City of Dreams

by Martin, William

  “Now you tell us,” said Rooster Tom.

  “If I’d been sober,” said Big Jake, “I woulda told you that joinin’ any rebellion is fool’s work. We should be tryin’ to get rich off of all this, like Gil always says.”

  “I didn’t do it for any free finky-diddlin’, nor knob jobs, neither,” said Gil.

  “No. You did it because you’re in lo-oo-ove.” The Bookworm made a graceful little bow-and-step, like a courtier in a silk waistcoat.

  Gil kicked him. “I did it because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “It don’t seem so right now,” said Big Jake.

  The Bookworm laughed. “At least Loretta’s a pretty one.”

  “They’re all pretty at night,” said Rooster Tom, “and they all give you the itch in the mornin’.” He stuck a hand into his breeches and grabbed. “And what are you lookin’ at?” he said to an old man stepping out of a nearby tavern.

  If the old man was startled to see Rooster pulling his pecker in the middle of the street, he didn’t say. Rooster’s quick-match temper was known in every ward, and men said that a challenge from him should be met with a pistol or a polite retreat. The old man chose the latter.

  So the Waterfront Boys strode on, as if this were any New York night . . . before there was a Continental Army on the Common or a British fleet at the Narrows, a normal night when rich men entertained in their parlors and whores entertained on the Holy Ground and young men rambled from alley to avenue in search of whatever entertainment they could find.

  A few days earlier, Washington had issued orders for civilians to evacuate the city. Most had already left, and those who remained were too old to travel, or too young, or too impoverished, or too fearful of losing whatever they owned, or too opportunistic to flee when the war had given them the chance to change life’s odds.

  And the Waterfront Boys were nothing if not opportunists.

  Rooster Tom had shown his mates half a dozen vacant Tory houses where pewter candlesticks and Turkey carpets and pipes of good port had been left behind. The Bookworm knew about a few, too, because he knew the maids in most of them. And since it was in the natural order of things that someone would eventually take anything valuable in a vacant house, the Boys had taken that responsibility onto themselves.

  What they took they carried to a pawnbroker who lived in the First Ward. What the pawnbroker gave them they spent on rum and girls.

  And they had spent plenty already that night. Rum and girls. Girls and rum. Now they were looking for a different kind of fun . . . a gang of soldiers throwing dice, perhaps, or a few Massachusetts militiamen worthy of a fight, or maybe a Tory to ride on a rail.

  Most nights, the streets teemed with soldiers and militiamen who were as undisciplined, drunk, and troublesome as the Waterfront Boys could be. But New York was quiet and tense, because Washington had moved half his army across the East River to Brooklyn. A fight was coming. So Broadway was mostly empty, and the Boys walked all the way to the Bowling Green without finding a bit of bother.

  As he kicked along, Gil fingered the crown finial in his pocket. He had kept the piece of brass, as large as the palm of his hand, because whenever he was about to do something stupid for patriotism or lust or any other emotion, high or low, the finial reminded him that acting without thinking had its consequences.

  The Bowling Green lay in darkness. But torches flickered in front of the fine house that Colonel Henry Knox now occupied at One Broadway. And Fort George glowered in the shadows beyond.

  There were two soldiers in blue uniforms guarding Knox’s door, two more guarding the gate in the picket fence, half a dozen more lounging by a row of horses tethered to the fence.

  Rooster went sauntering up, and the guards snapped to attention.

  “Easy, lads,” said Rooster.

  “Yeah.” Big Jake came out of the shadows. “We’re just lookin’ for a game of dice.”

  “We don’t throw dice,” said the big sergeant at the gate. “So move on.”

  “Move on, is it? In our own town”—Rooster rose on the balls of his feet, then dropped back, then rose up again, then back—“you’re tellin’ me to move on?”

  Gil grabbed Rooster by the tail of his leather waistcoat.

  The Bookworm stepped in front of the soldiers. “We’re sorry.”

  “We ain’t.” Rooster whacked at Gil’s hand. “We can go anywhere we want in our own town.”

  Gil said to the soldiers, “He’s just a bit—”

  “A bit what?” An officer with a blue sash appeared under one of the torches.

  “A bit”—Gil fumbled—“a bit . . .”

  “What unit do you men belong to?” said the officer.

  “None of your damn business,” said Rooster Tom.

  “What unit?” demanded the officer. “Or are you deserters?”

  Gil knew, from their size and fine uniforms, that these weren’t ordinary soldiers. They were the life guard for Washington himself. He said, “No deserters, here, sir.”

  The officer turned on Gil. “I think you’re lying. I think you’re all deserters . . . lying and desertion. Do you belong to one of the units the general moved to Brooklyn today? Lying, desertion, and cowardice. Good for fifty lashes. Take them.” He swung his arm and two of the Continentals grabbed Big Jake, and two more grabbed Gil.

  “I’m no deserter,” cried Gil.

  “Then what unit?” demanded the officer.

  “Mine!” A slight young man emerged from the shadows. He wore a blue uniform with deerskin breeches and brass buttons that flashed in the torchlight. “Captain Hamilton, New York Provincial Artillery.”

  And before another word was said, the door of Henry Knox’s house swung open, and out stepped the tallest man that any of them had ever seen. George Washington.

  All the soldiers presented arms. The captain pulled out his sword and raised the hilt to his chin in salute.

  Washington said a few more words to Henry Knox, the widest man that any of them had ever seen, then he pulled on his gauntlets and strode toward the street.

  One of the guards brought over his horse. The others formed a wall between Washington and the Waterfront Boys.

  Washington grabbed the bridle and swung a leg onto the horse. He didn’t even look down until he was mounted, sitting flagpole straight, left hand holding the reins, right hand braced against his hip. “Did I hear word of deserters?”

  “We’re not deserters, sir,” said Gil Walker.

  “Then rejoin your unit, or face a flogging.” Washington kicked his horse up Broadway, with his life guard mounting and galloping after him.

  Alexander Hamilton watched them go, then pivoted on his heels and said to the Waterfront Boys, “Come along, men.”

  Once they were out of earshot of the guards, the Bookworm said, “I want to thank you, Alexander . . . on behalf of all my friends.”

  “I won’t see New York boys bullied,” said Hamilton, “and I don’t forget favors.”

  “Favors?” said Gil.

  “Augustus here saved me from a beating or two at Kings College. Pity he couldn’t save himself.”

  “A pity,” said the Bookworm.

  “So, then”—Hamilton was heading for the Grand Battery, the row of cannons at the tip of the island—“what unit are you from?”

  “Stuckey’s militia,” answered Big Jake.

  “That explains it,” said Hamilton. “You’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?” said Rooster Tom. “We’d be lucky if we wasn’t in this militia at all.”

  At the Battery, half a dozen men were crouched under a torch. One of them was tossing dice against a wall. Another noticed Hamilton and cried, “Atten-shun!”

  The men leaped to their feet and stuck out their chests. Someone dropped a rum bottle that rattled on the cobblestones.

  Hamilton picked it up and threw it into the water. Then he said, “At ease.”

  “How are we lucky, sir?” asked the Bookworm

&
nbsp; “The British are moving on Long Island,” answered Hamilton. “It may be a feint, or they may be after Brooklyn Heights. Local units will be held here to protect the city. I expect the general thinks we’ll fight harder for our own homes.”

  “That’s for fuckin’ sure,” said Rooster Tom.

  “Your friend is very rude, Augustus,” said Hamilton without looking at Rooster. “Rejoin your unit, all of you.”

  The Bookworm said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Gil peered out at the lights of the British fleet, like harmless fireflies flicking on and off in the distance. Then he said to Hamilton, “You saved us from a floggin’, sir. It’s not somethin’ we’ll soon forget.”

  THE BRITISH BEAT the Americans so convincingly off Brooklyn Heights that only a lunatic would think that fledgling independence would not die in its nest. Washington’s escape from Brooklyn, accomplished under the cover of dark and dense fog, seemed an act of abject desperation.

  And the Boys saw it all because Stuckey’s company covered the New York ferry landing during the retreat. From midnight to dawn, the boats landed and left, landed and left, disgorging troops who had been beaten, bloodied, and had barely survived. The men came ashore dragging their muskets and sometimes their mates, and many simply drifted off in search of the nearest grogshop or the quietest whorehouse.

  “Scary thing,” said Big Jake.

  “What?” said Gil.

  “That we’re the most disciplined unit in sight,” said the Bookworm.

  “I got a good mind to desert this damn army,” said Rooster.

  “You’ll desert nothin’,” said Gil, “not while we’re watchin’.”

  “Aye,” said Big Jake. “Do it when we’re not lookin’. I’ll go with you.”

  “We signed our names,” said Gil. “If a man’s to be anything in this world, if he’s to get anything, signin’ his name ought to stand for something.”

  “Still and all,” said Big Jake, “it’s a helluva way to get rich.”

  THE DEFEAT TURNED Washington’s army into a mob, and for a time, no amount of flogging made a difference in their behavior. Some men deserted, simply picked up their bedrolls and shouldered their muskets and started walking. The rest got after the most serious drinking, whoring, and looting yet.

  Gil told his mates that they could never quit their own city, but there could be nothing wrong in looking out for themselves. So when they were released from duty each day, they “visited” more vacant Tory houses and brought more goods to the pawnbroker, so they had more money to spend.

  And with so many soldiers deserting, Loretta had more time to spend with Gil.

  He told himself that he was not in love with her, that she was just another person trying to make her way in a hard world, and what they did was all business.

  So he paid his shillings at the Shiny Black Cat. And she loosened her corset and raised her dress and let him poke her for as long as he could hold it.

  Usually, she dropped her skirts when he was done and stepped out to the yard for a quick douche. But sometimes, she stayed and talked, and talk, he knew, was something she saved for her “specials.” And he liked being a “special.”

  So one night, he brought her a present. In a deserted house, he had “found” two fine mahogany boxes with brass fittings—a matched set. They were empty. But he had discovered that if he slid a small piece of side molding, the bottoms of each box opened to reveal inner compartments where might be hidden jewels or money, though they were empty, too.

  Still, when he gave her the boxes, she acted as if they were full of gold.

  And she repaid him the best way she knew. She didn’t simply raise her dress and petticoats. She took them all the way off. Then she paraded in front of him in nothing but the corset, red satin mules, and white stockings. She let him see her front and back, arse and cunny and sweet rum titties, too. Then she pushed him back on the bed and pulled down his breeches and rode him until he was spent. Then they talked.

  “So,” she said, “what’s your plan for when the British attack the town?”

  “Do what Stuckey tells me to do.”

  She got up and pulled on her petticoats, then her dress, but she left her breasts exposed so that he could look at them a bit longer. “I hear that you boys visit the houses of Tory toffs who went runnin’ . . .”

  “I need to make my money to pay you.” He got up and pulled on his breeches.

  “I know a Tory house where there’s hard coin hidden.” She tightened her corset. “Gold guinea coins.”

  “Gold guineas? Why didn’t the owners take them?”

  “Because they ain’t left. The wife’s sickly. So she don’t much care that her husband has me come in to ‘cure’ him once a week.”

  A thumping started in the next room, accompanied by the deep groaning of a man and the theatrical urging of a woman.

  “Where is this house?” asked Gil.

  Loretta stepped closer to him. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll show you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Why . . . we can run . . . together.”

  The thumping played more steadily against the wall.

  Loretta glanced at the mirror vibrating above her little dresser and said, “We’d all like to get out of here, Gilbie. And gold’ll do it. No matter who wins the next fight, gold’ll get us through.”

  “I’m in the next fight, thanks to you.”

  “Don’t be blamin’ a girl for doin’ what she has to do.” Loretta pressed her breasts against him. “And remember, I believe in this fight as much as you do.”

  “How do you know what I believe?”

  “You signed up, didn’t you? You signed up ’cause the only way for the likes of us to have a chance—without robbin’ houses or whorin’—is to get free. Freedom’s the thing, Gilbie, whether you’re a young yob waitin’ by a coffeehouse for a merchant to give you an errand, or an orphan girl whose uncle sold her into . . . this.”

  Gil grabbed Loretta by the shoulders. “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I like you, Gilbie, and you like me.”

  Footfalls thumped down the hallway, followed by a knock and Fanny Doolin’s phony-sweet voice. “Hurry up, Loretta, dearie. This here’s a business, don’t forget.”

  Loretta glanced at the door, then turned her eyes back to Gil. “And because you and me, we’re two peas in a pod. We both grew up without a pa, we both seen our ma’s die afore their time, and we both want to do better than we done.”

  Gil Walker saw honesty in her eyes, no matter how obscured by mascara, more honesty than he had seen in the eyes of all the brokers on the waterfront or all the preachers at in their pulpits or all the Sons of Liberty that ever met at the Queen’s Head.

  She smiled. She had all her teeth, all white as milk teeth, not yellowed, not tobacco-browned, not wine-stained. And she had hope, too. “Just trust me,” she said. “If you trust me, I’ll trust you.”

  HAD THEY ATTACKED New York in those first days after Brooklyn, the British might have ended the rebellion right there. They could have lined the Post Road with gibbets from the Battery to Harlem Heights and hanged a rebel from every one.

  But they waited almost three weeks, as if to give Washington the chance to regain a bit of discipline, as if it would not be sporting to beat so disorganized an enemy. Or perhaps they were amused to see Washington spreading his troops up and down Manhattan like a poor man spreading butter on stale bread. Once he had put troops in Harlem and at the Grand Battery and on all the beaches along the East River and in all the little dirt forts that he had built to control the city, the British began to move.

  Stuckey’s company spent a Friday night on duty in a new trench that cut across Bayard’s farm, about a quarter mile north of the Common. Then Stuckey allowed them to go home to sleep. Gil expected it would be the last night that they would sleep in their own beds for a long time. So he dropped onto the feathers under Sam Fraunces’s eaves and slept with the same sense of purpose that
a miser banks his pennies.

  But just after dawn, he and Big Jake were awakened by a pounding on the door.

  Gil popped up first. “The tattoo! We missed the tattoo! It must be the attack!”

  Jake rolled over. “Hunh?”

  Gil leaped to his feet. “Get up. Get dressed. Or we’ll get lashed.”

  “It ain’t that,” said Fraunces through the door. “There’s a woman downstairs . . . says she’s a friend of yours.”

  “A friend?” said Gil.

  Big Jake popped up. “A woman?”

  LORETTA WAS WAITING on the street. “Fraunces wouldn’t let me come up.”

  Gil turned to Big Jake. “You can go back to bed.”

  Big Jake gave them a wink. “You want the room for a bit?”

  “No,” said Loretta. “That ain’t what this is about.”

  So Big Jake shrugged and went shambling back up the stairs.

  Gil looked at the sharp shadows slanting over Broad Street. “It ain’t much more than six o’clock. I was on the line all night.”

  “If the big fight’s comin’, time to show you the house, the house with the gold guineas.”

  So Gil followed her through the deserted streets.

  She wore common clothes and loosed her hair, and he almost told her that she looked beautiful in the morning. But he already knew her answer: Any woman would look beautiful in the morning, if she was leading a man to a stash of gold. So Gil said nothing.

  They headed up Broad Street and turned onto Beaver, which was lined with gabled Dutch buildings that housed the merchants who traded the pelts that had given the street its name. But rebellion had put most of the trading houses out of business, so most of the stores were shuttered.

  Then they turned onto New Street, the first street that the British made after they took the city from the Dutch. At the lower end lived artisans, craftsmen, and mechanics, who did business on the first floors and kept families on the second. But the neighborhood changed as they headed toward the Presbyterian Church that sat on Wall Street and stared down New Street like the all-seeing eye of God. The dwellings grew larger, taller, newer.