I says. “I like it here. Except for the smell.”
“Yeah, but what are we going to do? Sagamore ain’t here. He’s probably been drafted. Nobody around here except that old squirrel down there hammering boards together. Nowhere else around here we can go.”
Right behind us somebody said, “Howdy, Sam.”
We whirled around, and there was a man standing in the front door, leaning against the jamb with a shotgun hanging in the crook of his arm. I just stared at him. I couldn’t figure out how he’d got there. The house had been empty less than a minute ago. And we hadn’t heard a sound.
He was a big man, taller than Pop, and he was dressed in overalls and an overall jumper without any shirt. He had kind of small, coal-black eyes and a big hooked nose like an eagle, and his face was covered right up to his eyes with sweaty black whiskers about a quarter of an inch long. His hair was black and gray mixed, growing kind of wild and bushy over his ears, but he had a big bald spot that went from his forehead right across the top of his head. The black hair on his chest showed up past the bib of his overalls and stuck out along his neck where the jumper was open.
Those hard, shiny, button eyes seemed to be kind of grinning while they looked at us, but they made you think of a wolf’s grin. There was a big lump in his left cheek, and then without moving his head or anything he puckered up his lips and a big stream of brown tobacco juice sailed out across the porch, kind of bunched up and solid like a bullet. It came on and cleared the front steps and landed ka-splott in the yard.
“Visitin’?” he asked.
“Sagamore!” Pop says. “You old son of a gun.”
So that was Uncle Sagamore, I thought. But I still couldn’t figure out where he had come from, or how he’d got there in the door without us hearing him.
He put the gun down against the wall and said, “Ain’t seen you in quite a spell, Sam.”
“About eighteen years, I reckon,” Pop says. We went up on the porch and they shook hands and we all hunkered down on our heels around the door.
“Where did you come from, Uncle Sagamore?” I asked. “I was just there in the house and I didn’t see you. And what’s the man building down there by the lake? And how come you didn’t put those cowhides further away from the house?”
He turned his head and looked at me, and then at Pop. “This yore boy, Sam?”
“Yeah, that’s Billy,” Pop says.
Uncle Sagamore nodded. “Going to be a smart man when he grows up. He asks a lot of questions. He’ll probably wind up knowing more than a justice of the peace if anybody ever answers any of ‘em.”
Three
Uncle Sagamore got up and went in the house. When he come back he had two glass jars with him, and they was full of some kind of clear stuff like water. He set one down just inside the door and handed the other one to Pop, and then hunkered down again. Pop was still fanning the air with his hat, but he didn’t say anything about the smell from the tubs.
He took a drink out of one of the jars and then handed it back to Uncle Sagamore. He gasped a little, and tears come to his eyes.
“Old well ain’t changed a bit,” he says.
They didn’t fool me any, of course. I knew it wasn’t water but I didn’t say anything.
Uncle Sagamore took the big wad of tobacco out of his cheek and threw it out in the yard. He tilted the jar up and his Adam’s apple went up and down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It didn’t make any tears in his eyes, though.
“By the way,” Pop says, “there was a couple of airplane spotters up on the hill as we come in. Looking down this way with field glasses.”
“Wearin’ white hats?” Uncle Sagamore asked.
“Yeah,” Pop says. “And one of ‘em had a gold tooth. Looked like fellers that was real pleased with themselves.”
Uncle Sagamore nodded, sort of solemn. “That was some of the shurf’s men. Real hard-workin’ fellers, always frettin’ about forest fars. They spend a lot of time up there watching for smoke.”
“They ever find any?” Pop asked.
“Well, sometimes,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Once in a while an