Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read Free

more.”
    Uncle Sagamore seemed to have got over his nervousness. He leaned over and sniffed the mouth of the jar, and drew back. “Why, men,” he says, kind of shocked, “I ain’t no expert, of course, but I’d almost swear that was likker. How you reckon it got here?”
    Booger winked at Otis. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he says. “But whoever buried it here sure done you a dirty trick.”
    Uncle Sagamore shook his head like it was all too much for him. “Well, sir,” he says to Pop, “it’s enough to make a man lose his faith in human nature. People sneakin’ around buryin’ likker on his place when he ain’t lookin’.”
    “When you reckon they could of done it?” Pop asked.
    “There just ain’t no tellin’,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Bein’ off in the field like we are from daylight to dark, workin’ our fingers to the bone to try to make enough to pay the taxes—”
    Booger shook his head. “Oh, brother!”
    They both had another big laughing spell. Then they dried their eyes, and Booger says, “Well, let’s dig up some more and get goin’. I can’t hardly wait to see the Sheriff’s face when we come walkin’ in with him.”
    He grabbed the shovel and started digging again. We had to move back to keep from having our feet covered with dirt.
    Otis grinned at him. “If you run into a worm,” he says, “don’t take no chances with him. With a whole quart of that panther sweat spilled down there, he might pull a knife on you.”

TWO
    B UT MAYBE I BETTER go back and tell you how me and Pop came to be living here on Uncle Sagamore’s farm in the first place. You see, Pop’s a turf investment counselor by trade, and we used to travel around to the big cities like Hialeah and Belmont Park printing up the tip sheets and selling them to the clients, but along last year it seemed like Pinkerton detectives kept grabbing him all the time. And then we had this rhubarb with the Welfare Ladies in Aqueduct. They kept me while Pop was away, and threatened to take me away from him and put me in a Home because I was nearly seven years old and couldn’t read anything but the Racing Form. Pop touted ’em off that by promising to bring me down here to his brother’s place for some wholesome farm life, and we’d been here ever since, with Pop helping Uncle Sagamore out a little in some of the businesses he had for a sideline, like the leather tannery, and making evidence. Evidence is about the same thing as whiskey except it generally has less color to it.
    Then there was all this hullaballoo when the gangsters come, and Miss Harrington got lost in the river bottom with nothing on but her G-string, and the Sheriff found the still in the spare room of Uncle Sagamore’s farmhouse. Him and Pop was away for a while after that, but the Governor pardoned them and they was home now. That didn’t set any too well with the Sheriff, so he always had his men hanging around watching for smoke and looking for fruit jars full of evidence so he could send ’em away again. *
    Anyway, it was hot out there in the sun, and in a few minutes Booger had a real sweat worked up. Otis took the shovel and spelled him for a while. The hole kept getting bigger, but they didn’t find any more jars.
    “Hell, Sam,” Uncle Sagamore says to Pop, “I don’t see no need in us standin’ here. Why don’t we set down?”
    “Sure,” Pop says. We moved over in the shade of the oak tree. Uncle Sagamore stretched out and got comfortable with his back against the trunk, sailed out some tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    “It’s just like I always say, Sam; you can’t never tell about people,” he says. “Now, you look at them two boys, you’d swear they was borned politicians, wouldn’t you? I mean, take a long, disconnected drink of water like Booger, with his hair stuck down with chicken fat, and Otis with that cookie-duster mustache, you’d think one good diddle and a loud sneeze would kill ’em