Page 12 of The Reformatory

Just as Robert was sure he would pee himself the way Sammy had the night he saw the white-lady haint in his doorway, colors captured him through his window: the most beautiful peacock he’d ever seen strutted by the pond ahead, its tail fanned. He’d never imagined such colors. Joseph’s coat in the Bible could have been spun from those feathers. Mama’s smiling face came to mind, as if it lived in those colors.

“Some days, you’d see a dozen or more peacocks out here,” Mr. Loehmann said.

“Can I get out and touch it?” Robert said.

“Sorry. He would run—or you would.” Mr. Loehmann’s voice turned hard on the last words, and they both knew it was true: Robert wanted to run. Robert’s hand twitched toward the door handle, almost against his will.

With a stony jaw, Loehmann inched his car toward a gap in the cows and slowly gained speed as the cows obliged him, lazily clearing a path.

Robert stared over his shoulder at the peacock, trying to count the colors of its tail, which looked like a giant green fan with purple and blue eyes staring back at him. Green like the fishing hole. Dark blue like the stove’s flames, another blue as pale as the June sky. Purple as deep as night. When the bird and its display became a pinprick down the road, and then only a memory, Robert’s tears came again, setting his eyes afire. He would not cry, he told himself. He would not. He could not be a crybaby at the Reformatory. Tough kids would never let a crybaby alone.

Neither of them spoke a word the rest of the drive.

5

At first glance, Gloria could almost overlook the barbed wire at the top of the gate.

GRACETOWN BOYS’ REFORMATORY—EST. 1901, the painted sign on the gate read in script worthy of a palace. On the other side of the driveway, a blue-and-yellow football banner flapped, tied to two-pointed iron gateposts: GRACETOWN BULLDOGS, 1A CHAMPIONS 1949 1947 1946.

The grounds were as beautiful as Gloria remembered, like a small college nestled between a pine tree farm on the west side, a cornfield to the east, and then just all wild woods. Even now, she could not unsee the loveliness of redbrick buildings and neat pathways cutting across an endless, neatly mown lawn. Was it two hundred acres? Much more, counting its farms. She hoped to go to Spelman College like Mama wanted her to one day—Papa had promised to do his best to help her fulfill Mama’s dream for her—and the Reformatory did not look so different from the way she’d imagined that magical Atlanta campus. The gate stood wide open to the gravel path leading to the closest brick building, two stories high and woven with ivy.

But Gloria knew that evil isn’t plain to the eye. She felt the gooseflesh of premonition across her arms: ugly was just beneath the surface of this place. She hadn’t had a worried feeling so strong since the day she woke and saw Mama standing over the sink and knew she was a remnant of a bygone time, soon before the doctor said she had cancer. Why hadn’t the premonition come when she’d been walking Robert to school? Why had it only come too late?

Here, doggie doggie.

The future memory in Gloria’s head was so loud that she wondered if Miz Lottie had heard the mocking voice too. Or felt an age-old hanging tree somewhere in the woods, calling like a mournful bird just below her hearing. So much silent screaming. Or was it only crows? Although she was older now and the feelings weren’t as strong, sometimes Gloria still had trouble telling what was real, what was only imagination.

Miz Lottie pulled her truck off to the side of the road just outside the gate, and they sat idling. Waiting to think of a plan. The truck’s engine sputtered and complained as it idled. After a moment, Miz Lottie turned off the engine to save her gas. Gloria hoped they would be able to get Ole Suzy started up again for the drive home.

“Well, chile, if he’s already here, they likely won’t let you see him. Not ’til visiting days and whatnot.” Miz Lottie’s shoulders were hunched. She had shriveled to a knot in her seat. She was afraid of the place too.

“Shouldn’t we drive in and ask to see the warden?”

Miz Lottie studied the gate entrance, uncertain. Her hands tightened on her steering wheel, then fell away. “With the trouble with your daddy… I don’t b’lieve so, pumpkin.”

“Why not? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Got nothin’ to do with right and wrong,” Miz Lottie said. “It might be worse on Robbie if we raise too much fuss. Like we think we’re better’n other colored. We can wait awhile to see if he comes. If we’re too late, we’ll go back and call by phone and see when it’s visiting day.”

“That’s not what Papa would do. He’d be in there right now.”

“Uh-huh. Sho’ he would,” Miz Lottie agreed. “That’s why your daddy got run off to Chicago. That’s why he ain’t here to raise and protect his chirren. You right about that. There’s good men laying dead in the ground, early to meet their maker, ’cause o’ the fuss he raised, gettin’ those white folks so riled. Don’t tell me nothin’ ’bout what he would do.” For the first time, Miz Lottie sounded upset, lapsing into country talk she avoided around Gloria, who had far surpassed Miz Lottie’s third-grade schooling. Miz Lottie’s parents had been slaves, and she had picked tobacco alongside them as sharecroppers until they died. She had fled a burning house as a child, and she’d lost kin in Rosewood. Gloria saw Rosewood in Miz Lottie’s fearful eyes.

So Gloria couldn’t call Miz Lottie stupid, weak, or a liar. Gloria had overheard many of her parents’ late-night conversations, and Mama had warned Papa to count the cost of trying to organize the mill workers and register colored voters. This silver-haired woman with years etched in her face might smell like she soiled herself at times, but her mind was sharp and quick like Papa’s. Miz Lottie and Papa were more alike than either of them would admit.

But, oh, did it sting. Gloria had never expected to park and wait by the gate like outlaws.

And what if they weren’t too late and saw the deputy’s car? That might be no better. “They’ll drive right past us, Miz Lottie.”

“But you can wave. You can let him see you. You can smile—he’ll need a smile.” Gloria doubted she would be able to smile. The idea of it brought back her tears. “Stop fretting,” Miz Lottie said. “Just makes it worse.”

A motor rumbled from the parallel road. A truck was coming, maybe two. Gloria’s door squealed from rust when she opened it to hop to the ground.

“Don’t go runnin’ in the road!”

“I want him to see me.”

“Well, don’t you get locked up too!”