The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online

Bessie raised hell with Finley the first few times for tearin’ it down each time before she’d hardly got out of sight, but it didn’t do no good except to get her scratched off the passenger list, like I said. Finley and the Vision kind of voted her out, you might say.
    “So now when she gets a bellyful of Cousin Viola and comes home, as soon as she gets off the bus in town she goes right over to the E.M Staggers Lumber Company and orders a bill of material for a new privy. They made up so many of ‘em now they don’t even have to figure it any more. Got a list all wrote out, right down to the last ten-penny nail, hangin’ on a hook over the manager’s desk. So they just load it on the truck an’ Bessie rides out with ‘em.”
    But I wasn’t listening to Uncle Sagamore now. I was watching Booger and Otis. They was still holding their faces like they was afraid they’d die of the pneumonia if they ever sneezed. All you could see was their eyes with that terrible staring in them. They looked at Uncle Sagamore and the end of the shotgun and then out towards the car like it was a million miles away. They couldn’t sit still at all. They’d weave back and forth and kind of shift around on the step; but it was funny, each time they shifted they went backward a little. They slid down to the next step, and then the bottom one. They stood up and started easing away like they had something on their minds and had lost interest in Uncle Sagamore’s story altogether.
    They started out slow but began gathering speed, and by the time they got to the car they was really travelling. I never did figure out how they got the doors open and shot inside that fast, but by the time they’d hit the seat the car jumped ahead, making a long, looping turn. With the tires screaming, and they was headed back up the road towards the gate.
    Uncle Sagamore looked at ‘em and sailed out some more tobacco juice. “Doggone,” he says. “I should of knowed I was borin’ them boys.”
    Just then the car hit one of those bumps and went up about three feet in the air. They must have put the brakes on while it was still off the ground, because when it hit it just slid kind of nose down, and turned crossways and stopped about half out of the road.
    The door flew open and Booger and Otis jumped out, one on each side, and started running towards the trees. They reminded me of horses coming out of a starting gate, the way they took off. Booger had to go round the car, so he was sort of left at the post, but as soon as he was clear and had racing room he went into a drive and started closing fast on Otis. Otis come on again, but Booger was laying up close to the pace now and he finally pulled into the lead by a good length and a half, and won going away. They shot into the trees.
    Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe again. “Sure hope them boys ain’t comin’ down with that typhoid,” he says, and picked up the glass jar they had forgot to take along with them to have analyzed.
    He reached it back through the door and traded it for the other one. He handed this one to Pop. They both took a drink.
    Uncle Sagamore leaned the shotgun back against the wall and stretched. “You know,” he says, “that stuff might make a purty good remedy, at that. Even if it didn’t help a man out none with the gals, it’d sure take his mind off ‘em.”
    * * *
    Well, after Booger and Otis had come out of the trees and got back in their car and left, Uncle Sagamore backed his truck out of the shed by the barn. Him and Pop loaded the tannery tubs on it and took them off in the timber back of the cornfield.
    “Think they been in the sun long enough for now,” he says. “This leather-making is ticklish business. Got to let it age just right, part of the time up there in the sun, and then down here in the shade for a few days.”
    I wondered why they had to be clear up there beside the house just to be in the sun, but I didn’t say anything. This