Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (14 page)

Jackson said, “Good morning, sir, Mr. Washington,” and Martha scolded about his boots. The dogs frolicked about him eagerly and Jackson was smiling broadly as he said over and over, “Mighty good to see you, sir, Mr. Washington, mighty good to see you.”

And, awake now, he knew that it was eight years—no, more than that, and he knew how this day was different.

Dressing, he thought of all the times through the years that he had anticipated this day. Some things stood out more than others; he remembered the time in '76—or was it '77—when he met a mother who had lost her son, and wanting to say something—anything—yet able to think of nothing, blundering as a man does, blurted out, “What he died for—I think it will be worth the price.”

“What did he die for?”

Trying to explain, he found himself incoherent and she said, “Will this ever be over? Or will it go on and on? And how many more must die?”

And now it was over. He remembered a man who had lost everything, house and family, a man in the ranks who said, “The devil is that you can't think of an end—there is no end. It goes on and a man forgets about peace.”

And now it was the end.

He remembered the defeats, the endless hammering defeats, when they all screamed, “Give up! Give up!” When they pleaded, “Peace at any price.” When they begged him, “Make us terms.” Freedom was a dream. He remembered '76, '77, '78, '79, running away always, hacked, bleeding, leaving brown clots in the summer dust, scarlet splashes in the winter snow, the beggars' army, the winter encampments where they lay and starved and died, the logic with which wise men reasoned that they couldn't win, temperate men that they couldn't exist, judicious men that they couldn't even retreat.

He remembered the plots, the pettiness, the traitors, the defeatists, the weak and the brave, the shoddy and the glorious.

He remembered the women and then it was better. He was a man who had loved women, many women. There was a time when he could dance twelve hours, with a woman on either arm and a quart of wine under his belt. He remembered the women who had carried the wounded into their houses, the women who had fed the beggars, the women who had taken his hand and said they trusted him.

Thinking of the women made him look in his mirror, stare at the long bony face, the tight mouth, the pale gray eyes and the thin red hair. An old man and yet when it started he had been young.

When Washington came out of his room General Knox was waiting for him. Knox was a fine combination of sedateness and excitement, hugely fat, his pudgy hands folded across his stomach, his eyes deep in wrinkles of flesh.

The commander-in-chief said, “Today it is, Harry.”

And Knox nodded his big head as casually as he could.

That was the way it was.

“A good day,” Knox remarked. “I think we'll have sunshine.”

“That would be nice.”

“Cool, but not cold.”

And why not speak of the weather, he thought, the weather being one of the few things always present. He looked at Knox with new interest, the way you look at men condemned, the way you look at anyone before parting—Knox the faithful, the loyal, the one man beyond suspicion, the one other man who had never lost faith. Knox was fat and paunchy and haggard, the way a fat man can be haggard, and he looked old. Things made men old. Knox was only thirty-three now; when it began, he had been a boy of twenty-five.

“Think of Knox as a boy,” he said to himself.

It was quite impossible. How did one take up where one left off? Then Knox had been a bookseller, a chubby talkative boy with a wife and children, but that was eight years ago and more. And Knox spoke about the weather—and it was natural, he thought, quite natural.

And Knox, in turn, staring at the very tall, well-dressed thin man who had come from the bedroom, a Virginia farmer once—but that too forgotten—found more words impossible.

“We will go down to the city slowly,” the tall man said and added, “the first time in all these years, Harry. How do you suppose it will look?”

Knox shrugged and somehow managed to say, “And then?”

“And then I'll go home,” the Virginia farmer smiled.

Going home was something that had never been out of his mind, never for a day, hardly ever for an hour. Eight years had not turned him into a military man and now he realized that he had never really been a soldier, but rather a private citizen whose life had been temporarily disturbed, who had found that he could not live with certain things as they were and had set out to change them. He had put on a uniform and he was going away for a little while.

His wife had known better; holding both his hands then, she stared at him as if she had seen him for the last time, tall, pock-marked, skinny, a man she knew so well, all his little foibles and faults, and knowing that when he went all the props would go from under her life.

“We'll manage,” she said and agreed smilingly that it would just be a short time.

He knew she was lying; they both knew, and stared at each other.

“Well, it has to be done,” he had said. “You can't live with a thing hanging over your head.”

“You can't,” she agreed.

They were reluctant to discuss basic causes and the words
freedom
and
liberty
never were spoken. She reminded him about his woolen underwear.

“I know you don't like to wear it,” she complained fretfully.

“But I will.”

“And change out of damp clothes.”

He nodded, reminding her which fields he planned to plow and seed for the coming year. “I mean, if I am not back,” he explained.

“Don't drink too much.”

He said he wouldn't and she knew he would. “It will be only a little while,” he said, “and then I'll be back.”

They were camped in Harlem now and New York City was ten miles to the south.

“That is why I thought we would start early,” General McKay said, “and march slowly.”

“Yes—” He was called back to reality by the expression on McKay's face.

“You won't be going home, sir?” McKay said softly.

“Yes, I'm going home.”

They were alone in the drawing-room of the house he had made his headquarters. Speaking quickly, almost desperately, McKay said, “You know, sir, this is only the beginning—this must be only the beginning!”

He was a tall heavy-set man, dark-eyed, with deep hollows in his cheeks; brave enough in battle, the Virginian recalled, but fighting with a fury that had no other purpose than the easing of some burning resentment within him. For eight years McKay had lived for no real end; peace seemed to bewilder him. Now he clenched and unclenched his hands as he spoke: “What have we got, sir? What have we got, now that it's over?”

“A great deal, I think,” the Virginian said slowly, watching General McKay through narrowing eyes.

“Do you? I think we have nothing, sir. For eight years we've fought and bled out our guts—and for what? For the rest of them to live on the fat of the land. I tell you, sir, there's something better than being a half-pay broken veteran, swilling in taverns—you see—”

The Virginian was watching him with a face as cold as ice but he couldn't stop now; McKay had begun and he must go on.

“You could do it,” McKay said. “We have the army, the power, and best of all, the victory. We've won the war and whatever is left now is ours by right. A single coup, a march on Philadelphia—Congress will run like rabbits and then it's ours—”

“Have you spoken to anyone else about this?” The tall man's voice was curiously controlled.

“Several, sir.”

The Virginian reached out, took McKay's lapel in his big fist, drew the other close to him and said softly, “I ought to kill you—I am still your commander-in-chief, you know, and I ought to kill you. Who are the others?”

McKay shook his head and the Virginian flung him away so violently that he stumbled and fell.

“Get out! Get out!”

And he was going home, quietly, as he had planned. How his head ached! Was there no peace for him, no rest?

“I could stay,” he told himself. “But for how long?”

If it couldn't go on without him it was no good. It had to go on without him, otherwise all their eight years of fighting were for nothing at all. It was better that he didn't know the men McKay had taken into his confidence. This was no longer war, that you could fight with guns and force. A nation, a republic, was no more than the men who made it.

Somehow in the next few days he would have to fight as he had never fought before, but without weapons and alone. He had to go home; all the eight years had been for this, that he should become a private citizen, lay down his arms and go home.

More immediate things pressed upon his attention: the occupation of the last city the enemy held. They were coming back to a New York they had lost a long time ago, so long that it was difficult to remember all the details.

He thought of the men who had been with him when the Continental Army lost New York, in '76. There was old Israel Putnam, dragged away from his farm and his fields. He would never forget old Israel's constant complaint of rheumatism. He was more loyal than most, braver than men half his age.

He thought of Mifflin, who was now President of the Continental Congress—Mifflin who stood by so calmly while Lee and Reed plotted against him, seven years past. And what would Mifflin say to this new nightmarish plot? What would old Tom Paine say, who had pleaded with the troops all the way on that lonely retreat from Hackensack to Trenton?

And what of Nathanael Greene, who had started the thing as a rosy-cheeked Quaker boy and was now a seasoned and veteran commander? Thinking of Greene, he remembered the handsome blade who could not keep his eyes from the ladies; Greene had danced and flirted into this war, but it had done something to him, changed him as it had changed so many others. But through all of it Greene had stood fast—along with Harry Knox, who was chief of artillery.

Knox lasted; nothing had changed him, nothing could. And then the tall man, thinking of what McKay had said, wondered whether Knox had been one of those spoken to about a frightened Congress fleeing from Philadelphia, a military dictatorship—and if so, why had Knox said nothing to him?

The Virginian tensed, telling himself that this thing must be fought calmly and expertly. If he lost his own head, what then?

Knox entered the room, saluted, laid an affectionate hand on the other's arm and said, “Sir, you will lead the troops, won't you?”

“You lead them, Harry.”

“If you wish, sir. It's a great honor.”

“Of course it's an honor, Harry”—and then Knox looked at him, not quite certain whether he was being gently laughed at or not. The tall, thin man paced along the drawn-up ranks, struck with the thought, once he was outside, that he was reviewing them for the last time, holding on to that thought, yet unable completely to realize it this November morning of 1783.

These were his men, these tattered weary ill-dressed veterans. He sought for the strength in them and found it—not plots and not a march on the Congress, but a strength that comes out of years of fighting shoulder to shoulder.

There was Miles Crock, with him eight full years; George Ross who had enlisted at fifteen; Jacob Fusterbee, close on seventy, tough as leather; Adam Wheelright, Fuller Jackson, Moses Dane, Jeremiah Danbury, Isaac Watson, Isaac Crane, so many Isaacs, so many Jacobs and Jeremiahs. He said to one, “Going home?”

“Yes, sir—home.”

And asked him for the first time, “Are you married?”

“Yes, married.”

“And all this, eight years, what have you got out of it?”

“I reckon we've won, sir. Things go on. We're a stiff-necked breed and we went in because we like our own ways. I figure the time ain't wasted—”

For all of them it was much the same—at least, he hoped so, pleaded so to himself, looking into their faces. Once he could not have named ten of these men and now he knew a thousand names. Once he had curled inwardly at the sight of their dirty shirts, patched breeches and rusty muskets; but since then something had happened to him as well as to them. Leaving them he felt lonely and desolate; he sought for the one thing he wanted to take with him, a knowledge of their strength.

As he walked on, the men's faces turned after him. Eight years had made them soldiers, tough, lasting, well trained—the best soldiers in the world, he often thought, in spite of the fact that they wore no uniforms, that their feet were wrapped in rags and sacking. The world's first citizen army, they had done their job, and unlike the professional fighters of other nations, they would become householders once more. But did they realize that?

Stopping in front of one of them, a face that had been at Brooklyn, White Plains, Trenton, Brandywine, Valley Forge, Yorktown, he offered his hand.

The other took it shyly.

He would have liked to say something that mattered, like “Good-by, old comrade—believe in what we've fought for, believe!” but he could say nothing and the man who took his hand began to weep, the tears rolling unashamed down his face.

Good soldiers though they were, that was more than they could stand. They roared and clustered around him, hundreds and hundreds of them, reaching for his hands, his arms, just to touch a bit of his clothes, roaring at the top of their lungs.

And in that moment a wave of awful fear passed through him; he saw how what McKay had suggested was possible, if he were just to say the word.

He said nothing, just stood motionless.

General Henry Knox led the troops, walking his horse in silence and watching the tall Virginian who rode with the dignitaries, Governor Clinton, Pierre Van Cortlandt and others. And once the Virginian caught his eye and could have sworn that Knox's glance said, “What will you do? How will you manage it? Or will all the years we fought be for nothing?”