Page 81 of The Reformatory

Robert flinched when Warden Haddock reached toward him. A fresh white handkerchief lay in his hand, embroidered like a doily Mama had put under drinking glasses for company.

“Wipe those tears, son,” Warden Haddock said. “Those are the last tears I want to see. Don’t worry: I’m not sore at you for crying. Least now you see how haints’ll trick you, fool you with their form. I’ve been working here long enough to tell you no boy has been stabbed to death in that kitchen. I bet it was a big knife he made you see, huh? He’s just tellin’ you spook stories.” Yes, it had been a big knife, like a butcher used to chop through bone. But the boy had died somehow, hadn’t he? He wouldn’t be a haint otherwise. And Robert had felt the past flashes of pain as soon as he’d walked into the kitchen. More than one boy had been stabbed there. He had to keep reminding himself that Warden Haddock’s lies sounded so sweet and true.

“You know how he probably died?” the warden said, again as if he could hear Robert’s thoughts. “I’d wager a hundred dollars he died running away. Now, this is where my hands are tied: the state says we can’t tolerate running. How would that look? The state can’t leave boys in our care and then we let them run loose. And sometimes boys who run die; it’s a nasty fact. They have poor judgment, cross the street wrong, get hit or dragged trying to jump the train, fall in a ditch. There’s hypothermia in the cold, heatstroke in the summer, and sometimes a dog will catch ’em before the dog boys can pull ’em back. That’s an ugly business. But even with all that, they still try to run. It’s the scourge of my work here, Robert. My duty in the Funhouse was to try to save your life. And now we’ll start again on a different foot, you and me.”

Warden Haddock reached down and raised another Coke bottle from his lower desk drawer. He extended his half-empty bottle across the desk, waiting for Robert to clink it.

“Let’s collect those haints,” Warden Haddock said. “Once and for all.”

Robert hesitated, knowing with every part of him that he should not toast with Warden Haddock. He finally did because the warden’s eyes narrowed, his anger ready to return, and his leather strap was in plain view on the wall. The ting of their glass bottles as they touched was off-key in Robert’s ear, making his stomach roll. It felt like the worst thing Robert had ever done. He imagined Mama screaming out in pain. Music was her place with Robert, not the warden’s.

Was there a way to take it back?

“But… what if I only see one, sir? That one in the kitchen?”

“Oh, you’ll see more than one,” Warden Haddock said. “If you’re half the spotter Boone says you are, I guarantee it. Especially if you want that early release.”

Robert glanced down at the form again, typed up with his name. He thought of his soft bed and Gloria’s rabbit stew served in his favorite bowl. No more Funhouse—ever.

“And,” the warden went on, hesitating as if he hated to put the next part in words, “that’s the only way to be extra sure that nothing happens to your friends. The warden’s spotter gets extra protections, Robert. You’ll see that right away.” Robert heard the threat in the words the warden had disguised as a favor.

Warden Haddock lifted up a large mason jar from somewhere under his desk and displayed it on the desktop. It was empty except for about two inches of red-gray ash at the bottom so fine it could be dust. The jar was maybe eight inches high, with a sealed top and a raised image of a king’s crown on the glass. The word Crown stabbed through the glass below the picture. Haddock kept his hand across the top of the jar like he thought it might fly away.

“This was a jar for a pint of liquor,” Warden Haddock said. “But now it’s my collection jar, Robert. Take a good look at it. Believe it or not, that’s about ten years’ work. We haven’t got far, as you can see. We’ve only collected a handful. But once you set Boone loose with his traps, we’ll have more. They leave evidence behind once they’re gone. That’s how I’ll know you’re doing your job right. Each one you help Boone catch, that’s a day you go home early. But don’t you worry: like I said, this place is stinking with haints. You can help Boone catch twenty, thirty, without half an effort. Once you’ve caught ten, I’ll take off a full month’s time.”

The ash sat dead in the sunlight burning through Warden Haddock’s window. Robert peered more closely to see if even a fleck would stir, but none did. The ash was truly dead.

“What… happens to them?” Robert said.

“Nothing happens; they’re just the way they were supposed to be. Gone. Like it says in the Bible, Robert. Does the Bible talk about haints roaming free? Does Jesus say ‘Bless these haints and let them prosper’?”

Robert wasn’t sure, so he shook his head. He didn’t think so.

“You’re damn right it don’t. Haints are unholy, Robert. A good church boy like you can see that. You can’t capture a person’s soul in a jar. The soul belongs to God. This is just what’s left: the parts that should have been gone already. A shadow of the flesh.”

Robert felt himself nodding his head. He had heard Pastor Jenkins say Ashes to ashes, dust to dust at Mama’s burial as they lowered her wooden casket into the ground. Maybe Warden Haddock didn’t lie about everything. He had told the truth about killing his baby sister, after all.

But ten! Could he betray the haints he’d seen in the Funhouse? The boy who’d died of pneumonia floating in the infirmary? The charred boy who’d walked near his bed? Could he betray all of them so he could get out? Robert started counting the haints he’d seen in his head, adding up the cost of his freedom.

“I’ll even help you, since sometimes it’s hard to tell haints and the living apart,” Warden Haddock said. “I’d like you to start with this one—he’s awful dangerous. He died in the 1920 fire.”

Warden Haddock picked up a photograph from the pile on his desk. This time he stood up and walked behind Robert’s chair, leaning over him to place the photo practically under his nose. All of Robert’s skin prickled with the warden so close, like a bear was standing behind him. When Warden Haddock rubbed Robert’s shoulder, Robert’s eyes stared at his long, pale, pink fingers instead of the image on the photograph. The warden wore a gold wedding band. Robert wondered if the warden’s wife knew him even a little bit.

“Go on,” Warden Haddock said. “Take a look.”

The photograph was charred blackness, a burned shell of a wall and a circular heap of bones tangled together. The charred bones reminded Robert of a football game when both teams piled on a ball that had gotten loose, except they were in a perfect O shape, in swirls like the pattern on a peppermint lollipop. Because Boone had driven Robert through the ghost fire, he knew things the photo didn’t say: they had all hugged each other when the fire surrounded them. They had died together, not apart.

But he couldn’t see faces. The faces had been burned away.

“I don’t—” Robert started to say, and then Warden Haddock let go of Robert’s shoulder and pointed to the center of the pile with his index finger.

“Middle of the pack—that’s the one. Name’s Kendall Sweeting. Must’ve died from suffocation, from the smoke. Hardly had a burn on him. Maybe the rest were trying to protect him. He was the youngest in the shed. God as my witness, Robert, I want this one most of all.”

Robert followed Warden Haddock’s finger to a clear portion at the center of the circle, where a child was curled on his side as if he were in a womb, his face upturned, perhaps posed that way. He might have only been sleeping. Robert’s throat drew shut as if he too were gagging on thick smoke. He could not breathe—could not remember ever breathing.

The boy in the photograph was Blue.

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