Page 140 of The Reformatory

Gloria switched the radio off. The music program playing while Miz Lottie had been driving on the main road had soothed her, but she couldn’t abide the tension of a police show while they were idling near the railroad trestle, just off of the deserted gravel road that had jounced them for the last ten minutes of their drive. If Joe Friday were real, he’d be chasing after Robbie right now because the judge said Robbie deserved to be locked up. Even Joe Friday, who never made a mistake, would be on the wrong side of justice in Gracetown.

The creek that ran under the rusting old railroad trestle was so dry that it was mostly a mud puddle with reeds growing high. Gloria hoped the water flowed more like a proper creek closer to the Reformatory to help cover Robert’s scent as he ran. The water near them was so shallow that he would barely splash, and he would leave footprints. And while Robert would be able to climb up the bank to the truck, it was steep for a hurried climb. She wished she had scouted ahead instead of relying on Uncle June’s memory of how it had looked before. With Uncle June and Waymon in jail and the creek so pathetic, Gloria felt certain that the day would end in sorrow. If it all went wrong, she would tell the judge that she had led Robbie and Miz Lottie astray and he should punish her instead. Maybe there was no way for a Negro with fixed ideas to avoid being sent to jail.

“That water sho’ ain’t much,” Miz Lottie said, sharing her thought.

“He’ll get away before anyone even notices.” Gloria kept her fears to herself, since Miz Lottie was sweating too much, her forehead dripping even though all of the windows were down. Worry made the air hotter and thicker. Gloria felt her own cheeks, sure she had a fever.

The truck sputtered and coughed before the engine ticked off. Dammit!

“Don’t worry,” Miz Lottie said, pulling out the key. “Prob’ly the heat. We’ll let her rest.”

“We have to keep it running so we’ll be ready when he comes.”

“Give Ole Suzy a minute or two,” Miz Lottie said. “She’s earned it.”

A mosquito landed on Gloria’s nose and she swatted it away. “I can’t sit here anymore,” she said. The drive hadn’t taken as long as they expected, so they had been waiting for twenty minutes, watching the creek for signs of Robbie through the archway of leaning cypress trees over the creek bed that might have looked majestic on another day. Gloria opened her door and climbed out of the truck and onto the rocky soil on the side of the road. Miz Lottie whistled to her, reaching over the seat to hand her the pearl-handled .22.

“Take it,” Miz Lottie said. “Just in case. But don’t… shoot Robbie.” Even if Gloria hadn’t heard her odd halting speech, she noticed the tremor in Miz Lottie’s hand as the gun passed between them, warm from Miz Lottie’s clasp.

Gloria didn’t ask Miz Lottie what was wrong. Everything was wrong. Before Mama died and she’d seen how brutal life could turn, she would have fretted more over Miz Lottie, but she discovered a frozen piece of her mind reminding her that she couldn’t leave Robbie even if Miz Lottie got dizzy or sick, or even worse. It was too late to change the plan now. Like Miz Lottie had said, Robbie was her sole responsibility now.

“Can you… reach in the back and… hand me June’s canteen?” Miz Lottie said.

Gloria didn’t answer, her face too stony for words. She felt around under the tarp in the far corner, beyond her suitcase, where June kept his Army canteen with the green fabric cover he’d brought back from the war. Gloria took a swallow herself first to moisten her mouth and throat. The water tasted slightly metallic, but it was still cool from Miz Lottie’s kitchen faucet.

“Thank you,” Miz Lottie said primly, her lips pinned, when Gloria handed her the canteen. Gloria knew Miz Lottie could have made a dozen complaints, but instead she only swallowed from the canteen and laid her head back against her seat, her eyes closed. Gloria did not ask Miz Lottie if she was all right because she already knew she wasn’t. But she had to watch the creek.

Gloria walked a few steps down the embankment, trying to find the most obvious path for Robbie that he could climb quickly if dogs were at his heels. She spotted what looked like a deer path winding past jutting roots and weeds not far from the truck. Was it too steep for him?

Gloria remembered the rope coiled in the back of the truck she’d seen near the canteen.

“Miz Lottie, I’m gonna tie a rope here to help him climb up,” she said. Miz Lottie said “All right” so faintly that Gloria almost didn’t hear her.

Gloria shoved the gun snugly into her deep front pocket, half afraid it would explode in her dungarees. Then she tied the rope securely around a sturdy tree trunk at the edge of the road and tossed the rest of it down to watch it uncoil. The rope got caught in branches halfway down, so Gloria tugged on it to test her knot and then began climbing down herself, holding the rope taut with her right hand while she unraveled the rest on the sharp descent and shook it loose with her left. While her loafers were solidly supported on a jutting boulder about fifteen yards above the creek, she shook the rope to unfurl it as far as it would go. The tip didn’t quite reach all the way down, but it would be easy enough to see from below. Gloria looked up, imagining it from Robert’s viewpoint, and saw the rear of the truck where Miz Lottie had parked it just before the trestle, half hidden in wild weeds. The truck was obvious if you were looking, but it wasn’t directly over the creek where anyone might see it from a distance. Robert would see the trestle before he saw the truck, but he would see it. That was what she told her pounding heart, anyway.

Gloria slipped on her climb back up with the rope, and she was glad she was wearing too-big Levi’s jeans she’d borrowed from Waymon’s drawer instead of a dress, since she was already muddy at the knees. She was eager to check the clock in Miz Lottie’s truck, to see if two hours had passed instead of two minutes, the way it seemed in her imagination.

When she climbed back up to the truck, Miz Lottie had moved to the passenger side, hunched over as she went through the glove box. The part of Gloria that secretly had expected to find Miz Lottie dead over the steering wheel rejoiced. She loved Miz Lottie, but that also would have meant pushing Miz Lottie’s body aside to be ready to drive off with Robbie no matter what.

“You see him?” Miz Lottie said, eyes hopeful and childlike.

“Not yet. What are you looking for?” Now that Gloria had mapped out a safer passage for Robbie, she felt guilty that she hadn’t doted on Miz Lottie more.

“I got it,” Miz Lottie said, weakly holding up her black pillbox with a rose image Mama had bought her. Miz Lottie’s doctor had prescribed her pills for her chest pain from angina. Miz Lottie raised the canteen to her lips to swallow the pill, and Gloria helped her hold it steady despite Miz Lottie’s irritated glance because she hated to be treated like she was helpless.

“You okay?” Gloria said, the question she had avoided.

“Dizzy spell. You’d better drive, pumpkin. Don’t want Robbie to get this far for me to drive us off the road.”

Her voice was casual, but Miz Lottie had never confessed that she was not fit to drive, not once, although Papa and Uncle June had been telling her for years. Whatever was troubling Miz Lottie was worse than dizziness. Gloria was partially relieved but also terrified to see new pieces of the plan crumbling away. She’d laid the road map to the train station on the dashboard, but she didn’t trust that she could steer the old truck well enough to make the sharp turn back to the main road with such steep ditches on either side. But she said, “All right,” the simplest thing to say even if it wasn’t close to true.

Gloria took a step away from the passenger’s-side window to peer toward the creek again. Not even rabbits or raccoons stirred in the stillness of the woods. Robbie wasn’t going to come: the feeling was so certain that she was sure it was the future whispering in her ear.

Then a bell began to ring. The bell from the courthouse had a stately and reverent sound that probably would not reach this far, certainly not as crisply. This bell was a sharp, frantic rally with a higher pitch, probably rung by hand, so loud that it had to be much closer than Main Street. The bell sounded like they had been caught already.

Lottie straightened up in her seat. “The runaway alarm,” she said. “He’s out! And they know he’s gone. All these cracker farmers out here will be looking for him. Hope he’s quick.”

Robbie was quick, but the bell’s sound was quicker. Another flaw in their plan: Robbie might not make it alone if he’d already been missed. She checked her pocket for the assuring mass of her hidden .22 and stared at the quiet creek bed where Robbie had not yet appeared no matter how much she tried to summon him.