The Proud and the Free (19 page)

Angus MacGrath was in command of the guard there. Ten of the citizen-soldiers, their white armbands showing in the night, their bayonets fixed, were lined up on either side the doorway. Angus opened the door, and inside were ten more of the Citizen-soldier Guard, a good, solid show of discipline and strength, a better show than they had ever managed themselves.

It made an impression on them, all right, even as the pickets had made an impression, standing so tight that a rabbit could not crawl through. We brought the three officers into the ruined and desecrated hall and led them over to the long table, where the eleven men of the Committee of Sergeants sat. Three seats had been left in the center of the table, and as we approached Billy Bowzar rose and said:

Will you and your companions be seated here, Mr. Wayne?

I think, sir, answered Wayne, we had better clear up this matter of address before we go further. I demand that we be spoken in our military rank.

Your military rank is in terms of the Line, sir, Bowzar said quietly. We admit you no rank in the Line now. Let me be square and clear about it. We are the Governing Board of the Pennsylvania Line, and no officer holds a commission here today.

I hold my commission from the Congress, Wayne said.

Is that your feeling?

That is my feeling, Sergeant, answered Wayne, his fists clenched, the knuckles white, his whole body rigidly under control.

Then we'll address you as General Wayne, but we'll give no title to these two men – nodding at Stewart and Butler – who were regimental officers and are no longer. You can take that or leave that, General Wayne.

This time, I had a feeling that they would walk out; but they must have agreed in advance that under any circumstances, they would enter into discussion, and after a moment of silence, Wayne nodded shortly. They removed their hats, opened their coats without removing them, and sat down in the seats Bowzar had indicated, each with his big three-cornered hat in his lap. In their heavy, faced regimentals, wearing epaulettes and dress swords and large powdered wigs, with their ruddy, well-groomed faces, they made a strange contrast to the eleven men of the Committee. It is not only that five years of starvation and exposure will take their toll – a toll had been taken from us long before, and placed against the gentry we were undersized, as well as undernourished – wizened, with gaps where our teeth should have been, and the lasting marks of scurvy and the pox planted well upon us. A wig is a master's thing, for it sits on the head like a great crown, snow-white and beyond the damage of years, making the face and head very imposing indeed – as against little Jack Maloney, or Bowzar, who was five feet and three inches tall, or the Jew Levy who was a tiny, skinny man who could blow away in a good breath of wind – or as against Lawrence Scottsboro, a wizened gnome of man, or Danny Connell and O'Toole and the rest; all of us shrunk, except the Nayger Kabanka; all of us patched – all of us, except the Yankee Abner Williams, separated from the three officers by a thousand years of demarcation between the squire and the crofter, between the merchant lord and the broken-nailed laborer, between the white master and the black slave, between the English Protestant and the Roman Irish, between the Christian world and the hated Jew. And we felt it and they felt it too.

Yet with all that, Bowzar was fine and soft and easy as he introduced each man in turn.

These are the representatives of the regiments, he explained. We speak for the men, and every man in this Line who executes any task or gives any command carries a warrant from us. So when you speak to us, gentlemen, you are in a way talking to the whole of the Line, and we can answer for them too.

During this, I dismissed the guards, telling them to wait outside, and then threw a few logs of wood on the fire, which blazed up bright and cheerful—but no real warmth against the winter wind, which crept into the broken room from twenty different holes and openings. The table was well lit with candles in sticks and bottles, but the corners of the big hall stayed in darkness, and every now and then one could hear the scurrying of a rat.

Instead of seating myself, I stood at one end of the table, near the fire; and even with that measure of heat, it was pleasant enough, and I would find myself becoming drowsy now and then. For that reason, my memory may not be too exact on these conversations, but I recall well the tenor of them, and the picture of Wayne and Butler and Stewart as they sat there will remain with me as long as I live. How different it was from any pictures I have seen of that almost forgotten war!

Billy Bowzar finished speaking and waited —and there was a long silence until Wayne said:

Concerning the uprising and all that has happened in the past three days, I have the power to say this. If you agree to a return of the officers, no soldier will be punished. I give you my word on that.

We rose up against the officers, Billy Bowzar reminded him. Why should we take them back?

Because you are no army without them, Wayne said shortly.

Were we an army with them?

That's neither here nor there.

But it is, said Jack Maloney, because as sure as God, we are an army now.

Looking straight at him, Wayne said, You deserted out of one army, and now out of another.

Damn you, whispered Maloney, I am a truer man to the republic of Pennsylvania than ever you were.

Shut your trap! cried Stewart, and Bowzar broke in, cold as ice:

You come here as our guest, Mister.

You make a great score for yourself, Billy Bowzar.

Yes, and I have made great scores in the past, and paid them too, Mr. Stewart, and if I have to pay for this one, you render the account when the bill is due. Until then, you sit in our house at our table – and however such things are ordered with the gentry, they are ordered decent with us. We did not ask this meeting. We cast you out – every damned one of you – and you beseeched us this meeting. If you cannot sit and talk as gentlemen, then go back to Jacob Hyer's whorehouse!

I had never seen Billy Bowzar like that before —his face dead white against the red hair, every freckle standing sharp and prominent, all of him in a cold, awful anger that had its effect on the Committee as well as on the officers. His nostrils dilated with fury; the muscles bunched all over his square face; and his tiny blue eyes became narrow slits. If a bird pecked in me, it pecked deeper in him, closer to the soul of him that had been scarred by God only knows what. He reached in his pocket and drew out the silver watch that had become the official timepiece of the Line, and laying it on the table before him, he said:

You have one minute, gentlemen, to decide whether you will stay and talk decently – or whether you will go.

And then there was silence, the watch ticking away the seconds in a large and painful silence – louder and louder it seemed, or perhaps only in the memory is it that way; for I have often recalled those seconds and wondered whether our lives and the lives of many others would have been different had Wayne waited through the whole sixty seconds and then left. But that is idle fancy; the matter was a matter of power, and we were the Line and the power —a sullen, proud, angry, aware power that no force on the Continent could challenge, and Wayne was a general without an army, even as Stewart and Butler were regimental commanders without regiments, and all of them had gone through three terrible days – each of them no doubt contemplating a pistol at one time or another and debating a question of blowing out his brains. For the whole fabric of the thirteen states was hinged on the Pennsylvania Line, and whatever the result, they would have to answer; we were the power, and they were, at the moment, only three men alone. So they stayed, and Wayne said:

We will stay and talk.

As you desire, gentlemen … Bowzar nodded shortly, and then waited – as we all waited.

Wayne groped with his thoughts; Butler leaned over and whispered to him; Stewart sat stiffly and proudly, the bitterness congealing within him like a souring curd.

Well, said Wayne – well, we must discuss this. I recognize how hard it was for the soldiers in the Line. War is not a gentle practice, but it may be that it was too hard. On the other hand, I have stood for the men: I pleaded for food; I pleaded for clothes; I pleaded for money …

His eyes traveled from face to face, but none of us said anything. He placed his three-cornered hat on the table in front of him, as if that was a symbol of concession, but a muscle near his mouth twitched and twitched and his back was like a ramrod. Swallow and chew, I said to myself, as the scene blurred before my eyes and then returned again to focus – swallow and chew, my friend, my general … And then I held my own conversation with myself: Ask him for my youth, Bowzar, before you sell me. I am wise in the ways of men who lead; they are all alike, men who lead, and the tears were in my eyes for the woeful, lost hopes of my comrades back in the huts. But, I said to myself, leave them here to discuss, Jamie Stuart, and back to the huts and sound the trumpets, and march off.

Myself – said Butler, speaking for the first time – am in agreement with the general. The patience of the men was tried too sorely, so they rose up and hit out at what they could see, the officers. We are agreed that this is not a criminal matter, but an orderly and peaceful disposition. But under all, there is a fervent faith in my heart, and in the heart of the general and in the heart of each and every one of my fellow regimental commanders, that we and the men are of one mind and one heart concerning the basic principles and program of the Revolution, as set forth in that document we have lived by, the Declaration of Independence.

That we are, answered Bowzar.

Then it is possible that we should make progress.

Ye sit facing the men, said Danny Connell suddenly, which is not a common thing, and every word brings up another matter of reality. Ye make the Declaration a blanket to cover both of us; and we, who are such ignorant clods, by and large, that we cannot write out our own names, nevertheless know that document by heart —which is more learning than the gentry have studied lately. Therein it says, word for word, that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Have I quoted correctly?

We do not deny that the men had certain just grievances, Wayne said.

But you deny that those grievances were in the province of the officers, countered Bowzar.

We have laid aside our pride – said Wayne – to come here and discuss these matters for the common good. If you would lay your grievances before us –

You know our grievances, Billy Bowzar interrupted him. Look around you here at the leading Committee of the regiments, and see how we are clad and how we are nourished and how we are provided. Out there in the hutments, the men are fed and their bellies are full for the first time in months. Have you fed us? But you fed yourselves. Did you share what you ate? You clothed yourselves, and we went naked. Without pay we went, without drink, and our share was blows —blows until we cringed like a pack of dirty dogs instead of free soldiers of the republic! And even dogs have rights, for dogs are loved, and if they get a kick, they get a caress too; but our lot was unbroken by any consideration, and you abased us until we were worse than any dogs ever were. And when an officer shot down a man of the brigades, there was no court-martial for that officer, no trial, no demand that cause be shown – yet how many of our own good comrades have been hanged by the neck because provoked beyond all reason, they struck back? How many, General Wayne? How many, Mr. Stewart? How many, Mr. Butler?

The three officers looked at him, their handsome, ruddy faces controlled now, their anger stowed in the proper compartment, wherefrom it would be taken at the proper moment. This bitterness, this recitation of grievance – this was familiar and common and a part of their memory since the war began. This they could handle. This was different from the snarling, defiant anger of before. This was the beginning of something—and this I knew, and I wondered whether the others of the Committee knew it as well.

There is the matter of enlistments, Dwight Carpenter was saying. A man who has made his mark for three years, and served five —he said —is kept like a slave for his lack of reading …

But I was no longer listening. It was the end and over, and two days of glory had finished. We had marched through the Jerseys and become something noble if brief, but now it was something else again. They went on talking, and I dozed, and some I heard and more I did not hear, but watched the fire and dozed and dreamed of how in my childhood in the warm summertime – so I had been told – I played in the little creek that ran by the house where my mother once served.

I played there because sometimes they gave me a sweet or some cold crust off the roast of the day before, for I was “the little one of Annie Stuart,” and what a good, loyal servant she had been, not like those born and bred in Pennsylvania, who knew not their own place and standing!

Sick as my mother was after carrying me, with the seed of death planted inside her and planted to stay and take its toll in two short years after my birth, she nevertheless had gone each day to the house of Elder Simpkins, who was toll agent on all the roads through town and clerk as well, to do the service that his strong wife and his four strong daughters could not do, for they aspired to be quality as the fine ladies in Philadelphia were. All day, day in and day out, she had labored there, and her pay for a day's work was fourpence – fourpence for the price of a life!

So there I was allowed to play after she had paid her full price of one life for fourpence a day, and I was too much of a babe to even think of what was right and what was wrong, but knew only that there was a bit of a sweet or a crust of meat to be had for the memory of the strong Scottish lass who had served them.