by Ron Carter
“Matilda? Did she have her calf? She was going to have a calf.”
“Yes. A strong little heifer. Just like Matilda.”
Joseph smiled weakly. “A heifer calf—more milk later—so good to have milk.” Suddenly he sobered. “I can’t see Father. Where’s Father? Is he out in the grain—is the grain ripe? It’s too early for it to ripen—where’s Father?”
“In the barn with the calf.”
Joseph’s clutching hands relaxed, then fell away, and Mary felt the wasted body slump in her arms. His face was turned up to hers, eyes wide. His words slowed, and he spoke with great effort.
“Mother, I can hardly see you. Are you leaving? Mother, don’t leave me.”
“No, Joseph. I’m here. I’ll not leave . . .”
The boy drew a great breath, and his shoulders settled as it left him. A smile crept across his face. Then his head fell back, and Mary felt his spirit leave. She stayed on her knees beside his cot for a time, holding the body to her, tears trickling as she felt the wrenching pain that awaited a mother and a father and a sister named Jenny, when they received the letter that would break their hearts.
The soft tread of stocking feet behind brought her around, and she turned in the gray light to look up into the round, jowled face of Dr. Folsom. His hair was disheveled, and he was lifting his suspenders over his shoulders. His face softened as he saw her tears.
“He’s gone?”
“Yes. Just a few minutes ago.”
The first rays of a rising sun suddenly slanted through the windows, and for a few moments the aging doctor stood looking down at Mary as she cradled the body of a smooth-faced boy, who had given all he possessed on this earth for an idea with which he was scarcely acquainted and the depth of which in his seventeen years he had little grasp.
Liberty.
From the dawn of time, how many men had placed greater value on the indomitable, inborn need for liberty than on their lives? How many had left wives, children, hearth and home, all they held dear, in their unquenchable thirst for freedom? How many knew that without it, the sweetness of all else in life was lacking.
In the silence of the empty hospital, looking down at the tear-stained face of Mary Flint as she held the body of Joseph Selman, the question struck Dr. Leonard Folsom as never before. Was it worth it? The pain, the suffering, the death, the heartbreak—was it worth it?
Standing there in the room that had been filled with the maimed and the dying, staring down, a thought jolted Folsom to his very foundations.
I am here! Just a country physician—nothing in my life that sets me apart—just one common, aging man among many. Still, I left all to come here to do what I could! Why? I don’t recall thinking about liberty. Yet, I’m here. Is the need for freedom so strong that men will have it without conscious thought? Is it? Is it?
A feeling arose in his breast, faint at first, then stronger, then overpowering. It is! He could not doubt the source, nor dared he challenge the transcendent power of the conviction. It startled him, cowed him, humbled him, stripped him of all pretense, all defenses.
When he could, he choked down the lump in his throat and tenderly went to one knee beside Mary.
“Let me take him.”
He laid the boy back and covered him with the blanket, then stood. “I’ll get help for the burial, and then we’ve got to leave.”
“I’ll help bury him.”
Folsom looked into her dark eyes and at the beautiful face that was drawn and lined and shook his head. He raised a hand to gently touch her cheek.
“No, Mary. You still have traces of pneumonia in both lungs. I don’t know how you’ve survived this past month. Eighteen hours a day—surgeries, deaths, burials—you’re drained, body and soul. I’ll take care of it. You get your things ready, and then you ride in my wagon. I’ve made a bed from blankets. You’re going to rest. That’s an order.”
At ten minutes past nine o’clock—the tearful good-byes having been said between doctor Folsom’s little command and the townspeople who had labored at their side—the doctor helped Mary climb the wagon wheel to the wagon seat. He followed her and settled her in the wagon box on blankets stacked two feet deep. He took his place on the seat, gathered up the reins to the four horses, threaded them between his fingers, and nodded to the six mounted, armed men riding escort. They turned their horses south, and Folsom slapped the reins on the rumps of his team and talked them into a walk. Behind him, eight more loaded wagons rumbled into motion, taking their place in the line.
He turned to look at Mary. Shaded from the sun by the canvas wagon top, lying on blankets that smoothed the rutted road, she was already lost in deep, dreamless sleep.
At noon they stopped on the banks of a stream to water the horses and unhook them from the singletrees to graze while the men and women sought the shade of nearby maples to take their midday meal of brown bread, cheese, cold mutton, and dried apple slices. At half past one, they were once again moving steadily south, under an August sun that bore down unmercifully.
An evening breeze came down from the Watchung Mountains, cool on their faces, and they made their camp in a stand of oak trees near a stream that flowed south toward Bound Brook. They watered and hobbled the horses in grasses that reached their bellies, then kindled small cook fires for their simple supper. With the evening star winking in the west, they sat near the low flames—quiet, thoughtful, reflecting on the chapter in their lives they had just closed as they left Morristown, and the one they were now opening as they moved south to find and join the army as it prepared to engage General Howe and his British regulars in mortal combat.
Doctor Folsom found Mary seated on an aging wind-felled log, lost in reveries as she gazed into the glowing embers of a dwindling fire. He picked up a long stick, then sat beside her, and for a time they remained still, each with his or her own thoughts—a round, aging, balding, homely little man and a beautiful young woman with dark eyes and dark hair. They had known each other for only one month, yet as they sat beside each other, bone-weary, leading a tiny column of nine wagons searching for an army that was committed to the wrenching horror of cannon and musket, the walls people normally build around themselves for protection from the unwanted intrusions of strangers and society had vanished. Age, upbringing, social status, appearance—none of it mattered. A rare, unexpected feeling came stealing over them. Instinctively they understood that they both desperately needed to freely speak their thoughts and their hurts and fears, as they really were.
Folsom poked at the fire with his stick. “Today, in the wagon, you spoke a name in your sleep. I think it was Rufus.”
“My father. Rufus Broadhead. He died not long ago. The last of my family. He’s buried at the family plot in New York.”
Folsom nodded, and for a time the quiet held. “Then you’re married to a man named Flint?”
“I was. Captain Marcus Flint. He was killed unloading cannon from a ship at the Catherine Street docks in New York.”
Folsom turned far enough to see Mary’s face in the firelight. “Accident?”
“No. Murder. A British agent.”
Folsom slowly shook his head. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. No children?”
“Our first child was stillborn within days of the time Marcus was killed. I have no children.”
Folsom felt the pain, and his head bowed for a moment. Mary continued.
“You? You must have a wife and family somewhere.”
“White Plains. On the mainland near New York.”
Mary nodded. “I know about White Plains. You were a doctor there?”
“Yes.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “A country doctor.”
“Family?”
A light came into his eyes. “My wife, Emily. Our three children are grown and married and gone. The ones who lived. We lost two. A long time ago. Smallpox.”
“Your wife is well?”
“Yes. After Concord and Bunker Hill I said I had to go. She agreed. Almost insisted. She’s there now, sew
ing clothes for the soldiers. Most of the women are.” He bowed his head for a moment before continuing. “Your husband’s family?”
“All gone.”
“You have no one left on either side?”
“No one.”
“I know you come from high breeding. Did either family leave you assets?”
“My father had an estate in New York. The Flint family was wealthy. The British took my father’s mansion for their command headquarters. They took the Flint mansion for a hospital. They seized everything. I was left with the clothes I was wearing and what I could carry in one valise. I was forced to serve for a time as a nurse in the Flint mansion hospital. A British doctor named Otis Purcell taught me. One night the mansion burned. I was on the third floor, asleep. Dr. Purcell saved me. I was very close to dead from the smoke. That’s where I contracted pneumonia. I was thirteen weeks recovering.”
Folsom reached with the stick to stir the coals and waited.
“Dr. Purcell was a widower—had no family. The day after the fire he was dying of a stroke, and he wrote a will leaving me thirty-two thousand pounds, British Sterling. I put the money in a New York bank managed by a man named Charles Partridge. Later I was told a British court had entered an order to hold it all. A man in England named Alfonso Eddington had brought a lawsuit. He claimed to be a distant blood cousin of Dr. Purcell and contended that my claims were a fraud, that the will was a forgery. The money is still in the bank, but I cannot get it.”
“Have you tried? Hired a barrister?”
“I have no money to hire one. But I gave the documents to my father’s barrister, a man named Lawrence Weatherby. He said he would see what could be done.” She shook her head, and Folsom saw the sad hopelessness in her eyes. “He also told me the lawsuit is filed in Liverpool. I’m afraid there is no hope that a British court in Liverpool is going to deliver thirty-two thousand pounds in British Sterling to an American rebel accused of claiming it on a forged document.”
She paused for a time, then added, “The truth is, Dr. Purcell died while I was unconscious in the hospital after the fire. His body was found by a British general named Jarom Hollins, along with the will. I didn’t learn of what had happened until thirteen weeks later.”
Folsom stared at the dying flames while he let the story settle in. “How did you get from New York to Morristown?”
“Spent the last money I had, then drove a freight wagon for my keep.”
He turned to her in surprise. “You drove a freight wagon? How far?”
“From the Raritan River to Morristown.”
He broke off staring at her and said quietly, “Amazing. Amazing.” Again they sat with the night breeze moving cool on their faces, stirring the leaves of the oak trees.
“Why did you leave New York? All your friends?” Folsom asked.
“The British came. I was working for the patriots, and the Tories turned on us. I was with General Washington’s army when it crossed from New York to Long Island. Stayed with them. That’s where I met two men. One from Boston, the other a white man who was raised as an Iroquois Indian. They seemed to understand.”
Folsom could not miss the softness that had come into her voice and her face.
“Their names?”
“Billy Weems is from Boston. Eli Stroud was orphaned and raised by the Indians.”
“Where are they now?”
She shrugged. “The last I heard, somewhere up north. Eli thinks he can do something to stop the Indians Burgoyne has gathered to fight our army.” A brightness came into her eyes. “Maybe he can. I hope he can.”
Folsom sensed it. “You have a . . . a special feeling for these men?”
She turned earnest eyes to him. “They were kind. They understood.”
He stirred the fire, and a shower of sparks spiraled upward, then winked out as they settled.
“Is that the reason you came to Morristown? To find them?”
She sat without moving for so long he thought she was not going to answer.
“Yes.”
“Eli?”
“Yes.”
His words were so soft they could scarcely be heard. “I hope you find him.”
“I hope Emily is safe and well when you return.”
For a moment his chin trembled, and he reached to wipe at his mouth without saying a word. After a time he started to rise, and Mary reached for his arm. He settled back down, waiting.
Her voice was low, steady. “Is life just a matter of endings? All things ending? Mother, father, husband, child, home, health—all gone?—ended?”
Folsom didn’t immediately answer. Never had he talked of such things with a person he had known for such a short time, yet, sitting on a log in the wilderness, before a dying fire, it seemed natural, even needed.
After a time, he said, “All things change. Good, bad—all things. Maybe it’s less an ending and more of a change. Emily and I lost two of our five children. For a time I thought she would never smile again. But she did. She changed. Now she takes her greatest joy in our eleven grandchildren. Two lives ended. More lives began. An ending? Maybe. But maybe more of a change.”
There was torment and pain in her voice as she spoke. “Everything I knew, everything I loved, is gone. Not just changed. Gone forever. There seems to be no end to it.”
The doctor leaned forward, knees on elbows, looking at his hands as he slowly rubbed his palms together. “Life can be hard. But the thing is, it moves. Good times pass, but so do bad ones. It seems like the Almighty meant for us to taste it all, one way or another. Maybe more good or bad for some of us, but in time we share it all. Rich, poor, high, low—it makes no difference. Maybe that’s what life’s all about—finding out if we can take it all, and learn, and keep going. And it seems like somehow it’s all linked back to freedom. Is that why we’re fighting the British? We have to be free to find out what we are?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“I have, more lately than before. I sometimes mourn to be home with Emily, but lately it seems like I have to see this thing through with the British. There’s something about liberty—freedom—it just sits there like a stone. Won’t go away.”
“I know. I’ve felt it.”
The call of a distant owl came floating from the north, and they quieted for a moment, staring into the darkness of the forest. The strange mood had been interrupted. They were both aware it was receding, and oddly, it seemed right to let it go—that clinging to it, or speaking of it, would somehow diminish it. They did not move for a long time, storing the rare feeling in their hearts so they could draw it out in quiet times and feel once again the gift of having touched souls for a moment in the vast, uncharted ocean of life.
Finally Dr. Folsom stood with the dwindling light of the glowing coals casting shadows on his round, homely face. He had returned to the thorny world of duty, obligation, trouble, decisions, and safe distances between humans.
“You sleep in the wagon tonight, on those blankets. Keep one over you to protect your lungs. The pneumonia has not yet gone. I’ll be nearby.”
“Thank you. I will.”
She watched him disappear in the darkness, then turned back to the fire. The soft call of the owl came again, and she looked north for a few moments.
Eli’s up there somewhere. Is he alive? Safe? He has to be. He has to be. He and Billy. The Almighty has taken everything else from me. Surely He will not take Eli. He would not do that.
Notes
Mary Flint and Dr. Folsom are both fictional characters. The feeling between Mary and Eli Stroud is somewhat explored in volume 2, The Times That Try Men’s Souls, chapter IX.
Neshaminy Creek, thirty miles north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
August 10, 1777
CHAPTER VI
* * *
What?”
General George Washington thrust his head forward as he sat his gray horse, facing the sweating messenger who was fighting to hold his winded, lathered horse s
till in the wilting, midday August heat. Two hundred yards to the east, through a narrow strip of thick forest, Neshaminy Creek ran south toward the mother river, the mighty Delaware, thirty miles behind them. General Washington’s two aides, Colonel John Laurens and young, slender, diminutive Colonel Alexander Hamilton, flanked him on either side, stunned wide-eyed as they waited for the answer to the blurted question.
The messenger’s horse threw its head impatiently as the man raised an arm to point south. “Like I said, Sinepuxent Inlet, sir. Thirty-two miles below the Delaware Capes, in Maryland. The whole lot of them. We counted the flags. Two hundred sixty, all British, sailing south. I come as hard as I could to tell you. Wore out three horses.”
Shaken, Washington struggled to regain his composure. “Are you certain? Did you see it yourself? Make the count?”
“Me and four militia officers, sir. We was all there. We all had telescopes. We all counted. The whole British fleet is headed south. We don’t know where to, but south.”
Washington turned in the saddle and spoke to Hamilton. “See that this man gets food and rest for himself and his horse.” He shifted to Laurens. “Stop the column here, and put the war council on notice. I will likely need to assemble them before day’s end. Do not repeat what you’ve heard to anyone. Both of you report back to me as soon as possible.”
Hamilton turned his horse and led the messenger away at a lope, moving south to find the wagons loaded with oats for the horses, while Laurens spurred his horse north at a gallop to catch General Nathanael Greene, leading the two-mile-long column. Washington reined his mount into a small break among the oak trees and swung down, pacing, head bowed as his mind raced to make sense of the incomprehensible intelligence he had just received.
South! South to where? General Burgoyne’s to the north, up the Hudson! Philadelphia’s up the Delaware! And General Howe is taking that armada with fifteen thousand troops south? Ridiculous! His army’s been on those ships in this heat for over a month! Reports are he’s thrown more than a thousand dead horses overboard! This is August—he’s wasted half the summer campaign on those ships going everywhere except to join Burgoyne or to take Philadelphia. And now he’s sailing south?