Trouble in July Read online

  “I wouldn’t do anything rash, if I was you, Mr. Dennis,” Bert advised him. “It wouldn’t pay you to get into trouble yourself.”

  Jeff looked worried. He leaned forward trying to hear what was being said.

  “Then get Sheriff McCurtain out here to chase them off,” Avery Dennis said. “That’s what he got elected to office for, and he draws handsome pay the first of every month to do it. You tell him I said so.”

  “I’ll see what can be done,” Bert said, hanging the receiver on the hook.

  “Who was that?” Jeff asked, his eyes jumping from the phone to Bert’s face.

  “Avery Dennis,” Bert told him. “He says there’s a crowd out at his place tramping down his crop of corn. He wants you to come out there and drive them out of the field.”

  Jeff sat down with relief. A faint smile spread over his face.

  “I would have sworn it was some other damn fool wanting me to go catch that nigger before he gets lynched,” he said. “It’s nowhere like as bad as I thought it might be.”

  Bert and Jim waited in readiness, wondering if Jeff were going to send them out to Avery Dennis’ farm instead of going himself.

  Suddenly Jeff sat up erectly, sweeping the papers off his desk.

  “Avery Dennis ain’t got no business ringing me up on the phone at this time of night! Just look what time it is! Hot blast it, I might have been in bed sound asleep! Avery Dennis is a R.F.D. mail-carrier, anyway. Nobody on civil service has got a right to plague politicians who have to run for office ever so often! It’s just them kind of people who always go nosing into politics. I’ve got troubles enough without taking on complaints from a frazzle-assed mail-carrier living on civil service. I ain’t had no regard for people of that stripe since God-come-Wednesday.”

  He shook himself free of the chair and got to his feet. He looked larger than ever when he stood beside the small desk.

  “Get me my fishing pole like I told you, Bert,” he said brusquely, moving across the creaking floor.

  “Yes, sir, Sheriff,” Bert said, jumping. “I’ve got it standing against the wall on the front porch.”

  Chapter III

  WHILE SHERIFF JEFF McCurtain was getting into his automobile for the second time that night to drive down to Lord’s Creek, Sonny Clark was creeping out of the’ deep piney woods that covered the whole southern slope of Earnshaw Ridge. Earnshaw Ridge was a long hump of red clay earth that protruded from the sandy flatlands and round hills of Julie County like a swollen artery. The hump began somewhere in the adjoining county to the west, ran angularly across the northern section of Julie County, and disappeared in a southeasterly direction in Smith County. At the foot of Earnshaw Ridge, Flowery Branch flowed in a meandering course southward through the lowlands towards the Oconee River.

  Sonny had waded up the branch for about a mile and a half earlier in the evening and, after reaching the woods, he had lain trembling on the ground behind the fallen trunk of a dead tree for about two hours. Except for the two or three times he had been to Andrewjones, he had never in his life before been so far away from home. He had often wondered what was on the other side of Earnshaw Ridge, but for all he knew the world came to an end there and then.

  He was creeping anxiously through the stiff underbrush at the edge of the woods. When he reached the clearing of an open field, he stopped and listened for a while. A hound was barking somewhere down in the lowlands, but there was no other sound in the night. He stood up and, after looking around in all directions, walked cautiously across the field in the direction of the plantation. He did not know any other place to go.

  He moved across the field in spasms of haste, stopping abruptly when he thought he heard sounds, hurrying on again when the fear had passed. He knew unerringly the direction to take to the quarters where the Negro families lived on the plantation. He jumped a hedge and trotted joyfully in a furrow in a cultivated field. Each step that carried him closer home made him feel happier than he had ever felt before.

  Sonny was eighteen years old and he lived with his grandmother, Mammy Taliaferro, in the Negro quarters on Bob Watson’s plantation. He worked as a field-hand, and he earned enough money to support his grandmother and himself. Both of his parents had been killed about ten years before when a logging truck, running wild down Earnshaw Ridge, struck the wagon in which they were riding.

  The cabins in the quarters rose up suddenly in front of him. The starlight made the fields, and even the buildings themselves, look as familiar in the night as they were during the day. He crouched in a ditch behind the first cabin for ten or fifteen minutes, because he wanted to feel sure it was safe for him to come out in the open so near the buildings.

  He could not see anyone moving around the cabins, and there was not a light in any of them. It made him feel as lonely and afraid as he had been in the woods.

  After a while he crept on his hands and knees to the back of the nearest cabin. Raising himself from his knees, he peered through a chink in the door.

  By the rosy wavering flame of fat pine chunks he could see Henry Bagley and his wife, Vi, crouched over the hearth in the big room. Henry had always been Sonny’s friend, and he had been thinking of Henry during the whole time he was hiding in the woods on Earnshaw Ridge. He was afraid to go to his own home. He knew he would have a hard time trying to explain to Mammy what had happened and, besides he was afraid some white men might be waiting there to grab him the instant he showed his face.

  Sonny waited breathlessly, his eyes fixed on the faint light from the hearth. It was several minutes before he could find enough courage to call Henry. Then he put his lips to the crack and breathed Henry’s name.

  Henry sat perfectly still. Only his eyes moved door-ward.

  “Who there?” he called in a low voice, startled and afraid.

  Vi reached forward with as little movement as possible and threw another pine chunk on the fire. The room brightened.

  “It’s me, Henry,” Sonny whispered. “It’s Sonny.”

  “What you mean by whispering, me out of my wits like that, boy?” he said. “Ain’t you got no sense at all?”

  “I didn’t aim to scare you, Henry,” he said.

  Henry and Vi glanced at each other, each one nodding. Vi turned to see if the front door had the lock turned, and Henry got up and went cautiously to the back door. He put his ear against the door and listened to hear if he could detect sounds out there.

  “Come on out here, Henry.”

  “What you want?”

  “I got something to tell you.”

  Henry and Vi opened the door a few inches and looked out into the yard. Both of them saw him crouching on the ground in the corner between the doorstep and the side of the house.

  Henry opened the door a little more and stepped down beside Sonny.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?” he asked.

  “I’ve gone and got myself into trouble, Henry,” Sonny said, reaching up and clutching Henry’s arm. “I done got myself into bad trouble, Henry.”

  “Boy, I got troubles of my own to worry about,” Henry said.

  “It’s the worst trouble I ever been in in all my life, Henry. It just ain’t ordinary trouble.”

  “What you been up to?”

  “I ain’t exactly been up to nothing myself,” Sonny said. “It looks like trouble just came and grabbed hold of me, Henry.”

  “What you do?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Sonny said pleadingly. “I was just walking naturally along the big road about sundown last night, minding my own business as big as you please, and then all at once something happened.”

  “What happened?” Henry urged, grasping Sonny’s clutching hand. “Go on and say it boy! What happened up there on the big road?”

  “You know Mr. Shep Barlow, that white sharecropper of Mr. Bob’s on the other side of the branch?”

  “I knows him,” Henry nodded. “I knows him good and well. What he done to you?”

  “M
r. Shep himself didn’t do nothing,” Sonny said quickly. “’Twas his girl, Miss Katy.”

  Vi vanished like a shadow into the cabin, noiselessly closing the door behind her. She stood on the inside whispering to Henry, trying to make him leave Sonny and come in where she was.

  There was a long silence. Henry stared down into the upturned face of the crouching black boy. Sonny’s face glistened in the starlight with running streams of perspiration.

  “What was it, boy?” Henry demanded.

  Sonny clutched at him with both hands.

  “Miss Katy run out of the bushes and grabbed me and wouldn’t let go,” he said, trembling as he recalled what had happened. “Miss Katy wouldn’t let go of me at all, and she kept on saying, ‘I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody,’ just like that. I said to her a colored boy didn’t have no business standing there in the big road like that while she was around, but she wouldn’t pay no heed to nothing I said. I don’t know what got into her to make her carry-on like she done. She just kept on saying, ‘I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody’.”

  Henry tried to push Sonny’s clutching hands away from him.

  “Boy, you sure enough picked out the most troublesome trouble there is when you done got yourself into this fix. Why didn’t you haul off and get away from her? Why didn’t you act like you had some little sense and run off? You ought to know better than standing still and listening to a white girl trying to get you in a fix. Where’s your sense at, anyhow?”

  Sonny got a tighter grip on Henry’s arm.

  “And that ain’t all, neither, Henry,” he said, his voice breaking and falling.

  “Good Lord Almighty, boy! That ain’t all! What you mean? Now don’t tell me you ain’t got a single spark of sense in that head of yours!”

  “While I was standing there in the big road fidgeting to make her leave hold of me, along come an automobile full of Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun, that white woman, and Preacher Felts. They jumped out and grabbed me right there where I was. I told them I was trying to get shed of Miss Katy, but they didn’t pay me no mind. That white man pulled a knife, and I thought sure my time had come. He stomped me down on the ground and—”

  “Boy,” Henry breathed, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him roughly, “first you go and get yourself in trouble with a white girl—”

  “Henry, I didn’t go and do it! Miss Katy was the one who done it, because—”

  “Makes no difference. You got yourself in trouble and then got caught by Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun. Don’t you ever keep your ears open at all? That white woman is going all over the country getting up a paper to send all the colored to Africa or some place like that. And now you go and get yourself caught by her right when you and that white girl was standing—”

  Sonny pulled at Henry, holding on to him with all his strength.

  “I didn’t have nothing to do with it, Henry,” he pleaded. “I swear before the Good Lord, I didn’t! It’s that Miss Katy who’s the cause of the trouble—”

  “How come you squatting right here on the ground at my back door like you is if Mrs. Narcissa and Preacher Felts caught you like you said they did?”

  “They let me go.”

  “They did?” Henry said, amazed. “What made them go and do that-a-way?”

  “Mrs. Narcissa said to let me go like I wanted to, because I wouldn’t run off far, anyway.”

  Henry looked at him for a long time.

  “Boy,” he said at last, shaking his head from side to side, “you sure has gone and got yourself in a mess of trouble.”

  “What can I do now, Henry?” Sonny implored, moving closer.

  “You’d better get yourself away from here, and be quick about it, too.”

  “But I didn’t do nothing, Henry,” Sonny protested. He began to sob. “I was walking along the road, coming home to supper from Mr. Bob’s cornfield where I’d been chopping grass all day; and Miss Katy ran out of the bushes at me. I didn’t never touch her none. She done all the touching there was her own self, Henry.”

  “Makes no difference with white folks, if touching was done,” Henry said mournfully. “They ain’t going to stop and figure like you and me. They going to step out and do something big, and then figure afterwards. Don’t you know Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun’s going straight and tell the menfolks, and the sheriff, too, what she caught you at? The white folks ain’t going to let a nigger be caught with a white girl, and then not do nothing about it. That Mrs. Narcissa wants her book full of names so she can have her way about sending the colored to Africa like she says. Makes no difference about nothing else with that white woman. I know what I’m talking about, boy.”

  Sonny crouched trembling on the ground, holding to Henry’s hand as for dear life.

  “Henry, I tell you I didn’t do nothing to that white girl,” he panted. He was on his knees by that time, clinging to Henry. Henry had begun to tug to free his hand from Sonny’s grasp. “I ain’t never touched a white girl in my whole life, and I never set out to neither. Miss Katy just run out and grabbed me her own self. She must have been hiding in the bushes I don’t know how long, just waiting to run out like she done.”

  Henry struggled to free himself. He managed to move back against the door even though Sonny was hugging him around his knees.

  “It don’t make no difference at all what you say you done, or not done,” Henry told him with the calmness of despair, “because it’s the white folks who’s going to do the talking and acting, anyhow, from now on. They wouldn’t stop to listen to nobody with a black face now.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Sonny said desperately.

  “I can tell you what to do. You get yourself away from here as fast as them legs of yours will carry you, that’s what. And then keep on going after you get to where you thought you was going. Get yourself clean out of this country. You go straight north, and don’t stop and fiddle around none till you get there, neither. This here country around Andrewjones ain’t no place no more for a nigger caught fooling with a white girl.”

  “Where you mean, Henry?” Sonny begged, glancing fearfully over his shoulder. “Over on the other side of Earnshaw Ridge?”

  “Boy, that ain’t even the beginning of what I mean. I mean so far away on the other side you couldn’t never see it again.”

  “I want to stay here and work the cotton and corn for Mr. Bob,” Sonny whimpered. “I don’t want to go nowhere a long way off. If they asked Miss Katy, she’d tell them I didn’t have nothing to do with it—”

  “Hush!” Henry whispered.

  There was a sharp crunching sound that came from the direction of the road in front of the cabin. It sounded as if somebody had broken a dry shingle across his knee. A moment later several hounds began to bark.

  Sonny crouched in the corner of the step. Henry tore his hand from the boy’s frantic grip.

  “What’s that?” Sonny asked, his voice quivering.

  Henry backed tighter against the door, feeling behind him for the latch.

  Instead of saying anything, Henry shook his head, warning Sonny to be quiet. Then he reached down and touched the boy’s head.

  “On your way, boy,” he told Sonny in a husky whisper. “This ain’t no time to be hanging around my back door. There ain’t no telling when the white folks will start swarming around here looking for you. They might be out there in the dark creeping up here right this minute.”

  Sonny threw both arms around Henry’s legs. Henry could not shake him off.

  “I don’t want to go away from here, Henry,” he said like a child lost in the dark. His eyes fastened on Henry’s gleaming face. “I want to stay where Mammy is.”

  “Shut your mouth about Mammy. This ain’t no time to be talking about Mammy. You went and let a lowdown white girl get you into trouble, and now you got to get your own self out of it. First thing you know you’ll have both me and Mammy in a mess ourselves. The white
folks ain’t going to stand for no butting in now, even if it was Mammy. Go on away from here like I done told you.”

  Sonny held him tighter.

  “Will you tell Mammy for me that I didn’t do nothing, Henry? Tell Mammy it wasn’t none of my fault at all. Tell her it was Miss Katy who run out of the bushes and grabbed me. Will you tell Mammy that, Henry?”

  “Sure,” Henry said eagerly, pushing Sonny away from him. “I’ll tell Mammy the first chance I get. Right now there ain’t going to be no time to do nothing except hide out from them white folks on the hunt till they finish whatever they’re going to do. Now, you go on off like I done told you already before. I’m getting scareder every minute I have to stand here like this.”

  Henry tore Sonny’s arms from him and jumped back through the doorway. He slammed the door shut and bolted it tightly on the inside, leaving Sonny clinging to the steps.

  For a while Sonny crouched where he was, too frightened even to turn his head and look behind him. The moon still had not come up, but the starry night looked as if it had grown much brighter since midnight. When Sonny did find enough courage to turn his head and glance behind him, he could see the fence-rows crisscrossing the wide level land as plainly as he had seen them during the day when the sun was shining. Out across the fields he caught a glimpse of the persimmon trees jutting up like hands against the sky. He shut his eyes tightly, turning back again to look at Henry’s cabin door. The cabin in which he himself lived with Mammy was almost out of sight, it was that far away, and he was afraid to move away from the shadow of the building where he was.

  The dozen or more cabins in the quarters where Bob Watson’s Negro field-hands and tenants lived were scattered along both sides of the lane for a distance of half a mile. There were still no lights visible in the quarters. Sonny beat on Henry’s door with the flat of his hand, calling Henry. There was no answer. He crept on his hands and knees around the corner of the cabin and raised himself just high enough to put his eyes on the level of a crack under the tightly closed wooden shutter over the only window.