People began to come out of the door of the courthouse and down the steps. They crowded around. More was running this way from the stores around the square. You couldn’t hardly move. Pop and Uncle Sagamore and me had got out, but now we was pressed back against the car by the crowd.
‘I don’t believe it,’ somebody says in all the jam pushing around us. ‘They won’t never catch Sagamore Noonan dead to rights. He’s too smart for ’em.’
Somebody else says, ‘The hell they won’t. There he is, right there, ain’t he?’
Somewhere in the back, a little kid was yelling, ‘Papa, hold me up. I want to see Sagamore Noonan!’
Cars going by in the street was stopping. It was jammed up from kerb to kerb. People was craning their necks. It was a regular uproar with everybody trying to talk at once, asking questions and pointing and hollering at each other.
‘Is that really him?’
‘Sure. The one that looks like a pirate.’
‘That’s Sagamore Noonan?’
‘Sure, that’s Sagamore Noonan.’
‘I don’t care what they say, they ain’t got him.’
‘Of course they have.’
‘It’ll backfire on ’em some way. You just wait.’
‘I hear they found the still and ten thousand gallons of mash.’
‘They caught him running off a batch.’
The little kid was screaming. ‘I wanna see Sagamore Noonan. I wanna see Sagamore Noonan, I wanna see Sagamore Noonan.’
‘You just wait,’ a man says in the crowd right near us. ‘The whole thing’ll blow up right in their faces. It always does.’
I looked at him. He was a big man with a dark-complected face, wearing a baseball cap.
Another man says, ‘You want to make a bet?’
‘Ten dollars says he’ll walk right out of there and they can’t hold him. He always does,’ the baseball cap man says.
‘He won’t this time.’
‘Put your money where your mouth is,’ the baseball cap man says.
‘I’ll take five of that,’ somebody else yells.
‘Here’s five,’ another man says, pushing through the crowd.
‘Give me five too,’ somebody else shouts.
Everybody was jostling and shoving and waving money. The crowd pushed us back against the car even closer. Booger nudged a man standing close to us.
‘Cover all that Sagamore money you can,’ he whispers. ‘We got him dead to rights this time. Get down five hundred for me an’ Otis if they’ll bet that heavy.’
The man nodded and started pushing through the crowd. Uncle Sagamore didn’t say anything. He looked real discouraged. He took off his shoes and put them in through the window of the car so he could scratch his legs with his toes, and just stood looking down at his feet. There was so much yakking you couldn’t hear whether he was talking or not.
Then all of a sudden a little roly-poly man with a red face come shoving His way through the crowd like he’d been shot out of a cannon. It was the sheriff. He had his hat in his hand, wringing it the way you would a wash-cloth.
He jumped at Booger and Otis like he wanted to kiss ’em both. ‘Pearl says you got him!’ he yells. ‘Says you caught him with the goods.’
‘You bet we did,’ Booger says. He pushed the people back and opened the car door. ‘Look!’
The bundle of dirty clothes had been pushed off, and the top of the cardboard box was open. You could see the four fruit jars.
‘Glory, glory, glory!’ the sheriff yelled. ‘Praise the Lord!’ There was tears in his eyes and he was grinning from one ear to the other. Words just come spouting out of him.
‘How did you do it, boys? How did you ever manage to catch him? We been a-tryin’ for ten years! Hey, stand back, everybody! Make room for the photographer. Get the photographer down here. Get witnesses.’
Witnesses, I thought. There must have been two thousand people jammed around us in the street and on the sidewalk and the courthouse lawn.
He went right on, half-way between laughing and crying. ‘Get a picture of it in the car, and then another with me holding it behind the car, so the licence plate will show. Boys, how on earth did you do it? We can confiscate the car, of course. Two whole gallons of evidence—oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. We’ll put it in the safe. No, by God, I’ll put it in the vault in the bank and pay the storage charges on it myself. But how in the world did you manage to outfox him?’ He ran down at last.
Booger and Otis was laughing again. Booger wiped the tears out of his own eyes. ‘He says it’s tannery solution. Honest to God, sheriff, that’s what he told us!’ He broke down and howled some more. Then he got a grip on hisself and went on, ‘He outsmarted hisself this time. You know what the old wart hog done?’
The sheriff began to jump up and down. ‘No,’ he yells. ‘Of course I don’t know what he done. That’s what I keep asking you. What did he do?’
Booger and Otis both started talking at once. ‘Well, he set fire to an old stump down there in the bottom, see? That was to draw us down there out of the way, so he could sneak out without us getting a look at his car. But we got wise as soon as we seen it was just a stump, and rushed back, and sure enough, that was what he was up to. But—but—’
They both leaned against the car, roaring fit to bust.
‘But what, dammit?’ the sheriff yelled.
‘But the car broke down!’ Booger whoops. ‘So there he was, sitting there like a crippled duck, with two gallons of it on him right in broad daylight! So he tells us it’s tannery solution!’
The sheriff just shook his head with the tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Boys,’ he says, ‘this here is the proudest day of my life. I won’t never forget this.’
Uncle Sagamore mopped the sweat off his face. ‘Shurf,’ he says, ‘I don’t know what all this hooraw’s about, but if your men ain’t got nothin’ better to do than go around pickin’ on honest citizens that’s tryin’ to scratch out a livin’ tanning a little leather—’
The sheriff bristled up to him like a little banty rooster. He shook a finger in his face. ‘You shut up, Sagamore Noonan,’ he says. ‘Try to outsmart my boys, will you? Well, we got you this time.’
The photographer took pictures of the four jars and the box and then pictures of the car. A lot of people in the crowd was hollering to have the bets paid. ‘There’s the evidence, ain’t it?’ they says.
‘No, sir,’ others was saying. ‘Bets ain’t settled till we see ’em close the cell door on him. That’s Sagamore Noonan, you fool. You just wait.’ These ones seemed to be kind of losing heart, though. The baseball cap man was still talking loud, but it was like he wasn’t quite so sure any more.
Booger picked up the box and started into the courthouse. ‘Come on, Sagamore Noonan,’ the sheriff says. Then he looked at Pop. ‘How about this one?’
‘He admitted it was his car,’ Otis says.
The sheriff let out a yell. ‘Glory hallelujah! Two Noonans in one haul. Come on, men.’
It looked like everybody had forgot about me. I began to be scared. They was going to draft Pop and Uncle Sagamore, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. They started pushing through the crowd, with the sheriff and the man named Pearl holding them by the arms. I followed along behind with all the people pushing around me as we went up the steps into the courthouse. We climbed some more steps to the second floor and into a big room that had ‘Sheriff’ wrote on a sign nailed to the door. Two girls was writing on typewriters at some desks, and there was a lot of steel cabinets with drawers in ’em, People come crowding in behind us till the whole room was full.
Booger put the box down on the desk where one of his girls was writing. Him and Pearl and Otis and the sheriff crowded around. ‘Stand back a little, folks,’ the sheriff was yelling. ‘Give us a little room here. We got to photograph the evidence once more.’
Some of the people pushed back till they cleared a little space around the desk. Pearl motioned for Pop and U
ncle Sagamore to move back towards the corner of the room. I stood close to Pop because I was still scared. There must have been twenty, thirty people in the room, all grinning, and the door was packed solid so no more could get in or out.
The photographer got his camera ready. ‘Now,’ the sheriff says. ‘I want one shot of me opening a jar of the evidence.’ He stopped then and thought about it. ‘No, by golly,’ he goes on, ‘these two smart deputy sheriffs of mine was the ones outfoxed the old devil and caught him, so we’ll all three have our picture made with a jar of it.’
Otis and Booger just grinned like big chessie cats. They reached in the box and each got a jar. The sheriff got one.
‘Shurf,’ Uncle Sagamore says, ‘I keep tryin’ to tell you you’re makin’ a mistake.’
‘Shut up, Sagamore Noonan,’ the sheriff says. ‘We don’t want to hear no more out of you.’
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe and looked down at the floor. ‘Shucks,’ he says, kind of tired and put out, ‘all this hooraw over just a little old dab of tannery solution.’ People just snorted at him and looked back at the sheriff.
The sheriff held up his jar and looked through. He grinned. ‘Sure is a purty colour ain’t she?’
Booger sat down on the corner of the desk and held his out in his hand, looking important. ‘I don’t never drink nothing but Old Sagamore Tannery Solution,’ he says.
Everybody laughed. The photographer’s flashlight went off, and all three of them started trying to twist the jars open. That glue had set, so I wondered if the caps would come off at all. They caught the bottom of the jar in one hand and the cap in the other and twisted till they made faces. Uncle Sagamore and Pop leaned back against the wall and watched, real interested.
All of a sudden the sheriff’s jar just came right apart in his hands as clean as a whistle. The tannery juice went every which way, all over his clothes and the papers on the desk, and on the people standing around. It ran down his pants legs into his shoes. And before anybody could yell or jump or anything, Booger’s jar did the same thing. It was just like they had been sawed in two, and it was right where Pop and Uncle Sagamore had tested them with that string. Otis’s jar didn’t break, but when he jumped back he dropped it and it broke all to pieces on the floor.
It was a regular madhouse. That awful smell hit everybody at the same time and they started to choke and sputter and run for the door but there was so many standing in it and in the hall outside they couldn’t get through. They piled up like water piling up behind a dam. Everybody was yelling and pushing. Then the smell started to flow out through the door and people in the hall yelled and began running down the stairs. In a minute the log jam in the door broke and they all shot through at once.
Everybody, that is, but the sheriff. And of course me and Pop and Uncle Sagamore. The sheriff just stood there with his feet in a puddle of tannery juice. Papers was all over the floor, soaking up the juice, where somebody had knocked over one of the steel cabinets and spilled it open. The stuff had really spattered, like it had pressure behind it. It was on the typewriters and the desks and the walls. There was even a little dripping off the ceiling. A few drops fell on the sheriff’s bald head, going spat, spat, spat. I held my nose and watched him. It was sort of odd, the way he acted.
He didn’t seem to notice the smell. He just looked around real slow, and then he put his hands up over his face, and bowed his head like he was praying. In a minute he took his hands away and looked at Uncle Sagamore. His face was purple, like a cooked beet. He walked over to us, real slow, and stopped in front of Uncle Sagamore. His hands come up and made gestures like he was talking, and his mouth worked, but nothing came out.
Uncle Sagamore reached in his pocket and took out his plug of tobacco. He rubbed it on the leg of his overalls to clean it, and bit off a chew. He worked it around from one jaw into the other one, and then he says, ‘Shurf, ain’t you got no spittoons in here?’
The sheriff’s face was purple all the way down his neck now. His mouth went on working, but still there wasn’t a sound coming out. His hands made little gestures, and with his mouth opening and closing like that it was just like watching a movie when something has happened to the sound part and the picture is still going on without it.
‘Yes sir, Sam,’ Uncle Sagamore says, ‘it’s just downright unthoughtful, that’s what it is. They drag a man in here an’ arrest him without no cause at all, an’ they ain’t even got a spittoon in the place so’s he can spit. It kind of takes the heart out of a man, workin’ from daylight to dark tryin’ to scratch out a livin’ an’ pay his taxes so he can support all these goddam politicians.’ He shook his head and stopped, like he’d just give up.
‘It is sort of unconsiderate of ’em,’ Pop says, and nods his head. He lit a cigar.
Him and Uncle Sagamore started towards the door. I followed them. The sheriff turned and watched us, and then he walked real slow back to the desk. He still hadn’t been able to say a word. It was like he was all clogged up inside.
Uncle Sagamore stopped in the door and looked at him. ‘Shucks,’ he says, ‘ain’t no use holdin’ hard feelin’s.’
A little sound was coming out of the sheriff now. It was somelike, ‘—ffffft—sssssshhhh—ffffft—’
‘Hell, Shurf,’ Uncle Sagamore says, ‘the whole thing was just a little misunderstandin’, an’ I reckon I can overlook it. Matter of fact, if you want me to I won’t let on to nobody it even happened. We’ll just keep it a secret.’
The sheriff reached in the box and took out the last jar of the tannery juice. He held it in his hand for a minute, looking at it. Then he just drew back his arm real slow and deliberate and slammed it against the wall.
We all went out. It sure was a relief to get out in the fresh air.
We got in the car, but we didn’t go home right away. Pop stopped at the grocery store and bought six pounds of baloney and some cigars. Everybody on the street was talking about the tannery juice, and they kept staring at Uncle Sagamore. He didn’t seem to notice.
When we left the store we drove out in the edge of town where there was a sawmill and some railroad tracks. Uncle Sagamore showed Pop where to turn, and he drove into an alley and along it until we was in somebody’s back yard.
‘What are we going to do now?’ I asked Pop when he stopped under a big chinaberry tree.
‘Visit a friend of your Uncle Sagamore’s,’ he says.
Uncle Sagamore rapped four times on the door and in a minute a big woman with red hair opened it. She was wearing a kimona. She had cold blue eyes and looked like she could be plenty mean if she wanted to, but she smiled when she saw us and let us in. We followed her in through the kitchen and into another room and off to the right of it. It was kind of like a parlour, even if it was in the back of the house. Somewhere on the other side of the wall I could hear something clicking, and in a minute I figured out what it was. It was pool balls hitting each other. We was in back of a poolroom.
We sat down, she went out, and when she came back she had a big bottle and three glasses, and a bottle of coke. ‘That’s for you, Billy,’ she says, and handed me the coke. I couldn’t figure out how she knew my name.
She poured her and Pop and Uncle Sagamore a drink and then she sat down. She looked at Uncle Sagamore, and she smiled a little and shook her head. ‘You’d sure never think it to look at you,’ she says.
Uncle Sagamore took out his chaw of tobacco and held it in his hand while he swallowed his drink. Then he put it back in. ‘Has Murph come in yet?’
‘He just called,’ she says. ‘Said he’d be here in a minute.’ Then she laughed. ‘God, I’d like to seen it.’
Just then the door opened and a man come in. It was the big dark-faced man in the baseball cap that had kept saying they couldn’t do anything to Uncle Sagamore. He grinned at us, and poured hisself a drink.
‘Howdy Murph,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘Did Rodey get in all right with the load?’
Murph n
odded his head. ‘Slick as a whistle. He was pulled off the road just the other side of Jimerson’s, and as soon as he seen the two cars of you come by he went on in and loaded up. Follered you right into town. Let’s see—two hundred quarts at a dollar twenty-five—’
‘Two hundred and fifty dollars,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘Did you do much bettin’?’
‘Six hundred and eighty, as near as I can figure it,’ Murph says. ‘That was includin’ five hundred from Elmo Fenton, that I reckon was Booger and Otis’s money.’ He stopped and laughed. Then he went on, ‘Let’s see, that’s three hundred and forty apiece. Two-fifty plus three-forty—’
‘Five hundred and ninety dollars,’ Uncle Sagamore says.
Murph shook his head kind of slow, like he couldn’t even believe it, and began pulling money out of his pockets.
‘You’d sure never think it,’ he says, ‘to look at you.’
11
IT WASN’T TILL WE’D GOT clear home that I remembered we hadn’t took the dirty clothes to the laundry. I told Pop about it when we got out of the car.
‘By golly, you’re right,’ he says. ‘We clean forgot. Well, we’ll take ’em in tomorrow or the next day. Ain’t no great hurry.’
‘It didn’t look like it did any good at all to test those jars,’ I says.
Uncle Sagamore shook his head. ‘It’s just gettin’ to where a man can’t depend on nothin’ any more, I reckon. They sure don’t make them jars like they used to.’
‘Are you going to bottle up another batch of juice to send the gov’ment?’ I asked.
Uncle Sagamore sat down on the porch and took off his shoes to think about it. ‘Well sir, I don’t rightly know,’ he says. ‘Mebbe, in a couple of days. It’s just kind of disheartenin’, havin’ the shurf’s boys break ’em up that way.’
‘I think we ought to get at it right away,’ I says. ‘We’re wasting a lot of time when we could be making some new leather.’
‘This here boy’s a go-getter, Sam,’ he says to Pop. ‘You can see he ain’t goin’ to let no grass grow under his feet.’
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