Page 143 of The Reformatory

“Yessir,” Crutcher said in a defeated mumble, taking off his coat and draping it over a branch. Crutcher might not survive this hunt if he couldn’t get his heart behind it, or if he saw too much. Haddock had warned Crutcher the day he interviewed for the job that he could not be soft on the boys or they would be ruined as men. Today was Crutcher’s first real test.

Haddock lowered himself to his knees, pushing the loosened fence panel down as far as it would go, while Colonel tugged on his leash, barking impatiently for him to hurry up. Colonel pulled so hard that a sharp edge of the severed metal gashed Haddock’s upper right arm as he crawled through, leaving a red stripe of blood through his torn shirt. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it hurt more than any injury in years and would likely leave a scar. When Haddock roared a curse, Colonel whimpered and looked back at him with hangdog eyes, snapped from his scent euphoria. Colonel lost all his passion for hunting if Haddock yelled at him. And of course Haddock had never hit Colonel. Haddock couldn’t train his bloodhound the way he trained the boys.

“It’s all right, boy,” Haddock hissed between his teeth, patting Colonel’s head and running his hand down his flapping ears. “I’m not mad. I promise.” Then his command: “Git him.”

Colonel’s tail wagged. He pressed his nose back to the soil.

Once again, Haddock’s celebration was cut short as he followed Colonel’s lead. He’d expected Stephens’s trail to turn south toward the road, but the dog was tracking north through the crops and more or less parallel to the fence. Haddock thought Stephens might have run the wrong way at first and would correct his path, but Colonel’s pace north only quickened.

“What’s back this way?” Crutcher said.

Haddock mapped it in his memory, since he had considered purchasing that land for the Reformatory: the cornfield ended on the unincorporated property beyond the county line that was still mostly untouched woods. Nothing was out there except a creek, once a river, that ran out just beyond the abandoned railroad track and was long overgrown with weeds. This route held none of the promise of the peanut mill or the main road leading back to Lower Spruce. But if Stephens thought the Vaseline would keep the dogs off of him, maybe he thought the water would too.

“The creek,” Haddock said as it dawned on him. “That little sonofabitch.”

Crutcher quickened his pace to try to catch up with Haddock. “Should I tell the others?”

“They’ll figure it out if those dogs are worth a damn. If not, I don’t need ’em.” Haddock reached back to pull out his Colt so it would be ready in his hand.

“Superintendent…,” Crutcher began gently. “Why the guns? Surely he doesn’t have one.” No, Crutcher would not pass this test.

“I’d ‘surely’ love to know who cut my fence,” Haddock said, mimicking him. “Stephens didn’t do that by himself. You got any idea?”

“No, sir, not at all.”

Haddock waited a moment to decide if he believed Crutcher while Colonel sniffed at another boot print beside a browning plant. By God, Colonel was on Stephens’s trail!

“How’d you like what you found, Crutcher?”

“Sir?”

“Out in my shed. You said you were messing around in there. How’d you like it?”

In the long silence, the other dogs barked a racket, still heading the wrong way. He and Crutcher would be alone, at least for a while.

“I found a… broom,” Crutcher said. “That’s all.”

“That’s the trouble when you go through another man’s things,” Haddock said. “Did it dawn on you to wonder what I use it for besides sweeping?”

“Maybe I’m just… dumb,” Crutcher said, an almost laughable claim from a man as haughty as he was, “but I don’t understand your meaning, Superintendent Haddock.”

Haddock hated being lied to. He considered turning on his heel, raising his Colt, and seeing what kind of mess he could make of Crutcher at close range. He’d tell Bird he was so surprised by the footfall behind him that he’d shot Crutcher by accident. Not that Bird needed more than half a reason. But he didn’t want to slow down Colonel’s momentum; a gunshot would upset his dog.

“Only two things you need to know on a hunt,” Haddock said instead. “Number one, you make an example of the runner or others will try it. Number two, you keep your mouth shut and don’t ask questions. Don’t make me tell you twice. Some mistakes you don’t come back from.”

Crutcher did not answer, even to say Yessir. Haddock heard his silent loathing and judgment behind him, but if Crutcher wanted to shoot him in the back, so what? Crutcher would have a hell of a tough road explaining the shooting to Bird, even if he tried to claim it was an accident. Negro men didn’t shoot down white men if they wanted to live another day.

Haddock ventured a glance over his shoulder so he could see Crutcher’s tight, angry lips and let him know he didn’t give a damn. Haddock smiled. “Watch and learn,” he said.

The leash snapped as Colonel ran faster, leading them toward Robert Stephens.

40

On the unfenced end of the cornfield, Robert ran into a wall of trees. With dogs barking behind him—real dogs, not the noises that had fooled his ears as soon as he was under the fence—Robert had hoped that liberation from the corn plants meant he could wade straight into the creek. Instead, he was wading into a tightly packed thicket of thin tree trunks and nests of brush beneath them, barely passable and harder to see past than the ordered rows of corn. If not for the dogs, and Gloria waiting for him, he would have turned back.

These weren’t the tamed woods where he lived, thinned by traffic paths to the turpentine camps, with easy gaps between the trees for games of tag. He never would have played with Gloria in these woods, where any toy would instantly be lost and every step was met by twigs poking and scraping his chest, arms, and shins. If not for the dogs and maybe snakes, the thick woods would be the perfect place to hide. But they were not good for running or for finding his way. For the first time since the crow had appeared in the cornfield, Robert was forced to slow down until he wasn’t running, and then he was hardly walking, fighting against the underbrush, his arm raised to protect his face.

But it was impossible not to get scratched, and Robert pressed one hand over his right eye after a twig smacked his face so hard that he thought he’d poked his eyeball out. The sting almost made him cry out, but the barking behind him reminded him not to make a sound. Was the barking farther away? Robert was afraid to trust his ears because he wished it so much and wishes weren’t real, but at least the dogs didn’t sound closer. Not yet.