Page 106 of The Reformatory

“So? It still ain’t fair.”

True, Robert didn’t see as many haints on the white side. None on the train, anyway. None at the pool enclosure, with its ring of empty chairs for observers. He walked to the pool fence and peeked down as far as he could into the unnatural blue, looking for shapes that didn’t belong. He even stared at the waving ripples of water from the rain droplets. The haint at the church had taught him that a haint could take many forms. Nothing unusual was in the pool…

But there—

At the baseball diamond fifty yards farther down the slope, he saw a vague image of a solitary person sitting at the top of the stands. He’d have to get closer to see if he was a haint. Probably. No one would be sitting up there in the middle of work time, even a white boy.

“You see anybody sittin’ over there?” Robert said, pointing.

Redbone gave half a glance and shook his head. Robert had asked him a dozen times yesterday and Robert could tell he was already irritated by the question, even if answering it was his only real job. “You do?”

Robert shrugged, but the figure was clearer as they walked closer. A teenage boy. Robert didn’t want to betray him by pointing him out if Redbone couldn’t see him.

“I gotta tell you something,” Robert said. The words popped out without planning.

“Tell me, then.”

Robert glanced all around to make sure no one was listening. He and Redbone seemed so alone on the vast, well-tended campus that he might have tried to run right then if Gloria hadn’t already told him the plan. And he couldn’t trust that the haint in the bleachers wasn’t a regular boy who would tell the warden. Hell, a haint might whisper his secret to the warden to get even.

“A secret,” Robert said. “But if you tell anyone, we could die. Both of us.”

Redbone’s eyes mooned. “Worse than Blue?”

“Not worse—better,” Robert said. “But you can’t tell. You have to swear to God.”

“Oh, okay, swear to God,” Redbone said carelessly.

Robert held Redbone’s arm to keep him from walking ahead of him past the pool toward the baseball field. “I mean it, Bone. Swear it on your life. Your mama’s life. It’s the biggest secret you ever heard.”

Redbone nodded, sober. “Swear on my life,” he said. “I won’t tell.”

Robert told him in pieces while they walked, from time to time falling silent to make sure no one was coming near. While Redbone listened, not asking questions, taking it all in, Robert told him every step of his plan for Friday, even if a hurricane came: instead of the supper line, he would go to the kitchen as if he were looking for a haint. He would go to the very back, near the freezer. And the rear door. With the supper lines in front, no one would see him leave by the rear. And even if they did, so what? He could say he was haint tracking and tell anyone to leave him be. Then he would walk toward the Funhouse like he was tracking—no big deal. Why else would anyone want to go to the Funhouse? Once he got there, he would hide behind the narrow building, which no one used in the daytime. And peek right and left to make sure no one was watching. Then go to the high grass by the fence and look for the promised hole.

“I wanted to try to find the hole today,” Robert said, “but Boone sent us here.”

“Maybe it’s better to keep clear ’til it’s time to go,” Redbone said, voice smooth and untroubled. “Don’t draw nobody’s eye. I’ve never seen no hole. Maybe they’re gonna cut one from the other side.”

Robert had worried that Redbone would be too excited, or might get angry or scared, but he was only talking it through the way they had talked about Flash Gordon stories they would write. Redbone was used to laying plans. He had been laying plans for years. He thought more like Robert did than any other friend he’d had, and Redbone was smarter than any of his school friends too. It was almost—almost—worth coming to the Reformatory to have met him.

“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.