December 1950, and General Douglas MacArthur has promised them that they'll be home by Christmas. Trapper McIntyre sits with a small Korean kid in his lap, watches the others playing with their new toys. Scrawny orphans, cheerful as sparrows, clamouring around Margie and Ginger and their shining fistfuls of candy. Over by the signpost, Henry Blake is cooing at a tiny baby, her bright eyes following the straw doll in his hand. She reaches for the toy with chubby fists, bites delicately on the painted arm, gazes at Henry with solemn eyes.
The kid in his own lap abruptly decides to wrap scrawny arms around his neck, and Trapper is startled by the strange sensation of a soft cheek pressed close against his own. Little, clutching fingers twining in his hair; the fresh, warm, baby-powder scent. He plants a clumsy kiss upon the squirming bundle, looks up quickly, embarrassed, in case any of the others have seen. Major Houllihan pauses across the compound, an orphan swinging on each arm, her hair loosed from its practical tie and curling in pale tendrils about her face. There is a strange, almost tender look in her eyes as she watches him, though when she notices Trapper's eyes she glances away hurriedly.
"Want to play happy families, Major?" he grins cheerily, and is rewarded with a scandalised glare.
He waits until he is sure that the Major is out of sight before he lets himself lift the kid again in his arms,and press his closed eyes tight into the kid's shoulder, stroke the hair, dark and straight and shiny, not curling and golden like his baby's.
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In a small, bright kitchen in Boston, Massachusetts, Becky McIntyre reaches for a cookie cutter, stamps out the shape of a Christmas tree, looks up at her mother with Trapper's eyes.
"That's perfect, Freckles." Louise smiles with false cheerfulness. "How about a star next?"
"But I'm using the star." Kathy, clamouring for attention through a mouthful of dough, waving the cutter with sticky fingers as proof. "Stars are Daddy's favourite."
"You don't know that!" Becky, accusing. "You just made that up!"
And Kathy glares at her with a scowl just like Trapper's.
"Your Daddy likes all kinds of gingerbread." Lousie tells them firmly. "We'll send him some. Becky, get some currants from the cupboard and we'll decorate them."
Becky scrabbles for a chair, climbs up it like a monkey to find the little cardboard packet.
"Here!"
And Louise opens the packet, picks a single currant, and pops it in her mouth. Winks at the girls' petulant faces. They hesitate, then smile with their identical smiles like John's, and reach for the currants with deft little fingers. Lousie watches with a strange tightness in her throat, and her eyes sting from the heat of the oven.
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Hawkeye scrabbles in the mud with his free hand, searching for the dropped needle. A shell whines overhead, and he crashes forward, shielding his patient with his own body. The corporal's face is unmoving as the mortar fragments rain down, peppering the already soiled fatigues with mud. A soldier half-scrambles, half-falls over the edge of the foxhole and lies without moving.
"Forget him!" Hawkeye yells to the filthy private who crawls from the murky haze towards the fallen body. "Forget him! Get me some alcohol! In the bag."
The private rolls aside as another shell explodes, tosses Hawkeye an unlabeled bottle. Holding the bottle in his teeth, Hawkeye unscrews it with the hand which isn't currently going steady with the corporal's pulmonary artery. A brief sniff informs his that it is almost pure ethanol. Without ceremony, he splashes the alcohol into the gaping chest, and his patient buckles, writhing and gasping in agony. The Hawk grasps the reclaimed needle between his teeth and splashes the remains of the bottle over it. A fair portion finds his mouth, and the front of his red Santa suit, but the needle is at least sterile. He hopes. A ricochet of explosions from the north, the ground shudders, and Hawkeye slips face forwards into the dirt miraculously maintaining his grip on both the needle, and the corporal's partially-severed artery.
"Can't you idiots knock it off?" he yells to the war in general, spitting through a mouthful of sodden Father Christmas beard, before plunging back into his patient's chest.
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Daniel lifts the sherry glass slowly as the lights of the Christmas tree twinkle, reflected in the mirror-world of the black window. He watches, almost without seeing, the room lit with a warm golden glow of firelight, the surfaces bristling with holly and pine boughs. Most of Crabapple Cove seems to have accumulated in the room, and the old house rings with laughter. He remembers, on Christmas eves of a thousand years ago, wading through the snowy wood with an axe over one shoulder, his son's small, gloved hand tight within the security of his own. Hawk would always chose the tallest tree that he could find. He remembers decorating it, lifting his baby boy to place the star on the very top, until Hawkeye grew tall enough to do it himself, and Dan grew too old to lift him anyway.
Dickie Barber cranks up the old gramophone, and they all stand to listen as the soft strains of 'Silent Night' chime forth. Dan rests his glass on the windowsill, and bows elegantly, offering Molly Gillis his arm. With a quiet nod, she accepts, and they smile through their tears, and dance, because when the young folks are gone (and maybe never coming home), there's not a damn thing you can do but keep on dancing.
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N.B. Chapter title from a Bing Crosby song