Trouble in July

by Erskine Caldwell

  “What makes you feel like not working?” Harvey asked him. “You ain’t been getting into trouble of no kind, have you?”

  Sonny’s face twitched. He swallowed hard. His hands dug deep into the pockets of his tattered overalls.

  “Mr. Harvey, I ain’t done no wrong,” he said earnestly. “I declare, I ain’t!”

  “What about that raping?” Harvey demanded quickly. “You don’t call that wrong?”

  Sonny’s face fell.

  “Does you know about that, Mr. Harvey?”

  “Of course, I know about it. Everybody in Julie County knows about it. People all over the country know about it now after reading about it in the newspapers.”

  “The newspapers?” Sonny repeated. “Did they put it in the newspapers?”

  Harvey nodded, watching the boy.

  “I ain’t done nothing like that, Mr. Harvey.”

  Harvey reached down and broke off a handful of weed tops. He rubbed them in the palms of his hands until the seed crumbled from the pods and dribbled between his fingers. He threw the chaff aside and looked at Sonny.

  “You done something,” he said finally. “What do you call it then?”

  “I didn’t do that thing you mentioned, Mr. Harvey,” he said earnestly, stepping forward and almost stumbling in his haste. “I don’t know nothing about that thing you mentioned. I ain’t never done nothing like that in all my life, Mr. Harvey. I just ain’t, that’s all.”

  “Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun said you did. And she’s a white woman. You wouldn’t call a white woman a liar, would you?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Harvey,” he protested. “I sure wouldn’t. But I didn’t do nothing at all, Mr. Harvey.”

  “She said she and Preacher Felts saw you doing it. Mr. Shep Barlow’s daughter said you done it, too. You wouldn’t call all of them liars, would you?”

  “I ain’t calling them that, Mr. Harvey. I wouldn’t dispute white-folks’ word for nothing in the world. But I just naturally didn’t do nothing like that to Miss Katy or to nobody else, Mr. Harvey.”

  Sonny was going around in a circle, stumbling and catching himself almost every time he took a step. He was trotting in a nervous haste to convince Harvey of his innocence. Harvey stood still, looking closely at the boy’s agonized face each time he passed in front of him.

  “I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Harvey, when I said that. I ain’t never done nothing with colored girls, either. I just don’t know nothing about that, Mr. Harvey.”

  Harvey watched him closely. He could not keep from his mind a surging belief in the Negro’s earnestness.

  “How come you said that about colored girls, too?” he asked. “You never had dealings with one of them, either?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Harvey. That’s the truth. I’ve heard talk about it, but I never got around to knowing about it. I wouldn’t tell you no lie, Mr. Harvey.”

  Harvey turned his back on the boy and walked in the direction of the path a dozen yards away. When he reached the bare strip of sandy ground, he stopped and looked down the path and over the tops of the trees at the bottom of the ridge. Beyond that lay the flatlands crisscrossed with hedgerows separating the fields of growing crops. He wondered where the crowd of men was. He had not heard the men since the evening before when there was a lot of shouting at the bottom of the ridge.

  He turned around and looked at Sonny standing waist-deep in the murdocks. The boy was standing in the same position he had left him in. He had made no signs of running away. Harvey walked back to where he stood.

  “What you aim to do, Mr. Harvey?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Harvey thought he detected a movement under Sonny’s shirt. He moved closer.

  “What’s that you’ve got hid?”

  Sonny unbuttoned his shirt and put his hand inside. He drew out the rabbit.

  “Where’d you get that rabbit?”

  “It’s just one of mine,” Sonny said, stroking the rabbit’s ears. “I got him from home night before last, Mr. Harvey.”

  Sonny held the rabbit by the ears, resting the animal’s body on his forearm. The rabbit struggled for a moment in an effort to get down and nibble the grass that grew sparsely in the weeds. Sonny put him back into the blouse of his shirt and buttoned it.

  “I don’t know,” Harvey said uneasily, pulling his hat hard over his eyes. “I just don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know, Mr. Harvey?” the boy asked helpfully.

  Harvey did not answer him. He went back to the path and looked down the ridge for a long time. Sonny did not move from his tracks.

  It was difficult for him to make up his mind. First he would tell himself that he was a white man. Then he would gaze at Sonny’s black face. After that he would stare down upon the fields in the flatlands and wonder what would happen after it was all over. The men in the hunt-hungry mob would slap him on the back and praise him for having captured the Negro single-handed. But after the boy had been lynched, he knew he would probably hate himself as long as he lived. He wished he had stayed at home.

  “Mr. Harvey,” Sonny inquired plaintively.

  He turned on his heel angrily.

  “Mr. Harvey, please, sir, let me hide away up at your house. I’ll get in the barn and do just like you say. Please, sir, Mr. Harvey don’t make me go down where that crowd of white men is!”

  That settled it. He could not let himself hide a Negro while half the white male population of Julie County was turning the country upside down in search of him.

  “Come on,” he said roughly, beckoning to Sonny. “Come on this way.”

  He started down the path. After taking several steps he heard Sonny at his heels. He did not turn around.

  They walked down the winding path towards the highway at the foot of the ridge. It was about half a mile from where they had started down to the point where the path ended at the road. Harvey did not turn around to look at Sonny until they were more than half the way down. He could hear the sound Sonny’s bare feet made when they rustled a dry leaf or twig in the path. The rest of the time there was nothing to indicate that he was following as he had been told to do.

  They stopped at the edge of a clearing. Several automobiles had raced along the dusty highway, coming and going in nervous spurts of speed. The dust hung like a pall over the road.

  Harvey turned on his heels and looked Sonny straight in the eyes.

  “Why did Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun say you done it, if you didn’t do it?” he demanded angrily. “She wasn’t the only one who said it, either. Two others said the same thing.”

  Harvey was angry, but he did not know what had made him feel that way. He watched Sonny’s face.

  “Mr. Harvey,” Sonny said earnestly, “I don’t know why the white folks say I done it when I didn’t. I was walking along the road minding my own business when Miss Katy ran out of the bushes and grabbed me. I didn’t know what she done it for. I thought she was clear out of her mind. She started in saying she wasn’t going to tell on me. I tried to ask her what it was she wasn’t going to tell on me about, but she wouldn’t listen to nothing I said. All that time I knowed good and well I didn’t have no business standing there like that talking to a white girl, but I couldn’t do nothing about it. She grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t leave go. And she wouldn’t pay me no mind at all. I tried to get away from her, but she grabbed tighter till I couldn’t do nothing. Everytime I made a move, she jerked me like I don’t know what. I wanted—”

  “Did she know who you was?”

  “Yes, sir. She knowed I was Sonny, because she kept on calling me by my name. Right then is when Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun and Preacher Felts drove up in the car and stopped right beside us. Miss Katy never did say I was harming her. Miss Katy didn’t say nothing. But she acted like she wanted to run, just like I did. Then that white woman grabbed her and wouldn’t let her. And Preacher Felts knocked me down on the ground and kept me there. Then that white woman made Miss Katy say it. She made her keep o
n saying it, too. Then she told Preacher Felts to let me run off, but she kept a hold on Miss Katy and wouldn’t let her run. That’s what happened, Mr. Harvey. If the Good Lord Himself was here to speak for me, that’s what He’d tell you, Mr. Harvey. And you knows good and well He wouldn’t lie, don’t you, Mr. Harvey?”

  Harvey looked away, taking his eyes from the boy. He did not know what to think. He was more convinced than ever, though, that Sonny should not be held responsible for what had happened. If Sonny had been a few years older, or if he had been in trouble before, he knew he would not hesitate an instant. He’d drag Sonny to a tree and tie him up until he could get word to the crowd that had already spent two nights and a day looking for him.

  “If I don’t turn you over to the white men who’ve been combing the country for you ever since day before yesterday, they’ll call me a nigger-lover when they find out I turned you loose.” He hesitated, digging the soft sand with the toe of his shoe. “They might even be apt to run me out of the country. Them men down there has set their heads on stringing you up, and I don’t know nothing in the whole wide world that’ll stop them from now on.”

  “What you say, Mr. Harvey?” Sonny asked, perplexed.

  He turned his head sharply in order that he would not have to see the boy’s pleading eyes.

  Without looking behind, Harvey started down the path, leaping over a ditch into the field and hurrying through the scrawny growth of broomsedge and rabbit-tobacco. Sonny clung at his heels less than a yard behind.

  He crossed the narrow untilled field and stopped. Sonny was beside him, looking up at his face. Harvey’s head hung in silence for several moments before he could bring himself to speak.

  “I hate like the mischief to have to do it, Sonny,” he began, trying his best to look the colored boy in the face when he said, “but this is a white-man’s country. Niggers has always had to put up with it, and I don’t know nothing that can stop it now. It’s just the way things is, I reckon.”

  Sonny did not say anything, but his eyes rolled around until the whites looked like fresh bolls of unstained cotton. He had grasped the meaning of what Harvey had said.

  They went on towards the road, ducking their heads under the low-hanging branches in the hickory thicket and picking their way carefully through the briars on each side of the path.

  “Mr. Harvey,” Sonny whispered in a low voice.

  Harvey stopped and turned around. He knew he had made up his mind, but he did not know what he would do if the boy suddenly darted into the thicket.

  “What you want, Sonny?”

  “Mr. Harvey, won’t you please, sir, do one little thing for me?”

  “What?”

  Sonny stepped forward, pushing back the branches with his strong black arms, and looked at him pleadingly.

  “Mr. Harvey, if you thinks you has got to go do what you says, I’d be mighty much obliged if you went and shot me down with a gun instead of turning me over to all them white men.”

  Harvey could not find words to utter. He looked at the boy strangely, feeling that he had never seen him before in all his life. Then his eyes were no longer able to see what he was looking at, and he turned away. His feet moved along the path, carrying him with them.

  “Won’t you do that, Mr. Harvey?”

  “I couldn’t, Sonny.”

  “Why, Mr. Harvey?”

  He shook his head from side to side, every muscle in his neck aching painfully.

  “Why, Mr. Harvey?” Sonny repeated pleadingly. “I ain’t got a gun to do it with,” he said, stumbling over the ground.

  Chapter XV

  IT WAS BARELY mid-morning when Jeff and Bert drove away from Needmore, but the day had already seemed to Jeff to be the longest one he had ever had to endure. Jim Couch had been sent back to Andrewjones with a vaguely worded message for Judge Ben Allen. After a night of fatiguing wandering, sleepless and hungry, Jeff had resigned himself to his fate. However, tucked away in a corner of his mind, there was the hope that by some miracle he would find himself re-elected when the votes were counted.

  They drove along the road in silence. The unpaved surface was rough and bumpy, and occasionally they ran into washboardy stretches that rattled and shook the car until it sounded as if it would fall to pieces. When Jeff could stand it no longer, he told Bert to slow down.

  “I’ll bet there’ve been more cars over this road in the past two days than there have been in the whole year since January,” Bert said.

  “I’ll remind the road commissioner to send some grading machines out here and work it over after this lynching business is finished.”

  Just then, rounding a curve in the road, they almost ran into a man riding muleback. He was a farmer going to one of the stores in Needmore with a basket of eggs to trade.

  Bert stopped the car just in time. The farmer, with only one free hand, was unable to make the slow-moving mule turn to the side of the road. Bert pulled over to one side.

  “Howdy,” the man said, pulling the mule to a stop. You’re Sheriff McCurtain, ain’t you?”

  “Howdy,” Jeff said, forcing a smile to his face. “I reckon I am the sheriff. Leastaways, till election-time. If I got the votes of a lot of fine-looking farmers like you, I reckon I’d keep on being. How you voting this year?”

  “Ain’t decided yet,” the man said, shifting the egg basket from one hand to the other. “I’ll have to do some weighing in my mind, like I always do before I cast my ballot.”

  “Well,” Jeff said, forcing the smile to both sides of his face, “I always admire a voter for talking that way. The people ought to make sure of the politician they put into office. A lot of times the wrong kind of man gets elected, and the common people suffer.”

  The farmer nodded. He changed the basket of eggs back to his other hand.

  “I saw a peculiar thing a little while ago,” he turned and jerked his head down the road behind him, “about half a mile back. I was going to mention it when I got to Needmore.”

  “What did you see?” Jeff asked, sitting up.

  “A nigger,” he said. “It’s a funny thing, but I saw a nigger I’d never seen around here before. He looked like one of them Geechee niggers to me. But the peculiar thing about it was that it was any kind of nigger. It’s the first one I’ve seen since the day before yesterday when every last one of them around here struck out for the deep woods.”

  “Where’d he go to?” Jeff demanded, almost rising off the seat. “Where’s he at now?”

  The farmer shook his head.

  “He was standing back there in a little clearing beside the road when I saw him first. He acted like he was in a sort of daze, and he didn’t run off at all. I said something to him, but he acted like he didn’t hear me. That’s the thing that struck me as peculiar. I ain’t never seen a nigger act like that before.”

  Jeff began nudging Bert with his elbow, at the same time thrusting his body to and fro as though he were trying to make the car begin rolling before the engine was started.

  “I’ve got to go see about that!” he shouted at the farmer. He nudged Bert hard in the ribs. “Hurry, Bert! Hurry!”

  They raced down the road with no thought about the roughness of the surface. Jeff clung to the door with both hands. Every once in a while he turned and looked at Bert with an impatience he could not control.

  “That’s Sam, all right,” he said excitedly. “It never was nobody else but Sam. That’s pure Sam, all right!”

  They were traveling at a speed of fifty miles an hour, but it still was not fast enough to suit Jeff. He nudged Bert hard in the ribs again.

  “You know what I’m going to do, Bert?” he said, his eyes glazed with nervousness.

  “What, Sheriff Jeff?”

  “I’m going to get the court to issue a writ of non compos mentis for Sam. Then he won’t always be getting plagued with attachments. He’ll have all the leeway in the world, and can fool with the old automobiles as much as he wants to, but he can’t be held res
ponsible for his acts. That’s what I’m going to do! I’m going to get that writ as soon as I get back to town!”

  Bert jammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a screaming stop. Ten feet away stood Sam Brinson, gazing at them perplexedly. Jeff leaped out as fast as he could. Sam’s body shook as though he were coming down with chills-and-fever. His overalls were so ripped and torn that they looked as if they had been pieced together out of rags.

  “Hot blast it, Sam, where in the world have you been all this time!” Jeff shouted, throwing his body forward and plunging through the roadside weeds.

  Sam dived into the thicket behind him. He was out of sight in an instant.

  “Sam!” Jeff called, thrashing blindly in the wiry tangle. “Wait a minute, Sam!”

  Bert ran up to Jeff’s side. “Stand still and be quiet, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said. “Maybe we can hear him.”

  They listened intently, twisting their necks and parting the foliage carefully.

  “Is that you, Mr. Jeff?” a thin, frightened voice asked.

  “It’s me, Sam! There ain’t nothing to be scared about now. Come on out!”

  They waited, but Sam did not appear.

  “You heard me, you black rascal!” Jeff shouted impatiently. “Come on out before I turn loose and shoot you out. I’m looking straight at you. You can’t hide from me.”

  The bushes began to shake twenty feet away. Sam came forward inch by inch.

  “Where you been all this time, Sam?”

  “Mr. Jeff, don’t ask me. Just ask me where I ain’t been. I declare, I never had so much disturbance in my whole life before.”

  He cringed, stooping, before them. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “I thought sure you was done for,” Jeff told him. He was so glad to see the Negro that he felt like going up to him and feeling him to make sure he was real and alive. “I been looking all over for you,” he said with pretended gruffness. “Where you been?”

  Sam began to tremble as the memory of the past several hours came over him.

  “Mr. Jeff, them white men just near about ran me down to skin and bones.” He looked down at his feet. The soles of both shoes were missing, and the uppers hung around his ankles. “They chased me through the thickets with a rope tied around my neck, and when they got tired doing that, they tied me to the back end of a car and pulled me along that-a-way. Half the time they went so fast I couldn’t keep up, and I dragged on the ground. I thought my time had come for sure until a little while ago when they found that Sonny Clark and let me go.”