Just past the gate, the smell of smoke was so strong that Robert cranked up his window. He looked for signs of fire in the woods and outbuildings but saw none. Still, he nearly gagged on the smell. The taste of sour eggs played on his tongue.
“Where’s that smoke at?” Robert said.
Mr. Loehmann gave him a blank glance. The closer they came to the paved circular driveway in front of the nearest brick building—and they were upon it in no time—the more Loehmann’s face hardened into a mask more like the deputy’s. The invisible smoke fed the sick feeling in Robert’s stomach: no longer hunger, but far worse.
“You know how to cook?” Loehmann said.
“I can boil rice and scramble eggs.” Gloria had taught him since Papa left. She complained it wasn’t fair she had to spend half her day cooking and then cook for him too.
“Then be sure to say so. Kitchen’s not a bad job, and Negro boys work the kitchen. That way, you won’t be out in the sun.”
Could that be where the smoke was from? The kitchen? But, no—it smelled like burning, not cooking. Like the woods were ablaze all around them. Or the school itself. But Robert did not ask Loehmann again. How could Loehmann not smell it?
Maybe he was only smelling smoke because it was summer, when things that weren’t real had a smell, or a taste. Or made strange sounds. Usually, children’s summer sights and smells went away if you ignored them. That was how Gloria said it was for her, before she got too old to notice them as much. Summertime was when the haints came out. Did some haints smell like smoke?
They rolled up to a circular driveway, and the Reformatory’s main building appeared as if the windshield were a picture show screen. The building was two stories high, with tall windows and a coat of green vines almost covering the brick walls. The vines looked like a beard beneath two windows on the top floor that stared like hollow eyes.
Robert had never seen a building that looked so alive—waiting for him, even. This was a bad place, and this building was the heart of the badness.
Robert expected Loehmann to race away from the driveway to protect him, but instead the car stopped and Loehmann turned off his radio. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a billfold. He slipped out a small white card and gave it to Robert. “Should’ve given this to your sister, but that’s my number. You need me, call me.”
“But—” You can’t leave me here by myself, he wanted to say, but he didn’t have time before Loehmann was out of the car and gesturing for Robert to slide out after him, one last scoot across the sweat-damp leather. Robert touched the shiny steering wheel and tapped his boot on the gas pedal, wishing the engine were still running. Then he was standing outside, the adventure over. The rest was coming.
Robert’s pants didn’t have pockets, and he was sure he wouldn’t be allowed to wear Papa’s mill shirt. He saw a few white boys laying bricks on the side of the building, their rhythm quick and sure, and their shirts were identical gray. Robert gave the card the barest glance—David R. Loehmann, State of Florida Children’s Services—and slipped it into his boot, snug in his sock. Maybe it would be safe there. Maybe he could keep hold of one thing.
Six wide brick steps led inside the Gracetown School for Boys. The front room was large, like a museum. A portrait of Florida governor Fuller Warren stood high on the wall, a face he knew from an identical portrait in his school hallway. Mr. Harris had told his class the governor had made a speech against the Klan. (“If that ain’t the pot callin’ the kettle black,” Papa had said.) In his portrait, at least, he had kind eyes. Beside the portrait, a large glass case showed off photographs of smiling white boys, trophies, and football pennants.
Below the trophy case was a sofa long enough to stretch across half his house end to end.
Beside the sofa was the biggest radio Robert had ever seen, with a wooden cabinet at least twenty years old, standing on four legs like furniture. The radio was silent, but Robert imagined he would hear it all the way back to the gate.
Robert stared at the radio so long that he almost didn’t notice the white woman at her desk near a closed door. The woman had brown-red hair piled atop her head and wore matching eyeglasses. Loehmann went to her and tipped his hat.
“Mornin’, Doris. This is the boy from Judge Morris,” he said. “Robert Stephens.”
She waved a sheet of paper. “Don’t bother with section B.”
Loehmann leaned over and began scribbling. “Can’t do much with A either.”
“That won’t matter none,” she said. “Superintendent Haddock will take care of it. This the one who kicked Lyle McCormack?” She craned to look at Robert, whose heart throbbed when he heard Lyle’s name. Did everyone know?
Seeing him, her eyebrows jumped with surprise. She grinned. “This scrawny little nigger? Red’s called over here twice already, and you should hear him wailing about Lyle and football camp. Like Lyle just boxed a round with Joe Louis himself.”
“I expect Robert’s got the worst of it,” Loehmann said, still writing. Robert had noticed his hand pause when the woman said nigger, but he’d started up writing again.
The woman wagged her fountain pen at Robert, her grin gone. “What was in your thick head? I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree.”
She was talking about Papa! Robert’s rage from McCormack Road returned. “Lyle McCormack pushed me first,” he said, the way he wished he had in front of the judge—though maybe not as loudly. “Ma’am.”
The woman looked startled, then her face pinched with anger. She glanced back at Loehmann. “They’ll teach him how to behave here. That’s one thing certain.”
Loehmann handed the form back to her. “Oh—he cooks.”
The woman punched a button and leaned over a speaker on her desk. “He’s here, Superintendent Haddock. The one you’ve been waiting for. Robert Stephens.”
Loehmann didn’t meet Robert’s eyes. Instead, he patted Robert’s back—once, twice, three times—and was gone.
The smoky smell grew stronger when Robert opened the warden’s door.
Tremors raced up and down Robert’s legs as he walked into Fenton J. Haddock’s office, making him cling to the doorknob to stay upright. The tall window behind his desk gave the office so much raw sunlight that Haddock was a silhouette before him, as if he had no face. He felt as big as the cigarette-choked room, the tallest man Robert had ever seen.
“Go’n—close it behind you,” Haddock said, his low voice scraping the floor.
Robert was so quick to comply that the door slammed. Robert’s bladder pulsed in a way it had not since he was younger. He prayed he wouldn’t pee, tightening his legs to prevent it.
Haddock pointed toward a rug beside his bookshelf. “Lemme get a look at you.”
Robert prayed that he could walk without stumbling or peeing as he shuffled to the green-and-brown braided rug, keeping his eyes so low he could barely see in front of him. The rug’s pattern looked like railroad tracks. His heart shook his ribs.
“Candy?” Haddock said.
Robert was confused until he looked up and saw a crystal candy jar at the edge of the desk, brimming with wrapped red-and-white mints like the ones Miz Lottie brought to church to keep him from squirming with boredom.
“Go on. Take one,” Haddock said, more a command than an offer, so Robert took a mint and held it in his palm, squeezing tight. It didn’t occur to him to open the wrapper or try to slip it into his mouth. He couldn’t help believing the kindness was a kind of trick, and he didn’t think he could produce enough moisture in his mouth to suck on the candy anyway.
Haddock sat atop his desk with his knee hiked high, smoking his cigarette a long while. His face was narrow and hollowed at the cheeks when he took a draw. Robert looked away from him so he wouldn’t be accused of staring. A small family portrait on the bookshelf looked a hundred years old, in an oval frame like the ones Mama liked to hang: a white family in old-fashioned dress crowded on a sofa in a sitting room—a man, a woman, and a reedy young boy with an infant girl in a dressing gown in his lap. The baby girl faced forward, but her eyes were closed; she was sleeping against the boy’s chest. The photo was cheerless. For a reason Robert couldn’t name, the faces made him so uneasy that he snatched his eyes away.
“I oughta give you twenty lashes—I promised Red I would—but I’ve got a headache and I don’t need the hollerin’,” Haddock said. For the first time, Robert noticed the thick leather strap hanging on the wall behind Haddock’s desk, big enough to drive a mule. Maybe he had seen it from the start, but he hadn’t let himself see it before.
Robert tried to say Yessir but he couldn’t push air to his throat. Papa said if he stumbled across a panther or injured wild hog in the woods, sometimes the only thing to do was stand frozen. That was how he felt, facing off against a creature that could maul him.
“Doris, she don’t care for the hollerin’. Says she can’t hear herself think. Sometimes she’ll get up and go out to the church or take a walk and won’t come back for an hour just to be sure the beating’s done.” Haddock smiled. “Sure enough, sometimes it ain’t. Not by a ways.” He took a long drag on his cigarette.
Was it a game to Haddock, trying to make him cry? Would the strap come off the wall if he did? Don’t cry. Don’t pee. Don’t look. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Haddock sat quietly a moment while his office clock ticked tiny explosions. “You see that sign above the door? Can you read?”
“Yessir.” Robert looked for the words seared into a glossy board of wood. He had trouble making out the letters.
“Read that sign to me.”
Was it possible to forget letters of the alphabet? As Robert tried to read the words, the shapes looked like nonsense. The script was odd, with strange flourishes. Icy sweat sprang across his face and chest. His legs quaked. “H-he that…”
“Speak up.”
Robert tried to huff air past his shrinking throat. “ ‘He that spareth…’ ” It was a Bible passage, from Proverbs! He knew it from Sunday school. The rest tumbled out nearly from memory: “ ‘… his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.’ ”
“Well, how ’bout that?” Haddock said. “You read pretty.”
“I l-learnt it in church, sir.” Too late, Robert remembered Miz Lottie’s warning not to let anyone know how smart he was. “I c-could barely see them words up there.”
“Here’s what that sign really says in plain English: as an officer of the state, I will beat you bloody and sleep like a babe at night because it will make you a better man. God himself says so. Do you understand?”
“Y-yessir.”
Haddock stood up and walked a step closer to Robert with each growling sentence that spilled from his lips. “This reformatory is my domain. And in my domain, there is no swearing, no sassing, no unruly or disrespectful behavior of any kind. Every man is ‘sir’ and every woman is ‘ma’am.’ You do what you’re told when you’re told to do it, or your back will be full of stripes. And if you try to run away…” He paused, rage passing across his face and lips. His eyes stared through Robert to a faraway place Robert never wanted to follow him to. His voice went quiet, like a pastor’s during prayer. “… not only will I keep you here until you’re twenty-one, but you will be beset by dogs, clubs, or bullets. You will surely wish you’d never been born.”
Robert blinked furiously to try to stop his tears, but one slipped free down his cheek. He lost his battle with his bladder and felt hot urine wash his thighs. He thanked the Lord his shirt was so long; maybe Haddock wouldn’t see. Please don’t let it drip down to the floor. Please don’t let it muss his rug. Could Haddock hear his heart thrashing? Haddock breathed smoky breath down on him.
“You hear me?”
“Yessir.” A whisper was all Robert could manage.
“I’m your last chance, boy,” Haddock said. “A Negro child who’ll kick a white man will grow up to poison society and his own race. If he grows up. Getting sent here is the luckiest thing could have happened to you.”
“Yessir.”
Haddock gave Robert a long look. Then he walked to a shelf in the rear of his office and pulled down a gray shirt, a tie, and dungarees. While Haddock’s back was turned, Robert desperately checked himself to see if any pee had dripped down to the floor. He felt moisture down to his socks. But not on the rug. Not the rug, thank God.
“You get one set of clothes and one set only. You lose or muss these clothes, you get a whupping. You’ll get your Sunday shirt in your dorm. You wear the tie to church. You lose the tie, you get a whupping. Understand?”
“Yessir.”
The long pause confused Robert while Haddock waited. “Well, go’n, then. Strip down.”
Robert had never undressed in front of anyone who wasn’t family except the doc when he had chicken pox blisters all over his body. He fumbled to untie his boots first. Next he unbuttoned his pants, relieved that Haddock was still behind him and would not see any stains. Better to strip buck naked than to let the warden see the mess he’d made. He quickly pulled down his pants, wiping down dampness as he went; he hadn’t had time to find his drawers before the deputy came, so he wasn’t wearing any. He balled the pants on the floor, beyond the rug’s border. Papa’s shirt still nestled him, but Robert saw with horror that urine had carved bright brown trails down his ashy legs. Could Haddock smell it?
“I said strip down. Everything except your socks.”
The buttons of his shirt nearly broke as Robert tugged at them. He dropped his shirt atop his pants on the floor. The cold gooseflesh across Robert’s skin had nothing to do with the hot room. Every part of him was shaking now, not just his legs.
“Bend over. Spread your cheeks. Hurry up, now.”
Robert started to bend right away, blood rushing to his head, but the words spread your cheeks had no meaning. His hands felt ready to shake loose. “S-sir, what…?”
“Your ass cheeks, boy. Gimme a look-see. Make sure you’re not hiding nothin’.”
Robert trembled like he might have if he were naked in the snow. He hoped the lady at the desk outside would not come inside and no one would see him through the windows. While he struggled to grip his skin with slippery fingers, holding himself in this unnatural way, he remembered the card in his sock and wondered if Haddock would find it. Should he say something now? Would Haddock beat him if he didn’t? Or if he did?
“All right, turn around,” Haddock said.
Robert turned slowly, his hands falling to hide himself, his heartbeat a flurry. “You’re not big enough to be worth a damn to me,” Haddock said, half to himself.
“I… I c-cook, s-sir.” All he could remember was Loehmann’s last words: He cooks.
Anything to take this man’s attention away from his bare skin.
For the first time, Haddock looked pleased. “That right?”
“Yessir. A little.”
Haddock stared at Robert a long while. What was he looking for now?
Haddock suddenly tossed the pile of clothes to him, and Robert caught everything except the tie, which fell to the side. When his genitals were exposed, Haddock’s stare deepened and the air in the room grew nearly too heavy to breathe. Papa would not like this one bit. Or Gloria.
Robert thought of Papa’s stories of slaves being carried from Africa, sold at market like hogs. “There’s a pair o’ drawers inside the dungarees,” Haddock said, still studying him.
“Yessir.”
Robert found thin blue boxer shorts, like Papa wore, and slipped them on so fast he nearly lost his balance. He could breathe more easily once the boxers were on. They were a little big too, like the dungarees and shirt, but not as big as his boots. After he’d slipped his boots back on his feet—his socks were a little damp, but not too bad—he carefully picked up the tie and folded it the way he’d seen Papa fold his on Sundays, laying it across his arm. He grabbed the bundle of soiled clothes with his other arm and held them against his hip, hoping the pee wouldn’t smell or stain his new, fresh-smelling clothes. Every motion held his hope that Haddock would not be displeased or find a reason to grab his strap.
“I’m gonna call over to one of your dorm masters to take you to class. School’s in session for another hour. Then you’ll go straight to the kitchen. But don’t lose that tie.”
“No, sir. I won’t.”
Haddock rubbed his temples. “This headache’s got the upper hand now, but I’ll give you your twenty lashes. You just won’t know when, day or night.”
Robert didn’t answer. His tears tried to return. How could he sleep knowing that Haddock might come to beat him at any time?
Haddock walked toward his door. He stopped before the bookshelf with the framed family photo Robert had noticed. “You were lookin’ at this?”
“I…” A lie tried to sprout—What if he wasn’t supposed to?—but Robert told the truth. “Yessir. I saw it.”
“This here’s my family. That boy is me when I was just six years old. Holding my sister.” His voice grew gentle. “June of 1900, so it’s fifty years ago now, almost to the day. But it could’ve been last week, as well as I remember it. Mama wanted to hold her, but she wasn’t up to it. They hired a photographer from town, made a big to-do. That was the tradition back then, or no one would remember your face. I was the only one strong enough. The only one.” Haddock looked over his shoulder at Robert with the same storm in his face Robert had seen when he warned him against running away. “Truth was, I never wanted a baby sister.”
An icy sting shot across Robert’s skin. The smell of smoke choked him again—not cigarette smoke, but the terrible charred smell that had met him at the gate. Robert squeezed the peppermint in his fist more tightly, waiting for something terrible he could not name.
Haddock went to his door and opened it to call out. “Doris, tell Boone to come fetch him. And bring me some Bayer’s. Cancel my one o’clock call, hear?”
“Yessir, Superintendent Haddock,” he heard the woman say, chipper.
Robert dared one last look at the photograph, at the infant in the dressing gown, eyes closed tight. Yes, something was terribly wrong with the photo, every piece of it. The mother’s eyes were wild with grief. The father’s face looked whittled to the bone. Only young Fenton Haddock wore the barest trace of a smile. Robert finally understood what he had almost seen at first glance: the limp baby sister Haddock hugged to his chest was dead.