Conceived in Liberty (21 page)

“I'm sore tired,” I said.

For two days, there is no food, a roaring cold wind out of the north. No sunlight. A sleet that forms a coat of ice over the ground. We crouch in our dugouts, staring about like trapped animals. We eat the leather straps from our muskets, boiling them for hours in water. We tear cloth into fine bits, cook it and eat it. Bark from the trees. The few trees left in the forest are stripped bare of their bark.

We fly into rages easily. A word from Charley has Jacob at his throat. Ely and I tear them apart, while the women fill the dugout with their screams. Charley is weak as a baby. His woman has left him. He's too sick to satisfy her. She goes to Pennsylvania men in other dugouts, and Charley demands her back. She comes into the dugout, and they spit at each other like a pair of cats.

“Let the woman decide,” Ely says.

She says: “Ye're no men for a woman to want—filthy, rotten beggars.”

“You'll come to one of us——”

“As I please. I'm a free woman.”

“A dirty slut.”

“You don't call me a slut. I was a good woman once. I had no wish to be dragged around by a rotten rebel army.”

Finally, she goes back to the Pennsylvanians. Charley lies in his bunk, sobbing weakly. I offer him my woman, Kenton's.

“No, no—keep her, Allen.”

I fall into an insane temper of rage. I threaten the Pennsylvania men. I tell Charley that when my strength comes back, I'll kill them, every one that's had his woman.

Ely cries: “By God—we're no strangers! We're men together through hell. We're no men to be at each other's throats.”

Ely keeps the fire going. Ely cuts wood in the forest, goes out into the sleet by himself. Ely nurses us the way he'd nurse children. He humors us …

He sits at night, and tries to bear the pain in his feet. He no longer uncovers his feet.

A parade is called on the day of March seventh. The troops crawl out of their dugouts. The brigades assemble. Less men than ever. We march out to hear a message from the Congress read.

Rumours go about. A rumour that we retreat southward.

“They're going to break camp.”

“It's over now——”

“A British attack, and we're to defend the forts on Mount Joy.”

“Congress would know nothing of a British attack. Congress knows nothing of anything. God damn their souls——”

We stand shivering, waiting. At last, Wayne rides up with his staff. He dismounts and walks up and down our line. He says: “Attention, brigades.”

We try to form ourselves erect. He shakes his head, and walks back to his horse slowly. He stands there, looking over the grey hills in the direction of Philadelphia.

A young officer comes forward to read the message. We stand tense, waiting. He reads:

“From the Continental Congress to the Army of the Republic: In recognition of the men's courage in bearing their privations, we hereby appoint a day of fasting and prayer——”

We laughed. By God, we had not laughed like that in days and weeks. We laughed until we were trembling and weak. Then we turned round and marched back.

I remember how Wayne had not moved through all the reading. He mounted his horse slowly, like an old man, and rode down the hill to his quarters.

PART THREE

THE BATTLE

XVII

I
T HAS
been raining all morning. We sit in the dugout and try to understand that rain is falling—not snow but rain. The fire burns low, but we put no wood on it. The dugout is warm. The rain on the roof is like a corps of drummers beating out a roll.

Mary cries. She sits on the edge of a bed, sobbing, her lean figure swaying back and forth.

Curiously, Ely asks: “You've a sorrow, Mary?”

“No——”

“Then why are you weeping?”

“The rain—do you hear? I thought the world was lost in the cold.”

“It's rain——”

“Rain,” Jacob says, nodding, “rain out of the sky—a beautiful, fair rain.”

Anna lies in my bed, her head swaying a little to the beat of the raindrops. Near the bed, the roof is leaking. She holds out a skinny hand and lets the drops splash off it. “I mind,” she whispers, “how it was when I was a girl. We clung to the kitchen in the rain. It was a special day for kitchen work. Baking and sewing and weaving cloth. If I had a loom, I'd weave out a fine cloth to make coats.”

I go to the door and open it. Trees are like shadows. Clouds hang low to the earth, and the rain pours out in a great downpour, each drop biting a hole in the snow. Already, the snow is giving away.

When I turn back, I can hardly speak. I say: “Ely, what' day is this?”

“A day in March—I can't think of the exact day.”

Jacob said: “I call to mind how the Jew spoke of the spring coming. He had no sight of the spring in this country.”

I whisper: “We're alive—Charley, me, you—we're alive to see the rains.”

“A fair land in spring.”

“But we're alive. We're talking, moving.”

Ely nods. He walks around aimlessly, touching the rough frames of the beds, reaching up and touching the leaks in the ceiling. He sits down by the fire.

Jacob goes over to him, says gently: “You're disturbed, Ely?”

“I'm noways disturbed. I'm thinking.”

“We'll go back to the Mohawk some day, Ely—a free land for people to live in, a green, beautiful land.”

“We'll go back,” but with no faith in his voice.

I go to the door again. I'm like a child. I cry: “Ely—Ely, the snow melts!” I take my bayonet, stand out in the rain and dig through to the ground.

I come back into the dugout, dripping.

“You'll take cold,” Ely says. “Don't be a fool, Allen.”

Charley whispers: “You were digging in the ground, Allen. It's not soft so quickly.”

“We'll bury them,” I say. “They'll lie in peace. All those who died—they'll be no longer unburied and prey for the wolves. We'll dig in the ground and bury them.”

“In peace.”

I sit down on my bed, laughing.

Jacob says: “I call to mind how it was in the Mohawk, April—a month of rain and soft skies. The blossoms would come out on the apple trees in the month of May. I'll never forget the blossoming of the apple trees.”

“There are apple trees in Valley Forge,” Charley says eagerly.

The rain is dripping through the ceiling with a steady patter. We sit around and look at it, let it drip from our hands, watch the little puddles of mud it makes on the hard dirt of the floor.

“The cold is in my bones,” Charley says sadly. “Come years—I'll never get the cold out of my bones. I'll never get out the cold they flogged into me at the whipping post.”

“I dream of a hot sun——”

“I have a dream,” I say, “to lie down in soft green grass with the sun on me, with a bit of cloth over my eyes, with a breeze overhead.”

“With a lass?” Mary asks.

I shrug my shoulders.

“A hot sun,” Charley nods.

Jacob, looking into the fire, says: “The army will come back—there'll be new men. Militia will gather. We'll march …”

The door swings open, and Kirk Freeman, a Pennsylvania man, bursts in. He stands there panting, dripping wet.

“What is it?”

“The ice on the Schuylkill—it's breaking up.”

We follow him. All along, men are out of the dugouts, standing in the rain, listening. From far off, a dull booming.

“The ice!”

“It's thunder——”

A ripping crash. Someone laughs shrilly.

“Get back into shelter!” Ely calls. “We're not fit to stand out in the pouring rain!”

We go back inside. Some Pennsylvania men come in, and one of them has some rum. He tells a detailed story of how he came by the rum. Eight Pennsylvania men were on guard at the commissariat. Coming off duty one evening, they intercepted two McLane raiders, with a tub of foraged rum slung between them. The sergeant of the Pennsylvanians signed for the rum, as a captain, and they took it to their brigade and got drunk. For that, the sergeant had ten lashes, the others four apiece. But it was worth it.

The Pennsylvania man has what is left of the rum. There's a long drink for each of us. We heat it over the fire, drink it slowly.

There's a toast to liberty—“To John and Sam Adams, may they be hanged!”

“To the Continental Congress, may they rot in hell!”

“May they have dysentery until their bowels rot out!”

We sit around the fire, tasting our rum, listening to the rain. We are lulled by the steady, even beat of raindrops on the roof.

The Pennsylvania men talk of Kenton. “He was a strong man—a bright flame of a man.”

“He was a man to fight and to win—never to know pain or sorrow.”

Charley is already a little drunk from the rum. We are not used to hard drink, and there's not enough food inside of us to sop it up. Charley says:

“He died for us. There was no man had such a fear of the gibbet as Kenton. But he died for us.”

“God damn Muller's soul. He remembered the deer. He took it out on Kenton.”

“There are good Pennsylvania men who won't be forgetting a gift of two fine buck deer.”

“Something for Muller to remember.”

Ely said: “Let Kenton rest in peace. There's no score in the encampment but has been paid out in blood.”

“There's no peace for a man who dies on the gibbet.”

“Peace enough.”

Some of the Pennsylvania men brought in their women. The women shift from man to man. There's no hate. A man dies, and his woman is left behind. We have suffered too much to be jealous. They're a strange race, these women of the camp. Many a camp follower was a good woman once. Her man was going to war; they married and came along together. Then her man died, or he deserted, leaving her behind. No place for her to go; she fell into the life of the camp. These women went from man to man. What a man needed—They had seen how we were like beasts, but still men. Maybe they kept us being men.

We lie in front of the fire, and we sing sad Dutch songs, songs that were sung along the New York and Pennsylvania rivers for a hundred years.

And the rain beats on the roof.

It rained for two days more, and then, on a grey, wet day, the order went around for a grand review of the entire army. Muller brought the news himself. He came into the dugout and said:

“Come out of your hole—clean up!”

He met our eyes and smiled. He had courage, that man. “Parade with fixed bayonets. Stump!”

“The army moves?” I asked Ely.

“I don't know.”

A while later, General Wayne stepped into the dugout. We stood at attention, in spite of ourselves. There was a simple, natural dignity in Wayne, a spark of fire in his light blue eyes. For Muller we had not moved.

He walked round the hut without speaking, took up our muskets, looked at the flints. He nodded, said:

“You're soldiers. A man may go to hell, but he keeps his musket in firing condition.” He looked at our feet, man to man—stopped at Ely's. “You can walk?”

“I can walk, sir,” Ely said.

“I pleaded for shoes, God knows. Maybe we'll have them soon.”

“Yes, sir, I trust so. But I'm fair afraid no shoes'll fit my feet again.”

“I'm sorry,” he said softly.

He stopped at the door, said bluntly: “You're New York men, but my troops now. We've all seen hell. I pleaded for you at the court-martial.” Then he walked out.

We assemble outside the dugouts in brigade formation. The snow is a slush, and with each step we sink into it, ankle-deep. The drummers stand around, trying to tighten their drumheads. There is movement, new life in the air. Finally, the order comes to march—eight hundred of the Pennsylvania line.

We go through the trees, the slush falling into our faces. At the Gulph Road, we fall in behind the Massachusetts regiments. The Virginian men join in behind us, cursing in their soft drawl. We curse them back.

We march out onto the parade. Across the meadow, the Rhode Island men face us, next to them the Maryland brigades, then the long stretch of the New Jersey line. Thin, white-faced, bearded, filthy, no man with a whole, decent suit of clothes, we make a strange, nightmarish picture of an army. An army come back from hell, crippled beggars collected from the ends of the earth.

The drummers march out to beat their roll, but the noise is dulled. Their drum-skins are wet. Clouds hang low overhead. We can hear the cracking and rushing of ice in the Schuylkill.

Washington rides out, with his staff. They canter to the centre of the parade, draw in their horses and dismount. The men stand in the slush—waiting. With Washington there is a stranger, and all eyes are on him. He wears a blue and white uniform, gold-trimmed, and a white cocked hat, high black boots. We ask each other who he is. Nobody seems to know.

He walks toward the Pennsylvania brigades, Washington behind him. Wayne comes out, takes his hand, and they stand in a little group, talking. They are too far away for us to hear what they're saying, but suddenly the stranger breaks out into a roar of laughter—real laughter, the kind we have not heard for months. It takes effect. We look at each other.

He walks toward the brigades, stiffly. He's a stocky man, a broad flat face. He kicks his feet out in front of him, splashing the slush. When he is a few yards from us, he stops; his eyes widen. He walks along, his head turned sidewise, staring at man after man. He comes to one man who has no breeches, who wears an improvised sort of kilt instead. Then the stranger stops. For a moment, he stares straight ahead of him, then turns his head slowly—warily to look at the man. The head goes back. Still warily, it seeks out General Washington—then back to the man with the kilt. It takes us. We begin to smile. The brigades smile. A flurry of rain comes—and still the brigades smile.