The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,11

he says. “I know moon when I taste it.” But he thought about it for a minute and then took another drink.

“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “It would be kind of silly if we took it in and it was medicine.”

“You ought to know better than to believe anything Sagamore Noonan says,” the moustache one told him. “Here. Let me have it again.”

He took another one too. But he couldn’t seem to make up his mind either.

“Well, take her in if you just got to,” Uncle Sagamore says. “But you might as well set and visit a spell. Ain’t no hurry.”

“No, we’ll just run along,” they says. “This was all we was after. Didn’t want you to catch that typhoid.” They started to turn around.

Uncle Sagamore lifted the shotgun down kind of absent-minded and set it across his knees. He broke it, lifted the shells out and looked at them like he wanted to be sure they was really in it, and then slid ‘em back in and closed the gun again. He was sliding the safety catch back and forth, just to be doing something, the way a man scribbles with a pencil while he’s talking on the telephone. They watched him. The moustache one licked his lips.

“Sure you boys can’t set a spell?” Uncle Sagamore asked. “No use you rushin’ off in the heat of the day.”

They stopped. The gold-tooth one says, “Uh—well—”

“That’s the trouble nowadays,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “People just don’t take the time to be neighborly. Come a-chargin’ in here like a highlifed shoat to save a man from comin’ down with that typhoid, and then before he can hardly thank ‘em for what they done they get another burr under their crupper and go tearin’ off to hell an’ gone to save some other pore taxpayer from something. Man was to just set once in a while he’d live longer.”

The two sheriff’s men looked at each other again and then out at the car like it had suddenly gone a long way off and they wasn’t sure they could make it that far in the hot sun. They kind of oozed down on the steps, still watching Uncle Sagamore and looking into the end of the shotgun. “Well, I reckon there ain’t no great hurry, come to think of it,” the gold-tooth one says.

“Now you’re talkin’,” Uncle Sagamore says. He took the old plug of tobacco out of his pocket, rubbing it on his overall leg to get off some of the lint and dirt and roofing tack that was sticking to it, and bit off a big chew.

“Want to make you acquainted with my kin-folks,” he went on. “This is my brother Sam and his boy. Sam’s in the investment business in New York. Sam, say howdy to the shurf’s boys. The high-pockets one with the chicken fat in his hair is Booger Ledbetter, and the other one, with that kiss-me-quick moustache, is Otis Sears.”

“Howdy,” pop says.

“Howdy,” Booger says.

“Howdy,” Otis says.

Nobody said anything else for a minute or two. We all just sat there hunkered down looking at each other. I was on one side of Uncle Sagamore and Pop was on the other, and the two sheriff’s men was on the top step, in front of us. I could hear that bug going buz-z-z-z out in the trees again. Then a little breeze come along and the smell got awful. The sheriff’s men fanned harder with their hats.

“You boys warm?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Booger says. “It’s just that smell. Get’s sort of rank at times.”

“Smell?” Uncle Sagamore asked. He looked at them kind of puzzled, and then at Pop. “You smell anything, Sam?”

Pop quit waving the air with his hat. “Why no,” he says, surprised like. “What kind of a smell?”

Uncle Sagamore looked back at Booger and Otis. “You sure you boys ain’t just imagining it? Where does it seem to be coming from?”

“Why, I thought from the tubs over there,” Booger says.

“You don’t mean my tannery, do you?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

“Well—uh,” Booger says, looking at the end of the shotgun again. “I thought there was a sort of smell coming from over there, but maybe I was wrong.”

“Sure is funny,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I ain’t noticed a thing, myself. But I’m glad you boys mentioned it; reminds me it’s time for them two on the end to dreen a little. They been soakin’ for nine days now, and I better hang ‘em up. I’ll be right back.”

He got