Page 47 of The Reformatory

A shadow from the corner of his eye made Robert look up to the ceiling above his bed, where he saw a blurry dark mass. He blinked the tears away and saw that the mass was not on the ceiling; it was hovering a few feet above his bed, weightless, and it was a young boy, maybe six years old, limbs splayed as if he were swimming. Studying him. He was real enough to touch, down to the snot crusted on his nostrils and the knotty, uncombed curls on his head. The boy looked like he would drop on top of him.

Until the Reformatory, Robert had never known that ghosts could look so much like regular people—well, except they could walk through walls or float in the air. He wished Mama would appear to him in a flesh state instead of strangers. But maybe she couldn’t: maybe Robert could only see the boys who had died here. At least this one wasn’t ruined like the one who had found his bed in the dorm and made him want to scream. Now that he knew what real screaming was for, he was only bothered by the ghost, not scared. Mostly, he was mad it wasn’t Mama.

Robert started to say, Go away, you’re not real, but those two eager, real-boy eyes stopped him. For a haint, maybe spying on the living was entertainment like listening to the radio. At least he didn’t smell bad like the burned-up boy. Robert had to strain his neck to see the boy so high, so instead he relaxed to his flat pillow and closed his eyes.

“You can stay,” Robert whispered. “But don’t touch me. And don’t say nothin’.”

Robert felt the boy bobbing above him; he didn’t have to open his eyes to know he was still there. He could have learned more about the dead boy if he concentrated: the facts of the boy’s life bubbled just beneath the surface of Robert’s knowing. The dead boy was trying to tell him, a chorus of I was, I was, I was. Pneumonia. One word screamed through before Robert made himself listen to the radio again. He had enough pain by himself.

“Hush,” Robert said.

On Dragnet, the bomber is excited and angry. He might set off the bomb at any time.

When the captain asks Friday if he’s scared, Friday says, “Yeah,” and the captain says that makes them even. After a wrestling match with the bomber—no one gets shot—Friday grabs the bomb and drops it in a bucket. He rushes it outside, but he trips, and the bucket hits the ground at the same time he lands. But no explosion. The bomb never goes off! Friday is lucky; it was wired wrong. Has Joe Friday ever come so close to dying?

Robert felt like Joe Friday at the end, waiting for the explosion. He was still waiting when the theme music came on and the episode was over.

Robert whispered to the ghost, “I’m sorry you got pneumonia.” Wasn’t that all haints wanted? For someone to be sorry?

When Robert craned to look back up, the floating boy was gone.

A blink later, Redbone was standing over Robert’s bed with a clean, unbloodied shirt buttoned over his bandages. The daylight was brighter, so Robert must have slept for an hour, maybe two. Someone had turned off the radio. The three other living boys had stopped crying and were eating breakfast from trays in their laps. Robert noticed a tray at the foot of his bed: applesauce and runny eggs that looked gray. He checked the ceiling: no one floating.

How could Redbone be on his feet?

“See?” Redbone said. “Told you.”

His voice was strained, his only sign of suffering.

“Told me what?”

“You could take it. How many stripes you get?”

“I dunno.” Robert remembered Warden Haddock saying fifteen lashes, but he didn’t want to sound proud of it. Redbone had him twice beat, anyway. “Don’t you hurt none?”

Redbone sucked his teeth. “I don’t give nobody the satisfaction of seein’ me hurt, son.”

But he lost his big talk at the sound of footsteps approaching from the doorway. Redbone hobbled back to his bed, and Robert heard his Ssssssss hiss of pain as he lay on his stomach.

Then Redbone began moaning in a way he never moaned when they were alone.

The Negro nurse who pushed a cart into the room was old, maybe nearly as old as Miz Lottie. The wobbly, squeaky wheels on her metal cart made Robert’s bad ear scream, igniting every piece of him that had bled. He moaned too, following Redbone’s lead. He was always moaning in his head anyway. His bed was closest to the doorway, so she stopped beside him.

“Hope we won’t see you back here, huh?” the nurse said matter-of-factly. Moaning and whippings were a regular part of her job, nothing to change the look on her face over.

“No, ma’am,” Robert said. He hoped he wouldn’t have to talk more.

“You’re hurtin’?”

“Yes’m.”

She picked up a tin of Bayer aspirin and shook two pills into her hand. “You’re big enough for the adult dose. Swallow those down.”

Robert hated taking pills of any size, but he would do anything to keep from hurting so much. The old Robbie was dead, he reminded himself. Dead and gone on McCormack Road.

“Aspirin won’t seem to do much good,” she said. “But better’n nothing.”

The aspirin was chalky, and the tepid water the nurse gave him in a plastic cup didn’t help much when he tried to swallow. Fear sealed his throat when he felt the pressure from the pill, but to his relief the water washed down. He discovered a trick of moving the second bitter pill toward his gum, and he swallowed it easier from there. Still, he gasped when he was done. He’d been holding his breath.