Scar

by J. Albert Mann

  Hot sweat burns my eyes and the taste of salt wets my tongue.

  Dr. Tusten throws me behind a new rock and begins to tend the wounded man. I can’t move. I lie with my face in the dirt. It smells sweet. I see my mother bending over a row of corn seedlings, weeding. But then she kicks me. No, it’s the doctor. He’s binding up some poor fellow’s shattered leg and glaring at me. “Get up, Noah, and help me,” he orders. “Now! See how I place the wad of dressing over the bleeding? This will put pressure on the wound and stop the blood flow. Noah … watch. See how I wind the bandage around to apply the pressure on the wound and keep it clean?”

  “Is he dead?” I ask.

  “If he were, Noah, I wouldn’t be dressing his wounds. He has just lost consciousness. Listen, I’m off to search for others, stay here and load the muskets.” And he’s gone.

  I do as I’m told, and load. My arms are so sore from this task that they feel clumsy and odd. Before I have the second musket loaded, Dr. Tusten returns with another screaming man.

  Blood, sweat, screaming, death … “Put your hand over here, Noah, and push down,” more screaming, and grunting, and moaning. The moaning is worse than the screaming. The moaning is so much worse.

  More of our men gather around us. I can see them behind trees and rocks, loading … firing. Through the smoke comes the shrieking. It seems to reach out and grab me by the throat and squeeze, slowly. It sounds closer now.

  “Noah, here, roll this around the splint, like this …”

  I roll the bandage around the bloody arm of some poor fellow.

  “Now, tie it here, off the site of the wound.” Dr. Tusten comforts the injured man with one breath and instructs me with the next. It is better to move in this way, to follow him, than to think about what is happening around me.

  I’m in the middle of wrapping what is left of Jon Haskell’s knee when I catch sight of Colonel Hathorn coming in on our left. He looks like a different man from the man he was this morning; his bright eyes are cloudy and his clothes are wet and crusted with dirt and leaves. He meets the doctor’s eye and then drops behind a rock and begins to load. He comes up from the rock and aims south, not west, which is the direction we’ve been shooting in all day. Has the enemy moved?

  But that thought is quickly put to rest. I hear the cries of our enemy coming from the south now as well as the west. And a few moments later, I hear their howling coming from the east. We are hemmed in.

  I can see our men scattered throughout the forest. But we don’t number that many. I count us up … and have to stop at around thirty, including the wounded lying at my feet. Where is everyone? They cannot be dead. That would be over a hundred dead. They cannot be dead. I grab at Dr. Tusten’s elbow. “Doctor, where is everyone? Why are we so few?”

  The doctor continues his work for a moment, and then stops and says low into my ear, “I don’t know, Noah, we’ve either lost heavily or some of the men have been cut off from us. Keep tending the wounded and stick close to me. They need us, and it’s all we can do right now.”

  I return to my cleaning and wrapping and calming. But I’m not calm. The sky feels as if it’s pushing down on me, and I’m holding it up with my shoulders. As I work, more men drag themselves near the doctor and me, and we’re running out of cover. The musket balls bounce off nearby rocks and trees, spraying us with pine needles and dirt. The doctor sees this, nods at me to keep working, and takes off.

  I feel frantic without him. I can’t remember how to do anything. The man in front of me is bleeding from a small musket hole in his shoulder near his neck, and compared to some of the grisly wounds I’ve encountered today, his seems small and unworthy of my time. I move onto the next man, but the man with the hole in his shoulder catches my wrist. I look down at him. “Yes, yes, I’ll be right there,” I tell him. But when I turn back, he’s dead. Where is the doctor?

  Dr. Tusten dives back behind our rock and begins to gather up our supplies. “We’re moving. There’s a rock ledge behind us where we can tend the men better. It’s good cover and lots of it.” He tells the men who can still walk to follow us, and the rest, that we’ll return for them one at a time. We don’t need to explain why.

  Again I follow the doctor, banging my knees on rocks, the sacks snagging every fallen tree branch I crawl past. He disappears over a small ledge and I slide down after him.

  “Stay with these men while I return for the others,” he shouts as he climbs back up and over the ledge. It’s the farthest I’ve been from musket fire all day, but I don’t relax, not with the wounded surrounding me. I begin to clean, wrap, and calm them. I know all of their faces, and a few of their names. One of the men stops me and tries to hand me something. He struggles to speak, and his voice comes out almost too thin to hear.

  “Give this—to my wife—please—and—tell her—I loved her—to the end,” he says in short gasps. I run my eyes along the top of the ledge, searching for the doctor. He’s nowhere in sight. I can’t do this without him. The man coughs, long and wet.

  “No, sir,” I say, as I gently squeeze his arm, refusing to take whatever trinket he’s trying to give me, “you will have to love her longer, I’m afraid.” He laughs silently at the joke that I hadn’t meant to make and it relieves us both.

  The doctor calls from above, “Noah, grab him,” and he slides a large man down the pebbly edge of our ledge. The man is mostly unconscious and doesn’t take notice of his precarious position. I catch him under his arms but can’t hold him, and he hits the earth hard, crying out, “My leg, my God, my leg!” I open up his stocking and find such a mess that I stare at it, wondering what to do. The doctor interrupts my attempts to stop the leg from bleeding with another wounded man to catch off the ledge … and after that, another.

  “Dr. Tusten,” I call, but he’s gone again.

  I’m beginning to wonder who’s left fighting up there. I rush back and forth between the men, feeling lost. The doctor finally slides down the ledge, and in one breath’s time, has cared for most of the small wounds, and a few of the large ones. I thank the Lord. I could not have lasted one more moment without him. I duck back to work, wishing I had ten more hands to lend this doctor and these poor, hurt fellows.

  Then I hear something, or rather … I don’t hear something. I stop, trying to figure out what has changed, and in an instant, it hits me. The musket fire has slackened. I hear one pop. Two pops. But then nothing. Is it over? I turn to find the doctor. “Dr. Tusten!”

  He’s right behind me, his back to mine. “Keep working, Noah, I hear it,” he whispers.

  “What does it mean?”

  My answer drops down our ledge. It’s Colonel Hathorn, white-faced and out of breath. He picks his way through the wounded, and I can see that he’s trying not to look at them. Some of the men recognize him. One calls out his name, and another reaches for him, but he skirts around the man’s hand in his hurry to get to the doctor.

  “Benjamin, it’s over, they’ve broken through up at the northeastern end of our line. We couldn’t hold them.” His voice is low so as not to alarm our injured. “I don’t know what happened to Lieutenant Colonel Wisner and his men. I haven’t seen any of them since the first musket shot. We number only what you see here before you, and about twenty more men up atop the ledge.” He fixes his gaze on the doctor and leans in closer to him. “I have released the men.”

  We’ve lost? I can’t believe it. But I find that I don’t care. No. I don’t care. It’s over. Oh, thanks be to God, it’s over. We are released.

  But the colonel’s hard stare remains steady.

  We can’t be in danger any longer if we’ve lost? Surely they won’t hurt the wounded? And then I realize that they can and they will. “But the Van Eck boys,” I mumble. No. This is not how it was supposed to be.

  “Benjamin,” Colonial Hathorn whispers.

  “Go,” says the doctor. “And take him with you.” He nods at me.

  “I won’t leave you.” I don’t even look at Colonel Ha
thorn. “I won’t.”

  “Noah,” Dr. Tusten begins, but he’s cut off by the colonel.

  “Follow me if you want to live, Noah,” he says. Then he grabs the doctor’s hand, shaking it … not letting it go. Perhaps he’s never seen a hero before. I know what the doctor is doing right now is surely heroic. I only stay because I fear losing him. I’ve lost my father, and Josh. I can’t lose him.

  I feel the colonel look my way. I don’t move. He turns to leave. The wounded men call out to him. It’s a hideous sound … their begging. I weave in and out of them trying to give them words of comfort. But they will not be comforted any longer. They hear the howling of the enemy just as I do.

  I watch Colonel Hathorn’s back fade into the trees. But I know I can’t follow him. And they’re coming.

  I don’t look at Dr. Tusten, but keep moving from man to man, pretending to check dressings. But I see nothing. My ears hear only the shrieking and my sight has shut down. The doctor yells at me but his words have no meaning. He yells again and I look at him as if through a fog. “Noah, climb that ledge and find my other knapsack. I need more dressings RIGHT NOW!” he roars.

  I scramble up the slippery ledge after the sack.

  Once up on top, I search the forest floor but don’t see it. The pines block out the sunlight so well that there’s not much small growth on the forest floor, and I should easily have found the sack if it were nearby. But my eyes are useless, and my head swivels round and round on my shoulders, making me dizzy. I wander farther from the ledge. The sun is setting and I blink again and again, staring out into the darkening woods.

  Then I see it! Ten paces ahead. I stumble forward, and as I bend to pick it up, I’m knocked over by something catching me in the side, throwing me to the ground. I lie facedown in the dirt, stunned, not understanding what just happened—until I feel the burning.

  The shouts of the wounded compel me to leave the ground and head back to the ledge. I have the sack. I must return to the doctor. My side burns, and I have trouble standing straight … I half crawl toward the ledge.

  Just as I near the spot where I climbed up, I see them come out from the trees in the opposite direction. I can’t see my men below, but I can hear them shouting for mercy. Their cries fill me with courage and I leap up, ignoring the pain of the musket ball.

  But Dr. Tusten is waiting. He’s standing with his back to the Indians coming for him. He’s scanning the top of the ledge. He’s watching for me. His eyes find mine and before the first Indian can get to him, he gives me one last order: “Run!”

  I watch him go down. They scalp him alive, although I hear no sound come from him. And then I follow his order and run like hell.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  KEEP YOUR PROMISE

  FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1779

  The sky is getting light. It’s morning … finally. I try to lift my arms and shake him, but I only manage to push on his side. “Scar,” I whisper. He doesn’t answer. He’s hard to the touch. “Scar.”

  I stare past the trees into the quiet morning light. He’s left me. As my father did, and Josh, and the doctor. They are all gone. I am alone.

  But not for long.

  They arrive in silence, filling our small clearing. Staring, they surround us. I see them struggle to understand the scene before them, the two of us, side by side on our backs, bleeding into the hemlock needles. I see them recognize Scar …

  “His name.” The words sting my dry throat.

  One of them steps toward us. He has wide eyes and a large forehead. His scalp lock is long, hanging well past his shoulders. He moves closer. Just like me, he is shiny with sweat and covered in musket powder. I know he’s not coming to kill me—his face doesn’t have that look on it, that horrible look I remember on the faces of Brant’s men as they approached the wounded under the ledge. What then? Scar … he’s coming for Scar.

  “HIS NAME?” I shout, the strength of my own voice surprising me. And then I grab Scar, burying my face in the worn frock—and I wait for the Indian to rip him from me.

  “Ronhnhí:io,” a soft voice says. It is not a question or a command.

  I look up. A tall Indian in deerskin leggings and a green military tunic emerges from the trees. A silver-mounted cutlass hangs at his side. It is him. Joseph Brant.

  “His name. It is Ronhnhí:io.” I watch him look down at Scar. “It means, ‘he who has a good spirit.’”

  The sweaty Indian retreats and I loosen my painful hold. He who has a good spirit. Yes. That is it. My head sinks back to the earth, and for the first time, I notice the cool morning air on my cheeks.

  I want them to leave us now. I want them all to go. But they don’t. They hang back. A few sit. One bows his head in prayer. I can hear his voice but can’t make out what he’s saying. It’s like they’ve forgotten about us. Why do they stay? What are they waiting for?

  An emptiness spreads through me … I realize what they’re waiting for. I know. I’m not going home.

  I look around at the men, searching for a way to be wrong. But I can’t make out any of their faces, except one. Joseph Brant. When I catch Brant’s eye, he’s not uncomfortable with it and keeps my gaze. He moves closer, kneeling at my side. His moccasins, those white beads, the red tassels … the same ones I saw from under the laurel branches three days ago.

  My eyes are too heavy and I let them close.

  … Water. I need to get to the river. He’s standing in the middle of the wheat field.

  “Scar!” I shout. “Are you thirsty?” He doesn’t answer. Instead he waves to me, just as the bearded heads of grain wave to the clouds gliding across the high summer sky. “Wait!” But he’s already turning—already racing away through the straw-colored wheat.

  I jerk awake. And I know that I’m alone under the frock before I even open my eyes. My friend is gone.

  Brant makes me drink. I want to refuse, but I’m too thirsty. He places my head back onto the ground and waits. Scar died with me by his side and now I will die with this man by mine. But the thought doesn’t comfort me, and with him sitting so close, so quiet, I lose my courage to die silently, as I know I should. “I lost … we lost.” I’m embarrassed at my stammering, but the expression on the Mohawk leader’s face doesn’t change.

  He looks up, as if through a hole in the cloudy morning sky. He’s silent, staring through that hole. And then he looks back down at me and smiles a weary smile, drained of happiness. “Boy, I fight a battle every day of my life that I know I will lose.”

  “Is it worth this?”

  At first his face slackens. But then a hardness takes over his features. “It’s not that the fight is worth your life, it’s that your life is worthless if you do not fight.”

  I see in an instant the fight Brant speaks of, and its hopelessness. Not the war between the British and the Colonies, but the fight for his own freedom and the freedom of those who have followed him into the clearing this morning to find Scar and take him home.

  Freedom.

  Wasn’t that the same thing I was fighting for?

  My mother’s face and Mary’s tinkling laughter float over me, and then Dr. Tusten’s kind voice: “You are what happens next, Noah” … so tired … and then her … shaking my hand, telling me that two days make her wiser.

  Eliza.

  The thought of never seeing her again shreds my heart like a battlefield of musket balls. The sadness is suffocating, and I’m afraid … so afraid.

  “Wheat,” I tell him, but I can’t make out his face anymore. “I promised.”

  He bends close to my ear. I feel his warm, comforting breath on my forehead—or is it my father’s breath? “Go keep your promise, boy.”

  And I slip away under my father’s old blue hunting frock.

  EPILOGUE

  On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in July, Joseph Brant, under British orders, descended on the settlement of Minisink (the present-day city of Port Jervis and the town of Deerpark, New York) with twenty-seven Tories and sixty Iroq
uois, where they plundered, burned, and killed.

  Loaded down with stolen supplies and livestock, Brant took off north as fast as possible, taking the path along the Delaware River.

  Word of the destruction spread and the militia responded. By noon the following day, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tusten and Colonel John Hathorn, with 120 men gathered from New York and New Jersey, marched upriver in pursuit of the Mohawk leader.

  Early the next morning, under the charge of Colonel Hathorn, the militia prepared to attack. But before the men were in place, a musket shot rang out. Captain Tyler had gone ahead to scout the exact whereabouts of Brant and his troops. Some say, upon discovering them, he accidentally discharged his musket. Others say he unwisely shot at one of Brant’s men crossing the river. Tyler was killed on the spot, his reason for the shot forever buried in history.

  With the element of surprise lost, the battle began …

  The militia quickly divided into three divisions: Tusten on the right, Hathorn in the center, and Lieutenant Colonel Wisner on the left. Joseph Brant was a quarter-mile downriver when Tyler’s musket fired. He immediately gathered half his men and started up the hill from the river. This maneuver brought Brant around behind both Hathorn and Tusten, completely splitting off Wisner’s division. Wisner’s men, accounting for at least a third of the militia, ran off, never to be heard from again, thus leaving Tusten and Hathorn behind to face Brant’s experienced war party with only eighty men.

  When Brant’s party began firing on the rear of the militia, with the division he left at the river firing on its front, another large group of the militia broke and fled. Hathorn and Tusten were now left with approximately forty men hard pressed on three sides.