To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (17 page)

Now Trenton was in sight, and beyond it a temporary refuge across the river Delaware.

The outskirts of the town were typical of so many villages in this lush farmland of Jersey, well-made houses of stone and brick, barns even bigger than the houses, but all of them emptied, the farmers having taken their livestock into the woods or far from the line of march. Fences were gone from the roadside, the wood taken for camp-fires. Houses were shuttered. On one porch a father and three sons sat on the steps, watching them pass, all four of them cradling fowling pieces, the message obvious: Step foot on this land and someone dies. The men staggering along with him were too exhausted to offer a taunt.

The road was slightly better here, graveled in low spots. At a stone bridge crossing the creek that bordered the town, warm fires burned on either end, clearly fed by some looted fence rails.

“This is Trenton, boys.” It was an officer wearing a semblance of a uniform. “No looting by order of the General. Find your regiments. Just find your regiments and be ready to cross. This is Trenton, boys. No looting by order of the General . . .”

Tom shuffled along, suddenly feeling hemmed in as the open countryside gave way to a narrow street, shops clustered together, sidewalks of wooden planks, the smell of a town suddenly engulfing him, wood fires, candle wax, a fetid drain, food cooking. My God, it was roasting pork!

The village wasn’t much, maybe five hundred, a thousand souls, a dozen or so blocks of houses, shops, outbuildings. The vanguard of the army had obviously taken it over, after the straggling retreat from Newark a week ago. Any semblance of organization had by now collapsed. Provost guards were here in abundance, some of them as bedraggled as those they shepherded along, asking men for their regiment and then pointing the way, armed, some with bayoneted rifles, others with pistols or a drawn sword.

One approached Tom, blocking his path, pistol half raised in his direction.

“Which regiment are ye?” The man sounded New England, and though Tom had been a Pennsylvanian for little more than two years, he felt a distrust.

“I have no regiment.”

“What in hell do you mean, you got no regiment?”

“They ran off.”

The guard looked at him, not sure how to respond.

“You Jersey militia?” There was a sarcastic edge to his voice.

Tom threw back his head and laughed.

“Look, damn it, all I want to do is get across the river.”

“Which regiment?”

God damn, were all such men the same across history? he wondered. Given an order but unable to think beyond it.

“I have no regiment, as I told you. They all ran off. If I was thinking of deserting, wouldn’t I have done it by now?” Tom replied sharply. “My orders are to cross the river and head to Philadelphia.”

“Whose orders.”

“Damn it all,” Tom sighed. “George Washington.”

“Come with me.” The provost put a hand on his shoulder.

Tom stiffened. “Get your hands off me!”

“You’re under arrest.”

“I said, get your hands off of me,” and Tom pulled back. He had no weapon other than his fists and he raised them, the provost now pointing his pistol at him.

Those who had silently dragged along with him throughout the day stood watching, a few muttering as if ready to join in the fray, but none moving to help.

The two stood frozen in place. He gazed at the pistol. Would this man actually dare to shoot him?

He looked into the haggard face and hollow eyes of the man, ghostlike in the drifting mist. The man was shivering from the cold. He almost felt a pity for him and yet he would not be ordered about by him.

“I told you,” Tom said slowly. “I have orders to cross the river.”

“Show them, or you’re coming with me.”

“The hell with you,” one of the onlookers snapped. “Like the man said, if we was deserting would we be so stupid as to come into this godforsaken town?”

“I have my orders.”

“There’s always someone like you with their orders,” Tom sighed. “Well, I have mine, damn you.”

“Paine! Tom Paine! I’m looking for Paine!”

Tom looked past the provost. He didn’t recognize who was calling his name. An elderly man, mounted, leading a horse.

“That’s me,” Tom announced loudly.

“You Tom Paine?” the provost asked, even as the elderly man approached.

“To hell with you,” Tom snapped. “No, I’m not, and I’m a goddamn liar. Actually, I’m that son of a bitch, King George.”

The small group gathered to watch the fight laughed raucously. At the calling of his name, they were now firmly on his side.

The mounted rider drew closer, and those standing nearby came to attention as he passed.

“It’s Old Put,” he heard someone exclaim.

The rider reined in and glared down at him and the provost guard.

“Are you Tom Paine?”

“You found him,” he paused, looking up. “And who the hell are you?”

“General Israel Putnam, damn your impudent mouth.”

There was a momentary silence, then Putnam leaned down and extended his hand.

“The General said you were filthy, ugly, and foul-mouthed. I guess you fit the bill.” He could see that Putnam, “Old Put” as the men called him, was grinning.

Tom shook his hand, the grip hard, leathery, not sure yet if he cared for this man or not. Putnam had a reputation as a fighter, to be sure, and was held in high regard at the start of the war, but was haunted by the debacle at Long Island, most of his command having deserted after the fight.

“You’re to come with me,” Putnam announced. “I’ve got a mount for you.”

“Where?”

“To Philadelphia. General Washington orders you to go there with all possible haste and I’m to shepherd you along. So get mounted, Mr. Paine.”

Tom looked at the gape-mouthed provost guard who but a minute before was ready to arrest him. He could not suppress a grin.

“Still want to arrest me as a deserter?” he asked. There was something about such officials, echoes of the country he had fled, self-important and officious, that made his skin crawl.

“That’s it,” one of the bystanders laughed. “The rights of man against asses like him.”

The provost, glaring, turned and stalked off, looking for someone else to bully. The small crowd taunted him as he left.

“Time’s awasting, Paine,” Putnam announced, offering the reins of the horse he was leading.

Tom looked at the beast warily. For him, as for so many of his
class, riding a horse was a rare experience. The poor animal gazed at him with rheumy eyes. He was old, swaybacked, with about as much life left in him as the army he had been drafted into.

As Tom gingerly mounted, the poor animal let out an audible sigh, and Tom pitied him. Following Putnam’s lead, he turned about and headed down to the docks along streets lined with weary men. Mist was rising from the river, cold, bone chilling, wrapping all in a strange light.

He heard arguing, cursing, and had a momentary glimpse into an open doorway of a shop, a mud-caked soldier standing within, the shopkeeper and his wife shouting at the soldier, the young soldier shouting back. The boy looked familiar, the one with the carp back in Newark. Tom rode on.

Glimpsing a lone rifleman shuffling through the mists, Tom slowed and leaned over.

“Aren’t you Joshua’s friend?” he asked.

The rifleman looked up.

“I was his brother.”

“Was?”

The rifleman gazed at him intently.

“The goddamn surgeon took his arm off. He didn’t need to have done that. I told him just to tie the bleeding off, but no, he didn’t have time for that, the bastard. Said the arm had to come off, and I, like a damn fool, held Joshua down. He bled out on the table while they hacked away at him and died an hour later.”

The riflemen, so hard, tough-looking, stifled a sob.

“I should have cut the bastard’s throat for killing him, but he was already gone. Ran off they said. If I ever find him again, I will. To hell with this damn war, I’m going home.”

Tom was unable to reply, stunned. It had not seemed much of a wound.

“Paine!”

It was old Putnam, barely visible in the fog.

“Come on, damn you!”

Tom kicked the flanks of his horse and the old nag stumbled forward, the rifleman gone from view.

Ahead there was a strange glow, diffused in the mist, glaring bright as he approached, a ghastly light illuminating a river dock. Men were gathered about, some trying to push their way forward, others just standing there, as if no longer caring. A large flatbed ferry was docked, a line of Maryland Infantry guarding the approach.

“Those with passes only!” an officer was shouting. “The rest of you stand back, find your regiments, and cross when they do.”

Tom sensed that if the men gathered had but an ounce of fight left in them, they would storm the boat, but they no longer seemed to care.

Putnam pushed his mount through the crowd. Tom followed, passing between the bonfires lighting the approach, conjuring a literary allusion, as if he were passing down to the river Styx. But which bank was it? Was he leaving hell or crossing over to it?

Putnam handed down a slip of paper to the officer, who held it up to the light. He scanned it, nodded, and handed it back and motioned for him to pass through the cordon. Tom followed.

“That’s right,” someone cried. “Officers first.”

Tom looked around, feeling guilty, almost tempted to announce who he was, that he was not an officer, that he was one of them, a citizen like them, and that he had been ordered to go to Philadelphia, that what he carried in his backpack was a weapon to help them, but he knew that such an appeal was of no use. Not here, not this night.

He dismounted with Putnam and led his old horse onto the ferry, which was nearly filled with some of the army’s precious supply wagons. Their cargo was the sick and wounded, the air unwholesome with the fetid smell of death mingled with the cold damp of the river.

The ferryman shouted for them to push in closer, and a moment later the boat shoved off, bow angled upstream, unseen hands on the far shore laboring at the cable to pull the boat across.

Tom stood silent, looking back. The glare of the fires receded into the mists. The river rushing by but inches away was pitch-black,
frightening. If the boat should roll over, he knew all aboard would die. As for himself, he could not swim a stroke. Old Put bit off a chew of tobacco, nudged him, and he took a bite and handed it back.

“Out of one hell and into another,” Putnam grumbled.

“How’s that?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“What?”

“Congress, the cowards. They’re going to abandon Philadelphia and run for Baltimore. My orders are to find them, report on what is happening, and try to recruit more men.”

“They’re gonna run?”

“What the hell else do you think they would do? Hell, we’re all running now.”

“So why am I going with you?” Tom asked.

Putnam leaned over the railing and spat, the wind blowing most of the tobacco juice onto Tom’s ragged trousers.

“Find a printer and get whatever you wrote published. The General thinks it might stop some from running. He thinks you may be our best weapon at sustaining the Revolution. We need your new pamphlet. That’s your orders.”

Tom said nothing. The fires on the east bank had faded from view. The far side of the river was dark as well.

McConkey’s Ferry
11:00
P.M.
, December 25, 1776

A frigid wind blew in through the open doorway.

“General, I think it is time for you to cross the river.”

Stirred from his thoughts, Washington looked up. If not for the terrible stress of the moment, he might have offered a gibe in reply. Colonel Knox, all three hundred pounds of him, stood in the doorway looking like a drowned rat. In the few seconds he had been standing there, water was already puddling around his feet. His tricornered hat was bent down by the weight of sleet and ice it had accumulated, his wool coat hanging heavy and limp.

Washington felt a sense of guilt. He had tasked Colonel Knox with direct command of the crossing earlier in the day before any hint of the intensity of the storm that was now upon them. While he had been waiting here in the comfort of the home of the ferry operator, Knox had been out in the driving storm, shouting, cursing, directing the loading of each boat.

Washington stood up, beckoning toward the fireplace.

“For heaven’s sake man, take a few minutes to warm yourself.” Knox accepted the offer without hesitation. He extended his hands to the glowing flames, rubbing them vigorously.

Washington came up to Knox’s side and offered him the cup of coffee he had been sipping. Knox eagerly took it, draining it down in two short gulps. Washington took the cup back and handed it to Billy Lee, who went to refill it.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Knox began. His voice was quavering a bit, not from nervousness, but from the cold. “We are far behind schedule.”

“I know,” Washington replied. There was no reproach in his voice though for the last hour, while waiting for word that he should cross, every few minutes he had checked the time. According to the elaborate schedule he had laid out in writing for this attack, they were now nearly three hours behind.