Page 109 of The Reformatory

His voice suggested a last chance, but Robert and Redbone both shook their heads. One of the watching teenagers sucked his lip, angry. Robert had never met those older boys, so why did they care? After dinner, Boone had made a ceremony out of sprinkling his haint dust near a brick pile not far from the cafeteria after Robert lied and said he’d seen a haint there. A crowd of boys had waited around him, holding their breath, but Robert had ducked away even though Redbone had whispered that it would be better for him to watch too.

“Did the ash come?” Robert said, trying not to sound like he already knew the answer.

Boone gave Robert such an ugly look that he wanted to give up Blue right then.

“Come on, then,” Boone said, and he opened the door to the twilight.

Robert’s feet were more tender because they were damp, so the sharper stones and twigs poked like straight pins as he kept up a fast pace to follow Boone across the field. All around them, boys with late passes were streaming back to the dormitories. Only Robert and Redbone were walking away from the laughing, away from the rest. The air was soupy and warm, but Robert felt cold in his wet towel, as if everyone were seeing him naked as they stared.

But they were walking away from the Funhouse; that was what mattered. Instead of veering right, Boone veered left and led them through an open gate toward the horse stables Robert had not visited yet. Here, the air smelled like hay and manure. None of the horses were in sight, which at least might have been an unexpected treat, but Robert heard them snuffling and pawing at the ground behind the barn walls. He thought it was his imagination at first, but the horses stirred as they passed, a chorus of worry. Robert had ignored his fear as much as he could—At least we’re not going toward the Funhouse, he told himself again—but the horses’ nervous whinnies felt like the worst kind of luck. His damp back shivered with the breeze upsetting the leaves, hissing at him from above.

Were Redbone’s eyes glistening in the dimming daylight?

Grass gave way to rocky soil and then soft dirt and then concrete warm from the sun.

Robert thought about everything his feet touched to try to keep from being afraid.

“Tell him, Robert,” Redbone said. “Tell him what you were telling me, about how it was so unsanctified at the church. You said you saw the devil’s shadow, remember?”

“Yes!” Robert said, admiring Redbone’s quick thinking. Robert wished he had added more details in his earlier report to Boone. “I left that part out by accident, sir.” He tried to imagine a Flash Gordon story of a great battle between good and evil, except it would be a story about him. “The devil got the upper hand at the church, Mister Boone. While you and Superintendent Haddock were looking at the dust, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the wall: the devil’s shadow. It was gone quick as lightning, but I knew right then he’d come to try to stop me from finding haints. And I’m praying him away and praying him away, and I just know I’ll find another haint tomorrow. But I’m not strong enough to fight off the devil himself in one or two days, Mister Boone. Maybe I could lick him in three or four.”

“Maybe you know a potion, sir?” Redbone said. “A potion that could help him beat the devil down? I’m praying too, but some hoodoo would sure help.”

“Yessir, sure would,” Robert said. “That would speed it up.”

In the past two days, talk of hoodoo had created a kind of secret club between them, with Boone telling stories of learning to mix teas and salves at his grandmother’s knee, boasting of his skills as a haint catcher in his own right. But Boone didn’t look back at them as he led them across the concrete. Boone’s walking slowed as his breathing got louder. Nothing they said would turn him around, so they fell silent. Robert hoped they hadn’t made him madder with what might have seemed like obvious lies.

Finally, Boone stopped walking beneath a stand of pines. Robert looked at Redbone, confused, until he saw where Redbone’s eyes were staring: two wooden doors like cellar doors were lined up side by side in the midst of the pine needles, propped up by about six inches to show the darkness below. Two eyes stared out at them from the closer propped door, but Robert couldn’t make out the face in the dark. His chest began heaving as he understood: the Box!

“Guess you’re feeling good and sorry you ain’t found no more haints, huh?” Boone said.

Robert and Redbone both swore how sorry they were, how they would do better, how the devil had bested them in their hunt. Robert’s bare knees trembled beneath his towel. The underground space looked so tiny! Would they be forced to spend the night there? Or longer?

“Shut up,” Boone said, and no living thing within earshot made a sound, not even the unlucky boy who was locked in the Box. The crickets and nearby horses were silent too.

“Don’t make no promises to me: Talk to him,” he said, pointing toward the Box and the staring eyes. “ ’Cuz until you find me another haint for Warden Haddock, that’s where he’s gonna stay.”

Robert couldn’t grasp Boone’s words at first. Someone else was in the Box because he hadn’t shown Boone how to find the haints? The worst of the worst of the worst, Blue had said. Again he tried to look at Redbone, but Redbone’s eyes were locked with the boy in the Box.

“We’re sorry,” Redbone said to the boy. “We didn’t know he was lockin’ somebody up.”

“We’ll… try harder,” Robert said, his throat lined with sand as he spoke the lie.

“You’d better!” the boy’s rough voice came, vicious. Robert knew his voice! It was Cleo.

That was why the teenagers had been staring at them back at the dorm: they already knew. “What you look so sad for?” Boone said. “Didn’t you tell me how he was botherin’ you out in the cornfield the other day? Ain’t that so, Redbone?”

Redbone’s mouth fell open, shocked. “No, sir,” he said. “I never said…” But he looked mortified that he had contradicted Boone, so his words fell away.

Cleo had threatened them in the cornfield, true, but Robert had never told anyone, and he doubted Redbone had either. Why would Redbone be a fink and tell on Cleo when everyone knew that was the worst thing to do? If you finked on a bully, a bully would hurt you.

“Tonight he’s the only one out here,” Boone said. “There’s nothin’ in the Box ’cept a bucket to piss and shit in, and he’s gonna be mighty hot when the sun comes back out. And ev’ry minute he sweats in there and his stomach rumbles ’cuz he ain’t got no food and his throat burns ’cuz he ain’t got no water, he’s gonna be madder ’n’ madder. And he ain’t never gonna forget why he got put in there—’cuz y’all are playin’ around. Keep it up, and tomorrow night I’ll throw Redbone down in there with him.” He said this directly to Robert as if Redbone weren’t standing beside him.

Blue’s name stirred in Robert’s throat, and Redbone seemed to see it; he bumped hard against Robert as if to knock Blue’s name away.

“Just give us a chance, Mister Boone,” Redbone said. “Don’t put him down there. Cleo didn’t do nothing to be down there like that. I never said to put nobody in the Box.”

“You worry about your own self,” Boone said, grinning sideways at Redbone in the meanest way Robert had ever seen. “That’s what I’d do if I was you.”