Page 110 of The Reformatory

Boone nodded toward a steel water pail not far from Cleo’s coffin-like cage, this time looking back at Robert. His mean grin softened to a smile that didn’t look real, not with the way his eyes gleamed in the lamplight. Robert realized he didn’t know Boone at all, that Boone could do much worse things than laying stripes in the Funhouse. “Go on. Give him a scoop of water if you feel so bad. But remember he’s down there. You better show me a haint tomorrow. Hear?”

“Yessir,” Robert whispered, and he rushed to the pail as if giving Cleo the water quickly would somehow make him forget his anger. Make it better to be in the Hole, alone in the dark.

One lamp on a post cast enough light for Robert to see that the water in the bucket wasn’t clear like he’d expected. Pine needles floated on top, and a big black drowned beetle on its back. When was the last time this water had been changed? But Robert pulled out the scoop and tried to fill it with only clean water, without bugs.

“Hurry up,” Boone said. “I ain’t gonna stand here all night.”

Robert spilled half the water in his scoop in his rush to pull it out, but he kneeled beside the raised opening of the Box and saw Cleo’s angry jawline, not much more, in the dim light. He could smell Cleo’s sweating skin, gleaming with the heat still trapped in the Box from the long day. Robert offered the scoop to him. “I’m real sorry, Cleo,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

Cleo knocked the scoop away, and it landed with a clink on the concrete ground. Then Cleo spat at him. Most of the warm spit missed, but some of it hit Robert’s ear. The bad ear.

“You’re dead,” Cleo hissed at him. “I’m gonna kill you both.”

“We’ll get you out of here, I promise,” Robert said, finding words somehow, voice gentle like a parent’s, hoping there was something he could say or do to quiet Cleo’s rage. Gloria could look in anyone’s eyes and know almost anything about them, and maybe this was how she felt every day. He stared straight to the heart of Cleo’s life story, all of it bad and sad and wrong.

And now all of the blame was on Robert, somehow.

Cleo’s going to kill us, he thought, trying on the words, his head almost quiet. He could see his future plainly in Cleo’s eyes.

30

Tuesday night

Because their feet were caked with mud and pine needles, Boone said they could shower again after the visit to the Box. Redbone decided he’d rather join the laughter with the boys listening to the last few minutes of Jack Benny and Rochester’s raucous, throaty voice. “I never give up a chance to laugh,” Redbone told Robert after he changed into his pajamas.

But Robert couldn’t imagine laughing at anything, so he went back to the bathroom since all the boys were gone and he wouldn’t have to be naked in front of anyone. Maybe Mama would come to him. Maybe she would look more like Mama this time, not just a tapping sound on the pipes. She always came when he needed her most. His throat ached from the effort of keeping his sobs stifled. His heart still hammered from the idea of Cleo locked in that dark hole like an animal. No, worse than an animal: no one would even keep a dog somewhere so terrible. The horses in the stable would have a more comfortable night.

The bathroom was a sad collection of corroded sinks and leaking showerheads, with too few toilets lined against the tall, narrow rear windows—hardly any privacy for boys who needed to sit and take their time. Robert took advantage of the empty bathroom to visit the toilet first, and not a soul disturbed him. He pressed his feet against the slick tile and curled his toes, ignoring the smell of pee and a stain that looked, to him, like blood. By the time Robert flushed the toilet, he didn’t feel like crying as much. His senses were also coming back to him. He couldn’t visit with Mama: Redbone had said that it was hard for her to come to a place so far from anywhere she’d ever been, and he should send her away if she did. He might have to give up another haint to Warden Haddock, and Mama shouldn’t come anywhere near him in case Boone tried to lay down his dust in places of his own choosing. He was beyond Mama’s help.

“Don’t come to me anymore, Mama,” he whispered. “Wait ’til I’m gone from here.” The pipes were silent. Maybe she had heard him. Maybe that one thing was all right.

The water from the showerhead only dribbled and wasn’t warm, but at least he didn’t have to share. The cool water felt good on such a hot night, so he let the fat droplets douse his hair and face before he picked up the shriveled soap bar to wash. Only then did Robert understand why he was really in the shower room. Who he really wanted to talk to.

“Kendall,” Robert whispered in the empty shower stall. “Kendall Sweeting.” He shivered a bit when he called Blue by the name Warden Haddock had used; he thought of the dead boy in the photograph’s charred fire circle, curled up like he was in his mother’s womb.

He called Blue’s name five times, six times, and heard nothing in response except the laughter from the radio room echoing against the bathroom’s cement wall.

“Come on, Blue—Kendall,” he said. “You gotta talk to me.”

Again Blue did not come. The faucet complained in a howl when Robert turned off the water. He kept from crying by telling himself that he could call for Blue all night, now that he knew which name to use. But he would have preferred to see him in the light instead of the room’s darkness, where Blue looked more like a ghost.

All of the towels were already damp, so Robert felt dissatisfied and only halfway dry as he rubbed a thin towel across his skin. He was drying his legs when he saw steam rising from the neighboring shower stall and the hazy figure of someone standing beside him.

Had someone come in to shower while he wasn’t looking?

No. The water wasn’t on, and even if it had been, it wasn’t hot enough for natural steam.

And the cloudy shape was too small to be Mama. Finally—Blue had come. Robert thought he should peek around the stall’s wall to see more clearly into the phantom steam, but he couldn’t make himself go any closer to Blue. He liked the short wall between them. In fact, although he’d called for Blue, Robert’s damp legs felt weak and trembly. As the steam grew thicker, impossible to see through, Robert was sure he would pee down his leg and need to rinse himself off again.

“Blue?” he whispered.

“I was a long way from here,” Blue said. His voice was coming from the shower stall, but it also seemed to be nestled inside Robert’s head. Robert tensed as Blue snapped, “You can’t have more of us, if that’s what you’re asking. No one else deserves to be in that jar. Even Robicheaux didn’t deserve it. Any one of us is better than ten of you.”

Tears came after all as Robert poured out the story of how Boone had marched them out to see Cleo in the Box and how Redbone would be next if they didn’t find more haints.

“Cleo looked mad enough to kill us, Blue,” Robert said.

“Being dead isn’t so bad,” Blue said blandly, and Robert cried harder. Redbone was supposed to be his friend! “Just come up with a story to stall. Redbone’s a whiz at talking stories. I’m working on getting you the key to Haddock’s drawer—by tomorrow if I’m careful. The dust isn’t as strong anymore, and I’ll bet Boone will forget to refresh it. Finding you is the smartest thing Boone has ever done. Did you know that?”