Trouble in July Read Online Free PDF

trouble, Henry,” Sonny said, reaching up and clutching Henry’s arm. “I done got myself into bad trouble, Henry.”
    “Boy, I got troubles of my own to worry about,” Henry said.
    “It’s the worst trouble I ever been in in all my life, Henry. It just ain’t ordinary trouble.”
    “What you been up to?”
    “I ain’t exactly been up to nothing myself,” Sonny said. “It looks like trouble just came and grabbed hold of me, Henry.”
    “What you do?”
    “I didn’t mean to do it,” Sonny said pleadingly. “I was just walking naturally along the big road about sundown last night, minding my own business as big as you please, and then all at once something happened.”
    “What happened?” Henry urged, grasping Sonny’s clutching hand. “Go on and say it boy! What happened up there on the big road?”
    “You know Mr. Shep Barlow, that white sharecropper of Mr. Bob’s on the other side of the branch?”
    “I knows him,” Henry nodded. “I knows him good and well. What he done to you?”
    “Mr. Shep himself didn’t do nothing,” Sonny said quickly. “’Twas his girl, Miss Katy.”
    Vi vanished like a shadow into the cabin, noiselessly closing the door behind her. She stood on the inside whispering to Henry, trying to make him leave Sonny and come in where she was.
    There was a long silence. Henry stared down into the upturned face of the crouching black boy. Sonny’s face glistened in the starlight with running streams of perspiration.
    “What was it, boy?” Henry demanded.
    Sonny clutched at him with both hands.
    “Miss Katy run out of the bushes and grabbed me and wouldn’t let go,” he said, trembling as he recalled what had happened. “Miss Katy wouldn’t let go of me at all, and she kept on saying, ‘I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody,’ just like that. I said to her a colored boy didn’t have no business standing there in the big road like that while she was around, but she wouldn’t pay no heed to nothing I said. I don’t know what got into her to make her carry-on like she done. She just kept on saying, ‘I ain’t going to tell nobody—I ain’t going to tell nobody’.”
    Henry tried to push Sonny’s clutching hands away from him.
    “Boy, you sure enough picked out the most troublesome trouble there is when you done got yourself into this fix. Why didn’t you haul off and get away from her? Why didn’t you act like you had some little sense and run off? You ought to know better than standing still and listening to a white girl trying to get you in a fix. Where’s your sense at, anyhow?”
    Sonny got a tighter grip on Henry’s arm.
    “And that ain’t all, neither, Henry,” he said, his voice breaking and falling.
    “Good Lord Almighty, boy! That ain’t all! What you mean? Now don’t tell me you ain’t got a single spark of sense in that head of yours!”
    “While I was standing there in the big road fidgeting to make her leave hold of me, along come an automobile full of Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun, that white woman, and Preacher Felts. They jumped out and grabbed me right there where I was. I told them I was trying to get shed of Miss Katy, but they didn’t pay me no mind. That white man pulled a knife, and I thought sure my time had come. He stomped me down on the ground and—”
    “Boy,” Henry breathed, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him roughly, “first you go and get yourself in trouble with a white girl—”
    “Henry, I didn’t go and do it! Miss Katy was the one who done it, because—”
    “Makes no difference. You got yourself in trouble and then got caught by Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun. Don’t you ever keep your ears open at all? That white woman is going all over the country getting up a paper to send all the colored to Africa or some place like that. And now you go and get yourself caught by her right when you and that white girl was standing—”
    Sonny pulled at Henry, holding