Page 125 of The Reformatory

“—but if he made that sacrifice, you need to keep your head so you won’t get hurt too. Friends die for each other, Robert. The secret to war is the sacrifices friends make for each other, and this is your war. Don’t let your friend’s sacrifice be for nothing. Don’t vex Haddock or make accusations. Promise me that, son. It’s the most important promise you might ever make.”

“He should go to jail!”

“You’ve told me, and I heard it. I promise you—I heard it.” She held his face then, grasping his cheeks tightly, and his neck gave itself over until the weight of his head rested in her hands. “They’re going to bury Redbone today,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “At Boot Hill. They tidy these things up fast. His family’s not coming; I don’t even know if they’ve been told. That’s the first thing I’ll see about: making sure they’re told. But you need to be there to say goodbye, Robert. And I can help you.”

“How?”

“You’ll play four notes on that trumpet you play so beautifully. It’s taps, holding that lovely high C the way I know you can. It’s a sound only God could have created. I do believe Redbone will hear that horn all the way in heaven.”

“He will?” Robert whispered. He hadn’t been sure that a boy who stole a car and got sent to the Reformatory could go to heaven. He was glad Mrs. Hamilton thought so.

“I played it for my husband,” she said. “And I do believe he heard.”

Robert remembered that Redbone might be a haint now! He might find Redbone leaning against a tree. Or at the well. Redbone might come to his own funeral to watch himself be buried, legs swinging from a fence railing, making funny faces. He almost smiled.

“Teach me how,” Robert said.

Something rattled when Robert lifted the trumpet from the shelf. A small key fell to the floor. Mrs. Hamilton’s back was turned, so Robert kicked the key away and watched it spin across the room until it slid under the bass drum. He was so angry, he was panting. Was it the key to Warden Haddock’s desk drawer? Only a haint would choose such a silly place to hide it. How dare Blue try to give him the key now, of all times! Robert was far angrier with Blue than he was with Cleo, because Blue should have been able to stop it. And if Blue had delivered Henry Jackson like he’d said, Redbone never would have been sent to the Box.

“I don’t want your stupid key,” Robert whispered under his breath. “Leave me alone. I’m never talking to you again. I hate you.”

Instead of thinking about Blue and the rage he could hardly keep bottled inside, Robert spent his day learning how to play taps. He remembered the fingering easily enough with Mrs. Hamilton’s patient instruction, but he struggled with fixing his mouth properly up and down the octave. His high C squealed and stuttered, and his lowest note rumbled. For hour after hour, as Redbone’s memory charged him from every direction—even from the tiny bottle of oil he’d given Robert, which was still standing on the chalkboard rack—Robert drove away his thoughts with his trumpet. When he imagined Redbone dying alone, or Redbone’s reflection in the mirror on the wall, he couldn’t breathe except through the trumpet. He played to forget. He played to remember. His lips grew puffed and sore, but he never stopped practicing: middle C, middle C, F—pause—repeating middle C, F, A—slightly longer pause—F, A, high C—the longest note, his high C, which he often could hit just right before his descent down the scale—A, F, middle C—and then repeating middle C, middle C, F, allowing the final note to float to silence. The music felt like a kind of prayer. Mrs. Hamilton had said he was in a war, and Redbone was a fallen soldier as surely as if Haddock had shot him down instead of walking past him near the well.

Had Haddock known even then? Had he walked past Redbone thinking to himself how Cleo would take care of him because he could do anything he wanted to Cleo too? When the scream tried to rise in Robert’s throat again, he blew his hot sobs into the trumpet.

“Again, please,” Mrs. Hamilton said. Her voice always came just when he was about to forget he wasn’t alone.

Two firm knocks sounded on the door, impatient. Robert looked around to try to see who it was, but only a shadow moved beneath the closed door.

“Keep playing,” Mrs. Hamilton said.

Crutcher and Boone stood at the door. Robert’s heart raced, but he started taps again, keeping the notes smooth, an accusation in the sad beauty. He kept his eyes on the wall and Mrs. Hamilton’s charts of music scales. If Boone tried to touch him, Robert thought he would hit him as hard as he could with his trumpet and didn’t care what happened to him afterward.

Crutcher spoke first, gentle and familiar. “Marian… the boy needs to stop playing that. He’s played it a dozen times. More.”

“He’s practicing for his friend’s burial.”

“He sounds good enough. The other boys can hear… and it’s upsetting.”

“They can dig a grave and bury a child, but they can’t hear music?”

Robert had played taps an entire time again before Boone took over, less gentle and familiar. “He’s got chores. He needs to come on with me.”

“Chores?” Mrs. Hamilton said. “That what you call telling this boy when he’s chasing ghosts?” Robert kept playing but glanced back at Boone’s angry jowls. Crutcher took a step away from Boone, closer to his sister, as if to protect her. The middle C that Robert played was gravelly and flat as his attention fluttered. But he played on.

“You may not be aware of what emotional stress does to young people,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “August and Robert were in band together, so I’ve seen their bond up close. I’m not sure what all this ghost business is or how you’re caught up in it, Mister Boone, but I will tell you that this boy needs time to grieve in a safe environment. And I am providing him with that.”

“But, Mr. Haddock—”

“And if that’s a problem for the superintendent, you tell him he is free to come here and tell me so personally.”

“Marian…,” Crutcher said, whining.

“But while he is here, I assure you I will have some questions about why August Montgomery’s family has not been notified of his passing. And how a weapon ended up in those boys’ hands. Or the fitness of that punishment—the Box—on a boy hardly thirteen years old.”

Robert had to stop playing then. His hands were trembling too much.

“He won’t like that kind of talk,” Boone said with the same weary sadness he’d had in his voice when he knew he was leading Redbone to his death.