Conceived in Liberty (26 page)

We see a Fusilier. We stop and stare at his red coat, at the gold facings. A uniform fit for a king.

“But warm,” somebody says. “He could noways carry such a warm coat. Poor fellow's dead of a little bit of heat.”

“He should have been at Valley Forge. He'd not be minding a spot of sun.”

“I could have used such a pretty red jacket this winter. It fair breaks my heart to pass it by.”

Things break out of the haze of dust suddenly. The drums have stopped. We appear to be crawling through a sea of dust. The Virginians have spread out to scout the advance. Their voices come hollowly from nowhere.

“All's well—all's well—all's well——”

“A ravine—a dozen feet deep.”

“A ridge of sand.”

We come to an overturned cart, one of the British wagon train. A broken axle threw it on its side, and two broken trunks spill women's clothes onto the sand. We hand the clothes round, lace petticoats, lace and silk jackets, a gown.

“My Annie could wear this.”

“Your Annie's back with the militia. They're no men to demand lace petticoats.”

More men dead of the heat, horses whimpering as they die in the sand. In one place a dozen Hessians lie together, their glassy eyes rolled upward, no longer afraid of the sun.

The pines are endless, tall bare pines that in some places make a complete roof over our heads. There will be an open space, a hundred paces across, rolling sand dunes grown with weeds, then the pines again. There is no forgetting the hot, languid smell of the pines. The sand has no grasp for our feet. It burns them up. Our feet slip, we sprawl, we pick ourselves up. Next to me, Ely is a dogged machine, his eyes glazed. I give him an arm to help him along. He thanks me in a hoarse whisper.

We camp for the night. A thunderstorm drenches us, puts out the few fires we attempt to build. We lie like animals, dumb in our misery.

Word goes round that the British are near us. Faintly, the sound of a trumpet comes to us. Wayne stalks through the Pennsylvania brigades, putting us in a position to resist an attack if it comes. We drag logs to make breastworks, sleeping on our feet, stumbling over the logs and falling prone.

Not far from us, Washington pitches his tent. We watch the officers from other brigades riding up to the council—Varnum, Steuben, Charles Lee, Greene, Lord Stirling. They crowd into the tent, and their figures move against the light as shadows.

For what seems to be hours their tired voices bicker back and forth. We hear Wayne crying hysterically: “Fight—fight—for the love of God, can't you see it's all over if you don't fight? We'll never have this chance again—fifteen miles of half-dead soldiers and whores strung out across the country! We strike one blow—and the war's over! Only one blow! Look at my men out there! Do you think they'll suffer another winter like the last? Do you think you'll have an army a month from now if you don't fight?”

Washington's voice, soothing him, like a weary father.

And from Hamilton: “Sir—I'm sick of this, sick of this. You can have my commission.”

Lee's shrill tones: “You'd ruin everything! Sir, is this an army commanded by children—or by men? I'll have no young whelp like Hamilton instruct me——”

“Sir, you'll answer for that!”

“Please—please—for the sake of your brigades, gentlemen, quietly. There's no need to roar.”

Their voices drop to a murmur. We come closer to the tent. We lie in the sand, listening, listening. On and off, I doze. Each time I open my eyes—the voices from the tent. La Fayette's broken English:

“Can eet be? Can anything be so shameful? I weel not weesh to live, sirs, eef we don' strike.”

“Strike—strike! By God, with what? With those broken beggars out there?”

“Sir, I'll answer for my brigades!” Wayne cries. “I'll answer for the beggars! I'll go into hell with those beggars! Only give me a chance.”

Steuben: “Dey're goot men—by Gott, dey're goot men to fight mit.”

Finally, the council breaks up. The officers come out of the tent, mount their horses, and go back to their brigades. Washington stands at the entrance to the tent, talking softly with Wayne and Hamilton. His face is years older, thin, a face of large bones with skin stretched tight over them.

Washington shakes hands with the two officers—goes back to his tent then. Hamilton stands there, his deep violet eyes looking at nothing at all. Wayne walks over to the breastworks, sits on the stump of a tree and stares at the ground.

Captain Muller goes over to him, waits expectantly. “Tomorrow, sir?” he asks.

“Tomorrow will answer a lot of things.”

“We fight?”

Wayne nods—without glancing up.

I am on watch with Ely. We walk a little way from the breastworks and stand there, looking into the dark. The night is deep and silent, a hot, windless night.

“A strange forest,” Ely says. “A forest of the dead with its roots in sand. I was thinking to look at the Mohawk again, to walk between green, soft trees.”

“Maybe we'll go back soon. Maybe after the battle tomorrow …”

“You're afraid, Allen,” Ely says gently.

I nod.

“You're thinking of Kenton and the rest of them.”

“Of Kenton. If Kenton curses me for the shame of dying on a gibbet——”

“Kenton's dead. It seems to me, Allen, that the dead rest in peace. A deep peace back there on the hills where we left them. There's no shame. It's peace and a rest for a tired body.”

“When I look forward to it—to battle and more battle, to more winters like this winter past, if the war goes on for years. I'm fair sick of war, Ely. I'm fair longing to have one day come after another without the beat of drums. I think of that little girl who came running to us from the Virginian men. She was no fit woman to be a man's wife, Ely—but that's what she wanted. It seems to me, now, that I had a full love for her, and that I wouldn't have hesitated too much to make her my wife. It would have been a peaceful way of things to make her my wife, Ely, to look for the sun-up as a day of planting, to see brown dirt turn up under the plough and to come back at night to a wife who doesn't ask too much of a man.”

“There'll be none of that,” Ely says. “I wouldn't hurt you, Allen—you're all to me. I never had a son, Allen, and I think sometimes that you're a son to me. But there'll be none of that—no rest. I deny you rest, Allen, and I'll be resting soon. But you can't rest. My day is over. Yours is beginning.”

I look at him, shaking my head.

“You'll come out of the war, Allen, with broken pieces to put together. There'll be years of war for strong men—and you'll be strong. Then you'll put broken pieces together, and there'll be no rest—no peace.”

“What then?”

“Maybe a belief sometimes that the dream is coming true. We're not fighting the British. We're fighting for a great, fair stretch of land—out to the west. A different kind of people on that land, Allen. A free land.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm tired, Ely.”

“Believe me,” he says.

I try to sleep that night. I try to find Bess and draw her to me. But there's nothing—only a struggle without end, a groping for ideals that are empty. I try to believe, the way Ely believes, the way Jacob believes.

XXIII

W
E WAKE
with dawn. Wayne seems not to have slept at all; he is walking up and down our line, nodding, looking at our guns, whispering to us, though there is no need to whisper. He's nervous, and the sweat rolls off his face.

We strip for battle—naked to the waist, many of us barefooted and without stockings, many of us wearing no breeches, only a tattered sort of kilt. The brigade captains call monotonously:

“Measure loads—measure out your loads. Dry your powder pans and keep them dry. Any man with less than twenty rounds of ammunition report immediately. Try your guns and see that they spark.”

Files are passed up and down, and men put edges on their flints. I spark mine, and it seems to fall dull. My hands are wet and shaking. I take a file and attempt to edge my flint. Ely takes it from me and sharpens my flint with two deft strokes, roughens the steel. Ely is wonderfully calm, his face sad and a little puzzled. Jacob's eyes are hot and burning; he seems to have a fever.

Wayne can't stop moving. “Bayonets,” he calls. “Fix your bayonets—bolt your bayonets!” He tries a gun and then throws it aside. He acts like a man gone mad.

We count out. our loads: I measure the powder in my horn, mechanically. I sift some of it through my fingers. It's dry, but my fingers are wet. I'm wet all over, my breeches plastered to my legs. A film of water covers my body.

I finger my musket nervously. “Load,” Jacob says. “Load her careful, Allen. It's the first load that measures a man's life. If she don't spark the first time, she won't spark.”

I load the musket. It's an old musket with a large bore—my father's. I load it with a heavy charge and three balls. I say to Ely anxiously: “Three balls—that's not too much?”

“She's a strong musket, Allen.”

“I'm sick, Ely—sick and gone. I feel like sitting down and just resting. I'm in no way to move, Ely.”

“It's not your first battle,” Jacob says shortly.

“It's seven months since we've been to battle——”

“Easy, boy, easy,” Ely murmurs.

“Three balls is a fair heavy load for a musket,” I say doubtfully.

We form our lines. The word is still being called: “Dry pans and measure loads …”

Some of the men are munching on salt meat. I feel empty, terribly hungry. I go to my pack and get a piece of meat, but Jacob strikes it out of my hand.

“You'll be thirsty enough.”

“I'm bitter hungry.”

“You don't want to eat,” one of the men tells me. “It's a rotten thing to have a bullet in your belly after you eat.”

The officers are clustered around Washington. Wayne is arguing. Charles Lee stalks away in a rage; they are going into battle against his advice. Then Washington calls him back. Hamilton is sulking alone by the tent. Steuben can't keep away from the men.

“Mine children—you vill remember …”

The sun is just rising. A splatter of light fans the tops of the pines. No wind. Even at that hour of the morning, it is unbearably hot. The smell of powder, of sweating men, mingles with the odour of the pines. We move uneasily and stare at our muskets as if we had never seen them before.

Suddenly, Wayne goes to his horse, mounts, and rides to the head of the line. La Fayette follows him. Lee is calling something after them. Then Lee mounts too, and the order comes down the line to march. Wayne is leaning over his saddle, talking anxiously to a tall Virginian scout. Washington watches us, his face clouded. Lee rides off to one side, speaking to no one, his strange, ugly face contorted in anger. An ugly man, his ugliness burns in him. A professional soldier, he was respected at least for his professional advice until Steuben came. Now Steuben advises battle, and Washington has overruled Lee's plea not to fight. His hatred for Hamilton, for La Fayette, for Wayne is plain enough.

We march quickly, as if Wayne were eager to get into whatever lies ahead of us. It's damnably hot. We thread our way through the pines and then through woods of birch and maple. We go down into a ravine, form again on the other side. Wayne wheels the brigades, and now we march spread out like the broad end of a fan. We are in a wood. As yet, we have made no contact with the enemy.

We go through the wood, a distance on a road, and then down and out of another ravine. The bottom of the ravine is mud. We sink into it to our knees, suck our feet out, claw through. The mud splashes us from head to foot. The brigade commanders call out to each other, and Wayne waves his sword, trying to keep us in battle line. Lee's white horse, streaked all over, is struggling through the mud. He rides without looking back at us, sitting in his saddle wearily and indifferently.

We have been marching for at least an hour now, maybe more than that. I have no sense of time, but when I look up, I can see the sun through the trees. The bottom of the ravine is less hot than the road; the road was a furnace.

I stumble, and Jacob helps me up. He says: “Stay close to me, Allen—we'll get by. Stay close to me.”

Wayne's voice, crying: “Powder dry—powder dry—for God's sake, keep your guns out of that mud.”

As an echo: “Watch your powder pans—keep your flints clean——”

Our brigade is climbing out of the ravine, men wet to their waists with mud. We stumble up through the trees, and hear a flurry of shots. It means that our scouts have come into contact with the British rearguard.

As we are, on the slope, with the ravine full of mud to our backs, we're in a trap. The body of the army is beyond us, perhaps a mile to the rear. It comes like a flash of red fire in our brains; we stop; we stare at one another, our mouths open. I think of getting back out of the ravine—only out of the ravine. I guess we all think of that.

Wayne spurs his horse along our front, screaming madly for us to go ahead. “To the top!” he screams. “Climb to the top!”

I wonder dully how we could have come here, who placed us in a trap like this. Like cattle—to be caught in the mud and shot down.

Ely is shaking his head, like a man in a dream.

Jacob is cursing and screaming along with Wayne. He is ahead of the rest of us, clawing his way up. He seems to slide up through the trees—no volition of his own—slide up through the trees.

We go ahead—as if Wayne were drawing us. Stumbling, falling, we climb the hill, come out on top, drag ourselves forward with our muskets and make a line. More and more men. We make a line, and then we see the Virginian scouts running back through the trees, beyond them a glint of red.