Page 68 of The Reformatory

“Papa taught me enough to go up and down an empty road.”

“Not Ole Suzy,” she said. “Drivin’ Ole Suzy ain’t like drivin’ nothin’ else.”

“Well, you look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

“Nobody could sleep with all yo’ fussing. If I nod off, gimme a nudge.”

Gloria hardly noticed the billboard advertising Minute Maid orange juice until she saw the sheriff’s car parked behind it, a sight so sudden that they both sucked in breath. Gloria leaned over to check the speedometer: thirty miles per hour, slowing slightly. And Miz Lottie was in the proper lane again. Maybe it would be all right—

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Miz Lottie said, and Gloria saw the flashing red light as the sheriff’s car raced to the road behind them, kicking up dust behind it.

Gloria had an impulse to outrace the sheriff’s car, to yank the steering wheel from Miz Lottie’s hands toward the thicket of pines west of them to take their chances. But Miz Lottie slowed down while the sheriff’s car barreled in on them and flashed its headlights.

“Don’t look so scared,” Miz Lottie said, calm. “We was just pickin’ up laundry from Ruby. They prob’ly gonna let us alone if we say that. Most o’ these boys is on Sam’s payroll.”

Gloria only nodded. She didn’t want Miz Lottie to know how scared she was.

“Don’t say nothin’ ’less they ask you,” Miz Lottie said. “Don’t give ’em no lip either ’bout what right they got to do this or that. Hear me?”

Gloria nodded again. She craved an hour’s more advice from Miz Lottie, but there was no time before the deputies’ doors flew open. The truck barely had rolled to a stop before the driver was lumbering toward Miz Lottie’s window. He was as bad as Gloria had feared: fireplug stocky with a barrel chest, big jowls, and unkind creases across his brow. He stomped rather than walked. He carried a stink of violence sharp to her nose.

When the deputy reached her window, Miz Lottie summoned a grin so wide that the gaps from her missing back teeth showed. “I sho’ hope I wasn’t speeding, suh,” she said. “We can go up to thirty up where I lives at.” Miz Lottie exaggerated her lack of schooling, dipping into a lulling, obedient singsong.

Gloria tried on a smile, but her lips were too tight and trembly, so she gave up. A second deputy approached her. This deputy was younger and softer faced, peering at her through her window. His hair was cut short to blond fuzz. He loosened his shoulders when he saw she was a girl, not a boy, despite her overalls. He glanced at her feet, at the basket. Looking for something.

“Where y’all from, Auntie?” the deputy at Miz Lottie’s window said. He gestured to his partner toward the back of the truck, so the deputy left Gloria’s window.

“Gracetown, up a ways,” Miz Lottie said, still grinning.

“Suwannee County’s a long way from home, ain’t it?”

The second deputy climbed into the bed of the truck, and Gloria bristled. He needed a search warrant to look at anything in Miz Lottie’s truck—she’d learned this from plenty of radio programs and picture shows, from Papa, even from school—but she remembered not to say so. Metal clanged as he searched. Miz Lottie was particular about anyone handling June’s gardening equipment, since that was his weekend living, but she didn’t say that either.

“We take laundry from Sam and Ruby McCollum,” Miz Lottie said. The frowning deputy glanced at the basket that sat between her and Gloria. The linens were neatly folded, fresh from Miz Lottie’s closet. Under scrutiny, the story felt flimsy.

“That laundry don’t look dirty,” the deputy said. He noticed alarmingly fast. He was not an unseasoned deputy like the one who’d arrested Robbie. He talked like the poor whites who lived in Misery Swamp in houses built barely above the water, but he was not stupid.

Gloria leaned forward with the effort of trying to think of an answer about the laundry, but Miz Lottie answered first, tapping Gloria’s knee to remind her to be silent. “I didn’t think so either, suh, but she’s awful particular. Wants it washed again.”

“You drive a long ways to make a few dollars.”

“She pays real good, suh. Makes it worth my while.”

Gloria expected him to say Miz Lottie was too old to be driving—that almost would have been a relief—or to ask to see her license, but instead he said, “Funny you mention Gracetown,” and Gloria’s heart fell to her stomach.

“You got folks there?” Miz Lottie said, still grinning. Oh, she was an actress!

“Naw.” He spat over his shoulder. “But you do. Nigger name of Robert Stephens?”

Miz Lottie gave up her grin. The skin on her face sagged, old and tired again. “I ain’t got nothin’ to do with that man, suh,” Miz Lottie said. “Kin or no. He ain’t in Gracetown no mo’. He been long gone.”

The deputy’s eyes came to Gloria: pale irises that felt like blades, alien and dangerous. “So y’all got no idea where Robert Stephens is? He ain’t in Live Oak? You ain’t plannin’ on hidin’ him in your truck? Sneak him back home, maybe?”

Gloria shook her head. She thought she should answer, but her tongue was limp.

This deputy had created a fantasy about her and Miz Lottie that was absurd and yet seemed so real that she wanted to look back at the truck’s bed herself to see if Papa was hiding beneath Waymon’s weather tarp. Who had told the sheriff they were in Live Oak? Was it someone who’d overheard Miz Lottie’s party line? Someone at Belle’s? The deputy who had tailed them out of Gracetown? Gloria wished she could know to slap them blind.

“No one’s back here!” the younger deputy called. “Maybe some stolen tools, though.”