Trouble in July (3 page)

“If it had happened anywhere else in the country,” Jeff said wearily, “it wouldn’t amount to so much. I can’t figure out why that blame nigger had to be one of Bob Watson’s hands. It’s a pure shame.”

Bob Watson was the largest landowner in Julie County. He owned nearly half of all the farming land in the county, and almost all the timber land. He farmed about fifteen hundred acres of cotton with field-hands. Another fifteen hundred acres were let out to renters, sharecroppers, and tenants.

Corra came downstairs and stood in the doorway. She knew at once by the look on her husband’s face that something unexpected had turned up to discourage him.

Bert went to the door and told her in whispers what had been said over the phone.

“I’m licked, Corra,” Jeff said, looking at her helplessly.

“Nonsense,” Corra said. “Bob Watson is nothing but bluff and bluster. You know better than to pay any attention to what he says. Haul yourself up out of that chair and get on down to Lord’s Creek like I told you almost an hour ago. Get up from there and stir yourself, Jeff.”

Jim Couch went out to the porch to wait. Bert stood ready to help Jeff get started.

“Maybe you’re right, Cora,” he said, taking heart. “It’s sitting around here letting these things get me into a stew that does the damage. Bert, where’s that fishing pole of mine? Get me what I need. I ain’t got no more time to waste.”

He got up and walked heavily towards the door. His wife followed him, patting his arm, until he reached the front porch. Throwing himself forward, he crossed the porch, went down the steps and hurried towards his car standing in the street. At the sidewalk he turned around for a last look at Corra, but she had gone out of sight.

Jim had followed him down the brick path to the car.

“Since you’re figuring on being gone four or five days,” Jim began hesitantly, “I thought I ought to remind you about Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun, Sheriff Jeff.”

“What about her?”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten about her. It’s that petition she’s been getting up for the past two or three months. This is going to be a bad time, nigger-trouble coming right on top of that.”

Jeff’s shoulders sagged.

“That’s right,” he said, his gaze falling to the ground. “I’d clean forgot.”

The light in the bedroom went out. Corra had gone back to bed, thinking he had left for Lord’s Creek. He looked up at the darkened windows for a while, trying to think.

“If she gets a majority of the voters to sign that petition, that might settle the election right there and then,” Jim suggested.

Jeff nodded, his gaze still fastened upon the ground.

Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun was a grass widow about forty-eight years old who made a living selling Bibles and religious tracts. She had kept after Jeff to buy one of her books during all the past spring and summer, and he finally bought a tract with the hope that she would leave him alone after that. He had not seen her again until one morning three weeks before when she walked into his office carrying a big bundle of papers. That was when he found out that she was canvassing the county for signatures to a petition, the object of which was to send all the Negroes to Africa. She had written a letter to Senator Ashley Dukes and told him that the Negroes were buying Black Jesus Bibles from a mail-order house in Chicago, and that he would be as shocked and scandalized as she was to see pictures of Christ looking like a Negro. She told him something ought to be done right away to stop the circulation of Black Jesus Bibles in the nation. Senator Ashley Dukes wrote back and asked her what she proposed to do about it. Narcissa told him she wanted to get up a petition with millions and millions of names on it asking the President to send all the Negroes back to Africa where they came from. Senator Ashley Dukes wrote her again and told her if she persuaded everybody in Georgia of voting age to sign the petition, he would act accordingly. That was the point when Narcissa started out to get everybody, white and twenty-one, to sign it. Jeff had told her the first thing that because he was in politics he could not sign his name to it. She kept after him so persistently that finally he promised to sign the petition if she got everybody else in the county to sign it first.

“That petition changes the complexion of everything,” Jeff said, thinking hard.

“What are you going to do, Sheriff Jeff?” Jim asked.

“Sometimes I wish I was just a frazzle-assed beggar with nothing in the world to worry about except a bite to eat now and then,” Jeff said dejectedly. “Being sheriff ain’t what it’s talked up to be, Jim. My soul is worried limp from one day’s end to the next. I can’t even remember when I’ve had a minute’s pure peace. There’s always something coming along to torment a man in politics. You no sooner get through one election than you have to turn right straight around and start worrying about the outcome of the next one. Voters are a queer lot of people. I’ve seen out-at-the-front candidates wind up at the tail-end for a little thing like not wearing a pair of galluses. Now, ain’t that pure discouraging?”

He sat down on the curb, dropping his head into the palm of his hands. Jim stood by, nodding.

“If I only knew which way the wind’s going to blow from now on,” Jeff said, “I wouldn’t have to squat here as blind as a pig in a poke. If that nigger-petition of her catches on, I’d be a fool not to jump straddle the band-wagon. Nigger-trouble right now might be just the thing to set it off, too. People might begin falling all over themselves to get a chance to sign it to show their spite. I’d look like a pretty fool if I got left behind.”

He looked up at Jim, almost convinced by his own reasoning.

“If a big politician like Senator Ashley Dukes plays safe, that’s good reason why a sheriff ought to look out for his future, too.” He watched Jim’s face. “I feel I’m right, Jim.”

“That sounds right,” Jim said, “but you’re down here between two fires. Senator Ashley Dukes don’t have to run the risk of getting his fingers burnt up where he is. For all you know, that nigger-petition might back-fire and ruin everybody holding a political office in the county.”

Jeff got up and put his hand on the car door. He glanced behind him at the second-story windows in the jailhouse to see if Corra had got up again. The windows were dark and silent.

“My wife’s a wise woman, even if she ain’t so much for looks,” Jeff said, moving his head from side to side. “My wife told me to go fishing, and I reckon I’ll just go ahead and do like she said. I’ll be a lot better off down there sitting on a log across Lord’s Creek than I’d be up here running myself frazzle-assed trying to find out something nobody is going to know the truth about till the shouting’s over, anyway.”

Jim watched him climb into his car and squeeze his belly under the steeringwheel. He was disappointed. He had hoped to induce the sheriff to change his mind so they could go out on a hunt for the Negro. The two joys of his life were hunting possums between midnight and dawn, and tracking runaway Negroes at every opportunity.

Bert ran out of the jailhouse.

“There’s another phone call coming in, Sheriff Jeff,” he said excitedly. “I haven’t answered it yet, because I thought you’d want to know about it if you hadn’t left. What do you want me to do?”

“Go on and answer it,” he answered quickly. “It’s your job to take calls and promise nothing.”

“Yes, sir,” Bert said, turning around.

He had reached the screen door when Jeff called him. He came back to the porch steps.

“I’m going to listen to it, but that’s all I’m going to do,” he said getting out of the car as quickly as he could. “Hold on, Bert.”

Jim helped him squeeze his belly from under the wheel, and after that he was able to take care of himself. All three of them went inside.

They gathered around the phone. Bert lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” Bert said. “Hello!”

“It had better not be Bob Watson again,” Jeff said, eyeing the instrument suspiciously. “I’d be liable to lose my temper and tell him something this time.”

“Hello!” Bert said again.

“Hello,” the voice answered. “This is Avery Dennis.” His voice was sharp and high-pitched with excitement. “This is Avery Dennis out at Flowery Branch. I want to report some trouble out here in the neighborhood. There’s a crowd of men out here in my corn field tramping down my crop. It’s some of the crowd that’s looking for that nigger, Sonny Clark. I don’t care nothing about him, but them folks out there are ruining my field. I put a lot of work into my corn this year, all on my spare time, and I ain’t going to stand and see it ruined.”

“What do you want us to do?” Bert asked, turning and watching Jeff’s face.

Jeff nodded tentatively. He was not certain that he approved of the question but it was too late by then to do anything about it.

“Tell Sheriff McCurtain to come out here right away and drive them folks out of my corn field. He draws pay from the county for protecting property, and I want mine protected before it’s too late. There ain’t a nigger closer than a mile of here, noway. I’m going to get my shotgun and do some shooting of my own if them people ain’t run out of my field. I don’t have nothing against folks chasing niggers if they use care, but when they tramp down my corn field, drive automobiles over it, and ride mules through it, I just ain’t going to be responsible for what happens to them. You tell Sheriff McCurtain I said all that.”

“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.”

W
HILE
S
HERIFF
J
EFF
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.