Father Paul tipped the chalice and drank the rest down. Ernie smirked again.
After Mass they made their beds and went to the kitchen. Two bowls of grey mush sat facing each other at the kitchen table. Two slices of bread and two spoons filled with lard sat in a jar beside a jug of powdered milk.
“What,” Ernie complained, “no flapjacks?” He filled his mug with milk and drank it down. When he reached for the jug again, Jonny put his hand on his wrist.
“We have to say grace,” he said.
“Grace,” said Ernie, pushing his hand aside and filling his cup a second time as the cook removed a tin of freshly baked muffins from the oven. Ernie filled his lungs with their aroma. “That’s more like it,” he said. “I love muffins.” But the muffins went onto a tray for those in the dining room across the hall.
After picking through the leftovers of bacon, egg, and toast crusts, Ernie folded several crumb-filled muffin papers and crammed them into his back pocket.
The boys did the dishes. More cardboard boxes waited for them inside the storage room.
“Watch the door,” Ernie told Jonny. “I’m going to go through these boxes first.”
“Why?”
“To find my vest,” he said. “My grandmother tanned the hide herself and stitched the design. I’m not letting them burn that.”
Jonny stood outside the door while Ernie rooted through the boxes. His vest was at the bottom along with his slingshot. He rolled them up and stuffed them inside his shirt. “I’m going to hide these in the woods,” he said.
That afternoon, Jonny and Ernie nailed the last board of the little wooden chicken coop in place.
“Don’t they need somewhere to perch?” Jonny asked. He didn’t know much about chickens but he watched the birds in the forest a lot.
“They will need a roost,” Father Gregory said, scratching his head. “You’re right.”
“What about a tree branch?” Ernie suggested.
“Good thinking,” said Father Gregory. “We’ll look in the kindling pile.”
“There won’t be one the right size,” Ernie said. “We’ll need to go into the forest.”
Father Gregory looked at his watch. “No time now,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Where will they eat?” Jonny asked as they parked back at the school.
“We’ll have to make some kind of feeder,” Father Gregory said. “We can use one of the old barrels in the basement.” Father Gregory put a hand on Jonny’s arm. “Ernie, you fill those apple crates with grass while Jonny and I visit the basement.”
Jonny’s stomach turned. He had never been to the mysterious basement and would have felt a lot better if Ernie were coming along too.
Father Gregory opened the door with one of the keys attached to the long, black cord he kept beneath his cassock collar.
“You know this is an out-of-bounds area,” the priest said.
Jonny nodded.
“No one is allowed down here unless I go with them,” he warned.
Jonny nodded again.
The cold cement floor and cobweb-filled air made Jonny shiver. Father Gregory’s arm thrashed around in the blackness for the string to the light. In the sudden brightness, the huge black furnace surrounded by cords of wood was starkly visible in the centre. Next to its main pipe sat a shovel and a bucket. Jonny peered into the bucket. The smell of ashes filled his nostrils. Behind the furnace, wooden walls with doors went from floor to ceiling.
Several short walls divided the rest of the basement into stalls. One held stacks of newspaper and cardboard boxes. Another housed a giant, wooden-lidded bin. Beside it was a stack of empty apple crates and several barrels. The largest compartment beneath a small open window held the coal that rolled down the chute.
“We can use one of these,” Father Gregory said, pointing to a row of barrels. He knocked one of them onto its side. Jonny read the word “Cider” as it rolled toward him. “Once we fill it up, it will last weeks.”
Together, Jonny and Father Gregory carried the barrel up the stairs to the truck. Ernie stood in the yard holding a dead squirrel by the tail.
“Where did you find that?” Jonny asked.
“Up a tree,” Ernie said. “Where do you think?”
“How did you kill it?” asked Father Gregory.
“With a stone,” Ernie answered with a huge proud smile.
With a stone shot from a slingshot, Jonny thought, just like David in the Old Testament.
Father Gregory snatched the squirrel from Ernie’s hand and flung it far into the bush. “That is precisely why you have been sent to this school,” he said in exasperation.
Ernie looked to where the squirrel landed. “I could’ve got a buck twenty-five for …” But before he could finish, Father Gregory grabbed him by the wrist. He dragged Ernie to the door of the truck and opened it.
“Get in,” he said. “You are here to learn the Christian way of life, not to be hunting in the woods like a savage.”
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