Page 65 of The Reformatory

“You mean they’re giving us hell, Miz Lottie.”

“This is my goddaughter, Gloria Stephens. Bob’s oldest. Gloria, this is Harry T. Moore.”

Harry Moore’s face clouded a bit at the mention of Papa, but he smiled for Gloria and shook her hand. Gloria drew her hand away as fast as she could. His palm had seemed to rub hers with ashes; she tried to wipe it on her overalls. As she stared at his weary face, sparks danced at the edges of his hair. She expected the dishes to rattle from a sudden shaking of the floor, as if from a bomb.

But no one else had felt the shaking, and Gloria couldn’t see ashes on her fingertips. The future was shouting again, and this time Gloria felt sick to her stomach. She had seen a ribbon of sorrow into Ruby McCollum’s life, but Harry T. Moore’s was already close to gone.

“Be… careful,” Gloria blurted out. “They’ll try to bomb you. You and your wife both.” She spoke so quickly, she startled herself. Mama had said to consider anything she told. But it was like he was standing on train tracks and she could see the engine bearing down.

“Oh, you damn right they will,” Harry Moore said, hardly bothered. And he winked.

“You sound like Bob all right. Same thing he always said, almost word for word.” His mouth worked itself as if to go on, but he glanced between Miz Lottie and Gloria and thought better of it, sad-eyed. Even in a room with an NAACP lawyer and so many others carrying their grievances, he did not want to say more about Papa.

“Harriette told me you called,” Mr. Moore said to Miz Lottie. He sounded sheepish. “I didn’t mean for you to drive all this way—”

“I’d ’preciate an introduction to Mr. Dorsey,” Miz Lottie said. “He’s the one we came to see. When y’all finish up.”

“Oh, we finished, ma’am,” Willie Howard’s cousin said, flipping his cap back on his head. “I don’t think Mr. Dorsey’s got nothin’ else to say to me.”

Harry and the lawyer exchanged a look. “I’m sure sorry, Mr. Howard,” the lawyer said. Mr. Moore patted the dead boy’s cousin on the back as he walked away. Other men patted him all the way to the door.

The lawyer sighed and scooped his spoon in the sugar dish again.

“You keep putting in all that sugar,” Gloria said, “and you’ll have to eat that coffee.” John Dorsey lowered his spoon, found Gloria’s eyes. Smiled. She rose from her seat. “Too much sugar will rot out your teeth.”

“You sound like my wife,” the lawyer said.

“I’m Gloria Stephens,” Gloria said. Her stride to him did not betray the way her pounding heart made her knees watery. She outstretched an unsteady hand. “I’m from Gracetown and my brother needs your help.”

John Dorsey shook her hand with a cool palm, only glancing over her face. “Pleasure, miss,” he said. “I’m sorry for your circumstances.” He glanced to Mr. Moore for guidance.

“Juvenile matter,” Mr. Moore muttered. He gave the lawyer a private shake of his head she almost couldn’t see. The lawyer nodded in a way that seemed to sweep Gloria from his sight. His eyes pulled more deeply behind their lashes. He was looking at her and past her.

“Mr. Dorsey’s got a full plate today,” Mr. Moore said to Miz Lottie, as if it were she, not Gloria, who had spoken. “I’ll make some calls for the boy, see what we can do.”

The lawyer rested a light palm across Gloria’s and said, “With a sister like you working for him, I don’t have a worry, Miss Stephens.” Then he squeezed her hand and let her go.

Suddenly his pretty talking offended Gloria the way it surely had offended the dead boy’s cousin. Dismissal lay at the core, just like with Loehmann outside of the Reformatory. They wanted to seem nice, as if niceness could bring Robbie home.

“Robbie needs a lawyer,” Gloria said.

Miz Lottie stood up while Gloria held her steady. “We got up ’fore dawn and drove a long ways, Mr. Dorsey,” Miz Lottie said. “And don’t you worry, Harry—I’m not gonna ask you nothin’ about Bob’s case. Though I’d be lyin’ if I said I don’t have questions ’bout what the hell the NAACP is doing for him.”

Mr. Moore pursed his lips. “Not much we can do… yet, Miz Lottie.” He meant Papa would have to give himself up and stand trial first, or at least get arrested and put in jail.

“Robert Stephens?” the lawyer said to Gloria. “You’re his daughter? Robbie is his son?”

Gloria did not like how many eyes were on them; even the travelers in far corners were watching. Papa had warned her not to claim him in public, even to denounce him when she needed to, though she never had, or would.

“There’s too many people here,” she said quietly.

The lawyer nudged his sugar-choked coffee aside and stood. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Belle’s had a screened-in porch just beyond the kitchen’s back door instead of a yard, crammed with wicker tables and chairs smudged gray by time. Thickets of bougainvillea bushes in bright blooms of dark pink and purple hid the porch from the road, which was busier with passing cars than Main Street in Gracetown. The lawyer settled into the cushion of a throne-like chair next to a table with an ashtray, where he set down his half-burned cigarette. He seemed to be mulling Robbie’s case over. Miz Lottie sat near the lawyer while Mr. Moore paced, checking his watch. A rust-colored, overfed cat took to Gloria and twined between her legs, mewing.

“He got six months,” Gloria said. “Six months for a kick that wasn’t anything.”

“A kick to Red McCormack’s son,” Mr. Moore said, correcting.