The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,16

and went up about three feet in the air. They must have put the brakes on while it was still off the ground, because when it hit it just slid kind of nose down, and turned crossways and stopped about half out of the road.

The door flew open and Booger and Otis jumped out, one on each side, and started running towards the trees. They reminded me of horses coming out of a starting gate, the way they took off. Booger had to go round the car, so he was sort of left at the post, but as soon as he was clear and had racing room he went into a drive and started closing fast on Otis. Otis come on again, but Booger was laying up close to the pace now and he finally pulled into the lead by a good length and a half, and won going away. They shot into the trees.

Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe again. “Sure hope them boys ain’t comin’ down with that typhoid,” he says, and picked up the glass jar they had forgot to take along with them to have analyzed.

He reached it back through the door and traded it for the other one. He handed this one to Pop. They both took a drink.

Uncle Sagamore leaned the shotgun back against the wall and stretched. “You know,” he says, “that stuff might make a purty good remedy, at that. Even if it didn’t help a man out none with the gals, it’d sure take his mind off ‘em.”

* * *

Well, after Booger and Otis had come out of the trees and got back in their car and left, Uncle Sagamore backed his truck out of the shed by the barn. Him and Pop loaded the tannery tubs on it and took them off in the timber back of the cornfield.

“Think they been in the sun long enough for now,” he says. “This leather-making is ticklish business. Got to let it age just right, part of the time up there in the sun, and then down here in the shade for a few days.”

I wondered why they had to be clear up there beside the house just to be in the sun, but I didn’t say anything. This didn’t seem like much of a place for having your questions answered.

Uncle Sagamore and Pop talked it over about us staying there for the summer and Uncle Sagamore said it would be fine, only we’d have to kind of provision ourselves. He said he’d been so taken up with his tannery work this spring he’d forgot to plant any garden, and the chickens always quit laying when he brought his tubs up to the house to age in the sun.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Pop says. “We’ll run into town right now and lay in some supplies.”

So we unhitched the trailer and left it there under the tree and started out in the car. When we passed Mr. Jimerson’s place he was lying on his back on the front porch. He waved a hand and grinned at us.

“Guess they didn’t run over any of his hawgs this time,” Pop says.

“Why do you suppose they’re always trying to save Uncle Sagamore from something?” I asked him.

“Well, he’s a big taxpayer,” Pop says. “And I reckon they just like him.”

It was about two more miles from there out to where the little road joined the highway. But just before we got there we came around a little curve and Pop slammed on the brakes and stopped. There was a car and a big, shiny, silver-and-blue house trailer pulled about halfway off the road.

Pop looked at it. We could get by it all right, but it was a funny place to meet a big trailer like that because this road didn’t go anywhere except to some farms like Uncle Sagamore’s back towards the river bottom. And there was nobody in the car.

“They must be lost,” Pop says.

We got out and walked around it. The doors was closed and the curtains was pulled tight across the windows. We didn’t hear anybody. It was quiet and peaceful there in the pine trees, except once in a while we could hear a car go past on the highway just around the next bend.

It was funny. The car and the trailer seemed to be all right, and they wasn’t stuck in the sand or anything. It just looked like somebody had pulled it in here and then gone off