Trouble in July

by Erskine Caldwell

  “I wouldn’t harm a white man, please, sir,” he said low and earnestly.

  The girl in the bed cringed, moving closer to him as if begging for protection.

  “Where’s Sonny Clark?” Shep demanded loudly, holding the beam of light in the Negro’s eyes. Where’s he hiding out at?”

  “I don’t know nothing about Sonny,” he pleaded. “Please, sir, I don’t.

  “You heard about him raping a white girl last night, didn’t you?”

  “I heard tell about it, but I don’t know nothing at all about it. I ain’t seen Sonny since the day before yesterday. That’s the truth, white boss!”

  One of the men came into the room swinging a board that was the shape of a barrel stave.

  “Turn over, nigger,” he ordered.

  Luke looked pleadingly at the faces of the other men around the bed. He turned slightly, hesitating for a moment.

  “Please, sir, white boss, don’t do that!” he begged. “I ain’t done nothing to be beat about. Please, sir, I ain’t!”

  “You’re a nigger, ain’t you?” somebody said.

  A man reached over the bed and ripped the Negro’s nightshirt from him. He and his wife huddled close together, trying to protect their bodies from the white men.

  “White boss, I ain’t done nothing to be beat about. I been minding my own business all my life. If I had a beating coming to me, I’d keep my mouth shut. But I ain’t done nothing I know about to be beat for. That’s the truth, white folks!”

  “Keep your mouth shut, nigger, or you’ll talk yourself into the worst beating a nigger ever got.”

  “But, white folks—”

  “Turn over like I said!”

  He turned over on his stomach, looking around at the faces above him. The board struck him solidly, making a sound that wrung a strangling scream from his wife each time it fell.

  “White folks, please have mercy on me!” he cried.

  “Shut your mouth, nigger!”

  The board filled the room with echoes each time it struck the Negro’s body.

  After fifteen or twenty hard blows, Luke was ordered to stand up on the floor. He got up and stood cringing by the bed.

  One of the men poked the girl’s body with the end of a shotgun barrel. She lay with her head buried in the pillow, crying.

  “Please, white boss, beat me some more if you want to,” Luke said desperately, turning and seeing his wife being poked with the gun, “but don’t do nothing to her. She ain’t done no wrong. Please, sir, don’t do nothing to her!”

  “How many times do you have to tell one of these Bob Watson niggers to shut up?” somebody in the crowd said. “It looks like they don’t pay no attention at all.”

  While the woman was being pushed around on the bed with the point of the gun, one of the men went to the mantelpiece over the fireplace and brought back a pint bottle half full of turpentine.

  The rest of them crowded around the bed to watch.

  “White folks, what you all fixing to do to her?” Luke cried out.

  “I told you to keep that God damn mouth of yours shut, didn’t I?” Shep shouted, turning and knocking the Negro against the wall with a gun-stock.

  The men turned back to the woman. She was forced to stretch out on her back and then the bottle of turpentine was emptied over her stomach. She trembled nervously at-first, but as the fluid began to burn her, she screamed with pain. They prevented her from rolling off the bed, and then they stood by and watched her. She was screaming in agony and tearing at herself with her fingernails until her skin began to bleed. Luke tried to go to her, but he was knocked across the room.

  All of them were standing by the bed watching the woman writhe and twist when the men who had gone to search the cabin for Sonny came back shaking their heads.

  “I don’t believe that nigger came home at all last night,” one of them said. “Mammy, up there in the cabin, talks like she don’t know nothing at all about him. I don’t think she’s lying. No old nigger woman like her is going to lie about it at a time like this. She’s seen too much trouble to let herself get in a fix lying. She said she don’t know nothing about Sonny.”

  The men who had just come back from Mammy Taliaferro’s cabin rushed to the bed and watched the Negro woman tossing on it. The odor of turpentine was so strong that they knew without being told what had been done to her. They stood and gaped at her writhing naked body.

  Shep was the first to turn and walk away from the bed. Most of the men followed him through the door out into the night. He walked slowly out into the road, looking up and down as though undecided where to look next. His anger was rising. The one thing he hoped to do was to find Sonny before Clint Huff and his crowd could put their hands on him. He was afraid that Sonny would be found somewhere else and lynched before he could do anything about it. The men who had followed him from Luke Bottomly’s cabin waited to find out what he was going to do next.

  Off in the distance they could hear faint sounds coming from the direction of Needmore. Needmore was a crossroads settlement at the foot of Earnshaw Ridge in the northeast corner of the county. Shep put his hand against his ear and tried to make out what the sound was. He could not detect human voices, and so he did not pay any more attention to it.

  Some of the men were walking up and down the road in front of the cabins talking in lowered voices. Shep ran up to one of the dark cabins and kicked down the door. The noise brought everybody running.

  “Let’s get all of these Bob Watson niggers up and find out what they know,” somebody said to Shep.

  Shep pushed him away, ignoring the suggestion. He had already made up his mind to spend much more time in the quarters. He rushed through the door and flash-lighted the room with a quick sweeping motion of his hand. Half a dozen other lights were flashed on as the others rushed in.

  There was only one person in the cabin, a Negro girl who screamed and tried to hide under a quilt.

  Shep jerked off the covering. The girl sat up, her heart pounding with fright.

  She was light-skinned and young. She drew her feet under her, edging towards the corner.

  The nightgown was ripped from her and tossed aside. Somebody whistled at the sight.

  “Where’s your man?” Shep asked her, moving closer. “He’s down in the swamp working at the sawmill,” she whispered hoarsely.

  She looked to be between sixteen and seventeen years old. Her body was slender and round.

  “You better not be lying to me,” Shep warned her. “How long’s he been down at the sawmill?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t lying,” she said, holding her arms tightly around her. “He’s been working down there all this year.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Amos Green.”

  “Don’t he never come home?”

  “Yes, sir, he comes home every Saturday night always.”

  “Where’s Sonny Clark hiding out at?”

  “Who?”

  “Sonny Clark. You heard me the first time.”

  “I sure don’t know nothing about Sonny Clark. I ain’t seen him at all.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you’d seen him, nigger,” Shep said irritably. “I asked you where he’s at.”

  “I don’t know where he’s at,” she answered quickly, almost choked with fear.

  Shep turned away and went to the window. As soon as he had left the bed, the men crowded closer, pushing the girl to the middle of it.

  “Do you believe in niggers raping white girls?” somebody asked her.

  “No, sir, I don’t believe in that,” she said.

  “You’d want your own man shot down if he raped a white girl, wouldn’t you?”

  “Amos didn’t get in no trouble, did he?” she asked frantically. She looked appealingly at the faces around the bed.

  “Why don’t you answer what I asked you?” the man said, poking her with his shotgun.

  “Yes, sir, I want what you said,” she whimpered.

  A light s
uddenly flared up somewhere outside. Shep dashed for the door and ran out. The others ran.

  “Something’s on fire around here!” one of them said.

  When they got outside, they could see flames leaping from a chickenhouse behind the cabin across the road. Some of them ran to it and tried to knock the flaming boards to the ground. By that time it had gained such a start that it was impossible to check it. Most of the men withdrew and watched it burn to the ground. Three or four of them went quietly around the cabin and stepped into the dwelling across the road where they had left the girl a few minutes before. They slipped inside and closed the door noiselessly. No one missed them.

  “Who set that fire?” Shep demanded, walking up the road.

  Nobody answered him.

  “You can’t catch a nigger by going around setting fires,” he said sourly. “It’ll make them run for cover quicker than anything else. Looks like whoever done it would have better sense.”

  He walked away disgustedly. The crowd watched the chickenhouse burn to the ground, and when the last flame had flickered out, the men moved up the road behind Shep. No one said anything until the Negro quarter was far behind.

  “It was getting about time to clamp down on a nigger again,” one of the men said. “A week ago I was in a store in Andrewjones, and I’ll be damned if a black buck didn’t come in with more money in his pocket than I’ve had in mine all summer long. That made me good and sore, seeing a nigger like him better off than I was. That’s the trouble with them these days. They make just as much wages, and sometimes more, than a white man can. Hell, this is a white man’s country! Ain’t no nigger going to flash a bigger roll of money than I can, and me not do nothing about it. It ain’t right.”

  “Sign that nigger-petition,” a voice said from the rear of the crowd. “That’s the way to get shed of the niggers.”

  “I ain’t in favor of that fool thing,” he retorted loudly. “The best way is just like I said. String one of them up ever so often. That’ll make all of them keep their place. Hell, if there wasn’t no more niggers in the country, I’d feel lost without them. Besides,” he said, turning around and shouting, “who’ll do all the work, if the niggers was sent away?”

  No one had an answer to his argument. The men walked along in silence wondering to themselves about a country in which there were no Negroes to do the hard work. No one cared to discuss such a far-fetched possibility.

  A mile from the quarters, Shep and three or four men in front of the procession, suddenly stopped in their tracks.

  There, unmistakably, stood Bob Watson holding a shotgun pointed at them. The moon gleamed on the metal of the gun, flashing a warning that every one of them understood. No one moved. Bob Watson advanced a few steps.

  “I reckon nobody believed what I said,” he spoke slowly from behind the gun. “I sent out word that I’d shoot the first one who came on my land looking for Sonny Clark, and I ain’t fooling, either. I ain’t going to have one of my hands lynched as long as I can stop it. I don’t know who all of you men are, but I can see some I recognize. I’d figure that about half of you are my tenants and sharecroppers. That means that the other half ain’t got an inch of business being on my land. But that don’t excuse the rest of you none.”

  Somebody in the middle of the crowd spoke up.

  “A white girl’s been raped, Mr. Bob,” he said. “We can’t let the niggers overrun the country like that. They’ve got to be taken care of.”

  “The sheriff draws a salary to arrest lawbreakers,” he said quickly. “Nobody else’s got the right to come on my land.”

  “Hell,” one of the men said, “Jeff McCurtain ain’t going to hurt his votes by busting in on this nigger hunt. He’s got better sense than that.”

  Bob Watson moved to the side of the road, still holding the gun on the men.

  “I’m going to give everybody a chance to get off my land,” he said. This pump gun shoots six times. I’ll give everybody a chance to climb through that fence and head for the highway, and then I’m going to start pumping. But I’ll warn you. If I catch anybody around here again looking for that boy, I’ll shoot on sight next time. And I ain’t drawing a line between them who work for me and them who don’t. How about that, Shep?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Bob,” he said meekly, moving sideways towards the fence, “I know what you mean.”

  The crowd broke, dashing out of the road and leaping and falling over the fence. When the last one had reached the other side, Bob Watson emptied the gun into the air. As he took a handful of shells from his pocket with which to reload the gun, he could hear dozens of feet pounding across the field. He stood in the road, holding the loaded gun under his arm, until the sounds had died away in the distance.

  Chapter XIII

  SHERIFF JEFF MCCURTAIN was knee-deep and belly-floundered in a patch of rank pigweed when dawn broke.

  The strange-looking country around him was peaceful and quiet. Little wisps of fog were rising from the dew-damp earth and drifting aimlessly over the fallow fields. While Jeff stood gazing at the dawn, a lone shirt-tail woodpecker began hammering happily on a leafless dead sycamore.

  Jeff looked around him, wondering where he was. He and Bert had tramped over a lot of strange ground between midnight and daybreak, but for the first time he felt lost. He scratched his head, wondering if he were still in Julie County, or if he had crossed the county line sometime during the night by mistake.

  He saw Bert coming towards him from around the corner of one of the old sheds in the barnyard. Bert looked hollow-eyed and wan. His hat had been pushed to the back of his head, and his shoulders drooped despairingly.

  “Where in the world are we at, Bert?” he called helplessly. “I don’t recall seeing such a ramshackle piece of country since God-come-Wednesday.”

  “We’re only about twelve miles from town,” Bert said wearily. “This is Frank Turner’s old place.”

  Bert plodded through the weeds towards him. Jeff felt a little better, knowing that he had jurisdiction over the ground on which he stood. In the early part of his political career he had been subject to nightmares wherein he had found himself floundering helplessly in one of the other counties in the state while murder, arson, and rape were being committed on a wholesale scale right before his eyes. For that reason he had not set foot outside of Julie County in eleven years.

  “I don’t think Sam Brinson’s been here, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said. “I don’t think anybody’s been on this place in half a dozen years.”

  They looked at each other hopelessly.

  “I wonder what far-fetched thing could have happened to Sam,” Jeff said to himself aloud.

  “Maybe they turned him loose somewhere and he’s too scared to come out of hiding,” Bert suggested. “If they got tired of hauling him around with them, they might have done that, or else they—”

  “Or else, what?” Jeff asked quickly.

  “Well, they might have gone ahead and—and done what they said they was going to do.”

  “No!” Jeff said emphatically. “Not to Sam. Maybe to any other nigger. But not to Sam Brinson.”

  Bert turned and waded through the weeds towards the dilapidated dwelling. The car had been left somewhere in front of the house when they drove up in the dark.

  Jeff found it difficult to pick his way through the heavy growth of pigweed, but he did the best he could by following the trail left by Bert. When he got as far as the shed, he heard somebody shouting near by. He stopped and listened closely, filled with renewed hope. It might be Sam calling.

  Bert had reached the dwelling, but he was coming back.

  “It’s Jim Couch,” he called to Jeff.

  Jeff went to the side of the shed and leaned wearily against it.

  He could hear Bert and Jim crunching through the weeds, but he did not look up.

  “Good morning, Sheriff Jeff,” Jim said breathlessly. “It’s a fine day, ain’t it?”

  Jeff did not answer. He wanted a few momen
ts of peace in his mind before hearing what Jim had to say. He knew that if Jim had brought good news he would have shouted it out long before that.

  “I’ve been looking all over Julie County for you and Bert since last night,” Jim began. “I reckon I must have asked two or three hundred people if they had seen anything of you. I wouldn’t have found you out here at all, if it hadn’t been for your car standing up there in front of the house.”

  Jeff’s heart sank lower. He closed his eyes for one more moment of peace.

  “What’s the trouble, Jim?” he asked finally, opening his eyes.

  “Judge Ben Allen—”

  Jeff groaned.

  “I might have known that,” he said, dropping his voice lower. “I’ve been fearing that all night long.”

  “Judge Ben Allen had a fight with Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun about that petition,” Jim said quickly. “He took it away from her and tore it to pieces and told her he would have her arrested for inciting a riot if she tried to get up another one.”

  Jeff raised his eyes hopefully, his lower jaw dropping.

  “Then he called up and told me to find you right away and tell you he wanted Sonny Clark caught and brought to the jailhouse for safekeeping with every hair in his head where it ought to be.”

  Jeff slumped against the wall of the shed, his fingers digging at the rough weatherbeaten boards for support. He was as pitiful a sight as a month-old calf caught in a barbed-wire fence.

  “Boys,” he said dispiritedly, “I haven’t been so frazzle-assed tired since God-come-Wednesday. I been tramping Julie County all night long trying to find Sam Brinson, and now along comes Judge Ben Allen, changing his mind again, and saying he wants me to drop everything and catch that Clark nigger. It’s that Cissy Calhoun who’s made all this trouble. If I could put my eyes on her now, I’d chase her till she was so worn-out she’d wish she’d never been born.”

  He slid slowly down the shed wall, his body making a thud on the ground. Bert and Jim leaped forward in an effort to save him from a fall, but they were unable to reach him in time.

  The most pleasant feeling he had ever had in his whole life came over him. It was the hottest day of summer, and he was watching Sam Brinson tinker with an old car out in the sun. Sam was hammering away at the rusty old machine while he lay back against the trunk of a long-limbed wateroak tree on the cool bank of Lord’s Creek and fished for speckled trout. To lie there in the shade, with the soft cool mud oozing between his toes, and to hear Sam out there tinkering away on the old automobile, was almost too good to be true. He was fishing with worms and a cork, and the cork began to bob. He watched the ripples spread over the water, waiting for the cork to go under twice. Without taking his eyes from the cork, he spread his feet wider apart, pushing his toes deeper into the cool mud. Then he got ready to jerk the line the instant it was pulled under the third time. He set himself then and there to catch six or eight of those man-sized trout, and to take them home for Corra to fry and brown in corn meal. All of a sudden the cork went under for the third time, and he jerked with all his might. He lost his toe-hold in the mud; he slid down the slippery bank into the water; and the fishing pole went soaring out of sight over his head.