Trouble in July Read Online Free

better than to pay any attention to what he says. Haul yourself up out of that chair and get on down to Lord’s Creek like I told you almost an hour ago. Get up from there and stir yourself, Jeff.”
    Jim Couch went out to the porch to wait. Bert stood ready to help Jeff get started.
    “Maybe you’re right, Cora,” he said, taking heart. “It’s sitting around here letting these things get me into a stew that does the damage. Bert, where’s that fishing pole of mine? Get me what I need. I ain’t got no more time to waste.”
    He got up and walked heavily towards the door. His wife followed him, patting his arm, until he reached the front porch. Throwing himself forward, he crossed the porch, went down the steps and hurried towards his car standing in the street. At the sidewalk he turned around for a last look at Corra, but she had gone out of sight.
    Jim had followed him down the brick path to the car.
    “Since you’re figuring on being gone four or five days,” Jim began hesitantly, “I thought I ought to remind you about Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun, Sheriff Jeff.”
    “What about her?”
    “Maybe you’ve forgotten about her. It’s that petition she’s been getting up for the past two or three months. This is going to be a bad time, nigger-trouble coming right on top of that.”
    Jeff’s shoulders sagged.
    “That’s right,” he said, his gaze falling to the ground. “I’d clean forgot.”
    The light in the bedroom went out. Corra had gone back to bed, thinking he had left for Lord’s Creek. He looked up at the darkened windows for a while, trying to think.
    “If she gets a majority of the voters to sign that petition, that might settle the election right there and then,” Jim suggested.
    Jeff nodded, his gaze still fastened upon the ground.
    Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun was a grass widow about forty-eight years old who made a living selling Bibles and religious tracts. She had kept after Jeff to buy one of her books during all the past spring and summer, and he finally bought a tract with the hope that she would leave him alone after that. He had not seen her again until one morning three weeks before when she walked into his office carrying a big bundle of papers. That was when he found out that she was canvassing the county for signatures to a petition, the object of which was to send all the Negroes to Africa. She had written a letter to Senator Ashley Dukes and told him that the Negroes were buying Black Jesus Bibles from a mail-order house in Chicago, and that he would be as shocked and scandalized as she was to see pictures of Christ looking like a Negro. She told him something ought to be done right away to stop the circulation of Black Jesus Bibles in the nation. Senator Ashley Dukes wrote back and asked her what she proposed to do about it. Narcissa told him she wanted to get up a petition with millions and millions of names on it asking the President to send all the Negroes back to Africa where they came from. Senator Ashley Dukes wrote her again and told her if she persuaded everybody in Georgia of voting age to sign the petition, he would act accordingly. That was the point when Narcissa started out to get everybody, white and twenty-one, to sign it. Jeff had told her the first thing that because he was in politics he could not sign his name to it. She kept after him so persistently that finally he promised to sign the petition if she got everybody else in the county to sign it first.
    “That petition changes the complexion of everything,” Jeff said, thinking hard.
    “What are you going to do, Sheriff Jeff?” Jim asked.
    “Sometimes I wish I was just a frazzle-assed beggar with nothing in the world to worry about except a bite to eat now and then,” Jeff said dejectedly. “Being sheriff ain’t what it’s talked up to be, Jim. My soul is worried limp from one day’s end to the next. I can’t even remember when I’ve had a minute’s pure peace. There’s always something coming along to