Page 120 of The Reformatory

“You said the Box wouldn’t be so bad.”

Redbone’s eyebrows knit in anger. “You shut up! You ain’t even been here a week, talkin’ ’bout how the Box ain’t so bad. You felt all sad for Cleo, but it’s worse to be in there than it is to be looking down. When they close it and there isn’t but a little air coming through that hole, it’s like you’re buried in your grave. You’ve gotta give me the choice, Robert. Let me decide what happens to me if the ash doesn’t come—not Haddock. Maybe I won’t tell, but I need a choice if it gets too bad. I’d do it for you.”

That hurt. Blue had come between them for a time, but Redbone had been a good friend when he needed a friend more than any other time. He felt like he had known Redbone for years.

“We saw him on the way to church…,” Robert offered.

“Come on! Like you’re gonna trap him out in the grass? And that was Sunday. It’s three days already. You told me you talked to Blue after that. Last night. You talked to him fresh.”

Robert tried to raise his eyes to look at Redbone, but his skin felt heavy on his bones. “The baseball field,” he whispered. “We can take Boone to the bleachers. I saw one there.”

Robert felt Redbone staring. Redbone didn’t believe him. “I did, Bone,” Robert said. “I was afraid to tell you.”

“Which seat?” Redbone said. “Where was it at?”

In his memory, the haint had been sitting in a center bleacher. And then he had moved to one side. Midway up? Or up on top? Every time Robert tried to remember the boy with the mangled face, he was sitting in a different place. And Robert had been too far away to count the rows, to know which seat.

“Look at me,” Redbone said, and Robert raised his head again at last. Redbone’s red-rimmed eyes bored into him. “I know where you saw him.” He said it with such certainty that Robert blinked, startled. “I heard you talking to him in the bathroom, Robert. You lied and said it was your mama—maybe she was there too—but that’s the reason you won’t tell. Ain’t it? He was right where you were standing in the shower. If it’s a lie, call me a liar.”

Robert didn’t answer, but his unsteady chin told Redbone everything he needed to know. In the dining room doorway, Boone stood waiting.

The hog was strung up on a pole beside the slaughterhouse, a long, bloody slit carved across the length of the carcass. A cloud of flies circled the head and snout as two sightless eyes stared toward the sticky ground. Robert had seen Papa hunt and skin deer, but the dead hog hanging like a bad omen made him think he might never eat ham, bacon, or pork chops again.

Talk had spread about a haint at the well, so a crowd of about thirty boys had followed Robert and Redbone while they led Boone back there. A few of the boys were blood spattered from the slaughterhouse and Robert recognized a few from his dorm, and some from the cafeteria, and some from classroom and band. He did not know their names, but he knew them. Crutcher was there too; he stood, arms folded and face pinched, on the side of the slaughterhouse, away from the bloody hog.

“You saw a haint here?” Boone said, patting the rusted bucket hanging over the well on a frayed rope. The bucket swung slowly back and forth, twirling.

“No, sir,” Robert said, and rushed on when Boone frowned, “but I… feel one. I think so.”

“You think or you know?” Boone said.

Robert tried to feel confidence that Henry Jackson couldn’t resist the sound of his name.

Blue had said he would tell him to come to the well. “I… feel like a haint was here. Maybe he came before I got here, or after I left.”

Boone studied Robert a long time. His eyes seemed gentle, almost pleading. “You’ve been wastin’ up my dust day after day. I better see something tonight—you hear? I better see a li’l anthill of ash like at the church and in the kitchen. Or you’re gonna be sorry to your soul.” The threat frightened Robert more because of its sadness.

“He maybe was by those trees,” Redbone said, pointing. “We might need to try twice.”

All gentleness leaked from Boone’s eyes when they snapped toward Redbone. “No-bo-dy,” he said, drawing out each syllable like a blow, “was talking to you.”

A hush fell over the observers. At first Robert thought the sudden venom in Boone’s voice made their hearts skip too, and no one wanted to make him mad. But when he glanced over his shoulder at the crowd, he saw that Warden Haddock was walking up behind them, and boys were alerting each other with anxious taps to be quiet and still. In the setting sun, Haddock’s long shadow stretched far ahead of him in the grass as he walked in his snakeskin boots. His shadow made him bigger. Crutcher stood up straighter when he saw him, no longer leaning against the wall.

“Children…,” Crutcher prompted loudly, and most of the boys knew to join him when he said, “Good evening, Superintendent Haddock!”

A few, caught off guard, didn’t say anything, only mouthing at the end. Redbone greeted Haddock loudly with the rest, his voice clear and steady, but Robert couldn’t make his mouth move. Warden Haddock was looking at Robert, and his eyes seemed to know everything in Robert’s mind: about the photographs, the key, his desk, the false reports. Then Haddock shifted down the slant of his cowboy hat, and a shadow fell over his eyes. Robert’s bladder had bothered him a little during the walk to the well, but now it bloated. Haddock was carrying his haint jar under his arm.

“Good evening, boys,” Haddock said, still staring straight at Robert. “I understand our new haint catcher wants to put on a show for us. To help you boys sleep a bit better at night. Is that so, Robert Stephens?”

Haints might enjoy hearing their names, but Haddock calling Robert’s name soiled him and Papa with the sound of his voice. The closer Haddock walked, the more Robert wanted to take a shower and wash him away. Somehow, Robert nodded his head. When Redbone nudged him, he remembered to say, “Yessir, Superintendent Haddock.”

“That’s what he says, suh,” Boone joined in. “Says there was one at the well.”

“Or by the trees… sir,” Redbone said, and speaking up might have been the bravest thing Robert had seen him do, the way Boone’s eyes burned into him after.

Haddock made a fluttering gesture with his hand “ ‘By the trees’?” he said. “That sounds mighty vague. There’s two dozen trees out here. I surely hope it’s not as vague as all that.”

Boone’s jowls shook, he was so mad, and Robert knew Redbone had accidentally made a fool of Boone somehow, that Warden Haddock had come because it was solid, not vague.