The knock at the door was steady and firm. And loud. Very, very loud, at least to Kre’s aching head. Another three knocks followed, forcing Kre to slide out of the bed and stumble towards the door.
“Coming,” he muttered hoarsely. As his hand reached out towards the door handle, he noted that his knuckles were purplish-red and swollen. Other cuts and bruises graced his arms and he could tell that he bore more than a few over the rest of his body, even though they were covered by his bed-wrinkled clothing.
“Kre,” came the pleasant voice from the other side of the door, “are you awake yet?”
He could immediately tell that it was Mrs. Koraski on the opposite side and he opened the door to greet her. “Good morning ma’am.”
“Oh great heavens boy,” she tutted, pushing the door open wide and shaking her head at his appearance. “Did you sleep in your dusty dirty clothes? In my nice clean linens?” She started pulling the sheets off the bed before he could answer and she scrutinized the mud on the floor with a knowing and disappointed look at Kre’s muddy boots thrown against the far wall.
“I’ll, uh, clean it up.” He was no stranger to cleaning the rooms of the Lodge and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time he did so as some form of punishment for some act of childish stupidity that he and the other boys managed to enact.
“No,” she said with a soft, almost forced smile. “I’ll have Pete do it. That boy is sleeping off his own hangover in the shed out back and it’s the least of what he deserves for y’all’s little night out.” She shoved at him from behind with her armload of dirty linens, “Get down to breakfast before the food gets cold.”
Kre knew better than to dally when given an order by Mrs. Koraski. Pete’s mom never made requests. Everything from her was always a statement and the manner in which she said them left no room for argument. Many were the first-time guests that tried to insist that they wanted a different meal than what was being served, or claimed that they needed another drink after Mrs. Koraski cut them off. Many were the first-time guest that did so and suddenly found themselves doing exactly what Mrs. Koraski wanted them to do the first time, with them having no idea what had just happened but being all the merrier for it.
The boys knew her tactics by now but they still knew better than to overtly disobey a directive from her. Kre wound his way downstairs and headed to the main hall. It was oddly empty except for Mr. Koraski standing next to the kitchen door. When he spotted Kre coming down, he stepped into the kitchen and Kre could hear him gathering some dishes to bring out.
Sitting down near the slumbering fire, Kre wondered if Pete was getting kicked awake or if he just had cold well water splashed on him. Probably both. Pete’s dad returned shortly with two armfuls of plates and a pitcher tucked under his elbow. He expertly shifted each plate to the table without spilling a morsel. He pulled a mug from the pocket of his apron and filled it with crisp, cold apple juice from the pitcher.
Kre sat staring at the buffet laid out before him in mute wonder. Eggs cooked three different ways, two kinds of bread with small dishes of creamy butter and jellies, various fruits, sticky buns, a thick slab of ham, and several slices of thick sizzling bacon. It was a veritable feast. From his time working in the Lodge, he knew that they rarely served this kind of food to their guests. In fact, there was only one time that he could recall that they had anything like this in the past and that was when the Lord Governor of Sandort was stopping in while visiting the military base.
Regardless of why they were doing this, Kre was starving after a full night of excitement and exertion and he happily dug into the meal. Everytime he came close to emptying a dish, Mr. Koraski was back to replace it. It was delightful to be waited upon like this, but it was also disconcerting. A small voice in the back of Kre’s mind tried to figure out what was going on, but it was drowned out by the dull ache of the hangover and the noise of eating.