Lord of the Nutcracker Men (15 page)

Sarah was gone. Her mother had taken her north to Suffolk, to the little town of Bury St. Edmunds. They had left on the last day of the school term, and Sarah hadn't said goodbye.

The sergeant I didn't see until a week before Christmas.

It was the nineteenth day of December, a Saturday. Neither I nor Mr. Tuttle had talked of ending our lessons, but they were winding down. Distressed that no boy had come forward to admit to hurting his roses, Mr. Tuttle was only waiting for Christmas to submit his resignation. And I was still too ashamed to tell him the truth.

That afternoon, I got a shock to see him packing his belongings. He had half a dozen tea chests in his front room, and was filling them with his little trinkets. One whole wall was bare, except for the picture of his wife.

“Are you really leaving?” I asked.

“I am,” he said. “If nothing changes.”

“Because of your roses?”

“Because of the principle,” he said. “I've set a course and I have to follow it. That's the measure of a man, after all: to see things through no matter how distasteful, no matter what others think.”

“But what will happen to your roses?” I asked.

“They'll grow wild, I suppose,” said Mr. Tuttle. “I'll take a cutting, of course, and try to start over somewhere else. But the rest?” He was packing his figurines, rolling each one into a white cloth. “If they survive the winter they should do quite well. They'll spread from my garden into the fields, from the fields to the forests, all across Kent.”

“Like an army,” I said.

“Yes. A beautiful, red-coated army.”

From there we slipped into our lesson, the army of roses becoming armies of men. Mr. Tuttle distressed me by talking of wars that went on for years and years.
There were some, he said, that went on so long that they were ended by the grandchildren of the men that started them. “Imagine that,” he said. “Your father comes home an old man. You grow up and go off to the war, and then you come home and have children. And years from now your children grow up and go to fight in the same trenches as you and your father.”

“It couldn't happen,” I said. But I remembered the Highlander who had carried me up to the train. He had told me the same thing; he had told me that my dad would never come home. “No, it couldn't happen,” I said again, fiercely.

“Oh, but it's happened before,” Mr. Tuttle told me. “There's wars that lasted a hundred years.”

We reached the end of the
Iliad
that day. Mighty Achilles killed poor Hector, the Trojan prince, and dragged his body around and around the city walls. He dragged it all over the place, until it was smashed and broken. But the gods made it whole again, and the king of Troy had to go and beg for it back from the Greeks. There was a funeral that seemed to go on forever, with races and games, and people talking about Hector. Outside the walls, the Greeks were getting ready to attack again.

Mr. Tuttle wiped away tears, but I thought it was a silly ending.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“What more could there be?” said Mr. Tuttle. “It's prophetic, Johnny. Wars might pause, but they'll never stop. And if heroes can be killed, what's the use for bravery except to be mourned and remembered?”

I left his house rather sadder than when I'd started
out. And with every step through the gloom and the mud, I became a little more disheartened.

Mr. Tuttle, who dreaded the cold for the sake of his roses, was glad for the steady, endless rain. But I hated it. I was homesick and lonely, longing for my mother to come and take me to London again. I couldn't see how my dad would ever get home in time.

And now the days were so short that I had to hurry along the footpaths. Through thickets and stands of trees, the darkness seemed to chase me. It came like a rising river, filling the hollows. It covered the ruined cottage and flowed through the woods, all the shadows gathering there. It flooded the little cemetery to the very tops of the gravestones. A bat flitted across them, its wings whistling as it hunted for mice.

I passed the field quickly, then came to the forest again, so dark that I was scared to go in it. I veered from the path, down the edge of old Storey's farm. I trampled through the mud, and stumbled over hummocks I couldn't see. And I nearly shouted with fright when I heard the rustle in the trees.

Branches snapped. Something howled in the darkness. Then the orange cat came streaking from the forest. It banged against my legs, hissed and darted off. In an instant it was gone, but I would have liked to chase it, to kick it if I could. I was angry it had scared me, until I heard something coming behind it.

I stared at the trees, too frightened to run. I saw something moving in there, coming straight toward me. Then it turned aside, and slid along in its snap and crash of branches. I dropped to the ground, and out from the woods came the sergeant.

He passed close enough that I could hear him groan as he breathed. There was a bruise on his face, an ugly blotch like a slab of raw liver. His uniform was all in tatters, his trouser leg split open to his knee. Around his leg was a filthy bandage, stained with dirt and blood. I could smell the rot below it, the same sour stench that had leaked from the windows of Fatty Dienst's boarded-up shop.

He staggered on across the field, hunched like a gnome. He went in lurches and hops, his bandaged leg as stiff as a piece of wood. He was the dog-faced soldier my father had made, a weary and horrid thing that groped along, that sometimes crawled where the ground was rough and broken. He stopped, and moaned, then started again. He went on through the rain and the mud— through the gathering darkness—to the little cemetery where the grave markers stood like stepping-stones in the river of shadows.

He crossed the fence and dropped behind it. I saw him lurch across the mound of a grave and pass behind a marble cross. And he vanished then, in the gloom of rain and blackness, as though he sank within the soil.

I turned and ran, reeling from humps to hollows, from grass to mud to thorns. I staggered around logs, around old, fallen fences, and—at last—hurtled down through a ditch and up to the road. Then I stopped for a moment, but not any longer. From the north, toward Cliffe, came a clang of metal, like a tin bell tolling, and a glimmer of light flashed on the road. And around a bend appeared old Storey Sims.

He came weaving toward me, from side to side, from ditch to ditch. I saw the lantern in his outstretched hook,
its flickering light shining only on the front of him, on his arm and chest and face. That seemed to be all there was of Storey Sims, just an image of a man shining in the rain, just half a man—without any legs—floating along on the shadow river.

I was even more scared of old Storey than I was of the sergeant. I raced toward home, splashing through puddles. Each time I looked back the lantern was there, chasing me down the long and empty road.

“Don't slam the door,” Auntie told me as I barreled inside.

She was still at her knitting, her silvery head lowered toward it. The big balls of yarn had shrunk to the size of walnuts. Her needles ticked and tapped as steadily as watches.

“How's Mr. Tuttle?” she asked.

The house calmed me. It soothed me with its warmth and smells.

“Well?” she said. She looked up at me, and
tsked
and shook her head. “How can a boy make such a mess of himself just walking from house to house?”

I was filthy and wet. Blades of yellow grass were plastered round my ankles; I wore bracelets of thorns. I said, “I ran all the way home. I saw the sergeant again.”

“Where?” she asked. But I didn't get a chance to tell her, because someone came and pounded on the door. It shook the wood and boomed through the house, a sound as loud as thunder but steady as Auntie's needles.

“Well, don't just stand there gawking,” she said. “Go and see who it is.”

The door seemed to bulge toward me; its hinges rattled with each pounding of fists. I turned the latch and it
flew open, and there on the step was old Storey Sims. His boots were huge and hobnailed, his clothes all rough and patched. He had tangled hair and a beard like a thatch of black grass. His hook was raised, ready to hammer again, and I cringed away from him. Then he lifted the lantern and it blinded my eyes.

“You were out on the road,” he shouted. “Did you see anyone else? Did you see a young man?”

I didn't see his hook coming out from the glare. It took hold of my shoulder, and he shook me. “Answer!” shouted Storey.

“Let him go!” said Auntie Ivy, rising from her chair. “You crazy old man, let him go.”

But he only held me harder. He leaned forward, and his face swooped down to mine, shining in the lantern. “Answer me!” he shouted again.

“You don't give him a chance,” said Auntie Ivy. She thumped up behind me and pulled me back from the door. “How dare you come here in the dead of night and frighten the wits from the boy?”

“Good God, woman!” roared Storey Sims. His lantern hung above all of us, smelling of kerosene. “Murdoch's my son. What would you have me do?”

“Not scaring young boys half to death,” she said. “Now, stop this nonsense. Come in from the rain like a civilized man.”

Auntie Ivy could have kept a mad bull from charging by telling it to “stop this nonsense.” Old Storey Sims lowered his lantern and let his shoulders droop. He turned in a moment from anger to sadness.

“I won't come in,” he said. “Murdoch's out in the rain, and I have to keep looking. I have to keep searching.”

“Leave it be,” said Auntie, as gently as she could. “If Murdoch was out there, don't you think he'd know where to find you?”

“And what if he can't?” asked Storey. “What if he's lost? How can I rest thinking he's there?”

Auntie hugged my shoulders. Old Storey Sims glared at me, then touched his forehead and said, “Good night to you, Ivy.” He went down to the path, out through the gate, with his lantern clanging at the end of his arm.

Auntie Ivy closed the door. She looked down at me. “Johnny?” she said. “Did you really see your sergeant tonight?”

I nodded.

“Do you still think he's Murdoch?” “I don't know,” I said. “He gave me his tag, and it said his name is Thomas Cade. But he
looks
like Murdoch, Auntie.”

“Where did he go?”

“He came out of the woods,” I said. “And he vanished in the cemetery.”

“Gracious.” She sighed. “Johnny, that's where every Sims is buried.”

Auntie Ivy closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Not on Christmas Day.” Little tears dribbled onto her cheeks. “They can't attack on Christmas Day.”

“I hope they do,” I said.

Her eyes snapped open. “You hope for no such thing.”

“I do,” I said. Christmas was only five days off.

“You foolish child.”

“But, Auntie, the side that attacks always comes out the worst.” It was what the sergeant had told me, and Sarah too. “We have to get the Huns out of their trenches. We have to catch them in the open and—”

“Stop it!” she shouted. “You bloodthirsty boy.” She slapped me on the cheek.

It shocked me more than it hurt. It shocked me into tears. “Why did you do that?” I cried.

She threw my dad's letter onto the table, and went swishing from the room. She hadn't even read right through it, and I shouted at her: “Come and finish the letter!”

“You don't deserve to hear it,” she said.

I hated her then. I wished she was in France, squishing through the mud in her huge black shoes. I hoped a sniper could see her silver hair bobbing down the trench.

“I want to know what he sent me,” I shouted.

“Then open it, Johnny,” she said.

I cursed her under my breath. I called her a wicked old witch, and pulled away paper. I called her a fool and a hag, and pulled away more. And out from the wrappings came an aeroplane.

It wasn't my favorite toy, but it was close. It was my third favorite thing. Six inches long, graceful and lovely, it had a little propeller that spun when I tapped it. Black crosses were painted on the wings, and in the cockpit sat a nutcracker man, only his head showing, his big teeth grinning. I flew the aeroplane across the table, with a sound of engines purring on my lips: “Brrrrrrrr.”