The Long Morning at St. Brendan's

• Chapter 1 The Bell Before Dawn
• Chapter 2 Shadows on the Quad
• Chapter 3 The First Number
• Chapter 4 The Chapel of St. Brendan
• Chapter 5 Sons of Fortune
• Chapter 6 The Telegram
• Chapter 7 Ice on the Connecticut River
• Chapter 8 The Headmaster's Feast
• Chapter 9 Paper and Conscience
• Chapter 10 Letters Home
• Chapter 11 The Secret Society
• Chapter 12 Midnight Invocations
• Chapter 13 Lineages of War
• Chapter 14 The Radio in the Attic
• Chapter 15 Conscientious Objectors
• Chapter 16 A Haven in the Woods
• Chapter 17 Snowbound
• Chapter 18 The Border Crossing
• Chapter 19 Fractures in the Refectory
• Chapter 20 The Unchosen Few
• Chapter 21 Lowered Flags
• Chapter 22 Whispers in the Stacks
• Chapter 23 The Privilege of Survival
• Chapter 24 Counting the Unlucky
• Chapter 25 The Morning After
• Chapter 26 The Last Assembly

The iron tongue of the chapel bell did not so much ring as groan, a heavy, cold-clanging vibration that rolled off the slate roof of Cluny Hall and settled into the frozen ruts of the driveway. At five-thirty on a Tuesday morning in December, the air over the Connecticut River valley was thick with the scent of woodsmoke, wet wool, and the sharp, metallic promise of snow.

Julian Reed lay perfectly still beneath three layers of scratchy wool blankets, his eyes fixed on the pale, water-stained circle on the plaster ceiling directly above his iron cot. He had been awake since five, listening to the rhythmic, wet wheeze of the radiator and the distant, dry rattle of oak leaves clinging to the branches outside. Beside him, in the opposite corner of the narrow room, Miller Vance was a silent, motionless mound under a green army surplus sleeping bag. Miller always slept like a corpse, face down, one arm dangling over the side of the mattress, his fingers nearly touching the linoleum floor where a stack of The Atlantic and half-finished calculus sheets lay in a disorganized heap.

The bell rang a second time, its resonance shivering through the floorboards. Julian swung his legs out from under the covers. The cold hit him immediately, a sharp shock that traveled from his bare soles up to his collarbone. He grabbed his flannel trousers from the wooden chair by the window—they were stiff with the damp chill of the room—and pulled them on with a hurried, clumsy efficiency.

"Miller," he said, his voice flat and raspy with sleep. "Get up. If the old man catches you in the sack after the third bell, you’ll be hauling firewood before breakfast."

A muffled grunt came from the green sleeping bag. "Tell the old man that the Geneva Convention outlaws five-thirty calls for non-combatants."

"You're not a non-combatant yet," Julian remarked, pulling a heavy blue wool sweater over his head. The wool smelled of the cedar chest his mother had packed it in back in September, a clean, domestic scent that felt increasingly distant from the reality of St. Brendan’s. "And by noon today, none of us might be."

The silence that followed was different from the silence of sleep. It was the heavy, self-conscious quiet that had hung over the senior dormitory for the last three weeks, ever since the selective service announcement had been tacked to the bulletin board outside the Headmaster’s office. Today was the drawing. By tonight, every eighteen-year-old male in the United States—and several dozen seventeen-year-olds who were looking at the calendar with a sudden, desperate mathematical intensity—would have a number from one to three hundred and sixty-six stamped next to his birthday.

Miller rolled over, his face pale and creased from the folds of his pillow. His dark hair stood up in a ragged crest. "What’s your guess for my date?" he asked, his voice suddenly clear, his eyes wide in the gloom. "July fourteenth. Bastille Day. You think they’ll give a French holiday a high number, or are those bastards in Washington going to send me to some rice paddy just for the irony of it?"

"Nobody’s going to a rice paddy, Miller. The ground troops are mostly out," Julian said, though the reassurance sounded thin even to his own ears. He reached for his leather boots, the leather stiff and unyielding as iron. "And you've got an uncle on the draft board in New Haven."

"A second cousin," Miller corrected, sitting up and rubbing his temples. "And he hates my father. If anything, he’ll personally sign the induction order to settle a bet from the 1964 family reunion." He swung his legs out, shivering as his feet touched the floor. "God, it’s cold. Why do we pay four thousand dollars a year to live like Victorian orphans?"

"Character," Julian said, mimicking the dry, nasal drawl of Mr. Wyckoff, the assistant headmaster. "The cultivation of the inner man through the endurance of the outer elements."

They dressed in the dim light of a single forty-watt bulb. St. Brendan’s School for Boys did not believe in excessive illumination, nor did it believe in modern heating. Founded in 1888 by an Anglican clergyman who believed that cold water and classical Greek were the twin pillars of Christian manhood, the school sat on a rocky bluff overlooking a gray, sluggish stretch of the Connecticut River. Its buildings were Gothic revival monstrosities of dark red brick and rough-hewn granite, connected by gravel paths that were currently covered in a treacherous skin of black ice.

By the time the third bell finished its tolling, the hallway of Cluny Hall was alive with the sound of slamming doors, shuffling loafers, and the low, collective drone of sixty teenage boys waking up to a day they had been dreading for months.

Julian stepped out into the corridor. The air here was warmer, heated by the massive coal-fired boiler in the basement, but it carried the distinct, greasy odor of bacon grease and floor wax from the refectory downstairs. Boys were streaming toward the washroom at the end of the hall, their towels draped over their shoulders like woolen vestments.

"Hey, Reed," a voice called out.

Julian turned to see Teddy MacAlister leaning against the doorframe of his room. Teddy was wearing a silk dressing gown with his family crest embroidered on the pocket—a ridiculous garment that only Teddy could wear without getting stuffed into a laundry hamper. His hair was perfectly parted, even at this hour, and he was holding a silver-plated shoehorn as if it were a scepter.

"MacAlister," Julian said. "You look remarkably relaxed for a man whose birthday is in September."

"September eleventh," Teddy said, offering a slow, languid smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "An excellent month. Very stable. Besides, my father’s lawyer has already looked into the local board's quotas. They’re running low on mechanics in Hartford. They don't need Latin scholars from St. Brendan's."

"They will if the Latin scholars can't get into Yale," Miller muttered as he brushed past Teddy, his toothbrush clamped between his teeth.

Teddy’s smile twitched slightly, but he didn't lose his composure. "Yale is a family tradition, Vance. Like gout and bad investments. They don't reject us; they merely defer us until we’ve had time to sober up." He looked at Julian. "Are you coming to the common room before breakfast? The radio’s already on. Some station out of Boston is doing a preview of the drawing."

"I have chapel duty," Julian said. "I have to help Mr. Giddings set up the communion rail."

"Ah, the servant of the Lord," Teddy said, tapping his shoehorn against his palm. "Ask him if there's a special prayer for those of us with low draft numbers. Something with a lot of 'thous' and 'thees' that might sound impressive to a colonel in the infantry."

Julian didn't answer. He turned and walked down the stairs, his boots clicking sharply on the treads.

The main entrance of Cluny Hall opened onto the Quad, a vast, rectangular lawn that was now a sheet of frozen mud. Across the gravel path, the chapel rose like a dark stone ship against the graying sky. Its stained-glass windows were black, waiting for the first light of the sun to bring their martyrs and prophets to life.

As Julian walked across the yard, the cold wind from the river caught him, biting through his sweater and making his eyes water. He looked toward the gatehouse, where the school’s single telephone line connected them to the outside world. There was a light on in the headmaster’s study, a small yellow square of warmth in the dark facade of the administration building. Dr. Craig would be there, no doubt, drinking black tea and reviewing the list of seniors. He would be thinking of the school’s reputation, of the parents who paid the tuitions, and of the alumni whose names were carved into the oak panels of the dining hall—names followed by dates like 1917 and 1944.

Inside the chapel, the air was even colder than it was outside, preserved by the thick stone walls like the atmosphere of a tomb. The only light came from a few tallow candles burning near the altar, where Mr. Giddings, the school chaplain, was busily arranging silver chalices on a linen cloth.

Giddings was a small, round man with a halo of white hair and a permanent expression of mild alarm, as if he had just remembered he had left a kettle on the stove three miles away. He looked up as Julian’s boots squeaked on the flagstones.

"Ah, Julian. Good. Help me with these candles, would you?" Giddings' voice was thin and trembled slightly, though whether from the cold or nervousness, Julian couldn't tell. "The brass polish hasn't arrived from Hartford, so we’ll have to make do with what we have. A bit dull, I’m afraid, but perhaps solemnity is more appropriate today."

Julian took the long brass snuffer and began lighting the tall tapers along the choir stalls. "Do you think many people will come to the service this morning, sir?"

"They always come when there’s a crisis, Julian," Giddings said, his fingers fumbling with the clasp of the velvet chalice cover. "During the Cuban missile thing, we had boys sitting in the aisles. Of course, once the ships turned around, they went right back to skipping Sunday chapel to smoke behind the gym. It’s the human condition. We only look to the hills when we think the hills are about to fall on us."

"And today?"

Giddings paused, his hand resting on the silver cup. He looked out over the empty pews, his eyes reflecting the tiny, flickering yellow flames Julian had just lit. "Today is different. Today isn't a crisis that might happen. It’s a list that’s already written. They’re just reading the names. Or rather, the dates." He sighed, a soft, dry sound that was lost in the vastness of the nave. "I remember nineteen-forty. We had a service then, too. But there was a flag in the corner, and we sang 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' with some real conviction. Now... well, now it feels less like a crusade and more like a lottery at a county fair, doesn't it?"

Julian didn't answer. He reached the end of the choir stalls and stood for a moment before the great bronze eagle that served as the lectern. Its wings were spread wide, supporting a massive leather-bound Bible that had been open to the same passage in Isaiah for three days.

He looked down at his hands. They were red from the cold, his knuckles slightly chapped. He was eighteen. His birthday was November twelfth. In the quiet of the chapel, the date felt like a physical weight, a small, leaden pellet sitting in the palm of his hand, waiting to be dropped into a machine that didn't know his name, his face, or the fact that he wanted to study history at Amherst.

"Julian," Mr. Giddings said softly from the altar.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you have your enlistment papers? If... if the number is low?"

"My father wants me to apply for the officer candidate school in the Navy," Julian said, his voice flat. "He says if you have to go, you should go with clean sheets and a decent mess hall."

"Your father was in the Pacific, wasn't he?"

" Guadalcanal," Julian said. "He doesn't talk about it. But he has the medals in a velvet box in his desk. He opens it once a year, on Veteran’s Day, then locks it back up."

"Yes," Giddings said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "They lock a lot of things up, that generation. Sometimes I think they locked up their hearts as well. They think we’re soft because we don't want to go. But it’s not the going we fear, Julian. It’s the not knowing why."

The heavy oak doors at the back of the chapel creaked open, admitting a blast of cold air and the sound of muffled voices. The first of the boys were arriving, their dark blue school blazers buttoned tight against the draft, their heads bowed as they shuffled into the pews. They did not speak to one another. There was none of the usual shoving, the quiet snickering over smuggled cigarettes, or the frantic copying of Latin translations. They moved like old men, slow and deliberate, settling into the hard wooden benches as the light outside the stained glass began to turn from black to a pale, bruised violet.

Julian stepped down from the altar and took his place in the front pew, next to Miller, who had arrived with his tie crooked and his hair still damp from the washroom.

"They're setting up the television in the common room," Miller whispered, his eyes fixed on the altar. "Wyckoff tried to stop it—said it was a distraction from morning study hour—but Dr. Craig overruled him. He said we have a right to watch our own execution."

"It's not an execution," Julian whispered back.

"Easy for you to say," Miller said, his jaw tightening. "Your family has a library named after them in Massachusetts. If things get tight, your old man can find a doctor who’ll swear you have a floating kidney or a murmur in your left ventricle. My dad’s an accountant. The only thing he can manipulate is a ledger, and the draft board doesn't accept double-entry bookkeeping as a medical exemption."

Before Julian could reply, Mr. Giddings stood before the altar and raised his hands. The chapel fell into a silence so absolute that the creak of the old timbers in the roof sounded like pistol shots.

"The Lord is in his holy temple," Giddings began, his voice echoing off the stone walls, thin and lonely in the cold. "Let all the earth keep silence before him."

Julian closed his eyes, but he didn't pray. Instead, he listened to the wind howling off the river, rattling the leaded glass of the windows, and wondered how many of the boys sitting in the rows behind him would still be in this valley when the snow melted in the spring.

The service ended without the usual choral postlude. Mr. Giddings simply raised his hands in a brief, trembling benediction, and the boys stood in ragged unison, the scraping of their heavy oak pews sounding like a sudden shift of tectonic plates in the frigid air.

Julian moved with the crowd toward the massive iron-studded doors of the chapel. Outside, the gray light of dawn had finally broken over the horizon, though it offered no warmth, casting long, sharp shadows across the frost-crusted lawn of the Quad. The gravel path was slick, forcing the boys to walk with a strange, deliberate caution, their heads ducked into the high collars of their woolen overcoats.

To the east, the Connecticut River flowed like a ribbon of dark, polished slate beneath the bluffs. A light frost clung to the lower branches of the white pines, and the air carried the sharp, sulfurous stink of coal smoke blowing down from the furnace chimneys of the lower campus.

"Look at them," Miller said, coming up alongside Julian and nodding toward a cluster of boys gathered near the sundial. "You can tell who’s got a birthday in January by the way they’re standing. Like they’ve already been handed a bayonet."

Among the group was Carter Hayes, a varsity rower whose broad shoulders usually dominated any room he entered. Today, Hayes stood motionless, staring down at his penny loafers as if trying to decipher a private language in the wet leather. His father was a judge in Stamford, a man who had made a public point of condemning draft evaders in the local papers. For Hayes, a high number was more than a ticket to safety; it was the only thing standing between him and an immediate, compulsory sacrifice to his family’s public posture.

"Wyckoff’s heading for the refectory," Julian noted, watching the assistant headmaster maneuver across the Quad. Mr. Wyckoff was a tall, skeletal man whose black overcoat flapped around his shins like the wings of a crows. He carried a leather briefcase under one arm and a rolled-up copy of the Hartford Courant under the other, his gait hurried and rigid.

"He looks happy," Miller observed sourly. "Probably double-checked the disciplinary ledger to see who he can report to the board first if anyone steps out of line during breakfast."

They followed the flow of students toward the refectory, a heavy, timbered hall built to resemble an Elizabethan dining room. Inside, the long trestle tables were already set with heavy ceramic mugs and aluminum pitchers of watered-down orange juice. The smell of scorched oatmeal and fried salt pork filled the air, thick enough to coat the back of the throat.

Despite the steam rising from the kitchen hatch, the temperature inside the refectory was barely ten degrees warmer than the Quad. The high leaded windows were fogged around the edges, their lower panes iced over in intricate, feather-like patterns.

Julian took his usual seat near the end of the senior table. Opposite him sat Teddy MacAlister, who had traded his silk dressing gown for a tailored tweed jacket that smelled faintly of pipe tobacco and expensive hair tonic. Teddy was methodically spreading orange marmalade onto a piece of cold dry toast, his fingers long and perfectly manicured.

"The radio in the common room is completely static," Teddy said without looking up. "Some idiot in the third form tried to adjust the antenna with a metal coat hanger and snapped the lead wire. We’re cut off until someone brings a transistor from the dorms."

"It doesn't start until noon anyway," said Artie Gable, a quiet boy with thick glasses who sat next to Julian. Artie was frantically scribbling notes on a index card, his hand shaking slightly. "The drawing in Washington starts at twelve o'clock sharp. They'll pull the dates out of a glass bowl on national television."

"A glass bowl," Miller repeated, pouring himself a mug of black coffee from a chipped enamel pot. "They make it sound like a church raffle. 'Congratulations, Mr. Vance, you’ve won a free three-year tour of the Mekong Delta! Pick up your boots at the counter.'"

"It’s not three years, it’s two," Artie corrected automatically, his pencil hovering over the card. "And ground combat units are being drawn down. My brother’s in the Naval Reserve in Rhode Island. He says if you join the Seabees now, you don't even see the Pacific. You just build airfields in Georgia."

"Your brother is a liar, Artie," Teddy said smoothly, taking a small bite of his toast. "Or he’s vastly overestimating the strategic importance of Georgia. If your number comes up under fifty, you’re not going to be driving a tractor in Atlanta. You’re going to be carrying an M16 through a swamp, regardless of whether your father knows the governor."

Artie’s face went pale, and he carefully set his pencil down on the scarred oak table. He didn't offer a rebuttal. Everyone knew Artie’s father was a postman in Waterbury, a veteran of North Africa who had lost three fingers on his left hand to frostbite at Kasserine Pass. There would be no law firms or family trusts to intervene if Artie’s birthday—March third—was drawn early.

A sudden lull fell over the dining hall as Dr. Craig entered from the side door behind the high table. The Headmaster was a man of sixty, with a thick mane of iron-gray hair and a posture that remained obstinately military despite thirty years in academia. He did not wear his academic gown this morning; instead, he was dressed in a heavy charcoal suit, his hands clasped firmly behind his back as he surveyed the rows of boys.

He walked to the small wooden pulpit at the side of the room, clearing his throat with a sound like tearing linen. The room went completely silent. Even the kitchen staff stopped clattering the metal serving trays behind the hatch.

"Gentlemen," Dr. Craig said, his deep, resonant baritone filling the high-ceilinged room without the aid of amplification. "Today is a day that requires fortitude. It requires the calm, steady discipline that St. Brendan’s has sought to instill in each of you since the day you first walked through the gatehouse."

He paused, his eyes sweeping over the senior table, resting briefly on Julian, then on Teddy, and finally on Miller.

"There will be no early dismissals today," Craig continued, his tone turning crisp and businesslike. "Classes will proceed according to the posted schedule. At twelve noon, a radio broadcast of the Selective Service drawing will be piped into the assembly hall. Attendance is mandatory for the Sixth Form, optional for the lower school. I expect every boy in this room to conduct himself with the dignity that his family and this institution expect of him."

He leaned forward slightly, resting his large, liver-spotted hands on the edges of the pulpit. "We are living through a period of great national uncertainty. But uncertainty is not an excuse for hysteria. Whatever the outcome of today’s events, your duty remains the same: to your studies, to your character, and to one another. Mr. Wyckoff, if you would lead us in the morning grace."

Wyckoff stepped forward, his head bowed instantly, but the air of solemn authority Dr. Craig had tried to establish had already begun to evaporate. As soon as the brief Latin grace was concluded, the noise in the refectory burst back to life, louder and sharper than before, driven by an undercurrent of nervous, erratic energy.

"Mandatory attendance," Miller muttered, stirring his cold coffee with a tin spoon. "He just wants to make sure nobody slips off into the woods with a suitcase before the third round is called."

"Nobody’s running into the woods, Miller," Julian said, though he thought of the thick forest that stretched north of the school along the riverbank, dense with hemlock and mountain laurel, extending all the way to the Massachusetts border. It was cold enough out there to freeze a man in hours, but it led north.

"You haven't seen the luggage piled up in the basement of Cluny," Miller said softly, leaning closer across the table. "I was down there looking for my skates yesterday. Billy Chen’s got three leather trunks packed and sitting by the coal bin. He’s got his passport tucked into his shoe. He told me his father’s got a car waiting at the diner in town."

Julian looked over toward the junior tables, where Billy Chen, a quiet boy from Honolulu whose father owned a shipping line, was staring intently into his lap, his hands folded tightly together.

"That’s desertion before induction," Teddy remarked, scraping the last bit of butter from his plate. "Very messy. It stays on your record forever. Much better to fail the physical. A bit of sugar in the urine sample, or a couple of missed sleep cycles before the chest X-ray. My uncle knew a fellow at Williams who drank six cups of espresso and swallowed four rolls of Tums before his medical. His blood pressure was high enough to stun an ox. They sent him home with a 4-F classification before lunch."

"Must be nice to have an uncle who knows the tricks," Artie muttered, his voice choked with a sudden, rare spike of anger.

Teddy looked at Artie, his expression hardening slightly, though his tone remained patronizingly polite. "It’s not a trick, Gable. It’s simply understanding the mechanics of the system. The government isn't a person; it’s a machine. If you give it the wrong punch card, it spits you out. If you hand it a clean one, it rolls you right down the line."

"And what if the machine doesn't care about your punch card?" Julian asked.

Teddy turned his blue, unblinking eyes toward Julian. "Then you make sure you’re sitting next to the operator."

The bell atop Cluny Hall clanged once—a single, sharp iron strike that signaled fifteen minutes until the first morning period. Across the refectory, boys began scraping their chairs back, gathering their leather book-straps and battered brass-zippered canvas bags.

Julian stood up, feeling the heavy draft from the river seepage near the entrance doors. He pulled his wool coat around his shoulders, the fabric stiff and cold against his skin. Outside, the fog was lifting slightly, revealing the pale, white disc of the sun hanging low over the ice-bound expanse of the Connecticut River. The shadows on the Quad were lengthening, thin and jagged, stretching across the gravel paths like dark fingers reaching toward the main gates.