Trouble in July

by Erskine Caldwell

  Shep had hoped to find Sonny single-handed. He wanted to be the one to catch him, because he wished to have the satisfaction of tying a rope around the Negro boy’s neck and dragging him behind his car through the country before turning him over to the crowd. But during all that time he had not found a trace of Sonny.

  The men under the tree watched Shep cross the yard. One or two of them spoke to him, but he did not even turn his head to reply. They knew by his behavior that he had not found Sonny, and that he was dangerously out of sorts.

  After stomping up the front steps and across the porch, Shep threw his hat on the floor in the hall and walked into the dining-room.

  He stopped abruptly at the door. A strange man sat at the table eating dinner with Katy. Shep was surprised to find a stranger there, although the longer he stared, the more certain he became that he had seen the man before. The stranger had a long white beard that reached almost to the top button on his trousers. His shirt-front was completely covered by the bushy hair. The old man raised a spoonful of blackeyed peas in his shaking hand, but before putting it into his mouth he parted the beard carefully around his lips.

  “Who’s that?” Shep demanded, coming slowly into the room and taking a long close look at him. “Who’s he, Katy?”

  “It’s Grandpa Harris, Papa,” she said. “You haven’t forgotten him, have you?”

  “I thought I told him to stay away from here,” his eyes on no one in particular.

  Shep went to his chair at the head of the table, his eyes blazing.

  “Where’d he come from?” he asked. He stood behind his chair for several moments before sitting down. “What does he want?”

  The old man put down his spoon and looked up at Shep over the rim of his glasses. His beard grew in a peculiar sort of way, making him look as if he were grinning about something all the time. The snowy white hair on each side of his face grew in whorls under his cheek bones and then flowed down to his waist in folds like crinkled white tissue-paper.

  “Howdy, son,” he said to Shep, speaking for the first time.

  To look at him, there was no way of knowing whether he was actually smiling, or whether it was the beard that made him look as if he were. It made Shep angry to be grinned at like that.

  Shep jerked out his chair and sat down without answering him. He filled his plate with blackeyed peas and began shoveling them into his mouth. It did not make him feel any better when he reached across the table with his fork to spear a piece of cornbread and found that it had all been eaten.

  Grandpa Harris, with what looked to Shep like unseemly glee under the circumstances, parted his beard and took another mouthful of peas.

  “Grandpa Harris walked all the way over here from Smith County when he heard what happened last night,” Katy spoke up.

  “Heard what happened?”

  “Why, Papa, the raping, of course.”

  “I don’t believe there was no raping done around here, last night or no other time,” he said surily. “That woman who sells the tracts and you made up that tale. I ain’t found no trace of that nigger you said done it. It’s all a big lie.”

  Katy caught her breath, looking at the two men bewilderedly. She did not know what to say.

  “I ain’t seen Katy since the time her mother died,” Grandpa Harris said. “When the word reached me, I started out for here right away. I wanted to see Katy one more time before I went.”

  “Went where?” Shep asked, looking at him.

  “Went to die,” Grandpa Harris said. “I’m getting old.”

  Shep studied him casually, his mouth curling.

  “You’re pretty old to be traveling around the country like this,” he said. “Old people like you ought to stay at home where you belong.” He became angrier as he spoke. “I told you once before I didn’t want to see you around here again.”

  “I don’t aim to be a burden on you, son,” the man said. “I’ll be starting back to Smith County before long. I just wanted to see Annie’s girl a little. I don’t reckon I’ll ever have another chance to see her.”

  “See to it that you don’t forget to go back then,” Shep said, turning to his meal and lowering his head over his plate of blackeyed peas.

  Grandpa Harris looked at Shep and Katy, but there was still no way of knowing whether he was angry or grinning under the beard. The whorls of white hair on his cheeks appeared to be spinning around like a pin-wheel in a breeze. The last time he was there, the time he was ordered to stay away, he had walked all the way from Smith County to attend his daughter’s funeral. That was when he had threatened to send for the sheriff if Shep did not take Annie’s body from the well and give her a decent burial. Shep had chased him off the place within five minutes after the funeral was over and had ordered him never to set foot in the house again.

  “I don’t aim to put nobody to trouble over me,” Grandpa Harris said, grinning and chewing. He parted his beard as he took three spoonfuls of peas in quick succession. “Just as soon as I see Katy for a little while, I’ll quit and start back home. I don’t reckon I’ve got a right to say it, son, but just the same I hope nothing shameful happens over this trouble of Katy’s.”

  Shep sat up, knocking his spoon from his plate.

  “What in hell do you mean by that?” he demanded.

  “Son, it would be a lot better to let the sheriff of the county take charge of this trouble, because I don’t like for Annie’s girl to be mixed up in a shameful lynching. I know if Annie was here, she’d say the same thing.”

  “You keep your mouth out of this,” Shep said. “Nobody is going to come butting into my business and tell me that a nigger can rape my womenfolks and get away with it.”

  Shep shoved his plate away and got up noisily.

  “Now, son—” Grandpa Harris said calmly.

  Halfway to the door Shep turned and shouted at Katy.

  “Where’s that Calhoun woman?”

  “She went away right after breakfast, Papa. She said she had some work to do somewhere else.”

  He turned and glared at Grandpa Harris. The old man was cleaning and stroking his silky white beard with his handkerchief.

  “You keep out of my business,” he shouted at him. “I don’t want to hear no more talk about turning this thing over to the sheriff. If Jeff McCurtain comes sticking his nose into my business, I’ll make him wish he’d never seen a ballot-box. I’d shoot McCurtain down as quick as I’d shoot that nigger I’m looking for.”

  He turned from Grandpa Harris and glared threateningly at his daughter.

  “I don’t want to find you siding with him, do you hear me! I’m your paw, and you do what I tell you!”

  Katy nodded quickly, drawing away from him.

  Before she could get out of the way, her father had grabbed her with his left hand and had struck her with his right. His fist struck her on the side of her head, sending her crashing against the wall.

  He looked down at her sprawled at his feet for a moment and then turned and walked out of the house.

  Two automobiles filled with men had driven into the yard a few minutes before. Another car could be seen a quarter of a mile away, jolting over the rough road.

  Shep stood in the yard looking across the fields choked with grass. His cotton was stunted and starved. In another few days his crop would be too far gone to save. Almost everyone else in that section of the country had finished laying-by, and he wondered what Bob Watson would say and do if he should happen to see one of his tenant’s crops in that condition.

  Several men came across the yard while he was looking at the grass in the field.

  “Howdy, Shep,” one of the men said.

  “Howdy,” he answered without looking at them.

  There was silence for a while. The noonday sun beat down unrelentingly. All the men looked at the grass-choked cotton without comment.

  The car that had been coming up the lane towards the house reached the yard. Several men got out carrying shotguns and rifles.
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  One of the men standing around Shep nudged him with an elbow.

  “We’ve been thinking, Shep,” he said haltingly. “And we want to ask you a question.”

  Shep turned on his heel.

  “What!” he said angrily.

  “You didn’t say anything to the sheriff about this, did you Shep?”

  “Hell, no!” he shouted, glaring at the faces around him.

  The tension on the men’s faces vanished.

  “What we waiting for, then?” one of them said, throwing his shotgun under his arm. “If a nigger raped one of my womenfolks, I’d shoot every last one of them in the whole country till I got the right one.”

  “The sheriff will be out here with bloodhounds, taking that nigger right out from under our noses, if we don’t stir around and grab him first,” another man said.

  “No sheriff is going to take that nigger while I’m alive,” Shep said.

  “That’s the way to talk, Shep!”

  Shep pushed the men out of his way and went towards the road where the cars were standing.

  “There’s a big crowd down in Oconee Swamp,” one of the men said, running and catching up with him. “And there’s quite a sizable crowd over in them woods on the side of Earnshaw Ridge. What you figure on doing, Shep? That nigger can’t be in but one place at a time. Where do you figure he’s at?”

  Shep did not reply.

  “A lot of them got tired waiting for you to come back this morning, and they split up into bunches to go out looking. I stuck right here waiting for you, Shep, because I don’t believe in quarreling at a time like this.”

  Katy came out on the porch, looking at the men scattered over the yard. She went to the post beside the steps and leaned against it. Two or three of the men turned around and watched her. She smiled at them.

  A man who had been sitting alone in one of the cars got out and crossed the yard to meet Shep. It was Clint Huff, a carpenter, from Andrewjones.

  “Hold on, Clint,” somebody said. “You and Shep ain’t got no cause to scrap each other at a time like this. A white girl’s been—”

  Clint pushed him aside and went towards Shep. He and Shep had been quarreling and fighting since they were old enough to carry knives. The last time they had come together was at the sheriff’s annual barbecue the summer before. Shep had a scar three inches long on his chest to remind him of it.

  They faced each other, keeping a distance between them.

  “What you mean by trying to get this lynching party all balled up?” Clint said. “You act like you’re trying to boss it, don’t you?”

  Clint drew his knife from his pocket and opened the blade.

  “Now, wait a minute, Clint,” somebody said, stepping between them. “This ain’t no way to catch a nigger. Besides, everybody’s got a clear chance at catching him, anyway.”

  Clint shoved the man out of the way. Shep still had not said anything, but he had put his hand into his pocket and was drawing his knife.

  “You must be hiding that nigger out somewhere for Jeff McCurtain,” Clint said. He turned and glanced swiftly at the men around him. “Any men who’ll turn a raping nigger over to the sheriff ain’t no better than a nigger himself.”

  Shep snapped open the blade of his knife with a quick jerk of his fingers.

  The men tried to draw Clint and Shep apart, but both of them fought off all efforts to keep them separated. They were facing each other at less than five paces.

  Shep crouched a little, gripping his knife in his fist. Clint threw his hat on the ground and advanced on Shep in a circular direction.

  All the men in the yard crowded as close as they could, knowing by then that it was useless to try to stop them until they had fought awhile. Everyone was so preoccupied in watching the two men that nobody noticed Grandpa Harris when he pushed through the ring of men and ran into the center of the circle. It was too late then to do anything, because the moment he got there, both Clint and Shep lunged forward. The impact knocked Grandpa Harris from his feet and sent him crashing to the ground.

  “First Clint, and then Shep, backed away. They did not know what had happened, but Grandpa Harris had not moved since he struck the ground. The men crowded around Shep and Clint, drawing them apart. When they were on the opposite side of the yard from each other, some of the others lifted Grandpa Harris and carried him to the porch. He was stretched out on his back.

  “What happened to Grandpa Harris?” Katy said excitedly, getting down beside him.

  “He ran into the middle of it,” somebody said. “I reckon he was trying to stop it. He ain’t bleeding that I can see. He’ll come to in a little while and be all right. Anyway, old men like him ain’t got no business rushing into places like that. If one of them knives had struck him, he wouldn’t be here now.”

  Both Clint and Shep were shouting, but they were being kept far enough apart to prevent either one of them from jumping on the other. The men were talking to them, trying to persuade them to give up their knives for the rest of the day.

  “Grandpa Harris ran right past me,” Katy said excitedly, “but I didn’t know what he was going to do. I could’ve stopped him, I reckon.”

  Somebody drew her away while the old man was being lifted from the porch. They carried him inside and laid him on a bed. Katy stayed with him for a few minutes, but she wanted to see the men in the yard, and she came back to the porch.

  Clint shook off the men who were trying to hold him and went to his car. He got into it and drove off alone.

  The crowd moved across the yard, following Shep to the porch. He sat down on the steps, muttering to himself.

  “That was a shame about the old man, Shep,” somebody said. “But I reckon he’ll come to after a while. Looks like he would’ve had better sense than to go busting right into the middle of a fight like that, though.”

  Shep did not answer.

  “Who is that old codger, anyway?”

  Shep shook his head.

  “It was an accident, anyway. It would’ve happened to anybody who happened to get in the middle of you and Clint Huff.”

  Shep got up, looked around for a moment, and went straight to the corner of the porch where he had left his shotgun when he came home.

  He did not say anything as he hurried to his car. The men knew that the hunt was on.

  Chapter IX

  KATY BARLOW, FLUSHED and breathless, was so mad she could spit.

  Tossing her hair out of her eyes and brushing it back from her face, she drew her lips tightly against her teeth. She wished she could turn into a man so she could do it all the better.

  She thought of all the different ways she could spit if she were a man. She would spit between her feet, and over her shoulder, and straight into the air. She would even spit at Leroy Luggit’s face.

  Leroy, up there squat on the seat in the cab of the logging truck like a devil on a throne, grinned down at her mockingly. While she glared at him fiercely, stamping first one foot and then the other, Leroy raised his hand slowly and pushed the goggles up on his forehead.

  White circles around his eyes looked at her as mockingly as the scoffing grin on his face. He wore goggles to keep the dust out of his eyes while he was hauling logs from Earnshaw Ridge to the sawmill down in the Oconee lowland. With his goggles pushed up on his forehead, Leroy looked as if he were jeering at her with four eyes instead of only two.

  “I’m spitting mad, Leroy Luggit!” she cried at him, stamping her feet in the road.

  He laughed at her, throwing back his head and slapping the steeringwheel with both hands.

  “I’ve never been so spitting-mad before in all my life, Leroy Luggit!”

  She could see no resemblance in him then to the man who had met her at Flowery Branch bridge only a short week before and had given her a large bag of orange-flavored gumdrops that he bought especially for her in Andrewjones.

  Katy thrust one foot forward, placing it carefully on the step of the truck; then she leaned as close
to Leroy as she could reach, and spat with all her might at his face.

  Minute after minute went by while they stared each other in the eyes, but it seemed to Katy as if everything in the world had stopped. She was as surprised at herself as was Leroy at what had happened. She had never spat in a person’s face before in all her life. She had never even dreamed of doing a thing like that. It made her tremble to realize what she had done.

  Slowly he began to wipe his face with his shirtsleeves, one arm passing over his face after another, while the skin up to the roots of his hair became scarlet and swollen with a rising surge of blood.

  Katy made as if to spit at him again. Then she heard him shout at her as he jumped from the truck.

  “You hell-cat you! You black-haired hell-cat, you!”

  She moved backward towards the side of the road, spitting at him with each step she took.

  “I told you I was mad, Leroy Luggit!” she screamed angrily. “Nobody’s got a right to talk to me like you did a little while ago! I won’t stand for it! Do you hear me, Leroy Luggit!”

  She kept moving slowly backward, still spitting with almost every step she took.

  Leroy glared at her with flaming anger. His scarlet-colored face was wet with perspiration which seemed to ooze from every pore in his skin.

  “You may think you’re mad,” he said between gritted teeth, “but it’s nothing to what I am!”

  “If you do anything to me, Leroy Luggit,” she said threateningly, “I’ll tell Papa on you.” She retreated guardedly. “I’ll tell him what you did to me at the bridge, too. You just wait and see if I don’t!”

  “I ain’t scared of him or nobody else,” he said, sneering.

  He continued to advance upon her step by step.

  “I’ll tell everybody in the world on you!” she cried desperately. “I’ll tell Sheriff McCurtain and Judge Ben Allen and Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun!”