Page 152 of The Reformatory

“Robbie, come on!” Gloria yelled. “Don’t look back!”

But Robert had to see for himself. One dog had made it to the road: the larger German shepherd, uninjured, at a full run while it barked ugly plans for him. Maybe this was the dog Haddock had said would eat him alive before he was eaten himself. A last burst of speed took Robbie within five strides of the truck, then four. Then three. Again his sister’s outstretched hand waited. The truck’s lurch made him miss Gloria’s hand when he tried to grab it.

“Miz Lottie, drive straight!” Gloria said.

“Hit a hole!” Miz Lottie said. “Sorry!”

With the dog running behind him and gaining fast, Robert flung himself forward, and Gloria snatched his hand before he could fall, holding on even as his feet dragged on the road before he could climb up with help from Gloria’s unbreakable grip. The dog panted and growled on his heels as if it might jump in the truck too.

“You got him?” Miz Lottie called back.

“Yes!” Gloria said. “Faster!”

The truck sped up so quickly that they were both knocked against the side, but Robert was too full of joy in his sister’s arms to feel bumps or bruises. He watched the dog fall farther and farther behind until it slowed to a trot. Then the dog just sat still in the middle of the road, watching them go. Too late, the second dog and two handlers emerged, too far back to see well—and too far to get a good luck at the truck. The men yelled and shot their rifles in the air before the road curved and took them out of sight. Those men would hardly be able to tell the sheriff what color the truck was, much less who had been driving it. The sheriff would never expect the getaway driver to be an old woman.

“Praise the Lord!” Miz Lottie cried from the driver’s seat. “Praise Jesus!”

“Miz Lottie, you’re not sick?” Gloria called.

“Only with worry!” she said. “Better now! When we git to the state road, I’m gonna take the shortcut to Tallahassee. Those hillbillies don’t know these roads like I do.”

The truck swerved when Miz Lottie laughed like a young girl on a joyride like Redbone, and her laughter spread to Robert and Gloria as they hugged to keep from falling over. Robert laughed until Gloria rubbed his shoulder and said, “Don’t cry, Robbie, we’ve got you back now,” and he realized he was sobbing because Redbone was dead. Gloria’s touch, so much like Mama’s, made him vibrate with the horrors that had happened to him since the deputy picked him up and took him away from her.

The Reformatory was the Hell from Pastor Jenkins’s sermons, hidden at the edge of Gracetown while people drove their cars and played with their children and ate ice cream cones on Main Street. Every sight around Robert amazed him: the woods speeding past them so fast, the empty road ahead, the crows in the treetops. So normal and everyday, with Hell so close by.

“Where are we going?” Robert said.

“To take a train to Papa in Chicago,” Gloria said. She kicked away the tarp beside them to reveal a hidden suitcase. “We’re going home, Robbie.” Home was wherever Papa was.

“Y’all git down now,” Miz Lottie said. “Duck so nobody sees you!”

Robert and Gloria hid beneath the warm tarp and held hands, nestled in their dark hiding place while Miz Lottie’s truck rocked and swayed. They closed their eyes and felt their bones rattle as the old truck sped on the road to the train station, like astronauts taking off for the moon.

43

For the rest of their lives, the swamp and the truck ride would reside only in flashes of memory waking them when they tried to sleep, or in foggy dreams. They would remember the surreal relief when the woods opened up to paved roads, stoplights, and concrete. And peeling off blood and muddy swamp water for pressed collars and stiff, clean fabrics under the truck’s tarp. And the tearful goodbye with Miz Lottie, clinging and sobbing before she practically cussed them out and sent Gloria to the ticket counter. Mercifully, perhaps in the way Mama had said she didn’t remember all of the pain of birthing, over time they would willfully forget their time at the churning creek—although they would forever flinch at the sound of barking dogs.

“Go on to your future, girl,” Miz Lottie whispered to Gloria, the last words she would hear from her godmother when she could feel her breath against her ear.

They arrived after dark at the Tallahassee train depot, which looked like the Colosseum to her. She and Robbie were still steeped in each horrific moment, bones still ringing from their ordeal even as Gloria counted out their fares and carefully pocketed the rest, afraid to loosen her fingers from the bills. Robert huddled close to her, pushing his face under her arm, both hands gripping so she could not pull away even if she wanted to—and they both knew she never would. Their clothes were cheerful and alive, but inside of them they were living ghosts.

Until the train began moving, they thought it never would. Every white person they saw on the train platform seemed to be looking at them even when they weren’t. Every sound was a gunshot. Please just let us get to Papa, Gloria thought, and the train car lurched forward at last.

It was perhaps an hour later, when Robbie was sleeping against her, still holding tight, that Gloria noticed how filthy the Negro train car was. The smell broke through her fugue state first: the car smelled like a spittoon. None of the other half dozen Negro passengers were chewing tobacco or looked like they would, but a quick glance at the empty seats across from theirs revealed horrible stains. It’s not from the passengers; it’s from spiteful white train workers, her mind whispered to her. She was afraid to look at her own seat, which she was sure had stained the back of Miz Lottie’s pretty pink dress and Robbie’s new suit by now. The train was Jim Crow on wheels.

But in the morning the windows unveiled a wonderland passing at terrific speed, the trees and landscape a revelation. The red soil she had known her whole life was gone. The route map at the depot said this train’s two-day journey would hurtle them through Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, then up to Missouri and Illinois. As excited as she was to find Papa, Gloria felt like she was being swallowed inside the endless world.

Robbie reluctantly had agreed to allow Gloria to take hold of the satchel he’d carried with him through the swamp, which he had miraculously kept dry. But you can’t look inside, he’d told her. As much as Gloria’s fingers itched to unwrap the string and open the large envelope he had stolen from the warden, the look in Robbie’s eyes had convinced her that whatever was inside might prevent her from ever sleeping again. Once she gave it to Papa, he would give it to the NAACP—perhaps John Dorsey himself—and maybe no other child in Florida would have to suffer as Robbie had. But she also knew the way of things: everyone would try to say that only the warden left mauled in the creek had created the unholy suffering at that place, when the whole town had had a hand.

Robbie slept for most of the first day on the train. Gloria noticed that he was holding a tattered piece of paper and leaned over for a better look at the wrinkled sketch of a pleasant-looking boy’s grinning face. Gloria did not recognize the boy.

A giggle from Robbie surprised her, but he was still asleep. Somewhere in his dreams, he was at play. She didn’t know how she knew that he was visiting his dead friend.

But she did.

The sandwiches and pound cake Miz Lottie had packed for them lasted the first day, but their stomachs were growling as suppertime approached on the second. Liberation and hope were the only joys of the journey; everything else was hateful, from the stench to the heat to the poor bathroom facilities. At every stop, white passengers glared as they passed their windows like Negroes were a zoo display. Gloria did not dare try to leave the train at any of the stops. What would be the point? They would not have time to find food that would be served to Negroes, and she did not want to be left behind. Not when they were so close.

NOW ENTERING ILLINOIS, a sign beside the train tracks proclaimed, and her heart sang with a revelation. She thought about Papa’s story of seeing Mama eating ice cream on Main Street in Gracetown. But they weren’t in Gracetown anymore. They weren’t even in the South.