Page 114 of The Reformatory

June looked angry suddenly. “You didn’t say nothin’ to that drunk fool, did you?”

“No, I didn’t say nothin’! How come you always askin’ did I say something?” They stared each other down for a moment, their eyes boiling with old memories. Waymon looked away first. “It ain’t like that time at the base. You gonna hold that over my head forever? I didn’t say nothin’. I just pay him for gas. He don’t ask where I’m goin’. Can I finish?”

“Stop it,” Miz Lottie said. She rested her head in her hand as if to block out the light. “I swear and be damned, if you two jackasses don’t stop all that fussing!”

“I’ll drive us out in Clive’s car,” Waymon went on, “and you’ll hop out into the cornfield. It ain’t gonna be nothin’ for you to crawl under that barbed wire out front. But the fence on the Reformatory side, that one’s tougher. Wire cutters gonna work?”

“Should,” June said, thoughtful. “I’ll just need time to cut a hole big enough.”

“But not big enough for nobody to see it before it’s time,” Waymon said.

“Robbie’s small,” Gloria said.

“I’ll let you out, drive off,” Waymon said. “I’ll go a ways down the road, then I’ll turn and drive back. If you ain’t back yet when I whistle for you, I’ll drive off and come back again.”

“You can’t park,” June said. “No matter what. Those farmers will call the warden before you can count to three.”

“What did I just say?” Waymon asked. “I’ll drive off.”

With a silent sigh, Gloria surveyed Robbie’s escape team: an old woman who looked ready to faint and two grown men who argued like schoolboys. God help us, she thought. In the kitchen light, the plan seemed foolish in every way. If not for the hope she’d seen in Robbie’s eyes, she would have called it off. Instead, she said, “We have to make sure Ole Suzy is ready by Friday. That engine keeps clicking and goes off on a dime. We can’t be stranded out there.”

“I’ll fix it,” Uncle June said. “I just got the parts from—”

A knock on the door interrupted him. The front door. Then the doorbell rang. It wasn’t the proper code: Uncle June had told the Hatchetts to knock twice, pause, and then knock twice again so they would know who was there. Gloria leaped to her feet, and June’s shotgun had appeared from nowhere in his hands. He beat Waymon to the kitchen doorway and gestured for him to stay back. “I’ll get it,” he said.

Waymon nodded, reaching for his waistband. “I got the window.”

Gloria grabbed Miz Lottie’s hand and squeezed. Miz Lottie did not squeeze back. All at once, Gloria’s mouth and throat felt sucked dry. No wonder Waymon had been so thirsty: constant worry stole everything from you, even the spit in your mouth.

“Can I help you?” Uncle June said, slightly gruff but polite. No hint of danger.

The stranger at the door spoke with clear confidence, her voice raised loudly enough for all of them to hear: “Why, yes, I’m so sorry to disturb you after dinnertime,” a woman said. “Is this the family of Robert Stephens Junior?”

Robbie! The stranger’s voice sounded like a War Department notification. Gloria tripped on the hall rug in her hurry to get to the living room. The woman’s voice went on: “My name is Marian Hamilton, and I’m the director of the Negro band at the Reformatory. Robert is one of my star students.” Is one of her students, the woman had said. Not was. He couldn’t be dead, could he? Surely she wouldn’t have chosen that word if Robbie was dead.

The woman standing silhouetted in the porch light could have been Mama, from her hair to her shoulders to her posture. If she hadn’t spoken and said otherwise, Gloria would have believed she was seeing Mama’s ghost. Gloria could only stare.

“Somethin’ bad happen to him?” Uncle June’s voice came out small, from a cavern of waiting grief. He sounded helpless despite the shotgun just beyond the door.

“Oh no—I’m sorry—nothing like that,” the woman said.

The living room’s foul stink, which seemed to have wrapped Gloria in a cobra’s grip, let her go. She could breathe again. And move. And think.

“Sorry for the smell,” Gloria said. “People came and threw spoiled eggs and drove off.” She felt a sting of self-consciousness, eager to let the stranger know that this was not how Robbie lived, in stink and clutter. Gloria’s cheeks went hot when she realized the woman could see inside the living room at the stacks of newspapers and magazines climbing the wall.

Now that the woman was no longer in mystery and shadow, Gloria noticed the crispness ringing from every part of her: the gleaming part in her well-oiled hair, the tightly wound French braids, her blouse and collar starched and free of wrinkles. She spoke like she’d been to college, or somewhere even more exotic than college, carrying music in her words, like a march that must be followed. Gloria felt only twelve inches high in front of her. Was this woman writing some kind of report on Robbie? Had their family just failed a crucial test?

“Some of you came to visit on Sunday, but I see him every day, so I thought you might like to know he’s all right,” the woman said. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder, toward the road. For the first time, she seemed uneasy. “May I please come in?”

“No—” Gloria started to say, but June was already stepping aside to give her room.

“Yes, ma’am,” June said. “Watch your step.”

Miz Lottie did not like strangers in her house, especially “seditty” strangers, as she called the Negroes who lived in the new houses on the hill built from VA loans. But although she was watching from the hall, Miz Lottie did not complain as the woman came inside, where the sprawl of clutter was in plain view.

“Marian Hamilton?” Miz Lottie said. “You one of Bo Crutcher’s grandbabies?”

Mrs. Hamilton smiled. “I am indeed, ma’am,” she said. “I’m the eldest.”