Page 94 of The Reformatory

The line was still silent, although the silence was alive. Someone breathing?

“Hello? Doris? This is David Loehmann. I’d like to get Gloria Stephens on the visitors’ log tomorrow.” He sounded less casual the second time, more like reading lines from a script.

“You don’t say.” The voice was a deep-voiced man, not Doris. Not close to Doris.

Breath rose so quickly in Loehmann’s throat that he almost gasped. Haddock! Until that moment, Loehmann hadn’t realized that Fenton Haddock honest-to-God frightened him, but his fingertips tingled across the phone’s receiver. He’d only dealt with the man twice: once to introduce himself, and once to bring a mother’s complaint that her son’s back was scarred from a beating. Both times, Haddock had listened intently and smiled wide, but his pale blue eyes had twinkled with an unsettling blend of bemusement in one blink and barely muted rage in the next. A likely anti-Semite, yes, but Haddock’s eyes brought to mind a word he’d learned in Intro to Psychology at NYU: psychopath.

“Good morning, Supervisor Haddock,” Loehmann said, trying to recover. “I thought Doris must have a frog in her throat.” He had learned in elementary school that even bullies liked jokes. But not this bully. Not that joke. The silence was heavy with irritation. “We’re calling to get Gloria Stephens on tomorrow’s visitors’ log. She wants to see her little brother.”

He added we for extra weight although he knew his boss, Martinson, would string him up for making this call. Everyone had been talking about Gracetown over coffee that morning. The Gracetown NAACP had called to complain about the danger to children at nine o’clock sharp.

Haddock cleared his throat loudly, taking his time—mocking him, Loehmann realized.

Bastard. Haddock’s reformatory was too big, had too much local influence. Made too much money. Even Governor Warren needed a drink when Haddock was on the line, his boss had said.

“Deadline’s passed, I’m afraid,” Haddock said with a smile in his voice.

“I know that, Supervisor,” Loehmann said, although the Reformatory made so many exceptions that it was a deadline in name only. “He’s a good boy, no other trouble, and it feels like Judge Morris overstepped a little here. So we’re asking as a favor to the state of Florida.”

His voice sharpened a bit at the end, when he invoked the state. Martinson would be livid if he had to hop on the phone with Haddock to clean up an unauthorized request. Martinson liked to save his favors.

“Well,” Haddock said, and Loehmann imagined his eyes laughing at him, then glaring, “you know I’m always happy to accommodate the state, Mr. Loehmann. Two o’clock. After church. Tell her don’t be late.”

Loehmann exhaled with a silent prayer. “Thank you, Supervisor. She might bring an old woman with her too. We appreciate—”

The Reformatory superintendent hung up before Loehmann could finish. Loehmann pushed his chair away from his desk to give himself a foot’s distance from the telephone.

Despite the growing heat in his office from the morning sunlight filling his east-facing windows, he felt chilled to his toes.

Gloria had no time to celebrate the news of her two o’clock visiting time before a knock came at Miss Anne’s front door. When the knock sounded, Gloria had barely finished the toast and orange juice Miss Anne had fixed for her at the kitchen table. Disdained, Miss Anne looked at the clock on the stove: nine thirty. Too early for salesmen and too late for the milkman.

“Someone gonna get that?” Ma Ma yelled from upstairs, excited and confused by the knocking. “Daisy’s come home! Someone let Daisy in the house!”

Gloria wondered if one day she would be like Ma Ma, an old woman always missing Robert long after he was gone. “I’ll go shush her,” Gloria said from habit, standing up.

Miss Anne turned back to her from the doorway. “No,” she said firmly. “Stay here.”

Gloria sat again. Her chair gave her a clear view down the empty hallway to the living room, but the front door was out of sight to the right. Miss Anne scurried back into her view from the hidden foyer and raised her finger to her lip for Gloria to see: Shhhhh. Then she ducked back to open the door.

“How are you, Bird?” Miss Anne said loudly.

The sheriff! Gloria jumped to her feet and scurried farther out of sight, her back to the refrigerator door. She jumped when the teakettle on the stove whistled behind her. She reached over to shut off the burner so quickly that she nearly seared her arm on the hot kettle.

“Been better, tell you the truth,” the sheriff said. Was he in the house? Would Miss Anne be clueless enough to offer him coffee or tea?

“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Miss Anne said. “Fred told me what he was up to last night, and we’ll pay for any property damage. He’s upstairs sleeping off whatever he was drinking. It sounds like a whole bunch of them were up to no good.”

“Actually, Anne… I’m not here about Fred. I’m looking for Gloria Stephens. They say she works here as your house girl.”

Gloria felt rocked. Wasn’t it enough he’d just seen her on her front porch at dawn? Or had he been afraid to make her go with him then? Maybe he’d waited until she left. Maybe a deputy had followed her when Uncle June dropped her off at Miss Anne’s in the truck.

“Is she in some kind of trouble?” Miss Anne said.

“No, but other lawmen are burnin’ up my line after last night, and they say I’d better ask her where her daddy’s at. Right now, this whole thing’s a lost ball in the high weeds. If folks in town feel like I can’t bring them justice, they try to get it their own way.”

The cold seeping through the refrigerator door froze Gloria in place. She wanted to run, but she expected a deputy’s knock at the kitchen door behind her.

“He rode off and left them in the night,” Miss Anne said. “I’m sure she has no idea.”