Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read Free Page A

both, and here they are just workin’ away like a chain gang.”
    Otis stuck the shovel in the ground and stopped to wipe the sweat off his face. “I think we’re wastin’ time,” he says. “There probably ain’t no more buried here, the way he’s actin’.”
    Booger grabbed the shovel. “Don’t you believe it,” he says. “That’s just the sort of act the old crook’d put on to get us to quit. You ought to know—”
    He stopped all of a sudden then, and we heard it too. The shovel had hit something. “A- ha! ” he says. He threw out another scoop of dirt and reached down with his hands. They lifted it out, whatever it was, and begin whooping and hollering like men that had found a four-pound diamond.
    “Well, look what he’s puttin’ it in now,” Otis says. “It’s a GI canteen.”
    We all jumped up and went to look. They was standing in the hole they had dug, that was about three or four feet across and a little over knee deep, and Otis was holding this thing in his hand. It was a canteen, all right, the aluminum kind that soldiers carry, but it was old-looking and all crusted with dirt like it had been buried a long time.
    “Say, it’s full,” Otis was yelling, real excited. He shook it and grinned at Booger. Booger grabbed it and rubbed some of the dirt off with his hands.
    “Grand Jury, here we come,” he whooped.
    Uncle Sagamore frowned, sort of puzzled, and peered at the canteen. “Why, boys, I don’t recollect ever seein’ that around here.”
    “Why, of course not,” Booger says. “Probably what happened was it sneaked in here, filled itself with rotgut likker, and then hibernated.”
    Uncle Sagamore wasn’t paying much attention. He was rubbing his jaw and looking at the canteen. “Daggone it,” he says, like he was talking to hisself. “It is sort of familiar, now that I think about it.” Then he shook his head. “But I sure can’t place it.”
    Otis took it back from Booger and started to twist the cap off. It was stuck tight. He grunted and strained, but it didn’t budge.
    “It’s likely corroded,” Booger says. “Here, let one of the men try it.” He grabbed it away from Otis and twisted till the cords stuck out on his neck. Still nothing happened.
    Uncle Sagamore went on scratching his head. “You know, Sam,” he says, “I still got a feelin’ I seen that thing somewheres—”
    “I sure don’t place it,” Pop says.
    “Here, you hold it,” Booger told Otis. “Use both hands, and let me twist the cap.”
    They both grunted, but it didn’t budge at all. They began to look mad. “Dammit,” Booger says, “how come he put it in a canteen, anyhow? For thirty years he’s been runnin’ his moonshine off in fruit jars.”
    Otis shook his head. “He probably shop-lifted it at some gov’ment surplus place.”
    Uncle Sagamore looked up real quick. “Say, that’s it!” he says to Pop. “I knowed that thing was familiar.”
    Booger and Otis stopped twisting and grunting and looked at him. Pop asked, “You mean you bought it at a surplus store?”
    “No,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Them fellers give it to me. The men from the loan company. Well sir, that must have been six, seven year ago—”
    Booger let go the canteen to wipe the sweat off his face. “Boy, I bet this is goin’ to be a good one,” he says.
    “See if you can find a rock,” Otis says. “If we hit the cap a couple of hard whacks it may jar it loose.”
    Booger bent down and started pawing around in the dirt for a rock.
    “You say they give it to you?” Pop asked. “What company was this?”
    “The Redlands Loan Company,” Uncle Sagamore told him. “From over in Waynesville, as I recollect. It was Otis sayin’ gov’ment surplus that made me remember. You see, they bought this here safe at one of them gov’ment sales—”
    “Well, what’s in it?” Pop asked. “The canteen, I mean.”
    “It’s some kind of cordial,” Uncle Sagamore says. “One of them hifalutin’,