The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t seem like much of a place for having your questions answered.
    Uncle Sagamore and Pop talked it over about us staying there for the summer and Uncle Sagamore said it would be fine, only we’d have to kind of provision ourselves. He said he’d been so taken up with his tannery work this spring he’d forgot to plant any garden, and the chickens always quit laying when he brought his tubs up to the house to age in the sun.
    “Oh, that’s all right,” Pop says. “We’ll run into town right now and lay in some supplies.”
    So we unhitched the trailer and left it there under the tree and started out in the car. When we passed Mr. Jimerson’s place he was lying on his back on the front porch. He waved a hand and grinned at us.
    “Guess they didn’t run over any of his hawgs this time,” Pop says.
    “Why do you suppose they’re always trying to save Uncle Sagamore from something?” I asked him.
    “Well, he’s a big taxpayer,” Pop says. “And I reckon they just like him.”
    It was about two more miles from there out to where the little road joined the highway. But just before we got there we came around a little curve and Pop slammed on the brakes and stopped. There was a car and a big, shiny, silver-and-blue house trailer pulled about halfway off the road.
    Pop looked at it. We could get by it all right, but it was a funny place to meet a big trailer like that because this road didn’t go anywhere except to some farms like Uncle Sagamore’s back towards the river bottom. And there was nobody in the car.
    “They must be lost,” Pop says.
    We got out and walked around it. The doors was closed and the curtains was pulled tight across the windows. We didn’t hear anybody. It was quiet and peaceful there in the pine trees, except once in a while we could hear a car go past on the highway just around the next bend.
    It was funny. The car and the trailer seemed to be all right, and they wasn’t stuck in the sand or anything. It just looked like somebody had pulled it in here and then gone off and left it. We couldn’t figure it out.
    Then we saw the man.
    He was down the road at the next bend, but he was off a little to one side, in the trees. His back was to us, but he was standing real still among the trunks, watching the highway.
    “Must be waiting for somebody,” Pop says.
    Just then the man turned his head and saw us standing beside the trailer. He whirled around and started running towards us along the road. In spite of how hot it was, he had on a double-breasted flannel suit and was wearing a Panama hat and tan-and-white shoes. He kept watching us while he ran.
    “What the hell are you looking for?” he barked at Pop when he came up.
    Pop leaned against the side of our car. “Why, we was just passin’ and thought maybe you was in trouble, or something,” he says.
    The man looked us over. Pop was dressed the way he always was around the tracks, in levis and old scuffed-up cowboy boots and a straw sombrero. It gives the clients, as Pop calls ‘em, confidence to know the man they’re dealing with is connected with a big gamble. In fact, that’s the way he got his business name. Stablehand Noonan, he prints on top of the sheets. Anyway, when the man sized us up a little it seemed to give him confidence too, because he kind of cooled off.
    “Oh,” he says. “No. No trouble. I just stopped to cool off the motor.”
    He lit a cigarette and kept on watching us like he was thinking of something. He was dark complected and had real cold blue eyes and a slim black moustache. His hair was black under the Panama hat. You could see he was hot inside that double-breasted flannel coat, and it looked funny out here among the pine trees. He carried his left arm a little awkward, out from his body somewhat, and when he raised his hands to light the cigarette the coat opened a crack at the top and I saw a narrow leather strap running across his chest. I figured he was wearing some kind of a brace. Maybe