Page 95 of The Reformatory

“If it’s all the same, I’d like to bring her to my office.”

He would hurt her, or another sheriff would. What if he called in the sheriff from Lake County, whose deputies had beaten confessions from three men and shot one dead in the woods? That got her moving. Gloria made it halfway to the back door.

“Gloria quit working for us after her brother got locked up,” Miss Anne said. “I haven’t seen her today.”

Miss Anne was lying to the sheriff for her! And she’d said it just as smoothly as if she lied every day. Gloria decided not to try to flee outside, where another deputy might see her. Instead, she moved to the pantry, careful to pull the frayed rope handle slowly, slowly, so the door would not click too loudly into place. In the dark, tight space, her breathing grew faster. A broom handle was jammed between her shoulder blades, but she did not dare move or she would knock over the pantry’s tightly packed tin cans and jars of preserves. She tried to hold her breath so she could hear their conversation through the thin wooden door.

“Any idea where she might be?” the sheriff was saying.

“I don’t have the faintest, Bird. I just know she’s very upset, with her brother locked up. Taking a child away from his family is excessive for a schoolyard kick, isn’t it? And Lyle McCormack three times that boy’s size?”

“That may be, but I don’t make the law—I only enforce what they tell me to.”

“Seems to me this whole fuss has more to do with Red McCormack’s money and Robert Stephens Senior than it does with his children.” Miss Anne’s voice turned fiery in the way she usually reserved for Fred. “I’m going to write a letter to the newspaper.”

“Anne, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” the sheriff said. “I’d hate to see you get mixed up in the hurt feelings around this whole mess. That’s just pouring gas on the flames.”

“I know the Stephens family,” Miss Anne said. “I’m already mixed up in it. Their mother, God rest her soul, gave them both piano lessons in this room. They’re like family.”

“She knows more than she’s saying, Anne. I’m supposed to let a fugitive run loose?”

“You don’t have a case, Bird. You know you don’t. Show me a deputy or councilman who thinks Robert Stephens gave her that black eye. Tad’s been beating her bloody for years.”

To Gloria, the floor seemed to shake. Yesterday, Miss Anne had sounded as meek as a mouse, and now she was testifying to the sheriff’s face. The sheriff said something in a whisper Gloria couldn’t hear no matter how she held her breath silent. Then the sheriff said, “Sorry again to bother you, Anne,” and Miss Anne closed the door and locked both locks. The sound of Miss Anne’s quick, rapid breathing filled the house. She sounded scared, or angry. Probably both.

Gloria didn’t peek her head out of the pantry until Miss Anne came and called for her. Gloria didn’t come out until she saw with her own eyes that the sheriff hadn’t followed her.

“Sonofabitch,” Miss Anne said, the first time Gloria had heard her cuss. Miss Anne paced the kitchen, grasping her flaring dress with her palms so hard that she might rip it. “The nerve. That goddamned sonofabitch. That sorry excuse for the law—”

“What did he say?”

At first Miss Anne shook her head as if she didn’t want to repeat it. Gloria thought it might be something about Miss Channing. But she was wrong.

“He said, ‘Remember what happened to your father.’ ”

William Powell had driven his car into a ditch on a rainy night, and Papa had said it was the Klan as soon as he heard the news. Councilman Powell had signed a petition against lynching and his name had been in the Tallahassee Democrat, not just the Gracetown Herald. He’d met with the governor and called the Klan an embarrassment to business owners in the New South.

“Was it… a warning?” Gloria said. “To help you keep safe?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The way he said it, the way his voice changed… Gloria, it sounded like an actual threat. Against me. I’m shaking.”

The sheriff was always on the side of white people, Papa had said, until white people tried to help Negroes. Miss Anne clasped Gloria’s elbows, and Gloria clasped hers back. They stared at each other wide-eyed with growing understanding of how deep their troubles went.

Heavy footsteps on the rear staircase made them jump and look up. Fred was leaning on the railing halfway down the stairs, unshaven and bleary-eyed, still wearing last night’s rumpled clothes as he watched them. He lit a cigarette.

“Turns out, you’re not the smart one,” he said. “Matter of fact, I see you’re dumb as shit.”

He could be talking to either of them, or both. Miss Anne moved in front of Gloria, an impulse to protect her, and for a terrible moment Gloria expected Fred to go running outside to tell the sheriff she was hiding there. But Fred only gave her a dead-eyed look, not blinking, before he turned around to go back upstairs.

26

The Reformatory

All morning, boys came to Robert to tell him their haint troubles, even the teenagers who looked like men. Even two white boys stole away from their side of the campus to meet him after breakfast to tell him which lockers were haunted, where they heard whispers in the cornfield, which mules could talk like humans, and which tractor powered itself when no one was driving. Robert couldn’t keep track of all the promises he made to check out this place or that.

It was a fine morning until Robert saw Boone waiting by the cafeteria door with his leather haint satchel. Robert’s stomach bloated into his throat when Boone gave him that too-wide grin.

“Warden Haddock’s tickled to death,” Boone said. “Let’s head on over to that old fire spot and see what you see.”