Read Online Trouble in July by Erskine Caldwell - Free Book Online Page A

them were Allen-Democrats, he was willing to forget it if the coroner would, too.
    The light in the hall was turned on, and Katy came to the front door. She stood there for a while, peering out into the darkness. The men who saw her standing there recognized her at once. They moved closer to the porch where they could get a better view of her.
    “I didn’t know she’d growed up like that,” a man whispered to somebody next to him. “She’s a big girl now. I thought she was too young to look at a man.”
    “I’ve seen her around a lot of times the past year or so,” the other man said, “but I never paid much notice of her. I always thought she was just one of the young ones.”
    “She might have been one of the young ones in the past,” a man said as he moved towards the porch, “but she ain’t no more. She’s as bold as a bitch in heat. Just look at her up there!”
    Katy’s mother, Annie Barlow, had been dead for two years. Katy had just passed her thirteenth birthday at the time of her death. Her mother fell into the well one morning while she was drawing water to fill the washpot in the back yard. Shep had missed Annie that same evening when he came home for supper and found the meal had not been cooked and placed on the table at the proper time. He lost his temper and chased Katy out of the house, making her spend the night alone in the woods. Shep thought Annie had become peeved about something or other and had gone across the field to sulk a while, and that she would come back sometime during the night or early next morning in time to cook his breakfast for him. He was confident that when she did come back she would be as docile as ever. He went to bed that night and slept soundly. When he had to cook his own breakfast, he made up his mind to give her a good hard thrashing when she did come home. Late that afternoon she still had not returned, and Shep began to get a little worried. At dark he went over to Bob Watson’s and got a half a dozen Negroes to help him search the woods and fields near the house. They looked all that night and up to noon the next day, but not a trace of Annie was found. Shep finally sent word over to Smith County to find out if she had gone over there to stay with her father or sisters, but the word came back that she had not been seen there. Shep looked a little every day during the remainder of the week, and by Sunday he was ready to give up completely. He had finally decided that Annie had run off to Atlanta or Jacksonville or one of the other big cities. Late Sunday afternoon he was drawing a bucket of water at the well when the bucket struck something on the bottom he knew should not be there. He got Annie’s hair-mirror from the house and ran back and cast a beam of light down into the well. He recognized Annie’s red gingham dress the moment his eyes saw it. It made him much more angry to discover that Annie had been in the well all that time than he would have been if she had run away from home. He began shouting for Katy and throwing things into the well. Katy ran for the woods for fear he was going to throw her into the well as he was doing with everything else he could lay his hands on. There was nobody to stop him, and he kept on until most of the wood from the woodpile had been thrown down into it. Katy stayed away until the middle of the following week, but even then she was afraid to go to sleep at night during the rest of the summer while her father was digging a new well.
    The men in the yard had crowded around the edge of the porch where they could get a better look at Katy. She smiled at the faces she could see clustered around the steps.
    “Hi there, Katy!” somebody shouted excitedly.
    She leaned forward grinning at the men.
    “Hi there, Katy!” the same voice shouted, louder than before.
    Katy switched on the porch-light, turning the whole yard almost as bright as day. Most of the men who were leaning on the porch hastily backed away, but others took