Freed and he gave me his play growl and licked my ear. And that’s how we come to go to Uncle Sagamore’s.
Two
It had been a long time since Pop had been to the farm, so after we turned off the paved road he had to stop and ask a man how to get there. There was a little house without any paint on it and a barn made out of logs on the other side of the road. The man was chasing a hog, and he stopped and took off his hat and mopped his face with a red handkerchief.
“Sagamore Noonan?” he says, looking at us kind of funny.
“Yeah,” Pop says.
“You mean you want to go to Sagamore Noonan’s?” He couldn’t seem to believe it.
“Is there anything wrong with that?” Pop asks, kind of mad. “He’s there, ain’t he?”
“Why I reckon so,” the man says. “Leastwise, I ain’t seen ‘em bringing him out lately.”
“Well, how do we get there?”
“Well, you just sorta follow this road. The gravel kind of peters out after a while and it’s mostly sand, but I reckon you can make her all right with that trailer. After you go over a long sandhill and start down in the bottom there’s a pair of ruts leading off to the left through a war gate. From there it ain’t over a quarter-mile, and you can smell it if’n the wind’s right.” He mopped his face again. “And if you meet any cars coming out, give ‘em plenty of room because they’ll likely be in a hurry.”
“In a hurry?” Pop says.
“Yeah. Sometimes the shurf’s mighty aggravated when he goes by here. Run over three of my shoats already this year.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Pop says.
The man kind of shook his head, like it was getting the best of him. “That’s the reason I’m chasing this hawg. Two of the shurf’s men is back in there now and I’m trying to get him penned up before they come out. Sure is hard on hawgs.”
Pop thanked him and we went on.
“What did he mean, you could smell it?” I asked.
He shook his head, kind of absent-minded, like he was thinking. “With Sagamore, there ain’t no telling.”
We went up over a long hill where there was lots of pine trees. The car began to get hot, pulling the trailer in the sand. After we ran along the top of it for a while and started down on the other side we went around a turn in the road and right up along side another car pulled off in a little open place where there wasn’t any trees and you could see out over the river bottom. A man in a white hat was sitting on top of the car with his feet on the hood and he was looking through a pair of field-glasses like you watch races with. Pop put on the brakes and stopped, and the man let his field-glasses dangle on a strap around his neck and stared at us. I tried to see what he was looking at, but all there was was a couple of fields and then trees as far as you could see.
“What are you looking for?” Pop asks.
There was another man inside the car, and he was wearing a white hat too. He got out of the car and they looked at each other.
“Airplanes,” the man on top of the car says.
“Sure enough?” says Pop.
“That’s right. We’re airplane spotters,” the other man tells him. He had a gold tooth that showed when he grinned. “Never know when them Rooshians might take a notion to fly over this way. Where you fellas headed?”
Pop stared at him for a minute. “To the airport,” he says, and started the car up. “I see any Russian planes, I’ll let you know.”
We found the ruts going off to the left, and went through the wire gate. It was downhill a little way through the trees and then all of a sudden we saw Uncle Sagamore’s farm.
Then we smelled it.
Pop slammed on the brakes, and the motor stalled. “Good God,” he says, “what’s that?”
Sig Freed began to whine and jump around in the back seat. Pop took off his hat and fanned the air in front of his face, kind of choking a little. Then in a minute it wasn’t so bad and we could breathe again. There had been a little breeze blowing from where the house was, and it had quit.
“It’s coming from over there,” Pop says, “Right