To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (8 page)

Two years, a lifetime ago. He had learned a lot in the last five months, though. Drinking rum was one of the things he had learned, and though he would die before admitting it, especially now, he had learned how to run with the best of them.

He took a deep swallow of the rum, its warmth bursting through him, stilling the trembling from the cold and fever. He handed the canteen to Peter, who took a swallow as well and handed it back to the sergeant.

“I’m Howard, Sergeant Howard.” The three shook hands.

“You really Jersey militia?”

Jonathan braced slightly, wondering if the friend of the moment might turn.

He nodded.

“No bother,” Howard replied. “At least you two lads have stuck with it.”

“A lot more of us,” Peter ventured. “We were down with General Ewing until yesterday on the other side of the river from Trenton. We got six hundred or more.”

Howard said nothing, and Jonathan knew it was a bit of a cover. When the call had gone out in the summer, a thousand or more had answered just from Burlington and Salem Counties alone. What a time that had been, the march from Trenton up to New York. They had been feted at every village and town along the way. Cheered, even kissed by more than a few girls. No uniforms like the men of the regular line, but he had felt cocky enough in a fine dark gray linsey-woolsey hunting frock and broad brimmed hat, fowling piece on his shoulder. Though his parents had stood firmly against him and James going off to the war, they had at least made sure their boys were dressed for it, and each had a haversack packed with smoked ham, dried fruit, and even coffee beans.

Those had been wonderful, exciting days, even though, as they reached the broad Hudson and gazed in wonder at New York, the city across the river with well nigh on to thirty thousand living there, the British fleet already was at anchor in the outer harbor.

They had laughed then at the sight of the ships, pointing out to each other the fortifications that lined both banks of the inner harbor that would surely smash the fleet to pieces if it ever dared to venture in.

The laughter had soon died away and was stilled forever at Brooklyn. He had had his own moment of terror when a British column scaled the heights of the Palisades and maneuvered to take Fort Lee. He, along with the rest of his comrades, had fled before the enemy was even in sight and thus had started what some derisively called the Jersey Foot Races. The British light cavalry and Hessians had herded the demoralized army completely out of the state.

James. He did not like to think of his brother.

The rum had gone to his head. After the long cold day outside, the warmth within the barn suddenly felt hot, his knees going weak, and for a moment he feared he would faint.

Sighing, he leaned against Peter, who helped him a few feet to the corner of a stall. The floor was covered with a splattering of cow manure,
but he didn’t care. There was enough space to sit down. Sergeant Howard came over and squatted down beside them.

“So you boys are the guides?”

“We grew up in Trenton,” Peter announced. “General Ewing asked for volunteers who lived there, so Jonathan and me stepped forward. We were told to come up here. It was a bit of a hike, and damned cold.”

“You could’ve dodged off once out of sight,” Howard said. “Good for you, sticking with it.”

“We’re not giving up,” Jonathan announced, trying to sound manly even as he trembled.

“Your families live there? In Trenton?”

“My family owns a farm, a mile or so east, but I’ve hunted the fields all around there, along with Jonathan here. His family, they’re regular merchants. Own a store and everything.”

“What kind of store?”

“Dry goods and leather from a tannery we own,” Jonathan said softly.

“So your family’s there now?”

Jonathan nodded.

“You see ’em when we retreated through the town?”

He looked at the sergeant and shook his head.

“Haven’t seen my family since I joined up.”

There was more than a wistful tone in his voice. Looking closely, Jonathan could see that the sergeant was an older man, in his thirties at least, maybe forties.

“Wife and four children in Philadelphia,” he sighed. “At least, last I heard.”

He gazed off.

“Last I heard,” he said again. “I don’t know if they’re still there or took off. Word is half the city emptied out when Congress fled. The ones that stayed, most of them are Tories just waiting for us to be finished off.”

“Same in Trenton,” Peter replied bitterly.

Jonathan shifted uncomfortably.

Peter gave him a sidelong glance. He fumbled a bit and lowered his head. “At least that’s what I heard.”

Howard gazed at them.

“Guess it will be hard on you two, guiding us in to the attack. I mean, friends, neighbors, kin in the way.”

“It’s what we volunteered for,” Jonathan said. The bitterness in his voice was evident. “We have to beat the British to be free, and we are going to.”

He slouched lower against the wall and pulled his damp cape, actually just a tattered worn blanket, in tight around his body. Sergeant Howard drew back, as if sensing that a raw nerve had been touched.

Sitting there Jonathan studied his feet. The shoes his parents had given him had disintegrated and rotted off long ago, even though as tanners his parents had made sure that James and he had shoes of the finest leather, with even an extra pair tucked into their packs. He had given the second pair to Peter, an act of pity, and now both of them were barefoot, feet encased in strips of burlap, toes sticking out, swollen, cracked, filthy.

He had given up trying to patch his trousers. The frayed ends rose over his ankles, both knees sticking out, the thighs of the pants no longer white but black. As to his backside he was ashamed that only the blanket covered that nakedness. His hat did little to keep out the rain, the heavy felt long since matted out, the crown split open for several inches along a crease.

This is what I volunteered for, he realized. The romance of it was long gone. The girls who had so eagerly kissed him as he proudly marched out of Trenton would most likely recoil with disgust if they saw and smelled him now. Or, worse yet, count him a fool. So many others had stayed, as his parents had begged him to do on the day when what was left of the army passed through Trenton; they were safe at home, well fed, warm, and offered the protection of a forgiving and benevolent king.

“Damn my brothers,” he whispered softly. “Damn all of them.”

He thought again of what he might do when this army took Trenton back, as surely it must. He remembered far too clearly what James had done and what he suspected his other brother Allen might now be doing. When the army had retreated through Trenton three weeks ago, he deliberately avoided going to his house out of fear of what he might discover. But after this? After all this if we survive the night? He would not back down this time.

His parents? They had professed leanings for the patriots in the heady days of summer when the Declaration had been read from the steps of their church. But now? Hessians were most likely quartered in their home and store, and without a doubt his father, who had come to this land forty years ago and could still speak Dutch and even some German, was most likely drinking a Christmas toast with them at this very moment.

Another seizure of coughing took him. Leaning forward, he gasped for air, Peter bracing him, slapping him on the back as if that would actually help to clear his lungs.

He coughed up more phlegm and fell back against the wall of the stall, shivering, and then feeling hot. Peter, more a brother to him now than anyone else in this world, looked at him with concern.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, forcing a smile.

He closed his eyes, letting his thoughts drift back to summer, the warmth. Being the youngest and indulged by his mother he had been able to slip off from chores, most especially the noisome tasks at the tannery, his mother arguing that her boys were now of the upper class, as was she, and they did not need to stink of curing leather. She had dreams that he would have started this autumn at the college up in Princeton, for he could already read Latin and even some Greek. Even though it was a Presbyterian college and they were Lutherans, she had dreamed of her youngest being educated——a minister, perhaps, or a lawyer.

He smiled at the thought. Now I’m a private, dressed in rags. If we fail tonight and I’m taken alive, I’ll rot in one of the prison hulks
anchored in the East River off of Brooklyn. So much for my Latin and Greek.

And yet no regrets. If anything, his heart was even more hardened to see it through.

The coughing spasm having passed, he opened his eyes. It was a bit brighter in the barn; someone had managed to strike a flame, lanterns had been found, a few men were fishing out stubs of candles. Sergeant Howard actually looked somewhat absurd, holding his cupped hands over a candle set atop the wall of the barn stall, rubbing them over the tiny flame, trying to get the chill out.

Jonathan fumbled under his blanket in what was left of the once smart-looking hunting frock; underneath he still had something of an actual linen shirt, not washed, though, in months, and, if washed, would most likely crumble into rags. He found his Bible, tucked down near his belt, and pulled it out. By the pale light of the candle he could have made out some of the words, the book easily opening to the Ninety-first Psalm. He didn’t actually need to read it; he knew it by heart, could even say a few lines of it in Greek. Howard, watching him, moved his hands so as not to block the flickering candlelight.

Folded over and tucked into the Bible were a few sheets of paper, stitched together, that he was actually looking for, and he pulled them out. He held them close to his face, the words hard to see by the faint light and harder to read when a bout of shivering struck him, the pamphlet trembling like a leaf on a wind-swept tree.

Outside, the wind was howling, rattling some loose boards, the candle flame nearly going out. Howard cupped his hands around it again to protect it until the gust had passed. As the wind died away, Jonathan could hear the hard pelting of sleet and freezing rain against the side of the barn.

“What you got there?” Howard asked.

“Thomas Paine, he just wrote it.”

At the mention of the name Thomas Paine, those around him looked in his direction.

“You got that new pamphlet by Paine?” someone asked. He looked up. It was one of the Marylanders.

“Yup. They passed out a few of them with my battalion yesterday.”

“Major Bartlett got a copy, he read a bit of it to us earlier,” the Marylander announced. “And that’s the same thing?”

Jonathan nodded.

The Marylander turned.

“You men, let’s have some quiet here.”

“What the hell for?” came a reply.

“That boy from Jersey, he’s got the new pamphlet by Tom Paine.”

“Give it over here, Jersey.”

It was the Maryland lieutenant.

Jonathan rose to his feet and shook his head.

“No, sir, it’s mine.”

The lieutenant gazed at him as if judging what to do with the defiance of this militiaman, from New Jersey no less, and then turned back.

“Barry, fetch that lantern over here.”

A moment later the lieutenant was by Jonathan’s side, holding the lantern high, its bright light illuminating the tattered and water-stained pamphlet.

“Go ahead, Jersey. Read it.”

“These are . . .” Another coughing spasm hit. Embarrassed, he leaned over, gasping, coughing up more phlegm.

“Can you read it?” the lieutenant asked, as Jonathan stood up. There was no insult in his voice. It was a simple question.

“I was camped beside him up in Newark the night he started to write this,” Jonathan announced, his voice filled with emotion. “I can read it.”

The lieutenant fell silent. All around him were silent. The only thing that could keep him from being heard was the howling of the gale outside, sweeping across the ice-choked Delaware, carrying with it the distant sound of men laboring to load a cannon on one of the boats, other men struggling with the lead of a horse that had
slipped off the dock into the freezing water and was now crying out pitifully.

He held the pamphlet tight, but strangely, he no longer even needed to read it. It was in his heart and soul.

“
The Crisis,
by Thomas Paine,” he began, trying to hold back his emotions. “Number one.”

“These are the times that try men’s souls . . .”

Newark, New Jersey
November 24, 1776

Rain. Blinding sheets of rain lashed down from an angry heaven.

A chilled river of it was coursing through the thin, worn fabric of his tent, trickling down his neck, and, even worse, splashing on the page of foolscap he was trying to write on, smearing the first lines.

“Damn it all to hell,” he snapped, scooping up the soggy sheet of paper from the slab of wood he had been writing on, crumpling it and throwing it to the muddy ground.

Thomas Paine, more than a little drunk on this disgusting November evening, pushed his “writing desk,” off his knees, stood up, and drove the sheet of paper into the mud with the heel of his boot.