The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,19
something? Tell him to go fry a hush-puppy and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Keep your shirt on,” Dr Severance told her. “Mr. Noonan is going to rent us a camping place on his farm.”
Miss Harrington yawned. “Well, goody.”
“You’ll have absolute rest and quiet, and lots of fresh leafy vegetables.”
“Just what I always wanted,” she says.
Pop stood up. “We got to drive in to town buy some groceries,” he told the doctor. “It won’t take long, so you just wait here and when we come back we’ll lead you to the farm.”
Dr Severance came around the trailer with us and when we got in the car he put his arms on the door and leaned in a little. He jerked his head towards the trailer.
“When you’re in town,” he says to Pop, “maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t say anything about Miss Harrington to anybody. You know how the word gets around, and I wouldn’t want her pestered by a flock of reporters all the time.”
“We won’t say a word,” Pop says. He turned the key to the ignition, and then he asked, “By the way, this anemia’s not catching, is it?”
Dr Severance shook his head. “No. It’s hardly contagious at all. The only way you can catch it is if you actually touch somebody who’s got it.” He stopped, and then took a long look at Pop’s face. “And of course you got better sense than to do a crazy thing like that.”
“Now that you brought it up,” Pop says, “I sure have.”
We drove on around the bend and out onto the highway. It was only five miles from there to town. Pop was sort of quiet, except that every once in a while he would say, “My God,” like he was talking to hisself.
“Miss Harrington’s nice,” I says to him. “You don’t suppose she’s with the Welfare, do you?”
“I doubt it,” Pop says.
“I didn’t think so,” I says. “But she has got kind of a Welfare bosom.”
Pop didn’t act like he even heard me. His hands was gripping the wheel real hard and he was staring straight ahead.
“My God,” he says again. The car swerved across the road and almost went in the ditch on the wrong side. He yanked the wheel and we straightened out again.
“You oughtn’t to talk about Miss Harrington’s bosom,” he says to me like he was mad. “The poor girl’s not well. She’s got the anemia.”
“Is that bad, Pop?” I asked.
“Well,” he says, “I can’t see that it’s done her much harm so far, but I reckon it’s pretty serious if you got to eat vegetables for it.”
* * *
We got into town. It was a pretty little town, with a red brick courthouse in a square and big trees growing all around. We parked the car in the square and went into a grocery store. Pop bought eight pounds of baloney and six loaves of bread, and then he got a couple cases of beer and some cigars. I asked him if I could have candy bar. He said they was bad for my teeth, but finally gave in and bought me one. We went back out and got in the car.
We was just about to drive off when Pop suddenly remembered something. “I almost forgot,” he says. “We’re all out of hawg lard. I got to get some to fry the baloney in.”
He went back in the grocery store. I sat in the car, finishing my candy bar and looking out at the square. It was just then that I saw the big car go by with the men in it wearing Panama hats. There was three of them, and they all had on double-breasted flannel suits like Dr Severance’s. The car had Louisiana license plates, like his did, and it was just going along real slow while the men looked around. They kept watching the sidewalks and the other cars.
They went on around the square, and in a few minutes they came by again. There was a parking place ahead of us, and they pulled in and got out and started into the restaurant next to the grocery store. They walked close together, watching the other people all the time, and I noticed they all had that awkward way of carrying their left arm, just like Dr Severance had.
Just then Pop came out of the grocery store carrying the can of hog lard, and he nearly bumped into them. He stopped real quick and stared