he feared Mother Hall would hear it.
“Little Deer,” she mumbled, reading the name on an envelope. “Ain’t got no Little Deer here.” She tossed the envelope into the open lid of the stove and picked up another. “Can’t even read the name on that one.” The envelope went into the stove.
Turtle gasped. He had never received a letter from his parents in the two years he had been at the school, nor had any of the boys, as far as he knew. This was the reason! He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs that it was not fair, it was not right. He wanted to run to Willow and go home with her, but he didn’t even know where home was! He had come to the school by train and wagon. It had taken days, through forests, across rivers. He would never find his way back. Besides, boys who ran away were nearly always brought back … and beaten.
Mother Hall tossed another envelope toward the stove.
With that, he tiptoed across the wedge of lamplight. A floorboard squeaked.
“Who’s there?”
Turtle froze in the shadow, poised on his toes, scared to let out his breath in case she heard him. His knees began to shake. He knew he couldn’t hold his position for long. It was all over! She would catch him! He would be whipped, and he would still not have seen his sister! A sound roared through his ears like the train that had brought him to school ... ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk. It took a second to realize that it was the pulsing of his own body.
Mother Hall turned her attention back to the stack of mail, throwing it piece by piece into the gaping mouth of the stove. Turtle exhaled as gently as he could and crept on, past Father Thomas’s office to the big door that led to the girls’ side of the building. He pushed the door but nothing happened. He pulled and pushed again with more strength, but still the door did not budge. His hands groped around the edges until, just above his head, he discovered a metal bolt. It flew back with a clunk that Turtle thought would wake the dead. He pushed open the door and left it standing ajar for his return trip. By the time he reached the bottom of the girls’ staircase, he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He didn’t care if he was caught or what they would do to him. He bounded up the two flights of stairs and ran past the doors … one … two …
There she was! Standing outside the door, waiting for him. He didn’t need the dim moonlight to identify her, even though she was taller than he remembered. She flung her arms around him and held him tight, and he felt as though he was back in his mother’s arms. He was warm inside and full, as though something deep inside his chest had grown bigger and could no longer be contained by bones and flesh and skin.
He barely heard the angry voices or saw the lamplight swinging down the corridor. They clung to each other as the cane crashed onto their backs. More staff arrived. It took the combined strength of five adults to wrench the children apart. Mister Hall almost lifted Turtle from the ground by his ear as he marched him away.
“You’re going to have a beating like you’ve never had before.”
All of the boys had to watch Turtle’s punishment. His wrists were tied to the post in the courtyard. Mister Hall didn’t use his cane. He used lots of rawhide straps joined together at the handle. Each piece of rawhide had a knot at the end. He hit Turtle over and over.
Often the older boys mocked the younger ones who were being punished, sneering at those who were forced to kneel in a corner, ridiculing those who had the striped haircut. But no one laughed when Turtle was being whipped, not even Henry. Red Wolf closed his eyes so he couldn’t see, but his ears still heard the sound of the leather smacking into Turtle’s skin, and the yelps that turned to moans and then to whimpers. He felt sick to his stomach.
Red Wolf didn’t see Turtle for many days. The morning that he reappeared in the refectory, Red Wolf was elated. But Turtle had changed. He was broken. The light in his eyes had gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Grade One boys gathered around the farm manager in the hayfield. He was on edge. “There’s enough grass in this field to feed the cows right through the winter,” he said, “but we need a good, solid, dry spell to harvest it.” He looked at the sky, trying to judge the weather.
Red Wolf felt the breeze on his face and was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to rain for quite a while. He considered telling Mister Boss this, but thought better of it.
“Haymaking is tricky. Rain ruins hay! Even a passing shower makes it damp, and it’ll grow mildew. Soon your sweet-smelling hay turns foul … musty, full of grey dust … makes the cows cough. But even worse than that, mouldy hay gets hot, really hot, so that it bursts into flames! I saw a whole barn go up once. It burned down in the blink of an eye, just because of mouldy hay. There wasn’t even time to get inside and open the stall doors. The cows and horses burned, too.”
The farm manager’s face crumpled briefly, then he gnawed at the edge of a fingernail and continued with his haymaking lesson. “But if you wait too long for a dry spell, the grass goes to seed, and that’s no good.” He yanked at a grass stem and passed it to the boys. “See, it’s perfect right now, just started to flower. We don’t want to wait much longer.” He looked at the children and singled one out. “And why don’t we want to wait any longer?”
“I don’t know, Mister Boss, sir,” the worried boy said.
“Because once the grass flowers, the plant puts all its energy into making seed. The seeds fall off as soon as they are handled. And then what do we have?”
Nobody volunteered an answer.
“A barn full of tough old stalks. Understand?”
The boys nodded.
“Yes, haymaking’s a tricky business.”
After another two days of sunny weather the farm manager finally made a decision. He sent the seniors across the field in a row, each youth swinging a long-handled scythe. The grass fell in orderly lines, like columns of schoolboys who had their legs knocked out from underneath them.
The following day lessons were cancelled so that every boy in the school could help in the hayfield. Red Wolf advanced across the field, gathering day-old grass, flipping it over and laying it back down. He stooped until his back was so sore he couldn’t straighten up, so he squatted and moved along on his haunches. Then he crawled on prayer-hardened knees with sweat stinging his eyes until the blazing sun disappeared over the horizon and the sky turned orange.
The following day, as soon as the dew burned off, they had to turn the hay again. Red Wolf ached all over, and his fingers were swollen and tender. When he squinted at them he saw fine thistle hairs embedded in his skin. He wondered how something so small could cause such discomfort.
It was hotter than the previous day, with not a cloud in the sky to offer a moment of shade.
“Haymaking and heat waves go hand in hand,” the farm manager announced. “There’s water in pails by the gate, but don’t think you can shirk by going to get a drink any old time. I’ll blow my whistle for a water break.”
By the end of the second day Red Wolf flopped straight onto his bed without changing into his nightshirt. When Mother Hall came in for prayers, most of the boys were already sleeping.
The next day, the hay was dry and ready to be gathered,
