Simon shakes his head at Bartholomew in warning.
Don’t do it.
I pray Bartholomew heeds his advice.
*
Andrew feels sick to his stomach.
The boy is not someone he’s especially close to, but he has never seemed obstinate. Now, however, Andrew sees plainly the defiance in his face, sees it and prays for it to disappear into servitude, for the child’s own sake.
He has no wish to see anyone else get hurt.
Against his better judgment, he turns to Poole seated next to him, and speaks softly. “Father, perhaps we could let the boy have the food. He’s guilty of nothing but dirty fingernails, after all.”
Poole turns to Andrew as if bored. He replies loudly, as if wanting the boys to hear the rebuke. The lecture spills from his lips, easy as a recitation. “It’s a matter of discipline, Father Francis. Today it’s dirty hands, tomorrow they’re oversleeping. Next, they’re talking back, not following instruction. Sound structure needs sound discipline. Rebellion needs to be completely, and totally, dominated by those in charge. Without it, the structure will topple like a house built on sand.”
Andrew forces down his bitterness at being lectured like a child, knowing it’s exactly the tone Poole is aiming for—he doesn’t want to rebuke Andrew; he wants to humiliate him.
“Do you understand?”
Andrew nods, unable to keep the heat from his cheeks.
Poole gives him a final glance, then turns back to the matter at hand. “Bartholomew, please stand.”
At the rear of the room, Bartholomew swings his legs over the bench and stands, one arm held aloft, the food resting in a trembling hand.
“The rules of the orphanage are simple, and direct,” Poole continues. “If your hands are not clean for meals, you must wash them again until they are clean. If this means you miss the meal, then you go without and you do better the next time. Tell me, do you understand why we have these rules?”
Bartholomew thinks for a moment, although his look of defiance does not waver. “For order, Father Poole.”
Andrew sits back, wipes a hand across his face. He silently prays for God to give the boy wisdom. There’s a look in the child’s eyes that worries Andrew greatly.
He looks angry.
“That’s correct. Next time, you see, Simon will make sure that his hands are properly washed, thus ensuring good hygiene, which in turn keeps everyone healthy. This is how we learn. Now, by sharing with him, you are taking away this important lesson. You’re actually hurting him.”
Poole reclines, and Andrew struggles with the dark, wormy feeling that the priest is enjoying this. “And now,” Poole says, voice dripping with politic sorrow. “I need to teach you a lesson. A lesson about remembering the rules.”
Bartholomew trembles, as if a chill wind has blown past him, but says nothing. Andrew wonders how cold the meat in his hand has gotten; how all of the remaining, uneaten food must have cooled during Poole’s lecture.
“Since you want to take away Simon’s lesson . . .” Poole puts a finger to his chin, as if debating the proper outcome, one Andrew knows he’s already secured in his mind. “Then Simon will take away your food.” Poole leans forward. “All of your food. Both what is left on your plate, as well as what you would have received at dinner tonight.”
Bartholomew doesn’t move. The room is deadly silent.
“Give him your plate, Bartholomew.”
Andrew wants to turn away, to stand up and leave. To walk out of the dining hall and back to his room, where he can get on his knees and pray and forget the boys and the other priests and all of the pain he’s witnessed over the years.
He notices, for the first time, that Peter is sitting at the table next to the one where Bartholomew stands, and fights not to meet his eye. He doesn’t want the boy to see his shame.
“Now!” Poole roars in a sudden, vehement burst. He slams his palm onto the table with such force the plates jump and rattle. Andrew jumps as well, nerves burning, as if he’s the boy under Poole’s glare.
Bartholomew stands still for a moment . . . and then does something horrible.
He smiles.
No, son, Andrew thinks in a panic. Please don’t.
Poole must see that smile as well. Andrew knows it’s fueling the fire, stirring the man’s prideful conviction of authority. “This is your last warning, Bartholomew.”
Still smiling, Bartholomew lifts the hard bread, still topped by a tiny chunk of cold meat, to his mouth. Then he stuffs it in, chewing greedily.
The hall buzzes as boys begin to whisper. Andrew can’t help notice a thin line of browned drool leak from the corner of Bartholomew’s mouth.
Poole stands.
“This is your last warning! Give Simon your plate and all . . .”
Bartholomew reaches for the table. He grabs his plate, lifts it to his face and begins grabbing food in his fingers. He pushes potatoes and meat and bread into his mouth with abandon, hardly chewing. His cheeks bulge. Bits of meat and crumbs spill down his chin onto his shirt, the floor.
Through it all, he grins.
Poole looks down at the table, as if pained. Andrew wants to reach out, put a hand on the older man’s sleeve, beg forgiveness for the boy. He stays still.
Poole lifts his face to the ceiling, his hands lift from his sides, as if giving a benediction.
“Arise, O LORD.” Poole’s heightened voice fills the room.
From the corner of his eye, Andrew sees that Johnson is already moving.
“Save me, Oh my God! For thou has smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone, thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.”
As Poole bellows his prayer, Johnson knocks the plate from Bartholomew’s hands. Bartholomew yelps and cowers as Johnson roughly grips his arms, twists them around the boy’s back, and thrusts him forward, face contorted with fresh pain, toward Poole.
As if the child is a shield. Or a sacrifice.
Andrew forces himself to study Bartholomew’s features, to feel the pain and emotion there as his own. The child’s eyes are wide, black, terrified. His mussed inky hair, too long, clings to his sweat-moistened face. The smear of food across his lips—crumbs of the wasted remnants he couldn’t physically swallow—cling to his clothes, shoes. The mess on the floor.
Somehow, through the mess, through the pain and the fear, he still grins.
Poole rests his fingertips on the table and lets out a long sigh. His words are spoken softly, but carry well.
“Put him in the hole.”
In a heartbeat, Bartholomew’s defiance vanishes. His wide, hard eyes melt in fear. “What?”
It is Johnson who wears the grin now. He begins to drag the child out of the hall.
The panic on Bartholomew’s face twists it into something inhuman, turning a child’s innocent visage into a mask of animal terror, a cognizant beast being readied for slaughter.
“Father!” he screams, and Andrew winces at the sound of broken youth. In that moment, he craves the defiant boy once more, hopes for the look of rebellion. Anything but this raw fear. It pains him to see it stripped away in the blink of an eye, as if the child’s very soul has been snatched by the devil and consumed. “Father, no! I’m sorry!”
But Poole’s eyes are closed, just as, Andrew knows, his mind is closed to the consequences and ugliness of his discipline. “Rules will be followed . . .” he says, sitting down, hands knitted together beneath his chin. His voice is lower now, a soliloquy for himself alone. “We survive because of rules. Without them, we are no more than lost sheep.”