This time, though, there was something about this that seemed wrong to him. As if the letter "F" in the pancake was some kind of conspiracy. What did it stand for? A bad word in Common? That was too easy, and besides, they weren't laughing like that--it wasn't wicked laughter. It was...sad laughter.
Sad laughter. It was hard to make sense of it, but Zeck knew that he was right. The F was funny, but it also made them sad.
He asked one of the other boys. "What's with the F Dink carved into Flip's pancake?"
The other kid shrugged. "They're Dutch," he said, as if that accounted for any weirdness about them.
Zeck took that solitary clue--which he had already known, of course--and took it to his desk immediately after breakfast. He searched first for "Netherlands F." Nothing that made sense. Then a few more combinations, but it was "Dutch shoes" that brought him to Sinterklaas Day, December sixth, and all the customs associated with it.
He didn't go to class. He went to Flip's tidily made bed and unmade it till he found, under the sheet and next to the mattress, Dink's poem.
Zeck memorized it, put it back, and remade the bed--for it would be wrong to put Flip at risk of getting a demerit that he did not deserve. Then he went to Colonel Graff's office.
"I don't remember sending for you," said Colonel Graff.
"You didn't," said Zeck.
"If you have a problem, take it to your counselor. Who's assigned to you?" But Zeck knew at once that it wasn't that Graff couldn't remember the counselor's name--he simply had no idea who Zeck was.
"I'm Zeck Morgan," he said. "I'm a spectator in Rat Army."
"Oh," said Graff, nodding. "You. Have you reconsidered your vow of nonviolence?"
"No sir," said Zeck. "I'm here to ask you a question."
"And you couldn't have asked somebody else?"
"Everybody else was busy," said Zeck. Immediately he repented of the remark, because of course he hadn't even tried anybody else, and he only said this in order to hurt Graff's feelings by implying he was useless and had no work to do. "That was wrong of me to say that," said Zeck, "and I ask your forgiveness."
"What's your question," said Graff impatiently, looking away.
"When you informed me that nonviolence was not an option here, you said it was because my motive is religious, and there is no religion in Battle School."
"No open observance of religion," said Graff. "Or we'd have classes constantly being interrupted by Muslims praying and every seventh day--not the same seventh day, mind you--we'd have Christians and Muslims and Jews celebrating one Sabbath or another. Not to mention the Macumba ritual of sacrificing chickens. Icons and statues of saints and little Buddhas and ancestral shrines and all kinds of other things would clutter up the place. So it's all banned. Period. So please get to class before I have to give you a demerit."
"That was not my question," said Zeck. "I would not have come here to ask you a question whose answer you had already told me."
"Then why did you bring up--Never mind, what's your question?"
"If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint Nicholas?"
"We don't," said Graff.
"And yet you did," said Zeck.
"No we didn't."
"It was commemorated."
"Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?"
"Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for Saint Nicholas. Dink Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a pancake carved with the initial 'F.' An edible initial is a traditional treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth."
Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. "A Sinterklaas poem?"
Zeck recited it.
Graff smiled and chuckled a little.