Page 76 of The Reformatory

Gloria jumped at his outburst. Miz Lottie grabbed her hand, squeezing tight. Her bones were knotty and felt nearly bare of flesh. Miz Lottie was halfway to a skeleton already.

“We are all agreed on that, Your Honor,” John Dorsey said.

“Funny how it don’t look that way.” Judge Morris gestured toward Gloria. “She’s here telling me—what? Lyle grabbed you and kissed you? Well, good for you: you’re the envy of every white girl at Gracetown High, my daughter included.” Gloria winced at his mocking distortion, unable to answer. Her face burned.

“It wasn’t that,” she whispered, but trying to explain felt dangerous.

“She has the nerve to be sitting here with her lip quivering when her daddy’s a fugitive for forcible rape of a white woman? And y’all must know where he is—probably each and every one of you in here. Bird would love a meeting with y’all too.” His threat to call the sheriff sucked oxygen from the room. Would he send an old woman to jail to try to get her to talk about Papa’s telephone calls? Try to learn the address of the friend who took in Papa’s mail? Gloria wondered if she would say the address if someone beat her hard enough and she were out of her mind with pain.

John Dorsey was the first to gather words. “Your Honor, we’re not harboring Robert Stephens Senior. We’re only here on behalf of the son.” Quiet wariness steadied his voice.

Judge Morris studied them one by one. He scolded Gloria with his eyes before looking away. “I’ll spend my lunch hour with anyone who’s interested in peace, whites and nigras alike—but y’all do not want to go to war. Not with me. Y’all hear me?”

They all nodded and assured him they had heard.

“All right, then.” Judge Morris took off his glasses. “You ask me, Sheriff McCall is a showboat who likes the sound of his name. But he called Bird asking why Robert Stephens hasn’t been brought to justice when he had to catch four. And seems like the NAACP would rather set every rapist loose.”

“No, Your Honor,” John Dorsey said. “We choose which cases to back very carefully. Only cases where we strongly believe the defendant is innocent.”

“Like men who had confessions beat out of ’em in Sheriff McCall’s jail,” Mr. Moore said. “Or got hunted down and shot like a wild dog in the woods—” He stopped in mid-thought. Maybe John Dorsey had stomped on his foot.

Judge Morris’s face tightened. The unspoken words scalded Gloria’s mouth: Just ask and you’ll find out Papa didn’t do what that girl told the sheriff. Just ask Miss Anne. Just ask Channing. Go ask the girl herself when no one’s there to scare her.

But she had seen how angry he got the last time she spoke the truth, so the unspoken words scarred her tongue and filled her eyes with tears. If she called that white woman a liar now, Robbie might never go free.

“Boy,” Judge Morris said to Mr. Moore, “don’t mistake my remark about Sheriff McCall as an invitation to slander. That jury spoke. Don’t try to re-litigate that case in my chambers.”

A pause came before Mr. Moore said, “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

Mr. Moore had unsettled the judge, who flipped through his pad, not pausing for reading. “So now I suppose y’all will come back to try to speak up for Robert Stephens Senior. Or send Thurgood Marshall. Get us in all the papers too.” Gloria’s heart leaped. Thurgood Marshall himself defending Papa?

“Thurgood hasn’t been briefed on the particulars of Robert Stephens Senior’s case just yet,” John Dorsey said as soon as her hope rose. “But, Your Honor, since you brought it up…” Judge Morris waited for him to go on. “One of our concerns is that with feelings running so hot about Robert Stephens Senior, it’ll affect the boy’s stay at the Reformatory. I’m sure the superintendent does everything he can, but—”

“Might be safer in there,” Judge Morris said. “You think of that?”

Mr. Moore cleared his throat, a reflex. His tongue must be hurting his mouth too.

“I’ve thought of it,” John Dorsey said placidly, “but we believe he’s much better off with loved ones. It feels like this thing is a spat between neighbors—kids, really. It’s not the boy’s fault it’s tied to so much else.”

Judge Morris sighed, rubbing his forehead. For the first time, he checked his oddly shaped clock, its whip threatening to strike. It was already twelve forty-five, almost the end of his lunch hour. He folded up his foil over his stripped chicken bones and tossed it into his wastebasket. Then he swiveled his chair to gaze out of his tall window at Main Street below, past the ancient, gnarled branches of the hanging tree.

“I was born and reared in Gracetown,” Judge Morris said. “My father opened the five-and-dime when this town was hardly more than a dirt road on the way to Tallahassee. These are good people who’ve worked hard to make Gracetown worth something. We’re not Lake County. Bird isn’t Sheriff McCall.” He seemed to need to hear them say how much Gracetown was different.

“I was born and reared in Gracetown too,” Miz Lottie said. “I was kin to Claude Neal just over the way in Marianna.” The judge’s chair squeaked as he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. His lips were pinned tight, nearly gray. Harry T. Moore’s breath fluttered with a quiet sigh. In the 1930s, Claude Neal had been lynched after he was accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Miz Lottie had told Gloria about it after Papa left.

“One thing I’ve learned,” Miz Lottie went on. “Everything seems fine until it ain’t. And then we come to see it wasn’t never ‘fine.’ ”

“No good citizen of Jackson County is proud of that past,” he said. “But it’s the past. It’s done with. No one strung Robert Stephens by a tree, did they? Everyone forgets how Flake tried to keep Claude from harm, even got him out of town—” He stopped, voice hitching. He searched their faces and gave up on helping them understand. White and colored in Gracetown had never been easy since Claude Neal. In Marianna, anyone bearing his name had fled.

She should have fled too, Gloria thought. Papa should have taken them with him. No one had accused him of murder, but he should have known his family wouldn’t be safe.

The judge stood up. As if they were in a courtroom, Gloria and Miz Lottie rose to their feet with him. Gloria watched the judge’s face, looking for signs of mercy or anger. His smile returned, but it wasn’t a smile meant for promises.

“This has been quite a visit,” he said, as if they had only come for a casual lunch. “Mighty nice talking to all of you folks. I don’t want my town in the headlines, but if Thurgood Marshall’s ever passing this way, Attorney Dorsey, I’d like to know what’s he like in person.” He was asking about Thurgood Marshall as if he were Joe Louis.

For the first time, John Dorsey seemed surprised. “Depends on whether you see him in the courtroom or at the bar after.”

Judge Morris laughed, his eyes sparking. “You know, I’d heard that,” he said. “I heard he’s a man you’d want to have a drink with. Too bad Gracetown is dry.” And even if it weren’t, Gloria thought, where could a white judge and Negro lawyer drink together?