by Howard Fast
I walk toward them. I walk on until I stand under the tree where they are.
“Who are you?” Washington asks.
I am laughing in spite of myself, laughing while my head bursts with pain. I answer:
“A deserter—a murderer. But Wayne made me a captain. The brave General Wayne made me a captain—to lead my men into hell. Do you know what hell is? I was there. I led my men into hell today. Ask Wayne. Ask him. He made me a captain.”
“Mad,” Washington mutters. “No wonder—the heat and what we’ve seen today.”
“I’m not mad,” I say calmly. “I know when a man is mad. I’m not mad—only tired and wanting to sleep.”
“Then go and sleep.”
“I’ll go and sleep,” I say.
I walk through the apple orchard, looking at the faces of men. I find Ely at last, lying near the stone wall. Even in the dark, I know him.
I bend over him and whisper: “Ely—it’s Allen Hale.”
The wound is in his breast. I try to fold his hands over it. I close his eyes. His face is not tired any more. His face is the peaceful face of a man who has given out of a great heart.
I lie down next to him. I whisper: “I’ll sleep now, Ely. I’m fair dying to sleep. You know how it is with me. You have a heart for understanding.”
Sleep comes slowly, but the hot pain in my head goes. I lie there, next to Ely—listening to the sighing of the wind through the trees of the orchard.
XXV
THE NEXT morning, I bury Ely. There is much burying to be done—British and Hessians and Americans. Most of the Americans are naked, and we wrap them in the green coats of the Hessians. It’s not good that a comrade should go into the earth naked. Stripped and dirty, the Hessians lie in a row. They go into a trench, and no stone marks their graves.
I bury Ely where he fell, in the apple orchard. Close to the stone wall, where there will be no ploughing. And when the sun is low, the wall will shade him. Grass grows greener in the shade, and the grass will grow over Ely’s grave.
The farmer who owns the orchard stands there watching us. A tall thin man, he curses under his breath and speaks of money to be paid for damage done. He stops his cursing to stare at his apple trees, stripped and shattered by the rain of shot. Then he begins to curse again, yelling:
“Bury them deep! I’ll turn them in my ploughing!”
Some of us look at him, and then he’s quiet. We haven’t washed; we are bloody, filthy figures, but victors …
I want a sword for Ely. A sword to place by his side, and regimental colours to cover his face. Our regiment is gone and there are no colours. Ely never wore a sword, but there are swords on the field.
I walk among the Fusiliers. They have not been buried yet, and some of them lie on their backs, their eyes open. Most of them are boys, and even in death they manage to look gallant in their red coats. I would pity them, but there is no pity in me for anything, not even for Ely.
I find a slim dress sword. I find a blue flag. Blue is a good colour, cool. I cover Ely with the flag, and the sword I place by his side. Dirt falls on the flag, and then there is a little mound to show where Ely lies. I mark the grave with a bayonet—a rusty, bent bayonet that is no use to anyone. It will stand for a little while.
Ely is dead. Jacob is dead.
I walk aimlessly. The field is death, but death doesn’t move me.
It is not so hot as yesterday. The sky has a few scudding clouds, that throw shadows along the ground. I sit down under a tree and stretch my legs out. A long rest …
A man comes over to me and stands waiting.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
“I can’t find my regiment, Captain.”
“Why do you call me Captain?”
“You led us yesterday.”
He stands waiting.
“Well?”
“You led my brigade.”
“That was yesterday.”
“Shall I report to you, Captain?”
“That was yesterday,” I whisper.
I go to the brook and wash. There are other men there—naked, rolling in the cool water. I lie in the water with them; I lie on my back and let the water ripple over my body. It is very cool and very pleasant. I watch the clouds tumbling across the sky.
There is talk about what we will do now, where we will go. They talk as if the war were over. The British have been defeated; France is our ally.
They talk of going home, and the talk makes me uneasy. There is no place for me to go, no life for me except this. What was my home once is a dream now; the reality is here—with the revolution.
I dress myself. No shirt; a pair of torn breeches and my musket.
I walk back to the orchard, and I see Wayne. He is sitting on the grass, and Steuben stands next to him. Wayne is talking eagerly and quickly, smiling, and Steuben, frowning, tries to follow his English.
I go up to them and stand waiting. Finally, Wayne looks at me; as he looks at me, I see that he remembers, and he smiles.
“Allen Hale,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
He nods at Steuben. “This is the man——”
In German, Steuben says: “You are a very brave man.”
I shake my head. The brave men are dead. I say to Wayne: “My brigade is gone; my regiment is disbanded.”
“Who disbanded them?”
I point to Ely’s grave.
Wayne rises and gives me his hand.
“You refused my hand once before,” he remembers.
I nod.
“Where are the rest of you—the New York men?”
“Dead, sir.”
He is silent for a while. Then he says: “I brevetted you captain. You commanded a brigade.”
“There is no longer a brigade, sir.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll have your rank confirmed.”
I nod, salute, and walk away. I pass Ely’s grave. Already, the bayonet has lost its grip in the soil. It will not stand long.
We paraded before we marched away. We lined up on the field of battle. Front and centre, there was the Pennsylvania line, militia mostly, but in every company of militia a few enlisted men who had been through the winter. But only a few.
We stood in our ranks with the hot sun over us, with green twigs in back of our ears, with our hot muskets in our hands. The generals reviewed us and praised us. The beggars were an army, standing on a victorious field. The beggars had proven their right to exist.
That is written.
Ely lies on the field of Monmouth, with Jacob. The others are at a place called Valley Forge.
In the summer, Valley Forge is green and lovely. In the winter it is never so cold as that winter—never so cold that the ground will freeze deep to where they lie.
A BIOGRAPHY OF
HOWARD FAST
Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.
Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.
Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the Amer
ican Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.
Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.
Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).
Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.
Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir Being Red, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the Bronx Home News. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."
A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM, Esquire, and Coronet. He also contributed scripts to Voice of America, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.
Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison."
Fast with his wife Bette and their two children, Jonathan and Rachel, in 1952. The family has a long history of literary achievement. Bette's father founded the Hudson County News Company. Jonathan Fast would go on to become a successful popular novelist, as would his daughter, Molly, whose mother, Erica Jong, is the author of the groundbreaking feminist novel Fear of Flying. (Photo courtesy of Lotte Jacobi.)
Fast at a bookstand during his campaign for Congress in 1952. He ran on the American Labor Party ticket for the twenty-third congressional district in the Bronx. Although Fast remained a committed leftist his entire life, he looked back on his foray into national politics with a bit of amusement. "I got a disease, which is called 'candidateitis,'" he told Donald Swaim in a 1990 radio interview. "And this disease takes hold of your mind, and it convinces you that your winning an election is important, very often the most important thing on earth. And it grips you to a point that you're ready to kill to win that election." He concluded: "I was soundly defeated, but it was a fascinating experience."
In 1953, the Soviet Union awarded Fast the International Peace Prize. This photo from the ceremony shows the performer, publisher, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson delivering a speech before presenting Fast (seated, second from left) with the prestigious award. Robeson and Fast came to know each other through their participation in leftist political causes during the 1940s and were friends for many years. Like Fast, Robeson was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era and invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions. This led to Robeson's work being banned in the United States, a situation that Robeson, unlike Fast, never completely overcame. In a late interview Fast cited Robeson as one of the forgotten heroes of the twentieth century. "Paul," he said, "was an extraordinary man." Also shown (from left to right): Essie Robeson, Mrs. Mellisk, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rachel Fast, and Bette Fast. (Photo courtesy of Julius Lazarus and the author.)
Howard and Bette Fast in California in 1976. The couple relocated to the West Coast after Fast grew disgruntled over the poor reception of his novel The Hessian. While in California, Fast temporarily gave up writing novels to work as a screenwriter, but, like many novelists before him, found the business disheartening. "In L.A. you work like hell because there is nothing else to do, unless you are cheating on your wife," he told People after he had moved back East in the 1980s. Of course, Fast, an ardent nature-lover, did enjoy California's scenic beauty and eventually set many of his novels—including The Immigrant's Daughter and the bestselling Masao Masuto detective series—in the state.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1939, 1966 by Howard Fast
cover design by Jason Gabbert
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