Trouble in July Read Free

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