Running Man

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  Joseph waited as Tom Leyton stared blankly ahead, then the man’s eyes began to shift about as if the story were continuing in his head. ‘What did you do?’ Joseph asked, afraid of being left behind.

  ‘Some of the men didn’t want to go with him. We were tired. We wanted to get back to camp – didn’t want to spend another night in the jungle. It was dangerous. You didn’t know where the enemy was … or who. Mick and I and some of the others wanted to help him, but Mick especially. He loved the children. He was always giving them things – chocolate, matches, money. He would go without …’

  Moisture glistened briefly in Tom Leyton’s eyes, but then the muscles in his jaw locked and his face set like granite once more. ‘Mick convinced our captain to follow the boy – said he would go by himself if he had to. So … the boy ran ahead and we followed – a hundred maybe two hundred metres through the bush to a small clearing. There were three or four huts. Behind them the ground fell away to a dry creek bed.’ He stopped once more as if he were getting the story clear in his mind before continuing. ‘The boy had run to the furthest hut and was waving one arm frantically and clutching the tiny bundle of rags in the other. He kept screaming out to us, “Here! You come! You come! Please! Mother, help! Please!” Mick and I volunteered to investigate. I told him to be careful but he rushed ahead. He had just gone into the hut. I was about ten metres behind him. I saw some movement at the back of the hut. It was the boy. He was running away. He threw something on the ground. It was the baby. I ran over to it … only it wasn’t a baby. It was just some wood bound up in cloth. For a moment I was relieved … that it wasn’t a baby and that it wasn’t hurt. And then … then I knew it was a trap. The boy had led us into a trap.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I stood up. I turned to the hut. I was about to scream out to Mick, to the others, to get out of there, to take cover. But as I opened my mouth, the hut exploded. It seemed to expand like a balloon and come rushing at me. A wall of heat crashed against me and sucked the air from my lungs. Then I was flying backwards, smashing through branches and then I was upside down and things were falling on me. I could smell something burning. There was a harsh ringing in my ears like a siren blaring, but in the background I could make out the popping of automatic fire and the dull thudding sound of explosions. I tried to open my eyes, but I only saw a faint point of light, then that faded as well and I must have lost consciousness.’

  This time Joseph didn’t prompt Tom Leyton to continue. He knew he would finish the story he had begun.

  ‘When I came to,’ he said wearily, ‘I was upside down in the creek bed covered with broken branches and leaves and pieces of timber and thatching from the hut. It must have saved my life. In the confusion I must have been overlooked. The back of my head was wet with blood. My hands and face felt raw. I dragged myself up the bank. I didn’t care if the Vietcong were still there or not. When I got to the top, there was no danger – just my platoon, and they were all dead. Every one. I found Mick. He must have still been in the hut when it blew up. There was … He …’

  Tom Leyton covered his mouth with his hand and appeared to be holding the horror inside. As he lifted his head slightly his fingers trailed across his lips then fell to his chest. ‘I wandered back into the forest. I didn’t know where I was or which way to go. My head was screaming with pain. The skin pulled so tight on my face I thought it would split and tear away. I just walked. Somehow I still had my rifle. I staggered on until I became dizzy and collapsed against a tree. I don’t know how long I stayed there. It was starting to get dark. And then …’ He broke off unexpectedly and looked directly at Joseph. His eyes wandered over the boy’s face as sweat began to glisten on his forehead. Joseph watched with alarm as Tom Leyton’s hands began to shake and a mix of fear and helplessness filled his eyes. ‘Then … it became … very dark,’ he said as he gripped one hand in the other to keep them still. He turned away from Joseph and continued like a man defeated by a far too powerful foe. ‘I must have slept … on and off. In the morning I walked again. Eventually a search patrol found me and took me back to base.’

  Tom Leyton cupped his hands around one of the cardboard boxes and spoke without emotion.

  ‘They sent Mick’s body home, or what they could find of it. “Too late, too early”. And I ended up in hospital for a few days. Then I got to go home early as well.’

  ‘Because of your injuries?’ Joseph asked innocently.

  ‘No,’ Tom Leyton replied dispassionately, ‘for trying to kill the chaplain.’

  Joseph stared at Tom Leyton in disbelief but couldn’t find the words to frame the questions that raced through his mind. In the end he didn’t have to. It was as if Tom Leyton had read his thoughts.

  ‘His name was John, but the men all called him Chappy. He was the one constant in all that madness. Every day he would put on a small service. Sometimes only one man would turn up. Sometimes, if there was an operation on, the numbers would swell. I went as often as I could. Mick too. At the end of each service, the chaplain would say a prayer, particularly for any men who were going on patrol or on a mission. And he would always finish up with, May God’s speed be with each and every one of you.’

  Tom Leyton’s eyes clouded and his voice slowed as he moved deeper into his memory. ‘God’s speed … I clung to those words. I couldn’t go on a mission until I heard them and then I wore them like armour. In the jungle when even the movement of a butterfly could mean danger they would run through my mind like a mantra. God’s speed. God’s speed. I have God’s speed.’

  Suddenly a cold anger began to growl in Tom Leyton’s voice. ‘But where was God’s speed when I stood frozen to the spot and watched Mick get blown apart? And where was God’s speed for Mick or for the rest of the men when they were cut to pieces before they could take a step? Where was it?’ he demanded. ‘It was all just a cruel lie, and it always had been yet I was stupid enough to think it would protect us.’

  ‘But you survived,’ Joseph offered weakly.

  ‘Did I?’

  The stinging resentment in Tom Leyton’s tone burned Joseph like a hot iron, and he recoiled as the man’s anger bristled into bitterness.

  ‘As I lay in that hospital bed I realised what a fool I had been. I was still that little boy who thought a box of silkworms was a sign from God, the little boy who believed in miracles, the little boy who believed that there was someone watching, someone listening.’ He looked at Joseph and said with icy conviction, ‘Truth is not always a casualty of war. The only thing in the room with me that night was my own ignorance. There is no God, I know that … but there are devils … there are plenty of devils. I found that out in Vietnam.’

  Tom Leyton appeared to have come to the end of the story, but for Joseph the most important part had not been told. ‘But what about the chaplain?’

  Tom Leyton continued as if he were giving a statement to the police. ‘When I was well enough I went to sit in on a service. There were quite a few men present that night. I took a seat at the back. When it was nearly over the chaplain came to the front of the group for his final blessing. I walked up to him. He didn’t know what was going on. He smiled at me. He said, “Tommy, what’s the matter? I’m not quite finished. I haven’t wished the men God’s speed.” That’s when I hit him. I couldn’t let him spread those lies any more.’

  Tom Leyton looked down at his right hand then continued as if he were describing a series of freeze frame images. ‘He fell backwards over a small table that served as an altar. The wine spilled. It looked like blood on the white tablecloth. Chappy’s face was spattered with real blood. I took a revolver out of my pocket. It had belonged to one of the men in my platoon. A souvenir. I borrowed it. I looked at the chaplain sprawled on the ground. He was holding his hand in front of his face – his fingers spread like a spider. I raised the gun … that’s when they grabbed me. They wrestled the gun from my hand and took me away.’

  Tom Leyton turned a jaded face towards Joseph
. ‘So they sent me home, before my time. Not fit to serve … mental breakdown. I was in hospital for some time. I was there when my parents died. They had been coming to visit me. I was allowed out for the funeral. Eventually I tried teaching but … it didn’t work out.’

  Joseph watched Tom Leyton receding into his secret world, but before he could withdraw completely, there was one last question Joseph needed answered.

  ‘Were you really going to shoot the chaplain?’

  Tom Leyton met Joseph’s gaze and for the first time his face softened and another face appeared like one half revealed behind a mask. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘But the gun?’

  ‘It wasn’t for the chaplain,’ he explained earnestly. ‘It was for me.’

  At that moment, the world for Joseph tilted so that even the most familiar and comfortable things appeared strange and oblique.

  Joseph had called over twice since the day Tom Leyton had spoken about Vietnam, but on each occasion, those disturbing and painful revelations had remained bandaged in silence, like a wound that needed time to heal before life could move forward again.

  It wasn’t until the last afternoon of the holidays, as the too-familiar presence of school cast its stale predictability over his life, when a simple question from Joseph began to unravel more of the mystery surrounding Tom Leyton.

  ‘When did you start keeping silkworms again?’

  ‘It all began in the hospital.’

  ‘When you came back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Joseph expected this flicker of conversation to die, as many had before it, like a brief flame choked by damp and heavy timber, but at the last moment it was Tom Leyton who gently fanned it back to life.

  ‘I was on a ward with other patients. The nurses encouraged us to do things … to listen to music, play cards, have hobbies. One day one of the nurses brought in a few silkworms. No one was much interested. I didn’t want them. I’d had enough of silkworms,’ Tom Leyton said darkly.

  ‘One patient … Mrs Battista, finally said she’d look after them. She made sure they were fed every day. She would fret if the leaves weren’t changed quickly enough, terrified that the silkworms would die. She wouldn’t let them out of her sight. The nurses became concerned, but by then it was impossible to take the silkworms away from her; she would scream if anyone touched them. She said she would kill herself if they took the silkworms from her. The doctors must have been wondering whether giving her the silkworms was such a good idea after all. In the end, I think they knew it wasn’t.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘At first things seemed to improve when the silkworms began to spin. They didn’t have to be fed any more and Mrs Battista was calmer and happier. The cocoons intrigued her. When the first moth appeared one morning she danced around the ward with the box, showing everyone. No one had ever seen her so happy.’

  Tom Leyton’s hands worked mechanically, moving silkworms from one box to another, but he seemed lost in some distant, private world. Joseph had become used to these times when the thread of conversation would snag and stop and he knew a gentle tug might either release it or cause it to snap off forever.

  ‘Then why were the silkworms a bad idea?’

  Tom Leyton continued slowly. ‘The next morning Mrs Battista’s chair was empty. One of the nurses brought in the box of cocoons and placed it on a bookcase at the side of the room. We asked where Mrs Battista was. They just said she wasn’t well. Later we learnt that they had found her in the corner of her room wrapped up so tightly in bed sheets that she could barely breathe. When they tried to untangle her she screamed that it was too early, that she hadn’t changed yet.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She was taken to another ward for special care. It didn’t help. She refused to eat. She still tried to wrap herself up in anything she could find. They had to watch her all the time. Finally she became too weak to pull the sheets around herself. There was nothing anyone could do for her. I learnt all this from one of the nurses after I was discharged. She was on duty the night Mrs Battista died. She weighed nothing at all. The last thing she said was, “Why did they rob me of my wings?”’

  ‘And you took the silkworms?’

  ‘The staff tried to remove them, but I asked if I could have them. They weren’t too pleased about it. I didn’t want them for myself. I wanted to keep them so that I could give them to Mrs Battista when she was better. Maybe she would laugh and dance again. In the end they agreed. I guess they knew Mrs Battista wouldn’t be returning.’

  A shadow of sadness passed across Tom Leyton’s eyes. He drew in a breath and continued. ‘Over the next few weeks, I watched as the last moths hatched out and mated and covered the sides of the box with yellow eggs. I watched as the eggs turned brown then grey, and I watched as the moths slowly died one by one. I kept the eggs. Someone said to store them in the refrigerator until spring and then they would hatch. I don’t know if I believed them. They looked dead, but I did it anyway … for Mrs Battista.’

  Tom Leyton’s voice trailed off. He looked up and was met by Joseph’s expectant gaze. ‘Four months later they told me I was well enough to leave. One of the nurses agreed to take care of the eggs for me … until Mrs Battista returned. I was waiting out the front of the hospital for Caroline to pick me up. She was running late. I think they thought I had already gone. A cleaner came out. He emptied some rubbish into a bin just down from me. I saw a box tumble into it. It was Mrs Battista’s silkworm eggs. I pulled the box out of the rubbish bin. I don’t know why.’

  ‘And they hatched out,’ Joseph concluded.

  ‘Yes. I’d almost forgotten about them, but in spring I took them out and left the box on top of the fridge where I was living. One day I looked in and it was alive with tiny grubs. I picked some mulberry leaves and that was the beginning.’

  ‘And you’ve had them every year since then?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, before adding solemnly, ‘they have become my metaphor for life.’

  Joseph looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘They mirror what life is really like,’ Tom Leyton explained. ‘They are born, they live and they die. Their life has no purpose, no meaning. And they go on with their pointless existence in blissful ignorance until someone tosses them in a rubbish bin.’

  The emptiness in Tom Leyton’s voice chilled Joseph. ‘Poor Mrs Battista – she dreamt of having wings, the wings of a flightless moth. She wanted to be just like them, but she already was. We all are. Flapping our crippled wings, dreaming we can fly.’

  He pulled one of the shoeboxes towards him and tilted it a little to look inside. ‘I have watched these poor creatures live and die for over twenty years. What have they got to show for it – or me for that matter? What have I got to show?’ He reached down with his right hand and pulled open the top drawer of the desk. ‘Just these.’

  Joseph leant around the edge of the desk to see what was inside. At first he thought the drawer was filled with golden treasure like a pirate’s chest. Then he realised that it contained hundreds of silkworm cocoons glowing in the afternoon sun, from the palest yellow to a golden orange.

  ‘Look at them all,’ said Joseph in amazement.

  Without responding, Tom Leyton pushed the drawer half shut and pulled out the one below it. It too was filled to the brim with cocoons.

  ‘There must be hundreds. What are you going to do with them all?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s just it. Once I thought there might be a use for them, something to justify all the tedious effort it takes to construct them, some purpose I couldn’t see, some reason that made sense of all the useless years that are woven into them, but now … I don’t try to find answers any more. The silkworms spin the cocoons and I collect them. What else is there for both of us to do?’

  ‘But what about that?’ Joseph asked, pointing to the noticeboard behind him.

  Tom Leyton looked at the rectangle of black cardboard that was pinned there and
the soft yellow silk that was spun delicately around it. ‘I made that for Mrs Battista. It was spun from the very first silkworm cocoons. I took it to the hospital to show her when I went back for a check up. That’s when I found out what happened to her.’ Tom Leyton closed both drawers, then pushed back his chair, stood up and went to the cupboard at the far end of the room. Joseph watched as he reached inside. When he turned around, Tom Leyton had in his hands a new shoebox. He brought it to the desk and placed it in front of Joseph. ‘Would you like to choose which ones to keep?’

  ‘How many do you want?’

  ‘Twelve,’ Tom Leyton replied decisively. ‘I always keep twelve – that was what I started with.’

  Joseph placed a bed of fresh leaves in the box and began selecting the biggest silkworms from each of the other cartons. ‘When will you give the rest away?’

  ‘Caroline’s taking some tomorrow.’

  Tom Leyton glanced at Joseph and seemed to be about to speak again, but turned away. He shuffled the boxes on the desk with no real purpose, then stood and watched the boy making his careful selections. ‘If you want … you could take some silkworms … for yourself,’ Tom Leyton said hesitantly. ‘It would save you having to come here … if you didn’t want to.’

  Joseph knew that Tom Leyton was offering him a way out, but whether it was an offer that he wanted refused or accepted, Joseph was uncertain. When he looked up at the man for some sign, his face remained hard and inscrutable. He thought of all the times that he had yearned to escape the suffocating bleakness of Tom Leyton’s world. Yet in spite of all his gloom and pessimism, Joseph was still drawn to him – drawn to a man who mourned his lost friend; drawn to a man who had rescued silkworm eggs from a rubbish bin and for more than twenty years had helped them survive.

  ‘Thanks, but I … Mum mightn’t want them at home … and we’ve got no mulberry tree. I could get some off yours, but … I don’t mind coming over. If it’s all right with you.’