Page 88 of The Reformatory

“You mean now?”

“My mama say, ‘Lottie, you smell that kerosene? They pour it to make the fire burn quicker.’ They’ll pour it on your skin, you give them a chance. Then you’ll be blacker’n black.”

Miz Lottie was talking out of her head and white men were circling the house. The world folded in on itself, and Gloria held her breath until her dizzy feeling passed. She’d almost forgotten the lesson she’d learned from Mama’s illness: people seemed fine until they weren’t fine at all. Just like towns. Like Gracetown.

Gloria watched the truck, waiting to see if Uncle June would start shooting or give her a signal. To keep from being afraid, she felt herself wanting it to happen. The nozzle of her gun tapped lightly against the edge of Miz Lottie’s closed window.

“You’re not in old times with your mama anymore, Miz Lottie.”

For a moment, Miz Lottie was silent, mulling that over. “Don’t die in no fire,” she said. “Any way but that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gloria whispered, not sure what she was promising. She was just glad Miz Lottie sounded in her right mind again. Maybe the broken window had taken her mind back to the old days, like Waymon sometimes jumped when he heard loud noises since the war.

“They don’t care who it is—man, woman, or child,” Miz Lottie said. “Once it starts—they don’t care. They’ll treat you like you ain’t from the same God as them. Like they the devil.”

Gloria thought of the hard-eyed deputy on the road who wanted to drag her to the woods. “I know, Miz Lottie.”

“If you gotta run, go on and run,” Miz Lottie said.

“Uncle June said—”

“And I’m telling you: Don’t wait on me. Please, Gloria—please, child.” She was begging. “It’s bad enough Waymon’s out there. They burned it all—my grandpa’s house. His barn. I was a child—I was fast, and so was Mama—so we lived. We ran to the woods and hid. That’s what you’d better do. You only live through it if you’re quick.”

“They’re not going to burn us,” Gloria said.

“How do you know that?” Miz Lottie hissed, both a whisper and a shout.

Gloria didn’t know how she knew, but she did. She saw fire—plumes of black and gray smoke and excited golden flames—but the fire was not destined for Miz Lottie’s. A fire was burning somewhere else. Was Robbie on fire somewhere? The Reformatory?

But no. That didn’t seem right either. That fire had been in 1920. This one was new.

“I just know it,” Gloria said. “Same way I always know. Mama used to ask me things.”

That satisfied Miz Lottie. She went back to her quiet whimpering over Waymon. She’d told Gloria that whites had remarked to her that Waymon had “changed” since the war, how he unnerved people as he paraded to church in his Army uniform every Sunday. Waymon said he liked to remind people he had shed blood, and he might shed blood again.

“Is Waymon all right?” This was the first time Miz Lottie had ever tugged on Gloria’s knowing like Mama used to.

Gloria tried to know about Waymon, but part of her didn’t know how to try. Her flashes came on their own. The harder she tried, the less she knew. “I can’t see that now. I can’t see everything.”

Another window broke. It might have been the window in Gloria’s room—right beside them, where she had been sleeping until only minutes ago. Gloria peeked through the blinds again, toward the truck. Still no Uncle June, no headlights, no engine. But the light-colored shirt at the end of the clothesline was flapping unnaturally, coming to life.

Gloria peered more closely, trying to see. Was her eye fooling her?

A shadow bobbed in front of the shirt, closer and closer. Rapid footsteps crushed twigs and leaves as someone, a man, was running toward her—right at her, as if he could see in the dark.

What was the point of yelling a warning? Gloria raised her pistol and backed up two steps, waiting for the window to break. She kept her hand steady on the trigger by remembering Uncle June’s advice: she couldn’t shoot just because she was scared. If he just threw a rock, she would not shoot. If he just yelled out epithets, she would not shoot. But if he had a gun, or tried to climb into the room, or if she saw fire—

“Let me in!” the man said at the window. He tapped hard, but not enough to break it. Gloria’s plans left her—trigger finger tightening—

“It’s Waymon!” Miz Lottie said.

Before Gloria could move, Waymon already had coaxed the window halfway up. When Gloria added her strength, the window squealed in its frame, raised high enough to let wiry Waymon through. Then they both slammed the window behind them. Waymon locked it.

“Goddamn crackers—one of ’em tried to come right out back,” Waymon said. He saw the gun in Gloria’s hand and snatched it from her. “Girl, gimme that ’fore you hurt somebody.”

Then he stumbled out of the bedroom, crashing through Miz Lottie’s clothes racks. Miz Lottie called after him, but his footsteps were racing to the front of the house.

Waymon smelled like smoke.