Read Online Uncle Sagamore and His Girls by Charles Williams - Free Book Online

“But just what did it say?” Pop asked.
    “Oh,” Curly says, kind of indifferent. He turned and pointed up the hill. “See that old pine stump up there, about halfway to the gate? There’s a pint fruit jar of moonshine buried just under the ground about six inches from the west side of it.”
    I’d never heard of anything like it. That stump was easy a hundred yards away. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was amazed too, but when we all walked up there Curly just scratched in the dirt with a stick and there it was. It was a pint jar, all right, and it was almost full. He held it up and looked at it.
    “Hmmm,” he says, sort of frowning. “Looks like she might be just a sha-a-de out of adjustment. Said a pint, but this is about a drink short.” He unscrewed the cap and took a drink of it, and nodded. “Pretty close on the proof, though. Said a hundred, and that’s just about on the nose. See what you think.”
    He passed it around. Uncle Sagamore took a drink, and then Pop, and Murph. Uncle Sagamore put his chew back in his mouth, aimed some tobacco juice at a bug crawling along the ground, and says to Pop, “Well sir, if that ain’t the beatin’est machine I ever seen in my life.”
    “It sure is, for a fact,” Pop says. “You just don’t know what they’ll think of next. Likely, though, it takes a real smart man to work it.”
    Curly took another drink, and then he grinned, kind of modest. “Well, it does take a little trainin’, men, but I wouldn’t want to hawg all the credit. You got to give a lot to the man that worked out the idea. Likely you recall him, the great Chinese scientist, One Screwed Duck.”
    Murph nodded. “Sure. I remember reading about him. Didn’t he invent the high-diving board and the empty swimming pool?”
    Curly handed the jar to Uncle Sagamore, and slapped him on the back. He seemed to have got a little red in the face from the two drinks. “Well, I got to be off and electioneerin’, men. I just wanted to let you know I’m one candidate that sure aims to keep his campaign promises, the minute he’s elected. And you take care of that back,” he says real friendly to Pop, “so you can get to the polls.”
    He got back in the truck and drove off up the hill with music blaring out of the loudspeakers. We all walked over and sat down on the porch. Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked real thoughtful. Murph lit a cigarette.
    “Well, I guess that was plain enough,” he says.
    “Sig Freed sure didn’t seem to like him,” I said.
    “Likely he caught it from somebody,” Pop says. “There’s a lot of it going around.”
    “But wasn’t that a humdinger of a machine?” I asked.
    “Yeah, wasn’t it?” Pop says, like he wasn’t paying much attention.
    Uncle Sagamore still hadn’t said a word. He turned a chair down with its back tilted up from the floor, and laid back against it. He scratched his leg with the big toe of his other foot, and just went on looking up the hill with his mouth puckered up, like he was kinda thinking.
    “It scares me,” Murph says. “What are we goin’ to do?”
    Pop shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked at Uncle Sagamore, but Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice.
    Murph waited a few minutes longer, and then said he had to get back to town. Pop walked out to the car with him, and I followed along. Murph got behind the wheel and turned on the switch, and then he looked over where Uncle Sagamore was still lying on the porch. It was the first time I ever saw him look worried. “You reckon he’s got any ideas?” he asked Pop.
    “There ain’t no way you can tell,” Pop said.
    Murph scratched his head. “Ordinarily, I’d say there ain’t anything he can’t handle, but this is rough. That Minifee’s beginning to look like the foxiest character he’s ever tangled with.”
    “Yeah,” Pop says.
    “He’s goin’ to win the election, hands down. That Sheriff hasn’t got a chance.”
    Pop nodded.
    “And when he does,” Murph says,