Conceived in Liberty

by Howard Fast

  “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. A
ll 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.

  The brigades were sympathetic towards Kenton. No one of us had any love for McLane’s raiders. They foraged food, but we saw little enough of it. The brigades were muttering and talking among themselves. They remembered the time Kenton had slain the two deer.

  I thought of myself up there with Kenton, three gibbets instead of one. What sort of fear was in Kenton’s heart? How could he stand like that—and bear it?

  I thought he was looking at me. Then I realized that the sun in his eyes would show him only dark figures of men coming out of the glare on the snow.

  I thought of Charley, who would have died instead. Only I was always outside of it. Never had it occurred to either of them that I should be the one to die. I had known it. The moment Washington agreed to Hamilton’s request, I had known that it would not be I; I had known that I would live.

  I thought of how there had been no word of hate out of Kenton’s mouth, no word of resentment, only regret for something he had done to me when we were both children, something I had forgotten already. I thought of the Kenton I had always known; this man——

  “He’s godlike,” I said to Ely.

  Ely was crying, unashamed. It was the first time I had ever seen tears in Ely’s eyes.

  The brigades were muttering with resentment. “Let him live—he’s a fair good man—he’s guilty of no crime——”

  Muller walked up to Kenton, tore a piece of cloth from his ragged coat, turned on his heel and walked away. The act signified the defacing of a uniform. But Kenton wore no uniform. There had never been a uniform for any man in the Continental army. The uniform business was a conceit of the Congress and the officers. Now, for the first time, I took a pride in our rags, a great pride in the fact that we were men together, no soldiers, only men in our own right—beggars with guns.

  Watching Kenton, watching Muller striding away smugly, watching the men on either side of me, I had a picture of the revolution as coming from us, part of us, part of the awful resentment against forces that destroyed man’s pride in himself. Part of men born into a new world.

  It rose like the growl from the brigades, a growl of dumb fury and hate. I wonder whether Muller saw it—saw a new world in us, a world groping blindly to find itself. Kenton saw it; I swear to God that Kenton saw it. I swear to God that Kenton died with that vision in his eyes.

  I cried to Ely: “He’ll not hang! We’ll take him back!”

  A moment the brigades surged forward, a moment during which Wayne’s ringing voice shouted:

  “Brigades attention!”

  We fell back, men in arms and in rank. We fell back into the years of war that stretched before us, how many years no man there knew.

  They stood him on the scaffold. When they wanted to blindfold him, he shook his head. He stood bareheaded, the rope around his neck, his hair golden with sunlight. Then they shot the trap, and Kenton died.

  There was a great sigh from the brigades. Men slumped visibly. Men stood with their heads hanging over, holding their muskets limply.

  “He’s dead,” I whispered.

  The drums beat out into the morning air. The brigades began to move. Wayne had become a figure of stone; he rode ahead and looked at no man.

  Jacob’s face was grey, his eyes black hollows.

  I said: “You bear him no hate, Jacob. Leave the hate for me. Hate me, Jacob—but not Kenton.”

  “I bear him no hate——”

  Ely muttered: “The love of a man who gives his life for a man——”

  We marched back to the dugouts. I went in, and Charley Green was waiting for me, his face flushed hot.

  “Kenton’s dead,” I told him.

  “How?—he wasn’t afraid?”

  “No. He was smiling.”

  Charley cried. He lay with his face in his hands, crying bitterly. I went to the fire, sat down close to the flames, and stared into them. I tried to get back what I had seen when Kenton went to the scaffold.

  XVI

  I SHAKE my head. The hand I hold the cup of water with trembles, spilling some of it. My hand is a frame of bone with yellow skin stretched over it.

  “I’ve seen a lot of fever,” Ely says. “It comes, goes, and leaves you weak. It leaves strange thoughts.”

  “How
many days have I been here, Ely?”

  “Six days——”

  I consider it thoughtfully—six days. Six days without food. Yet I’m alive. I say:

  “Have you ever thought, Ely, about a man’s lot after he’s died?”

  Ely shook his head. “I’m no religious man, Allen. It’s a thing for preachers.”

  “Kenton died for me. He’ll hold no hate for me?”

  “I’m not thinking he’ll hold any hate.”

  “You’ll stay by me, Ely?—When I go, you’ll hold me, Ely? I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll stay by you, Allen.”

  “You’re a great, good man, Ely. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.”

  Ely shakes his head. He wets a rag, wipes my face with it. He covers me. He sits by me, washing the heat from my face.

  I relapse into a stupor. The cold and heat alternate again. The fire in the dugout fills all the space taken by my eyes, a roaring blaze of fire that consumes me. I cry for Bess. I wake, sweating, and reach out desperately for her. The days and nights blend into the even smoke-filled grey of the dugout. The dugout is eternal; and we are men doomed to it.

  The doctor comes once more. The fever has broken itself, and I lie in bed, weak as a baby. Charley is sitting up already, a thin, wasted figure.

  The doctor is different, red-eyed, a straggling beard over his chin, thinner. His smock is dirty with blood. His voice has lost its sharp bite. He comes into the dugout, and Jacob helps him out of his coat. He shakes his head.

  “I’ll climb that damned hill no more. Doctor’s no good here. Let me rest.”

  He sits down by the fire and stretches his legs. He glances at Charley, then at me.

  “Both of you sane again,” he says. “I wouldn’t have thought it.”

  Charley laughs. “They’ll not pile me in the snow.”

  “Give them time. I’ve a thousand men in my hospital. Do you believe me? A thousand men in that shack—a full thousand men between the four walls. No room to walk, and it doesn’t matter if you walk on top of them. There’s no hell hereafter. Hell’s here. Hell’s in my hospital. A thousand men and no one of them will walk out of the place. Better that they don’t. It’s not a thing to remember. But the women live. God knows how, but they live and hold on. They won’t put the women in—to hell with the women. But the women live. Look at those two.”