Last Refuge of Scoundrels

by Paul Lussier

  She blinked. Was it fear?

  “And when your kids ask you, ‘Papa, Grandpapa, why’d you slaughter that lady, her daughter, and her man?’ Ah, hell! Let me give you our names—this way you can say, when we’re famous all over the world, that you knew us when. I’m Deborah, there’s Alice, and that handsome fellow, he’s John!”

  The Redcoat’s gun was shaking. Deborah’s foot was twitching. Other than that, her mien was cool.

  “So where was I? Oh, yeah. . . . ‘They just wanted a world made right, Daddy! How on earth could you have been so wrong?’ And all you’re gonna be able to say is ‘ ’Cause the king told me to!’ Now, won’t that be a sorry time?

  “I know it looks like I’m the enemy, but I ain’t, unless you’re happy shoveling shit, getting whipped ’cause your breeches aren’t white enough, being tossed into prison ’cause you’re carrying debt, getting your finger chopped off for saying what amounts to ‘boo’ about the king—the same king that thinks you’re a worthless turd he’d sooner jail, even kill, than meet.”

  The soldier: “Madam, give me back my gun!”

  “So what is it, then?” she asked. “Is it shoot me dead or let it rest? Is it murder or ‘Let them go!’?”

  The Redcoat gave way. “Goddamn you, Jenkins!” one of the others cried, raising his musket and training it on Alice, her face in his sights. He cocked the hammer.

  The girl looked to her mother. “Mummy, it’s coming on. . . .” Suddenly, wracking convulsions shook her body. She fell to the earth, drooling, trembling, kicking in the dirt. The fit was on her.

  The sickening sight of the girl with the crippled hand thrashing uncontrollably was enough to make all three Redcoats dismount their horses and take direction from Deborah as to how to help. Ordering one to place a stick in Alice’s mouth, another to hold her gently, and me to stroke her head, Deborah knelt beside her, whispering “Hush, now, little darling. Mama’s here. Everything’s fine. Tap out ‘Yankee Doodle,’ sweetheart—can you do that?”

  The concentration required of Alice was a lifeline, and she began tapping her way back from her fit of falling sickness, a condition which until this time I didn’t know she had. Small wonder Deborah had been so insistent about Alice getting the tune right.

  Slowly but surely, Alice came to, by which time the soldiers had lost a good deal of their resolve. Was it a state of heightened lucidity, or of mania, or of inspiration, which compelled Alice to make her next choice?

  As the Redcoats were kneeling over her, debating among themselves exactly what to do with us (“Should we at least wound them to slow them up? Take them prisoner?”), Alice pulled a knife from her jacket and slit one soldier’s throat. The other she managed to stab in the gut. And before the third could comprehend what had happened, she leapt up and ran, compelling him to follow.

  “Run, Mother, run!” she screamed. Deborah, in shock, could no more run than I could. The remaining soldier felled the girl with a single shot, which echoed across the field.

  Silence.

  Deborah ran to her daughter’s limp body. Ignoring her, the soldier lunged at me, stabbing me in the leg with his bayonet. Then he mopped the excess blood from my leg, wrapped a cloth tight below my knee, and tied me to the saddle of one of the dead men’s horses, tethering that horse to his own.

  Turning to Alice’s mother: “Run along now, to your General. And pray—end this bloody war,” he said quietly.

  He left Deborah alone.

  Tipping his hat, he rode away with me in tow. When I craned my neck, I could see that Deborah was in a tragically altered state. Her face was buried so deeply into her dying daughter’s bosom I was certain she was trying to suffocate herself and die.

  I called out, “Run, my love!”

  She didn’t call back. Not even to say good-bye.

  Over and again in my mind I played back this scene that had left Alice dead, Deborah as good as slain, and me a prisoner of war. The queer thing is, I couldn’t imagine it having gone any differently. It seemed meant to be, I suppose.

  I gathered it was.

  The series of events occurring thereafter I never witnessed; I only heard tell of them. Ultimately, in fact, they became legend, told and told again by plain folk hundreds, nay, thousands of times. Every teller adding his or her flourish, the end result being a tale that in every respect but one I trusted was true.

  The ending was what was false. The ending which held that Deborah Simpson and John Lawrence ended their lives justly famous, given full credit for putting America on the path to freedom in winning the great war.

  According to “The Legend of Deborah and John” as told at hearths and kitchen tables, after John was taken away, Deborah clung to Alice for several hours more. In a small clearing ten minutes’ ride outside Philadelphia, off the road to Germantown, she held her daughter in her arms and watched her die. This was how the tale began.

  Another ten minutes it took for little Alice to choke on her own blood. Although she died of a bullet to her body, such was her spirit that she did not die instantly, not before tapping out with her fist a particular tune. . . .

  Deborah waited until afternoon the next day, until her daughter’s body was cold to the touch. At which point, unable to leave her side, and unwilling to bury or burn her, she strapped Alice’s dead body behind her on her saddle and together they rode away.

  Some thought it ghoulish, the sight of a grieving woman with a dead girl tied to her saddle riding through the countryside, screaming out news of Clinton’s oncoming exodus: “Turn out, citizens, turn out!” But mostly people viewed her as an angel from heaven, for the Rebel folk were so pleased finally to be executing their long-planned and long-awaited shot at vanquishing Britain on their own that had Deborah been a decayed skeleton in a tricorne hat they still would have cheered her, welcomed her as one of their own, and helped her on her way to Valley Forge.

  “Now! Now! Now! Ambush his baggage train and send his vehicles careening into the mud! Fell trees onto Clinton’s path! Farmers, kill your livestock so as not to have them stolen by the British! Fill your wells with sand to deprive them of water! Shoot the stragglers in Clinton’s right flank and blow up so many bridges that his passage is slowed! Ready the way for General Washington!”

  Notifying Washington of Clinton’s withdrawal was more difficult. Having been a spy for the commander-in-chief for some time now, Deborah normally knew full well to take every precaution not to be seen or heard in the vicinity of the General except as someone other than herself.

  Today she was much too distracted to care.

  Today she rode right into camp, lathered in grime and demented with grief, and demanded to see the General, alone.

  The General, of course, would not come.

  “Fuck it!” she cried. “Tell him the eighteenth it will be! June the eighteenth Clinton will evacuate Philadelphia! He will have a ten-mile-long supply train of artillery, baggage, provisions, pontoon trains, fodder wagons, private carriages, rolling bakeries, traveling blacksmith shops, fifteen thousand soldiers, five thousand horses, and at least two thousand terrified Loyalist camp followers. In short, plenty and more!

  “But also there will be on this day a solar eclipse. No shadows. We will hide in bushes, lie in wait, and make sure that Clinton is given the hardest of times. We will pick his men off like at Lexington and Concord—like flies! By Monmouth Courthouse, in New Jersey, Clinton will be slowed to a near halt.

  “Tell the General this is where he must come, by way of the ravine, to do the final harm! Tell him he must prepare without delay!”

  At which point, nearly falling from her horse in a faint, she regained her balance, wheeled her charger, and galloped away.

  Upon hearing the news, the General raced to the top of Mount Joy to have a look through his field glasses at the woman the sentry described as “crazy as a loon.” Satisfied that it was Deborah, though disturbed by the sight of Alice’s body draped over Deborah’s horse, he ordered immediate preparations to
move out and away from Valley Forge.

  The time had come to resume the war.

  For well on a month (June 18 was by now just twenty-eight days away), Deborah aimlessly wandered the hills, taking a position overlooking Monmouth and camping out, living on rabbit, acorns, and herb brews. She was worried. Would Clinton be sufficiently harassed? Could Washington vanquish him?

  Odd that Deborah found the mental wherewithal to ask herself such questions, for, in fact, her cognitive state by now had deteriorated to the point that had she been asked, she’d not have been able to recollect her own name. And she believed that Alice was still alive. So not only did she refuse to bury her daughter, Deborah kept her body propped up against a tree beneath a protective bough and each day would update Alice on the state of things in the countryside, whether the match-to-end-all-matches between Clinton and Washington was—or was not—soon to transpire.

  Just Deborah and Alice sitting there upon the hill amid the white wreaths of shadbush, yellow forsythia, and lilac, waiting on Clinton, on the people, on Washington, on the eclipse of the sun.

  The date arrived.

  One can’t help but feel sad, not only for America but for Deborah, that the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse turned out to be a draw.

  It all started well enough, Washington scaring the living daylights out of Clinton in dotting the hills along the British column with thousands of troops ready to come at both his flanks, pincer-style.

  Deborah, viewing the parade from across the ravine (she was not willing to leave Alice behind to fight), was delighted with her and Alice’s work (although not for a second had she forgotten about John).

  “My Lord, finally, it seems we’ve done it, dear! It seems we’ve reached just about everyone we needed to in time! Clinton’s baggage train looks less than half its size, the soldiers and stragglers look depleted, and I can see that bridge after bridge in his path has been destroyed! And, oh, my love, Washington has arrived!”

  Yes, indeed, it seemed as though Deborah had done everything right. Except, that is, to set straight Washington’s all-too-ridiculous gentlemen-in-command.

  The players: Charles Lee, Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, Anthony Wayne, Nathanael Greene, Lord Stirling. To Deborah, they were just names. But names can still do damage, and these certainly did.

  They disagreed on everything from the start. Shortly after Washington spotted Deborah in his field glasses, he decided to dispatch fifteen hundred men to harass the British. His aides and generals met to discuss the proposal. Hamilton thought such a number not nearly enough. Charles Lee, who disapproved of the attack altogether, thought it too much.

  Somehow the number of Continental regulars to be involved escalated to five thousand nonetheless, with a thousand New Jersey militia and six hundred sharpshooting riflemen planned as backup. And when that happened, General Lee changed his tune. Well, if this is going to be a grand battle, then, he thought, let me lead the charge. “I wish to request complete command!” On the other hand, we could lose: “Never mind.” Then again, we just could win: “Well, then bring it on!”

  Washington, fully appreciating the “anxieties of honor” that were occupying Lee’s mind, caved, giving supreme command of the engagement to the man who couldn’t decide whether the whole idea of attacking Clinton was a pitiful waste of money, men, momentum, and time, or whether it was worth a shot if it meant that he would obtain the glorious post he desired: major general, first in charge.

  Of course, Lee’s heart wasn’t in it. But steeped in military protocol as these august men were, few argued against Lee, a ranking officer (a former British officer!), being assigned the command. His Pomeranians danced circles of delight.

  There was a civilian doctor who snuck into Washington’s tent that night and, after begging five minutes with His Excellency, shared his reservations about the good General’s bad choice of Lee.

  But the physician was politely shown the door.

  Unfortunately, Lee, on top of being arrogant and delusional, was stupid. The next day at dawn, he quite literally had his men marching back and forth over the same bridge, yet remained convinced that it wasn’t the same. He spat back at a lesser general who tried to alert him to “a better way” that he knew his business and to please shut up.

  Lee’s men were the ones Deborah spotted coming over the hill, sending Clinton into a panic. Unfortunately, once he was over the hill, Lee realized that he was without a battle plan (had he forgotten it? mislaid it?). So naturally, at the first sign of Clinton adding reinforcements to his rear guard to defend himself, Lee lost what little mind he had and began babbling orders and contradictory counterorders “with a rapidity and indecision calculated to ruin us,” said one soldier. The only clear command from Lee being one—and, regrettably, it was an outright lie:

  “I have orders from the Congress and the commander-in-chief not to engage.”

  You do?

  Had it not been for a fat little fifer who waddled back to Washington and, begging his mighty pardon, told of the retreat that had been ordered by General Lee, rank, wanton disaster would have been ours. We would have lost the war then and there.

  Washington, unable to believe his ears, galloped into action. He rode forward, with the chaos before and around him as proof of the fifer’s claim (soldiers screaming, crying, ducking, running every which way but to the front). Then Washington blew his top, laying Lee out in lavender and ordering the attack anew.

  The delay and vacillation, however, had taken its toll. As had the heat. By now soldiers and horses on both sides were parched, exhausted, and stark raving mad, for at some point the mercury had climbed to one hundred and five degrees!

  From atop the hill, the sight of five thousand soldiers in total confusion proved just the jolt to heal Deborah’s muddled brain.

  “Noooo!” she cried, her voice caroming through the wood. This was not to be endured! What in the name of God had gone on?

  Suddenly Alice looked stiff, and even in this ferocious heat felt cold to the touch—every bit as dead as she was. Flies surrounded her, and maggots; tiny bits had been removed from her stony gray flesh. This wasn’t Deborah’s daughter. Keeping her about was insane.

  Quickly conveying Alice’s body to a little gully and covering her with branches, Deborah, breathing dragon fire, leapt, jumped, lunged, even rolled down the hill—desperate to get to the battlefield fast.

  She entered the scene on Englishtown Road, due west of Monmouth Courthouse, amid an orchard rimmed by shrubs. An hour or so had passed since Washington had ordered his men back to the fray, commanding them to re-form a defensive line on high ground.

  British grenadiers were advancing in her direction in perfect formation. She was just inside the American line, behind the hedge where panicked soldiers, desperate and unable to remember their drill (“Poise firelock! Take aim! No, no—cock firelock . . . Oh wait, what’s become of my blasted bayonet? Fix bayonet . . .”) were crouched, some praying to the Lord for help, and others crying out for their mothers.

  The heat, as if in apology, was sucking as much moisture as it could from the earth, resulting in long, wide vaporous swaths of steam refracting the fire and sparks of exploding muskets and artillery, but doing little to cool. The field was an oven, hot enough, it seemed, to boil the blood that was drenching the area in ever-increasing streams.

  Deborah had never seen such carnage: soldiers darting back and forth through the bushes, hacking and chopping and shooting at each other, retreating only long enough to reload . . . or, rather, fumble clumsily with powder and ball while crying out “God almighty, we’re in hell!”

  Screams, shots, curses, fire, the sickening chunk of sabers lopping off heads and limbs.

  A flying ear.

  A grenadier walks about with a sliced neck, his head lolling to his left shoulder.

  A Continental loses his stinking bowels in a death agony, tugging without success at a bayonet lodged in his gut.

  A militiaman, shot down
and writhing in pain, is trampled by fellow Rebel soldiers running helter-skelter; surely they see him, but they just don’t care. One soldier even gets his boot caught in the wounded man’s mouth.

  Thirst so intense that cheeks are purple, tongues are cracked, throats so closed that wrenching calls for “Water, water!” never make it into the thick air.

  Yet Deborah fetches it anyway.

  Carrying a sack made of her skirt in one hand and a scoop from a dead soldier’s boot in the other, she totes gallons of water from the stream. Cupping it in her hands, she funnels it, dribbling the cool wet into dying soldiers’ mouths, reviving far too few. The heat is simply too great. Soldiers not killed by whizzing bullets and cannonballs are suffocating to death anyway.

  Suddenly calls of “Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!” emanate from outside the hedge, nobody quite sure—or caring a whit—from which side.

  Deborah, seeing her plan dying before her eyes, wants things to be different. But how to go about it, what to do?

  Her eyes fall upon an unmanned cannon, the artilleryman wounded or dead.

  She reaches for a cartridge.

  She grabs a rammer and fires ball after ball after ball after ball.

  The British fire back.

  A ball actually passes between Deborah’s legs, but she’s too far gone to feel fear. Instead, she’s reminded of the pain of childbirth, of how much she loved Alice, of the memory of her beloved daughter.

  She rams the cannon and she fires another ball.

  And all at once she sees it. Alice is dead. John is gone. I loved John. I have failed. We can never win this war; Revolution thus will never be. A dream. A flight of fancy. A sham.

  She tosses the rammer to the wind. No more balls. No more guns. This is not the way. I will fight no more is her last thought before she falls, exhausted, her body tumbling down into a thorny and parched ravine.

  She never laid eyes on Washington that entire day. Although it is hard to believe that Washington had not spotted her in the last savage hour of the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, still he made no attempt to speak with her. Neither did she attempt to find him. For his part, it was because he was ashamed. For her part, she was disgusted and forlorn.