Johnny One-Eye

by Jerome Charyn

  I MARCHED TO PEEKSKILL with Hamilton’s New Yorkers—a rigmarole of rags and blue coats, men with muskets and cartridge boxes, canteens and haversacks, men hatless or in leather caps, with clay pipes in their pockets, with salt horns and the simplest shoes.

  I was hatless, like half the army. I wore a velvet coat Sparks had given me, leather britches, a white blouse, long stockings, a neckcloth, and my green sash. The other Yorkers were mindful of my sash. They saluted, called me “’Tenant Stocking, sir.” But I was not much given to officers, preferring to march like a wolf, the way I’d marched with Arnold under the walls of Quebec.

  I did wear a hanger, but declined Hamilton’s offer of a horse. I marched on foot with all the lads. Hamilton knew better than favor me. He was our colonel, and the men did adore him, tho’ some members of Congress called him a rapscallion because he had helped raise up the First Rhode Islanders, a regiment that was mostly colored, scaring slaveholders half to death.

  We went along the river, with muffled drumbeats, crossing the Hudson in barges and small boats that had been waiting for us at King’s Ferry, Ham and his officers riding their mounts onto a single raft, right near the end of August.

  I was not looking to adventure my life into a moment of glory. But I felt strong among these men as we shoved across the river, without much wonder at who we were—mechanics or farmers and free blacks, undivided on our little boats, except that I had a singular advantage. Our destination—Yorktown—was unknown to them. I could understand Washington’s reticence to inform his own troops. He had to hit Cornwallis with the fist of surprise.

  WE WAITED ON A TINY BLUFF until other battalions crossed, men as ragged as we—horses drowned, cannons sank, boats smashed against the reefs, their passengers bobbing in the currents until some other boat plucked them out of the water.

  Then a battalion of Rhode Islanders crossed in a single great barge—a boatload of black men in tricorns. Their officers were all white, but it seemed of little consequence. These Rhode Islanders ruled themselves. The officers looked like dwarfs with red faces against a background of tall, dark men with little clay pipes and backs straight as a board.

  Unlike the rest of us, they were not the least bit bedraggled. They wore blue leggings, coats with silver buttons that glittered against the sun and would have driven an enemy insane on the battlefield. They all had bayonets of the bluest sort of metal and would scratch themselves and pick their teeth with such instruments.

  And who were these warriors? Fishermen from Newport; hunters, whalers, and foundry workers; some were even slaves. But they’d responded to Washington’s call to arms against the king. They didn’t own property or have a seat in Congress—most of them had never seen Philadelphia. But they would have gone to the Divil for their “little chief,” even if he was a planter with a hundred slaves. He was also a gen’ral who sat on a horse, and was at least as tall as they were.

  I pitied the king’s men, pitied Cornwallis, who would have to struggle against such warriors. We marched beside them in the dust for sixteen days, dust that settled in our ears, formed strange little masks around our eyes. We paraded on Market Street in Philadelphia, with Rochambeau and his whitecoats just behind us, not a speck of dust on them. Their fifes and drums made splendid song. But no one really watched the whitecoats. Philadelphians were beguiled by tall black soldiers in a whirlwind of dust.

  We marched in more dust to Head of Elk, where we climbed onto French barges that brought us down the Chesapeake, past the lights of little tidewater towns—folks wondering at so many black men in a barge, black men with blue bayonets.

  We landed near some swamp and marched to Williamsburg—the meeting point for our assault—after having wandered over a month. A city of tents rose up around Williamsburg, like scores of soldiers strangulating an entire town. We were right near the Continentals’ command tent. I’d come here to fight, but my heart seized up when I saw a man in an eye patch come out of that tent.

  “’Lo, John,” said Malcolm Treat as if we were classmates at King’s. But I was not perusing him now. I’d heard a laugh from inside the command tent, bold and provocative, with a ring I could not forget. A tall woman galloped out of the tent, so tall she had to tilt her head. She wore a pannier, and much powder and paint. She clutched Treat’s arm, but she must have felt her Johnny boring into her. She looked up and her doxied eyes flickered once—’t was neither shame nor regret, but a recognition, silent and sad.

  “Clara darlin’,” Treat said, “ain’t you gonna say hello to your fiancé?”

  But my belovèd dragged Treat away from the tent.

  Fifty-Nine

  WE MARCHED TO YORKTOWN THE VERY NEXT morning, the 28th of September as it were, through woods thick with briars that scratched my face. I licked at my own blood, welcomed the taste. The air had turned crisp of a sudden; we’d entered some kind of autumn—the ground no longer steamed under our marching shoes—but I cared not about the seasons. I might have gone mad in these woods, near a tobacco farm ravaged by the British and their raiders. I could have hid among dead tobacco leaves, buried myself in tidewater, stayed with the frogs. I knew Clara couldn’t have signaled me in some open manner whilst she was with Treat. Was she dealing in silver bullets again?

  We were an army despite our riven uniforms and ragged ways, and Washington rode up front on the same sorrel that had crashed through the bridge in Connecticut, or perhaps some ghost of that horse. The Rhode Islanders were right behind him. And there was a certain splendor seeing Washington on his sorrel, followed by a bevy of black men.

  WE SETTLED IN A GOOD MILE from Cornwallis’ cannons, Washington and Rochambeau in separate headquarters and separate camps. But there was constant traffic between the two camps, French officers galloping hither and thither with their aides.

  Cornwallis had used a thousand blacks to build ten outer forts, each with moats and a shield of sharp sticks, to protect the heart of his citadel. Yorktown itself sat on a bluff, giving Cornwallis the advantage of higher ground. Washington would have massacred us all had he risked a frontal attack on Cornwallis’ bluff. Neither he nor his generals was familiar with sieges and trench warfare. But Rochambeau’s engineers had delivered a hundred sieges—the siege of Yorktown now belonged to them.

  They and their sappers only worked at night, building trenches in the dark, protecting them with mounds of earth and twigs that fooled Cornwallis, at least for a little while. And during the day there was much bruit in Washington’s command tent. I would have gladly kept away. I did not want to meet Clara and whatever officer she would parade with next. But Hamilton kidnapped me right out of my tent.

  “You shall be my secretary,” he said.

  And as we traveled across our own broad camp with great vigor, General Lafayette broke into our stride—he and Hamilton hugged and kissed. Lafayette had recently recovered from the marsh fever he contracted in the Carolinas and was exceedingly gaunt. He no longer had to bother himself with Benedict Arnold and other raiders—Clinton’s bulldog was back in New York, sitting on his haunches, a general with a mansion and no men.

  We’d entered the perimeter of Washington’s command post—sentries saluted us and stared at my green sash. I could have been a Chinese admiral in their eyes. I was with General Lafayette.

  I followed him and Hamilton into headquarters, a tent as large and noisy as some Persian bazaar I had read about in a book of travels. There were five conversations at once, five cliques, five cabals petitioning the commander in chief—colonels from the Royal Deux-Ponts, the largest of the French regiments at Yorktown; Rochambeau’s engineers; Lafayette’s aides; Washington’s own engineers; and his secret service.

  The Royal Deux-Ponts would not even look at Lafayette. He’d arrived in America with some madcap notion of liberty and had seduced the rebel Congress into declaring him a general. He couldn’t have been a captain in their own regiment. But it was Lafayette and not the Royal Deux-Ponts who held Washington’s ear. Yet he still had to compet
e with the other cabals. I could not listen to all that commerce, could only concentrate on Clara. She was with Malcolm Treat, wearing her powder and paint.

  For a moment all conversation stopped as Washington regarded me with one of his subdued smiles. And every whirling face inside the tent regarded me at the same instant, even Clara. Then Washington looked away, and the furor started all over again. I stood near Hamilton. He and Lafayette were talking about some insane dash up Cornwallis’ cliff. I did not listen.

  I had to stitch together why Clara was the lone woman in the tent. And like some prince of spies I soon gathered that Major Treat had been sending her through enemy lines.

  Seems Cornwallis’ citadel suffered a shortage of food, and Cornwallis was pondering how to reduce the size of his garrison. He’d settled on the most expendable items—the black soldiers and slaves who had built his ten forts. He’d promised them freedom, their own little heritage in Yorktown, but he had no further use of them now. Besides, an epidemic of smallpox was raging through the colored barracks, an old ramshackle barn. As the tale deepened, other conversations died.

  “Excellency,” Treat said, “their epidemic may soon be ours.”

  Washington interrupted him. “Major, we must listen to Clara—Clara was within the walls, not we.”

  Fool that I am, it took me the better part of an hour to comprehend that her paint was but a disguise. Ye gods, it was not her beauty alone that held the eyes of the Royal Deux-Ponts and the rebel chiefs. She had as much turbulence on her face as any of these men. And she had one great advantage—she knew how to enchant; they, it seems, did not.

  The little major and I kept measuring each other with all the slanted precision of one-eyed men—he was convinced that John the Divil had walked into Washington’s tent with the sole purpose of stealing Clara away. But Clara wasn’t considering him or John the Divil.

  Clara bowed to the commander in chief. She was the tallest person in the tent save Washington himself. “Excellency, I hear say that Cornwallis had his Britishers infect the Africans with smallpox so that he might catapult them over the ramparts—”

  “And bring our army to ruin with the same disease,” Hamilton said.

  Washington’s cheeks mottled with rage. “I thought the man indolent in his defense of Yorktown, but there is evil behind that indolence.”

  “Couldn’t we help the men in the barn?” Clara pleaded.

  “Couldn’t we bring ’em blankets and sweet water?”

  “Ah, show we are Samaritans,” said Malcolm Treat. “Mistress Clara, we are not a hospital ward.”

  “Yet I fear that by not helping them we may harm our own cause,” Washington said.

  “They are of small worth to us,” insisted Treat; having Clara under the same canvas roof with John the Divil had maddened him. He mocked her in front of the commander in chief. “Sir, shall we send Clara through with a blanket brigade?”

  “Would that I knew how. Then I’d be worthy of Rochambeau’s engineers—Mr. Treat, could we not persuade some citizens within the walls to help these afflicted men?”

  “Excellency,” said Hamilton, “allow me to find my own route to that barn.”

  “Mr. Hamilton, we cannot spare you.”

  “But you can spare me,” Clara said. “I could summon nurses within the walls—be my own nurse.”

  Treat was about to gnaw at her. “Impossible,” he said with a twitch. “Lord Cornwallis will capture Clara.” “Mon Dieu,” said one of the Royal Deux-Ponts, patting his brow with a perfumed handkerchief. “We should make better use of Clara. Have her sleep with one or two of Cornwallis’ aides. What a trésor she will bring back to us!”

  I did not like this Royal Deux-Pont and his perfumed handkerchief. Hence, I wandered into the fray.

  “Excellency, if you do not help Cornwallis’ black soldiers, you will bring havoc to your own troops.”

  “How so?” said Treat, his nostrils flaring.

  “The Rhode Islanders might rebel should they get wind of our intransigence, our unwillingness to help those wretched men.”

  “Hang the Rhode Islanders!” shouted Treat. “I’ll put them all in irons.”

  And while Washington and his commanders looked at Treat, Clara vanished from the tent without the littlest nod to me.

  Sixty

  SEEMS CORNWALLIS’ CITADEL HAD SWALLOWED up Clara. I wanted to break through the walls and carry her home on my back. But I was a lad without a reasonable plan. And while I pondered, French engineering parties dug all night, closer and closer to Cornwallis’ ten little fortresses in two parallel lines. ’T was a marvel to behold—the miracle of trench warfare. Our own fortifications grew out of the trenches like earth-and-metal flowers that were finally in range of the citadel itself. We fired at the British without mercy until Cornwallis ran from his headquarters in town and hid near the harbor.

  He had to abandon three of his outermost fortresses, whilst we dragged the heaviest cannons up to our own little forts.

  And then, amidst all this nocturnal movement, there was much hurly-burly in the woods near our camp. Cornwallis had begun to expel infected Negroes from his parlous paradise—drove them like cattle through the open rump of a particular fortress.

  These men now wandered in the woods. Our own lads panicked, crawling deep inside their tents. Others ran to the woods with their rifles, but they could not get near the Negroes. A phalanx of Rhode Islanders was standing between them and the woods. Said Rhode Islanders didn’t menace the riflemen—simply smiled and sent them back to their tents.

  But they did not prevent me from going through. I saw black men with blisters on their mouths, others with scars that had turned their faces white; some had eyes so raw and red you could not locate the eyeball; still others ran in circles. I did not know what to do.

  Then a voice beckoned from within the woods.

  “Johnny One-Eye, you gonna help me or stand there forever?”

  Clara appeared from behind a tree with blankets and pails of water, a candle tied to her forehead, canteens hanging from her military belt; she had her natural freckles rather than paint. She wasn’t wearing a pannier. She had the britches of a man.

  “And you dasn’t pester me with questions, ye hear?”

  I had said not a word.

  “They’re contagious, John. And you’re not to get too close. But you can give them blankets, and feed them water with a wet rag.”

  “Clara,” I said, sobbing now, “you’ll get sick if—”

  “Didn’t ye promise not to blabber? I had the smallpox in Dominica, survived an epidemic. My mama nursed me through—I can angel them as much as I want. You cannot.”

  She gave me the blankets, the pails, and wet rags.

  “Found a woman who lives right on the river, paid her to care for them. Mr. Washington lent me the money, and it wasn’t from the paymaster—it’s his winnings at vingt-et-un with Gen’ral Rochambeau. And I have to give these men instructions on how to get to the river lady. But you must keep their mouths wet, or they’ll die. And you must give them the blankets until you run out of blankets, ye hear? And put your neckcloth over your mouth.”

  I drank in her sweat that was wondrous as any aroma.

  “I missed you like the Divil,” she said. “But Malcolm Treat wouldn’t let me near ye.”

  She tied her candle to my forehead and I started distributing blankets and wetting the mouths of the Negroes with my rags. “Master,” they kept asking, “what is your name?”

  “Johnny One-Eye,” I said, right through my neckcloth. “And I’m nobody’s master.”

  Some of them shivered and fell in front of my eyes. ’T was Clara who picked them up, led them deeper into the woods. I could understand Rochambeau’s engineers, but not a war that would deliver black soldiers and slaves unto pestilence.

  Two lights started to blink and move along like some invisible monster—then this monster became all too visible. Major Treat and Sergeant Champe had arrived with enormous lanterns
.

  “Well,” Champe said, the pistol in his hand shining like some magnificent silver article. “If it ain’t ol’ One-Eye with the boogers.”

  “Shut up,” Treat said, swinging his lantern wildly to capture a wider swath of the woods—Clara walked right into the lantern light.

  Champe was appalled. “That ain’t her, Major. That’s Clara’s apparition.”

  “Shut up,” Treat said. He was calculating in his mind whether to kill me. There was only a forest of black men as witnesses—and Clara.

  “’Lo, darlin’,” he said, “where did Johnny get all the blankets?”

  “From George Washington’s private treasury,” she said.

  “Clara’s tricking us,” Champe said. “Major, that is surely so.”

  Clara did not wait for Treat to aim at my heart with his own pistol. She whirled about and stepped in front of me.

  “You still love this odious boy,” the major said. “Clara, I shall count to three.”

  Clara clasped me by the britches, and I could not move—I did not want her to die. “One,” Treat said. “Two—Clara dear, it ain’t no jest.”

  He couldn’t survive without getting rid of his own Divil. And he was willing to fire right through Clara’s flesh. But he never did count to three. Suddenly, Treat shoved his pistol into a pocket, plucked off his neckcloth, and placed it over his mouth. Then he picked up a water pail and began to wet the mouths of the infected men with much ado. Treat’s transformation made sense once I discovered two Rhode Islanders standing with their rifles at the very edge of the lantern light, their faces obscured.

  “How go ye, ’Tenant Stocking?” a voice shot out of that obscurity.

  “Well as can be in wartime,” I said with the deepest of shivers, for I desired the Rhode Islanders to enfilade Treat, but I would only have compromised Clara, prevented her from aiding those poor black souls stricken with the smallpox.

  We worked together—Champe, Treat, Clara, and myself—like some independent army, until the woods cleared of these black souls.