Lord of the Nutcracker Men (18 page)

“What a funny soldier,” said Auntie as I stripped the wrappings from the figure. “He looks like a ragpicker, Johnny.”

There was a floppy hat on his head, a scarf at his neck, enormous boots on his feet. He wore so many clothes that he was round as a snowman, while his cheeks were painted a very bright red.

Auntie Ivy laughed, but I didn't. “What's wrong?” she asked.

“He sounds sort of frightened.”

“Your father? He doesn't!”

“He keeps saying, ‘I'm afraid,’” I told her.

“That's not what he means.” She scowled at the letter, and I saw her lips moving as she read through it again.

To me it was clear; Dad was scared, but didn't want me to know. Like a spy, he had put a secret code into his letter that he had meant only for Auntie to see, but that I had learned by mistake.

“He sounds perfectly fine to me,” she said. But now she looked troubled herself.

“But what's in those boxes?” I asked. “What are the Germans bringing up to the front?”

“Presents, of course.”

“Maybe mortars,” I said.

She took a long breath, then closed her eyes and sighed it out. “Well, if you doubt your own father …”

“But he's not telling the truth,” I said. “They don't pitch horseshoes. It's not like that at all.”

“I suppose you know better,” she said.

“I do.” I knocked the little soldier on his side. “There's mud everywhere. It falls away and there's bodies inside, their hands reaching out. The soldiers hang their canteens on the—”

“Who's telling you this?” asked Auntie.

“No one.” I felt more miserable than I'd ever felt in
my life. I couldn't tell her the truth about anything. At last she stood up, and I thought my troubles were over. But they only got worse.

“Go and find your coat,” she said.

The last thing I wanted to do was go and see Murdoch shivering in his old ruin, babbling about angels and things that lurked in the shadows. But Auntie insisted. She even stood over me as I pulled on my Wellingtons.

“Maybe someone else has found it,” I said. “Someone who really needs it, Auntie.”

“What nonsense,” she said. “You're just too lazy to look.”

“But what if someone did?” I was sick at the thought of seeing Murdoch. “Should I leave it with him?”

“Johnny,” she said, her eyes getting small. “What are you talking about?”

I looked down at my boots so she wouldn't see the tears in my eyes.

“Tell me,” she said. “Who could be out there that would need that coat more than you?”

“I don't know,” I said. But the words choked in my throat, and came out in only a squeak.

“Who?” she asked again. Then, “Good heavens! Not that soldier?”

Her knees popped as she came down to the floor. “Johnny, where is your coat?”

I hadn't promised not to tell her that. “In the ruins,” I said. “But please don't ask me anything else.”

“All right,” she said calmly. “We'll
both
go out. We'll get to the bottom of this.”

We went down the footpath together, in the cold morning of Christmas Eve. Our breaths made puffs of
white; our boots creaked on frozen mud, raising flurries from a thin layer of snow. Auntie Ivy, in a red coat and white hat, walked at my side, telling me now to hurry, now to slow down. She wore funny little buttoned boots with sharp toes and chunky heels that skidded on the ground.

“A body could freeze to death out here,” said Auntie. I thought of Murdoch lying among the stones. Would we find him covered in ice, peering up through frozen eyes? Or had his angel come to fetch him, leaving nothing there but my coat?

I took Auntie to the ruin, and she marched straight up through the rubble. In her bright clothes, on the gray and white stones, she looked like a robin at a winter feeder. I went up behind her, my feet cold in my boots, my face tingling with frost. She stumbled and I caught her, and we climbed to the top of the stones.

Below us lay the sergeant, half covered by my coat. His eyes were closed, and his lips had almost no color. Auntie gasped to see him, then hurried down to his side.

“It
is
Murdoch,” she whispered. “Oh, Johnny, I'm sorry.”

“Is he dead?” I asked.

She bent her face toward his. “He's breathing,” she said.

I climbed down beside her as Auntie drew my coat around Murdoch's shoulders. She pulled it up, baring the bandages. “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Look at his leg.”

It was crooked between the stones, doubled in size. He had torn big, ragged holes in his bandage, and the flesh underneath was broken and purple, scratched by his nails, oozing a terrible custard.

“Look what they did to him,” said Auntie Ivy. “Oh, why is he lying here? Why didn't he go home?”

“He told me he couldn't,” I said.

“What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing.” I hung my head.

“Johnny, he's dying!” shouted Auntie Ivy.

I couldn't keep my secret. I didn't want to keep it. “He shot himself, Auntie,” I said.

“Lord have mercy.”

I couldn't look at Murdoch and I couldn't look at Auntie, not with her eyes suddenly full of horror and shock. I looked up at the sky, at the clouds boiling past, through the gap from wall to wall.

“He was scared,” I said. “He wanted to get away from the war. But now he's a deserter, and the army will shoot him again if they find him. They'll make him better and shoot him.”

“What madness,” she cried. “What an awful, horrible war.” She dragged her hands down her face, pulling so hard that she stretched all the wrinkles away. Then she took off her gaudy red coat and put it over his legs. “You wait with him, Johnny,” she said, standing up.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“To get some help, of course.”

“Not Mr. Sims,” I said. “Auntie, please; he's not supposed to know.”

She was already leaving, scrambling up through the rubble. In a moment she was over the top, clunking down to the path. Her little white hat disappeared.

I heard a quiet rumble underneath my overcoat. I lifted the edge and saw the orange cat curled against Murdoch's chest; it was the cat that had kept him warm.
Then I covered it up, stretched out beside the sergeant, and listened to the purrs. I was still lying there when Auntie Ivy came back, with Mr. Tuttle behind her. He carried his gown, and we worked together to make a litter for Murdoch.

The orange cat stretched, and wandered out, and we carried Murdoch from the ruin, into a drizzle that was already melting the snow. With Mr. Tuttle at his head, Auntie and I at his feet, we carried him along as gently as we could, stopping to rest where the trees gave us shelter. He lay in a murmuring sleep all the way to Mr. Tuttle's house, where we stretched him out on the sofa.

Mr. Tuttle piled logs on the fire. Auntie Ivy took one look at the pile of tea chests—no bigger or smaller than I'd seen it last—and went off to make cocoa for Murdoch. I was put to work tearing bedsheets into bandages; then we all bundled Murdoch in blankets that were fluffy and white. Mr. Tuttle and Auntie sat side by side on the edge of his ottoman, rubbing warmth into the soldier, trying to coax him to drink. Murdoch started shiver-ing—slowly at first—and then so violently that the enormous sofa shook on its wooden legs. Drops of cocoa flew from his lips.

Mr. Tuttle tried to hold him down. “Johnny, go and find Storey,” he said.

“What about a doctor?” I asked.

“He's gone to the war, and the nearest one is miles away,” said Mr. Tuttle. “We'll send for him too, but first things first. Murdoch must see his father.”

“That's not what he wants,” I said.

“I suspect he no longer knows what he wants.” Mr.
Tuttle pressed his hand on Murdoch's forehead. It was horribly bruised, bright with sweat. “He's got a very high fever, Johnny. He may well have no idea where he is, nor even
who
he is.”

“But he knew before,” I said. “And he made me
promise
not to tell.”

Auntie Ivy put down the cocoa. “We don't have to tell Mr. Sims everything that happened,” she said. “We can keep some of it to ourselves.”

Mr. Tuttle knew nothing of that. He looked in wonder at my auntie, and then at me. I didn't say a word, but Auntie never kept secrets. “It's self-inflicted,” she said, in a whisper.

“Oh, Lord.” Mr. Tuttle touched the blankets lumped over the soldier's leg. “He told you this, Johnny?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What a weight,” he muttered. “What a responsibility to put upon a child.” He shook his head and frowned. “Johnny, I'm sorry, but I must side with your aunt. It's the right thing to do.”

I was sent away to find old Storey Sims. I was told to bring him back as quickly as I could, to tell him only that Murdoch was there.

It was very cold, and the clouds were such a solid mass that I was sure they stretched all the way to France, that it might be snowing on the battlefield and on the soldiers in their trenches. I thought of my father standing in the cold, with his new wooly clothes all sodden and icy. He wasn't playing billiards or singing songs at a fire; he had never done that. I saw him very clearly, as I trotted up the road. I saw him pounding his hands together,
shuffling feet that squelched in the mud, through a rime of crackling ice. I saw the sad, worried look on his face as he waited for Christmas, for the Germans to come.

And then his picture melted away, and I couldn't bring it back. I couldn't even think what he looked like, and it scared me to think I might
never
remember. In the morning there would be a battle, and he might come out of it wounded and shattered. He might not come out of it at all.

I tried to outrun my fears, but they swirled all around me. The Germans bringing up boxes. Dead men's hands. I felt haunted by my fears, as though they battered at my mind. Voices cried at me, one after another.
That
army
of butchers. Zeppelins, Johnny. The Huns came thick as eels. There's wars that last a hundred years
.

The voices chased me to the farm, up the lane to the porch. I kicked and banged at the door.

Old Storey came out, and he glared down at me with the darkest look I'd ever seen.

I said, “Murdoch's—”

“Where?”
roared Storey, and I told him.

He didn't wait long enough to get a coat, to even shut the door. He shouted for his wife to come, then bounded from the house and dragged me with him, around the back to a wagon and a harnessed horse. He'd been hauling firewood, and the wagon was half empty now, the ground beside it strewn with short, fat logs.

“Get up!” he shouted, and pitched me onto the wagon's seat. Mrs. Sims came dashing out, and he pitched her up as well. He climbed up with me and shook the reins, and the horse set off at a run.

The wagon swayed and clattered, spilling the wood
from its sides, from its back. The logs tumbled down and bounced along the mud and the grass. I clung to my seat and we dashed along through the clouds of breath the horses made. In moments I was back at Mr. Tuttle's little cottage.

Murdoch still shook on the sofa. The blankets were stained with patches of sweat, with a spot of black blood that had soaked through the new bandages. He seemed only half his size, a trembling lump so unlike the soldier I'd first seen at the wall that I wouldn't have been surprised if old Storey had asked, “Who is this?” But he only said, “Oh, Murdoch. Oh, Murdoch, where have you been?”

Mrs. Sims threw herself down by his head. Old Storey petted and patted at the blankets. “What happened to him?” he asked. “Where did you find him?”

Mr. Tuttle came and stood at my side. “It was Johnny who saved him. Johnny kept him warm.”

“But where was he?” asked Storey.

“In the ruins,” I said. “The tumbled old cottage.”

Old Storey stood up. “Why didn't he come home?”

I looked back at him, not sure what to say. Then Mr. Tuttle's hand settled on my shoulder. “It's Murdoch you should ask,” he said.

“Look at him,” yelled Storey, coming closer. “How can I do that?”

“Don't shout at the boy,” said Mr. Tuttle. “It's no wonder Murdoch was scared to go home.”

“Scared?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “He was too frightened to tell you what really happened.”

He looked at Murdoch, then at me. “
What
really happened?”

“I can't tell you that,” I said.

“You can, boy. And you will.” Storey was huge; he towered over Mr. Tuttle.

Mrs. Sims had her veils pulled back, her white face watching. But it was Auntie who spoke. “Stop this nonsense,” she cried.

For once it did no good. Old Storey's face was livid with anger, and I closed my eyes, sure he would hit me. But Mr. Tuttle pulled me close against himself and said, “Now, that's enough.”

He didn't sound very stern, but he did sound as though he meant it. “I won't have you shouting like this in my house,” he said. “Certainly not at Johnny, who did the best he could, and better than most would have done.”

Storey was stopped in his tracks. His arms bulged and his eyes showed fury; but he came no closer.

Mr. Tuttle's voice steadied into his schoolteacher's tones. “Now I'll tell you, sir, because I think you should know. Murdoch was shot by his own hand.”

Mrs. Sims gasped a shrill breath. Storey staggered back, as though he himself had been shot.

“Johnny kept to his promise and told nobody why,” said Mr. Tuttle. “But I imagine your son was afraid that you would see him as something less than a man.”

I nodded silently. He had come right to the truth.

The old man went back to the sofa and sat on the table beside it. He took Murdoch's hand, holding it through the blankets. “I want to take him home,” he said.

“I won't allow it,” said Auntie. “But we'll leave you alone with him, if that's all right with Mr. Tuttle. You can have the house to yourselves if Mr. Tuttle will come and spend Christmas with Johnny and me.”

I felt Mr. Tuttle's fingers twitch on my shoulder. “Why, I should like that very much,” he said softly.

We left the old man with his soldier son. Mr. Tuttle went pedaling off to send word for the doctor, and caught up with us again just as we reached the gate to Auntie Ivy's house.