Page 69 of The Reformatory

“Those are my grand-nephew’s tools,” Miz Lottie said. “I got bills of sale in the glove box.” Her voice’s pitch had climbed; she couldn’t hide her nervousness.

“You got an answer for everything, don’t you, Auntie?” the deputy at the window said, and Miz Lottie had no answer for that.

Gloria wanted so much to relieve Miz Lottie with clever remarks, to shame this man into letting them go, but she kept her lips pinned. Her heart banged against her breastbone.

The truck shuddered as the second deputy jumped down. The first strolled around the front of the truck as if inspecting it for sale while the other watched and waited, clearly a subordinate. The deputy in front of the truck stared at Gloria through the windshield, his eyes heavy above stern jowls. Gloria wished she could duck from him. She hated her body in his eyes: breasts loose beneath her undershirt and thick denim because Mama had not been there to remind her to put on a bra before going to town. He stared as if her clothing could not hide her. She would have made herself invisible so he could not see the dark skin across every inch of her.

The deputy looked over his shoulder toward the woods where Gloria had imagined she might outrun them. Gloria didn’t like him studying the woods, which grew thicker thirty yards from the road. A path was rutted through the mud and high grass toward the trees, plunging into shadows. This deputy hurt Negroes in the woods. He had done it many times.

How? How had the day gone so wrong? She had plunged into the worst trouble of her life, just like Papa had worried, and no one was with her but Miz Lottie, who was too frail to raise a hand to defend her. And Gloria could not run and leave Miz Lottie, even if running would not get her shot from behind.

Gloria’s eyes fluttered, blinking, as she fought to think of what to do. “Shhh,” Miz Lottie whispered between her teeth. “Sit real still.”

While Gloria forced her frantic blinking to stop, her back straight, she noticed Miz Lottie’s hand creeping to the laundry basket, hugging it to her. Miz Lottie burrowed her hand into the pile of linens, an inch at a time, her eyes fixed on the back of the deputy’s head as he gazed at the tree line.

When he looked back toward Gloria, his thoughts were plain on his face. The deputy began his slow walk to Gloria’s window, feasting on her fear, bent down so he never lost sight of her. Miz Lottie kept her hand in the laundry basket as his ruddy face appeared in Gloria’s open window. A twig beneath his boot sounded like a breaking bone. He came so close that Gloria could see the too-big pores on his shiny nose, the sweat on his brow. She smelled chewing tobacco on his breath.

“You’re his daughter, ain’t you?”

Gloria moved her mouth to answer, and at first it made no sound. “Yessir.” A whisper.

The deputy tugged on her car door, but it did not yield. Gloria had never been more grateful for a lock to hold. The obstacle was temporary—he only had to reach through the open window to pull up the lock himself—but it held him at bay for precious seconds, long enough for him to think it over. Gloria’s pounding heart wanted to leap outside of her body.

“How you feelin’ today, Jimmy?” the deputy said, calling to his partner while his eyes stayed on Gloria. Jimmy didn’t answer. “You feel like a ride real quick?”

In her peripheral vision, Gloria saw Jimmy take off his hat, smooth his hair back, put it back on. “Not too much.” She could barely hear him over the rush of blood fogging her ears.

The deputy’s glare smothered Gloria, but she was afraid to look away. Her eyes itched from wanting to blink, from tears frozen just out of sight. She knew what a ride meant to him; she could hear the woods’ whimpers, women and men helpless beneath white skin and badges.

“How come you dress like a damn bull dyke?”

“I… don’t know,” Gloria said, the only words she could think of.

“Is the Nigger Stephens’s daughter a bull dyke? You sure look like one. Don’t she, Jimmy?” Again Jimmy was silent. Gloria wished Jimmy would say, Come on, leave her be. But Jimmy was not going to help her and Miz Lottie. Whatever this deputy did or said, Jimmy always went along, or at least covered for him. Always.

“No,” Gloria said. “I’m not. Sir.”

Gloria couldn’t help pausing before she said Sir to make it an afterthought, to strip its weight and even mock it. The deputy’s eyes flared. He heard it too. He tugged at the door handle again, like rattling a cage. Gloria refused to jump. Her body was calcifying in her seat. If he touched her, she swore, her body would be a stone and not her body at all.

“You don’t wanna mess with that girl, Mister Deputy, suh,” Miz Lottie said.

Her words and voice were quiet, beyond calm. Gloria noticed Miz Lottie’s hand buried inside the laundry basket again, and the deputy did too. Shoot, I got my protection, Miz Lottie had told Ruby McCollum, and Gloria remembered what Miz Lottie called her “pea shooter,” a little .22 she kept under her bed for squirrels that ravaged her garden or stole her birdseed. Miz Lottie had her gun! Her hand was already on the trigger. Gloria knew it as plainly as if she could see through the basket’s braided brown wicker. Miz Lottie’s face was all pleasantness, but her eyes told the deputy a story of sudden death.

“What’s that, Auntie?” The deputy sounded as confused as if a hound had spoken words.

“You want to leave that young gal alone, suh,” Miz Lottie said. “You surely do.”

The deputy glanced at Miz Lottie’s hidden hand, and knowledge burned between them as they stared at each other over Gloria and the neatly folded linens. So much anger churned inside the deputy that his jowls shook. His hands were on the door, not at his holster, and Gloria was amazed to realize he was too scared to move. Scared of Miz Lottie!

Time slowed to molasses. Miz Lottie’s engine coughed, weary from idling. Nearby, loud birds quarreled. A car was approaching from town, close enough to hear its tires humming on the road. The deputy spat on the floor of the truck, the brown glob falling into the laundry basket at her feet—and backed away from Gloria’s window. He kept his hands away from his gun. He circled widely around the back, toward Jimmy.

“Stay the hell out of Suwannee County!” the deputy called out to them, out of easy range. “You hear me? I better not see no kin of Robert Stephens here again!” Gloria heard the petulant child hidden inside his anger.

“Yes, suh,” Miz Lottie said. “We won’t come back, suh.”

Gloria braced for the deputies to try to shoot them from the rear, but they didn’t. Maybe pride had saved them: the deputy who’d menaced her couldn’t confess to Jimmy that he was scared of an old Negro woman, or why. Or maybe Miz Lottie had shamed him. Was it over?

The approaching car finally reached them—a timeworn black Model T—and didn’t slow before passing. But Gloria glimpsed John Dorsey watching with grave interest from the passenger window before Mr. Moore drove on. Neither deputy looked the passing car’s way. At least the NAACP knew where they were. That was something.