Trouble in July (2 page)

He tried to hurry, but his movements were hampered by the necessity of keeping the weight of his body in balance. When it came to his shoes, Corra had to get down and guide his feet into them and then tie the laces.

“Mrs. McCurtain—” Bert said outside the door.

“He’s getting dressed now, Bert. Go downstairs to the office and wait.”

Jeff turned around several times, looking for his hat. Corra got it and put it on his head.

“I’ll bet a pretty that all this hot-blasted trouble started about pure nothing,” he said, gazing at his wife. “When the dust settles, it won’t amount to a hill of beans. That’s why I hate to waste my time waiting till God-come-Wednesday for things to straighten out.”

“You let the people argue all that out among themselves,” Corra told him. She raised her finger in front of her nose and began shaking it at him. “But I’m standing here telling you in plain words that if you don’t stay away from that end of the county, and go fishing somewhere for the next three or four days, you’re going to regret it as long as you live on the topside of this earth, Jeff McCurtain. Now, you hurry on off to Lord’s Creek like I told you.”

He gazed longingly at the soft bed and at the hollow his weight had made. The springs and mattress sagged invitingly. When he tried to turn away from the sight of it, he found that his body had become more unwieldy than ever.

“I wish you had to go just once and sit all day long poking a stick into a creekful of slimy fish,” he said. “The mosquitoes will eat big pieces out of me, and what’s left of me will itch for the next two weeks with chigger bites.”

“As sure as you are living, Jefferson McCurtain,” Corra said warningly, wagging her head, “you’ll lose the election this fall if you go one step nearer Flowery Branch than you are now. You managed to get re-elected last time only because Judge Ben Allen was able to pull strings at the very last minute. If you get into a mixup like a lynching or something, neither Judge Ben Allen or nobody else in Julie County will be able to get their hands on enough wires or ropes to keep you in office. People are as shifty as the south wind in November when it comes to voting.”

He put his watch into his pocket with his wife’s warning ringing in his ears. Without waiting any longer, he moved heavily across the room towards the door. His large body made everything within sight look small and insignificant in comparison. The floor squeaked painfully under his weight.

When Corra saw him moving slowly across the room, she could not keep from feeling sorry for him. If she could get her hands on the person responsible for all the trouble, she would make whoever it was sorry he was ever born.

She ran to him when he put his hand on the knob of the door.

“Be sure and get that bottle of mosquito oil in the drawer of your desk downstairs,” she urged, patting his arm. “It’s the bottle you had with you the last time down at the creek. Be sure and rub it all over your face and neck, Jeff. The mosquitoes on Lord’s Creek are worse this year than they have ever been. And take care of yourself properly, Jeff.”

She squeezed his arm affectionately.

He left the room without looking back again. On the way downstairs he wished to himself that people who had it in them to do it would go ahead and do their lynching and tell him about it after it was all over. There was scarcely any political risk in coming along after the lynching had taken place and saying the law had to be enforced and upheld, because by that time, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there was not a man to be found who would come forward and identify a member of a mob. But there was a handful of men and women in the county who always made it a point to remind him every time a lynching had been threatened during his eleven years in office that it was his sworn duty to protect the life of a suspect until he could be taken to trial before a court. The last time a Negro was lynched in Julie County, about six years before, he went fishing as soon as word reached him that a crowd of white men was looking for the Negro, and he had stayed down on Lord’s Creek for five days. When he got back, the Negro was dead, and the whole thing had blown over and quieted down. But some of the people had accused him ever since of neglect of duty. It was those men and women who could cause a lot of trouble for him if another lynching took place in the county. It might even cost him his job this time.

“Bert!” he called, easing his weight down the stairs first on one foot and then on the other one. “Do you hear, Bert!”

Bert came running from the office and stood at the bottom of the stairway.

“It looks bad, Sheriff,” Bert said, following him through the hall and into the office.

“What does?” he asked, standing in the middle of the room and blinking his eyes sleepily in the bright light. “What looks bad?”

“That trouble out at Flowery Branch.”

“What’s the trouble about?”

“I haven’t been able to find out much yet. I’ve been trying to ring up Jim Couch to see what he knows, but Jim’s wife said he left home an hour ago and hasn’t come back yet.”

“I’m going to do something far-fetched to you and Jim Couch both, if all this turns out to be nothing but pure hullabaloo.”

“They say a nigger boy named Sonny Clark raped a white girl out there about sundown last night.”

The sheriff did not say anything for a while. He moved over the floor to his desk, picked up some papers and threw them down again.

“What’s the white girl’s name?” he asked without looking at Bert.

“Katy Barlow.”

He sat down heavily in his chair at the desk. It was an especially large chair with arm rests made wide enough apart for the width of his body. He leaned back cautiously.

“Some of those folks up there in those sand hills beyond Flowery Branch raise girls that never have drawn the color line,” he said. “It’s not an easy thing to say about brother whites, but it has always looked to me like them folks up there never was particular enough about the color line. However, a nigger man ought to be more watchful, even if it is one of those white girls up there in the sand hills. If the niggers would—”

“That Barlow family lives up there,” Bert said.

“But that ain’t one of Shep Barlow’s womenfolks, is it?”

“She’s his daughter.”

The sheriff’s jaw fell ajar. He stared at Bert, shaking his head unbelievingly. Some of the papers slipped off the desk and fluttered to the floor.

“Man alive! Shep’s daughter?”

Bert nodded.

“That’s bad,” he said after a while. “That’s really bad. Shep Barlow ain’t nobody you can fool with. About nine years ago he killed a nigger for just accidentally breaking a hoe-handle. And only a few years before that he killed another one for a little thing a lot less. I’ve forgotten what it was now. Shep Barlow ain’t one to stand for something like that, especially if it’s his daughter that’s been raped.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you ever since I called you the first time, Sheriff Jeff. I tried to tell you it was important. Jim Couch said—”

“But you didn’t tell me it was anything to do with Shep Barlow,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “That makes all the difference in the world. There’s going to be a mess of trouble as sure as the sun’s going to rise tomorrow morning. There’s bound to be trouble now.”

He began filling his leather pouch with smoking tobacco from the glass jar on the desk. His hands were shaking so badly he spilled more tobacco on the desk than he managed to get into the pouch. When he had finished, he swept the spilled tobacco to the floor with a single motion of his hand.

“Maybe when Jim Couch phones in—” Bert began.

“Maybe, nothing!” he said, his voice shaken. “There ain’t no maybe about it. Get me my fishing pole out of the closet. I’m going off fishing for a few days. While I’m gone, you and Jim look after things the best you can. But don’t do nothing without proper orders from me. No matter who says what, you deputies ain’t got the right to so much as turn over a stick unless I give the word.”

“Yes, sir, Sheriff Jeff,” Bert said.

Jeff pulled out three or four desk drawers, feeling inside of them for the bottle of mosquito oil. He found it and held it up between his eyes and the light globe. It was all of half full of yellowish fluid. He tamped the stopper tightly and dropped the bottle into his pocket.

“You can let Sam Brinson, the colored man, out in a few days, but tell him I said if he mortgages any old car again and then turns around and sells it over his head, I’m going straight to the courthouse and get a writ of estoppel drawn against him that’ll tie him hand and foot. And I don’t want to find that cage-room back there full of nigger wenches, either, when I come back. The last time I went off for a few days, I came back here and found a nigger gal in almost every cage in the whole jailhouse. You tell Jim Couch I said you and him has got to do your wenching someplace else after this. I ain’t going to stand having this jail turned into a whorehouse every time I turn my back. If it happens again, I’m going to do something far-fetched to you boys.”

“Yes, sir,” Bert said.

W
HILE
B
ERT WAS
looking in the closet for the fishing pole, Jeff McCurtain walked out on the front porch and looked up at the starry night. He felt lonesome the minute he left Bert and heard the screen door slam behind him. He knew he was going to spend four or five of the lonesomest days of his life down on Lord’s Creek. He wished he could take Corra with him to keep him company, but he knew she would never consent to any such proposal.

He walked down the steps and looked up at the bed-room windows on the second story. The light was still burning, and he could see Corra’s shadow moving around the room. He knew she was waiting up to make sure he left for the creek.

Just as he was turning to look at the stars once more, an automobile roared through the middle of town, coming down the main street at a fast rate of speed. At the corner a block away, the car slowed down suddenly with an ear-splitting shrieking of tires on the pavement. A moment later the headlights from the car turned the night in front of the jailhouse brighter than day. The automobile jerked to a stop, bouncing from end to end. Before Jeff could get out of sight, somebody jumped out and ran towards him.

“Sheriff Jeff!”

“Is that you, Jim?”

“I’m glad you’re up and dressed, Sheriff Jeff.”

“What’s the matter?”

Jim Couch, the elder of the two deputies on the staff, ran up the walk. He was out of breath. He stood looking up at Jeff, panting for wind.

“I just came from Flowery Branch,” he managed to say, his voice raucous with excitement. He stopped and breathed deeply several times before he could say anything more. “I thought maybe you hadn’t heard about the trouble.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to stay out there and get mixed up in the trouble until I was certain what you’re going to do about it, Sheriff Jeff.”

Jeff looked down at Jim calmly and serenely.

“Me?” he said quietly. “I’m going fishing, son.”

They walked up the brick path to the porch and opened the screen door. The phone in the office suddenly began to ring with a shrill, unpleasant clamor. Jeff went into the hall and stood in the office door. Bert had already picked up the phone.

“Is this Sheriff McCurtain’s office?” a husky voice boomed.

“Yes,” Bert said, his eyes turning slowly in his head until he was looking Jeff straight in the face. “Deputy Bert Stovall speaking.”

“What kind of a sheriff’s office are you folks running anyhow?” the voice demanded.

“What do you mean?” Bert asked, wondering who it was.

“You’d better get McCurtain up out of bed and tell him to get busy and catch a nigger named Sonny Clark, or I’ll come to Andrewjones and jerk McCurtain out of bed myself. I want Sonny Clark caught and locked up for safekeeping. Do you hear me?”

“Who’s talking?” Bert asked excitedly. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

“This is Bob Watson at Flowery Branch. Sonny Clark has been accused of raping a white girl, the daughter of one of the tenants on my place. Sonny is one of my field hands. I don’t want no trouble out here. If Sonny Clark gets lynched, there won’t be a nigger left on my plantation by sundown tomorrow night. Or if some of them don’t run off, they’ll be too scared to get out in the fields and work. My whole crop will be ruined. Don’t forget this is laying-by time. I won’t even be able to hire outside help if a nigger gets lynched out here. You tell McCurtain I said for him to get up out of bed and come out here and catch Sonny and take him to Andrewjones, or somewhere, and lock him up good and tight for safekeeping till this trouble blows over. I voted for McCurtain the last time he ran for re-election, and my wife votes the same ticket I vote. But he’ll never get another vote in this part of Julie County if he don’t come out here and do something right away before it’s too late. He was elected and draws a bigger salary than he’s worth to do just what I’m telling you now. You tell McCurtain I said he’s already done enough fishing to last him a lifetime, and if he goes again now, it’ll be just one too many. Good-by!”

Bert set the phone down carefully, fearful that it would burst into another clamor of ringing before he could get away from it. Crossing the room, he repeated to Jeff practically every word Bob Watson had said. Jeff listened with his mind in a ruffle, leaning his weight against the doorframe.

Nobody said anything for several minutes after Bert had finished. Jim Couch stood behind Jeff in the hall, waiting impatiently for the sheriff to act.

Jeff moved his bulky body across the room and sat down heavily in the big arm-chair behind the desk. Jim followed him into the room.

“Jim,” he said slowly, looking up at the deputy under drooping eyelids, “Jim, it’s things like this that has whipped me frazzle-assed for eleven long years.”

Both Jim and Bert nodded sympathetically. They realized he was at that moment in the tightest corner of his entire political career. On one hand there was a crowd of Julie County citizens, all registered and qualified voters, who would do their best to throw him out of office if he attempted to interfere with their lynching of Sonny Clark. On the other hand there was a small group of influential men and women, one of them being Bob Watson, who would do anything within their power to ruin him politically if he did not show some evidence of trying to stop the lynching.