Page 48 of The Reformatory

Redbone let out a cry as if he’d just felt Warden Haddock’s lash, trying for sympathy. “How many this time?” the nurse asked Redbone.

“Thirty, ma’am.”

“Well, gracious. I expect you’ll behave now, won’t you?”

“Yes’m,” Redbone said.

“Both of you boys from Lincoln,” she said, glancing back at Robert, “you’ll stay here today and then back to your dorm tonight. Then it’s out to the fields in the morning.”

“Ma’am?” Robert said, startled. “We work in the kitchen.”

“Not anymore,” the nurse said. “Not for at least a month after the Funhouse.”

Robert glanced at Redbone’s face for a sign she was lying, but Redbone looked glum, so they would go to the fields after all. Papa had told him he should never spend even a minute picking for white men. And how could he work at all with his back hurting so much? He could say none of this to the nurse, who didn’t much feel sorry for him, so he began to eat to smother the lump in his throat as she rattled away with her cart.

His eggs were cold and bland and didn’t taste much like eggs. The applesauce seemed more sour than sweet. Maybe nothing could have flavor today. He might not really taste anything again until he left this place, was back at home with Gloria or at Miz Lottie’s kitchen table. Thinking of home brought tears to his eyes, but he didn’t want Redbone to see him crying.

The kitchen had been his one good thing, and now that was gone.

Redbone was back at Robert’s bedside as soon as the nurse left. “The lucky thing is, we don’t got to go to school today if we’re in the infirmary,” Redbone said slyly. “Work neither.” Redbone had already found something to be happy about.

Not Robert. “Why we got to work the fields for a whole month?”

Redbone’s lips tightened and a shadow overtook his brow. Instead of answering, he slapped down a deck of playing cards on Robert’s mattress. “Spades or bid whist?”

In his misery, Robert didn’t want to play cards with Redbone or anyone else. At least the ghost floating above him had been quiet.

“I wanna play!” one of the young boys called out. He wheezed when he talked. Did he have pneumonia too?

“Shut up,” Redbone said. “You’re too little. And hush ’fore you bring the nurse.”

“She can’t hear nothin’,” another boy said. And he laughed far too loudly, testing.

The other two joined the laughing.

“All of y’all hush or I’ll whup your hides,” said Redbone, and the boys fell silent. Redbone’s eyes came back to Robert. He patted the deck of cards, impatient.

“You my friend now?” Robert said. “Like… if I needed you to, you’d cover for me like you did for Blue? I’d cover for you.”

Redbone considered it, staring at the marching ants on the wall. Then he nodded. “We been to the Funhouse together now. So… hell yeah.”

Robert had never needed to have someone declare his friendship so badly. Redbone’s Hell yeah made the dingy room’s walls seem brighter. Dulled the sharp edges of his pain. He felt his mouth twitching to smile. Almost.

“Bid whist,” Robert said, deciding.

Redbone grinned. “You really ’bout to get yo’ ass beat now,” he said.

“We’ll see who gets beat.” Robert’s smile snuck out.

Redbone dealt out cards, his hands as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

The infirmary, despite its griminess and chemical smells, was a sanctuary for a day. Robert and Redbone snuck in card games between the nurse’s halfhearted rounds when they both put on a pathetic display for her eyes, which wasn’t really only for show. “If you don’t act sick enough, they send you to school at twelve thirty,” Redbone advised him.

Whenever the nurse was gone, Redbone told stories: more adventures from his joy ride, his rabbit-hunting skills, his baseball card collection, and how his daddy sold liquor and paper sacks stuffed with fried catfish from his pickup truck. Robert couldn’t bring up anything Redbone didn’t already have a story about. Redbone was only a few months older, but his life was so much fuller than school and church and Papa’s meetings. Redbone’s back porch had been a place for play, not for work. And since Gloria had warned him never to talk about Papa, Robert didn’t tell Redbone about Papa’s back-porch meetings, everyone stiff and silent when they thought they heard a car. Or if a hunter’s rifle sounded too close. He didn’t talk about Mama dying either. Those weren’t stories to make you feel better like Redbone’s.

Robert checked the ceiling for the floating boy. Still gone. “You see the haints?” Robert said finally.

The question caught Redbone so off guard that his lips dropped apart. He didn’t speak at first. “They don’t mess with me too much,” he said finally.