Page 87 of The Reformatory

“Yes,” Gloria said, fully agreed. She wished the deputy from the road in Live Oak would come, a wish so fierce it sped her heart. But then she saw ashes—a heralding, not a memory—and her heart iced. There would be burning tonight. What would Papa do if he were here? Gloria knew the answer: he would run. Papa had run already. Running had been the answer for Robbie all along, and she’d been foolish enough to go to the courthouse.

“Go on,” Uncle June said. “Get Mama out of the front room.”

“Where’s Waymon?” Gloria asked. June and Waymon were not Miz Lottie’s biological children, but she had raised them both since the time they were Robbie’s age. While they were gone for the war, at times Gloria had wondered if Miz Lottie would worry herself to death. June was kin, and Waymon had found his way to her somehow. They both talked about how she cut switches from her yard to keep them in line as if she’d done them a great service, just like Miz Lottie said her mother, in her slave cabin, had cut switches to beat her children because she said it was better if it came from her instead of Massa.

“Waymon can take care of himself,” June said. “Go, Gloria. Hurry.”

Miz Lottie walked slowly, so Gloria tried to take her time walking with her despite her anxiousness. Gloria flicked off the bare bulb in the hallway, and the house beyond the kitchen went dark except a faint glow from the windowless bathroom. Gloria held Miz Lottie’s slightly trembling hand as she led her through the dark. She knew the house from memory enough to reach Miz Lottie’s open doorway. Her room was an inky cavern.

Miz Lottie had so many clothes that two racks of dresses lined her bedroom doorway to make a path to her pink canopy bed, a long-ago retirement gift from Councilman Powell, so high she needed steps to climb to it. The bed was more regal than the bed where Ma Ma said Miz Lottie had kept Ma’am’s feet warm. Gloria led Miz Lottie through her collection of memories to her bed. “Where’s my water?” Miz Lottie had sworn she didn’t need more after two sips, but now she sounded panicked. Gloria had kept the mason jar, knowing better. “I’ve got it.”

Miz Lottie drank in thirsty gulps, her hands struggling with the jar’s weight, so Gloria helped her steady it.

“Do you need your heart pills?” Gloria said. “They in the bathroom?”

Miz Lottie shook her head. “Stay here,” she said. “With me.”

Outside, a white man was shouting. He was too far to make out his words, except niggers. “Is Waymon in the kitchen with June?” Miz Lottie said. “Did he come back yet?”

“Yes,” Gloria lied, the easiest thing to say. Uncle June had said to keep Miz Lottie calm.

Headlights swept across Gloria’s face through the open blinds, as if God wanted to shine a light on her lies. And Miz Lottie knew: Gloria saw it in the flash of her wide, probing eyes. Gloria rushed to the window to close the blinds like Uncle June had told her to. The headlights were coming from the back, not the road. Who was driving in Miz Lottie’s yard?

Once the blinds were closed, Gloria rushed back to the bed to find the laundry basket, feeling for the ribbed wicker. She banged her ankle on Miz Lottie’s steps to the bed, but she barely felt the pain while she looked for the gun.

“Gloria—” Miz Lottie said sternly. “Is Waymon here or not?” More angry shouts outside.

“No, ma’am.” Gloria did not want her dying words to be a lie.

“What?” Miz Lottie’s voice rose in alarm.

“Waymon’s not here. Not yet.”

“Then why’d you say…” But Miz Lottie did not finish, anguished. Worse than a rebuke. Gloria wished she could take back the truth when she heard Miz Lottie’s whimpering sob.

She had seen Miz Lottie weep only once, at Mama’s funeral. Miz Lottie’s crying twisted her insides with shame and dread.

Gloria wrapped her fingers around the butt of the .22. She didn’t have the time or light to check the chamber, so she went to the window, led by the moon.

“This loaded?” Gloria said, hoping Miz Lottie could hear her over her crying.

“Five shots. Bullets in my closet, top shelf, in my hatbox.” Miz Lottie held back her sob. “You see anybody?”

Gloria looked for movement in the shadows. “No.”

The silent hulk of Miz Lottie’s truck waited in the moonlight, ready. We should have run. Gloria saw herself in the truck in another time, racing the truck along the railroad tracks past rows of slash pines, Miz Lottie beside her. Racing toward—

—the woods. Someone waiting in the shadows.

“Where’s Robert Stephens?” In the backyard, a stranger let out a yell.

Gloria almost dropped her gun when her knees buckled in fright. The voice sounded not farther than ten yards away, maybe fifteen. Instinct made her pull back from the window, but she remembered Uncle June saying to watch for fire. She peeked out again, trying to see past the tree. Glass broke from the other side of the house, probably the living room window. Out front, Mrs. Hatchett screamed and her husband told her to stay down. Someone was out back; someone else was at the front. Maybe the house was surrounded. Cold facts came to Gloria, lining up.

“Gloria?” Miz Lottie said, still a whimper. “You smell kerosene?”

“No, ma’am.” But the entire room might smell like kerosene. Gloria’s nose was plugged with her own hot breath as she panted by the window.

“You tell me the truth,” Miz Lottie said. “I can’t smell anything. I was in my bed, an’ I thought to myself, ‘Who’s that fussin’ outside? Who’s out there yellin’ to raise the dead?’ ”