Page 11 of The Reformatory

“Well, I can note that in your file. If there’s a file,” Loehmann said. “And I can mention it to the judge when I see him next.”

Robert’s eyes widened. Mention it to the judge! In the hot sun all morning, he’d cursed himself for not telling the facts. He’d expected Gloria to explain, but the judge hadn’t given her time. Could it all be set right now? Was it as simple as two white men passing in a hallway?

“But don’t get your hopes up it’ll change anything,” Loehmann said. “I take it you know who the McCormacks are. Red McCormack owns half the county land, and no one wants to be on his wrong side when it’s time to ask for favors. Whole town goes to church together, their children go to prom. Judge Morris was lenient, at least in his own mind.”

Robert couldn’t gather sense from what he’d just been told. What did any of that have to do with Lyle McCormack shoving him and looking at his sister that way? Touching her arm?

“You know what the word ‘indefinite’ means, Robert?” Loehmann said. Robert shook his head.

“ ‘Indefinite’ means for an undefined period of time—like forever. I’ve seen files for two or three runaways, white boys, who were sent to the Reformatory for an ‘indefinite’ sentence. That means there’s no intention of setting them loose until they’re twenty-one. So six months may seem like a long while to you… but the judge tried to go easy. You’re too young to play football. Just be grateful for that.”

The more Mr. Loehmann spoke, the more he confused Robert. What did he care about an election and proms and football? What did any of that have to do with him? He’d never heard the Reformatory was for boys as old as twenty-one. That did not fit the picture in his head of young Negro boys at desks.

And Loehmann had mentioned nothing about the thing that worried Robert most, aside from being away from Gloria so long. But Robert was shy about bringing the words to his lips.

“Are the stories true?” Robert said, inching up to it.

Loehmann took his eyes from the road again. He stared, not blinking. Funeral serious. “Which stories?”

“The…” Robert struggled with the word. “The… haints.”

Loehmann looked relieved, his attention back on his driving. “Gracetown and its ghost stories. I’ve never seen a more superstitious place. All summer long with the kids I’ve seen, nothing but talk of strange noises in the house.”

“Only children can see or hear,” Robert said. “That’s why.”

He’d been foolish to think Mr. Loehmann would believe tales of haints. All grown-ups lost their patience for haints after a time, even Gracetown grown-ups—even if they’d seen the haints’ mischief, or worse than mischief. In summer, sometimes babies died in their sleep, petrified by ghosts. Or kitchen dishes or farming equipment were broken overnight, the blame laid on the children. His friend Sammy had told him he’d seen a buck naked white woman standing in his bedroom door in the moonlight, and he’d peed his bed out of fear she might be real—because although Sammy was only twelve too, if anyone heard tales he’d been within six steps of a naked white woman, he’d be lynched for sure.

Loehmann chuckled. “Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I tell the rest: there’s no such thing as ghosts. That’s an absolute fact. And even if there were, ghosts would be the last worry on my mind if I were on my way to the Reformatory.” He looked at Robert again when he said the last part, his eyes serious.

Ahead, four milking cows with bloated udders had wandered into the road, two in each lane. They only looked up when Loehmann beeped his horn. But aside from swishing their tails, they didn’t move. The car came to a stop.

They sat and waited. Papa would have inched forward to nudge at the cows, but Mr. Loehmann didn’t and Robert didn’t dare tell him to. Maybe Loehmann was afraid of scratching his pretty new car—or maybe he knew even cows might try to ram you if they got mad. Still, anything that delayed his arrival to the Reformatory was fine with Robert Stephens.

A memory peeked out that Robert had tried to hide from: Sammy’s brother Luke had died at the Reformatory. Three years ago, Luke and his friends had stolen a car parked behind the clothing store on Main Street, so he’d gotten a long sentence—and Sammy’s family had been allowed to visit him only once. Sammy said he barely recognized Luke when he saw him: so thin, his eyes wild like a cat’s, his face an old man’s. His fingers shook. When Sammy asked him what had happened to him, Luke said the Reformatory was full of haints who kept him awake at night. Who sometimes dragged him from his bed. He said no one could sleep for the screams or the fear they might be next. And when Sammy asked Luke what the haints did after they dragged you away, he only shook his head in his old-man way with tears in his eyes. And Luke never cried, not even when he’d fallen from the big oak outside Sammy’s house and broken his arm in two places. Sammy had nightmares after he visited Luke at the Reformatory, so his parents had never taken him back.

A year later, Sammy’s family got a letter that Luke was dead. The warden said he’d died from heatstroke trying to run away, but no one believed that, least of all Sammy. Luke had been buried at the Reformatory without a proper funeral, so no one in his family had even been allowed to say goodbye. Sammy had told him at the fishing hole just two weeks before, “Your mama died from cancer, but my mama’s been dead on her feet since Luke never came home.”

Those ugly thoughts of Sammy had come only once his stomach was full, his hunger gone. He was sorting out the day in pieces.

“You seem to me like a smart boy, Robert.”

“Yessir,” Robert said, so as not to contradict him. His teacher sure didn’t think so.

Mr. Loehmann stared at the cows, dangling his cigarette out of the window. “If you’re smart, you’ll learn enough to get out and stay out. That place pays the county a good sum for every boy sent there, so you’ve just been sold. Never forget that. They don’t want to send you home. They want any excuse to keep you. Any special problems, any special talents, will mean trouble for you. Try to be invisible.”

They were the scariest words anyone had ever spoken to Robert, aside from when Gloria said Mama’s dying. The words punched Robert in the stomach, stealing the air from his lungs. He’d imagined going to classes and maybe doing some sweeping or picking.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yessir.” A whisper.

“I don’t mean to scare you, but I want you to have a chance to go home while you’ve still got some childhood left. So you can get back to a real school and make a life for yourself.”

“It’s not a school?”

“Oh, there are classrooms, but it’s a prison for sure. I think you know that already.”

The remnants of the sandwich he’d eaten tasted rotten in Robert’s mouth. He wondered if he might spit up his lunch. Why hadn’t he thought the word prison before? Robert was not tough like his father, who had once been a boxer. Only the toughest boys would be waiting in prison.