Page 126 of The Reformatory

“I’ll just bet he won’t. But if anything happens to Robert Stephens, that’s exactly the kind of talk he’s going to be hearing—and not just in here.”

“Marian,” Crutcher hissed, tugging at his own vest so hard he might have torn it.

Boone was faking a smile suddenly. “Naw…,” he said, his eyes heavy on Mrs. Hamilton. “She’s right, she’s right. Terrible thing, what happened. It’s a damn shame.”

“And Henry Jackson too!” Robert called out. The words that had been bottled up in him flew free. “And the boys from the fire! A lot of terrible things happened! That’s why they’re everywhere. That’s why he wants them in his jar! Isn’t it? Does he think I’m gonna put Redbone in his jar now? Well, I’m not!” Blue too, he remembered. Blue had suffered a terrible death. It wasn’t Blue’s fault he was a haint. Robert’s face itched from his tears.

Speaking the truth had loosened Robert’s lungs. Boone was staring at Robert as if he were a haint floating ten feet high, his lips parted and slack. Even Mrs. Hamilton and Crutcher were wide-eyed.

Boone was the first to recover from his outburst. He took off his hat as he ducked inside the band room, taking a step closer to Robert, who remembered how much it had hurt when Boone grabbed him and twisted his shirt. “Yeah, I see now he’s talkin’ foolishness,” Boone said. “He needs time to get his head back on straight. So he don’t say nothin’ to get in trouble.” His eyes dared Robert to say another word, and Robert raised his trumpet to his lips to play taps again, staring back. Robert blew.

“We goin’ to Boot Hill at five o’clock, you and them other boys he knew,” Boone said, raising his voice over Robert’s trumpet. “Here, you bury your friends. And you try to learn so you don’t end up in the ground right next to ’em.”

If Robert could have killed a man by squeezing his eyes closed, Boone would have dropped dead where he stood. And Haddock. And Crutcher too, although he wasn’t the worst. If he could, he would set the entire Reformatory on fire and let all of the boys run with him.

“He’ll be there,” Mrs. Hamilton said.

When it was time for the band to meet, Robert sat with the sad-faced band students and then helped straighten up the band room. No one mentioned Redbone’s name. Robert nudged the big bass drum marked GRACETOWN SCHOOL FOR BOYS to the side and found the tiny glistening metal key he had kicked beneath it, just the size for the lock on a desk drawer. Robert slipped the key into his sock and enjoyed the solid feeling of his secret. He didn’t feel fear. Even the grief that had sliced his belly all day was squashed to a low pulse of pain when he remembered his plan.

Friday—tomorrow!—he would find a way to sneak into Haddock’s office and open his drawer. He would steal his photographs and his haint jar, even if it meant he needed help from Blue like he’d promised. He wouldn’t do it for Blue—he would do it for Redbone, so his true killers wouldn’t try to trap his spirit in this awful place.

And then he would run. With the jar. With the photographs. With his stories. Even if he died trying.

34

Fourteen boys came to bury Redbone, most of them from their dorm, where his bed sat empty, but also a couple of older boys who had just met him in band. They took turns with four shovels they shared between them to scoop into the ground, clearing room for the pale plywood casket in the back of the white truck. None of them looked toward the truck. Once, Robert saw the simple casket in the corner of his eye, the darker wood whorls like eyes staring back, and he remembered riding with Redbone in that same truck and how Redbone had given him advice about the Funhouse, and he couldn’t understand how Redbone was lying dead when he could still hear Redbone’s voice in his ear. That was the only time he almost cried again, so he made sure he didn’t look at the truck anymore. As they worked, the thin grass on the surface gave way to red-brown soil that grew redder and more like blood the deeper they dug. Like Mama had said.

When it was Robert’s turn to take the shovel, he pitched it hard into the packed soil, and his elbows and palms rattled. Maybe he’d hit a rock. Digging was hard work, but Robert welcomed the effort because it gave his anger a place to go as he grunted with each strike. The boys working beside him created a chop-chop-chop chorus as they worked, and an older boy from the band started singing a work song none of the rest of them knew, but they caught on and sang the words: “I said I need more power—power, Lord—I need an everlasting power—power, Lord…” And before they knew it, Crutcher said quietly, “That’s deep enough, fellas.”

And the hole for Redbone was dug, a lonely pit in the soil that looked impossibly small beneath the cedars and pines on Boot Hill. Robert noticed that this graveyard had no crosses or headstones like the cemetery behind his church. No flowers or wreaths or favorite items marked where a person was buried or honored their living. They were about to lay Redbone in the ground like he was a dog. He felt so angry again, the sky above him flared bright pink.

“Come on, Tex, you’re big and strong,” Crutcher said to the boy who had led the singing. “You too, Calvin. Let’s go carry him.”

Robert felt like he should have said he would carry Redbone’s casket too—he remembered Papa’s tight face when he’d been a pallbearer at Mama’s funeral—but he couldn’t make himself speak up. He didn’t want to touch Redbone’s casket or think about what he looked like inside. Instead, while Crutcher and the two other boys lifted the box out of the truck to move it to the freshly dug hole, Robert looked around desperately to see if Redbone’s ghost was watching from somewhere in the trees. But no other haints or people were in sight. Boone wasn’t there either, of course. Or Warden Haddock. They were cowards.

Crutcher cursed when they dropped the casket too hard into the hole, and it wasn’t even properly nailed shut, because the top flew open a few inches and there was a thunk sound as Redbone’s body jumped, and in the shadows inside, Robert saw a glimpse of Redbone’s thin arm, almost like he was trying to wave to him, and then the casket fell closed again. Robert almost threw up, but he swallowed the sour taste back down into his throat.

“Lord,” Crutcher said as they all stood in a circle around the casket in the hole, “we are gathered to lay August Montgomery to rest. Please bless this soul and forgive him his trespasses, for he was young and had lost his way.” Robert expected a better prayer or a passage from Scripture, but none came. “Do any of you boys have any remembrances of August?”

Stone silence except for quiet sniffling. Robert tried to open his mouth but couldn’t.

Even now he was letting Redbone down.

“He made me laugh,” said the boy with round glasses Robert had nicknamed Owl.

The other boys nodded and agreed with murmurs.

“He never wanted to see nobody get in trouble,” another boy said.

More agreement. Each one who spoke gave strength to the rest. Another boy remembered Redbone dressing his wound when he cut himself on a saw on lumber duty. A boy from band said Redbone kept good time and would have loved marching with the bass drum on Main Street, struggling to say something although he had not known Redbone hardly at all.

“He was a child of God,” Tex said, which was better than Crutcher had done. “He shoulda had a chance to live his life.”

All of the boys agreed.

“He…” Robert fought to force language from his burning throat. He wanted to say He died because of me, but he couldn’t confess in front of so many mourners. “He was my best friend.” Five small words cost so much effort that Robert wanted to curl on the ground.

“It’s time to play now, Robert,” Crutcher said. He handed him his trumpet, which had been resting against the trunk of a tree.