Lord of the Nutcracker Men (17 page)

It was a cold morning, the gray clouds bulging with rain or maybe snow. I wore my overcoat, and went north up the road to the village. The few coins I had jingled in my pocket.

It was easy to shop for Auntie. I bought her a pair of knitting needles, thinking her old ones would soon be worn away by all their clicking and scraping. But I couldn't decide what to get for my mum.

I went all through the shops, then around them again. I went from one to the other, looking at ribbons and hat pins and writing paper. I looked at candles and tapers and tiny horses meant to dangle from bracelets. But the things that I liked were too dear, and I went back to the first shop and started again.

The geezer who'd sold me fireworks asked what I was looking for.

“Something for my mum,” I said.

“Ah. Perhaps she'd like one of these.”

He put them out on the counter, fancy little boxes full of fancy little chocolates. There were some like tiny eggs and some like seashells. They all looked very expensive. Right away I knew that my mum would love them. “How much do they cost?” I asked.

“Oh, they vary,” said the geezer. “How much do you have?”

I took out all my coins: three pennies, a ha'penny and a farthing. I turned my pockets inside out, but there wasn't more than that.

“It's all I have,” I said. “My dad's at the front and my mum's in Woolwich, and my auntie's a skinflint, sir.”

His fingers came down on my pennies. He nudged them toward me, then hooked them around and slid them into his palm. “I'll go to the poorhouse,” he said. “But you're close enough. There's even a farthing left over to buy yourself a sweetie.”

I pushed the chocolates into my pocket and started for home. It was already late afternoon, but if I hurried down the footpaths I could still get there before the twilight brought old Storey Sims out with his lantern and his hook.

The light had no shadows, and the forest seemed thick and gloomy. I ran down the path, hurdling roots and frozen puddles, my elbows brushing on crackly bushes. I pretended that my knitting needles were swords, and I slashed them at the twigs. I was a hussar, charging, and the sound of my feet echoed from the trees like the hooves of horses. I kept running, past the orchard, past the crumbled cottage.

And a voice cried out: a howl.

It was an eerie sound that made me stop and stand absolutely still. I wasn't sure just where the voice had come from.

I heard it again, and turned toward it. The ruined heap of a stone wall loomed above the bushes. The sound had come from there.

It was the orange cat, I thought. I laughed and shook myself, and said, “It's just the cat.”

But then it called my name.

“Johnny,” it said. “Help me, Johnny.”

I didn't move.

“Help me,” said the voice.

I saw the sergeant then, his head, his battered cap. I saw him in the gloom among the fallen stones, and his hand came up and beckoned. And he moaned. He moaned such a heartbroken sound that I couldn't pass him by.

I walked toward him, through the dead grass and the leaves the wind had scattered. I reached the stones and put my hands on them—they were cold as ice—and peered down at the sergeant where he lay on his back, on the ground, all twisted in the rubble. His face was white and it glimmered with sweat. His fingers were like white worms writhing on his throat.

“I'm cold,” he said. “So cold.”

“Then why are you lying here?” I asked.

He closed his eyes and winced and jerked upright with another horrible moan. Clutching at his bandaged leg, his head thrashing from side to side, he panted like a dog before falling back again. Though I shook from the cold, he was sweating. A trickle of sweat dribbled from under his cap, down his forehead. He mopped it away, smearing it across the bruises that had spread to both cheeks.

“I'm dying,” he said. “Oh, Johnny, help me.”

“How?” I asked. “Stay with me for a while.”

I sat on the stones of the fallen cottage, wishing that Mr. Tuttle was with me, or even Auntie Ivy. I didn't know what to do to help the sergeant, and I didn't want to stay.

“I saw him again,” he said. “The angel.” His hand shot out and grasped at his leg. The pain took all the
breath from him, and for a minute he couldn't speak at all. Then again he said, “I'm so cold.”

I took off my coat and covered him with it, or only his chest; my coat was so small. As I bent over him I smelled the rot in his flesh, and what I thought was the mud of the trenches still caked on his boots and his clothes.

The sergeant opened his eyes. They were huge, all yellow and dull. “There he is,” he said. “Do you see him, Johnny? Do you see how he glows?”

I looked behind me. There was nothing there but a pale smudge of sunlight, an orange smear on the clouds.

“He's coming now,” said the sergeant.

He made me so scared that I couldn't bear to sit there anymore. “I'll bring some help,” I said. But when I tried to leave, his hand clenched on my boot.

“No,” he said. “Just stay with me. Talk to me.”

“About what?” “Anything. The war; your father. Tell me about James.”

“It's not so bad anymore,” I said. “My dad's playing billiards in the dugout. He went to a picture show.”

I heard a bubbling in his chest, a wheeze that came out from his throat. It took me a moment to realize that the sergeant was laughing.

“Is that what he told you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Poor James. What a good soul. He wouldn't want you to worry.”

“It's true,” I said.

“No, Johnny, it's not. There's no billiards, no picture shows. It's mud and more mud, death and more death.”
The sergeant groaned. “It will never change and it will never stop. The guns, the shells, the rats and the mud.”

“It's not like that anymore,” I said.

“It will always be that way. It will never stop,” he said. “The battles go on and on. The dead pile up in no-man's-land. The shells bury them and unearth them again.”

“Stop it!” I said. “My dad never lies.”

“Believe what you like.” He trembled with a sudden pain. “It's a horror, is what it is. I saw the trench collapse, and a dead man's hand appear, reaching from the mud. I saw a soldier hang his canteen on the hooks of those fingers. And I should be there, Johnny. It's where I belong.”

“You were wounded,” I said. “You're a hero.”

He shook his head, but it only lolled from side to side. “I'm not that.”

There was a haunted look in his eyes. I was glad when he closed them.

His face had shrunk to his skull. But it was the same face in the picture at Storey's farm.

“Murdoch?” I whispered.

His eyes flickered, but didn't open. “You know,” he said. “Do others know? Does my father know?”

“He goes looking for you,” I said.

“Don't tell him you've seen me.” A tremble started in his hand and shook up through his arm.

“Why won't you go home?” I asked.

“He wouldn't understand. I did it myself, Johnny.”

“Did what?”

“I shot myself.” Sweat beaded up on his face. “I couldn't bear it anymore. The misery; the fear. I'm a coward, not a hero.”

“But you still need help,” I said.

Even his breath made him shake. “My dad was a soldier; his dad too. He would hate me for this.”

“I won't tell him,” I promised. “Only my auntie.”

“No one can know.” He winked, and it was ghastly to see. “It's our secret, Johnny. Yours and mine.”

“And Thomas Cade's,” I said.

“No,” said Murdoch. “He was on the hospital ship, coming home.” He moved his shoulders, fitting down among the stones. “The doctors already knew what I'd done, I think. I saw them whispering, pointing at me. When the ship docked I'd be arrested, then shot for desertion. That night Thomas died. I changed my tag with his; I put some of my things in his pockets.”

He started to shake more violently. I tightened my coat around his shoulders, but it didn't seem to help him. His leg twisted, and he moaned, but his eyes stayed closed. “Do you have any food?” he asked.

“No,” I said. But I did. Mum's chocolates were in my coat pocket, inches from his hand. My money was gone; they were all I could buy her.

Murdoch sighed. His breath rattled. “When I'm gone, cover me over,” he said. “Some dirt, some stones. I don't want the dogs to get me.”

“Please don't talk like that,” I said. “I can bring you help. They can make you better.”

“For what?” he asked. “To shoot me? To send me back? I'd rather die here than go back.”

His arm groped under my coat. His white fingers came out from the edge, curled like the hooks he'd seen in the trenches. “Say you'll do it,” he said. “Just cover me over,” he said. “But make sure that I'm gone.”

I couldn't do that, and I didn't want him to die. I took
out my chocolates and fed them to him. He gobbled them down.

Right away he was calm, and he lay on the stones with a peaceful look on his face. “I didn't think I would ever eat chocolate again,” he said. “God bless you, Johnny.”

I held his hand, but I hated him for what he was asking.

Murdoch lay quietly, his chest hardly lifting. Now and then a tremor came through his hand into mine. Then his eyes opened again. They started as slits, then widened suddenly into huge, horrid balls. “There he is now,” he said. “The angel. He's here.”

His head eased back, and he fell into an awful sleep that made him twitch and cry. I imagined that he was dreaming himself back to the war, though what he was seeing I couldn't even guess. Then his hand flew up to ward something off, and he howled. And I thought that he wasn't asleep at all, that he wasn't dreaming, and whatever he saw was really
there
. A man, a beast, an angel—whatever it was—it was oozing with the shadows into the ruins of the cottage. And it made me shake with fright.

I ran from that place. I scrambled over the stones, down to the grass and leaves, and I raced along the footpath, back to Auntie Ivy's.

I climbed over the wall, and I saw my nutcracker men in their black slits of trenches, their gnashing teeth in a ghostly line. I ran into the house, shouting for Auntie.

She was holding a telegram.

“It's for you,” she said.

I could hardly speak. “My dad?” I whispered.

“No,” she said. “It's your mother.”

“My mother?” I asked. “What happened?”

“Oh, don't be silly,” she said. “Nothing has
happened
. She sent you a wire to say that she won't be coming for Christmas.”

I started to cry. On top of everything else, of Murdoch and the secret I'd made, this seemed like the end of the world. “She was going to take me home,” I blubbered. “She promised to come and get me.”

“Well, she's not doing it to spite you,” said Auntie. “With all the suffering in the world, I don't think it's a tragedy that you won't see your mother at Christmas.”

“But why?” I asked.

“Why do you think? The war, Johnny. The—” She stopped. “Where's your coat?”

I was almost surprised to find it missing. I'd run so fast and so far that I was hot even without it.

“Well?” she said. “Where is it?”

I couldn't tell her the truth. “I didn't have it with me,” I said.

“You
did,
” she snapped. “I saw you put it on.”

“Then I must have lost it,” I said.

She gave me a suspicious look. “Well, you'd better go and find it. First thing in the morning, young man.”

I didn't know what to do or what to tell her. The night turned cold and the snow started falling. I thought of Murdoch shivering in his ruins, but I didn't tell Auntie. I let him lie there all that night and into the morning of Christmas Eve.