Page 16 of The Reformatory

Loehmann didn’t meet Robert’s eyes. Instead, he patted Robert’s back—once, twice, three times—and was gone.

The smoky smell grew stronger when Robert opened the warden’s door.

Tremors raced up and down Robert’s legs as he walked into Fenton J. Haddock’s office, making him cling to the doorknob to stay upright. The tall window behind his desk gave the office so much raw sunlight that Haddock was a silhouette before him, as if he had no face. He felt as big as the cigarette-choked room, the tallest man Robert had ever seen.

“Go’n—close it behind you,” Haddock said, his low voice scraping the floor.

Robert was so quick to comply that the door slammed. Robert’s bladder pulsed in a way it had not since he was younger. He prayed he wouldn’t pee, tightening his legs to prevent it.

Haddock pointed toward a rug beside his bookshelf. “Lemme get a look at you.”

Robert prayed that he could walk without stumbling or peeing as he shuffled to the green-and-brown braided rug, keeping his eyes so low he could barely see in front of him. The rug’s pattern looked like railroad tracks. His heart shook his ribs.

“Candy?” Haddock said.

Robert was confused until he looked up and saw a crystal candy jar at the edge of the desk, brimming with wrapped red-and-white mints like the ones Miz Lottie brought to church to keep him from squirming with boredom.

“Go on. Take one,” Haddock said, more a command than an offer, so Robert took a mint and held it in his palm, squeezing tight. It didn’t occur to him to open the wrapper or try to slip it into his mouth. He couldn’t help believing the kindness was a kind of trick, and he didn’t think he could produce enough moisture in his mouth to suck on the candy anyway.

Haddock sat atop his desk with his knee hiked high, smoking his cigarette a long while. His face was narrow and hollowed at the cheeks when he took a draw. Robert looked away from him so he wouldn’t be accused of staring. A small family portrait on the bookshelf looked a hundred years old, in an oval frame like the ones Mama liked to hang: a white family in old-fashioned dress crowded on a sofa in a sitting room—a man, a woman, and a reedy young boy with an infant girl in a dressing gown in his lap. The baby girl faced forward, but her eyes were closed; she was sleeping against the boy’s chest. The photo was cheerless. For a reason Robert couldn’t name, the faces made him so uneasy that he snatched his eyes away.

“I oughta give you twenty lashes—I promised Red I would—but I’ve got a headache and I don’t need the hollerin’,” Haddock said. For the first time, Robert noticed the thick leather strap hanging on the wall behind Haddock’s desk, big enough to drive a mule. Maybe he had seen it from the start, but he hadn’t let himself see it before.

Robert tried to say Yessir but he couldn’t push air to his throat. Papa said if he stumbled across a panther or injured wild hog in the woods, sometimes the only thing to do was stand frozen. That was how he felt, facing off against a creature that could maul him.

“Doris, she don’t care for the hollerin’. Says she can’t hear herself think. Sometimes she’ll get up and go out to the church or take a walk and won’t come back for an hour just to be sure the beating’s done.” Haddock smiled. “Sure enough, sometimes it ain’t. Not by a ways.” He took a long drag on his cigarette.

Was it a game to Haddock, trying to make him cry? Would the strap come off the wall if he did? Don’t cry. Don’t pee. Don’t look. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

Haddock sat quietly a moment while his office clock ticked tiny explosions. “You see that sign above the door? Can you read?”

“Yessir.” Robert looked for the words seared into a glossy board of wood. He had trouble making out the letters.

“Read that sign to me.”

Was it possible to forget letters of the alphabet? As Robert tried to read the words, the shapes looked like nonsense. The script was odd, with strange flourishes. Icy sweat sprang across his face and chest. His legs quaked. “H-he that…”

“Speak up.”

Robert tried to huff air past his shrinking throat. “ ‘He that spareth…’ ” It was a Bible passage, from Proverbs! He knew it from Sunday school. The rest tumbled out nearly from memory: “ ‘… his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.’ ”

“Well, how ’bout that?” Haddock said. “You read pretty.”

“I l-learnt it in church, sir.” Too late, Robert remembered Miz Lottie’s warning not to let anyone know how smart he was. “I c-could barely see them words up there.”

“Here’s what that sign really says in plain English: as an officer of the state, I will beat you bloody and sleep like a babe at night because it will make you a better man. God himself says so. Do you understand?”

“Y-yessir.”

Haddock stood up and walked a step closer to Robert with each growling sentence that spilled from his lips. “This reformatory is my domain. And in my domain, there is no swearing, no sassing, no unruly or disrespectful behavior of any kind. Every man is ‘sir’ and every woman is ‘ma’am.’ You do what you’re told when you’re told to do it, or your back will be full of stripes. And if you try to run away…” He paused, rage passing across his face and lips. His eyes stared through Robert to a faraway place Robert never wanted to follow him to. His voice went quiet, like a pastor’s during prayer. “… not only will I keep you here until you’re twenty-one, but you will be beset by dogs, clubs, or bullets. You will surely wish you’d never been born.”

Robert blinked furiously to try to stop his tears, but one slipped free down his cheek. He lost his battle with his bladder and felt hot urine wash his thighs. He thanked the Lord his shirt was so long; maybe Haddock wouldn’t see. Please don’t let it drip down to the floor. Please don’t let it muss his rug. Could Haddock hear his heart thrashing? Haddock breathed smoky breath down on him.

“You hear me?”

“Yessir.” A whisper was all Robert could manage.

“I’m your last chance, boy,” Haddock said. “A Negro child who’ll kick a white man will grow up to poison society and his own race. If he grows up. Getting sent here is the luckiest thing could have happened to you.”