Following another prayer, chow was duly brought on. Big glass bowls full of home-baked beans were passed up and down the four tables, steaming platters of cheap red hotdogs, tureens of canned pineapple chunks, lots of milk in plain cartons marked DONATED COMMODITIES and INDIANA STATE DAIRY COMMISSION.
Wolf ate with grim concentration, his head down, a piece of bread always in one hand to serve as a combination pusher and mopper. As Jack watched, he gobbled five hotdogs and three helpings of the bullet-hard beans. Thinking of the small room with its closed window, Jack wondered if he were going to need a gas-mask tonight. He supposed so - not that he was likely to be issued one. He watched dismally as Wolf slopped a fourth helping of beans onto his plate.
Following dinner, all the boys rose, formed lines, and cleared the tables. As Jack took his dishes, a Wolf-decimated loaf of bread, and two milk-pitchers out into the kitchen, he kept his eyes wide open. The stark labels on the milk cartons had given him an idea.
This place wasn't a prison, and it wasn't a workhouse. It was probably classed as a boarding school or something, and the law would demand that some sort of state inspectors must keep an eye on it. The kitchen would be a place where the State of Indiana's eye would fall most often. Bars on the windows upstairs, okay. Bars on the kitchen windows? Jack didn't think so. They would raise too many questions.
The kitchen might make a good jumping-off point for an escape attempt, so Jack studied it carefully.
It looked a lot like the cafeteria kitchen at his school in California. The floor and walls were tiled, the big sinks and counters stainless steel. The cupboards were nearly the size of vegetable bins. An old conveyor-belt dishwasher stood against one wall. Three boys were already operating this hoary antique under the supervision of a man in cook's whites. The man was narrow, pallid, and possessed of a ratlike little face. An unfiltered cigarette was pasted to his upper lip, and that identified him in Jack's mind as a possible ally. He doubted if Sunlight Gardener would let any of his own people smoke cigarettes.
On the wall, he saw a framed certificate which announced that this public kitchen had been rated acceptable under standards set by the State of Indiana and the U.S. Government.
And no, there were no bars on the frosted-glass windows.
The ratlike man looked over at Jack, peeled his cigarette off his lower lip, and tossed it into one of the sinks.
'New fish, you and your buddy, huh?' he asked. 'Well, you'll be old fish soon enough. The fish get old real quick here in the Sunlight Home, don't they, Sonny?'
He grinned insolently at Sonny Singer. It was quite obvious that Singer did not know how to cope with such a smile; he looked confused and unsure, just a kid again.
'You know you're not supposed to talk to the boys, Rudolph,' he said.
'You can just cram it up your ass anytime you can't roll it down the alley or kick it in the air, buddy-roo,' Rudolph said, flicking his eyes lazily over Singer. 'You know that, don't you?'
Singer looked at him, lips first trembling, then writhing, then pushing together hard.
He suddenly turned around. 'Night-chapel!' he shouted furiously. 'Night-chapel, come on, let's go, get those tables cleared and let's get up the hall, we're late! Night-chapel!'
5
The boys trooped down a narrow staircase lit by na**d bulbs enclosed in wire mesh. The walls were dank plaster, and Jack didn't like the way Wolf's eyeballs were rolling.
After that, the cellar chapel was a surprise. Most of the downstairs area - which was considerable - had been converted into a spare, modern chapel. The air down here was good - not too warm, not too cold. And fresh. Jack could hear the whispering of convection units somewhere near. There were five pews split by a central aisle, leading up to a dais with a lectern and a simple wooden cross hung on a purple velvet backdrop.
Somewhere, an organ was playing.
The boys filed quietly into the pews. The microphone on the lectern had a large, professional-looking baffle on the end of it. Jack had been in plenty of studio sound-rooms with his mother, often sitting patiently by and reading a book or doing his homework assignments while she did TV overdubs or looped unclear dialogue, and he knew that sort of baffle was meant to keep the speaker from 'popping' the mike. He thought it a strange thing to see in the chapel of a religious boarding home for wayward boys. Two video cameras stood at either side of the lectern, one to catch Sunlight Gardener's right profile, the other to catch his left. Neither was turned on this evening. There were heavy purple drapes on the walls. On the right, they were unbroken. Set into the left wall, however, was a glass rectangle. Jack could see Casey crouched over an extremely professional-looking sound-board, reel-to-reel tape recorder close to his right hand. As Jack watched, Casey grabbed a pair of cans from the board and slipped them over his ears.