by Howard Fast
A roll call—the muskets answer, each one an individual. Charley has a musket with a silver-inlaid stock, the work of Paul Revere. Clark’s is a French piece. There are three long-barrelled Valley-country muskets.
I say to Ely: “The rain has stopped.”
“I know,” Ely answers softly. He is looking at the muskets, too. His big grey head is bent over.
He comes over to me and sits down. He says: “Best not to keep the women here tonight.”
“I’ll stay here,” she says. not moving from her place by Charley’s bed.
I nod to my woman, and she goes to the door.
“Tell them you’re Allen Hale’s woman. They’ll keep you.”
She’s anxious to go. After she’s gone, small as the dugout is, it seems curiously empty.
“Ely,” I say, “there were three hundred of us come out of the Valley country.”
“I know.”
“Will any go back?”
The next day we buried Charley Green. We laid him in the hillside, just away from the abatis. We put a wooden cross as a marker on his grave. We laid him where he could see the blue hills, off to Philadelphia.
XIX
JOB ANDREWS, a Massachusetts man, crying for us to come and see. He’s run up the hillside, laughing like a child. We make a circle round him, and he shows us what he has, a delicate purple flower.
“The first,” he says. “A winter flower.”
It goes from hand to hand until it falls to pieces. Men hold it close to their noses, trying to sniff its perfume. We handle it tenderly.
“Only one,” Job says.
“More later.”
“I seen these blossoms come in great banks.”
We go to the grand parade under a blue sky that’s rolling with clouds. The wind out of the west is cool and clean, and brings a fragrance of spring. We are without our ragged greatcoats.
The brigades form, and the drums beat out their roll. Steuben rides onto the field, and we smile. We’ve found a man to love, a man like ourselves, coarse, hard, living with the earth, but patient and gentle as a woman.
He dismounts and walks toward the brigades. He has mastered a broken English, which he delights in using.
“Mine children,” he says.
We laugh. He’s taught us to laugh again. We’re a few hundred broken soldiers, but he respects us. It’s a new thing with us.
“Mine children—ve learn to march dis day. Ja—ve learn to march vere ve vant, take vat ve vant. Vat der British have, ve take—ja?”
We imitate him. “Ya—ya, Baron.”
We march back and forth, across the grand parade. We have learned to lift our feet, snap them forward in the Prussian fashion. We have learned to march in close order, ten men moving as one. We have learned about bayonets.
He pleads with us: “Mine children—you vill not use der bayonets to cook food? Please. You vill clean der bayonets?”
He tells us to sit down. The staff officers protest. They tell him that he is mad. These men are beasts—and he is destroying what discipline is left in the army. Men on parade do not sit down.
He doesn’t understand, and he shakes his head. “But a democratic country—I thought things would be different,” he says in German.
“We are at war, Baron.”
“I know, I know—I’ve seen a little of war. But my own way. Let them sit down.”
We sprawl about, watching him curiously. He says: “I make mit der bayonet vat you call a show—Ja? You vill vatch.” He walks through the brigades, seeking a musket and bayonet to suit him. As he walks, his rage mounts. Musket after musket, he examines and throws aside in disgust. Finally, he cries:
“Vat pigs—vat svine! Vy did I come to dis accursed country—to dis land of peasants?” He stamps back and forth in a fury of rage, and we watch him without heat. The rage will cool. We know enough of rage. We were penned up like beasts for a winter; some of us went mad.
He cools. He selects a musket and bayonet, and goes out before us. He salutes us, says:
“Vatch careful, mine children.”
A short, fat man, he moves awkwardly as he goes through the drill. Beyond him, a cluster of our officers observe with expressions of mingled amusement and resentment. Steuben walks back, whirls, and runs toward us with fixed bayonet presented. He thrusts at the air, wrenches, and plucks back the bayonet.
“As dis, ja? Der British are clumsy fools—ja? Der virst—brezent, barry—t’rust!” He lunges again. We roar with laughter. We call out:
“More, Baron!”
“Give us one for General Howe, Baron!”
“Give us the whole thing—over again, Baron!”
He doesn’t resent our laughter. He joins in himself, laughing and panting at the same time.
“Now—mine children, mit all. Attention!”
The brigades form. The endless drill goes on again: present bayonets, four steps and lunge. Parry, four steps and lunge. We march up and down the parade. We march endlessly, eternally, until our heads are whirling. We lunge at the air, again and again, long lines of tattered men.
Steuben is tireless. He seems to know only one thing—drill. Morning, noon, and night, he drills us. He comes up to the dugouts alone, examines our muskets. He tells us how to clean our bayonets, how to edge a musket-flint to make it spark, how to divide powder into the proper amounts to make a sure load.
He comes into our dugout once. It is toward evening, and we are resting from the drill, lying in our beds.
He enters, and we stumble to our feet. He says in German: “Be seated—I pray you. You understand German?”
We nod, and he looks round the dugout curiously.
“You lived here all winter?”
“All winter.”
He turns to our musket rack, and his lips move as he counts the guns. He says:
“Where are the rest of the men who live here?”
“They’re dead.”
He shakes his head, walks to the fire and stares into it. “I have seen some terrible things,” he mutters. “I have seen men suffer——”
The drills go on. The sky turns a shade of blue taken out of our dreams. The locust trees along the Schuylkill bud green. The brown dirt on Charley Green’s grave sends up little shoots of growing things.
XX
I AM OUT with Ely on sentry duty—a cool, clear night. We meet each other and walk slowly toward Charley’s grave. I bend over and pick a bit of grass from it.
I hold it out to Ely. He takes it in his hand and stands there looking at it.
“I had in mind that Charley would be with us,” I say. “I had no thought that he would die …”
Ely says, thoughtfully: “There will never be another winter like this. When you were born, Allen, I stood outside your house with your father. It was a bitter, sad thing to hear your mother scream. All night long, she screamed out in pain. You were born in the morning.”
I listen; it comes to me that Ely is an old man, part of a past.
“There’ll be something out of this winter, Allen—something from our suffering. I don’t know what, I’m not a learned man. But we’ve given birth—do you understand?”
“I don’t know——”
“You’re only a boy, Allen. You’re making something for yourself. It’s not for Jacob or me.”
“What, Ely?”
“A way of life—a new world for men. The Jew who came from Poland, a great distance, seeking it. The men who died——”
“For whom?” I demand. “They let us starve here, while they filled their fat bellies.”
“When your enlistment’s over, Allen, you’ll go back?”
I shrug.
“You’re looking for something. Allen. Only find it. It needs a strong man.”
I’m thinking, a man like Ely, a strong man to take things and hold them. I’m thinking of all who went—Moss, Kenton, Charley … My turn sooner or later.
I say to Ely: “God—I’m sick for home.”
H
e nods. “I know how that is, Allen.”
“You’ll come home with me, Ely?” I ask him eagerly. “You and Jacob—the three of us back to the Mohawk?” I take his hand.
“There’s too many died here, Allen,” he says, shaking his head.
“But why—why must we keep on? Ely, I’m afraid.”
He says, gently: “Go back, Allen. If you wish to go back—then go.”
We walk apart, and I turn again and again to watch the lean figure of Ely, Ely an old man already, Ely with a knowingness that frightens me because it’s away from me, out of my world.
The next day I go to General Wayne’s quarters. I try not to think of what I’m doing. I try not to think of how the green shoots are pushing themselves up through the dirt on Charley Green’s grave.
Wayne is sitting at a desk, writing, when the orderly brings me in. He glances up at me, and his brow puckers. I can see that he remembers me.
“What do you want, sir?” he asks me.
“I want to sign papers for re-enlistment.”
He stares at me. The orderly leaves me alone, and Wayne sits for what seems a long time, staring at me, looking at my torn, filthy clothes.
He says oddly: “Your name’s Allen Hale——”
“Yes, sir.”
“What regiment?”
“The Fourteenth Pennsylvania.”
He takes a paper from his desk, and looks at it thoughtfully. Then he says to me: “That girl you had with you when you deserted—you loved her?”
I don’t answer him; I am strangely aware of myself. I don’t want to speak of Bess; she is too close to me now; she will be closer.
“Why are you staying with the army?” Wayne asks.
I can’t tell him; I can’t put it into words to tell him.
“Haven’t you suffered enough?” Wayne demands, his voice rising.
“I haven’t suffered,” I say quietly. “Those who suffered are dead. I haven’t suffered.”
Wayne stands up and comes over to me. He holds out his hand, says: “You know me, sir.”
I take his hand.
I walk back to the dugouts slowly. As I climb the hill to where the Pennsylvania brigades are encamped, I notice the new grass. New grass—its color the faintest, purest yellow-green. Tiny blossoms of violet.
I come to the top of the hill and look round. A faint illusion of green all over the countryside, rolling hills, a blue sky almost near enough for you to reach up and feel of it.
I come into the dugout. I say to Ely: “I’ve been to Wayne’s quarters.”
“You’ll be going home soon?”
Jacob is watching me, curiously. His long, dark face has a trace of sadness on it. For once, the hard, inherent cruelty of his tight mouth has relaxed. He has the dignity of a silent king as he stands in the little dugout. It seems that into him—not into Ely or myself—has gone the force of all the men who died there. He stands there alone. There’s nothing to endure about Jacob: I see him going out in a magnificent flash of black fury; sooner or later, he’ll go that way. Now, as if he had suddenly realized himself, he’s alone. As much as on Washington’s, the force and weight of the revolution is upon his shoulders. The stiffness of his shoulders makes it all the more marked. All during the winter, those shoulders had never once bowed, never once moved from their tense, upright position. Then I see him as the Jew, and I realize for the first time how close together they were in force and understanding.
“I’m not going home,” I say. And dully: “I enlisted again—for a time of three years.”
Jacob shakes his head. It is the first time I have ever seen pity for any man in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Allen,” Ely says.
Jacob sits down on the edge of one of the beds. He’s terribly alone there—the double row of empty beds behind him. His eyes wander around the dugout slowly, from Ely to me—groping for others when he knows there are no others. His eyes come to rest on the musket rack, and it seems to me that he is counting the muskets.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ely says again, sadly. “It’s my fault.”
“There was nothing for me to go back to.”
“Your people, Allen—come spring planting, they’ll be watching for you. It’s on me, your enlistment—and my words that kept you here.”
I try to explain. And then, suddenly, I’m tired, and I don’t want to explain. I want to go outside and lie down in the sun. I say: “All that’s gone. None of us can go back, Ely.”
Jacob nods. “There will be war for years—God only knows how long.”
I go outside, feeling that I am leaving behind me two old men who are strangers. I feel bitter—sad. I’m left alone.
I walk through the trees, and find a little space of meadow where the sun beats through. I lie down there. The ground is cool, but not too cold. The sun is a beating pulse in my eyes.
I lie there for a long time, watching the small, bundled clouds drive through the sky. I think of Bess, not of a person who is dead, but of a woman I will meet again some day. I think a little sadly of the boy Allen, who despised her—but there is no feeling of hate or resentment in me, not for her nor for the boy I was and whom she loved.
XXI
WE SHAVE our beards. A great amount of hair going away. One man lies flat on his back while another shaves him. The knife scrapes and cuts the skin.
We bare our feet. Bandages fall apart as we unwrap them. Feet that are black knobs of filth. We bare our feet and walk gingerly—barefooted.
About two or three hundred of us lie naked along the Valley Creek—Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts men. We wash our clothes with sand and ashes, hang them on the trees to dry. All along, up and down the creek—a beggar’s wardrobe, tattered breeches, paper-thin coats. We roll over and over in the icy-cold water and then come out into the sun to dry. We can’t get enough of the sun. First it burns us red, blisters our backs; we turn brown slowly. We’ve become a cult of sun-worshippers. The cold is in our bones. We take long hours in the sun the way we’d take a tonic. The hot, salty sweat is good as it runs into our eyes and our mouths.
We sit on the bank, our feet dangling in the water, and scrub ourselves with curiosity. We pick the lice out of our hair. We investigate each part of our body as the winter accumulation of dirt disappears. We’re a curious lot—thin, bony, hollow-eyed. We curse the Virginia men goodnaturedly. The spring has washed away hatred, washed away the differences between the north and the south—the east and the west. We’ve suffered together for too long.
I wash Ely’s feet—and then he stares at them curiously. Somehow, they are healing. Long, raw scars are ingrained with dirt, but the bleeding has stopped. The poor, tortured flesh is knitting itself together once more. Soon the scabs will fall off. The dead white skin will be replaced with new flesh, and new blood will flow through the blue veins that stand out so sharp. He stares at his feet as if he had never seen them before. He takes a few steps through the water—then goes back to the bank and sits down. He attempts to say something to me, and his words choke up. He moves his feet back and forth, watching the water wash over his toes. Finally, he asks me:
“You’ll shave my beard, Allen? I’m longing to feel my face clean and smooth.”
He lies on his back while I shave him. It’s strange to watch his face emerge from under the whiskers. The wind is sighing through the trees, and dogwood blossoms fall over us.
I lie down for my turn. While the knife scrapes over my chin, I close my eyes. I feel the bite of the blade as Ely plucks at my whiskers. Every so often he dips the knife into the cold water to wash it. When it touches my face again, it is chilled and clean. Bit by bit, Ely removes my beard. The years drop from me. I’m a boy again. My skin is firm and clean and hairless. Ely’s fingers wander over my face, kneading what’s left of my beard to soften it, so that it will come off more easily. Under the lulling play of his fingers, I doze. When I open my eyes, he is finished, looking at me and nodding his head.
Later, we play in the water, lean white men, childish. We throw handfuls of water at each other, duck each other. We find deep holes where we can paddle round. We find two wooden buckets, and a couple of Massachusetts men appoint themselves a bucket squad. We line up and pass between them, and they douse us with water. It’s a rare treat, and we keep up until the Massachusetts men are dog-tired. Then we lie in the sun, drying ourselves, telling stories, exchanging the latest jokes about the British, about our officers and their wives.
We put on our tattered clothes and walk back bare-footed. We rub our feet into the lush, green grass. When we see flowers, we stoop over to pick them, and then stand and look at them. We put the flowers in our hair and prance round. We become pagans and children: we do foolish things and we are not ashamed.
In between drills, we lie out in the sun. That, we can’t get enough of. Our bodies are like sponges. As much sun as we soak in, there is always need for more. We lie about, talking, laughing, rolling dice: but we say little of the winter. It’s too near us.
The women try to make themselves pretty. There’s no whole dress or hat among them, but they fill their hair with blossoms. They parade back and forth—smiling at us. They even wash, and once we surprise a lot of them bathing in the creek. They try to hide their nakedness in the shallow water, and we stand on the bank laughing at them, like gangling boys. Finally, they seize their clothes and dash away. We chase them, laughing wildly, roll over in the woods, plaster wet bodies with dead leaves.
Recruits are coming into camp, along with food. A great wagon train from the north brings thousands of pounds of meat. The militia come and sign papers for three-month terms. We have no love for the militia; and for their part, they’re awed and a little afraid of the regulars. They stand around and watch us. On the parade, they blunder about, while we go through Steuben’s Prussian drills like well-trained troops.
Baron von Steuben is losing weight, but he delights in us the way a father would delight in his children. We’re his men. Half of the Pennsylvania line he knows by name.
We let the fire in our dugout go out. Ely stands in front of the empty fireplace, poking at the ashes with a stick. The door to the dugout is open, and a breeze from outside stirs the dry ashes. It is the afternoon, toward twilight, and the two of us are alone in the dugout. The two women are gone. They went after Charley died, and afterwards I saw Anna with a Massachusetts man. It doesn’t matter.