“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 kno
w,” 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.”
CHAPTER 16
December 18, 1914
Dearest Johnny,
Guess who sent me a present? Princess Mary! She gave me the nicest little tin box, full of fine cigars and a special box of matches. I knew she wouldn't forget your old dad, and the hobbyhorse I made her years ago.
Really, Johnny, she sent something to everyone. We were all quite pleased, and it was only the start of it. There are so many packages coming to the front that the trains are running late! Besides the wonderful socks I've got a plum pudding from The Times, a bottle of Horlicks tablets from Mrs. Brown downstairs, a fountain pen from that geezer who had the shop next to mine. People I've never heard of and will surely never meet are sending little gifts to the whole battalion, and we're outfitted now in fine form, in balaclavas and socks and furry coats.
Now don't you dare tell this to your mother, but I rather envy the single men. They are getting heaps and heaps of things that come addressed to “A Lonely Soldier.” It's all quite overwhelming. My section of the trench looks like a stall in Petticoat Lane!
Everyone is thinking very strongly of home. For many of the lads this is the first Christmas they have ever spent away from their families, and I have seen them sniffing the wrappings of their little presents, trying to catch the smells of England, of women, of home. I have seen some break into tears at the sight of a packet of matches. And in the clouds now we're seeing tinsel and garlands and evergreen boughs.
Across the way, the Hun is planning his own sort of celebration. Every night we hear the tramp of boots on his duckboards, great numbers of men marching up to the front. Word has it he's readying a big offensive for Christmas Day, hoping to catch us off our guard. Well, he's in for a nasty surprise, I'm afraid, for that is just the sort of thing we expect from that lot of unholy barbarians. Christmas or not, we'll be open for business. And we'll be sending lots and lots of nine-pound presents his way that morning.
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.”
I flew it from the kitchen, running underneath it as it dipped and soared to the hall. Then it landed there, and waited as I put on my boots and my macintosh.
“Contact!” said the pilot. I spun the propeller. “Brrrrr. Brrrr.”
The aeroplane did a wingover through the door. It swooped down the steps and soared across the garden. The pilot was looking down, scouting the front for the big Christmas push.
I armed him with a dirt bomb, and he flew above the front. “I will try to hit their cheneral.”
But I was scared to drop bombs on the British. So the pilot missed, and his glob of dirt fell miles and miles behind the lines. Then he flew home, and I crouched in the mud to plan the Christmas attack.
General Cedric hopped forward. “Strengthen the trenches!” he shouted. “I think the Huns are coming.”
All that day I worked on my trenches. I fetched more butcher's string and doubled my coils of barbed wire. I kept thinking how the church bells would ring when Auntie Ivy's garden lay covered with all my nutcracker men. I would wipe them out in one huge attack, in a single rush on Christmas morning. My little wooden father would be right at the center; he would kill half of them himself, and my real dad would come home a week later, with medals all over his chest.
The orange cat went slinking past that afternoon, along the top of the wall. Thin as sticks, its fur matted, it sat at the corner where the sergeant had stood. It howled at me, but whenever I moved it darted away.
“Go on to Mr. Tuttle's,” I told it. “He'll give you cream.” Then it howled again, in such a sad voice that I couldn't bear to listen. So I chased it off with dirt bombs, and went back to planning my war.
The rain turned to hail. It sizzled through the branches above me, slashing down on my shoulders, on the back of my head, as I crouched over my wooden army. It filled the cracks among the stones of the wall, and it covered the ground with tiny pellets that sparkled and shone. And I kept moving the nutcracker men into their trenches, packing them shoulder to shoulder.
Then the gray sunlight faded, and the ground began to freeze. The British soldiers glittered under frosty coats, and I couldn't bend my fingers anymore. They clamped like claws to my nutcracker men. And when Auntie Ivy called me in, I stood up and left my shadow behind me. All the garden was white except for that spot where I'd crouched at the trenches, where the hail hadn't fallen.
“Why, you're frozen stiff,” said Auntie Ivy. “I forgot you were there, you poor thing.”
I had a bath—she made me do it—and sat in a swirl of steam as the ice melted from my hair. My teeth chattered; I shivered as each bit of sleet trickled down my back. Then I put on pajamas and huddled by the stove, wrapped in a huge towel, as Auntie Ivy brought me cocoa so thick that it stuck to my teeth.
“Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Why didn't you come in and get warm?”
“I didn't think of it,” I said.
“You could have caught your death out there.”
She felt my forehead, then banked up the fire. The kitchen grew sweltering hot. And she kept looking at me sideways. “Do you want to hear the last bit of it now?”
“Of what?” I asked.
“Your father's letter, of course.”
I sniffed. “Yes, please.”
She sat in the squeaky old rocking chair and put on her spectacles. The letter crinkled as she unfolded it. In a mumbly voice, she read very quickly down to the place where she had stopped.
I tightened the towel around my bare feet.
This morning an aeroplane flew across our bit of sky. It passed at too great a height for me to tell if it was one of ours or one of theirs. But it flew to the west, toward the German lines, and it crossed our slit of clouds so fast that I could scarcely believe it. Why, it traveled in seconds farther than I've gone since I came to the front, farther than I might ever go until the war is over. And how I wished I was on it.
I would let
it whisk me to Kent, to land on the road that passes your house. And I would be there sooner than I could, by walking, even pass beyond the sound of the guns. And then you'd jump in and we'd fly on to London, right to Regent's Park. And we'd spend Christmas together, you and me and your mother.
I'll be lonely without you, Johnny. I have to admit it. But I'm sure your Auntie Ivy is looking after you well enough. Have you put up the tree? It's been years and years since I've seen it, but I remember it as a rather splendid tree. There was lots of room underneath for all the presents and the packages.
Will you have a goose this year? Will you have a slice for me?
Enclosed, one little aeroplane. And only a bit of my love, I'm afraid. No parcel in the world would be big enough to hold all of that.
Dad
“Where's the tree?” I asked.
Auntie Ivy took off her little spectacles. “I don't know,” she said.
“Maybe it's in the storeroom.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But I'm not sure we should put it up.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I don't think you'd like it,” she said.
But nothing would do then except that I would see that tree standing in the parlor. I pestered Auntie Ivy until she caved in and said, “Oh, all right!” So up we went.
She knew right where it was, in a box inside another. The picture on the lid was faded and torn, but it showed a whole family sitting below a monstrous tree that sparkled with candles.
“It is splendid,” I said.
“Well, that's not quite how it looks,” said Auntie Ivy. “It's not so grand as your father remembers.”
We took the box down to the parlor, and my heart fell the moment that we opened it. There was a stick for a trunk, and bent wires for branches. Tiny glass ornaments rattled around in the bottom, along with half a dozen candles in little tin cups.
“Our father—your grandfather—bought this one year,” said Auntie Ivy. “He set it up on Christmas Eve, and we saw it in the morning. The candles were burning. And your father—he wasn't much older than you— thought it was the most magical thing he had ever seen.”
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