Free Uncle Sagamore and His Girls by Charles Williams Page B

“Ain’t no tellin’,” he says. He got in the wagon and drove off.
    When noon came I went over to the kitchen and had a baloney sandwich, and then started back on the corn again. I had two gunny sacks full now. It sure puzzled me what kind of business Pop and Uncle Sagamore could be going into to need all this stuff and a shed with a water pipe, and I wished they’d get back so I could maybe find out. In about a half hour I heard a car turn in up at the gate. But it wasn’t them. It was a beat-up old Ford. It drove on down and two men got out.
    “Hello,” I says.
    “Howdy,” they said. They stood there staring at all the stuff like they couldn’t believe it. Then one of them says, “Well, if that don’t beat anything I ever seen. Right out in broad daylight.”
    The other one shook his head. “And that Shurf jest a-rarin’ fer a chanct to put him in jail before election. You reckon he’s lost his mind, Rupert?”
    Just then another car drove down the hill. It had one man in it. He got out and stared at the stuff too. “I heered about it, but I didn’t believe it,” he said.
    “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.
    None of them said anything. They looked at each other, and got back in their cars and drove off. I went on shelling corn. There was two more cars in the next hour, and all the men acted the same way. It sure was funny, I thought. Then in about a half hour Pop and Uncle Sagamore got back. They hadn’t bought anything this time, though; the truck was empty. They looked at the shed and the hog pen, and then got some buckets and started shelling corn too. I told them about the Sheriff being here, and the other people.
    “Well, is that a fact?” Uncle Sagamore says.
    “They sure seemed to be interested in what we was doin’,” I says. “What kind of business are we in, anyway?”
    Uncle Sagamore studied about it. “Well, we’re sort of thinkin’ about a couple of things. Taxes bein’ what they are, man’s got to have several arns in the fahr jest to stay alive.”
    He didn’t say any more. With all three of us working, it wasn’t long before we had five sacks of shelled corn. “That ort to do for a start,” he says. He loaded the sacks in the truck and drove off.
    “Now,” Pop says. “We got to have some hot water.”
    We built up a fire in the kitchen stove and put a washtub on it and filled it with water from the well. Pop said it would take more, so we started a fire around Aunt Bessie’s big washpot out in the back yard, and filled that too. It was sure beginning to look interesting. By the time the water was good and hot, Uncle Sagamore got back. They unloaded the five sacks of corn, and doggone if it hadn’t been ground up into meal.
    “Now, you just stay out of the way, Billy,” Pop says. “And keep that dawg from underfoot.”
    I called Sig Freed and sat down on a box and watched, trying to figure out what they was going to do. First, they set the eight wooden tubs in a row against the wall. Then Uncle Sagamore opened some of the sacks of sugar, and started measuring sugar and corn meal into the tubs while Pop brought hot water from the house. When they got the first tub full, they found an old stick and stirred it.
    Just then there was a car come down the hill from the gate. It looked like one of those that had been here before, only this time there was more men in it. And right behind it was another one. They stopped in front of the barn and men started getting out. There must have been ten, at least. They all stared at Pop and Uncle Sagamore and the tubs.
    “Evenin’, men,” Uncle Sagamore says, and then didn’t pay any more mind to them. He went on measuring out corn meal and sugar.
    One or two of the men nodded, but they all stayed back like they was nervous about getting too close.
    “Didn’t I tell you?” one of them said, kind of whispering. He was the one called Rupert that had been here earlier.
    Another one shook his head. “Now I reckon I seen