Page 5 of The Reformatory

She wasn’t surprised at dawn when the sheriff’s deputy came to the door.

3

The deputy looked angry to be on an errand so early. None of Gloria’s rehearsed apologies or excuses swayed the gruff boy in his too-big deputy’s uniform, barely older than she. His black-and-white sheriff’s car sat parked outside their chicken wire, a sight she knew well: sheriff’s cars often had parked in that spot in the months before Papa left—usually at dinnertime, when Papa had stood at the window while she and Mama and Robbie sat with their forks frozen above their plates, waiting for flames or gunshots. Had this boy deputy come to the house before? If you asked the operator to call Sheriff Posey’s office, the Klan klavern would pick up on the other end.

The deputy’s clothes were rumpled. Handcuffs gleamed in his hands.

“Where’s Robert Stephens Junior? The judge is waiting on him at the courthouse.”

His voice sounded muffled, as if Gloria had cotton in her ears. Why, oh, why hadn’t she run away with Robbie when she’d had the chance?

“You’re here for me?” Robbie scurried to the deputy when he should have been climbing out of his window and jumping the wire. He sounded more confused than scared. He had slept in Papa’s old blue mill shirt. Robbie hopped on one leg to pull on his pants as the deputy stepped toward him.

“He’s under arrest?” Gloria said.

“What you think?” the deputy said, fixing the metal cuffs around Robert’s wrists. The click-click was as loud as a gunshot.

Gloria had seen gangster pictures where outlaws were arrested by the police, and she had expected more ceremony. But she’d overheard Papa and the pickers complaining about how the sheriff broke down their doors and dragged them to jail on vagrancy charges when they got tired of picking. The sheriff in Gracetown wasn’t like police in pictures or on the radio.

Robert didn’t cry or fight the deputy, but his head hung like it was boneless. He didn’t look Gloria’s way. Family couldn’t do anything for you when the sheriff came, just like family was helpless against sickness—except through prayer, Mama would say. And the judge was involved. The son of Robert Stephens would not go unnoticed.

Gloria had hidden her unmailed letter in her dress, but what good was the letter now? Letters took days to arrive in Chicago! Instead of writing a silly letter, she should have packed their clothes in Mama’s powder-blue suitcase and fled, even on foot. They should have run, just like Papa had.

“He’s twelve years old. What’s going to happen to him?” Gloria said.

“Ask the judge,” the deputy said.

“They wouldn’t send a young boy to a work gang, would they?”

“Just shut up and come on, if you’re comin’.”

“Can you wait and let me get dressed proper?” Gloria didn’t have any clothes better than the faded gingham dress she wore, tattered at the hem, but she was frantic to stop the motion of the day. The deputy was quick about his business, like Robert was a calf he had tied with a rope. He tugged on Robbie’s arm to pull him to his car.

“Catch up,” the deputy said.

Gloria had to run to keep pace with him, but she climbed into the back seat beside Robert before the deputy slammed the door. Robert lay against her while she rode with him the way he had when he was small. With the mesh separating them from the deputy, they might both already be in a cage.

“What’s he being charged with?” Gloria said. “Lyle McCormack pushed him first.”

“Shut up or I’ll arrest you too,” the deputy said. “I’ll lock you up for obstructing justice. He twitches a muscle, he’s resisting arrest. You talk too damn much. I better not hear a peep.”

Gloria sat with Robert and stroked his wrist where his shackles met his skin.

Gloria had never been inside the Gracetown Courthouse, a monument with a golden bell tower at the center of Main Street. She lost sight of Robert on the steps because the deputy said Negroes went in from the rear, so he was gone before she could hug Robert or say she could fix everything, even if it might not be true.

Papa had been to the courthouse many times on behalf of friends and family, but he had never brought her or Robert. Why would he? The only Negroes in the courthouse were the accused and their families, with whispers up and down Lower Spruce when so-and-so was arrested or about to go on trial. Golden arrows pointed out windows on property taxes and probate (the latter a word she did not know), but no one would believe a visit to the courthouse was about anything except shame. If anyone who knew Miss Anne saw her at the courthouse, Miss Anne would ask Gloria terse questions about why she had been there. Would Miss Anne fire her because Robbie had been arrested? Gloria sorely needed the fifteen dollars a week Miss Anne paid her for cooking and cleaning.

“You lost, little missy?”

A Negro uniformed custodian with a long-handled broom was the only person who noticed her. He was about ten years older than Papa, in his forties, with white hairs sprayed throughout his curly black crown. His eyes were big behind thick glasses.

“Yessir,” she said. “I’m trying to find my brother.”

“He in trouble?”

“The deputy said he was going to see the judge.”

As the man listened, his lips curled up slightly in a hidden smile. Gloria knew he was struck, perhaps bemused, by the crisp way she spoke. But his eyes were sympathetic.