Page 39 of The Reformatory

I hate this place, Robert thought. I just want to go home, Mama.

PING.

The sound came so loudly that Robert jumped. Even the boy beside him turned his head to look at the pipe that ran across the length of their stall. But the boy looked away, not interested. Robert laid his hand on the pipe, as warm as human flesh, coursing with water like blood. Mama was here, somehow! Whatever gave the water its terrible smell, it wasn’t from Mama. She was fighting through the smell to get to him. Robert didn’t know how he knew, but he knew that plainly. Robert leaned against the slimy shower wall nestling the pipe. He wished he could climb into the wall, through the concrete. He wanted to feel his mother’s hug again. He wished she would appear like the stabbed boy in the kitchen, solid enough to lay eyes on. A sob—part joy, part sorrow—clawed from his throat.

“Hey,” the boy beside him said. “You can’t act like a sissy in here, dummy.”

“My mama’s ghost is here,” Robert whispered. “Right now.”

“So?” the boy said. “Be glad it’s only your mama, stupid.”

Robert swallowed back his sob and stood up straight. He grabbed a chalky bar of soap from the dish and tried to make enough lather to wash. No one had given him a washrag like Gloria always insisted he use at home, so he did his best with his hands on his face, under his arms, between his legs, though he barely brushed his privates because he didn’t want anyone to see him washing there. Robert was shivering as he grabbed his damp towel and tried to rub himself dry.

The bunk room was hotter than the shower room even without steam.

Redbone led Robert down the length of the beds pushed so closely together that he could barely avoid bumping them. Robert took small steps, hips to the side. Many of the boys were already on their beds, either sitting or lying down. Talking was more fevered, everyone squeezing in their last bit of living while the lights were on, some playing cards or dominos, some sharing jokes. He heard a crack of marbles. A few were so tired they were already curled under their blankets, trying to sleep in the din. A handful were thumbing through their New Testaments, reading with their lips moving, as if memorizing the words could set them free.

Redbone pointed out a bed in the middle section, almost dead center, far from doors or windows. His neighbors were so close, they might as well be sharing one bed. One boy had glasses that made his eyes look like an owl’s, listening to their every word with his chin propped on his elbows like they were a shiny new television screen in a store window. The other was sketching on a pad with black chalk, seeing and hearing nothing. Neither one looked like trouble.

“If a bed opens up by a window, grab it,” Redbone said. “But you’ll have to fight somebody for it. Ev’rybody likes windows for the breeze. Hot as hell in the middle.”

Redbone glanced back at Robert and must have felt sorry for the look on his face. “You git used to it, though. We all start in the middle.”

Robert stared at the windows lining the room, amazed again to see no bars. And most of the windows were cracked open. Did they sleep beneath open windows every night? The panes were too narrow to climb through, but with a screwdriver and time to work on the frame, maybe over days, he could get out. The windows were high, but he could stand on his bed. He almost said it aloud: Why don’t more of y’all run away?

Redbone saw the unspoken question in his eyes.

“Oh, you might hear barkin’ from the dogs,” Redbone said casually. “The dog boys march up an’ down outside with those hounds all night long, an’ sometimes a squirrel or a possum riles ’em. But you’ll git used to the barkin’ too.” Robert nodded that he understood: more boys didn’t flee through the dorm’s open windows because they were afraid of the dogs.

Redbone left him to go to his own bed in a far corner, beneath a window. Blue’s bed was beside Redbone’s, so close they could be sharing one, and Robert envied how they must whisper jokes in each other’s ears. Blue gave him a nod. Robert almost smiled.

He was relieved Cleo and his friends weren’t hidden anywhere in the room of nearly fifty boys. Cleo’s gang was older, so they must be in the Washington wing. The first good news: he wouldn’t have to be afraid Cleo might attack him in the night. He couldn’t forget Cleo’s terrible stare in the cafeteria. Some people never forgot a slight, no matter how small or unintended.

Robert noticed Owl still staring, wondering what to expect from him. “You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you,” Robert said.

Owl shrugged.

“Shhhhh,” said the boy who was drawing. He was sketching a cypress tree standing alone in the swamp, and it was good enough to be a photograph: fat trunk squatting in the water, tendrils hanging like string, the water shining the tree’s reflection back at it. Robert wished he could draw himself away somewhere else too. He sat on his bed and watched the boy’s sure strokes as he drew shadows like a magician. A wiry boy in the bed in front of the artist’s was leaning back to watch too.

“When you gonna draw me?” the other boy said.

“When you gonna cough up that dollar?”

Owl snickered. “Nobody’s payin’ you a dollar for that. A nickel, maybe.”

A voice roared from the doorway: “Prayer!”

Everything shuffled around him. The artist shoved his pad under his bed, playing card decks fanned closed, marbles rolled stray on the floor. Everyone kneeled on the right side of their beds, folding their hands in a prayer position. For a moment, Robert only watched before he remembered to kneel and pray too. The cool floor was his only relief from the heat.

“The Lord is my shepherd…,” a boy began, and then the room was one voice, matching the tempo and monotone: “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…”

Robert heard officious footsteps and peeked through a half-open eyelid: Boone and Crutcher were pacing the rows of beds. Boone was carrying a long wooden ruler. A thwack sounded as Boone smacked a boy across his back. Robert squeezed his eyes closed and recited in rhythm with the others, afraid to scratch his itching ear: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.…”

Thwack. A brief, startled cry of pain somewhere behind him. That boy sounded very young. Robert was so nervous, he nearly forgot the words to the prayer he had recited in front of his entire congregation when he was only six while Mama, Papa, and Pastor Jenkins stared on with pride. He’d imagined that God was staring down at him with pride too—but he could barely think about God with a prayer interrupted by ruler strokes. The words seemed a boldfaced lie. “… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

What goodness and mercy? But Robert said “Amen” with everyone else. He was grateful not to feel the ruler across his back for wrongdoing he didn’t know was wrong. What had those boys done? Squirmed? Not prayed fast enough?

“Lights out!” Boone shouted, and the overhead lights switched off. Robert hadn’t realized how bright the lights had been until they were gone. The only light left in the room streamed in from the hall. Around him, everyone hurried back into bed.