Page 45 of The Reformatory

“I don’t think you wanna bring up his rearing,” Warden Haddock said, and Crutcher’s face puckered as he tried to hold his expression blank. Crutcher wasn’t the only one in Gracetown who knew Papa’s name. “But I’ll say this: he’s lucky I’m the superintendent and not some of those county boys, or he’d be out in a swamp with the Klan. My boys are already grumbling. Don’t try to say I don’t play fair.”

Boone and Crutcher agreed they had never met any man fairer, white or colored.

“I’ll take it one more step…,” Warden Haddock said, and spat to build up anticipation like Reverend Jenkins encouraged excitement from his flock. Robert stood in amazement while a conversation bloomed like when men had come to Papa’s back porch, or when his grown cousins gathered under Miz Lottie’s oak tree, playing with her old truck’s engine to try to make it run. Like an ordinary day in an ordinary place. “I’d bet five dollars that gal was never raped by anybody, white or Negro.”

Thunder might have shaken the walls. The two white men groaned with disapproval, and Boone and Crutcher shifted uncomfortably. Their amen corner was silent now. The room felt weighted down.

“Know what? Make that ten dollars,” Warden Haddock said. “What you think… Robert Stephens? Did your daddy rape that white lady?”

Robert’s mouth was so dry that his tongue and cheeks felt glued to his lips. He could not open his mouth. To speak, he thought, might mean dying. White men talking about rape always led to a rope. That’s what Papa had said right before he left.

“Sir, the boy don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” Crutcher said, quiet as an undertaker.

“He’s not shy,” Warden Haddock said. He nudged Robert with the tip of his boot, heavy pressure on his bare toes. Robert felt one of his toe joints crack. “Go on and say. Did your daddy rape that white lady?”

The word rape was profane. He and Gloria had overheard Mama telling Miz Lottie she’d been raped by her employer when she was seventeen—the reason she’d decided she’d never work for anyone but herself again—and Gloria had run off with horror in her eyes, but she’d never told him what it meant. The first time he’d learned had been last year, when the sheriff came looking for Papa. He’d asked the older boys at school what rape was even though Gloria wouldn’t tell him. It’s when a girl doesn’t want to, but you force her anyway, the sage eighth grader, Pastor Jenkins’s son, had said. Sinners and cowards and drunks do that.

“No, sir,” Robert whispered. “My daddy wouldn’t hurt nobody. He’d never do that. He ain’t a sinner or coward or drunk.”

By the way the warden’s head canted to one side as if to see him in better lighting, Robert realized he should have thought before he spoke. Only fright had made his words tumble out.

Neither Crutcher nor Boone would look at him. Crutcher took one step away, pretending to search his vest pocket, as if hearing talk of the white lady would conjure her.

“So… you think she lied?”

Robert knew better than to say lie. “I think like you think, sir.”

Warden Haddock slapped Robert on the back hard enough to sting and then rubbed the spot to soothe it. “There ya go,” he said. “Everybody knows it. Just a bunch of vile talk the growers put Lorraine up to. Pete McClain’s been blacking her eye for a year, and everyone knows ’cept that dim wife of his. Pete prob’ly paid her and her loudmouth daddy and mama a pretty penny to make up a story. All of y’all know it and won’t say. And leastways, I won’t visit the sins of the father on the son. The son pays for his own. Ain’t that right, Robert Stephens?” Warden Haddock continued to rub at the spot on his shoulder until a new alarm grew in Robert he could not put a name to. Slowly, Warden Haddock slid his hand away.

“Your daddy has a big damn mouth and thinks he’s good as a white man,” Warden Haddock said, “and that’s crime enough in Jackson County.”

“I don’t know for sho’ what happened with my daddy, sir,” Robert said, and his heart died a thousand deaths, and he wondered if somewhere in Chicago, Papa might have heard him.

“Hush. Yes you do,” Warden Haddock said. “A young man stands by his convictions. The good Lord has seen fit to give me this opportunity to steer you to the right path. Hop up on the table.” He said it so kindly that Robert almost missed the words.

A white man yanked Robert so hard that the tabletop dug into his stomach and made him lose his breath. The man’s red caterpillar eyebrows frowned. Robert smelled sour beer on the man’s breath, in his sweat; he worked drunk most nights—

—like the men on the night of the fire in 1920. Knowing what he shouldn’t made Robert dizzy.

There is more than this. Mama’s voice in his memory gave Robert the strength to pull his leg high enough to try to hoist himself onto the wooden platform. It was truly as if he’d never worked his body before, every part difficult to manage, like his newborn cousin, Jackie, who had been named for Jackie Robinson. He thought of Jackie’s wobbly arms and legs as he nearly slipped from the plank, which was slick with sweat.

No, not sweat. The sharp, prickly scent was blood.

He looked behind him to the mud-splattered wall and realized the tiny dark dots in random patterns were not mud. Blood patterns were sprayed like paint droplets against the dull planks. He would bleed here. His blood might fly.

“Take this,” Crutcher said, and shoved a thick, uneven wood chip into Robert’s hand. The chip was dry, fresh from a storage bin. Robert’s fingers shook around it. Crutcher leaned closer and whispered in smoky breath, “Bite down. Lie still as you can. It’ll be over quicker.”

Robert didn’t know when he had started crying. Warden Haddock made a tsk tsk tsk sound and Robert bit back a sob and wrestled with it. The room seemed as cold as the freezer now that his shirt was off. But not his pants, thank goodness—not his pants.

“What you waitin’ for, Robert Stephens?” Warden Haddock said. “Lay down.”

Robert tried to lower himself, and his limbs disobeyed, his elbows locked as if he were holding the tabletop against gale winds from below.

“Do what he say, boy,” Boone said.

When Robert felt Boone grab his left arm, he hurriedly shoved his wood chip into his mouth. The wood almost jostled loose as three men grabbed and arranged his body with rough hands, but Robert flung his head high so the chip would fall against his molars. He imagined ants or wood mites crawling in his mouth, but his teeth sank into the soft wood, fused. Robert’s hot breath hissed in and out against the wood, faster and faster, but his jaw held on so hard it ached. His whole body heaved with his breathing.

The edge of the table cut into Robert’s collarbone—his neck muscles had to support his head to keep it from dangling forward—and Robert suddenly knew that boys had died on this table during their beatings, their voice boxes crushed and necks snapped during careless handling. No, he would not move. He would do as Crutcher had said and lie still. He would do as Redbone had said and bite on the wood chip.