Boys in the Valley(3)

Part One


We Are Many





1


St. Vincent’s Orphanage

Delaware County, Pennsylvania. 1905.

“PETER, WAKE UP.”

I open my eyes to the familiar.

White walls. Two rows of metal-framed beds. Bleached pine floor. Bright pale light bursting from large, uncovered windows that line the east-facing wall. Two large, arched oak doors at the far end of the long room are closed. The winking glimmer of the polished iron cross that hangs above them a constant sentinel. Always watching.

Simon pokes me in the shoulder. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

I sit up, rub my eyes. Most of the kids are still asleep, so it must be early. Not yet six.

“I’m up,” I say, and shove Simon gently back toward his cot. He laughs and sits down on his mattress, looking out the large window between our beds.

“Might snow today,” he says excitedly, as if that’s a good thing.

“Too soon.” I yawn and stretch. It’s icy cold in the dorm. My thin robe is balled up at my feet and I pull it on over my wool pajamas, which I’ve long grown out of, annoyingly exposing my ankles and wrists. I slip my feet into shoes and follow Simon’s stare through the glass.

The sky outside is white as bone and just as hard. I stand up to get a better look at the grounds.

The surrounding trees are leafless and gray. They look dead and withered. The earth is a wealth of weedy grass that, in the dim light, looks as gray as the trees. Colorless. The barn that holds our horses, sheep, and goats sits to the south. Ahead is the field we’ll be working that morning, pulling what we can from the earth and storing it for the winter, which I’ve heard will be long and harsh. I wonder if any of the boys will die before spring shows its face again, and say a silent prayer for all of them.

I glance at the metal wind-up clock on my dresser—the only furniture we’re allowed—and see it’s a few minutes before six. I’m the only one who has a personal clock, and it’s the only thing I have left from my childhood, my prior life; the only thing I saved when I fled the burning house.

I push in the knob on the clock’s alarm, disabling it. No need to hear the shrill bell to wake me. My memories serve well enough to break my sleep.

“Go wash, Simon. And take Basil with you.”

Basil, a small, sickly, black-haired English boy not even ten years old, watches me and Simon from across the room with wide owl-eyes. He is already fully dressed.

“Oh, why Peter?”

“Because he’s up and ready.”

I watch them as they trudge out the dorm toward the washroom. I study the others in the early-morning light, curious if anyone else has woken.

It seems my nightmare didn’t disturb the others, and I feel badly for rousing Simon. But it’s near dawn now, and Poole will be ringing first bell shortly, expecting us to be dressed and ready before the subsequent bell ten minutes after.

I shed my robe and pajamas, begin pulling on the heavy shirt and pants folded neatly inside my dresser. It will be cold today, and the idea of winter’s arrival worries me for reasons I don’t fully understand. I’ve been through many winters here at St. Vincent’s and they’re all the same. A seemingly eternal purgatory of cold and dark.

And yet, as I look through the window at the dreary landscape, I find myself frowning with worry.

My melancholy breaks when the first bell brays its command from the foyer. I turn to the room and see the lumps beneath the sheets begin to stir and groan.

The boys are waking.





2


I STEP OUTSIDE AND SEE FATHER ANDREW WAITING BY the gate which leads to the crops. He waves and I wave back. Boys clamor past me with a divided urgency: excited to be outdoors, but wary of the labor ahead. Aaron, a pink-cheeked boy with blonde hair so fair it looks white in the morning sun, falls in next to me. He’s only thirteen but tall, if skinny, and one of a few orphans who almost matches my height.

“Fields again?” he whines. “We’ve stored enough food for an army.”

“You’ll be thanking the priests a few weeks from now, when the storm has us snowed in, trapped like rats. Remember last year?”

He groans dramatically and I laugh, patting his shoulder. “Get the boys divided, will you? Help Father Andrew.”

Aaron nods and begins pulling at coats, shoving the little ones lightly. “You lot who were in the field yesterday are with the animals today. You others, in the field. Come on, ya rascals.”

The other priest in residence, ancient Father White, emerges from the large front doors of the orphanage and begins sorting the remaining children. The ones destined for the barn head off in a tightknit horde to tend the animals and squeeze what milk can be had from the goats. More cow milk will need to be purchased, along with our meat and bulk items, from the Hill farm a couple hours’ ride to the east.

The Hill farm is the furthest I’ve ever traveled from the orphanage since the day I arrived. The coastal city of Chester is yet another three hours past the farm, and that by horse. The valley is remote, and the priests like it that way. One road in and one road out, a brown ribbon flowing like a reverse stream up the green hills to the east, seeming to vanish at the crest of the swell into crisp blue sky. Heavy forest rises to the north and west; a barren plain lies to the south, a sea of heather that ultimately rides upward, a heaving wave.