The Return of the Indian (15 page)

Where was the baby-sitter?

Normally she would be in here, watching television. But the set sat darkling in its corner. The intruders made towards it, laid hands on it. While one unplugged it and rolled up the cord, the other two lifted it between them. Would they try to take it out by the window …? No. They carried it silently to the door. The cord holder opened it and they went out.

Omri swung his legs swiftly to the floor and stood up, holding his breath. His heartbeat was extraordinarily steady; in fact he felt calm and clear-headed. There was
another door to the living room, and it was the one nearest the foot of the stairs. Moving across the carpet without a sound, he slipped out of the room and glanced toward the front door.

It was open. The skinheads were going down the path, but they weren’t yet ready to make off. They put the television down in the front garden just behind the hedge. Omri knew they would then turn and come back for more. He took two swift steps to the stairs and raced up them silently, two at a time.

He must phone the police.

No, he couldn’t. The only phone was in the hall.

He must do
something.
He couldn’t just let them get away with it. It was bad enough they made his life a hell in Hovel Road, without invading his territory. But the inescapable fact was that they were years older than Omri, there were three of them, they probably had knives.

He reached his attic bedroom out of breath and opened the door as quietly as he could. He stopped. It was full of strange small lights and flickering shadows.

The first thing he saw was Patrick, fast asleep on cushions on the floor. Then he noticed that the cupboard had been returned to the top of the chest, and so had the seed tray. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on on its much-trampled earth surface. Omri moved forward to look closer.

An astonishing scene met his eyes.

The ruined longhouse had been turned into a sort of scratch hospital. Clean pages evidendy torn from a notebook
had been laid on the floor. In a double row, with a walkway between their feet, lay a number of wounded Indians. They appeared to have been well looked after. The ones Omri could see, through the holes in the long-house roof, were bandaged and covered with warm blankets, made of squares cut from Omri’s sports socks—he recognized the green and blue stripes on the white toweling. Bright Stars was there, her baby tied to her back, moving among them with a bucket, giving them drinks.

At either end of the building burned a small fire of matchsticks and shavings of candlewax, each tended by an unwounded Indian. Around the fires, wrapped in glove-finger sacks, more braves lay asleep.

Omri’s eyes went to a bright light at one end of the seed tray. The stub of the candle had been stuck into the earth and lit. Around it, muttering and chanting, Little Bear moved in a slow sort of dance. His shadow, hugely enlarged, was flung all over the walls of Omri’s room, and the thin, weird, wailing note of his chant Struck Omri’s heart with sadness.

Near the candle was the paddock. It was like a graveyard. Laid out on the grass were some small, still shapes, covered with squares of white cotton blotted with drops of red. Omri counted them. There were eight. Eight out of forty. And all those injured. How?—when they had ambushed the unsuspecting enemy, with far superior weapons?

It took only a few seconds for Omri to take all this in.

Then, out of the depths of the longhouse, bustled a little figure in blue and white, with a tall, flowing cap.

“Well!” she exclaimed when she saw him. “Here’s a nice how do y’ do! Call this a casualty ward? I’d rather be Florence Nightingale—
she
had it easy! Whoever let these poor, simple fools loose with modern weapons ought to be shot themselves!”

“What happened?” asked Omri, dry-mouthed.

“What was bound to happen.
They were shooting each other!
From what I can make out from their leader, they encircled the enemy, then blasted off from all sides, never realizing how far the bullets would travel. The shots that didn’t hit an enemy were likely to hit an ally coming the other way! I’ve fished so many bullets out tonight I could do it with my eyes shut …” She bustled back to work, tutting loudly.

Omri bent and shook Patrick awake.

“Get up. We’ve got burglars downstairs.”

Patrick jerked upright. “What!”

“Skinheads. Three of them. They must think the house is empty. They’re going to clean us out. Only, they’re not, because we’re going to stop them.”

“We are? How?”

“Where are the guns the Indians had?”

“They’re in the cupboard. I think they’ve damaged a lot of them.”

“We were mad … Where’s that bag of British soldiers we had in the garden?”

“Here—but you’re not going—”

“And where’s Fickits?”

“He’s in with them.”

Omri was frantically emptying the paper bag onto the chest. He found Fickits at once and almost threw him into the cupboard, remembering just in time to take the jumble of rifles, tommy guns and machine guns out first. He locked and unlocked the door, and in the next moment Fickits was standing bewildered by the pile of guns.

“Corporal! Check those weapons.”

Fickits, rubbing his eyes, at once came to attention, and then began disentangling what now appeared to be a pile of scrap. Omri meanwhile was putting handfuls of soldiers recklessly into the cupboard. Patrick was at his Shoulder.

“You’re crazy! You’re always telling me not to—”

“Shut up and bring me something flat.”

“Like what—?”

Omri turned on him fiercely. “Use your head! Anything! A tray, a book! My loose-leaf will do! Be quick!”

Patrick did as he was told. Omri closed the cupboard but didn’t turn the key.

“Corporal!”

“Yessir?”

“How much ammo is left?”

“Ammo, sir? More like, how many workin’ weapons. Them redskins ’ave wreaked ’avoc, sir. Absolute ’avoc. I was afraid of this, sir. These ’ere are precision instruments, sir, they’re not bloomin’ bows an’ arrers!”

“Never mind that now. I’m going to put you in charge of a—an operation, Fickits.”

“Me, sir?”

“—Not Indians this time; British troops. And they’re going to mount an attack on three people my size.”

“Gawd ’elp us, sir! ’Ow can we?”

“Just do as I tell you, Corporal, and make them do as you tell them. Okay?”

Fickits gulped noisily, then straightened himself.

“As long as most of ’em are Marines, sir, I expect we shall manage.”

“Good man! Stand by to reassure them as they come out.”

“No need for mollycoddling ’em, sir. The light’s poor; I’ll just tell ’em we’re on night maneuvers.”

Omri turned the key in the lock, and opened the door at once. He was glad the light in the room was dim. Patrick thrust Omri’s large, flat loose-leaf book in front of the cupboard, and out on to it poured twenty or thirty tiny khaki-clad figures. Some of them still had their weapons; others, obeying Fickits’ barking orders, began to man some of those the Indians had used. The room filled with the metallic sounds of weapons being loaded.

“Shall we use the big guns this time, sir? Now we’ve got the crews?” Fickits asked Omri aside.

“Yes. Marshal them all on here, and tell the men to prepare for an all-out attack when you give the word.”

“No trouble, sir. Just don’t—er—” He coughed.
“Don’t thrust yourself forward, sir. They ’aven’t spotted anything unusual yet, if you take my meaning.”

Patrick had caught the spirit of the thing and was feverishly sorting out every bit of hardware he could find in the biscuit tin and getting the cupboard and key to work on it. Soon the men, who were armed with light arms, machine guns, portable antitank rockets, and even a “bunker-buster”—a Milan missile—were in position, drawn up on three sides of a square with their backs to Omri. Though this was a formidable array, Omri did not feel even the faintest scruple.

“Fickets,” he whispered, “I’m going to transport you all. When you can see your targets, give the order to fire at will!”

“Sir!”

“And don’t worry! Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

“You hope,” muttered Patrick as they started down the darkened stairs.

They moved silently down through the darkness. Omri could feel, through his hands holding the edges of the loose-leaf platform, the faint vibrations of life. He could also, for the first time since it happened, feel the sting where the row of minute bullets had pierced the skin of his palm.

On the first landing he nudged Patrick to a stop.

Low down on the bottom flight of stairs was one which always creaked. He heard it creak now. He changed direction and slipped through a half-open door into the bathroom.

He and Patrick stood behind this door. There was another door to this room, which led into his parents’ bedroom, and it, too, was ajar. They saw a faint light—the
sort made by a penlight—feeling its way about on the landing, and heard the stealthy sounds of the skinheads following it. Then a faint whisper:

“Let’s try in ’ere—”

The finger of light vanished, to appear again through the other door. The intruders were in Omri’s parents’ room. He could hear them moving furtively about, then the soft whine of a wardrobe opening.

“Gaaah—no fur coats …”

Omri and Patrick stood rooted, hardly breathing. Omri was almost praying that, in the darkness, no soldier would press a trigger by mistake. Suddenly the torchlight was within two feet of them on the other side of the door.

“Look ’ere, Kev! …”

Omri set his teeth. He knew what they’d found. A little oak chest with small, shallow drawers in which his mother kept the few bits of jewelry she owned, most of it old silver inherited from her mother. It was very precious to her, though it wasn’t specially valuable. Omri heard the scrape of the wooden drawers, and then:

“We can flog this lot … Let’s just take the ’ole thing—”

And then another voice, farther away but audible because they thought they were safe and were getting careless:

“‘Ere! I’m goin’ to take a leak on their bed—”

And there was a burst of stifled sniggering.

That did it.

Before Omri could even signal. Patrick had let out a growl of disgust and flung the door open.

“The light-switch! Beside you!” Omri shouted.

There was an agonizing second while Patrick groped. Then the top light came on, flooding the bedroom with brightness. The skinheads froze in grotesque positions, like children playing statues. Their ugly faces were turned toward the boys, their eyes popping, their loose mouths gaping.

Omri rushed in like an avenging fury, and stopped, the loose-leaf platform with its contingent of men thrust out in front of him.

“’Ere, wot the ’ell—”

Then Fickits’ sergeant-major voice rang shrill and clear:

“FIRE AT WILL!”

The biggest skinhead snarled and made a dive towards Omri. For a split second he loomed menacingly. Then there was a concerted burst of fire, and suddenly tiny red spots appeared on his face in a line, from the bottom of one cheek, diagonally across his nose to the top of the other. He stopped dead in his tracks, let out a howl of pain and outrage, and clapped his hands to his face.

“I bin stung! It’s ’ornets! Get ’em orfa me!”

Behind him, his mate started towards Patrick, hands reaching out to grab.

“I’ll get ’em—little nerds—”

But all he got was the miniature equivalent of an ar-morpiercing shell up under his thumbnail.

“OWWW!” he shrieked, and let out a string of curses, shaking his hand and dancing in agony.

The third and smallest of the gang had been gazing at the object Omri held, and he, unlike the others, had
seen.
He now let out a sound that started as a moan and ended in a scream.

“UughhhhhAAAOWEEEE!”

He then flew into a panic, dashing here and there in short spurts, yelling, “’Elp! They’re alive, I seen ’em, they’re alive!”—through the crump and crack and chatter of the guns, which were firing continuously. The other two also turned and tried to flee, but all sense of direction had deserted them. They bumped into the furniture, the walls and each other, swearing and howling, and giving great leaps into the air every time they were hit in a sensitive spot. Omri and Patrick added to the uproar by shouting encouragement to their little men. Patrick was jumping about as if at a prizefight or a foot-ball match. Omri had to stay still to hold the firing platform steady, but he opened his throat on a long shout of excitement as the three invaders finally found the other exit and fled through it, pell-mell.

“Cease fire!” cried Patrick.

“CEASE FIRE!” bawled Fickits.

There was a fraction of a second’s silence. Then the boys heard the skinheads shoving and swearing on the stairs. One of them tripped; there was a series of satisfying thumps, and then a loud crack as one of the banisters broke. The boys, hurrying down to the half landing, saw
them fleeing along the path and heard the clatter of their boots receding along Hovel Road, accompanied by sounds of anguish.

The boys turned and hugged each other.