Page 61 of The Reformatory

“What’s he sayin’ now?” Miz Lottie said, aiming her ear toward the receiver, but Gloria gently pulled it away while she answered Papa: “You hear her for yourself. Like always.”

“Don’t let her drive. Have her tell Waymon—”

“Is he talkin’ ’bout my driving?” Miz Lottie said loudly toward the phone. “Bob, hush. I told you to let off with that. Waymon can’t miss work; neither can Junior. It ain’t safe for them nohow, ’specially not Waymon. I’ll take her. I can drive to Live Oak with my eyes closed.” Her voice tremored with irritation.

“Remember what I said,” Papa whispered to Gloria, a hiss across the phone line from Chicago. “She’s more than eighty years old.”

“We’ll get there the best we can,” Gloria said. She agreed with Miz Lottie: they would attract less attention than a big Negro man like Junior or wild-mouthed Waymon.

“Tell him to quit wasting his money goin’ all the way ’round Adam’s barn like we’re a couple of fools who can’t do nothin’. We been doin’.” Miz Lottie smarted from Papa’s every other word. She loved him as if she were Papa’s mother, no doubt, but half her love was fussing.

A knock sounded on the front door, and they both whirled to look as the door flew open.

It wasn’t Junior or Waymon; the door opened clumsily, pushed too far. On the umbrella rack behind the door, a bright red hat in the tangle of clothing tumbled down. Miz Lottie’s neighbor Earl Hatchett, Gracetown County’s NAACP vice president, stuck his gray head in. His moustache grew up his cheeks. He lived two houses down and shared Miz Lottie’s party line.

“Tell Bob he better not come to Live Oak,” he said, “or they’ll catch him on the county road. They already out lookin’.”

“See?” Miz Lottie said toward the receiver, loudly enough for Papa to hear. “Don’t tell your business on my phone. And don’t you dare come to Florida. Hatchett said they’re looking for you to come.”

It dawned on Gloria that Papa had not spoken in a long while. Had the phone cut off? Had he already left for the train station? “Papa?” When she heard an empty line and its clicks and buzzes, Gloria’s chest tried to wring out her breath. She’d just gotten used to his voice again.

“All right,” Papa said, as if remembering her. He’d still been thinking about it until Mr. Hatchett spoke up. His thoughts often took him away when other people were talking, which had annoyed Mama to no end, one of their last arguments until Mama stopped speaking and her own thoughts took her away. “I won’t come.” His voice was soaked in grief. He did not sob, but Gloria could hear the tears on his cheeks.

“I’ll go, Papa,” Gloria said. “I’ll make sure Robbie gets out.”

And she prayed she was not the liar tomorrow might prove her to be.

The bedroom was pure dark when Gloria felt tight fingers shaking her shoulder, and when she gasped to wakefulness she saw Lyle McCormack standing over her. When she blinked, it was Lyle’s father and his bright red hair. Then Miz Lottie flicked on the bedside lamp, and she saw only the room stashed with Miz Lottie’s fabrics and antiques. “Wake up, sugar,” Miz Lottie said. “We leave early, we’ll just be two headlights on the road. Get your clothes on. You should have slept ready-roll. Let’s go.”

The glowing hands on the bedside clock said it was not quite four thirty in the morning, so early that the cranky rooster next door was still sleeping. But Miz Lottie was already dressed, her pocketbook on her arm and white pillbox hat on her head like they were going to church. Miz Lottie wore this hat on special occasions or trips to the bank, when she would be on display. The only fresh clothes within Gloria’s easy reach were an old pair of overalls she used in the garden, so she would look plenty common and didn’t care. Miz Lottie frowned at Gloria’s clothing, but she was more interested in leaving in a hurry. Anyway, Gloria had muddied her dress at the swamp.

Miz Lottie waved to her from the truck’s driver’s-side window. The engine was already running. “Grab the gas can case we need more to get back. Come on.”

It was so early that the world felt blurry on the sleeping street. She and Miz Lottie could be the only two creatures on earth except the mosquitoes and crickets. Gloria hauled the half-empty gas can and set it in the bed of the truck alongside the gardening equipment Junior stored there. She wondered where Robbie was at that moment. Was he asleep too? Was he at peace or in pain? Gloria tried to imagine her brother, but she couldn’t fix on him. Maybe she never had. Maybe he’d never been whipped.

“Girl, git your head out of the clouds,” Miz Lottie said. “Come on!”

Gloria was so tired, she’d nearly fallen asleep on her feet. She hardly had room to squeeze beside Miz Lottie in the cab of the truck because two large laundry baskets were in her way: one on the floor and one beside her on the seat.

“Whose clothes are all these?” Gloria mumbled, trying to close her door without pinning her leg. The baskets smelled like mothballs. She glanced at the one beside her and found bedsheets that smelled like Miz Lottie’s bedroom. “No more room in your closet?”

Miz Lottie slapped her hand away from the linens. “Hush.” In her irritation, Miz Lottie backed out of her dirt driveway too quickly, bouncing over the exposed tree root at the curb. “Anyone asks us, we’re delivering laundry like your mama used to. You hungry?”

Gloria was hungry. She’d barely eaten any dinner, so her mouth watered when she found a biscuit wrapped in a napkin on the dashboard. It wasn’t warm, but the butter inside had melted. “Did you sleep last night, Miz Lottie?” she asked, mouth full.

“Enough,” she said. “I’ll sleep after Robbie’s home.”

“Who are we delivering laundry to?” Gloria said, testing the cover story.

“An NAACP lawyer named John Dorsey who fights these crackers in court.” Gloria gaped, and Miz Lottie looked at her sidelong with a smile. “We’ll just say it’s for Ruby and Sam McCollum. Sam’s a big man, and Ruby’ll vouch for me if I ask. She’s colored to boot. We pretendin’ to do laundry, we might as well wash for our own.”

Gloria’s laugh startled her so much that she nearly choked.

Their laughing and talking stopped after they passed the railroad trestle, leaving Lower Spruce. Even the truck’s engine seemed to quiet. A sheriff’s car was parked in the shadow of the cypress tree twenty yards beyond the trestle, which was dangling its curtain of aerial roots. If not for the white coloring of the hood, Gloria would not have noticed the car. The dead headlights gleamed dully like a jungle cat’s watching eyes.

“Miz Lottie—”

“I see him. Don’t turn your head.”