Trouble in July (16 page)

“Or else, what?” Jeff asked quickly.

“Well, they might have gone ahead and—and done what they said they was going to do.”

“No!” Jeff said emphatically. “Not to Sam. Maybe to any other nigger. But not to Sam Brinson.”

Bert turned and waded through the weeds towards the dilapidated dwelling. The car had been left somewhere in front of the house when they drove up in the dark.

Jeff found it difficult to pick his way through the heavy growth of pigweed, but he did the best he could by following the trail left by Bert. When he got as far as the shed, he heard somebody shouting near by. He stopped and listened closely, filled with renewed hope. It might be Sam calling.

Bert had reached the dwelling, but he was coming back.

“It’s Jim Couch,” he called to Jeff.

Jeff went to the side of the shed and leaned wearily against it.

He could hear Bert and Jim crunching through the weeds, but he did not look up.

“Good morning, Sheriff Jeff,” Jim said breathlessly. “It’s a fine day, ain’t it?”

Jeff did not answer. He wanted a few moments of peace in his mind before hearing what Jim had to say. He knew that if Jim had brought good news he would have shouted it out long before that.

“I’ve been looking all over Julie County for you and Bert since last night,” Jim began. “I reckon I must have asked two or three hundred people if they had seen anything of you. I wouldn’t have found you out here at all, if it hadn’t been for your car standing up there in front of the house.”

Jeff’s heart sank lower. He closed his eyes for one more moment of peace.

“What’s the trouble, Jim?” he asked finally, opening his eyes.

“Judge Ben Allen—”

Jeff groaned.

“I might have known that,” he said, dropping his voice lower. “I’ve been fearing that all night long.”

“Judge Ben Allen had a fight with Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun about that petition,” Jim said quickly. “He took it away from her and tore it to pieces and told her he would have her arrested for inciting a riot if she tried to get up another one.”

Jeff raised his eyes hopefully, his lower jaw dropping.

“Then he called up and told me to find you right away and tell you he wanted Sonny Clark caught and brought to the jailhouse for safekeeping with every hair in his head where it ought to be.”

Jeff slumped against the wall of the shed, his fingers digging at the rough weatherbeaten boards for support. He was as pitiful a sight as a month-old calf caught in a barbed-wire fence.

“Boys,” he said dispiritedly, “I haven’t been so frazzle-assed tired since God-come-Wednesday. I been tramping Julie County all night long trying to find Sam Brinson, and now along comes Judge Ben Allen, changing his mind again, and saying he wants me to drop everything and catch that Clark nigger. It’s that Cissy Calhoun who’s made all this trouble. If I could put my eyes on her now, I’d chase her till she was so worn-out she’d wish she’d never been born.”

He slid slowly down the shed wall, his body making a thud on the ground. Bert and Jim leaped forward in an effort to save him from a fall, but they were unable to reach him in time.

The most pleasant feeling he had ever had in his whole life came over him. It was the hottest day of summer, and he was watching Sam Brinson tinker with an old car out in the sun. Sam was hammering away at the rusty old machine while he lay back against the trunk of a long-limbed wateroak tree on the cool bank of Lord’s Creek and fished for speckled trout. To lie there in the shade, with the soft cool mud oozing between his toes, and to hear Sam out there tinkering away on the old automobile, was almost too good to be true. He was fishing with worms and a cork, and the cork began to bob. He watched the ripples spread over the water, waiting for the cork to go under twice. Without taking his eyes from the cork, he spread his feet wider apart, pushing his toes deeper into the cool mud. Then he got ready to jerk the line the instant it was pulled under the third time. He set himself then and there to catch six or eight of those man-sized trout, and to take them home for Corra to fry and brown in corn meal. All of a sudden the cork went under for the third time, and he jerked with all his might. He lost his toe-hold in the mud; he slid down the slippery bank into the water; and the fishing pole went soaring out of sight over his head.

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 that 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.”