Trouble in July (17 page)

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.

H
ARVEY
G
LENN, 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.

“What makes you feel like not working?” Harvey asked him. “You ain’t been getting into trouble of no kind, have you?”

Sonny’s face twitched. He swallowed hard. His hands dug deep into the pockets of his tattered overalls.

“Mr. Harvey, I ain’t done no wrong,” he said earnestly. “I declare, I ain’t!”

“What about that raping?” Harvey demanded quickly. “You don’t call that wrong?”

Sonny’s face fell.

“Does you know about that, Mr. Harvey?”

“Of course, I know about it. Everybody in Julie County knows about it. People all over the country know about it now after reading about it in the newspapers.”

“The newspapers?” Sonny repeated. “Did they put it in the newspapers?”

Harvey nodded, watching the boy.

“I ain’t done nothing like that, Mr. Harvey.”

Harvey reached down and broke off a handful of weed tops. He rubbed them in the palms of his hands until the seed crumbled from the pods and dribbled between his fingers. He threw the chaff aside and looked at Sonny.

“You done something,” he said finally. “What do you call it then?”

“I didn’t do that thing you mentioned, Mr. Harvey,” he said earnestly, stepping forward and almost stumbling in his haste. “I don’t know nothing about that thing you mentioned. I ain’t never done nothing like that in all my life, Mr. Harvey. I just ain’t, that’s all.”

“Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun said you did. And she’s a white woman. You wouldn’t call a white woman a liar, would you?”

“No, sir, Mr. Harvey,” he protested. “I sure wouldn’t. But I didn’t do nothing at all, Mr. Harvey.”

“She said she and Preacher Felts saw you doing it. Mr. Shep Barlow’s daughter said you done it, too. You wouldn’t call all of them liars, would you?”

“I ain’t calling them that, Mr. Harvey. I wouldn’t dispute white-folks’ word for nothing in the world. But I just naturally didn’t do nothing like that to Miss Katy or to nobody else, Mr. Harvey.”

Sonny was going around in a circle, stumbling and catching himself almost every time he took a step. He was trotting in a nervous haste to convince Harvey of his innocence. Harvey stood still, looking closely at the boy’s agonized face each time he passed in front of him.

“I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Harvey, when I said that. I ain’t never done nothing with colored girls, either. I just don’t know nothing about that, Mr. Harvey.”

Harvey watched him closely. He could not keep from his mind a surging belief in the Negro’s earnestness.

“How come you said that about colored girls, too?” he asked. “You never had dealings with one of them, either?”

“No, sir, Mr. Harvey. That’s the truth. I’ve heard talk about it, but I never got around to knowing about it. I wouldn’t tell you no lie, Mr. Harvey.”

Harvey turned his back on the boy and walked in the direction of the path a dozen yards away. When he reached the bare strip of sandy ground, he stopped and looked down the path and over the tops of the trees at the bottom of the ridge. Beyond that lay the flatlands crisscrossed with hedgerows separating the fields of growing crops. He wondered where the crowd of men was. He had not heard the men since the evening before when there was a lot of shouting at the bottom of the ridge.

He turned around and looked at Sonny standing waist-deep in the murdocks. The boy was standing in the same position he had left him in. He had made no signs of running away. Harvey walked back to where he stood.

“What you aim to do, Mr. Harvey?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Harvey thought he detected a movement under Sonny’s shirt. He moved closer.

“What’s that you’ve got hid?”

Sonny unbuttoned his shirt and put his hand inside. He drew out the rabbit.

“Where’d you get that rabbit?”

“It’s just one of mine,” Sonny said, stroking the rabbit’s ears. “I got him from home night before last, Mr. Harvey.”

Sonny held the rabbit by the ears, resting the animal’s body on his forearm. The rabbit struggled for a moment in an effort to get down and nibble the grass that grew sparsely in the weeds. Sonny put him back into the blouse of his shirt and buttoned it.

“I don’t know,” Harvey said uneasily, pulling his hat hard over his eyes. “I just don’t know.”

“What don’t you know, Mr. Harvey?” the boy asked helpfully.

Harvey did not answer him. He went back to the path and looked down the ridge for a long time. Sonny did not move from his tracks.

It was difficult for him to make up his mind. First he would tell himself that he was a white man. Then he would gaze at Sonny’s black face. After that he would stare down upon the fields in the flatlands and wonder what would happen after it was all over. The men in the hunt-hungry mob would slap him on the back and praise him for having captured the Negro single-handed. But after the boy had been lynched, he knew he would probably hate himself as long as he lived. He wished he had stayed at home.

“Mr. Harvey,” Sonny inquired plaintively.

He turned on his heel angrily.

“Mr. Harvey, please, sir, let me hide away up at your house. I’ll get in the barn and do just like you say. Please, sir, Mr. Harvey don’t make me go down where that crowd of white men is!”

That settled it. He could not let himself hide a Negro while half the white male population of Julie County was turning the country upside down in search of him.

“Come on,” he said roughly, beckoning to Sonny. “Come on this way.”

He started down the path. After taking several steps he heard Sonny at his heels. He did not turn around.

They walked down the winding path towards the highway at the foot of the ridge. It was about half a mile from where they had started down to the point where the path ended at the road. Harvey did not turn around to look at Sonny until they were more than half the way down. He could hear the sound Sonny’s bare feet made when they rustled a dry leaf or twig in the path. The rest of the time there was nothing to indicate that he was following as he had been told to do.

They stopped at the edge of a clearing. Several automobiles had raced along the dusty highway, coming and going in nervous spurts of speed. The dust hung like a pall over the road.

Harvey turned on his heels and looked Sonny straight in the eyes.

“Why did Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun say you done it, if you didn’t do it?” he demanded angrily. “She wasn’t the only one who said it, either. Two others said the same thing.”

Harvey was angry, but he did not know what had made him feel that way. He watched Sonny’s face.

“Mr. Harvey,” Sonny said earnestly, “I don’t know why the white folks say I done it when I didn’t. I was walking along the road minding my own business when Miss Katy ran out of the bushes and grabbed me. I didn’t know what she done it for. I thought she was clear out of her mind. She started in saying she wasn’t going to tell on me. I tried to ask her what it was she wasn’t going to tell on me about, but she wouldn’t listen to nothing I said. All that time I knowed good and well I didn’t have no business standing there like that talking to a white girl, but I couldn’t do nothing about it. She grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t leave go. And she wouldn’t pay me no mind at all. I tried to get away from her, but she grabbed tighter till I couldn’t do nothing. Everytime I made a move, she jerked me like I don’t know what. I wanted—”