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

their places, and before long nearly everyone was standing as close as he could get. Katy was still wearing the dress that had been ripped down the front from neck to hem. Mrs. Narcissa Calhoun had said that that was the way she found Katy, and that she wanted her to show what a Negro had done. Narcissa could be seen hovering behind the door, urging Katy to go out on the porch.
    “Hi, Katy! How about it!” somebody called to her.
    She opened the screen door and walked out on the porch. She stood where she was for several moments, turning her head every now and then when Narcissa said something to her. She looked as if she were embarrassed. Her face was flushed almost crimson.
    Finally Narcissa stuck her face around the door and said something to her. Katy hesitated for a moment, and then she took several steps towards the edge of the porch. Almost everybody in the yard had begun to push and crowd around the porch. Katy crossed to the post by the steps.
    “I could get my temper steamed up a lot hotter if it had been anybody else in the world that got raped,” one of the older men in the rear said.
    “Katy Barlow ain’t got exactly the best reputation I’ve heard about,” another one said, “but it ain’t exactly her fault. Her old man just ain’t taken proper care of her since the girl’s mother was found dead.”
    “That’s true enough,” the other one said, “but I just can’t seem to be able to work up a temper over it.”
    Katy was smiling down at the faces glowing in the light. She put one arm around the post, supporting herself, and fingered the torn opening in her dress. The crowd surged forward in an effort to get a closer view of her when she moved the opening in the garment.
    “Hi there, Katy! How about me!”
    She smiled broadly at the faces, her face burning with excitement.
    Several men who had been standing at the edge of the porch directly under her, pushed their way out of the crowd and backed off to the smudge. DeLoach, the barber from Andrewjones, worked his way through the closely packed crowd. They gathered around the smoking smudge fire, watching Katy. Nobody said anything for several minutes.
    Milo Scroggins, a tenant farmer who lived about two miles down the road, came up where DeLoach and the others were standing. He took a bottle of corn liquor from his pocket and passed it around. After the others had had a drink, he turned it up and finished it.
    “I ain’t seen anybody tonight who’ knows anything about her,” the barber said, jerking his head in the direction of Katy on the porch. “It’s funny that she’s been living around here all this time and nobody’s ever had anything to do with her.”
    “You ain’t been asking the right folks,” Milo said. “You ain’t ask me nothing about her.”
    All of them crowded around Milo. The barber nudged him with his elbow.
    “Have you ever noticed her doing anything?” DeLoach asked quickly, nudging him again and again.
    “Notice her?” Milo said, smiling.
    DeLoach nodded several times, still nudging him in the ribs.
    “Last fall I was picking cotton for Bob Watson, over in a field about three and a half miles from here,” Milo said. “Bob Watson owns all the land in this part of the country, and nearly everybody around here works for him, renting or sharecropping or something. There was about thirty-five or forty of us in his field picking cotton this time I’m talking about.”
    “What about her?” the barber asked impatiently, jerking his head toward Katy.
    “Hold your patience,” Milo said, pushing him away. “I’m coming to that part. We are all picking cotton, and Katy Barlow was, too. I noticed all morning that she kept edging up to the boys, and so that afternoon about three o’clock I decided I was going to find out what she was up to. I fell behind the rest of the pickers a little, and it wasn’t long before she dropped behind, too. I talked to her some, trying to feel her out, and she appeared to be just