Page 118 of The Reformatory

Gloria tested telling the secret. “Robbie should run away.”

Mrs. Hamilton’s face cracked to alarm. She rushed to Gloria and grabbed her shoulders. “No,” she said firmly, as if Gloria had told her the entire plan. “Never say that to him. He can’t talk about running—can’t even think about running. They hunt down runaways, Gloria—do you hear me? Kill them, sometimes. Just because the lawyer didn’t work out at first, don’t lose hope. Trust in the system to find a way to get him out.”

Gloria’s knees tremored from a combination of disappointment and renewed terror at their plan to free Robbie. “Yes, ma’am,” she whispered. Mrs. Hamilton searched her eyes like she was looking for the truth before she let Gloria go.

Mrs. Hamilton offered her food, but Gloria wasn’t hungry. Then Mrs. Hamilton gave Gloria a folded washrag and towel and told her to knock on her door if she needed anything. She said she would be listening to music in her room and that Gloria should let her know if the sound was disturbing her. Gloria lay in the strange new bed with a mattress harder than she was used to, maybe because it was so new. A brass band played a march through the wall on Mrs. Hamilton’s record player like it was the Fourth of July.

The system, Mrs. Hamilton had said. TRUST in the system. The words lanced her. How could she trust in a system that would lock up her brother over nothing? A system that would leave arsonists unpunished after they burned down her house? And chase Papa out of town?

Gloria felt safer than she had in nearly a week, but she had never felt more alone.

VII BOOT HILL

32

Wednesday

The stone block well, about three feet high, was set back from the butcher shop in a clearing near a stand of cedars, ringed by dead leaves and pine needles. Robert took a step closer to the well to try to peer down beneath the faded wooden hutch, but the opening was covered with a tarp like a lizard’s skin, cracked from the sun. Would the haint try to come from inside the well? Should he move the cover? Robert tried to remember every word Blue had spoken, but he wasn’t sure, so he backed away a step. The well gave off a feeling he didn’t like, in a way that reminded him of the knife pricks he’d felt when he first walked into the kitchen. Maybe some boys had thrown themselves into the water down there—or been thrown. The skin-like tarp wasn’t moving, but the well felt restless enough to shake the ground. The uneven ring of stones looked like a hoodoo circle from Boone’s conjure stories.

“What time did Blue say it would come?” Redbone asked.

“It is a person,” Robert corrected.

“A haint, you mean.”

“Blue said they don’t like being called haints,” Robert said.

Redbone spat. “I don’t like being called ‘nigger,’ but that’s life. And death too, I guess.”

“Cut it out,” Robert whispered. “With you running your mouth, I wouldn’t come either.”

Redbone tipped an imaginary hat toward the well. “What time is this poor, sad soul coming to meet us, Robert? We supposed to stand here and wait?”

“Blue didn’t say when exactly. I just told him Boone checks by suppertime.”

“Suppertime?” Redbone groaned, leaning back as if to curse the sky. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair. “I gotta wait the whole day to find out if I’m goin’ in the Box?”

“We don’t want to bring Boone ’til we’re sure. I don’t even know where to put the dust.”

“If it was you was the one goin’ in, I bet you’d know.”

Robert’s jaw tightened with irritation, but he knew Redbone was only scared of how pathetic Cleo had looked down in the Box without food, water, or a bed. And Redbone didn’t even know the worst of it: Robert hated every moment he stood in this place. The slaughterhouse fifteen yards behind them reeked of shit and rotting meat and blood, and a hog was snuffling against the wooden planks, trying to get free. Robert didn’t want to imagine himself as that hog in a pen, but he felt the same desperation to be free… and a dread hanging over him as grim as the butcher’s knife. Why did the well have to be so close to the slaughterhouse? The hog would scream. The haint would scream. He would scream when the dogs caught him after he ran. Death was everywhere, a taste like poison in his mouth.

He didn’t want to be here. Blue had said the haints had cursed the fire spot and the Funhouse, but this spot felt cursed too. A lone green clover was pushing through the decay circling the well near Robert’s feet, so he squatted to pick it up, hoping it was a lucky one with four leaves. But it was a regular one, of course. He and Redbone had spent an hour near the well that morning trying to call for the ghost, and nothing about this place felt lucky. Robert tossed the clover away.

He had to try again. He had to try to convince this stranger to sacrifice himself so he and Redbone could sleep safely in their beds another night. It wasn’t fair, but it was a fact. Robert blinked to keep from crying. He couldn’t stop his nose from running, the snot thin and warm.

“Henry Jackson!” Robert said, calling for the dead man again. “Please come out. Please come to this well, Henry Jackson.”

Redbone shuffled beside him, unsure what to say. “Yeah, man, if you could please—”

“You have to call his whole name,” Robert reminded him.

Redbone gave him an annoyed slap against his shoulder and sighed. “Henry Jackson!” He called so loudly that Robert jumped. Redbone cupped his mouth with both hands, shouting toward the well, “Come on back, Henry Jackson! Henreeeeeeeee!”

“Sounds like you’re slopping a hog.”

Redbone’s voice lingered in the treetops, and Robert was sure no haint could have missed it. His sore eardrum popped, and a strange silence wrapped around them, filling both of Robert’s ears with deep and steady nothingness. No birds singing. No leaves whispering. No whir of insects. Something—something—seemed to be holding its breath.