The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,28
and all. Can we go in every day?”
“Sure,” she says. “Why not? I think it’ll be fun.”
“I hope you’ll like it here,” I said. “Anyway, it ought to be nice and restful for you after New Orleans. All that stuff must have been pretty tiring.”
“Well,” she says, “it was a pretty tough grind.”
Seven
When we got back to the trailer it was growing dark, and Pop and Uncle Sagamore had left. I went on down to the house, and they was in the kitchen with the lamp lit, getting supper. Uncle Sagamore was slicing the baloney and pop was frying it. I got some slices to feed Sig Freed, and Pop asked me if we had gone swimming. I says yes and told them about Miss Harrington’s diamond bathing suit. Him and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other, and Uncle Sagamore slipped and cut his hand with the baloney knife.
“Well, imagine that,” Pop says.
“I just did,” Uncle Sagamore says, and went off to bandage his hand.
When he came back Pop had finished frying the baloney, and they put it on the table. Uncle Finley came stalking out of his room, the one that connected with the kitchen, and sat down at the table without looking to the left or right.
He picked up a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and held them sticking straight up with his fists on the table, and says, furious like, “Who was that there shameless hussy paradin’ her naked legs around here this evenin’? Is she a-goin’ to stay here?”
Uncle Sagamore grinned at Pop and says, real loud, “Why, that ain’t no way to talk about a pore gal that’s in bad health, Finley.”
“Well, either she goes, or I do,” Uncle Finley says, banging the table with his fists. “I ain’t goin’ to live in no place where there’s sinful people like that a-wavin’ theirselves around in defiance of the word of the Lord.”
Uncle Sagamore shook his head, real sad. “Well sir, you’re sure givin’ us a awful hard choice, Finley. But we’ll miss you. By Ned, we sure will.”
Pop asked Uncle Sagamore, not loud enough for Uncle Finley to hear, “Do you reckon he’ll really go?”
Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “No. You don’t rightly understand fellers like Finley. They figure it’s their duty to stay real close to that sinful stuff and keep watchin’ it, so they can stay worked up about it.”
“Yeah, I reckon that’s right,” Pop says.
“Sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Don’t you worry. The Devil ain’t goin’ to run Finley off the place by shakin’ some woman’s pink behind at him. He ain’t no coward.”
We all sat down at the table. Uncle Finley leaned his head down and started saying grace. While he was talking, Uncle Sagamore reached over and speared about eight slices of baloney and started eating.
“Sure is nice to have some real grub for a change,” he says, “after that goddam garden sass Bessie’s always cookin’ up.”
After supper me and Pop got our bedrolls out of the trailer and made ‘em up on the porch. Ours wasn’t a big house trailer like Dr Severance’s; it was just big enough to hold the printing press and paper and our camping gear, and we always had to sleep outside. There wasn’t any windows in it, either, because a lot of times we was set up pretty close to the track when we was printing the throw-away sheets, the advertising ones we ran off as soon as we’d got the results of the first six races.
We laid down and Sig Freed curled up on my blanket with me. Pop lit a cigar and I could see the end of it glowing red in the dark. Some kind of birds was yakking it up out over the river bottom, six-furlongs-in-one-ELEVEN, six-furlongs-in-one-ELEVEN over and over.
“This sure is a nice place,” I says. “I like it here.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Pop says. “I reckon we’ll stay until Fairgrounds opens in November. And looks like we might be able to build up our bankroll a little, what with gettin’ a commission on Dr Severance’s rent and me helpin’ Sagamore a little with the tannery business.”
“Well, I sure hope he don’t bring those tubs back up here,” I says.
“Oh, you get used to that and don’t mind it a bit,” he says. “As a matter of fact, according to Sagamore’s formula they’re goin’ to be ready for a little more sun exposure about day after tomorrow.”
“Where does he sell the leather?” I asked.
“Well,” Pop says,