The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,30

the side of the house next to the well. There wasn’t much breeze, either, to blow it away.

Well, they stayed there for nearly a week, night and day, but like Pop said after a while you got used to it and didn’t mind. I asked him why they didn’t take ‘em away at night, because there wasn’t any sun then anyhow, but he says it was too much trouble to carry ‘em back and forth.

About the fifth or sixth day they was there I’d got so used to the odor I could even go up to the tubs without it knocking me down, so I went over to see how the leather was coming along. I got a stick and lifted one of the cowhides up, and doggone if the stick didn’t just poke right through it. It was coming apart in the tubs just like the last batch had.

I went right away to call Pop and Uncle Sagamore to tell ‘em about it, but I couldn’t find ‘em. They’d been setting in the shade of the chinaberry tree in the back yard just a few minutes ago, having a drink out of the glass jar, but now they was gone.

I looked all around, and called, and went through the house, but I couldn’t find ‘em. So I walked down to the barn, and they wasn’t there either, but when I went back to the house again they was setting right there under the chinaberry tree where they’d been in the first place.

When I told ‘em about the leather coming apart Uncle Sagamore kind of frowned and they came around and looked theirselves. Uncle Sagamore took the stick and poked at one of the hides, and sure enough it just went right through.

He straightened up and sailed out some tobacco juice and scratched his head. “Well sir, by golly, she sure is,” he says. “What you reckon we’re doin’ that’s wrong, Sam?”

Pop scratched his head too. “Well, I just don’t rightly know,” he says. “But it sure don’t look right. Leather hadn’t ought to be that tender.”

“I done everything just like the bulletin says, the one I got from the Gov’ment,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I followed it real careful this time so’s there couldn’t be no chance for a mistake. What you reckon we ort to do?”

Pop studied for a moment. “Only one thing we can do,” he says. “We got to let her run full course. Ain’t no use startin’ another new batch now, because she’ll probably wind up just like this. We got to let her simmer right out to the end, and then when she’s all finished we’ll send a little bit of it to the Gov’ment and ask ‘em to take a look at it and tell us what we done wrong.”

“Well sir, that’s the way I got her figured too,” Uncle Sagamore says, nodding his head. “Them fellers in the Gov’ment can’t tell nothin’ about it less’n we follow the instructions right out to the end. So we’ll just let her ride. Only take about another month and a half.”

“Why, in a month and a half it probably won’t be nothing but soup,” I says.

“Well, ain’t nothing we can do about that,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Just have to send ‘em some of the soup, then. Instructions is instructions, and if you don’t do what they say the Gov’ment can’t tell you nothing.”

“But look at all the time that’s wasted,” I says.

Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco over. “Well, hell,” he says, “what’s time to a dead cowhide, or the Gov’ment?”

So they decided to do it that way. It seemed to me like we wasn’t going to make much money out of the tannery if another month and a half had to go by before they started a new batch and they already knew this one was ruined, but there wasn’t no use arguing with Pop and Uncle Sagamore.

I was having too much fun to worry about it anyway. I went fishing early every morning, and late in the evening Miss Harrington would give me another swimming lesson. In between times, in the afternoon when she wouldn’t go in I’d practice in the shallow water at this end of the lake, just below where Uncle Finley was building his boat. And that’s where the funny thing happened, the one I couldn’t figure out at all.

I reckon it was the next day after we discovered the leather was ruined. It was right after noon. Sig Freed was sitting