Sagamore Noonan

Sagamore Noonan is one of the main characters of the American novels Fantasia in the idiots and With the Ballot boxes, the idiots! of Charles Williams. In the adaptation to the cinema Fantasia in the idiots , the character is played by Lino Ventura.

It is a colourful character. He has in the fifty years, a beautiful quite thick beard and very of sweat which eats the face to him, of the very small black eyes, a length and large hooked nose, chewing tobacco in the mouth, of the black hair bleaching very broussailleux which goes down thick on its ears, with a baldness of the face until the back of the head. He is large and strong, wears an overall on a knitting, from where arise, with the chest and the neck, of long black hairs. He goes barefeet, but takes his shoes to go downtown, even if he removes them once over there.

Lives in its farm at the fine bottom of the county of Blossom (imaginary Comté probably in the Kentucky), with eight kilometers in the south of the town of Jerome, at the end of a sand road which goes down from a mountain of fir trees. It there with the barn of logs on the right, and opposite the way, the house, dirty color gray, in the shade of a large tree, provided with a large veranda. Halfway of the hill which kills towards the small lake, on the left, it there with the arch that Finley builds, his/her brother-in-law who prepares with the apocalypse.

It is known as that Sagamore is cotton farmer, but one sees only the corn field behind the barn (place, the back of the barn, which remains secret for the Billy young person, nephew of the farmer, and thus for the reader, because there is a whole mystery, the place being interdict with the child).

One sees it only seldom working, it seems to pass the majority of its time lengthened under its veranda in full day, or sat on the steps. He however complains all the time with the sheriff and his assistants (representatives of the State) to work sometimes up to eighteen hours per day to pay his taxes. When Billy makes the remark with his/her father of it, this one answers that it is not the high season. What Billy does not know, or rather includes/understands only with half, it is the production and the trade of gnôle of Maïs which the two adults hide to him, but whose Murph, the friend of the city, will say after a pretense made to the sheriff, that them deliveryman could pass 200 liters of gnôle to the city, and who the price of the liter is of $1,25.

Moreover, the idleness of Sagamore carries out it to swindle the inhabitants of the county, being made pass, while treating to the head of the sheriff, for an honest man, a manufacturer of gnôle, and the organizer of enormous beaten around at his place, aiming at finding a charming young person stripper lost in bikini in the bush around the small lake. Helped of his Sam brother, it sends all the men of the county in assistance to those of the sheriff to find the young woman. It is still one of its blows, aiming at making pay the carpark in front of at his place, and bring hamburger stands, chips, a travelling bazaar, and much the open ones which enable him to earn money on the back of its fellow-citizens.

Moreover, it makes a success of another blow, when it is taken, earlier, with jam bottles full with a liquid seeming to be gnôle. It acts as if it had been really caught in the act, as like to protest it the two assistant ones of the sheriff, Otis and Booger. As it is led to the office of the sheriff in the city, and this one rameute all the population to show as it caught Sagamore Noonan in the act. The suspect, usually extremely in mouth which does not hesitate to laugh at the sheriff, keeps this time low profile. The spectators start to bet on the initiative of the one of them, the assistants of the sheriff also misent large against Sagamore. Much is those which think that Sagamore Noonan really will fall. But one learns that it was a blow completely assembled by Sagamore and its Sam brother, which once released, will find their accomplice who in crowd had launched the bets, Murph, which accommodates them in the inner room of its room of billiards, where it announces also the success of the delivery of gnôle seen higher.

It is this man who will say to Billy the small narrator, in connection with Sagamore Noonan, which it is the greatest genius that it ever was possible to him to see. He repeats it in Billy after two blows assembled in beauty by Sagamore.

At the any end of the novel Fantasia in the idiots , Billy spends the summer alone to the farm with his/her aunt Bessie, when his/her father and his uncle are " rappelés" like he says, in fact in prison. They return at the end of two months. They were still pointed out in cell, to assemble new blows, until the chief warden who has the rather long arm, can do them to clear! Of return to the farm, Billy is made a joy because it was bored a little, and learns that with his/her father they will remain still a little time. The small one knows that the life will become animated again, with his/her uncle assisted by his father. The continuation will take place in the novel With the Ballot boxes, the idiots! .

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