Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read Free Page B

diddle-me-quick society drinks.”
    Otis frowned, like he was trying to remember something.
    “All right, here’s a rock,” Booger says. He straightened up. “Now, hold it straight up and give me room to swing—”
    Otis was still looking puzzled, and he didn’t pay any attention. He held the canteen under his arm while he lit a cigarette. “Redlands Loan Company,” he says, kind of talking to hisself.
    “Oh, hell,” Booger told him. “You’re not listenin’ to those lies of his, are you? What would a loan company be givin’ away canteens for? And besides, he ain’t never been in Waynesville.”
    “No, they was over here,” Uncle Sagamore said. “Four of ’em in a big truck, down there in my bottom timber—”
    Booger shook his head. “Boy, I can see this ’un is goin’ to be a real doozy. Hold that thing, Otis, and let me sock it.”
    He grabbed up the shovel and stuck it in the ground between them, and Otis held the canteen so the cap was resting against the handle. Booger drew back the rock. Then he stopped. “ Redlands Loan Company?” he says, kind of thoughtful.
    “What was they doing down there in the bottom?” Pop asked.
    “Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. He sailed out some tobacco juice and wiped his mouth. “Like I say, they was tryin’ to open this here safe. They had a bunch of sledgehammers and drills and stuff, and they just beat it up something terrible—”
    Booger stared at him. “ Safe? ” he says. His eyes got big, and he kind of stiffened up, still holding the rock.
    “They boughten it at one of them gov’ment surplus sales,” Uncle Sagamore went on, “and then when they got their papers and stuff inside it they found out the combination didn’t work, or something was wrong. Anyhow, they couldn’t get her open. They’d been writin’ back and forth to the gov’ment for a right smart spell, tryin’ to get the right combination, or get somebody to come open if for ’em, but you know how the gov’ment is—”
    “Wait!” Otis says all of a sudden, staring at Booger. “You remember? They never did find it—”
    “But how did they come to give you this here cordial?” Pop asked.
    “Oh, when they left, they just said I could have her,” Uncle Sagamore said. “They had two canteens of it, but I reckon they’d already drunk the other one before I got there. But it was awful-tastin’ stuff. Real greazy, like it was all fusel oil, and it upset my stummik somethin’ fierce. I had the gut cramps and the trots all day.”
    It was real funny then. Otis’s face turned as white as the underside of a toadstool. So did Booger’s. Neither one of ’em said anything. They just went on getting whiter.
    Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice the way they was acting. He went on talking to Pop. “Likely you got to develop a taste for them fancy drinks,” he says. “Or mebbe them boys was just hoorawin’ me, figurin’ a old boll-weevil like me wouldn’t know no better. Could of been some kind of oil they was usin’ on the drills, come to think of it, the stuff was so greazy.”
    You would have thought Booger and Otis had turned to stone. They just stood there in the broiling sun, the two of ’em all wrapped around the shovel handle and the canteen. Booger’s right arm was still stuck out, where he’d drawed back the rock to hit the canteen.
    “Well, what did they call the stuff?” Pop asked.
    “Hmmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says, pursing up his mouth. “Yeller somethin’. Wait a minute—Yeller Creme de Menthe. That’s what the boss said it was—he was the one that give it to me. Big laughin’ sort of feller, always crackin’ a joke. He kept callin’ me Ebeneezer—”
    “Why you reckon he done that?” Pop asked.
    “Oh, he was just that kind of a feller,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Funnin’ all the time. But mebbe I better tell you the whole thing, how I happened to run acrost ’em, and all.”
    “Sure,” Pop says. They stretched out in the shade of the