The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,40
‘em. Pop took the bag and put it in the back of the car, on top of the box that had the jars in it.
“Maybe they’d be better on top of the clothes,” says. “Like a cushion, so there won’t be no chance of ‘em breaking.”
“No, they’re all right,” Pop says. “We tested them jars, didn’t we?”
“Okay,” I says. I started to climb in the back. “Are we ready to go? Where’s Uncle Sagamore?”
Pop lit a cigar. “Oh, he’ll be along in a few minutes. He had to run down in the bottom to see about one of the mules.”
“Oh,” I says. “Well, why don’t we pull the car up a little so we can get away from them tubs?”
“That’s a good idea,” Pop says. He moved the car up the hill about fifty yards and we sat in it while we waited for Uncle Sagamore. It was hot and sunshiny, and I could hear that bug yakking it up out in the trees. It was real nice, I thought, especially since we was out of range and couldn’t smell them tubs. The country sure was a nice place, all peaceful like this, and not crowded like Pimlico and Belmont Park. I could see Dr Severance and Miss Harrington sitting in their chairs in front of the trailer listening to the radio. They waved at us. Pop looked up in that direction.
“A diamond bathing suit,” he says, more like he was talking to hisself. “Imagine that. Where do you swim, you an’ Miss Harrington?”
“We don’t,” I says. “You told me not to, don’t you remember?”
“Oh. Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”
He was quiet for a minute, and then he looked back up the hill again and stirred kind of restless in the seat. “Reckon if it’s made out of diamonds, it ain’t a very big suit, is it?”
“No,” I said. “Just a little three-cornered patch, sort of, and a string that goes around the middle.”
“Just one patch?”
“Yeah,” I says. “Leaves her lots of room to swim in. It ain’t binding her at all.”
“Ho-ly hell!” he says, like he was choking on the cigar smoke. “You’re sure there ain’t three patches?”
“No. Just one. Why? Is there usually three?”
“Oh,” he says. “I don’t rightly know. Seems like I heard somewhere there was three, most generally. But I reckon it don’t make no difference. You see anything of Sagamore?”
I turned and looked down past the house and across the cornfield, but I didn’t see him anywhere. “Not yet.”
“Well, he’ll be along pretty soon.”
“Is something wrong with one of the mules?” I asked.
“Well, with a mule, it’s kind of hard to tell when something is wrong with him. But he says one of ‘em had been actin’ kind of funny. Like something was worryin’ him.”
“Oh,” I says. We waited some more. And then, when I looked down that way again, I saw a little feather of gray smoke coming up above the trees down in the bottom.
“Say, Pop. Something’s burning down there.”
He turned that way. “Well, by golly, so it is. I reckon it ain’t serious, though. Likely just an old stump or something.”
Just then there was a racket up the hill. It sounded like a car coming along the old road in a big hurry, I turned and got just a glimpse of it as it passed an opening in the trees. It didn’t turn in at the wire gate, though; it just kept on going on that road that angled down towards the bottom. It was really moving.
“They was travelling a little like Booger and Otis,” I says. “You reckon it was them?”
“Hmmmm,” Pop says. “I don’t know. Can’t see why they’d be goin’ down there towards the bottom.”
“Maybe they seen that smoke. Uncle Sagamore says they keep a sharp lookout for forest fires.”
Pop took a puff on his cigar. “Reckon that might be it, at that. Well, they’ll likely put her out. Ain’t no cause to worry.”
He kept on looking towards the timber, and in a minute Uncle Sagamore came out of it on the far side of the cornfield. He was walking pretty fast. He went in the back of the house, and then come on out the front just like he’d walked straight through, but when he came out he had on a pair of shoes. The shoes wasn’t laced, though, and he didn’t have on a shirt. He didn’t believe in dressing up much to go to town. The black hair on his chest stuck up above the bib