The Proud and the Free

by Howard Fast

  Then there was a roar, and we stamped our muskets on the frozen ground, so that the thud, thud, thud of two and a half thousand guns echoed through the village and across the valley. Jack Maloney stood beside me, and he put his arm about me, tight as a steel vise, and he bent his head to hide the tears as they flowed, and he whispered to me:

  Ah, Jesus Christ, Jamie, we have been given a moment of opportunity and a sight of glory, and we failed them.

  I saw the Jew Levy weeping, the strange little man of his own council and his own peace whom I had hated two years for his being a heathen Jew, and then loved for three years for his being a patient man who never raised his voice or lost his temper or had anything but a gentle word for a man in pain – but knew him not ever, not in two or five years; and the big black man Holt wept, and old Lawrence Scottsboro wept, since his moment was past and finished. So I knew then that what Jack Maloney said was right and true, that we had been given a moment of opportunity and a glimpse of glory, and we had failed because we knew no better way of things than the gentry could offer.

  We still have our strength, said Billy Bowzar, when the stamping of the muskets had finished, and we must use it well and wisely. We cannot remain as an army and have our own officers out of our own ranks, and we will not remain under the officers we cast out. Therefore, they have agreed to discharge every man with more than three years’ service, which means the greater part of the Line. The rest will be formed into new regiments, perhaps in this Line, perhaps in another – and this they must do. I would to God that there was a way to hold the Line together, but there is no way. A thousand men have sworn that they will never serve their officers again, and we know of no way they can serve this Committee other than to peacefully go their ways. So that is it; yet we have proved something. We have proved that we, by ourselves, can make ourselves into a better army than whips and canes ever made of us. Someday, other men will remember that. For my own, I will stay with what is left of the Line, for that is the way I feel. I don’t put this as a matter for anyone else’s conscience, only for mine. Therefore, we will break camp in the morning and we will march to Trenton, where we will disband.

  That was it, or something like that; for I cannot recall all of this exactly, and it was a long time ago, and I have no journals but only the pictures that were engraved on my mind. I have many pictures, but the clearest are of winter afternoons when the foreign brigades stood to square parade with the sere, cold sky overhead, with the old banners blowing in the wind, and with the drummer boys beating a roll, their little hands wrapped in pieces of wool, their fingers blue with the cold. And rather than the important it is the unimportant that lingers; so that in the moment when Billy Bowzar finished talking, I saw one of the drummer lads whose name was Harold McClintock bawling like a child – which he was, for he was only thirteen years old and no larger than a boy of ten would be these days – with his blue lips and his blue fingers and his skinny, sunken chest; and I wondered what would become of him and all of those lads who had been picked up here and there along the way in the miles we marched, and taught to beat a drum or blow a fife. Those things I wondered about – and what would become of the blowzy or worn women who had followed us here and there and everywhere; and where would the big Bantu black men go, who spoke hardly any English at all but were runaway slaves from the tobacco fields in the Southland; and what of old Lawrence Scottsboro who knew nothing but soldiering? What of the Poles whom we picked up in York city in ’76 when the Polish brigade was shot to shreds, and what of all of us, of all of us?

  But it may be that those are partly thoughts of the years afterwards and not of the moment. At the moment, I was one of them – the only difference being that I had some place to go to – and I made up my mind that I would go back to York village in Pennsylvania and to the manse of Jacob Bracken.

  So after some time it was sounded to break ranks, and the sergeants blew their whistles, and the men crowded around Billy Bowzar whom they loved. But I got out of it, and walked away by myself; I was not in a mood for farewells and I did not know, then, that we would come together again soon enough.

  We marched to Trenton, where we were mustered out. I could tell of that, yet it was without particular incident, and we were not what we were once, the Pennsylvania Line of old. We were nothing at all now, except men of many tongues and ways of speech, ragged and aimless. We stood by the riverbank and watched our cannon loaded onto barges which carried them away to Philadelphia. We saw the Line dissolve like sand washed away, and it was done. Each went his own way, and to some of them we said good-by and farewell forever; and there was many a man there I never laid eyes on again. But there were others I saw soon enough, for it was not easy to break the bond and the habit of what we had been for so long; and of that I will tell in due time.

  But now we said our good-bys, and Jack Maloney and myself together walked off down the road to Philadelphia. He had no place in particular to go; and for my part, the road to York ran through Philadelphia. We turned once to look at Trenton and the shrunken encampment that remained there, and then we went on. We were no more soldiers; we were discharged; we were free; but the taste wasn’t sweet. We had no money and no future in any particular, and what we owned in the world we carried on our backs – our old knapsacks, our knives, our flint boxes. We had a piece of bacon, a pound of corn meal and a pinch of salt. These were the rations we had drawn, with an oath to go with them, from the plump, healthy commissary sent up by the Congress. We each of us had been given a threadbare blanket, and we had odds and ends of rags that we had held onto; in my knapsack was the banner of the 11th Regiment, which I had folded up and taken for myself, partly for sentimental reasons and partly because I considered its usefulness as a scarf in the cold weather. So we were off on our own, I myself a tall, skinny, rawboned lad, Maloney a foot shorter – Handsome Jack Maloney, as we had called him once.

  Two days we were on foot to Philadelphia, and it was a blessing that this was a mild winter, and not the terror of cold and ice we had known three years before at Valley Forge. Always the snow clouds hung in the east and the north, but the snow did not fall until the church towers of Philadelphia were already in sight, and the night in between we spent on the roadside with a good fire to warm us. Altogether, it was not bad. The road was fairly empty, except for occasional groups like ourselves, out of the Line and drifting toward the city without any certain purpose or intent. The only incident worth recalling happened when a patrol of the Light Horse came trotting along. We stood our ground – perhaps foolishly – and when they saw that we were out of the Line and without guns, they gave us a taste of their whips as they cantered past. Well, we had taken the whips of such men often enough, and we rubbed our faces and went on.

  So we reached Philadelphia with a wet snow falling, tired, chilled and dispirited, and walked through the streets and saw the cheerful, bright-lit windows, the citizens hurrying to be home to the warmth of their firesides; and we smelled the food cooking and saw, through the windows, the children laughing as they went to dinner, the families gathering together with great certainty that all was right in the world. We saw the shape and heard the sound of something we had never known, and the misery of that winter night made it all the more poignant. And it was no pleasure to have citizens cross a street rather than pass two men of the Line – the same Line which had again and again made a barrier of its bayonets between this city and the enemy. Right or wrong, we had given five years of our lives to the war, and those five years the Philadelphian citizens had spent secure and comfortable.

  So you see, said Jack Maloney, what it is to be discharged and a soldier of the Continentals.

  Which is why, I nodded, feeling the icy water in my thin boots, so many come back to the whip and the cane. There are worse things than a whip and a cane.

  Far worse, Jamie, for here I am just like a dog without a master. Here I am in the cold, wet snow with houses all around me, but to them in the houses I am a fearful thing. Have you an
y money, Jamie, forgive me for asking you again?

  None.

  Not even a copper penny?

  Not even a copper penny, I said.

  Well, said Maloney, kicking the slush out of his path, here we are at the great Carpenters’ Hall, where fine words were said and fine documents were signed; and I have two hundred dollars of Continental paper in my sack, so let’s get them out, Jamie, and eat and drink, and then we’ll render in payment what was paid to us – if you are game.

  Game I am, I answered him.

  So we stopped in the square, rooted in his knapsack, got out the paper, stuffed our pockets with it, and went straightaway to Josef Hegel’s Coffee House, where there was light and warmth and merriment, and all the other things cold, hungry men desire. Hegel’s inn, called the Red Cock, two squares from Carpenters’ Hall, was not the best place in the town but by no means the worst, which meant that while you didn’t encounter the great merchants, neither did you encounter the great thieves; and Hegel closed his doors to street doxies, peddlers, cripples, beggars, if not to footpads, pimps and purse-lifters. It was one of those in-between places where a soldier could go if he had some hard money in his pants, and as we remembered it, there was a good piece of roast meat and good beer and good rum. We had gone there first after the occupation in ’78, when we came into Philadelphia as liberators of a town which to a large degree, recognizing the difference between the golden pound and the paper dollar, did not particularly desire to be liberated; and we had come in hard and bitter, and the town was wide open for us in an unvirtuous display of virtue, whereby the women proved their loyalty and there was free beer in every tavern. The welcome had cooled since then, but we had not expected something so chilly as what met us when we turned back the door of the Red Cock, which invited all comers so merrily with its diamond-shaped panes of colored glass.

  Well, there was merriment within all right, and the proper smells and the proper sounds, but as we stood, in the little hallway eyes were averted from us, and Josef himself came over, frowning and thinking of the neatest way to turn us out into the bleak wet of a night that had already changed to rain.

  Innkeepers, said Jack Maloney, are cut of a mold, by God.

  To which I answered that among the few pieces of wisdom I had inherited from my poor father was something to the effect of the selling of food and the other sustenance of man’s soul and belly putting the seller apart from the race.

  An evil practice, which gives rise to fat, dirty men.

  The fat man was upon us, head to foot in his apron; and I thought, this is my own true punishment, for the ghost of Jacob Hyer has arisen against me! This man had a pear-shaped face, little pig eyes of pale china-blue, and an enormous chin which swept, layer by layer, down onto his chest, for all the world like a majestic beard.

  No soldiers, he said, short and sweet and to the point.

  You buggerin’ randy reaver!

  What’s that?

  Scots, I said smoothly. And what in hell is wrong with you, Josef Hegel? Is this true German hospitality, that I hear so much of?

  No soldiers, he said again. That’s that.

  Like hell it is, I answered – holding back little Jack Maloney, for I felt the little man begin to shake with anger – Just look at us again. I am Jamie Stuart and this is Jack Maloney, and in our time we spent a pretty penny on your lousy rum. Do you think you’re going to turn two soldiers of the Line, two sergeants, mind you, out into that miserable cold rain? Guess again … dropping my voice … for we’ll dance a pretty jig around your place. Now let us sit down quiet, and that will be that.

  You got any money? he wanted to know.

  I did quick arithmetic and answered him, To the face value of five guineas.

  Show it, he said.

  Now I will like hell. Sit us down, or – I swear to God – we will take this place apart and break it into little pieces.

  Don’t shout, he said. Now, all right. Just come with me.

  And he took us to a corner through the hard and unfeeling eyes of his guests, who shrank away from two dirty and soaking men in overalls, swearing all the while under his breath at the various curses that plagued him – dirty, worthless soldiers being the first and foremost among them.

  What will you have? he asked ungraciously, as we slipped off our knapsacks and sat down.

  For each, a noggin of rum and a cut of that lovely meat on your flame.

  The meat comes dear.

  Well, we are great ones for dear things, so fetch it!

  And when he left, Jack Maloney leaned back, sighed, grinned happily and observed that we would probably spend the night in jail, but that it would be worth it. He brought the rum and we took the first hot gulp of it down on our empty stomachs. The second drink went smoother, but already I could feel my nerves tingling. It was a long time since I had tasted rum, especially this thick, brown, syrupy stuff that was better than the best wine of Europe, to my way of thinking … especially since I was something of a connoisseur of rum and totally ignorant of the best wine of Europe.

  So you see, Jamie, said Jack Maloney, when we had finished the meat on our plates and wiped up the gravy with good white bread – the kind of bread I had not tasted in at least twelve months, good white flour bread instead of the miserable corn pan we ate in the Line – So you see, Jamie, said Jack Maloney, what a queer thing this matter of life is. We have in our pockets two hundred dollars of paper, stamped with the name of the Congress and issued out to us as pay at one time, but since it is not worth the paper it was printed upon, we are thieves and sit here eating stolen meat and drink with a stolen roof over our heads. But you and me – who were a part of the Committee of Sergeants just a while ago – now we are despised, because we wear overalls and carry sacks. But on the other hand, Jamie, those men who remained by the fireside, blessings fall upon them, like little snowflakes from the heavens. Why are we accursed, Jamie Stuart? Is freedom a sickness?

  A rare sickness, I answered slyly, my head light and airy. Nor catching at all, like the pox.

  Nor catching, agreed Jack Maloney, and added: Except at times. Except at times, Jamie.… Except at times, he told the barmaid who had come beside us, putting his arm around her and smiling into her face.

  Now what is? she wanted to know.

  A sickness like the pox. Now bring us some rum, darling, a little rum. Ye do not hate soldiers?

  Not when they look like you, little man, she smiled; and he pinched her behind and she slapped his face and went off with the noggins.

  Jamie, Jamie, said Jack Maloney, Jamie, my lad, I am filled with sorrow at myself, for I am just a lonely man with no knowledge of anything but killing, and even that trade is gone. Pride is for the gentry, Jamie – we should not touch it. Pride brings us down. A man falleth with pride. I envy my good comrade, Billy Bowzar, who remained a soldier, which is all that any of us are good for. Will I find me a good, sweet woman someday, Jamie, will I now? And peace? Will I find me contentment, Jamie?

  And he stared at me earnestly and drunkenly, his eyes wet with tears for his own sorry fate, his thin-featured, handsome face bemused and inquiring. And as the barmaid returned with our rum, he sang:

  In London Town, in London Town,

  The lassies are so fair,

  That I who wandered off so far

  Am sooth in deep despair.

  His voice was high and sweet, but it carried; and eyes turned toward us, and a party of men at a table nearby regarded us with little love and much disgust. Their conversation turned on us, and they spoke, among other things, of the dirty, drunken mutineers of the Pennsylvania Line. Jack Maloney heard them, stopped singing, eyed them for a moment, and then rose up, mug in hand, and walked over to them.

  I beg your pardon, he said politely.

  They looked him up and down. They were well-dressed, well-fleshed, sober men, sitting over their supper and beer; they were shopkeepers or small traders of some sort.

  I drink to the foreign brigades, blessed be
their memory for ever and ever, said Jack Maloney.

  Ha!

  What does that mean, sir? asked Jack Maloney.

  Gentility had overcome him, which he had absorbed from the years he served his British masters, and there he stood by the table like the very soul of politeness, delicate and small and very handsome indeed, as only he could be in his broken canvas-topped boots, his big, wet, stained overalls, his coat thrown open, his ragged mockery of a vest, and the old rag he wore around his neck with all the elegance of a ruff. He had raised his brows with solicitude, wrinkling his small, well-shaped nose – and one would take him for the least dangerous little man in the world, which he was not. So I reached out and wrapped my hand around the heavy pewter candlestick that stood on our table, and lay there against the table that way, watching and listening, too drunk to mind what happened now, too unhappy to raise a finger to prevent it.

  Ha! It came again.

  Shall I take that as an insult, an observation upon the brigades?

  Get out of here, you damned, dirty deserter, said one of the men.

  Deserter – deserter? asked Jack Maloney. Why? he said gently. Why are we dirty too … he inquired … unless because we tended to the war while you tended to other things? Five years I have been in the old Pennsylvania Line, gentlemen, and it ill becomes you, I think, to speak so poorly of me. Yes, even if I was a deserter right now – added Jack Maloney – for a man gets a bellyful of fighting and dying and hungering and the cold and the misery and the wet winter nights, and of all those things which you know so little.… So apologize, if you will.