Totentanz (16 page)

There were greetings all around, and Jeff
found himself seated on the end of the toboggan while they waited
for the fire to be brought to life. He could not understand why
they were bothering with this now, since there was still a good
hour of daylight left. He thought of asking Tom about this, but he
saw that Tom was busy with Melissa Poundridge, seating her on the
toboggan, showing her how to make some sort of knot. Jeff was
nearly crowded off the end of the sled, and almost said something,
but he thought better of it; when Tom was in this mood, there was
little he wanted to hear about anything. Now Jeff was getting cold.
But then Bill Gantry had set a spark going with his flint and the
small fire was sputtering to flame.

Jeff wanted to get to the sledding part, but
he knew he had to wait for Tom. He had to wait for Tom for
everything, but that never bothered him because Tom was his brother
and always looked out for him. Tom had fought for him many times
when the odds were unfair; one time he had thrashed Henry Major
when that boy, three years older than Jeff, had taken one of his
licorice whips right on the street in front of the general store
just after Jeff had bought it. Henry had begun to strut away when
suddenly Torn came out of nowhere, threw him to the ground and
pounded the tar out of him—and retrieved the candy, whole and
clean. Tom had taken a licking himself for that one when the rest
of the Major clan—John and his older brother Jim—had ganged up on
him in the schoolyard, but he had never said a word about it. A
word never had to be said.

Finally they were going to sled. This
happened only after Melissa Poundridge and the other girls decided
there was something they had to do off by themselves for a while.
The sky was turning blue-black by then, and when Tom said for him
to get on the toboggan behind him and hold tight, he did so with a
yell and they were off almost before he was seated. The icy snow
glared bluish as it rushed past, and they came close to the fence
once. But almost before he knew what had happened, they were at the
bottom of the hill, flying past the lit torches and coming to an
abrupt stop at the raised mound of snow another twenty feet on.

"Wheeee!" Jeff said, and he thought he had
never been happier in his life when Tom turned around and said
"Wheeee!" too. They turned the sled sideways and then Tom got it up
on his back, this time gently pushing Jeff away when he tried to
hold on. "Let me do it, pal," he said, and when they got to the
top, Jeff saw that Melissa was waiting for them.

There followed another boring time on the
sled in front of the modest fire, and Jeff grew impatient.

"Can't we go again, Tom?" he asked, and when
he got no definitive answer, he asked, "Can I go by myself,
then?"

Tom turned around and stared at him.

"No," he said. There was a look on his face
that Jeff didn't like, and Jeff liked it even less when Tom turned
his back on him to face Melissa again. He sat still for a few
minutes, trying hard to interest himself in John Major's story
about how he had pulled Bessy McAllister's pigtail in class that
morning, then turned back to his primer before Mr. Glass could
react, thereby getting away with it; and then Jeff asked Tom
again:

"Why can't I go by myself?"

Tom tried to ignore him, but Melissa said in
a petulant voice, "Why don't you let him, Tom? Get him out of
here."

Suddenly Tom turned toward him. "All right,
little kid," he said. Jeff never liked it when he was called
"little kid."

"Go on down, but hold on tight."

Instantly Jeff was up, laying his hands on
the toboggan. And instantly he regretted what he had asked for.
Torn, he saw, had turned back to the girl, but Bill Gantry was
eyeing him in a way that he disliked. He saw Bill nudge Tom, asking
him something, but Torn shrugged him off. Because Jeff couldn't
lift the sled the way Tom had, he had to pull it by the rope
attached to the front. The sled was long, and even then he had
trouble in hauling it in his wake. He turned around to see Bill
Gantry get up, but at that moment Melissa said, "Aw, let him go on
himself," and Bill sat down again. John and Henry Major turned
their turtle eyes on him, grinning stupidly in the firelight, and
then turned back to their friends. Jeff was suddenly alone.

Resolutely he pulled the toboggan forward.
Before he knew it, he was at the top of the course. The sky was
black now; he could see the first faint points of the evening
stars. There would be a moon later, but now the only light he had
to guide him came from the two flickering torches to either side of
the starting point and, far below, the two tiny spots of orange
that marked the other torches. In the dimness he could make out the
blue-white track of snow he was to follow. It seemed much steeper
and more treacherous than it had before. He shivered. He turned to
look back at the warm fire, to listen to the laughing voices behind
him, and knew that it was too late to retreat.

As if to fire his resolve, he heard Henry
Major call out, "What's the matter—you scared?" and the rippling,
if not unanimous, chorus of laughter that followed tightened him.
For all he knew, his brother, along with this girl he seemed so
mysteriously interested in, was laughing at him too. And that
would be too much to bear.

He straightened the sled in the track and sat
down on it. He realized how empty it was without a second rider. He
had never even ridden in the front before. Without the extra weight
of his brother, he feared he might take off like some huge bird, to
crash somewhere in the unknown distance below. His boots fit
snugly under the front curve of the toboggan. As he sat waiting for
a push that would never come, tears filled his eyes and he began to
shiver.

He wanted to cry out for Tom to come and help
him like he always had, but he knew it would not happen this time.
An invisible space had opened up between them, between him and his
childhood. He felt trapped. He heard another snort of rude
laughter, muffled, behind him. He imagined the Major boys
snickering at him again. Why didn't Tom stand up to them this time?
He felt that space widen even more. He had feared the time might
come when Tom was not there to fight his big battles for him, and
this was it. Though he understood, he could not help hating Tom for
it. Why did this have to happen? Why did Tom have to abandon him
now?

"Jeff?" someone called, and for a moment his
heart leaped at the thought that his brother had come out of the
dark to save him once more. Sitting on the sled, he turned,
half-smiling. It was not Tom, but Petey Graham, the half-wit. He
loomed out of the twilight like a giant, his huge gawking frame
forming a shadow in front of the flickering firelight behind
him.

"Need help, Jeff?" he asked sincerely. He
still held his carving tools and a formless piece of wood he was
trying to turn into something that had a shape.

"No thanks, Petey."

"You sure? I heard them Major boys laughing,
thought they might have dared you into something you didn't want to
do."

Jeff choked back tears, suddenly hating his
brother more than he ever thought he could.

"No, Petey, that's okay."

And then the sled seemed to move by itself,
though it was his own hands that propelled it away from the lurking
specter of Petey Graham and down the hill. He felt a momentary
exhilaration as the first steep drop came. His stomach bottomed out
as the sled picked up speed. The voices above faded, leaving him
now with only darkness, and cold wind whip-ping his face. The sled
moved swiftly and expertly along the well-worn path, and the target
torches at the bottom already seemed bigger. For a supreme moment
Jeff felt in control of all that was happening. He felt grown
up.

But that moment passed. The toboggan was
moving with purpose now. Jeff realized with a flash of panic that
he didn't know how to steer it. Torn had always handled that part,
had never really explained it to him, and here, about halfway down,
when the second steep drop occurred, there came a point when the
rider had to assume control of the sled. That point came, and Jeff
didn't know what to do. He was moving too fast. Finally he threw
out his feet to try to slow himself, but he only upset the movement
of the sled and tore off one of his boots. Though the sled
steadied, he knew that he was at the mercy of the toboggan and the
snow and the night.

He had never moved so fast. He could not see
the torches at the bottom—and then he did see them, somewhere off
to the right where they shouldn't be. He shouted, and something
solid and black came up very fast, a chain of mountains it seemed,
until he realized it was the half-broken fence around the
churchyard. There was a momentary slackening in his speed and a
thump as something ran under the sled. There was no time to think
of this because he was accelerating again.

He thought he heard sounds
above him, calls and shouts, but he couldn't be sure. He heard no
laughter. Large blocks of night were moving past him—gravestones.
He threw out his booted foot wildly, trying to stop his progress,
and his knee abruptly buckled under him, throwing his chin into the
front of the toboggan. He nearly lost consciousness. Still he did
not slow down. Then before him he saw the twin lights at the bottom
of the path, and a wild hope sprang up in him that all was
miraculously well, that he had somehow come through the cemetery
and regained the path. But this was not so. Once again he saw the
fence—long, tapered fangs of wood—rushing at him until something
intervened: a huge mountain of formed stone, large and curved, with
a looming cross on top of it. The toboggan hit it, and his last
agonized, hate-filled word before he flew off the sled to slam into
this object was "
Tom!
"

He awoke in mud. There was mud in his mouth;
he seemed awash in wet blackness.

He turned over. The sky was slate-colored and
low, so overcast that it looked as though it touched the earth.
There was rain, too, a solid, unending fall of water that made him
want to turn over again and bury his face in the mud.

His mind cleared a little. There was shouting
all around him, and screaming. "Tom?" he called, and in answer
someone to his left gave a groan. He turned his face in that
direction and saw a human form, certainly not his brother Tom,
trying to turn toward him. The prone figure seemed made of mud,
with a heavy, mud-colored overcoat and something in one hand, a
long stick it looked like, also mud-colored. It was a rifle. The
man holding it groaned once more.

There came excited shouting near him, and
Jeff managed to raise his eyes out of the mud to see a dim line of
men running his way. He saw that they were wearing gray overcoats
and had bayonets lowered. Behind him, he heard more cries, though
they were farther away and less enthusiastic. The running men were
nearly upon him when the groaning man to his left gave a loud shout
and suddenly rose to his feet. He was delirious. His rifle was
still in the mud. He held his hands out and shouted "Captain!
Captain!" Jeff saw now that the man had a beard, cropped close to
his face, despite that, he could not have been more than nineteen
or twenty. Though he was a soldier of his own army, Jeff did not
know him. He must have wandered in from another regiment.

Then the graycoats were upon them, and as the
groaning soldier lurched forward, he gave a sudden scream and was
driven back and down into the mud by a bayonet held by a
Confederate with a half-wild look on his face. The rebel's mouth
was open, and to Jeff he looked half-man, half-fish, gulping wildly
at the air as if it held water that he needed for sustenance. The
downed man's screams seemed to waken him, and he suddenly looked
very frightened, trying desperately to remove his bayonet from the
struggling figure; his fellows were streaming by him, yelling
curses and encouragement. Finally, in a panic, the gray-clad
soldier put his foot on the screaming man as if he were a clod of
earth and pulled his rifle free. The man sank back into the mud,
twitched, and then lay inert as the Confederate moved on.

Jeff kept still as death, with his face
toward the bayoneted soldier, his teeth clenched to keep from
crying out. He felt a heavy boot on his ankle and wanted to yell at
the pain. The boot moved on, grinding into the skin below his heavy
trouser, but he managed to keep quiet.

After a time, all the cries and other sounds
receded. Jeff screwed up his courage and turned his head toward the
battle. There was a fog of rain and smoke back there, with vague
forms moving in and out of it. Besides that, there was nothing but
mud and gray sky. He looked the other way and saw no reinforcements
or laggers, so he rose up on his elbows and knees and crawled over
to the bearded soldier.

“You hear me?" he whispered, moving down
close to the man's ear. He turned the man's face toward him, away
from the mud. The eyes were glassy and half-closed. Remembering
what he had seen others do, he reached down to the man's neck and
felt for a pulse, but there was none. As his hand moved away, it
felt something slick and wet, not like mud, and he had to hold
himself from vomiting when he saw that the Confederate soldier's
bayonet, in being tom loose, had ripped the front of the man's
chest almost to his shoulder blades. Most of what had been in his
chest lay out on the ground or covered the front of his
uniform.

Jeff must have fainted, for when he awoke,
the sounds of battle were gone and it was night. Rain was still
falling. He tried to stand but could not; his lower leg, where he
had been trod on, was sore and swollen and ached terribly. He heard
a sound close by and tried once more to rise but fell back down
heavily and lost consciousness again.