Page 79 of The Reformatory

“What for?” Robert said.

“He didn’t say,” she said. “Can you think of why he might be calling after you?”

Robert glanced at Redbone, who looked away, his face stormy. Maybe Redbone thought Robert would snitch on him because he covered for Blue the night of the Funhouse. If Redbone thought he was so low, he was no kind of friend. Maybe nobody made any friends here. And Robert had been so careful not to get in trouble! He didn’t talk to anyone or play around, so he hadn’t been late to the farm truck, the band room, the classroom, or the dorm. Not once. He’d been first in line. He’d picked more weeds than the other boys; he’d seen it with his own eyes.

“I don’t know, ma’am.” It took all of Robert’s resolve to hold back his tears.

But Mrs. Hamilton saw his tears. She put her hand on his shoulder, and the sob fighting from his throat died, although his throat still burned. “There’s no reason to assume the worst. I just thought you might know about something. If so, please tell me.”

Then, suddenly, Robert knew: someone must have seen Blue talking to him in the cornfield! Blue was the worst of the worst of bad luck. Mrs. Hamilton saw Blue in his face too.

“There’s something and you just don’t want to say,” she said. “Is that right?” Robert couldn’t shake his head to deny it.

She went on. “And it involves another person you don’t want to get in trouble.”

Without wanting to, Robert glanced toward Redbone, who loved Blue so much that he’d taken his licks for him. But Redbone darted away and was out of sight.

“Now, you listen carefully to me, young man,” Mrs. Hamilton said, and her voice was so commanding that he couldn’t have stopped listening if he tried. “I don’t have to tell you how badly boys get punished in this place. I don’t like it, but those are the rules. And since you just got out of the infirmary, I hope you’ll remember how you ended up there. If Warden Haddock ever asks you a question direct, you tell him the truth—every time. He won’t ask you a question unless he already knows the answer. Do you understand?”

Robert shook himself from paralysis and nodded his head.

“I can’t hear you,” Mrs. Hamilton said, just like a drill sergeant in Sands of Iwo Jima.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him the truth.”

And why shouldn’t he? What had Blue done for him except get him in trouble? No one had told Blue to come out in the cornfield when he wasn’t supposed to. Blue said he had come to warn him about the warden, but Robert wouldn’t need warnings if Blue would leave him alone. Warden Haddock might give him double the lashes this time! Or worse: drag him away like the teenager he’d seen in chains. Robert had watched every older boy’s face in the cafeteria to try to see that kid again, but he hadn’t found him yet. Ev’rybody don’t go home, Boone had said.

“Stand up straight, Robert,” Mrs. Hamilton said, “and wipe away those tears. I’ll walk over to his office with you. And I’m going to wait until he’s done and walk you to the schoolhouse.” Then, quietly, she said, “Be strong like your father. Can you try to do that?”

Robert nodded again, almost smiling. Crutcher had spoken kindly of Papa too.

“Come on, then,” she said, and she held out her hand to him. Robert was startled: Miz Lottie still held his hand when she crossed Main Street with him, but he had already forgotten how adults treated children, or at least how they were supposed to. He hesitated so long that he was afraid she would pull her hand away, so he curled his fingers around hers harder than he meant to.

“It’ll be all right,” she soothed him. “As long as you tell the truth.”

And he would, Robert vowed. He would tell everything. As Robert walked hand in hand with Mrs. Hamilton down the steps, he couldn’t stomach Redbone’s burning, wondering eyes as he passed. Redbone brushed close, pretending to trip on the stair, and he brought his lips to Robert’s ear for a whisper as faint as a breath.

“Better not say nothin’ ’bout Blue.”

22

“You like Coca-Cola?” Warden Haddock said. “I don’t mind mine warm, but I picked you up a cold one from the machine.” He offered the green-tinted bottle across his desk of files and neatly stacked photographs, past his candy jar. Sunlight from the window behind Haddock made the bottle glow.

“Thank you, sir,” Robert said, although he didn’t like Coca-Cola since Mama died. Mama had kept a bottle or two in their icebox, stashed in the back. If you drank Mama’s Coke, there’d be hell to pay. The taste of it made him miss her.

Haddock’s teeth were frozen. “If you like a thing, you smile, don’t you? When the superintendent gives you a cold Coke?”

Robert tried a smile and failed. Then he imagined Mrs. Hamilton sitting close to the door, watching the time passing on the clock, waiting and listening in case anything went bad. She had said to tell the truth, so Robert said, “I’m too scared, Mr. Haddock. I feel like you think I did something wrong.”

He smiled. “Relax and drink your Coke, Robert. You’re not in trouble.” Warden Haddock said it like the idea was ridiculous, as if he hadn’t just beaten his back bloody while two men held him down. As if the boy bound like a hog hadn’t called Warden Haddock the devil himself.

Robert didn’t believe Haddock, but he sipped at the frigid bottle anyway, and the sugary syrup stung his mouth while he imagined Mama pouring Coke over ice in one of her good glasses at dinner, her treat at the end of the day. He would have preferred tap water to the fizzy Coke, but he swallowed half the bottle before he knew it because Warden Haddock was watching. His throat was grateful for the cold, at least.

“Boone tells me you have a gift, son.” The word son made Robert nearly cough. Warden Haddock’s eyes melted with what seemed like affection. “You’re a spotter.”

Now it was coming. Now Haddock would ask him to betray Mama. “Sir?”

“A spotter. You ever seen war pictures? When snipers up on a hill or in the window want to kill an enemy, they need a spotter to make calculations so they can do it right.” Warden Haddock crossed his elbows across the desk, leaning closer to Robert, ready to tell secrets he didn’t want his secretary to hear. Or Mrs. Hamilton, even if she was listening as hard as she could. “This school is stinking with haints, Robert. All of Gracetown stinks with ’em, but here most of all. Anyone who grew up here knows that. Don’t pretend you don’t.”