From that moment, Tim knew to take care in any sudden and unexpected touch, and that’s what must have done in Holly. She forgot. She scared him. It would never happen again, Tim would find the right opportunity to talk with Jip and put the fear of God in him. Send him away, indeed.
The Rothmans would never have to send away their little boy. He would come to this room every summer until he was a young man, and probably come back with his own son in time, and that boy would be normal, too, and on it would go for them, the lucky, the untroubled, the well-to-do. And Tim would be coming here forever, checking on someone else’s second home, closing up every winter and caretaking their dreams. He listened for the wind, but it had abated. No breeze whistled through the cracks. An oppressive silence gave him the uneasy sensation of being all alone in a strange place, and then the house heaved a sigh as though it had tired of him. When he realized it was just the furnace shutting off, Tim laughed at himself. Acutely aware of his own breathing and feeling like a trespasser, he turned to leave, only to be stopped by a small and uncertain sound. Something scratched, like fingernails raked across a sheet of paper, barely audible but enough to unsettle him. It clicked again, a staccato of movement emanating from inside the room. Spooked by its suddenness, he pricked up his ears. The third set of delicate clicks came from the direction of the boy’s desk, and he heard and finally saw the scuttling of a pair of hermit crabs resurrecting themselves in their shells, fiddling their great claws and wriggling their legs to meander across the wooden surface.
“What the—”
All four crabs were on the march, heading off to the four corners, and he pounced, collecting them one by one in the scoop of his hands. Each quickly withdrew into its whirling cone. How they had survived for months in the boy’s pockets was a mystery to Tim, but he quickly dismissed the question and carried them downstairs and put them in the sea grass behind the house. He watched for a long time to see if they would move, but they remained still as stones.
The sun had long since reached its winter day apogee and now arced toward the west as though rimed in mist. A frosty afternoon was sneaking in, and he was late. He left the crabs where they lay and hurried off. As he approached the Wellers’ house, he could see their son, Nick, waiting patiently on the front porch, cold as an icicle, and he raced to the Jeep as Tim pulled into the driveway, as if he had been a prisoner a long, long time and was now released from his sentence. His cheeks were red and chapped, and the boy beamed with an eagerness nearly impossible to bear. Nick was such a good friend to have for Jip. Such a good boy.
iii.
The grays hid as best they could on the icy white field, crouching behind the random nooks and crannies folded into the landscape. By the cut of their uniforms and the odd square lip at the bottom of their helmets, they gave themselves away as Germans. In a poised fist, one man held a grenade shaped like a hammer. Two snipers stretched out on their bellies, peering through the sights to await the foe. On the white hills above the ambush site, a squad of green Americans marched to their doom. The radio man’s antenna had snapped off in some ancient skirmish. The mine sweeper kept falling over on the soft surface. Five o’clock on a December Sunday, and the dusk concealed the soldiers.
A war cry, startling in its whooping ferocity, broke the stillness, and from the horizon, a band of red Indians swarmed on to the scene. Charging on red ponies, reins in their teeth, a pair of braves drew back their bows. The arrows whistled softly in long arcs and fell true. The gray captain gulped his last surprised breath as the arrowhead pierced his heart. One by one the army men turned in dumb shock at the unexpected arrival of the reinforcements, their savage intensity. From the pillows, the Americans cheered and huzzahed as they returned fire, launching grenades like winter hail. The kneeling bazooka man blasted a round, and bodies flew in all directions. In their feathered headdresses, their mohawks, and latticed breastplates, the warriors scrambled over the quilt, their hatchets raised with gleeful, murderous intent. Men fell through the ice and cried out full of panic in the frigid waters. At the height of the massacre, the bedroom door opened swiftly, throwing a rectangle of light from the hall against the far wall and illuminating the boys inside.
With a fistful of plastic Indians raised in midair, Jack Peter stared at the figure on the threshold. He froze, bewildered, as if awakened from a deep sleep. His shadow on the wall was as still as the toy soldiers strewn across the bed.
His mother kept her hand circled around the doorknob and stood halfway in the room, her gaze intent upon her son. “Boys, it’s getting late. Shall we send Nicholas home, or would you care to join us for supper?” Nobody ever called him Nicholas, not even his own parents. He smiled again at her constant formality.