Page 44 of The Reformatory

“After I got that call from Red McCormack saying hold off, I didn’t ’spect to see you.”

“No, sir.” Robert tried to hold his tears at bay, but why couldn’t he escape bad luck?

McCormack had changed his mind—Gloria had a hand in it; he was sure of it—but he might be worse off despite whatever miracle she had performed for him.

“Not getting off to a good start, are you?” Warden Haddock said.

“No, sir.” Robert could barely speak through the coat of phlegm in his throat.

Warden Haddock slowly wiped his strap. “You know what you did wrong?”

Robert longed to argue, but he remembered Crutcher’s warning. “Asking stupid questions, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Warden Haddock laid his strap down on the table and picked up a lighted cigarette from a clay ashtray. Robert held a wild hope he might say, Well, never mind all this, then. Go’n back to bed. Instead, Warden Haddock studied Robert with his eyebrows raised, as if he might have heard wrong.

“ ‘Stupid questions’?” Warden Haddock said. Exaggerated, the phrase seemed monstrous. “That what you call it?”

Boone made a chuffing sound, glaring at him. Robert didn’t know what to say, so he dared not speak until he learned his mistake.

“A ‘stupid’ question would be ‘Does the sun rise in the west?’ ” Warden Haddock said. “ ‘Do pigs like slop?’ Those are stupid questions. Way I hear it, ’less you’re fixin’ to call Boone a liar, you were asking how to run away.”

In the corner of his eye, Robert noticed the men at the card table flexing their arms, exercising their fingers like Mama had before she taught him scales on the piano at Miss Anne’s house. They had put their cards down. They were preparing to hurt him.

“Not for me to run, sir,” Robert said. “I was just asking if anybody ever did…” Robert’s voice dropped away. Crutcher had told him not to argue. Keep his mouth shut.

“Why would you want to know if a thing was possible, Robert, ’less you thought you might want to try it? Explain that to me.”

Everyone’s eyes came to Robert. Under the room’s gaze, his mind spilled empty. “I dunno, sir,” Robert said.

“Since you’re the one who brought it up, you’d better explain it.” Warden Haddock picked up the leather strap again, wrapping it from elbow to palm.

“Like…” Robert imagined the ping from Mama beneath his hand and said the first thing that came to him, as if she were whispering in his ear: “… like how, in picture shows, people fly to outer space and can look down on the whole Earth. Or how Joe Friday chases down crooks on Dragnet. I ain’t never gonna be on no rocket ship, no police detective, but I still want to hear it like a story.”

The room was still while the men waited to hear what Warden Haddock would say. The white men waited too. One of them was chuckling, sure it was a lie.

After a time, Warden Haddock nodded. “ ‘Like a story.’ A kind of fairy tale.”

“Yessir,” Robert said.

“You believe that, Boone?”

Please please please please please. Robert’s heart thundered with hope again. Boone shrugged. “Dunno, boss. That’s what they both said. Like it was just a story.”

“Bullshit,” one of the white men said under his breath.

“Stories are dangerous, Stephens,” Warden Haddock said. “They can get you hurt bad. Get you killed. Your friend the storyteller just got thirty lashes. It’s not his first time here, and he should know better. I have to teach you too, and I’m not sure yet how many licks that’ll take. But however the Lord leads me, from now on, if you’re smart—and I think maybe you are—you’re not gonna want to hear no more stories.”

“No, sir.” Robert’s words were only air whistling between his chattering teeth. Crutcher gently cupped his elbow like an usher leading him to the front of the church, and Robert’s body seized up but he walked with Crutcher anyway—one step, two steps, three—closer to the table where he would be whipped. Blood rushed in Robert’s ears from the tremor of his heartbeat, and his knee joints fought against his weight. Boone was almost gentle enough to fool him into wondering if he might still be spared. Hadn’t Mama’s messages to him already been a miracle? And another: Red McCormack already called the warden once—so why shouldn’t Mr. Loehmann come bursting through the door to tell him Judge Morris said it was all a mistake and to let him go? Robert had learned at his mother’s bedside that God tested you.

“Gimme your shirt,” Crutcher said. Robert hesitated just long enough for him to add, “You don’t want to wear it. Fabric gets in the skin.” For the first time, Robert thought of his skin breaking; not bruises, not welts, but slashed-open flesh. As if he were no different than the dead side of beef hanging in the freezer.

Robert looked at Crutcher with pleading eyes: You know my daddy and you know this is ain’t right, and Crutcher’s eyes blinked away.

Boone tugged at Robert’s shirt, impatient, so Robert quickly pulled on the button beneath his chin, trying to tame his fingers’ strange dancing. Robert heard shuffling, all of the men moving to their places, penning him in. Ready to catch him if he ran. Warden Haddock’s boots snapped closer against the floorboards, loud in Robert’s ears.

“He always so polite and quiet?” Warden Haddock said.

“Seems like he was raised nice enough.” Was Crutcher arguing for him?