Page 3 of The Reformatory

The hunger in the pit of Robert’s stomach twisted, making him feel sick. Gloria had stripped the schoolmarm out of her voice, replacing it with country sweetness, like lemonade with too much sugar. She took a halting step closer to Lyle, showing him her full face, her lips upturned as if she were really smiling.

Lyle’s eyes drifted back to Gloria. “So come swim on Sunday, then. After church. Close to dark. The sun sets pretty on the water.”

“Bet it’s pretty, all right,” Gloria said. “But I’m goin’ on to work. I’m Miss Anne’s girl now, you know. Good mornin’, Lyle McCormack.”

She took a step farther down the path and Robert quickly followed, glad to be away from a moment pricked sharp, even if he wasn’t sure why. Something to do with the swimming hole, and Lyle asking Gloria to go swimming as if they were courting. But no McCormack would court a Negro girl—no white man, period, would—so why was he bothering Gloria?

Lyle McCormack flipped a tuft of flat golden hair from his face as he matched Gloria’s pace. He took her arm to stop her walking and lowered his face close to hers. For an amazed instant, Robert thought he meant to kiss her—but instead, he whispered in a voice just loud enough for Robert to hear, “You look nicer’n those gals at Pixie’s.”

Gloria stared at him with a moon-eyed face Robert had never seen on his sister, so childlike it frightened him.

Lyle McCormack grinned. “You can do more’n scrub floors, Glo. I know you can.”

Then he winked at her. As Lyle McCormack’s eyelid slid shut above his grin, locking into a leer, Robert understood one of the last things his father had told him before he fled to Chicago: he was never, ever to wink his eye at a white girl or white woman. Foolishness like that can get you killed, Papa had said.

And here was Lyle McCormack winking at his sister in broad daylight, standing in the middle of the road where any passerby or farmhand could see. A hundred years could have passed since their twilight swimming days. The bright morning sun, his stomach’s knotted hunger, and Mama’s death face stirred Robert into a rage. He didn’t want Lyle McCormack’s hand and eyes on his sister a breath longer. He squeezed himself between Lyle and Gloria.

“Leave her be!” Robert said.

Lyle’s eyes dropped down to him. “What’s got into you?”

Gloria backed up a step behind Robert, but Robert remained fixed, a wall.

“Move, Robbie,” Lyle said, and shoved him aside, so much power in the blunt motion that Robert stumbled two steps. His upper arm smarted from the heel of Lyle’s hand.

“Stop it!” Gloria said to Robert. “Mind your business.”

But Robert ran toward Lyle McCormack, swinging his foot at the bigger boy’s left knee, and his new boot’s bulk sank into the side of Lyle’s kneecap with a thunk of bone. It wasn’t like he’d done it: he watched himself do it.

Lyle McCormack yelled in pain. “You little shit,” he said. He hopped on one leg.

“You pushed me first,” Robert said, his voice and eyes low. The kick had taken all the fight out of him. Instead, he was realizing what he had done.

“He didn’t mean it, Lyle,” Gloria said. “He’s stupid! It’s just me looking after him since Mama died. He don’t have his daddy now either.” Gloria was talking fast, as if Lyle McCormack were holding a shotgun to his head.

Lyle McCormack was red-faced, so tall above Robert that he blocked the sunlight. Lyle pursed his lips, eyes staring death at Robert. “I oughta brain you, Robbie.”

“Walk on it, Lyle,” Gloria said gently. “Your knee’s all right. Ain’t it?”

After a last glare at Robert, Lyle hobbled in a circle, testing his knee. “Dammit!”

“But you’re fine,” Gloria said, a feeble plea in her voice. “Ain’t you?”

Robert knew better than to lay hands on a McCormack. Any Negro knew better than to lay hands on any white man, but especially a McCormack. At best, Robert calculated he was about to get the thrashing of his life. The worst was too big to form a picture.

“You do that again, I’m gonna knock your teeth out,” Lyle said, his finger pressing the tip of Robert’s nose. “You hear me?”

“Yessir. I’m sure sorry,” Robert said, more grateful than scared. Amazed it was over. But it wasn’t.

“Lyyyyle!” a man’s voice called across the field, from beyond the fence.

Their heads snapped like owls toward the fence. Robert hoped the voice didn’t belong to Lyle McCormack’s father, who everyone called Mister Red because of his bright orange hair, but his hope died as his hair charged through the pine grove.

Gloria took Robert’s hand, squeezing it. They both wanted to run.

“Did this little nigger just kick you?” Red McCormack said. He ducked the fence rail. The closer he walked, the more Robert felt the earth parting around him, a hole swallowing his feet. Mister Red is gonna kill me, Robert thought, the most certain thought he’d ever had.

Lyle’s eyes went to Gloria in an apology meant only for her to see. Then he went to his father, hiding his limp.