The reformatory, p.38
The Reformatory, page 38
“I had a bad dream I couldn’t find it,” Robert confided. He’d tried to forget Sunday night’s dream about shaking the fence until his palms bled, with no way out. He tried not to believe the dream was a message from the future, like Gloria said her dreams were sometimes.
“It’ll be there,” Redbone said then, quietly. “Probably. But maybe not yet.” They walked in silence for a while, the bigness of the plan rattling their heads.
“We should use a code to talk about it,” Redbone said, “like Joe Friday. Starting now.”
“Good idea.”
The silence became solemn while they thought about it. Operation Freedom and Project Escape wouldn’t work, but those were Robert’s only ideas. He was too excited to think of others.
“Christmas,” Redbone said. “That’s what we’ll say.”
“I sure can’t wait ’til it’s Christmas!” Robert said, raising his voice so that it skated across the water of the empty pool behind them. They both laughed, although Redbone smothered his laughter behind his arm to leave no witnesses.
Robert suddenly missed Blue—the old Blue. If the old Blue were here, he would push the joke further and further, and laughing from his tummy would feel good. But they stopped laughing at the same time. The living weren’t allowed to play the same games as the dead.
“He’s not gonna let you,” Redbone said quietly.
“Who?” Robert said, although he knew.
“He’s not gonna let you run off ’til you do what he says first.”
Robert glanced around again, and no one else was in sight except the haint sitting in the bleachers. He had changed position, from center left to dead center, sitting at the top. He wasn’t a regular boy for sure, since he moved too fast, but could he be Blue in disguise?
“Who says he even knows?” Robert said.
Redbone gave him a look: biting, almost angry. Then he sighed. “Come on.”
“Did he say something to you?”
“He knows everything here,” Redbone said. “Everything.”
“Are you gonna tell him?”
“Hell no, but I don’t have to. He probably knew before you did, soon as they drove up. He’s a haint. You thought you could keep a secret from him?”
Embarrassment flashed hot on Robert’s cheeks. He’d misjudged how much he could evade Blue then. What else had he misjudged? Even a small thing would get him caught.
“You better be sure Haddock don’t know too,” Redbone said, lowering his voice when he said the warden’s name.
“No chance,” Robert said, his fervent hope. But what if the guards had searched Miz Lottie’s Bible? What if they had found the drawing and realized it was a map?
“Better hope not,” Redbone said. “I’d rather meet Blue in a bad mood than those dogs.”
Friday seemed like an even more impossible time away. Robert felt dizzy.
They stood at the red clay entrance to the baseball park, facing home base with bleachers on each side of them. The haint was still there—Robert didn’t look closely at his face—but he pretended to scan the places where he saw nothing but empty rows.
“How many haints we got now?” Robert asked Redbone. Anytime they logged an imaginary haint, Robert was hoping to throw Boone off the trail of real haints he’d seen. Blue had warned him not to capture anyone else, and Robert never wanted to see anyone else turned to ash before his eyes.
Redbone flipped through his notebook. “We said three yesterday.”
“I could say I saw one at the pool.”
“So Boone has to crawl out on that diving board to put down his dust,” Redbone said, and they laughed. Laughing felt reckless, so they both stopped right away, looking over their shoulders. Again Redbone’s eyes looked straight past the haint in the bleachers.
“He’s gonna know,” Robert said, realizing he had misjudged Warden Haddock as much as he had Blue. “When there’s no ash pile, he’s gonna know. We can’t do it three or four times: he’ll know after one time. He’ll look me in my face and see with those… those…”
“Those devilish eyes,” Redbone said, and nodded, although they didn’t tell each other their stories about being with Haddock. Neither of them wanted to.
He had to get past Warden Haddock too, not just Blue. His escape was a fairy tale! “You gotta come up with a story and stick with it,” Redbone said. “Say you’re messed up since church. ’Cuz a spirit can’t dwell in God’s house. But you’re praying you’ll feel better.” Ooh, that sounded good! Clever words flew out of Redbone’s mouth like rainwater.
Robert tried the words on, remembering the frightening sight of the haint tumbling end over end down the aisle, shaking the church floor. He could sound convincing to Warden Haddock. He could, if it meant he could run away on Friday. He could even endure the Funhouse again if it meant he could run away on Friday.
“Do you think… I can do it?” Robert said. “Christmas?”
Redbone knocked his head back as if giving it thought for the first time. His pause made Robert’s heart pound. “You damn well better do it,” Redbone said. “ ’Cause now I gotta go too.”
He sounded like he had no choice, almost sad. Annoyed, even.
“Not if you don’t want to,” Robert said. He’d hoped that Redbone would want to come because he was a quick thinker; maybe that was why he’d burned to tell him all along. But the plan might not work for two. Gloria hadn’t said he couldn’t bring someone with him when he ran, but she hadn’t said he could. She’d trusted he would have the good sense not to tell, and Robert felt he’d let her down. But he could have convinced her if he’d had time. He could have.
“You don’t know how it goes here,” Redbone said, his voice still sad. “They’d put me out in the Box. They’d whip me and starve me to try to make me tell where you went. They do it all the time when somebody runs.”
“You could say I didn’t tell you.”
“Wouldn’t matter if you did or didn’t: punishment’s the same. They make you an example. ‘If you run away, this is what happens to your friends.’ ”
The worst of the worst of the worst, Blue had said. Blue had been right: Robert couldn’t think like them enough to imagine how low their wrongdoing could go.
Redbone slapped his forehead with his palm. “Oh, damn. I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“Boone’s been grinning at me, telling me, ‘Have fun!’ I thought he’d been switched with a robot or something, he’s been so nice—” He stopped himself short, his eyes filled with new, scary realizations. “Haddock wants us to be friends.”
“Why?”
“So you’ll think twice about messing up,” Redbone said. “Or running. Trust me, if you get in trouble, I’ll be the one who pays first. You sure you don’t see another haint here? ’Cuz Haddock’s gonna want his ashes, Robert. Remember, they’re already dead.”
The boy in the bleachers was wearing a gray baseball jersey with the number 13 in white.
Robert tried not to look at his face, but he couldn’t help seeing his hair matted to his forehead, his missing jaw glistening red in the sun. Dogs had gotten to him. He was half-eaten. Robert looked away, feeling his throat fighting vomit.
“Blue said I can’t,” Robert said. “He’ll hurt my mama, Bone.”
“Tell your mama to go away,” Redbone said. “She’ll go if you say so.”
“How do you know?”
“Blue told me she has to fight to be here,” Redbone said. “Most times haints can’t go to places they’ve never been—unless there’s an object, like something they owned. That’s you, I guess. But if you tell her to go away, I bet Blue can’t hurt her.”
“Won’t matter. Boone’s haint dust is good for three days. That’s what he said.”
“Boone can’t hardly count to three.”
“Well, he got it from his grandmama, and I bet she can count to a million.”
Redbone stared around him, trying to spot a haint on his own. “Then you better cry your eyes out when you tell Warden Haddock you’re trying your best,” Redbone said.
“Would you tell on me?” Robert almost wanted to say it would be okay to tell if Haddock was hurting him enough, but he was afraid to. He was afraid to ask what the Box was. Or what Boone and Blue had meant when they said the Funhouse wasn’t the worst.
Redbone shrugged. “You never told about Blue, so I’m not gonna tell anything about you, then,” Redbone said. “But if I see any haints, I’m telling where they are—except Blue. And if they punish me too bad…” He didn’t finish. Maybe they were both realizing at the same time that he would tell on Blue if he had no choice. “I’ll do what I have to do. Then maybe I’ll be the new haint catcher. Since maybe your luck ran out.”
Even standing side by side with Redbone, Robert felt miles away from him. He had never felt that way about a friend. And wasn’t Redbone Blue’s friend too? This new, harder kind of friendship cut through his skin like Haddock’s whip.
“What if Blue hurts my mama’s spirit ’cuz of you?” Robert said. “What if he lets Haddock trap her? You should’ve heard the things he said, Bone.”
“I’m not trying to hurt nobody,” Redbone said. “I won’t tell on you—not ever—but I wanna remember who I am when I leave this place. Some boys, they get this look in their eyes and you know they’ll be old men still in this place ’til the day they die. I might go to the Funhouse or stay in the Box a night or two, but I won’t go to the shed, so that’s that. You should be ready to give Blue up too if you have to. Your mama would want you to do it no matter what. She wouldn’t want Haddock to touch you. No mama would want that. We just gotta get by day-to-day.”
Robert knew he could ask about the most terrible places and punishments, but he didn’t want to know. He had vague shapes and outlines in his mind, but he didn’t want to see the pictures hidden in Haddock’s desk even in his head.
“Until Christmas,” Robert said.
“Yeah,” Redbone said, cheerless. “ ’Til Christmas.”
Was Blue’s spirit hovering somewhere near them, invisible? Was that what Redbone had meant when he said Blue knew everything? The next time Robert checked the bleacher, the haint and his mangled face were gone. He had only wanted Robert to see his injury. To be a witness.
“You need to call out for Blue,” Redbone said. “Call him by his real name: Kendall. That’s how you know he’ll come for sure. He told me they love having their names called. He said for them it’s a feeling like we don’t even know about. Like a new life, almost. It’s like hearing it from outer space if someone calls them.”
“Why should I?” Was Redbone already laying a trap for Blue?
“Tell him you’re ready to hear his plan for getting in Haddock’s drawer—a good plan. You have to do what he says, Robert. It’s the only way he’ll let us go.”
* * *
Tuesday night, Redbone and Robert were still wrapped in their bath towels, straight from the shower, when they found Boone waiting in the hall, beckoning for them. They looked at each other—Redbone was as clueless and wary as Robert—and then followed him, dripping down the hall toward the lobby. Robert’s bare foot slipped slightly on the floor as he tried to catch up to him. Boone hadn’t hollered at them with threats about the Funhouse, so maybe it wasn’t that, but Robert thought about how the whip would hurt against wet skin.
In the hall, three boys from the teenage wing stared from a distance in a huddle.
Boone hesitated by the front door as if he were about to walk outside. “Y’all didn’t see no other haints?”
His voice suggested a last chance, but Robert and Redbone both shook their heads. One of the watching teenagers sucked his lip, angry. Robert had never met those older boys, so why did they care? After dinner, Boone had made a ceremony out of sprinkling his haint dust near a brick pile not far from the cafeteria after Robert lied and said he’d seen a haint there. A crowd of boys had waited around him, holding their breath, but Robert had ducked away even though Redbone had whispered that it would be better for him to watch too.
“Did the ash come?” Robert said, trying not to sound like he already knew the answer.
Boone gave Robert such an ugly look that he wanted to give up Blue right then.
“Come on, then,” Boone said, and he opened the door to the twilight.
Robert’s feet were more tender because they were damp, so the sharper stones and twigs poked like straight pins as he kept up a fast pace to follow Boone across the field. All around them, boys with late passes were streaming back to the dormitories. Only Robert and Redbone were walking away from the laughing, away from the rest. The air was soupy and warm, but Robert felt cold in his wet towel, as if everyone were seeing him naked as they stared.
But they were walking away from the Funhouse; that was what mattered. Instead of veering right, Boone veered left and led them through an open gate toward the horse stables Robert had not visited yet. Here, the air smelled like hay and manure. None of the horses were in sight, which at least might have been an unexpected treat, but Robert heard them snuffling and pawing at the ground behind the barn walls. He thought it was his imagination at first, but the horses stirred as they passed, a chorus of worry. Robert had ignored his fear as much as he could—At least we’re not going toward the Funhouse, he told himself again—but the horses’ nervous whinnies felt like the worst kind of luck. His damp back shivered with the breeze upsetting the leaves, hissing at him from above.
Were Redbone’s eyes glistening in the dimming daylight?
Grass gave way to rocky soil and then soft dirt and then concrete warm from the sun.
Robert thought about everything his feet touched to try to keep from being afraid.
“Tell him, Robert,” Redbone said. “Tell him what you were telling me, about how it was so unsanctified at the church. You said you saw the devil’s shadow, remember?”
“Yes!” Robert said, admiring Redbone’s quick thinking. Robert wished he had added more details in his earlier report to Boone. “I left that part out by accident, sir.” He tried to imagine a Flash Gordon story of a great battle between good and evil, except it would be a story about him. “The devil got the upper hand at the church, Mister Boone. While you and Superintendent Haddock were looking at the dust, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the wall: the devil’s shadow. It was gone quick as lightning, but I knew right then he’d come to try to stop me from finding haints. And I’m praying him away and praying him away, and I just know I’ll find another haint tomorrow. But I’m not strong enough to fight off the devil himself in one or two days, Mister Boone. Maybe I could lick him in three or four.”
“Maybe you know a potion, sir?” Redbone said. “A potion that could help him beat the devil down? I’m praying too, but some hoodoo would sure help.”
“Yessir, sure would,” Robert said. “That would speed it up.”
In the past two days, talk of hoodoo had created a kind of secret club between them, with Boone telling stories of learning to mix teas and salves at his grandmother’s knee, boasting of his skills as a haint catcher in his own right. But Boone didn’t look back at them as he led them across the concrete. Boone’s walking slowed as his breathing got louder. Nothing they said would turn him around, so they fell silent. Robert hoped they hadn’t made him madder with what might have seemed like obvious lies.
Finally, Boone stopped walking beneath a stand of pines. Robert looked at Redbone, confused, until he saw where Redbone’s eyes were staring: two wooden doors like cellar doors were lined up side by side in the midst of the pine needles, propped up by about six inches to show the darkness below. Two eyes stared out at them from the closer propped door, but Robert couldn’t make out the face in the dark. His chest began heaving as he understood: the Box!
“Guess you’re feeling good and sorry you ain’t found no more haints, huh?” Boone said.
Robert and Redbone both swore how sorry they were, how they would do better, how the devil had bested them in their hunt. Robert’s bare knees trembled beneath his towel. The underground space looked so tiny! Would they be forced to spend the night there? Or longer?
“Shut up,” Boone said, and no living thing within earshot made a sound, not even the unlucky boy who was locked in the Box. The crickets and nearby horses were silent too.
“Don’t make no promises to me: Talk to him,” he said, pointing toward the Box and the staring eyes. “ ’Cuz until you find me another haint for Warden Haddock, that’s where he’s gonna stay.”
Robert couldn’t grasp Boone’s words at first. Someone else was in the Box because he hadn’t shown Boone how to find the haints? The worst of the worst of the worst, Blue had said. Again he tried to look at Redbone, but Redbone’s eyes were locked with the boy in the Box.
“We’re sorry,” Redbone said to the boy. “We didn’t know he was lockin’ somebody up.”
“We’ll… try harder,” Robert said, his throat lined with sand as he spoke the lie.
“You’d better!” the boy’s rough voice came, vicious. Robert knew his voice! It was Cleo.
That was why the teenagers had been staring at them back at the dorm: they already knew. “What you look so sad for?” Boone said. “Didn’t you tell me how he was botherin’ you out in the cornfield the other day? Ain’t that so, Redbone?”
Redbone’s mouth fell open, shocked. “No, sir,” he said. “I never said…” But he looked mortified that he had contradicted Boone, so his words fell away.
Cleo had threatened them in the cornfield, true, but Robert had never told anyone, and he doubted Redbone had either. Why would Redbone be a fink and tell on Cleo when everyone knew that was the worst thing to do? If you finked on a bully, a bully would hurt you.
