Trouble in July

  He opened his eyes to see Bert and Jim standing over him fanning his face as hard as they could. He closed his eyes quickly, wondering why he had grown to hate fishing the way he did if it was anything at all like that.

  “Take it easy, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said, fanning harder and easy, Sheriff Jeff. You’ll be all right in a minute. Take it easy, Sheriff Jeff.”

  “Boys,” he said, looking at them strangely, “I hooked the biggest one you ever did see.”

  “Take it easy, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said, fanning harder and looking at Jim Couch.

  “I had some bullies that weighed eight to nine pounds, but I threw them right back because they was too little. The law says to throw back in anything under six inches, but McCurtain ain’t never fished for anything that measures, from nose to tail, less than—”

  He sat up, looking across the patch of weeds.

  “Where’s Sam?” he shouted. “Where’d Sam go to?”

  “Everything’s all right, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert tried to assure him. “There’s no hurry about nothing. Just take it easy for a while.”

  No one-spoke for a while. Bert and Jim watched him, fanning all the time. The sun had reached the tops of the trees across the fallow field, and rays fell across Jeff’s face. He looked up, blinking in the strong light.

  “Something must have come over me,” he said sheepishly. “Everybody knows I don’t like fishing one bit.”

  “That’s right, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said. “Me and Jim ain’t going to believe it. We know you don’t like to fish.”

  He sat quietly for a while, and then he motioned to Bert and Jim to help him to his feet. He got up with difficulty and staggered through the pigweed patch towards the car, pushing the rank stalks aside with a sweeping motion of his hands.

  “I’m all right now,” he said, warding Bert and Jim off when they attempted to help him to the car. “I’m all right if I didn’t make a fool out of myself.”

  They followed close behind where they could help him if he stumbled on the rough ground.

  They opened the car door for him and stood back, waiting for him to say what they were going to do.

  “I’m doing my duty as I see it,” he said, settling back comfortably in the seat. “If Judge Ben Allen wants a dead nigger, I’ll get him. But if wants a live one, he’ll just have to wait till I find out about Sam first, or else he’ll have to go out and catch him himself. The cemeteries is full of politicians who didn’t heed the voice of the common people, and I don’t aim to be carried there before my time.”

  “You mean we ain’t going to look for Sonny Clark?” Jim asked.

  “I mean just that, son,” he said. “I ain’t going to run myself frazzle-assed running first in one direction and next in another. If Judge Ben Allen can’t make up his mind and leave it made up, that’s a pretty fair sign that he ain’t so sure of the will of the common people. That’s all I want to know. I’m going to stay straddle the fence till I’m convinced I’ll land on solid ground when I leap. In the meanwhile, I’ve got my eyes open for Sam Brinson. I’ll look for him till God-come-Wednesday, if necessary.”

  “Are we going to start looking some more for Sam toreckly?” Bert asked, hoping the search would be halted long enough for them to find breakfast somewhere.

  “No,” Jeff said firmly, slapping his hand on the car window. “No. We’re going to start looking now.”

  He pointed out the direction he wanted to go, and Bert turned the car around. They drove off in the direction of Needmore with Jim following in the other automobile.

  A mile down the road they came to a three-room tenant house perched on the edge of a cotton field. There was a mailbox on a hickory post in front of the dwelling. A man in patched overalls was leaning against the post watching the two cars approach.

  “Slow up, Bert,” Jeff said, nudging him in the ribs. “Maybe this bugger knows where Sam went to. Stop the car.”

  The car rolled to a stop a few feet from the farmer. He looked up suspiciously, pulling his sun-scorched field-straw hat down over his forehead.

  “Howdy,” Jeff greeted him, leaning out the window and wrinkling his face in a grin.

  “Howdy,” the man replied.

  They looked at each other closely, each waiting for the other to speak first after that. Jeff realized after several moments that it was up to him to say something.

  “Hot weather we’ve been having lately, ain’t it?” he said.

  “I reckon so.”

  “How’s your woman and all the young ones?”

  “Fair.”

  “Laid-by yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Figuring on taking a government loan on your cotton this fall?”

  “Ain’t decided.”

  “Did the boll weevils hurt your crop much?”

  “Not much.”

  “It’s hot, ain’t it?”

  “Yeh.”

  The two men watched each other suspiciously, each trying to fathom the other’s mind. The farmer took out his pocketknife and whittled several strokes on the mailbox post. Jeff drew in a long deep breath and leaned farther out the window.

  “Who you going to vote for this coming election?” he asked, unable to withhold the question any longer.

  “I’m a Democrat.”

  “Anti-Judge Allen, or pro-Judge Allen?”

  “I ain’t no Allen-Democrat, if that’s what you’re driving at,” the farmer said heatedly, pushing his hat away from his forehead and spitting a stream of tobacco juice at the front tire.

  Jeff leaned back and ran his hand over his face, relieved to know the kind of ground he was on. He made a sign to Bert to switch off the motor.

  “I’ll be running again myself this year, as usual,” he said, tilting back his hat and smiling at the man against the post. “I’ve got a mighty clean record in back of me. I’ve devoted the best part of my life to being the servant of Julie County voters, but I’ve made it a hard and fast rule never to treat the Allen-Democrats to political favors when it comes to upholding the laws—”

  “What’s your name?” the farmer asked, spitting at the front tire and straightening up.

  “Me?” Jeff said, taken back. “Why, I’m Sheriff Jeff McCurtain. I thought—”

  “How come you didn’t lock up that nigger in the jail-house?”

  He looked at Jeff, squinting one eye and wiping the knife-blade on the palm of his hand.

  “What nigger? You mean Sam Brinson? I had—”

  “I don’t know nobody by that name. I mean Sonny Clark.”

  Jeff swallowed hard, glancing at Bert. He was beginning to be afraid that he had done himself more harm than good by stopping and getting involved in politics.

  “How come you didn’t stir around and catch him before that mob got on his trail?”

  “I figured—”

  “You draw a good sum of money out of the public funds, don’t you?”

  “It don’t amount to much,” Jeff protested. “It ain’t no more than a bare living.”

  “It’s a heap more than I make, and I know a lot of folks like me. The county keeps a pair of bloodhounds, too. If you wanted to catch that nigger, all you had to do was let them bloodhounds loose on his trail. Now, ain’t that so?”

  Jeff opened the door to allow the air to circulate better. The heat was making perspiration break from his flesh like water seeping through a flour sack.

  “Now, about them bloodhounds,” Jeff spoke up defensively. “Bloodhounds don’t always do as much good as some folks think. Anyway, that was such a smart nigger, I figured he’d wade down Flowery Branch, and them hounds wouldn’t never be able to strike his trail. On top of that, they’d be yelping so much, he’d be warned away. I figured the best way to catch him was to beat the bush and grab him that way.”

  “Why didn’t you do it that way, then?” the man asked persistently.

  Jeff ran his hand over his face nervously. He was at a loss to know how to handle the situation. He sat hoping t
hat there were not many voters in Julie County like the man leaning against the mailbox post. He knew he could not afford, even at that stage, to take a public stand either for or against the lynching until he knew which way the wind was blowing. He dreaded the coming election worse than he did a plague. This was one time when he knew there was no possible way for him to keep from taking a stand on one side or the other, and he knew as well as he knew his own name that his chances of being re-elected were not worth an argument if he failed to gauge correctly the sentiment of the people. In the past, Judge Ben Allen had always been able to settle the outcome of the primaries in advance merely by making a few trades and switches with the opposition. But now Jeff was beginning to wonder if Judge Ben Allen had enough political power to swing an election when the untested issue of lynching was to be brought out in the open for the first time in the history of Julie County. He wished he had had the sense to follow his wife’s advice when she told him to go fishing, and to get there as fast as he could travel.

  The man in the patched overalls was gazing at him stolidly. Jeff bit his lower lip, hoping the man would not press the unanswered question upon him,

  “By the way,” Jeff said, attempting to sound as casual as possible under the circumstances, “I don’t reckon you’ve seen anything of Sam Brinson, the colored man, have you?”

  The farmer narrowed his eyes, fixing his gaze on the front tire as though he were sighting down a gun barrel, and spat unerringly upon the sidewall of the rubber casing. A few faint lines appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  “Who’s that? I never heard of him before.”

  “Sam’s from over the other side of Flowery Branch—about halfway between the branch and Andrewjones.”

  The man shook his head slowly.

  “Who does he work for?”

  “Nobody, exactly,” Jeff said apologetically, “except for himself, you might say. He sort of fools around with old cars that he gets his hands on one way or another.”

  “Never heard of him,” the man said, shaving the post with his knife, “but he sounds like one of them Geechee niggers to me. That breed’ll do anything to keep from working in the fields like ordinary niggers.”

  Jeff was too discouraged to sit there and argue any more. He made a motion at Bert, indicating that he wanted to leave. Bert started the engine.

  “If you hear any word about Sam Brinson,” Jeff said, raising his voice above the noise of the motor, “I’d appreciate it a heap if you’d let me know.”

  The farmer did not say anything in reply. He turned over the wad of tobacco in his left cheek with his tongue, but the car rolled away before he could spit on the tire again. They left him standing with his shoulder propped against the mailbox.

  They had gone nearly a mile before Jeff spoke.

  “I reckon I can count that vote lost till God-come-Wednesday,” he said sadly. “How was I to know he’d have it in for Geechee niggers, and not be an Allen-Democrat, besides?” He paused, looking with dismal eyes at the landscape. “There sure are some queer creatures that a politician has to poll.”

  The road they were on ran north-and-south through the county along the eastern boundary. By following it northward they were not getting any closer to Andrewjones, which lay about fifteen miles to the west at that point, but they were getting closer to Earnshaw Ridge.

  During the next twenty minutes they passed half a dozen or more deserted-looking Negro cabins. In the yard of one cabin the week’s washing hung on the clothesline, but the dwelling itself looked as if it had been deserted on a few minutes’ notice. The wooden shutters had been closed and bolted over the windows, but the front door remained ajar.

  “Drive on to Needmore, Bert,” Jeff said, pointing ahead. “I want to inquire around for Sam. It stands to reason he’s somewhere, now, don’t it? He just couldn’t be swallowed up in a hole in the ground and not leave a trace of himself behind.”

  It was Saturday, and ordinarily the roads would have been crowded even at that early hour with Negroes afoot riding on mules, and driving their old cars. But there was not a Negro to be seen anywhere.

  Even in Needmore there were no Negroes to be seen.

  Needmore was a crossroad settlement barely large enough to have a name. On opposite corners there were two general stores with high dashboard fronts. One of the stores had a tall red gasoline pump beside it. Other than a handful of scattered, unpainted, white-inhabited bungalows, there was nothing else in the settlement. The place had been given its name by the Negroes who went there to trade at the stores, and who were usually told, when they attempted to purchase an article, that they would need more money.

  Bert slowed down the car and stopped in front of the store with a gasoline pump. Jim Couch drew up beside them almost at once.

  Jeff gazed out upon the barren sandy soil around the stores, unable to stop worrying. He felt too tired to get out of the car, so he sent Bert to bring his bottle of Coca-Cola out to him.

  Chapter XIV

  HARVEY GLENN, A young cotton farmer who lived on the panlevel on top of Earnshaw Ridge, was coming down the path from his house after breakfast that morning chewing a toothpick in the corner of his mouth when he saw a Negro’s woolly head sticking out of a clump of murdock weeds. Harvey stopped, tossed the toothpick aside, and looked around for a rock.

  While he was searching the ground for a stone the size he wanted, the waist-high weeds shook a little. The woolly head dropped out of sight.

  Harvey stepped back, looking hurriedly all around him for a rock of any size.

  The night before, when word of the man-hunt had spread over all the countryside, Harvey went to bed with his wife as usual. At least half of the men in that end of Julie County went out on the hunt, but Harvey told his wife, who was afraid of being left alone in the house, anyway, that nobody had the right kind of eyesight to catch a Negro in the dark, and that he was not going to waste any of his time trying.

  As soon as he had eaten his breakfast that morning though, he put on his hat and started down the ridge. He was about halfway between his house and the road at the bottom when he happened to glance off to one side and saw the murdocks shaking.

  “Is that you, Sonny?” he called, stooping down and picking up a field stone about the size of a brick.

  The weeds shook violently, but there was no answer.

  “You heard me, Sonny,” he said, raising his voice.

  He thought he heard a faint sound. It was like a moan trailing off into a whimper.

  “What’s the matter out there?” he called, craning his neck.

  Harvey took several steps into the weeds, stopping and rising on his toes in an effort to see if it really was Sonny Clark crouching out there. He was careful not to take too much of a chance until he could be sure it was Sonny, because he had left his rifle with his wife for her protection.

  “You’d better answer me, Sonny!” he said impatiently.

  There was no motion in the weeds, and the woolly head had disappeared completely from sight.

  “Stand up on your feet, Sonny!” he ordered, moving closer. “Stand up and let me see you, or I’ll chunk this rock right spang at you!”

  Sonny’s head rose to the top of the murdocks like a turtle warily emerging from its shell. His eyes became larger and larger as he got to his feet.

  “Howdy, Mr. Harvey,” Sonny said. “How you, today?”

  Harvey pushed through the weeds towards the boy, stopping and staring at him when he was a few feet away.

  “What you doing in my field, nigger?” he said gruffly, moving around in a circle in order to see if Sonny had a weapon of any kind.

  Sonny’s body turned as though it were on a pivot, his large round eyes following every movement of Harvey’s legs.

  “Is this here your field, Mr. Harvey?” Sonny asked, his voice rising in surprise. “I declare, Mr. Harvey, I didn’t know this here field belonged to you at all. I thought maybe it didn’t belong to nobody, because on account of all these here weeds
—”

  “All land belongs to somebody or other,” Harvey stated flatly.

  “Is that right?” Sonny said, his voice trailing off vaguely. “I didn’t know that before, Mr. Harvey.”

  “You know it now,” he said quickly, stopping and facing the boy. “What you doing hiding out in it like this?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Harvey. I knows whose it is now, all right.” He paused and looked down at the weeds. “I just don’t know how come I got to be in it like I is, though.”

  “Why ain’t you at home working? Ain’t you one of Mr. Bob Watson’s field-hands?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sonny said eagerly, “I live on Mr. Bob’s place.” He looked around behind him, searching the horizon with a sweep of his eyes. “I just didn’t feel like working today, somehow. I ain’t feeling at all well, Mr. Harvey.”

  Harvey threw down the rock and strode into the circle-of trampled-down weeds where Sonny had been crouching. It looked to him as if Sonny had been there a long time, possibly all night. The boy backed away several steps, his quick darting eyes taking in most of the horizon with a swift glance.