Page 144 of The Reformatory

He didn’t see the crow anymore either. The crow had come in and out of sight in the cornfield, but Robert hadn’t seen it in the web of trees. Now Robert wondered if the crow had been Blue or if he’d only hoped it was, and despair licked at his stomach again. He felt let down both by Blue and by Gloria, although it pained him to admit that he was frustrated with his sister. She hadn’t described the woods this way at all! She’d promised a creek, and instead thick woods were a trap slowly catching him like a spider’s web to hold him for the dogs.

And holding him for Haddock. Robert knew he must be coming too.

No wonder most runaways ran toward the road instead! Why hadn’t Blue told him what to expect? Or did Blue know these woods himself, after being trapped at the Reformatory? Blue might not have ever set foot in the land behind the cornfield, or even known how to get there. Robert’s doubts and worries cramped his lungs as he gasped harder for air, although his pace had slowed to a crawl. The more slowly he moved past the thickets and fallen timber crisscrossing his path as if to block him, the harder he breathed, as the air was hotter and thicker.

But his fear of Haddock and the dogs kept his feet moving despite his aching muscles and overworked lungs. He squeezed himself past the pine trunks and tried to duck as many branches as he could, ignoring the scratches. As he was finding his rhythm, he was yanked backward so hard that he almost fell from his feet. He turned around in terror, afraid Haddock had somehow snuck up behind him, but his satchel had only caught on a broken limb. When he pulled to try to free himself, he realized the limb had caught in the satchel’s hole, not the strap, and had ripped the hole so big that the haint jar fell to the ground, with the envelope beside it.

“No… no… no…,” Robert whispered.

He didn’t know if he was more afraid of breaking the haint jar or seeing Haddock’s photos, but he rushed to collect everything that had fallen out. The jar had a chip in the glass now, but it had not broken enough to release the ashes inside. The envelope was still tied tightly, but Robert tightened the string a little more just to be sure. He would have to carry the torn satchel in his arms like an infant.

A dog bayed behind him, shockingly close. He heard Haddock’s voice calling in the wind, saying, “Here, doggie doggie!” Haddock was going to catch him!

Despair froze Robert where he crouched. He was afraid to move or lift his head too high.

When he was still, his breathing and heartbeat were so loud that he was sure Haddock would hear him a mile away. He started to crawl forward in the prickly brush, but he noticed that the drawing of Redbone had flown free from the bag, lying ten feet to his right. The drawing was more wrinkled than it had been and seemed to have a tear, but Robert would not leave Redbone’s drawing behind. Leaving it behind would not only be a sign for Haddock on the trail; it would feel like leaving Redbone’s spirit behind too.

Still breathing fast, perspiration falling into his eyes, Robert crawled toward the drawing, which had landed on a flat stone beyond another fallen tree trunk. He strained to reach through a gap beneath the fallen tree to try to grab it, but as soon as his fingers got close, the paper shivered… and flew out of his reach, hopping five more feet away in a light breeze.

Cursing, Robert climbed over the tree trunk to try to reach it again. This time the paper whirled up higher and away from him like it had been snatched and was dancing eight feet in the air above him, rocking gently back and forth before it got stuck in a tree branch and flapped there.

“No…,” Robert whispered again, near tears. He didn’t have time to climb up and—

The paper freed itself, hovering above Robert so that Redbone’s face showed. Then it floated farther ahead, rocking lazily on breezes that Robert could not feel.

“Redbone?” Robert whispered, hardly daring to hope. “Or… Blue? Is that you?”

An invisible crow cawed.

Robert was so excited that he nearly shouted for joy. “Will you show me?” he whispered. “Can you show me where to go?” The floating paper whirled in a circle and then charged forward, nearly out of sight past the treetops. “Wait—not so fast!”

But he followed. If Blue or Redbone or both of them were driving the paper’s path as he hoped they were, they had saved him a harder time, because his direction had shifted slightly. He fought past untamed brush until the floating and dipping paper revealed a deer trail he had not seen from his previous position. He might never have found the thin trail of orange soil, where it was so much easier to run and seemed more likely to lead to a creek. He noticed that his boots were leaving prints on the path, but the loud baying behind him told him he didn’t have time to cover his tracks. The dog knew where he was. He only hoped he had enough of a head start to outrun the dog and locate Gloria and the truck.

But did he?

Clasping the broken satchel and its contents to his chest, Robert begged his aching, pulsing legs to keep running just a bit farther and faster. He was quick in short races, but he wasn’t used to long distances, and his entire body was complaining. His feet were sore, chafing against the insides of his too-big boots, and his lungs were howling for rest. When his stomach lurched, he braced himself against a tree trunk with one arm while he bent over and threw up the food he’d eaten that day, splattering the mess against the soil. He kicked at pine needles to cover it. He didn’t want to give Haddock the satisfaction of knowing how tired and scared he was.

“Heeeeere, doggie doggie doggie!” Haddock’s voice called.

Haddock sounded close enough to tap him on the shoulder, so Robert stumbled into a run again. And the dog! The howling sound wasn’t like the choppy barks from Red McCormack’s dog Duke when he chased you down the fence; the low, wounded baying sounded like Henry Jackson’s song by the old well, as if the dog were telling stories about Robert’s short, sad life.

Where was the paper? He had lost sight of it when he threw up, but he noticed it caught in some branches overhead, more torn than before. For an instant he was sure it was just an ordinary piece of paper that had been blown by the wind—and maybe he was completely off track by now. Why had he ever believed he could steal from Haddock and get away? Why had he believed that Gloria could rescue him when she’d barely been able to feed him? Or that haints could lead him to freedom when Blue was trapped himself?

But as Robert ran on the faint trail, the paper yanked itself free from above and sailed a few yards ahead of him, twirling. The paper’s frolicking reminded Robert of newsreels he’d seen of Air Force jets doing tricks in the air. Robert laughed with a hysteria he could not control as he gasped for air. The paper was a haint somehow, and the haint was leading him just as Blue had promised, and every time he thought of it, he laughed harder, because no haint he had ever seen in a scary movie looked like a plain old piece of paper.

The treetops whispered as he ran, rustling so loudly that they obscured the sound of the barking. Gooseflesh sprang across Robert’s arms as an energy like electricity jolted his skin, like being held and rocked and sung to. Like being carried. When the path cleared up and Robert saw an opening ahead he hoped led to the creek, his feet were moving with longer and longer strides before he touched the ground, and it dawned on him that he might be flying instead of running. Was he floating over the stones and dead leaves and pine cones, his legs freed from their burden as they churned above the ground? As soon as he looked down, Robert’s feet landed on the path hard, but he didn’t lose his balance, propped up by imaginary arms.

He leaped up again to see if he could fly just as his dreams had always promised, or some memory of long ago, and as his legs pumped, he felt himself rise until a tree branch above him thwacked the side of his head and a dead leaf went into his mouth, but that only made him laugh harder. His feet couldn’t feel the chafing against his raw ankles anymore, gliding instead of running. Then he landed so hard that it hurt his soles and made him stumble, scraping his knees.

The path had led him to a clearing… and a Negro woman in a white dress like a church usher was standing twenty feet ahead. She was smiling at him, so familiar that he almost called Gloria’s name—but the shape of her face and frame made him gasp as he realized—

“Mama?” Robert said.

Calling her broke the spell, or maybe it was the baying dog behind him, but the woman was gone when he blinked away droplets of sweat. The leaves’ powerful rustling was gone too, along with the electric feeling Robert was now sure she had given him to help him move faster and find his way. She’d appeared in the middle of the creek ahead, wading in the water like the spiritual Miz Lottie had sung. A crow cawed, and this time Robert saw the bird perched on a branch above the water, close to where Mama had been.

Robert’s knees gave way until he was kneeling at the edge of the path, panting, new tears mingling with the sweat stinging his eyes. His excitement at finding the creek couldn’t overcome the pain of seeing Mama so briefly before she was gone. He had seen a dozen ghosts at the Reformatory, but only Mama’s ghost truly mattered, and she’d been the hardest to find. Maybe it was because she had never visited the Reformatory in life, as Blue had said, and she had only appeared in a flash to let him know she was there, that he had reached the creek he was looking for. The unfairness opened new sorrow in Robert even as he whispered, “Thank you, Mama,” because coming to him must have been so, so hard.

As if in comfort, the pencil drawing of Redbone floated back down in front of him and onto the ground. The journey had nearly torn the paper in half, but Redbone’s grin still showed through the rips and creases. Sobbing now, Robert folded the paper as well as he could with shaking hands and shoved it into his back pocket, hoping it would be safe there.