Trouble in July (18 page)

“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 on 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.

I
T 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 responsible 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.”

“Found him?” Jeff shouted at the Negro.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Jeff. They done found him and let me go. That was a while back, and I reckon that black boy is done for by now.”

“Where?” he demanded.

“Back down the road there at the branch where them willow trees is at.”

Jeff took out his watch and studied the face. He pushed his thumbnail against the crystal as though he were trying to move the hands forward.

“It’s getting late in the morning,” he said, glancing up at the sun for comparison. “It ain’t much longer till dinnertime.”

Jeff put his watch away and started for the car. Bert walked along beside him.

“Mr. Jeff,” Sam said meekly, “what you aim to do about me?”

They turned around and saw him backing into the thicket.

“Come on here, you black rascal,” Jeff said. “I don’t ever want to find you getting out of my sight again. Get in the car. I’m going to put you back safe in the jailhouse.”

They all got in. Sam crouched down on the floor in the rear instead of sitting on the seat.

After going two or three miles, Sam called in a low voice.

“What do you want, Sam?” Jeff asked.

“I forgot to tell you about the rabbit.”

“What rabbit?”

“I don’t exactly believe it my own self,” he said haltingly, “but I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“When them white men grabbed Sonny, a rabbit jumped out of his shirt, just like it was coming out of his belly. But it hadn’t hopped more than a couple of hops before they fired away at it and blasted it all to bits. Now, Mr. Jeff, I don’t want you to believe it, because I don’t exactly believe it, either. But my eyes saw it.”

Bert’s and Jeff’s eyes met, but neither of them spoke. Jeff twisted his body on the seat and looked down at Sam crouching on the floor. He turned around after that and kept his eyes on the road ahead.

Just before they reached Flowery Branch bridge, two cars came up the road and roared past in a cloud of choking yellow dust. They were going so fast it was impossible to identify any of the men.

“It looks like they’ve finished, just like Sam said,” Bert commented.

“If they’ve actually gone ahead and pure done it, I’m thankful I saved one out of the two,” Jeff said.

A hundred yards from the bridge they saw dozens of automobiles standing in the road, blocking it, and others turned out into the weeds on the roadside.

Jeff’s hand on Bert’s arm brought the car to a stop. A moment later he motioned to Bert to drive the car off the highway where it would not be readily observed. Sam looked up over the back of the seat anxiously when he could feel no more motion. He ducked down again, moaning.

“We can’t do nothing without some help,” Bert said excitedly. “We’d better go to town and deputize—”

“Ain’t no need for that now,” Jeff said. “They’ve done done it, son.”

Bert drove the car into a thicket until it was practically out of sight of the road. Jeff got out and peered through the bushes towards the grove of willow trees on the bank of the stream.

“They’ve done it, just like I said,” he whispered to Bert beside him.

They could see the body of the Negro boy swinging lifelessly from a limb that had been stripped leafless by bullets and shells. There were still at least forty or fifty men standing in small groups around the tree. Others were leaving. One or two cars could be heard to start near the bridge.