Last Refuge of Scoundrels

by Paul Lussier

  Instead . . . nothing. Not one militia officer, soldier, or civilian in sight. Just a bored, lone sentry standing guard in a Sunday afternoon downpour who hurriedly rounded up a small escort to shepherd us to our residence, the home of the president of Harvard College, which, as it turned out, was conveniently situated in the line of fire of the British gunboats anchored on the Charles.

  There were twenty thousand soldiers gathered about Boston at this time, hailing from colonies and provinces far and wide in answer to the express riders who had run themselves ragged north, south, east, and west spreading news of Lexington and Concord (and, more recently, Bunker Hill). They had left their plows, their fields of wheat, tobacco, corn, their harvesting of peaches, slaughtering of turkeys, firing of bread, preparing of conserves, hammering of silver, and sewing of shoes, to walk to Boston from as far away as Georgia with only muskets on their shoulders, haversacks of biscuits on their backs, and strands of field grass in their hair.

  Twenty thousand! And not one of them led there by a commander-in-chief, or eager to greet us that Sunday as we trundled tardily into town.

  But we had come to save them, didn’t they know? Where was the gratefulness, the appreciation, the show of obedience and respect for a general, a “man of talent, skill, and great fortune” who had “risked the ruin” of his reputation in assuming the terrible burden of power of the commander-in-chief, without pay—all for the sake of his country?

  There it was: evidence anew, as if there weren’t enough of it already, of “what an exceedingly dirty and nasty people” had risen up against King George. And oh, was Washington shocked all the more by what he witnessed on the road to our housing: a colonel shaving a private’s face; officers and enlisted men drinking together in the tents, women lolling about at their sides; dirty children leapfrogging over fires; grown men mucking about naked in the river, mooning women and wagging their penises at passersby; American sentries fraternizing with British pickets who had crossed enemy lines to play whist! Blacks lying with whites and Indians with slaves. Fair women holding hands at the roadside, chanting “New lords, new laws—no! New lords, new laws—no!”

  Where were the weeping mothers? The wounded fathers? The heartsick children missing their parents who’d been tossed into mass graves?

  “The situation is not what I was expecting,” Washington said to me in a darkly threatening tone.

  “I see that.” At which point yet another argument might well have ensued were it not for the sight of Deborah and Job to preoccupy him: ostensibly two male soldiers, one white and the other black, holding hands.

  Washington noticed the couple first. Ordering the horses stopped and silencing those of us in the coach (I remember that at the time Joseph Reed, a secretary, was squawking at top volume about how he wished he’d never come), Washington pointed, I thought rather rudely, at the black man and the white. Then, chin on fist, he simply stared for some minutes. And some minutes more. More than incensed, he looked confused.

  “Shall we go, sir?” I asked.

  He was roused from his reverie, but before we could move, the white soldier spotted me in the carriage.

  She called out, “John!” smiling.

  Was she happy to see me or more surprised by my place at Washington’s side? I didn’t know. And in truth, I didn’t care, my relief at knowing she was safe after the Bunker Hill debacle turned to nausea by the company she was keeping: another man’s—a black man’s, to boot.

  Ah yes, when threatened: still my father’s son.

  Washington was transfixed. “I’ll be. So she’s a woman, then?”

  I simply nodded, wishing to commit myself to as little knowledge of her as possible, then added with calculated nonchalance, “So it would appear.”

  “But she knows your name.”

  “So it would appear,” I repeated.

  “You do see that she’s a woman, do you not?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “So do you, or do you not, know her? Are these the types with whom you consort?”

  At which point Deborah kissed Job, causing me to bristle all the more.

  “And the black one—he is a fellow, then, no?”

  “I believe he’s male. Yes, sir, it would appear that—”

  “That nevertheless she makes a very convincing man, indeed,” he said, directing the coachman to move on. And to me: “Your first assignment is to find out who she is . . . and remove her. She disgusts me.”

  “John!” Deborah yelled.

  I froze. “John!” she yelled again, running toward the coach, which passed her by.

  I didn’t look back.

  One day later, Washington laid down the law. He immediately set to revising the Massachusetts military penal code, adding sixteen more clauses and a vast assortment of punishments, including a provision for treason: death by hanging.

  Henceforth, soldiers would be expected to avoid profanity and drunkenness. There would be no more dances around the fire. Any cider found in camp would be confiscated. There would be no naked bathing by the river, although the General “does not mean to discourage the practice of bathing to wash.”

  Deserters would be shot, as would any soldier who refused to serve under an officer appointed by Washington, never mind if he was from the soldier’s region or not. “Level” intercourse between officers and men would be disallowed until “every officer and private begins to know his place and duty.” Physical differences between officers and enlisted men were encouraged: A system of rosettes and sashes in different colors was devised to distinguish rank, with higher officers ordered into richer fabrics, colors, and better tailoring for purposes of commanding respect.

  Women were to cook and clean and live apart from their men and were not to be seen drilling or on parade.

  Sodomites would be forced to “ride the rail”—that is, tied, sitting up, legs straddling the narrow edge of a two-by-six plank (firmly set against the balls), which was held in midair by men at either end and then bounced up and down.

  Time to get serious about war, boys and girls. Time to get the job done right.

  In a whole different language. The language of “gentlemen.” Determined to do what the British could not: tame us, control us.

  No event delineates more clearly the resonant effect of a story told in different languages than that of the recent Battle of Bunker Hill.

  After receiving a full account, Washington sided with reports characterizing the “rout” as avoidable, nothing proper leadership couldn’t have prevented. A subsequent report indicating the exact opposite—that Bunker Hill wasn’t a triumph for the British after all, but rather a humiliating defeat—was resoundingly ignored and taken as false. How much of a defeat could it have been if in the end the new British Commander Howe (Gage’s day was done) had seized—and was still holding—the battlefield?

  To Washington, the Rebels had failed. They had stupidly fortified the wrong hill (Breed’s instead of Bunker’s) and as a result the distinguished Dr. Joseph Warren, among others less notable, had unnecessarily lost their lives. And on top of this foolishness, the Rebels had withdrawn—worse than that, turned tail and run—just as Howe’s men, climbing the hill in an out-and-out frontal attack upon it, were reaching its peak.

  “Blasted cowards, all!” Washington exclaimed.

  But others pointed to the facts—as Deborah would—that we lost only twenty-six men to Howe’s two hundred and twenty-six, with an additional full thousand wounded (half his force). That controlling a hill covered with thorny blackberry bushes was hardly a major strategic coup. Gage’s own words about the battle were proof enough of our success at Bunker Hill: “The people are now spirited up by a rage and enthusiasm as great as ever people were possessed of—we must proceed in earnest or give the business up.”

  Washington’s ignorance (or ignoring) of these details was to the American farmers who fought and were wounded there nothing less than a declaration of war—on them.

  It was not that Washin
gton was oblivious to their view. It was just that in the language he spoke, that of “facts” which fit with his own gentleman’s ideology, it simply wasn’t possible to lose a hill and win a battle. Never mind that the lone fear of another Bunker Hill would keep Howe distracted and unwilling to attempt a frontal attack again; these considerations didn’t rate with “gentlemen” the same way losing the hill did.

  A language of fact and not of feeling.

  A language disallowing nuance, thus humanity.

  A language of fear.

  George Washington was inclined to agree with Loyalists that our “Just and Righteous Cause” had been betrayed because, once again, at Bunker Hill we had behaved like “murderers.” Ours were not regimented soldiers acting upon the orders of captains—one forward line firing while the rear loaded in orderly, predictable fashion. No, this, as reported, had been steady, relentless fire erupting without interval, without proper display of military etiquette. The Tories would say (and Washington wouldn’t disagree) it was the handiwork of “banditti, desperate wretches of whom not one has the least pretension to be called a ‘gentleman.’” Simply because we hadn’t waited for orders to fire.

  This was just not how a “gentleman’s” war was fought. Or won. There were rules to follow, hierarchies to hew to, customs to obey.

  Fortunately for America, the Rebels didn’t see it that way then and never did quite get the hang of it. For in their language, Bunker Hill had been the best kind of triumph, and in the end it was their language that would win the day once Washington adopted it too. Which he would finally do, albeit secretly, although I wouldn’t apprehend this for several more years—only just in time to turn ’round the war at the point when we were right on the brink.

  Remember that I told you this was a story about getting past appearances?

  Pray, read on. . . .

  CHAPTER 25

  The Battle of Breed’s Hill

  In Cambridge, I was repeatedly rebuffed in my attempts to speak to Deborah. She would have nothing to do with me after I had snubbed her in front of Washington. “Lieutenant Robert Shurtleffe” (“Psst! It’s me, Alice!”) went so far as to show up at my door, warning me to stay away, that “Colonel William Buttrick” would not only look unkindly upon my continuing to call but would forcibly deter me from doing so.

  Now that Dr. Warren had died (“knees steeped in blood,” as prophesied) and old Artemas Ward had been placated by the generalship Congress had granted and been corralled into Washington’s camp, “Colonel William Buttrick” (commission granted by Ward and Warren) was the one remaining “hero to the people.” He was praised for his commitment and fiery dedication to The Cause, particularly his brave, patriotic showing at Bunker Hill, and stories about his courageous, defiant—and triumphant—stand at that battle were legion. The same stand he was about to be court-martialed for.

  In a different language.

  Neither Washington nor Congress could abide the fact that so-called lieutenants and colonels had, in the last moments of battle, directed their “soldiers” to run from Howe, off the hill. To avenge this sad turn of events, Washington wasted no time authorizing the issuance of eight court-martial writs for cowardice and corruption demonstrated during the battle of Bunker Hill, Buttrick’s indictment chief among them.

  Of course, I tried to change Washington’s mind, even going so far as to admit Buttrick was a woman I once had loved, an admission which, had I not ducked, would have afforded me a lethal head wound by flying candlestick.

  The truth is I was in such utter disbelief that I hadn’t even let sink in the possibility that Deborah could, in fact, be hanged. The objections I voiced to Washington were mostly driven by my fear that pursuing this course of his would make it impossible for me to convince Deborah that Washington was a good man and that this, for now, was the best we could do for her Revolution (the case I’d been wanting to make to her personally when I tried to visit her tent and was turned away).

  But this, now, was my wake-up call. How in the name of God had I convinced myself that dragging Washington to Cambridge was somehow part of the piecemeal progression toward my goal of obtaining food and guns?

  The mercilessness of the language of the “gentlemen” had hit home.

  Of those eight court-martial writs, I recollect three: Samuel Gerrish and Joseph Matthews for running from the engagement, and, of course, Deborah, a.k.a. Buttrick, for leading the retreat. Joseph Matthews was sentenced to ten lashes on his bare back in front of his company; I can’t remember what happened to Samuel Gerrish; and Buttrick, to my stupendous relief, escaped.

  Three days after the writ’s execution, guards went to his/her tent to arrest him/her, only to find him/her gone. (I had snuck her a note via Alice: Very dangerous! You must go!)

  My secret and very private joy over her escape, sadly, was short-lived. For Buttrick certainly resurfaced in a nefarious way that spelled her end. Amid dense fog, she was found rowing ashore off a British gunboat anchored on the Charles and was accused of plotting to shoot Washington while he was lazily sipping his morning tea (was it British?) under his portico. A sentry spotted Buttrick in his spyglass and wounded his left leg.

  She was leaving me no out.

  It was decided that Buttrick was to be hanged two days hence.

  I went mad, begging, pleading, cajoling Washington not to follow through. Yes, I understood she was an assassin and all that, but still, the scenario as it was playing itself out felt so sad to me, so wrong. I wasn’t quite the gentleman—yet.

  Washington was not only unmoved, he further assigned me to Buttrick’s watch, threatening me with dereliction of duty, punishment being death by firing squad, should the prisoner escape.

  Still I tried to save Buttrick’s life, with one final plan. I offered to have Deborah—and her daughter—sold into indentured servitude in the West Indies, never to be allowed to return.

  “Hang her!” Washington insisted.

  “You can’t, sir!”

  He just stared at me. “And why not? Perhaps I’ll hang you with her too!”

  “You’re not a king, sir, not yet! You’d do well to remember that!” I glowered.

  I thought sure this was the end of my life. That Washington would drag me out to the Charles and have me shot, dismembered, and my bits tossed to the sea. He didn’t do that. Instead he kept drinking Madeira and one hour later inexplicably reversed his course. “Indenturement, eh? Your proposal has appeal,” he slurred. “Do it.”

  I did it.

  She told me that she would rather have died. Alice didn’t know what to think, except that the West Indies couldn’t be so bad because it was warm and there was a lot of sugar there.

  Visiting her in the safe house that evening, I confided, “I will make sure you are comfortable, and when this is over I pledge to work tirelessly for your return.” The truth was, I intended to send her to a particular plantation belonging to an old business partner of my father’s, but I didn’t share that with her because she wouldn’t have cared and I was concerned that the guards outside the door might be listening.

  “So—you’ve joined the enemy.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got that wrong, Buttrick,” I replied, hoping that calling her by her soldier’s name would reduce my heart’s affection for her. But it only made things worse. “Oh, why the devil did you plot to kill the General, after all? If only you’d have let me speak to you. If only you could have been made to see it wasn’t so bad—”

  “Stupid moron,” she hissed, kicking her chained foot against the wall. “He’s not my general!” She spat at me, covering my cheek with her warm saliva.

  I couldn’t bring myself to wipe it off, not straightaway, finding in the hot, viscous spit strewn across my face confirmation of what I’d been looking for and otherwise had been unable to find: rage, fury, shame, embarrassment that I’d ever had anything to do with her at all. The conviction that she, with her chains, shorn hair, filthy neck, face, and arms, and those venomous ey
es, was mad—and had been so all along.

  A silence fell between us. Only this time, no stardust, no lightning, no tea . . . if only because I wasn’t listening.

  I turned to leave. “Let me help you,” she whispered.

  She sifted dirt through her fingers and her chains clinked; she toppled the bowl of gruel that had been served to her on the dirt floor. “It’s not as it looks,” she whispered again.

  “What’s that?” I asked, breaking the spell. In consequence, the next opening that might have altered the course of History passed me by.

  She even went so far as to beckon me closer with her finger, obliging me to descend before her on one knee. I wanted to feel nothing between us but the cold, dark crust of the oxidized chain.

  She said nothing; she only smiled. It was the surest sign of her love I could imagine.

  “You listen to me now, I’ll opt for the Indies, I’ll take Alice and I’ll go.”

  I took her hand. I was crying. “Deborah, please—”

  “Let me help you”—she repeated the entreaty that in light of the circumstances struck me as odd, coming even from Deborah—“by leaving you with a story,” she continued, “of the Battle of Breed’s Hill.”

  She rested the stretch of chain between her wrists on the floor and folded her hands comfortably atop the pile of links.

  “They say such a slaughter the king’s men never knew. They also say Gage has been going around telling the king and such, ‘Those Rebels ain’t the despicable rabble too many have supposed.’ Now, I know Gage ain’t probably saying ‘ain’t,’ but you get the gist, and I imagine the rest is pretty near on.”