Page 82 of The Reformatory

Robert could barely catch his thoughts after he left the warden’s office and told Mrs. Hamilton everything was fine and saw relief soften her kind face. His shock at seeing Blue in the photo made him doubt the sight of the twilight sky above him and every blade of grass beneath his feet. Warden Haddock wasn’t lying this time: Robert had seen with his own eyes! If Blue wasn’t alive, if Blue wasn’t real, could he trust in anything he thought he saw? He had touched Blue. Talked to Blue. Robert’s skin rang with the memory of Blue’s fingers around his ankle in the cornfield. And the way he’d laughed and laughed.

Who was real and who wasn’t, then? What about Redbone? Did Redbone know Blue was long dead? Of course he did! So many things made better sense: how Redbone had lied to Boone the first night and said he’d been the one telling stories about boys running away, not Blue. How Boone had ignored Blue when he took him and Redbone out to the Funhouse. How Blue had slipped out to the cornfield. And Redbone’s last words to him had been Don’t say anything about Blue. Robert wondered if Redbone might be a ghost too.

And who else? Was he a ghost himself?

Robert didn’t want to be near the other boys until he saw Redbone, so he stood waiting for him beside twin pines outside of the cafeteria near the supper line. He stood near the garbage Dumpster that was so close to the cafeteria door that it was hard to separate the smell of their dinner and rotting food, both clogging his nose. He’d been hungry most of the day, but now his appetite was gone.

As they passed him, two boys he’d warned in the cornfield when Boone and the watchers were near nodded and said, “Hey, Robert,” but Robert barely noticed them. He also barely noticed when Cleo brushed past him with a rough bump of his shoulder and a sneer. He’d been afraid of Cleo in the cornfield, but not anymore. Robert didn’t glance Cleo’s way, staring straight ahead, and he barely heard Cleo say, “Yeah, you better not do nothin’,” before he moved on. Robert stood statue still while all around him boys jostled and joked in line for supper. Robert kept looking for Redbone, afraid he’d see him, afraid he wouldn’t.

But he was more afraid he might see Blue.

As soon as Robert thought Blue’s name, Blue appeared like the ghost he was in a row of boys walking toward him, grinning from ear to ear. But when Robert gasped aloud, choking on his own tongue, he realized the boy was much younger than Blue, and he and his friends had nearly identical plaid shirts he had never seen Blue wear. No, it wasn’t Blue, Robert reassured himself three or four times to try to calm his heart.

Robert had considered Blue almost a friend, at least on the way to being one, but now every moment he’d spent with Blue felt like a violation. Blue had locked them in the freezer, slamming the door behind them, and… then what? Floated in the air? Marched back and forth through the wall until he was bored? And in the locker room, he’d appeared like a phantom from behind Robert’s locker door. And then there was the cornfield. Robert had known something wasn’t right about Blue being in the cornfield the moment he’d felt his touch.

“Stephens!” Boone called.

Robert spun, afraid everyone within earshot knew. He might have jumped ten feet high if his muscles didn’t feel like rocks. No, no, no—this was all wrong. He was supposed to see Redbone first, not Boone. He wanted to undo and unsay everything that had happened in the warden’s office.

Boone wore a leather pouch around his neck. He gestured. “Come on,” he said, and pushed through the line toward the cafeteria’s double doors. He stopped walking and turned, frowning when he saw Robert hadn’t moved. “Show me where it was at. It ain’t gonna hurt you none.”

All eyes were on him now. Robert had imagined a meeting in secret at the rear kitchen door, not a proclamation in front of every boy in line. Robert darted toward Boone to keep him from saying the awful thing out loud, that he was a haint tracker. He helped the warden hunt down boys who had already died—boys the warden himself might have helped kill like he’d killed his sister. Some of them did seem to know, the way they cleared a path for Robert and stared questions at him. Even the boy who reminded him of Blue was staring.

“Let’s go,” Robert whispered, mostly to be away from their eyes.

Inside the doors, heat and the smell of over-steamed vegetables swamped Robert as he followed Boone to the building’s left side, away from the cafeteria and toward the kitchen in back. Redbone was in his white cap, pushing a mop; Warden Haddock had already put him back in the kitchen. Redbone stopped mopping when he saw Robert. Boone was so intent on walking to the big metal vat against the rear wall that he didn’t tell Redbone to get back to work. Boone surely hadn’t seen the loathing in Redbone’s face.

Robert gave Redbone a shrug he hoped would look like an apology, but Redbone’s dark eyes sharpened on him as if he knew his every secret thought.

“Where was it again?” Boone said. “Show me where you saw that haint.”

Why had he said it aloud? Redbone’s face changed to a pale shade, melting away into an expression that reminded Robert of Papa’s when he had sat at Mama’s sickbed.

“That floor’s wet!” Redbone called out. “I just mopped it.”

“Don’t seem wet to me,” Boone said, and kept walking, and Robert had to follow. He couldn’t make himself look at Redbone.

The floor wasn’t a bit wet, or even clean—it had tracks through spilled flour in places—but Boone didn’t catch Redbone in the lie because Boone was only interested in the vat where Robert told him a haint had stood. Why had that white boy shown himself? Why hadn’t he been more careful? White boys didn’t belong in the kitchen—not even as haints. Robert tried to convince himself this was all the haint’s fault. He even tried believing Warden Haddock’s claim that the haint hadn’t been stabbed in the back; he only showed himself that way to make people feel sorry for the victim of such a low-down, cowardly act. Or to try to scare him. All the storybooks and picture shows were about haints scaring people. Hurting people, even.

“Tell me where he was at and I’ll sprinkle all around. If I had enough powder, I could do the whole kitchen.” Boone surveyed the floor and finally frowned. “He said he mopped this damn floor.” But instead of yelling or threatening to send Redbone to the Funhouse, Boone reached into his pouch, the floor forgotten, and pulled out a saltshaker full of red-brown powder.

“What’s that?” Robert said, although he knew everything except its name.

“Goofer dust,” Boone said. “Fresh batch I just scooped from my grandmama’s grave. That’s what draws ’em. Sprinkle goofer dust where you saw ’em last and they’ll come right back. Must smell like frying bacon to a starving man. Long as the trail’s fresh, they’ll come back an’ get caught. And they sure ’nough turn to dust like a li’l anthill.”

Robert felt sick to his stomach as he remembered the warden’s proud jar of dust. If you’re dead, stay dead, Blue had said. With his own mouth.

“Right there,” Robert said, all the while praying that Mama had never come near this spot, that she had stayed far away from the kitchen.

“Speak up, boy. I can’t hardly hear you.”

Robert didn’t move his arm from his side as he stuck out his index finger ever so slightly to point to the corner beside the vat. Robert could still remember the boy’s freckles as clearly as the knife. “That’s where he was standing, and then… he walked through the wall.”

“That right?” Boone caressed the wall nearest the corner as if he might find a soft spot and walk through the wall his own self. “This spot here?”

“Yessir.” Robert wasn’t sure. He hoped not, but it might be.

Boone rubbed his palms and paced like he was about to feast on the beef stew simmering in the large pots on the oversized stove. The carrots had been overcooked to a dull, sickly shade nothing like orange, and the meat alongside them had turned gray. The smell made Robert feel sick. This day, this week, this year, made Robert feel sick.