The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,23

man, aside from being a little inclined to get all het up over triflin’ little things that don’t amount to a hill of beans. Reckon he’s got the high blood pressure. An’ then, too, it must be kind of trying, havin’ your men sneakin’ around Pokin’ beans up their noses when you ain’t lookin’.”

No,” Pop says. “They wasn’t poking beans up their nose. They were drinking croton oil remember?”

“Oh, sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It was croton oil, wasn’t it?”

The sheriff brought both hands up and rubbed ‘em across his face, and he didn’t say anything for a minute. He breathed kind of slow and heavy, but when he took his hands away he was still quiet.

“While I’m out here,” he says to Uncle Sagamore, “I’m going to have a look in your barn. We been gettin’ reports from various towns that you been doing a little shopping here and there.”

“Why, sure, Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Help yourself, I’m always kind of proud when I done a little shopping. The way I see it, it shows good management when a man can have a little money left over to buy something for hisself after he’s fed all the goddam politicians he’s got lyin’ in his lap.”

“Come on!” the sheriff says, real cold.

The barn was made out of logs, with split shingles for a roof. Inside there was some stalls for the mules. It was kind of dim, and smelled nice, just like the stables at a race track. In one corner there was a corncrib with a little door made out of planks.

We all stopped, and the sheriff went over and opened the corncrib door, “Well, well,” he says, Ebbing his hands together. “Just like I thought.”

I couldn’t see past him very well, but it looked like a lot of sacks of something or other piled up five or six feet high.

“Sure is a lot of awful sweet mule feed,” the sheriff says. He started counting, pointing with his finger and moving his lips. Uncle Sagamore leaned against the wall and sailed out some tobacco juice.

The sheriff finished counting. He turned around and looked at Uncle Sagamore, and he seemed to feel a lot better. “Ninety sacks,” he says. “That’s about the way we heard it. That was quite a little shopping you did, here and there.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Uncle Sagamore says. “A man’s workin’ eighteen, twenty hours a day, he don’t get to town very often.”

“You mind lettin’ me know what you’re aiming to do with all of it?” the sheriff asked. “Stories like that interest me.”

“Why, no. Not at all, Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You see, when Sam here wrote me he was comin’ to visit a spell this summer and was bringin’ his boy, I figured I ort to lay in a little sweetnin’. You know how boys is. They got a sweet tooth.”

“Nine thousand pounds of sugar?” the sheriff asked. “They must figure on staying several weeks. Ain’t you afraid that much’d be bad for his teeth?”

Uncle Sagamore snapped his fingers. “Well sir,” he says, “you know, I never thought of that.”

The sheriff’s face started to get purple again.

Uncle Sagamore shook his head, kind of sad. “Imagine that,” he says. “Sure looks like the joke’s on me, buyin’ all that sugar for nothin’.”

Six

We walked back to the car. The sheriff opened the door and started to get in. “Well, you just go right ahead bein’ smart, Sagamore Noonan,” he says. “Sooner or later you’re going to laugh on the other side of your face. It’s here on this land, and we’re goin’ to find it. It ain’t goin’ to be so funny then.”

“Why, did you lose something, Shurf?” Uncle Sagamore asked. “You should have told me. Anyway, me an’ Sam can help, you just let us know. And don’t you fret none about us tellin’ anybody your men’s started drinkin’ croton oil. You can depend on us.”

The sheriff said a bad cuss word and got in and slammed the door. The car jumped ahead and made a big turn and then went bucking up the hill. It seemed like him and his men was always in a hurry. I thought it wasn’t any wonder they kept running over Mr. Jimerson’s hogs.

I wondered why Uncle Sagamore had bought all that sugar, but I figured there wasn’t any use asking him. Maybe I could ask Pop about it later. He might know. But I was sure he hadn’t bought it on account of us, like he