Lord of the Nutcracker Men

by Iain Lawrence

” One by one, the guys went soaring up, flung by the boys to the top of the bonfire. Their stuffed legs seemed to kick at the wood and the flames. Their arms groped through the sparks, and their masked faces grinned as the fire swept over them. They sprawled on the wood and burst into fire themselves. Their bodies tore open, spilling out smoke. One came hurtling down, wrapped all in flames, rolling over and over as his arms beat at the fire in his burlap body. I dragged my own guy forward and heaved him up with the rest.

  He seemed to sit for a moment at the very top, his huge head flopping forward. His arms seemed to lift and beckon to me, to all of us. Then the fire took hold of his ankles and crept up his legs. Smoke welled from the body, thick coils of gray that swirled around his monstrous head, around his tiny little cap. The boys laughed to see him, my poor sad guy. But I looked at him almost with horror as the clothes my father once had worn blackened and twisted, then burst into flames. The smoke thickened. My guy's body split open and Mr. Tuttle's rosebushes tumbled down into the heart of the bonfire. His head tipped back, and a split appeared for his mouth, holes for his eyes. They jetted smoke, then turned to fiery red from the blaze of twigs inside. He seemed to glare at me, to shout in the roar of the fire. Then his strings dissolved and he collapsed into pieces, and only his head was left, smoldering into ashes that drifted up with the sparks.

  There was silence for a moment; then the boys all shrieked and hollered. They jostled against me, pushing me sideways. I stumbled back against one, who shoved me on to the next. The firelight swept over them, flickering on their clothes and faces. It made them strange and savagelike, and they laughed and chanted.

  “Guy, guy, guy. Stick 'im in the eye.”

  They pushed harder. I reeled from boy to boy. Sparks burst from the fire, exploding at my feet.

  “Hang him on a lamppost. And there let 'im die.

  ” The ring of watching skulls gaped at me. The boys pushed me closer to the fire. What had started as a game, I thought, had turned to a wildness they couldn't control. Their hands pressed and shoved.

  I felt the whole heat of the bonfire scorching at my back, and I feared the boys would throw me on it. They would pitch me up—I was certain they would—and my arms would flail like those of the guys as I fell, spread-eagled, on the wood.

  Then Sarah was there, swirling in among the boys, and I thought she had come to pull me away. But when she took my hands she pushed me instead, and I spun around to find more hands waiting. I slipped into the rhythm then, into a mad sort of dance, a Red Indian dance of stamping feet and whoops and shouts. We flew round and round, under the sparks and the whirls of smoke, round and round the watching faces.

  I was sad when it ended. The boys went off in pairs and little groups, and the great fire dwindled to a heap of coals. Soon Sarah and I were the only ones left, and we walked together to the edge of the village. I didn't mind her being there. Her hair had a particular smell that I liked very much, a lovely mix of smoke and gunpowder.

  It wasn't so bad, I thought, to have a girl for a friend. After all, she was almost like a boy. Except for her clothes and her hair, and her voice and her shape, she was exactly the same as a boy.

  CHAPTER 7

  November 11, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  I can't tell you exactly where I am, as our commanding officer would not allow it. He is a very kind soul who is loath to read our letters at all. But he must, and he does.

  The best I can say is that we're somewhere near a town called Ypres. Goodness knows how you're supposed to pronounce it. We call it Wipers.

  We're not quite close enough that we can see the village, but I can tell where it is by the smoke that rises from the ruins. The Hun, unable to capture it, has decided to destroy it instead. He did the same thing in Belgium, of course, smashing the very best and oldest buildings like a child in a tantrum. Bit by bit, all the land around us, all the homes and the trees, are vanishing in the same way. Before very long there will be nothing but endless ruin and mud.

  It's the dreariest world. And the dreariest weather. Bitterly cold, it only stops raining when it starts to snow or sleet instead. We are settling down for winter, the first British soldiers to ever do that in the field. War used to stop when the snow began falling. But now it just goes on.

  The shells come down, the bullets fly, at dawn and dusk we stand to. We're still waiting for Fritz to come at our throats, and sometimes I wish he would. I wish he'd come and get it over with. The waiting is very hard for me.

  Enclosed is a sniper. The fellow stands for hours, as still as a heron in the marsh, watching through a tiny hole for a glint of sun along the German parapet. I envy him, Johnny. All that I ever see is mud, and a little bit of sky.

  All my love, forever and ever,

  Dad

  I was setting up the sniper when Sarah came by. She arrived on the footpath, hopping over the wall by the beech tree. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “There's going to be a battle.” I pointed at my nut-cracker men lined up in their trench. “The Huns are going to attack.”

  “They shouldn't do that,” said Sarah.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they don't.” She put her hands on her hips. “That's what my dad says. They like to wait in the trenches for the British to come, then shoot them down with machine guns.”

  I didn't like being told by a girl how to fight my battles. “They can attack if I want,” I said.

  “You should have a raid instead,” she told me. “Raids happen all the time.”

  “I know,” I said. “My dad says he's seen them.”

  “Well, my dad leads them,” said Sarah. “He gets volunteers, and he takes them out into no-man's-land, right across to the German trenches.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “Different things.” She acted them out with her hands. “Sometimes they throw bombs in the trench. Sometimes they go rushing in themselves, and they grab a German and haul him out.” She cupped a hand to her ear. “Sometimes they just lie there and listen.”

  “All right.” I showed her the little lieutenant with his long coat and his whistle. “This can be your dad,” I said.

  Sarah took it from me. I thought she would marvel at the perfect little man, but she only sniffed and curled her lip. “I suppose it will do,” she said. “He wouldn't really wear his trench coat on a raid, but that's all right.”

  “Make him ask for volunteers, and my dad will go.” I picked up the whittled model of my father. “They can crawl across no-man's-land right here, and—”

  “You can't make the orders,” said Sarah. “I'm the officer, you're just the soldier.”

  We put our wooden men in their places. The lieutenant shouted, “I need volunteers!”

  Up popped my little dad. “Me, sir!” he cried.

  The lieutenant nodded, his whole body tipping. “Who else?”

  “Just me,” said my dad.

  Sarah breathed hard through her nose. “Johnny, there has to be another one. You can't have a proper raid with just one soldier.”

  I chose the sergeant. “I suppose I'll go,” he grumbled. Sarah knelt by the trench. In her hand, the lieutenant squirmed over the top, onto the muddy slope of noman's-land. “It's very dark,” she said, in the gruff voice of the wooden lieutenant. “It's the middle of the night. So stay close behind me, and keep low to the ground.”

  My little man with his little rifle went out next, and then the sergeant. They squirmed across the mud.

  “Get down!” said Sarah's lieutenant. She pressed him into the ground. “The Huns have fired a star shell, and I think they might have seen us.”

  She punched the ground. Mud splashed up through her knuckles. “Boom!” she shouted.

  I pecked out machine-gun bullets. “Ratta-tatta-tat.” My fist hurtled down like a shell. “Whizz … boom!” My dad started moving. He slithered past a twig, around a stone, and crept toward my dead man.

  “Bang, bang, bang!” shouted Sarah.
She hurled a handful of mud. “Boom!”

  Bullets sprayed around my dad, around the dead man on the ground. The lieutenant got up and scuttled forward.

  It was too hard to move both of my men and fire bullets at the same time. “The sergeant's scared,” I shouted, and sent him scampering back to the trenches. “We'll have to go on by ourselves.”

  “Follow me!” cried the lieutenant.

  Bullets whizzed around the little men. The ground heaved where I punched at the garden. But my father crept closer to the German trenches. “Ratta-tatta-tat!” He lay flat for a moment, then got up and dashed forward, leaping into the trench before the lieutenant could get there. He battled with my nutcracker men, and they toppled all around him. Then he grabbed the last one and scampered back.

  General Cedric ran up from his place behind the lines. “Splendid work,” he said. “You'll get a Victoria Cross for this, Private Briggs.”

  The wooden lieutenant crawled back through shell bursts and bullets, dragging the sleeping man—the dead man—behind him. “Wounded,” he said. “The chap's only wounded.”

  I wished I had thought of that for myself. It made the lieutenant look brave and heroic.

  “I got right to the trench,” said Sarah, in the lieu-tenant's voice. He stood up again. “I heard the Germans talking, and they're going to start a barrage. Look how angry they are.”

  The evening sun slanted into the German trench, shining on my nutcracker men, gleaming on their teeth and their bayonets. They looked fiercer than ever.

  We collected stones and balls of mud, heaping them against the wall. But General Cedric canceled the barrage, because Auntie called me in for tea.

  That night, a Friday, she dragged her big tin basin into the kitchen, and I had a bath in front of the stove, behind a barricade of quilts and blankets. She found my grandfather's old dressing gown, and I sat bundled inside it as I wrote to Mum and Dad. It would become a ritual on Friday nights: a bath, a cup of Horlicks, letters to my parents.

  I shivered through the chore that first time, turning out two letters exactly the same, except one started Dear Mum and the other Dear Dad. “I am fine. How are you?” I wrote. “Auntie Ivy is fine. Tomorrow I have to go and see Mr. Turtle.” I crossed that out. “Mr. Tuttle.”

  His house was just a ten-minute walk down the road. On the outside, it was simple and thatched. But inside, it was full of things, of little plates and frilly doilies, of photographs and keepsakes. On a shelf was a picture in a black frame, the portrait of a lady with long hair coiled in tight little turns, as though a hundred watch springs had exploded from her dark-colored bonnet. “Is that your daughter?” I asked.

  “No, Johnny.” He took out a handkerchief and dusted the glass, though it already sparkled. “That was Mrs. Tuttle. Rest her soul.”

  The handkerchief dabbed at the frame, then at his eyes. But when he turned around, he was smiling. “We'd best get started with our lessons.”

  Two enormous chairs faced the fire, with a table between them where he'd set a copy of the Iliad, a plate of biscuits and two glasses of milk slicked with cream. The chair swallowed me up; it was soft as meringue. Mr. Tuttle picked up his book.

  “This is a story about a war,” he said. “A very old war. It was written nearly three thousand years ago, but you might think that Homer finished it just this morning. He comes so close to describing the events of today that it's uncanny, really.”

  He paced across the hearth, just as he paced in school. His hands went up to his collar, as though reaching for the gown that he always wore in class.

  “Homer begins by talking about the gods in their palaces among the clouds. They're all related, by marriage and birth, and always bickering with each other. For amusement they toy with the people. To the gods, the people are merely pieces in a great game.”

  In class, Mr. Tuttle was strict and stern. But in his home he was different, not nearly so dull. “Now think of Kaiser Wilhelm, the leader of Germany. Queen Victoria was his grandmother, our King his cousin. As boys, the Kaiser and the King fought imaginary battles in a toy fort not terribly far from here.”

  He paced past my chair. “Well, the Kaiser grew up, but he never stopped his games. He sported himself in fanciful uniforms that hid his crippled arm. He outdid his cousin with a better navy and a bigger army, an enormous army dressed in toy-soldier clothes. He and all the rulers of Europe are just like Homer's gods, all related, always fighting. Do you see that, Johnny?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I knew you would.” He opened the book and turned through the pages. “So in the sky we have the gods, and down on the earth there's Agamemnon, the King of ancient Greece. He has been at war with the Trojans for nine years, all because of a silly argument between two princes, his own brother Menelaus and a Trojan named Paris. As the Iliad begins, the gods are toying with Agamemnon. They let him dream that he can capture the city of Troy and at last bring an end to this war. Agamemnon wakes up believing the gods will make him win. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded. “Like the Kaiser.”

  “Quite right. The Kaiser has always taught his men that God is on their side,” said Mr. Tuttle, pacing. “Agamemnon marches against Troy. Guarding the city are the Trojans, led by Hector, the bravest of them all. He sees the Greeks swarming toward him, an army so huge that its men are like blades of grass in a field. Hector's army is tiny; he knows he cannot win. But does he surrender? No. Does he close the city gates?” Mr. Tuttle's eyes bulged as he stabbed a finger in the air. “No! He fights back nonetheless. Now who does that remind you of?”

  “Belgium,” I said.

  “Good, Johnny. Yes, Belgium fought to a brave finish. But who else might fear the Kaiser coming?”

  “France?” I said.

  “Yes. But what about Britain? We're a tiny nation, our army dwarfed by Germany's.”

  “But we can't be Hector,” I said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because we have to win.”

  “Ah.” Mr. Tuttle put his book on the table. “Isn't that what every Trojan would have thought?”

  I had never once imagined that Britain might lose the war. “What happens next?” I asked.

  Mr. Tuttle beamed. “The armies clash; they battle back and forth. Agamemnon fears the gods have deserted him, so he pulls his men away and shelters them in trenches.”

  “Like the Kaiser did,” I said.

  “Exactly like the Kaiser did.”

  I leaned forward. “And then what happens?”

  “You tell me.” Mr. Tuttle tapped on the cover of his Iliad. “You read this book and tell me then: what did all the men of both the armies pray for at the same time?”

  “Victory?” I asked.

  “Don't guess,” he said. “Read the Iliad, Johnny. It's all in there.”

  He sat with me then, and we drank our milk and ate our cookies. He talked about other books in a way that wasn't too terribly boring. I was starting to think that I might escape the thing I'd been dreading when he asked for my help in his garden.

  “It won't take long,” he said. “A few minutes is all.”

  He led me through the house and out to the battered roses. He asked me to hold the bushes open while he wrapped the broken stems in bandages of tape and burlap. He was like a doctor tending to the wounded.

  “The poor roses,” he said. “I imagine that most of them ended up on that bonfire. Wouldn't you say that's likely?”

  “It might be, sir,” I said.

  “I should have gone and watched the guys being burned.” Mr. Tuttle lay nearly flat on the ground as he reached in among the roses. “I might have seen the branches tumble from one of them like a telltale heart.”

  He twisted his neck to look back at me. “But I couldn't bear to watch it, Johnny. I would have flown into a rage, I think.”

  I tried to smile. There was nothing to say.

  “I've fought against blight, against drought and frost. I've battled dogs and bir
ds and insects,” he said. “I never thought that I'd be beaten by a boy.”

  “What will you do if you find him?” I asked.

  “I don't have to find him at all.” His face was turning red. “I already know the boy who did this.”

  My heart leapt to my throat. I let go of the branches, and they sprang shut like a spring-loaded trap, stabbing his skin with their thorns.

  Mr. Tuttle let out a little gasp. “Open them, please,” he whispered.

  They popped and snapped at his sweater, unraveling strands of wool. Mr. Tuttle breathed a few wheezy breaths, then went back to his work.

  “I know all the boys,” he said. “So I'm bound to know the vandal. I shall let it be known what was done to my roses, and I'm sure the boy will come to me. I believe his guilt will get the better of him.”

  “What will you do to him, sir?” I asked.

  “The boy will spend a year with me. A full twelve months,” said Mr. Tuttle. “Rain or shine, summer and winter, every day for a year he will come to my garden and tend to my roses.”

  “But what if he doesn't own up?”

  “Then I'll lose all hope for the boys of Cliffe,” he said. “I'm too old to struggle anymore. If no one has come forward by Christmas, I shall resign from the school.”

  He tucked his bandages round the broken stems, and his voice turned slow and sad. “I should miss the classroom,” he said. “Apart from the garden, it's all I have. But nonetheless, my mind is made up. It's a matter of principles, Johnny.”

  I felt rotten inside. But I couldn't possibly admit to what I'd done if it meant staying for a year in Cliffe. I was going home when the war ended; I was going home at Christmas.

  “Principles are taking men to the front,” said Mr. Tuttle. “Principles sent Agamemnon marching against Troy. Without his principles a man has nothing; he is nothing. Even a dog, after all, has principles.”

  At last he turned me free. He squirmed out from under his bushes, and stood with the last tattered bandages dangling from his fist. He told me to go along home, and not to worry about his roses. “If they last the winter, they'll last forever,” he said.