Conceived in Liberty (18 page)

“I'm starved,” I say. “I'm starved for some meat.” I take the meat, eat it. Kenton hands me water to drink. There's more than enough meat for a man. It occurs to me that they ate little themselves, saving the bulk of the meat for me. They look at me while I eat, but they don't ask any questions.

“It's good meat,” I sigh. “It's ripe salt ham.”

Charley says: “They have a ham called Boston round; it melts like butter in your mouth.”

“They have a hickory cure in the Mohawk——”

“I'll pledge Boston ham against backwoods pig. It makes me fair sick to hear a backwoods man talk like he knew the way of living. You take a grown man who can't write his own name, and he's no better than a red savage.”

“Allen here has learning, and he's a backwoods boy for all that,” Kenton says. “It's no matter of trouble to learn to read and write. Only I had a hatred for it.”

Charley laughs. I finish eating, and put the bowl away. They look at me, still asking no questions. I wonder how they can sit that way, talk, laugh, as if there was no gibbet waiting. I'm afraid to tell them; I don't know how to tell them.

A red glow falls upon us out of the firebox, mottles us, burns in Kenton's beard. I touch my own beard nervously, short curly hair; I tangle my fingers in it.

Charley puts a hand on my arm, says gently: “We had no thought to joke with death, Allen, only to drive off fear.”

“We shouldn't have sent you,” Kenton says. “God damn them, can't they send us to a gibbet without playing with us?”

“It was Hamilton's thought to save us,” I say. “He did what any man could do to save us. He made an honest strong plea to Washington.”

“I can't abide a man so stone hard as Washington,” Charley says.

“He's a hard man.”

“I had no great hope when Allen went——”

“What came of it, Allen?”

I look at them.

“We're to die?”

I say, slowly: “We're to choose among ourselves for one. The other two go free with a flogging. But the one man dies on the gibbet.”

They stare at me. “One man?”

“He said he would noway spare the three of us.”

“One man,” Charley whispers.

I can't stand their eyes; I shake my head, cry: “It was not my doing! You think I had no courage to die along with you!”

“We know, Allen,” Kenton says. “We're grateful to you, Allen.” His voice had a tone of complete relief in it; he smiled a little as he spoke, almost contentedly.

Charley asks, querulously: “How was it that they came to spare two men? How was it that way, Allen?”

I try to tell them what happened in the room. I try to tell them how it came about. I find myself sobbing hoarsely.

“It's all right,” Kenton says. “It's no matter to sob about, Allen.”

“You're thinking it's me. You're thinking I had no thought to be the one. Only one of you. You're thinking I had no courage to stand up on a gibbet. I took a way out that was easy—I told them one of us would die for the other two. You're thinking that. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Allen, Allen—be easy.”

“I'm not fearing.”

“Allen, we had no mind to give you pain.”

“You're despising me.”

“Allen, it's better two of us should live. It's a horrible bad thing for a man to die on the gallows. It's a dreadful thing to think about and dream about.”

I say weakly: “Which one? Which man of us to die?”

We sit there for a moment, watching each other. Then Charley Green tears himself up, walks over to the door, and pounds his fists against it. He pounds until the door shakes under the impact, and then he leans against it, panting.

“You'll beat yer hands sore. Come away,” Kenton begs him. “Come away, Charley.”

“God damn them, are they playing with beasts? Are we no longer men, but beasts to be tortured?”

“Come away——”

Charley whispers: “I'm oldest. I'm a man of thirty years.”

He turns round to face us. The coals in the box are almost gone—a dim glow. At the door, Charley is a black figure without form. I look at a black figure that is nothing of a man—a fear in form, groping for death, afraid and unafraid. I think of a man who joined our regiment in Boston, a fat, short man with printer's ink staining his fingers black. A small moustache and red cheeks. A black cocked hat and a black coat. Blue eyes. A man in a round happy form who became a butt for our jokes and contempt. A man fascinated by backwoodsmen who wore green hunting coats. He carried a musket with an ivory stock, a treasure of a musket, small, beautiful. He carried a silver snuffbox worked by Paul Revere. He wore lace cuffs. He tried to be a dandy, but he was more a troll than a dandy. I try to think of him that way, making such a figure out of the black mass at the door.

“I'm a man of thirty years,” he says again. “I'm the oldest man of you all.” Then he comes toward us, sinks down on the floor, and stares at the firebox. A small man, thin and bearded, filthy.

Kenton's voice is soft, curious, a world of curious wonder in his voice: “You'd go to a gibbet for us, wouldn't you, Charley? You'd have no fear to die for us?”

“I'd have a dreadful, awful fear to die on a gibbet,” Charley says simply.

“You're a brave man,” Kenton says.

“There's a way of being brave, and I'm noways brave. I'm thinking that if Ely were here, he would see no younger man die in his place.”

“Ely is a strange creature—a creature out of fear.”

A smile tries on Charley's face; a smile takes his mouth and moves it slowly. He reaches out and touches my hand. I'm afraid to look at him. He holds onto my hand. “A long way,” he says. “A great length of marching. Christ, we're like brothers, all the three of us.”

Kenton says: “I've no matter of fear any more. I'll be. in company, good company. There're no men who've gone already to hold back from me with contempt, to say that a man dead on a gibbet is not a man for their company.”

“We'll draw lots,” I say desperately.

“We'll draw no lots.”

“Why? I'm not afraid! I swear to God I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid——”

“It's no matter of fear, Allen,” Kenton said gently. “I couldn't live and think you had died in my place. I couldn't go back to the Mohawk and say that Allen Hale, a boy of twenty-one years, had died on a gibbet so I could live.”

“But I'd go back——”

“Allen, I shot the man. Allen, I swear a holy oath by God and Jesus that I shot the man. I aimed with my gun and killed deliberately. The sin is on my soul and the taking of blood was by my hands. Can there be any peace for me, if another suffers for my sin, Allen?”

“You're a liar,” Charley whispered. “I stood by your side and you took no aim.”

“Would I go to death with a lie?” Kenton asked.

Charley took a coin out of his pocket, a tarnished shilling. He turned it over and over. He said: “You're a strong man, Kenton. You're a rare man for loving and hating. We'll not argue.”

“We'll not argue.”

“The King's head is life for you.”

“Agreed.”

He threw up the coin, so that it would fall on the firebox, but Kenton caught it midway. He fingered it a moment, then tossed it over to one side of the room, where it fell in the dark. I sighed deeply. Kenton was smiling.

“You shouldn't have done that,” Charley said.

“This tossing a coin for a life is play for children. If a man has it in his mind to die——”.

“I can't let you.”

Kenton said slowly, thoughtfully: “I made a scheme to desert and go northward. I said to myself, no other man'll pay for my scheming.”

I couldn't stand any more of that. I put my face in my hands and sobbed. They didn't stop me. I went away from the firebox and threw myself down on the floor of the room.

Finally, Kenton came over to me. It might have been an hour afterwards, two hours. I don't know. The coals had about burnt out, and the firebox glowed dimly. Kenton knelt down by me and put an arm about my shoulders.

“Allen,” he whispered.

I didn't answer.

“Allen, I'll have no fear. I swear that to you, Allen. ‘I'll have no fear or shame or remorse to die on a gibbet.”

“Leave me alone!” I cried.

He went on talking, his voice soft and easy: “Allen, a time ago, maybe twelve, thirteen years, you stood up to me and I beat you down. I had it over you by a foot of height, and you swore you would not forget the beating——”

I didn't move. Kenton was far away. I groped for him and held onto his arm. I saw a shadow move across the room; Charley Green came up to us, sat down.

“I had in mind to ask your forgiveness. I had in mind to give you my powder horn—for a thing to remember me by.”

Then we sit together. There are no more words. We lie close for warmth.

XV

K
ENTON SAYS
goodbye to us. A grey morning with big flakes of snow dropping slowly. Charley's face is all twisted up, and the tears wash the dirt from under his eyes. He won't look at Kenton. He stares at the floor, clenching and unclenching his hands, moving nervously, shivering.

The care is gone from Kenton's face. He puffs on Hamilton's long clay pipe, blowing clouds of blue smoke between us. Kenton says:

“If you're the only man to go back to the Mohawk, Allen—then they won't know I died on a gibbet?”

“They won't know——”

“Not for my shame, Allen: I think it no shame. But they might consider it a matter of shame.”

I nod my head; I wipe my eyes and hold a hand over my mouth. We go out. Kenton stands in the centre of the room. He waves his hand.

Outside, Hamilton and the commandant of the fort are waiting. Hamilton avoids our eyes. A guard of four men forms behind us, and a drummer goes in front. The drummer beats a slow roll. I see how the flakes of snow fall on the drum, splatter under the sticks. Charley plods along next to me, his feet dragging. I feel a wild, insane impulse to run back to Kenton, to stay with Kenton. I look at Charley, and see the same impulse in his eyes. He shakes his head. He keeps on shaking his head, dumbly.

We march up the Baptist Road, and then onto the Grand Parade over to the whipping posts. The snow is falling more heavily now. The men of the Pennsylvania brigades bulk like shadows out of the snow. They march along with their heads down and form into their lines.

They curse the snow and they curse us.

“Did you bastards have to pick a day like this?” they cry. “A hell of a thing to drag men out for!”

They stand round us, not too interested, knowing only the cold and the snow, shivering in the snow. They hold their muskets close to their bodies, their hands in their armpits for warmth. They bend their heads to break the force of the wind. They don't look like soldiers; they don't look like men. I try to find Ely, but there are too many bearded, ragged men. They all look the same, their identities lost in the swirl of snow.

The officers come riding up, close together, bent over on their horses. They ride up and down, beating the men into formation. Wayne sits on his horse, wrapped tight in his cloak; the snow gathers all over him, over his horse.

The drum beats up a crescendo. It dies, and the stillness is broken only by the muttering of the men. The parade stretches away, a plain of snow with walls of snow. A man's voice reciting: “—twenty lashes to be delivered on the bare back, in dishonour—” Charley is a little to the front of me, rigid. He shakes his head. Kenton is sitting in the guardroom, alone. Kenton deep in his loneliness. The drum again, slowly, a beggars' dance, a beggars' ball. I dance with Bess. They are a great company on the other side of the veil of snow, Bess with her husband. Is her love for me or for her husband? Like Kenton's love? The love of a man or the love of a woman?

They strip off our clothes. I stand very still. The fear of cold and pain is a monstrous lump, swelling my heart. The same fear that brought Kenton death. —If I were in Kenton's place?

I'm watching Charley. They peel off his rags. In Boston, Charley was a fat man. A round, fat man. Something to be laughed at by a regiment of backwoodsmen. Tall men in green hunting shirts come out of the Mohawk. My mother sews on the shirt, cloth she wove with her own hands, pleading with me not to go. The planting is done; come winter I'm back. The war will be over. The whole land will rise in arms, and then the war will be over. Four, five months, ten months.

They bare Charley's back; they bare my own. I tremble with the cold, and my skin crawls together. I feel that my blood is freezing.

“The whip will warm you——”

The bones stand out of Charley's flesh, bones with skin stretched tight over them. A winter's filth on the skin; but the snow will wash us. I clench my teeth and bite my lips. The snow melts on my skin; the wind on the wet surface is like knives cutting into me.

They bind us each to a post. Hands bound together and then tied to an iron ring at the top of the post. Charley is stretched like a drawn chicken. I feel an impulse to laugh. Kenton feared the cold; he stayed in the guardhouse.

I strain around to see the brigades. Warm in their clothes. Warm——

The first lash. Charley wilts. I feel a knife drawn over my skin. But no real pain; nothing to compare with the cold. The cold makes a wall round me that nothing can come through. Bess could lie up against me and warm me with her body. Bess is in the dugout—or dead. I could have Kenton's woman, because Kenton is good as dead. Back in the dugout, I'll have Kenton's, woman to warm me.

Another—third, fourth: I stare in wonder at the red marks on Charley's back. Too cold for blood to flow.

Are there marks on my back, open spaces on the skin with red in between? The fourth lash brings a cry out of Charley. A low animal cry; his strapped hands wrench back and forth, spasmodically. The fifth lash brings blood flowing over the dirt. Blood to wash him—washed in the blood of lambs.