The Reformatory

by Tananarive Due

Robert had given up trying to convince his older sister, Gloria, that Mama was visiting him, unless she was just jealous that he still had a piece of her that she didn’t. But it was such a small piece, not even enough to touch or hold.

he was never, ever to wink his eye at a white girl or white woman. Foolishness like that can get you killed, Papa had said.

Florida’s soil is soaked with so much blood, it’s a wonder the droplets don’t seep between your toes with every step,

Papa had seen the body swinging in front of the courthouse, and on that day he decided he could not let white people scare him or he’d be scared all his life.

“Only children can see or hear,” Robert said. “That’s why.”

“If you’re smart, you’ll learn enough to get out and stay out. That place pays the county a good sum for every boy sent there, so you’ve just been sold. Never forget that. They don’t want to send you home. They want any excuse to keep you. Any special problems, any special talents, will mean trouble for you. Try to be invisible.”

David Loehmann didn’t know what had or hadn’t happened outside of Pixie’s that night, but he’d heard a rumor at the courthouse that the girl, Lorraine, hadn’t even been there when the attack supposedly took place, that it was her married boyfriend on the town council who’d beaten her bloody. Heard another rumor that Robert Stephens didn’t frequent Pixie’s, a segregated roadhouse just outside the Gracetown border, either. Which would explain why Sheriff Posey hadn’t scoured the ends of the earth to try to bring Robert Stephens back to Gracetown to face justice. How hard would it be to find him, with his children still living locally?

Blue spoke, hushed. “I’ve seen that white boy. The one with the knife?”

“They keep coming back,” Redbone said. “I bet haints get hungry, huh, Blue?”

So they just all see ghosts?

Lord, let no one harm him from this realm or another. Spare him, Lord.

“A blood sickness. Too much killing and dying. Too many restless spirits. Angry spirits. You think ghosts walk in the summer in ev’ry town? You think creatures steal children in the swamp down in Miami, or Palm Beach? Or leeches nest inside babies over in Tallahassee? Maybe it’s a curse on us—a town named for Grace that don’t act like no godly place.”

’Cuz, see, colored folks fighting for what’s theirs is like a virus to white folks—and they kill a virus so it don’t spread.

Gloria barely heard him. Her hearing was swallowed by the barking, the pounding of her feet on the road, and her frantic heartbeat as she escaped McCormack Farm. She could almost—almost—hear the footsteps of others who had run before her.

Kindred spirits awaited him here: boys who had been afraid of beatings and dogs, whose skin had been torn or charred, whose bones had snapped, spirits circling the site of their shared tragedy. They rose from the stink of the wrong done to them, and he could almost see them in the dark: blinking eyes around, straining to have their faces remembered.

“No one stays nice,” Redbone said. “Best remember it.”

Blue’s stare felt chilling now. Blue’s eyes spoke of something so final and awful that the corn bread lost its taste.

“This sends ’em gone for sure—the way they was s’posed to be gone already,” Boone said. “You can help me find ’em. Finding ’em is part of my job, and I like to do my job well. You do right by me, you won’t have no worries in here.” “Find… who?” “Haints,” Boone said. “Don’t act like you ain’t seen none. You from Gracetown, ain’t you? I know who you is. I know yo’ people.”

“Long as it ain’t been more’n three days, you can draw a haint to a spot where he’s been.

The warden’s real good to me when I bring him ash for his jar. I’m his Collector.”

“You felt the fire. Not all haints are human, Robert. A big enough corruption can be a haint too. Boone said you flinched in those flames like the fire was still burning. Like you could see every face. He knew what you could see as soon as he met you.”

You can’t capture a person’s soul in a jar. The soul belongs to God. This is just what’s left: the parts that should have been gone already. A shadow of the flesh.”

“Say ‘The past belongs in the past. I rebuke evil spirits who dwell in history!’ ”

“Real crows get scared! Crows love pecking at dead things, but they sure don’t love spirits. If you hear a crow near you, you’ll know it’s me.”