Master of the Village (869 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesLabels: fiction
Rating: 1.67 on 17 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Flash Harry (View user info) at 2008-06-02 10:48:38 EDT
Seeing another person's body parts is always a formative experience. But when you see them dismembered and ripped apart - a severed foot here, a gloved hand there, a decapitated head that's crashed through the roof of a nearby shed - then it sticks with you for life. Particularly if you see your father, the local policeman, adorned with the responsibility of putting all these pieces back together - matching severed limbs with their corresponding torsos - and then getting them into body bags. It's bound to be life changing.
It happened one afternoon in Leicestershire in 1944, and the bodies belonged to nine Italian airmen. Their plane had exploded above the small village of Thurmington, and their component bits and pieces had rained down on the local inhabitants and their houses. An unopened parachute hung limply from a tree, and pieces of olive-tanned skin peppered the lawn. Another unattached head had crashed through the window of a nearby house, still wearing its helmet.
The four-year-old boy looked on as his father tried to identify those parts, gathering them up, slowly piecing the men back together so they might be buried whole. And then word came: one of the men had missed the flight - there were only eight bodies to piece together. Police officer Walter Wilson would have to empty out the bags and start again.
The sun hovered high in the blue sky late into the evening, and it was just as well. The harassed policeman had just emptied the bags out onto the lawn to begin his second attempt at assembly when the dog burst through the door, which had hung ajar. Teddy, the excitable ginger-haired spaniel, pranced gaily through the scattered arrangements of corpse, and galloped towards the neighbouring field in which smouldered the wreckage of the doomed Piaggio aircraft.
Walter Wilson yelled after his pet, but his cries fell on deaf ears. "Bloody dog," he muttered, and turned to his son, the quiet little bystander with blonde curls. "Do us a favour, Jack, and go grab Teddy. Don't go too near that plane, mind."
Doing as he was told, Jack toddled across the lawn, side-stepping bloody rib-bones and chunks of thigh on the way. Jack had been born into war. He had lost his mother to bombs from the sky, and seen his older brothers leave home to fight the enemy in far-off lands. His father had avoided conscription, as a policeman, and was now left to bring up the child alone and maintain a semblance of normality in the rural village. The spaniel was there to keep Jack company, acquired from the rag-and-bone man who lived down near the River Soar. The rag-and-bone man could get anything, if the swap suited him.
"Teddy! TED-DEEE!" screamed Jack. The spaniel, whose intense loyalty to the child easily matched its disregard for poor Walter, appeared from the smoking ruin, and trotted over to the fence, where Jack waited. With every step its ears bounced up and down, and something swung lifelessly from its smiling mouth - a human hand.
The dog dropped this appendage at Jack's feet, tail wagging proudly. Fearlessness and curiosity overcame the child, and he gripped the thumb of the unfortunate airman as he held the hand out in front of him. As it swayed from side to side, something luminous sparkled in the sunlight. Wedged firmly onto the Italian's index finger was a solid gold ring, adorned with the shiniest, most brilliant stone young Jack had ever seen.
It is hard to say why Jack took the ring. It had been a particularly strange day among strange times, and there seemed something significant in the way Teddy had rescued the bejewelled hand from the ill-fated Piaggio. Jack pulled the ring from its finger forcefully, and stuffed it into his pocket with a sudden pang of guilt. He gave the severed hand back to the spaniel, who gurgled and pawed at it, skipping excitedly behind Jack. The boy made his way back across the lawn to his father, who had by this time laid out all of the limbs, torsos and heads that he could find in his garden.
"Well done, lad," greeted the policeman. "Will you put the stupid thing in the house and give us a hand?" Jack ushered Teddy back into the house. The spaniel whined as the door closed over on his nose, and the boy wandered back down the path to the growing piles of uniformed limbs.
After some hours of careful jigsawery, Walter Wilson had arranged the hapless Italians into eight heaps, each consisting of matching limbs and proportionate torso. The errant heads had been collected from the tool-shed and the neighbour's kitchen, along with those feet and collar-bones that the explosion had sprayed wider than the heavier pieces. A ninth pile, considered 'miscellaneous', had begun to cause flies to buzz around. An unpleasant scent rose from this collection of skin-flaps, bones and unidentifiable chunks, as it festered in the late afternoon sun. Wary of arousing the interest of foxes, or gulls, the policeman loaded up his body-bags, resigned to abandoning the odd bit or bob (including the hand Teddy had salvaged from the plane). The doctor would be round later that evening; in these stormy times he was doubling up as the village undertaker, as well as the GP.
Once the sun was down, and the bloated body-bags safely locked away in the cellar, Walter Wilson and little Jack busied themselves deep in the bowels of the big house. Teddy could be relied upon to raise the alarm when the doctor knocked on the door.
This had once been a home to a busy, bustling family. But with Mrs Wilson killed and the older boys away on the continent, the policeman had taken up a new hobby to pass the time, one which Jack took a considerable interest in also. With the curtains drawn tightly, and only the flickering light from a few candles bouncing around the room, they settled in to do what they did every night: renovate the old billiards table.
The table was over six feet long, with thick legs and robust beams running across its width. On its surface the baize was mottled and torn, a reminder of the troubled times it had survived. Walter Wilson had received it for a considerable outlay from the rag-and-bone man, who had himself picked it up from the rubble and debris of one of the land's many blitzed buildings. Enlisting the help of local prisoners he had hoisted it onto a horse-drawn cart and brought it all the way north to Thurmington, safe in the knowledge that police officer Wilson was a renowned enthusiast and devilishly competitive player. He was a certainty to find something worthwhile to trade with for the table.
Little Jack sat in the corner of the table, the candle-light flickering warmly on his blonde curls. Teddy the spaniel lay in the open doorway, ready to roar with indignation whenever the doctor chapped on the front door to collect the scattered Italians. Walter stalked his way around the table, smoothing out the felt with his hands and tutting at the rips and scrapes the explosion had caused. He had an old cue which had belonged to his father, and the rag-and-bone man had supplied an incomplete rack of balls.
"I'm telling ye, son," said the policeman softly. "When this table's up to scratch I'll show ye a thing or two. First I'll teach ye how to play like this..." he clipped one of the balls sweetly into the corner, without touching the sides. "Then I'll teach you how to do this..." he raised the butt of the cue high into the air, and stabbed down on it in a sharp, striking motion. The cue-ball shot off to the left, before curving in a smooth ark back around to the right, cleanly swerving around two obstacles in its path.
"Oh, there's some money to be won in this game, alright," he continued. "But we need to get this table up to standard first - look at the roll down that cushion. Unacceptable," he shook his head, sadly.
A dull knocking echoed its way into the billiards room, and Teddy leaped up as though he had been shot. The spaniel tore around the corner, slipping on the wooden floor, crashed head-first into the wall and then bounded up the stairs like a demon.
"One day I'll show ye how to shave the cue-ball, so that it runs wonky, even on the truest o' tables. But we only do that when the stakes are serious," said Walter with a smile. "Come on upstairs son, that'll be the doctor here to pick up those poor, dirty Italians."
User Reviews
Submitted by loveinbrevity (user info) at 2008-07-21 11:22:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by woolfe (user info) at 2008-07-08 05:06:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2008-06-03 04:21:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i've read this before, but a little different.
deja vu?
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2008-06-03 04:19:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice, though I think it needs to go further.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-06-03 03:58:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Oh yeah I probably should've mentioned this isn't intended to be a stand-alone piece.
If I get round to writing more then the loose ends will hopefully be tied up in a neat li'l bow...
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2008-06-03 03:51:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-06-02 19:08:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2008-06-02 18:57:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I want to do a puzzle.
Submitted by X54 (user info) at 2008-06-02 16:47:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really good, but I agree: the ending needs to tie everything together. What happened to the severed hand? And the pinched ring seems like a chicken begging to come home to roost. But maybe Jack intended for Teddy to eat the hand so no one would ever notice the ring was missing?
"He gave the severed hand back to the spaniel," and "Will you put the stupid thing in the house and give us a hand?" both had me laughing.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2008-06-02 15:43:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fair enough.... i'd read more.
Submitted by xjarofmudx (user info) at 2008-06-02 15:40:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
If you want to see the how this guy plagiarized this story go here http://www.tshirthell.com/store/link.php?id=S2VlZG8=
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-06-02 15:31:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Brdn, I'm hoping this is a set up for more to come, a larger story that will tie all of those ends together.
Am I right? I'm right aren't I? Because that would be super.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2008-06-02 15:06:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I can't follow suit. i mean i mostly enjoyed what i read but how was he master of the village, what was the relevance of the boy picking off the ring, the ninth person that was supposed to be on the palne wasn't but there was a ninth anyway? dog was sposed to alert them before the doc knocked but instead was retarded? i it just fell flat to me i guess.
Submitted by Banjo (user info) at 2008-06-02 12:43:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
As always old chap, you don't fail to disappoint. Bravo!
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-06-02 12:28:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-06-02 12:11:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
interesting read.
Submitted by TheBrad (user info) at 2008-06-02 11:03:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment