Lord of the Nutcracker Men (13 page)

“We'll fix him up,” she said. “Then we'll put a bandage on him so the glue will set.”

Her hands trembled. Her eyes squinted behind her tiny specs, and her mouth squashed in until I saw her teeth and gums.

I leaned forward, watching Auntie smear the wood with glue. She pressed the pieces together.

“They're crooked!” I cried.

She straightened them out. Beads of glue squirted from the wood, bubbling along the crack like pus from a wound. In the distance, a second bell joined in with the first, and then a third as the ringers arrived at the church. The halves of my wooden man came together perfectly, just as the bells rang a wonderful chime, a beautiful chorus.

Auntie Ivy wrapped the man in gauze, slipped a pin through the bandage, then passed him to me. He felt fragile and light, as though weak from the wounds.

“Thank you,” I said. The bells went on and on, their sounds flowing on top of each other, cascading down like musical rivers.

“We should have a celebration.” Auntie stood up, all her bones popping. “In honor of the victory. I'll make a cake and we'll have a splendid supper.”

“But I have to go to Mr. Tuttle's house,” I told her. “You know it's Saturday.”

“Invite him!” She fiddled with the glue pot, pressing the lid into place. “We'll have chicken, I think.”

“Really? A chicken?” My mouth watered at the thought of that rare treat. “It's not even Christmas yet.”

“But we have to celebrate,” said Auntie Ivy. “And poor Mr. Tuttle will have to fend for himself if you don't want him to come.”

“I suppose I can ask him,” I said.

She smiled. “All right. If that's what you want.”

I took the wooden man back to the garden. As the bells chimed, I stood him in the trench. The other soldiers cheered to see him back, and Dad laughed and said, “No fear, lads. I'm right as rain. I wasn't hurt at all.”

But I worried about him—about my real father. I could see the spot in the old German line where his wooden figure had raided the trenches.
I went over the top last night, and I'm quivering in my boots this morning to think what a narrow escape I had
. Farther down the garden was the place where Pierre had been smashed by a stone, the spot where his body had appeared in the mud.
The most astonishing things sometimes turn up when the parapet collapses
.

The bells stopped, their last chime a tingling echo. It seemed that the whole war had gone like that. I remembered marching my nutcracker soldiers across the floor when they had no army to fight. Then Dad had given me a Tommy, and Britain had joined the war. He'd given me more Tommies, and Frenchmen, and soon the real Germans had fallen back at the Marne.

That feeling of goose bumps came back to me. It seemed that whatever I did with my nutcracker men would happen soon after in France. And I looked at my father, split down the middle, and felt sick all over again.

But I had
meant
to raid the trenches. I had
meant
to push the Germans back. And breaking the figure was only an accident. Maybe accidents didn't count.

I wondered if I should take the little soldier to Mr. Tuttle's house. It might keep my real dad safe if I took the model from the trenches. It might even bring him home, I thought, if I took that wooden soldier far enough away. The distance to Mr. Tuttle's house would be a hundred miles or more to him. Then I smiled and picked up the wooden man. And I stopped again.

What if I took the toy away and my father disappeared? What if he went “missing in action” like all the others in the paper? So I put him back in the trenches, and went off to see Mr. Tuttle.

I found him behind his house, staring at the roses. He heard me coming and turned around. “Oh, Johnny,” he said. He sounded disappointed.

“Are you waiting for someone?” I asked.

“Always,” he said. “Every day I think a boy will surely come and make his confession. But I'm afraid my die is cast.” He stepped up to his roses, and his hand went out and took the tips of their branches. “In just a few weeks I'll be done with the classroom, and perhaps with Cliffe as well.”

“Why?”

“They're not pulling through.” He squeezed the branches, then his hand fell away. “But enough of that. You've come for your lesson, of course.”

“And something else,” I said. “Auntie's cooking chicken. To celebrate the victory. She'd like you to come.”

“She would?”

“Yes, sir. You could see my soldiers, too.” “The crowning glory. Well, thank you, Johnny.” He bowed like a lord. “I accept your invitation.”

He was happier than I'd ever seen him, so happy that
he canceled our lesson. He was still smiling that evening, when he came to the door in his overcoat and old gray suit.

Our supper was cooking, and Auntie Ivy was setting the table with her best china. Mr. Tuttle sniffed at the wonderful odors that came from the kitchen. “It smells like ambrosia,” he said.

“Oh, mercy no,” said Auntie Ivy, blushing. “It's only chicken.”

Mr. Tuttle was nearly half again her height. Beside her, he looked tall and nearly handsome.

“It will be another half hour,” she told me. “You'll have to entertain your visitor.”

I took him outside, and he gazed down—grinning— at the little soldiers. “What an army,” he said. “It makes me feel like Zeus to stand above them like this.”

“They had a fierce battle,” I said. “The Germans were pushed back all along the front.”

I was hoping he would say, “That's just what happened in France.” But he only peered at the men. “Why is that fellow bandaged?” he asked. “Are you pretending that there's something wrong with him?”

He made me feel small. To him, I was only playing with toy soldiers. He didn't know there was so much more than that.

“Is your little man wounded?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Is he sick?”

“There's nothing wrong with him.”

Mr. Tuttle looked puzzled, and I knew he could never understand. Sarah had already guessed what my wooden men could do, but Mr. Tuttle never would. It was the sort of thing that adults wouldn't believe.

An hour later, we were sitting down to a supper that was the nicest I'd had in Cliffe.

Mr. Tuttle and Auntie Ivy talked about the school and the church and the minister. They made me think of my parents, and our suppers before the war. Auntie Ivy kept looking at Mr. Tuttle in the same way that my mother would look at my father. She passed him potatoes and peas and more and more chicken. And we never once talked about the victory in France. It was as though there wasn't a war at all.

Auntie Ivy put the letter down. She didn't move for a long time; then she trembled once, and wiped her eyes. “You see?” she said, and tried to smile. “Your father's fine, Johnny. You worried over nothing.”

“But is he still all right?” I asked.

She frowned.

“Is he?” I pulled at the paper that was wrapped round and round the newest soldier. “He didn't write that letter this morning. Yesterday they had the victory. Maybe yesterday he was—”

“Don't say it,” she said. “Don't even think it, Johnny.”

“But, Auntie. This wasn't a victory. It was just a big mess.” I tore off a layer of wrapping. “And the newspaper said it was a great victory.”

“Maybe the newspapers got it wrong,” said Auntie. “It wouldn't be the first time, would it?”

“I think the letters haven't caughten up,” I said.

“Caughten up,”
she scoffed. “Don't let Mr. Tuttle hear you say that.”

“But how can I know?” I said. “How can I know he's all right?”

“Because he is,” she said. “Because he always is and always will be. I just won't stand for you thinking anything else.”

“But—”

I shredded the paper, and the man tumbled out.

“Auntie!” I cried.

It was horrid and twisted, a tortured little man. Auntie Ivy gasped as it rolled across the table.

“Dear mercy,” she breathed.

It seemed to twitch on the table, its arms groping out, its legs all disarrayed. It looked awful, barely human, like something from a nightmare.

“Give me that,” said Auntie Ivy. She stood up and snatched it away. “That's not fit for a boy to play with.”

“Do you think he really saw a man like that?” I asked.

“There's no one like that,” she said. “It's not natural.” Then she swished across the kitchen, and pried the lid from the firebox.

“You're going to burn it?” I said.

“I certainly am.”

I didn't argue. The thing was more horrid than maggots, more horrid than leeches or great, hairy spiders. I felt a huge relief when Auntie Ivy flung it in among the coals.

She took up the poker and stirred the fire into shimmering flames that cast a red pall across her face. She thrust and hammered with it, now at the center, now at the corners, and I imagined that thing crawling inside, squirming away from the poker. Then she slammed the lid down, and the fire crackled and spat.

“I
hate
this war,” she said. “Oh, Johnny, I wish it would end.”

She started crying, and I had never seen her cry before. It wasn't like the proud, silent tears my mother had shed at the sight of my father in his uniform. It was
ghastly and frightening, for she shook all over, as though she'd knock herself to pieces. She covered her face with her hands, but still she kept shaking. And then she shrieked like a bird that had been caught by a cat.