Conceived in Liberty (19 page)

A sense of pain comes to me, pain out of the distance. The wall of cold around me has been broken. Pain with fire; heat and cold at once. The scream from between my lips comes from another, not from myself. I lose count of the lashes.

Maybe the eighth—or the tenth. Charley's back is no longer human flesh. If I see it clearly? I see a writhing figure; or I see nothing. We tried to desert—a long trip back to the Mohawk Valley. Three men plodding through the snow, and the fourth figure is Bess. A fair good walker for a woman. The strength in a woman is the strength of the earth. She clings to me, crying:

“What did we do? Allen, for the love of God, what did we do?”

I realize that it's Charley's voice, and I'm sane enough to hear and understand. I would tell him, a just punishment, meted out by officers sitting round a table. A big man with a big face talks about an army. Men in dugouts talk about Washington's purpose. He plays for big stakes. No other reason for it. He's put his head in a noose—because he's playing for big stakes. A kingdom, a wilderness stretching away for thousands of miles. Jacob knows, and Jacob has explained it to us again and again. Washington sits at the table in a nightcap. Does he love Hamilton? Who is Hamilton?—eyes like a woman.

The fifteenth lash—or more? Much more. They're giving us twenty or thirty. The pain is gone. A thudding hammer on my back and a cold pain in my lungs. But I stand on my feet. Charley hangs by his hands and feels the pain no more. He's at liberty. A word to make songs of. We're scared boys at Bunker Hill, and we try to strengthen ourselves by saying liberty. Always liberty. The British march up, rank upon rank of scarlet-clad men, the drummers beating a mocking parody of Yankee-Doodle. Yankee-Doodle went to London, riding on a pony. They keep on marching. A bugle pipes up the tune of “Hot Stuff.” The officers flash swords in the sunlight. I'll throw down my musket and run away—to Boston, hide in Charley's house. Old Putnam says, Fire and give the red bastards hell. Then we're at liberty—free.

A crisp voice says: “Twenty—cut them down.”

Charley first. He falls in the snow, a little mound of human flesh, all cut up and bleeding. He falls there and he doesn't move. But I stand up. Oh, dear God—the strength of me! I stand on my feet. I move my arms and spread them apart. Kenton, look at me, cut and bleeding and standing on my feet, the guts inside of me freezing!

“Brigades—at ease!”

I keep moving my arms.

“Brigades—march!”

I move over to Charley, step by step, until I am right above him. The snow is stained with blood.

“Charley——”

He doesn't move.

“Charley—we've done our punishment. Get up!”

“Charley—get up!”

I say: “Oh—Jesus Christ.”

I see Ely walking toward me. Ely is an old man. He walks toward me, and more pain than I ever knew is on his face.

I turn to him. “Ely——”

He begins to clothe me. He picks up my rags, bit by bit, and forces me to get into them.

“I'm noways cold, Ely.”

He helps me into my coat. Then he goes to Charley. I don't follow him, only stand where I am, looking round curiously. Some of the men have stopped, and they're watching us. The officers force them on; it doesn't matter a damn if deserters die in the snow. An officer spurs over to Ely. Ely glances up at him, and whatever the officer might have said is left in his throat. I walk to Ely.

“We'll help him back,” Ely says.

Charley looks at me and tries to smile. I take hold of one of his arms, Ely the other, and we help him to his feet.

“I should have stayed—not Kenton,” Charley whispers. “I'm no man to live out of this.”

It was an endless distance to the dugout. We walked slowly. Ahead of us, the brigades disappeared into the wall of falling snow. We plodded on, and always there was more of the grey snow wall ahead of us.

We have to carry Charley. He's a limp thing in our hands. Every few feet we stop to rest.

“I'm sore afraid he'll die of the cold,” Ely says.

We climbed the hill. There were some Pennsylvania men there, and they helped us along. They looked at me with wonder. Indeed, it was a wonderful thing that I could still move and talk.

“It's a rare man who could stand a flogging and walk afterwards,” one of them said admiringly.

“A rare strong man.”

“A freezing bitter day for a flogging. It's a wonder.”

They carry Charley into the dugout, lay him in one of the bunks. Ely enters and I come in behind him. I was never gone. I see Jacob standing in one corner, avoiding my eyes. The two women are still there, Smith sitting limply on a bunk, his face a haggard mask from the scurvy. Henry Lane is gone—dead, I suppose.

A Pennsylvania man says: “The blond lad who brought in the deer, where is he?”

I begin to laugh. I am cold suddenly. I stumble over to the fire and huddle close to it. In front I am cold, but my back is burning with pain.

“Where is Kenton?” a woman asks.

I crawl into one of the bunks, put my face in my hands and cry bitterly. Ely approaches me, bends over me.

“Allen—I'll go get the doctor.”

“It's no matter.”

“I'll go get him.”

I move from side to side, trying to ease the pain. I kick at the wooden bed until my toes are bruised and hurt. One of the women brings me a cup of water.

“Here—drink.”

I drain it down. I try to sleep, to forget myself, but there's no escaping the pain. I whisper: “Ely—Ely.”

“He's gone out, boy.”

“Jacob——”

I look up, and Jacob is standing where he was when I entered the dugout.

“Jacob—we've suffered enough to ease your hate for us.”

He doesn't move, and his face doesn't change.

“Only forgive me, Jacob. Kenton's to die.”

“We're a people at war. A just punishment——”

I groan. I put my face in my hands and sob bitterly.

A long time passed then, or perhaps only a short time made long by pain. Ely came back with the doctor. I must have slept, because they were taking off my clothes when I knew things again. The doctor was saying:

“Civilized—here's their civilization. Here's what they fight wars for. Look at that back.”

“They were deserters,” Jacob said.

“Deserters? Would any sane man remain in this place? Are any of us sane? Eight hundred men in my hospital, piled up like meat in a butcher's. Naked, frozen, starving. I cut off arms and legs. I'm no doctor; I'm a butcher, a barber, a leech. There are no doctors. False—it's all false, a rotten fabric of lies. I know nothing, nothing. I bleed them. I cut off frozen limbs. And they die—they die like ants. What's your cause worth when men die like ants—like savage beasts—? I'm no better than the rest. We're living in a world of ignorance. Let them die. I don't try to save them. It's better if they die.”

He washed my back with warm water, rubbed some sort of fatty paste into it.

“He'll be all right?” Ely asked anxiously.

“This one's strong. By God, it's amazing what a strong man will stand. I don't know about the other. Let me have a look at him.”

I twisted my head and watched them go over to Charley. The doctor worked with strong, sure hands. Only his hands were the same. The rest of him had changed. He seemed older than when I saw him before, not so clean. Nor was he shaven.

“He'll be all right?”

“How do I know? You expect me to be God, to give life. Well, I don't know. Doctors are fakes. None of us know anything. And it doesn't matter. There's plenty of room in mother earth—plenty of room for all. Don't give him anything but broth. He has a fever.”

“Thank you—” Ely said.

“Don't thank me. This does me good. I'm learning. I'm learning the secret of man. Pain—pain. Eight hundred men in a log cabin. I go back there, and they want me to be God. Christ, I'm sick and tired of the lot of you.”

Then he went out, and I called Ely over to me.

“Don't fret now, Allen,” he said. “Try to sleep.”

“I have to tell you, Ely.”

“Tell me later.”

“No—now. Of Kenton. They said they'd spare two of us, but that one man should die for the shooting of McLane's trooper. Kenton would have himself the man.” I grasped Ely's coat. “I was afraid. It was my doing, my bringing the girl along that got us taken.”

Ely looked at me oddly; then he shook his head. “If Kenton wanted it. A man's life is his own.”

“Kenton had a fear of the gallows—a bitter, awful fear. He was in no way wanting to die on a gibbet.”

“Ye're hurt enough, Allen.”

“No——”

“Sleep now.”

“No—when the brigades march out to see Kenton hanged, I must be there. I want you to swear to it, Ely, that you'll wake me to be there.”

“I'll wake you, Allen.”

“You've no hatred of me, Ely?”

“No hatred, Allen.”

“When the brigades march——”

I slip away—a long way down into darkness. Sleeping and waking. When the brigades march—to dishonour a man.

A long way back, a surging backwards and forwards, and Bess lives and dies. Bess comes and drifts away. She whispers the secret of her death. Why did I die, Allen? Why did I die? Fair, beautiful men die. Why do men die, oh Allen? What is the making of this war? For the poor to drive out the rich, for the rich to crush the poor—for a freedom that makes no man free? What is the making of war, Allen?

She goes and I wake and I see the fire burning; and Jacob feeding logs onto the fire. Jacob is a man with dreams, but men with dreams lose all semblance of humanity. What kind of dreams has George Washington—dreams of a throne? I try to see the big, hurt face underneath a crown. No dream of a throne. A man groping. Jacob wants the wilderness; he's a wilderness seeker. A new land out of a wilderness. A man with one purpose: drive out the British. Men may die; nothing matters so long as the purpose is left. Drive out the last Englishman. Take the wilderness for ourselves. Drive women into the forest to be killed by savages. Women like Bess. All women like her.

I drift into sleep again, dreaming that Bess is with me: but this time I know she's beyond the veil of death. With the others who died, with the great company who know why we fight, why we struggle, and what will come of our fighting and struggling. She asks me no questions. She's thinking of Kenton. Kenton wakes. One more to a company of men who have gone.

A dream of pirates, of Massachusetts men who made a war so that their ships could rule the seas. Virginian planters who would get better than English prices. Fur traders who would break the great English companies. Only why are we here, farmers, dying and becoming beasts? What have we to do with all that? We were farming men, and we would live in peace so long as we could turn the soil and bring food forth from the ground. What had the Jew to do with it?

I sleep, a troubled, feverish sleep. A sleep broken by the faces of living men and dead men——

The brigades marched out the next day. They marched out to see Kenton hanged. The snow had stopped. A blanket of snow, two feet deep in some places, lay all over the ground. The sun glistened from the snow, made the highlands a place of bizarre, incredible beauty. On every side, away from our encampment, the countryside rolled, a white sheet spread on hills.

The order came to assemble for parade. We knew what it meant. Charley Green lay in his bunk, the pain of a feverish man in his eyes. When I went over to him, he said to me:

“You'll go out on parade, Allen. You'll watch him and honour him.”

“I'll honour him.”

“He was not meaning to humble you, Allen. He did it out of love.”

“I know,” thinking only that I hadn't guts enough to die for another.

“I'm thinking it should have been me. Allen, and that I'll never rise out of this bed. Kenton would have lived. Kenton is a strong man. He would have endured the whipping and lived.”

“You'll be better, Charley.”

“Try to look into his eyes, if they leave them bare.”

“Yes—I'll look into his eyes.”

I went out of the dugout slowly. It was still an agony of pain for me to move. My back felt like flesh pressed against hot iron bars. Ely begged me not to go.

“It's no sight to see, Allen. They'll not expect a man who was flogged to get out of his bed.”

“I'll have no peace unless I go.”

We formed for parade on the road, the pitiful remnant of the Pennsylvania Line. There were some eight or nine hundred of us left, poor, tattered wretches. Wayne's pride. The pick of the army. We bent under the weight of our muskets. We dragged our feet through the snow. We blinked like owls at the light that flashed from the polished surface.

The drums beat out their monotonous roll. Wayne rode a nag with ribs prodding out, a half-starved, broken horse. Most of the officers walked. Their horses were dying from lack of fodder.

Ely and Jacob walked in my rank, Jacob still wrapped in the same stony silence as before. Ely bore the weight of my musket.

We marched down into the valley, past the hospital. The doctor was standing on the steps, watching us, a curious, sardonic smile on his face. We turned up and were drawn into ranks near the fort. On the slope of Mount Joy, a gibbet had been constructed. Kenton stood before the gibbet, a guard of four men round him. He was bareheaded, his yellow hair like gold in the sunlight.

I was weak and sick from the marching. Once I had looked at Kenton, I could not take my eyes away. Yet I felt that I would collapse in the snow if I watched the thing.

I whispered to Ely: “He's not guilty. The three of us shot in a passion. There's no knowing who killed McLane's man.”

“God help him,” Jacob muttered.

“He'll not be fearing God,” I said.