The reformatory, p.49
The Reformatory, page 49
Haddock was probably chasing him by now, releasing the dogs from their kennel. Soon Robert was crying from the horror of what he’d done and the hopelessness of trying to run. His legs buckled and he tumbled down, skinning both of his knees white in the fall. The haint jar landed so hard that he was afraid he’d broken it, so he rifled quickly through the satchel to be sure it was intact. It was all there: the slightly wrinkled drawing of Redbone, the tied pack of photos, the jar of ash. Nothing was broken or lost, except maybe him.
“Blue!” he called out to the sky. “You here? Which way do I go?”
A crow cawed from above. Robert looked up: a single crow he hadn’t noticed before circled him like a buzzard waiting on him to die. If not for what Blue had told him, Robert would have thought it was bad luck and shooed the big crow away. He couldn’t stop imagining the crows gathered near the slaughtered hog the last time he’d been with Redbone.
“Is that you?” Robert called. He expected the crow to land near him and take a human form, but instead it flew ahead… and then circled back, a shadow passing over him. Almost like an ordinary crow, but not quite. The crow was trying to lead him. It was Blue! Or seemed to be. Crows had always looked ugly and fearful to Robert, but this one had jet-black feathers that shined in the sun, and it struck him that crows had always been lovely. This one was, anyway.
That was enough to get Robert back on his feet and dry his eyes. Robert followed the soaring crow toward the woods.
* * *
The longer Fenton Haddock waited for someone to find Robert Stephens to take care of his newest haint problem, the more he was convinced something was badly, badly wrong. The certainty was an itch in his brain, the voice of his younger self—his less disciplined self—that whispered his worst thoughts to him. You let them get the best of you, the voice said. They’re all making a fool of you. You should’ve let these burn too.
His staff had blocked off the cafeteria door because it was so smoky inside, so dozens of waiting boys were sitting in the grass, organized by dormitory, waiting for sandwiches the kitchen crew was working on from folding tables hastily set up against the wall. Boone said no one else had been hurt in the fire, but Boone was calling off names from his ledger just the same, getting a head count. No boy ever missed dinner unless he was up to no good.
And Robert Stephens was still nowhere in sight. Haddock watched for Stephens as every new boy streamed toward the cafeteria, but he did not come.
Crutcher had gone looking for Stephens at the dormitory, but Haddock didn’t trust Crutcher to the task alone, so he’d sent a couple of other dorm masters out to drive around the campus and look for Stephens too. Boone said he hadn’t given him a pass to the white side of the campus, so he shouldn’t have been so hard to find—unless he didn’t want to be found. Had Stephens taken advantage of the excitement to try to disappear? The voice inside him posed an even more alarming question: Did Stephens set the fire somehow so he could run? What if a haint hadn’t set it at all? The plan seemed cunning and far-fetched for a boy of twelve, but Haddock couldn’t let go of it easily. The thought made him so nervous that he patted his back pocket for his billfold to find the spare cigarette and matchbook he kept hidden in the folds.
The cigarette was crumpled and stale, but he never kept fresh ones because he didn’t like the way cigarettes made him cough at night, no matter what the doctors in the radio ads promised about the new filters. His parents had smoked and then coughed themselves to death by the time they were sixty, so doctors be damned. But a jolt of nicotine cleared his mind, so from time to time Haddock allowed himself one spare so he could get enough of what he needed but not enough to like it. The cigarette was so deformed that he could barely light it, but it finally took.
Haddock had almost slid his billfold back in his pocket when he remembered his ritual of checking the zippered change compartment where he kept his spare desk key. His main key was snug on the ring strung to his belt, where he touched it at least a dozen times a day, but he checked on his spare only when he used his billfold.
The compartment was empty. His spare desk key was gone.
Haddock’s lips pulled apart so fast that the cigarette fell to the grass. Haddock tried to slow his quickening heart by quizzing himself calmly on when he might have last used the key; no more than a couple of days could have passed since he’d seen it. Had he left it on his dresser at home? Spilled it out with the change he’d put in the change jar on his kitchen counter? Had his wife been rifling through his wallet and pulled it aside without knowing what it was? He’d slapped her more than once for touching his things, so he doubted she would have the nerve. But it was possible—wasn’t it? Because where else—
The smoky smell that clung to his clothes and hair answered his question. If a haint had started the fire, couldn’t a haint also have stolen his key? Kendall Sweeting had already pulled his photos out of his drawer more than once, before Boone laid his trap. What if…?
“Shit,” Haddock said, all calm stripped from his mind. The day’s events felt inextricably linked in such an obvious way that Haddock didn’t need to hear the voice in his head say, He’s made a damn fool of you. And you better do something about it.
Haddock ran for his truck, which was still parked near the kitchen door. He gestured for Boone, who put down his clipboard and stopped his roll call. Haddock was in a hurry, so Boone hurried too. Haddock wished he had ten men like him.
“I don’t think any of this is an accident,” Haddock said as he drove across the grass to the field that led to the administration building, the truck going so fast that even Boone looked uneasy. “I need to check something in my office… then we’re gonna find Robert Stephens ourselves.”
“I would’ve seen Stephens by the kitchen,” Boone said, not yet understanding, but Haddock didn’t have time to broaden his thinking. No, Stephens probably had not set the fire; in fact, he’d been smart enough to steer clear of the kitchen altogether. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t had anything to do with it—that he hadn’t helped coordinate it in some fashion. Haddock had ordered Cleo to kill Redbone to break Stephens and motivate him to trap haints without lies or disobedience—but what if Stephens really was like his daddy at his core? What if he made plans instead of getting scared? Stephens was only twelve, but Haddock had learned not to underestimate children the same way he knew never to underestimate Negroes.
He hoped he hadn’t underestimated this one.
Doris stood up behind her desk, startled, when Haddock and Boone came bursting in from outside. The woman he’d been scheduled to interview as a schoolteacher was also in the lobby, her mouth in a surprised O at the sight of them. Business as usual in Haddock’s office.
No accusations or repulsion in their eyes. No sign of the sheriff. No photographs in view. “Is everything all right?” Doris finally said.
Haddock slowed his pace, holding his arm out to bar Boone from moving so quickly. In the small room, Haddock realized how they both reeked from the fire. He could only hope he had no ash on his face as he forced a grin. “Someone left a burner on and we got some smoke,” he said. “Everything’s fine now. The boys are eating dinner as usual.”
Doris’s shoulders sagged with relief. She relied on this job to put food on her family’s table, like all of the Reformatory’s employees. That was the thing none of the Tallahassee blowhards wanted to consider: Without the Reformatory, where would the town get its corn? Who would run the printing press? He wasn’t just trying to protect himself: the Reformatory was like a town unto itself, and his town could perish. It could perish today.
He shook the woman’s hand and apologized for being tardy, asking if she wouldn’t mind coming back on Monday. He even assured her the job was probably hers, and the way her face lit up put his mind even more at ease. As he reached for his main key ring to unlock his office door, Haddock heard Doris offering appointment times, so he gave Doris a warm smile over his shoulder and she smiled back at him, her ears turning pink at his rare affection.
But his smile died as soon as he opened the door. “Come in,” he whispered to Boone, and he quickly closed the door behind him. Something was wrong, but at first glance Haddock couldn’t have said what, even at gunpoint. He scanned every corner, trying to spot it.
“Stay here,” Haddock said to Boone, leaving him standing close to his photo with Lucy.
When Haddock walked closer to his desk, he saw that his screen had been removed from his window and propped against the back wall. The curtains swayed enough to remind him that he’d left his window wide-open. He usually closed his window when he left his office for long periods, but not always. And not if he didn’t expect to be gone long.
Haddock ran behind his desk and saw the specter that had dogged his nightmares for thirty years: his bottom drawer yawned and the space behind his bottle crate was a dark, empty maw. He leaned over and felt inside to make sure it was empty. Quickly, he tugged on the other drawers to check them. Had a haint only moved his things around to scare him?
No. Nothing. The haint jar was gone. Even worse: his photographs were gone.
“Boss?” Boone finally said, worried.
“Someone broke into my office,” Haddock said. “Stole the haint jar.”
“Jesus, help,” Boone said, more frightened than outraged. Ordinarily, he’d come up with a plan to flush out the thief and how to punish him—but, like Haddock, Boone wasn’t assuming the burglar was living. What did you do if the burglar was a haint?
“Jesus ain’t got nothin’ to do with this, Boone,” Haddock said. He went to his window and looked outside at his limited view: he could see only the cornfield fence and a small swath of the campus that included the shed, about thirty yards down.
The shed! Crutcher said he had seen Robert Stephens near there.
Boone had walked closer behind him. “Came in through the window!” Boone sounded relieved when he saw the discarded screen. A window screen probably wouldn’t matter to a haint. “Let’s go see what’s outside.”
Boone’s mind was working more quickly than Haddock’s, and why not? He didn’t know the whole of it, the terror in the missing photographs. Haddock trusted Boone with many of his secrets, but not the worst of them. Nervous perspiration stung Haddock’s eyes, so he mopped his brow with his shirtsleeve and followed his most trusted man outside.
The thief had obviously hidden in the hedges, with fresh footprints—They look like a grown man’s!—between the first three rear windows, leading to Haddock’s. A few leaves had fallen from the shrubs, and scuff marks on the bricks showed how he’d climbed inside.
“I’m gonna call and get you bars for that window, boss,” Boone said, still not understanding that there would be no need for bars across the windows if those photos were made public. If a child had stolen the photos, he had a better chance of finding them, but a grown man might be long gone. Boone was crawling under the hedges like a detective, but Haddock’s rib cage constricted so hard around his lungs that he had to think to breathe.
“These look to me like boot prints, boss, and I bet I know who’s wearing these boots,” Boone said, like a miracle. “Robert Stephens. Just like you were saying before.”
“This big? He’s only twelve—”
“Naw, suh, he had brand-new boots when he came in, so we didn’t have to give him no shoes. They looked big, just like these. Nobody can’t find him, right?”
“Right,” Haddock said, and his lungs opened for a flood of oxygen. “And Crutcher said he was out by the shed! So he can’t be far.”
With his panic receding, Haddock leaned over to examine the soil beneath his window in the patch of sunlight evading the hedges. A scoop of soil was missing near his window, with a lumpy pile of dirt beside it that didn’t look natural. It might be nothing, but—
“Boone,” he said. “Back up. Let me see if something’s buried.”
“Good eye, boss,” Boone said, noticing the apple-sized lump. He gave Haddock room to kneel beside him. Haddock knew better than to pray to God for his photographs, but he prayed just the same to whatever spirit ruled over the Reformatory and fueled the voice that had told him to set the fire: Please let it all be buried here. But whomever he was praying to spat his prayer back at him, because he unearthed only an empty jar of Vaseline with a blue label.
“Stephens!” Boone said. “Crutcher said he was covered in this. What’d he do, grease himself up to slide through your window like a pig at a county fair?”
Slowly, Haddock shook his head. Quick as he was, Boone still didn’t see. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Stephens had broken in at the same time he’d run off to see about the fire.
Haddock’s earlier panic was replaced with rage: this little son of a bitch had somehow staged a distraction while he invaded his private chamber and stole from him. You better make him pay, the voice that had told him to set the 1920 fire rumbled, a voice very much like his own. Make him watch while you spill out his guts. Don’t leave it to somebody else: you better kill this one yourself.
“Ring the big bell and rouse the dog boys,” Haddock said. “Time to hunt.”
5:45 p.m.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this program is for you, not your children,” Jack Webb’s voice said gravely on the radio between the crackles on Miz Lottie’s old receiver in the truck. “The subject is of vital importance to you as parents. This is the story of a vicious man…” The familiar dramatic horn music came on, and then an announcer’s voice: “Fatima cigarettes, best of all cigarettes, brings you… Dragnet.”
Gloria switched the radio off. The music program playing while Miz Lottie had been driving on the main road had soothed her, but she couldn’t abide the tension of a police show while they were idling near the railroad trestle, just off of the deserted gravel road that had jounced them for the last ten minutes of their drive. If Joe Friday were real, he’d be chasing after Robbie right now because the judge said Robbie deserved to be locked up. Even Joe Friday, who never made a mistake, would be on the wrong side of justice in Gracetown.
The creek that ran under the rusting old railroad trestle was so dry that it was mostly a mud puddle with reeds growing high. Gloria hoped the water flowed more like a proper creek closer to the Reformatory to help cover Robert’s scent as he ran. The water near them was so shallow that he would barely splash, and he would leave footprints. And while Robert would be able to climb up the bank to the truck, it was steep for a hurried climb. She wished she had scouted ahead instead of relying on Uncle June’s memory of how it had looked before. With Uncle June and Waymon in jail and the creek so pathetic, Gloria felt certain that the day would end in sorrow. If it all went wrong, she would tell the judge that she had led Robbie and Miz Lottie astray and he should punish her instead. Maybe there was no way for a Negro with fixed ideas to avoid being sent to jail.
“That water sho’ ain’t much,” Miz Lottie said, sharing her thought.
“He’ll get away before anyone even notices.” Gloria kept her fears to herself, since Miz Lottie was sweating too much, her forehead dripping even though all of the windows were down. Worry made the air hotter and thicker. Gloria felt her own cheeks, sure she had a fever.
The truck sputtered and coughed before the engine ticked off. Dammit!
“Don’t worry,” Miz Lottie said, pulling out the key. “Prob’ly the heat. We’ll let her rest.”
“We have to keep it running so we’ll be ready when he comes.”
“Give Ole Suzy a minute or two,” Miz Lottie said. “She’s earned it.”
A mosquito landed on Gloria’s nose and she swatted it away. “I can’t sit here anymore,” she said. The drive hadn’t taken as long as they expected, so they had been waiting for twenty minutes, watching the creek for signs of Robbie through the archway of leaning cypress trees over the creek bed that might have looked majestic on another day. Gloria opened her door and climbed out of the truck and onto the rocky soil on the side of the road. Miz Lottie whistled to her, reaching over the seat to hand her the pearl-handled .22.
“Take it,” Miz Lottie said. “Just in case. But don’t… shoot Robbie.” Even if Gloria hadn’t heard her odd halting speech, she noticed the tremor in Miz Lottie’s hand as the gun passed between them, warm from Miz Lottie’s clasp.
Gloria didn’t ask Miz Lottie what was wrong. Everything was wrong. Before Mama died and she’d seen how brutal life could turn, she would have fretted more over Miz Lottie, but she discovered a frozen piece of her mind reminding her that she couldn’t leave Robbie even if Miz Lottie got dizzy or sick, or even worse. It was too late to change the plan now. Like Miz Lottie had said, Robbie was her sole responsibility now.
“Can you… reach in the back and… hand me June’s canteen?” Miz Lottie said.
Gloria didn’t answer, her face too stony for words. She felt around under the tarp in the far corner, beyond her suitcase, where June kept his Army canteen with the green fabric cover he’d brought back from the war. Gloria took a swallow herself first to moisten her mouth and throat. The water tasted slightly metallic, but it was still cool from Miz Lottie’s kitchen faucet.
“Thank you,” Miz Lottie said primly, her lips pinned, when Gloria handed her the canteen. Gloria knew Miz Lottie could have made a dozen complaints, but instead she only swallowed from the canteen and laid her head back against her seat, her eyes closed. Gloria did not ask Miz Lottie if she was all right because she already knew she wasn’t. But she had to watch the creek.
Gloria walked a few steps down the embankment, trying to find the most obvious path for Robbie that he could climb quickly if dogs were at his heels. She spotted what looked like a deer path winding past jutting roots and weeds not far from the truck. Was it too steep for him?
