by David Potter
On his feet are rags, wrapped twice around. His bare toes stick out. His toes are black, which I hope is only filth.
“Are you thievin’?” he says. “You can’t wait, until we die a decent death?”
“I’m not a thief,” I say.
“Then what are you, poking about like this? A spy?”
We’ve now gathered some attention among the New York men. They have nothing to do besides stand around and wait to board one of the longboats, which doesn’t appear likely to happen anytime soon, so pestering some strange interloper—that would be me—must seem like a pleasant diversion.
“A spy?” says another. He’s taller than the first, but just as smelly. He has on his feet something resembling shoes, but not by a whole lot. “Show me a spy and I’ll rip his heart out, along with his liver. It’d make a tasty meal, and more than I’ve had in days. Where be your spy, mate?”
“Right ’ere ’e is,” says Shorty. “Spyin’ about, looking us all up, one by one. Spyin’ or thieving, one or the other. How’s about we share his heart, mate? I’ll rip out the left side and you can have the right.” Then Shorty pokes me in the chest—right where my heart is—and draws a line up and down. “Or would you prefer, my Lord, tops to bottoms?”
“Why, Your Majesty,” says the tall one. “I shall take the top of the heart, leave you the bottom. Has anyone salt for the tasting? The last heart I et was a wee bit on the chewy side, don’t you know.”
The men laugh, kick me in the butt, and send me on my way. New Yorkers—what jokers, whatever the century.
I search around with no success until I hear Brandon loudly—very loudly—whispering.
“Mel! Over here! Down by the water!”
I scramble through the crowd of Marylanders and a crowd of Massachusetts men. Brandon is down by the river, next to the loading dock. Only two longboats can be loaded at a time, one on either side of the dock. The Vermonters are still being brought aboard, and the Marblehead men, who both command the loading operation and pilot the longboats, are hissing in an enraged whisper at nearly everyone to shut up and sit down.
“I’ve seen him, I think,” Brandon says. “The Hessian dude. He’s in the middle of that boat right there.”
Brandon points. A longboat, black, big, bulky, and slow, is making its way across the river. Fore and aft in the boats are Marblehead men, one the oarsman and the other the pilot. Everyone else is sitting down.
“Are you sure you saw him?” I ask Brandon. “It’s dark.”
“I’m sure. He was the guy at the farmhouse with the torch, right? Short and ugly? But I’m pretty sure he saw me. What I don’t understand is why he would go across the river. Washington’s on this side. How’s he going to get to Washington from over there?”
I think it through. And it makes perfect sense. On this side of the Delaware there are hundreds of men clumped together, and wherever Washington goes he is surrounded. But once Washington crosses over and begins the march to Trenton, his protection will break down. We’ll be marching along a road that is unfamiliar. At some point the general could be completely exposed. And totally vulnerable.
“He’s going to take up a position, Brandon,” I say. “Somewhere along the route he’ll find the perfect place. For the kill shot.”
SIXTY-FIVE
“MEL?” SAYS BRANDON.
“Yeah?”
“What do we do now?
“I’m not sure. I think we’ve got to think of something. Like, pretty quick.”
“Boys?” says a voice behind us. “Are we whispering again?”
It’s Bev, who seems very pleased with herself. “So it turns out,” she says, “that it’s pretty easy to pass as a boy. All you have to do is walk around like you know where you’re going. And spit once in a while.”
I point to the longboat crossing the river. “The dude we’re after is on that one, Bev. Brandon spotted him. Any ideas?”
“So he’s going to the other side of the river?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“I guess he figures his chances are better there, so he can have a shot at Washington without so many people around.”
Bev takes this in. A new group of men begin boarding an empty longboat that just came into the dock. “Why don’t we just get in line with these guys,” she says, “and take this one over?”
It’s as good a plan as any. We mix in with the men, and a few minutes later everyone in front of us has boarded and it’s our turn.
Or it should be our turn.
Blocking our way is one of the Marbleheaders, the tough fishermen from Marblehead, Massachusetts, who’ve been given command of the longboats. Their job is to board the men on the longboats one by one and situate them according to some seaman’s algorithm, the purpose being, I take it, not to have too many men cram up in the front, or in the back, or on one side or the other, and tip the thing over right there in front of everyone. So he has power, this guy. He has red cheeks and black eyes. “Just where,” he says, “do you think you’re going?”
“We’re with them,” I say.
“With who?”
“Them,” I say, pointing to the men on the longboat.
The Marbleheader rolls his eyes. “Not likely. Now run along. This boat be full and ready to shove off.” Then the guy puts his hand to my chest and shoves me off.
I stumble backward. Unfortunately for me, I lose my footing, stumble off the dock, and fall on my butt. Right in the middle of the muddy pathway the men have been using to come to the dock itself.
And even more unfortunately, I have an audience.
Quite a large audience, if you want to know the truth.
The men from Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine, to be exact.
Who see me sitting on my butt and laugh in unison.
Laughing, unlike mere smiling, is generally a noise-producing event. Har-har, ho-ho, hee-hee—you get the idea.
A hundred men of the soldiering kind laughing in unison—that’s definitely a noise-producing event.
So much so that the Marbleheader who shoved me hisses at the men to quiet down.
So much so that the noise draws the attention of some officers, who immediately come down to the dock and also hiss at the men to quiet down. Some rather rude and vulgar language is exchanged by both sides. The officers are adamant that the men comport themselves in a certain manner, and the men, who have been standing around in the snow and driving sleet for hours now and are about to board boats to take them into battle, are not in the mood to be told what to do and what not to do.
Things get a little tense.
The officers are hardly older than the men. It’s a mystery to me how the few get to be officers and the many get to be mere men, but it is what it is. Bev and Brandon help me to my feet. “That wasn’t cool, dude,” Brandon says to the Marbleheader, who merely shrugs. Bev is about to go off on the guy, but I tell her to take it easy.
“We’re still going to need him,” I say.
“He’s a total jerk,” Bev says. “He didn’t have to push you.”
“Maybe not, but we still haven’t solved our problem. We are on this side, and Kramm is on the other.”
We turn and watch as the boatmen shove off and the longboat begins crossing. There are chunks of ice floating by, and it’s snowing and sleeting and awful, but we’re able to make progress.
About thirty men are aboard. The sides of the boat are high, and the pilot and the captain are standing, so we can see their heads. The longboat takes a distinct northward tack to counter the current, which will push it downstream, to reach the landing zone on the Jersey side. There’s one guy at the helm of the boat, using a long pole to push away ice, and there’s a guy in the stern, with his hand upon another long pole, a steering sweep, which is affixed to the deck. There’s also one guy on each side manning an oar, and they work in tandem. All the boatman are Marbleheaders, and they know what they’re doing. Everyone else is a landlubber, and just along for the ride.
The boat starts to inch its way upstream.
This is going to take a very long time.
“We really need to get across,” says Bev.
“Yeah, but I don’t think they’re going to let us on until our unit goes,” I say. “That seems to be how they’re doing it. And I don’t think our unit is set to go. They’re still up on the hill. Maybe we should go back and wait with Daniel and Elizabeth.”
“That’s not going to cut it,” says Bev. “You know that, right, Mel?”
I know it all right. I just don’t know what to do about it.
SIXTY-SIX
SOMETIMES YOU DON’T HAVE a single good idea to your name. And the harder you try to come up with one, the harder it gets.
And sometimes while you’re trying to think of a good idea, but can’t, what you need kind of walks up to you and bops you on the head.
Which is how things happen next. General Washington, General Greene, and Captain Hamilton come down the dock to see for themselves what the commotion is all about.
And to inform Colonel John Glover that the general is ready to cross.
The snow is getting worse. It’s driving now, pelting all of us, starting to blow full force. I think the commander in chief wants to get across before it’s too late.
General Greene has a word with Colonel Glover, and space in the next boat is cleared. I catch Captain Hamilton’s eye, and he nods me over. “You have something,” he says, “on your mind?”
“I do,” I say. “We have to get on the next boat. It’s urgent.”
“Urgent why?”
“We saw our Hessian friend. He’s already crossed. He’s waiting on the other side.”
“Are you certain?”
“One hundred percent.”
“The general will not countenance any delay. Nothing must interfere.”
“Everything’s at risk, whether it’s part of the plan or not. If you just let us get on the next boat, we’ll be able to protect him, but he’ll never have to know. So he won’t say no.”
“How many are you?”
Me, and Bev, and Brandon, and Daniel, and Elizabeth: five, I tell him.
“Impossible. Three of you at most.”
I know it’s the best deal I’m going to get, so there’s nothing to do except agree. I tell Captain Hamilton we’re good. He tells me to line up right behind him, and he’ll see to it we get aboard.
That leaves only one task.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Brandon. “Hold my place.” I turn and run before either he or Bev asks me to explain myself.
The Massachusetts Twenty-Third Continental Regiment is maybe seventy or eighty yards away. The snow is really starting to fall now, and as I run down the line I go past all the different militias and companies lining up to board the longboats. In the dark and snow I can’t identify where they’re from, or see their colors, if they have any. They could be from Connecticut or Delaware or New Jersey or New York or Maryland or Virginia, but every man is in exactly the same condition—cold and wet. I keep going till I get to Daniel and Elizabeth, at the very back of the pack of the Twenty-Third Continental.
Getting here is the easy part. Now I have to tell Daniel and Elizabeth we’re going over now, and they’re going over later. It doesn’t help that I have about six seconds to do it. Or that we’re standing next to a riverbank, surrounded by two thousand soldiers, in a driving snowstorm. I’m not going to have time to soothe anyone’s feelings, soften the blow, talk it out—or listen to counterarguments.
Or indulge a hissy fit.
This is war.
Orders must be given, and taken.
“Mel!” says Daniel, as I approach. “We were getting concerned. Your friends—have they met with misfortune?
“They’re fine,” I say. “But here’s the deal. We spotted Kramm, and we can’t let him get too far ahead of us. Captain Hamilton will only allow three to ride over on the next boat. I’m thinking it’s best if Brandon, Bev, and I stick together—I don’t think we can risk being separated. Okay? I think you two should stay with the Twenty-Third and get over as fast as you can. Remember the call, guys. It’s ‘Victory.’ And the response is—”
“Or death,” say Daniel and Elizabeth in unison.
“And we’ll have to catch up somehow on the other side,” I say. “We can’t worry about how. We’ll have to figure it out once we all get over. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” says Daniel.
Elizabeth offers her hand. “Be careful,” she says, and I tell her I will.
Then I’m off, and I get in line behind Captain Hamilton with a second to spare.
SIXTY-SEVEN
MAYBE IT WOULD BE more impressive if the sun were shining, trumpets were blaring, and General Washington, like a pharaoh in ancient Egypt, was brought down to the dock in a golden chariot.
But that’s not how it happens. Through the driving storm, with big, flat chunks of ice clogging up the Delaware, General George Washington stands at the top of the dock, looks across the river to New Jersey, then walks down the dock, and waits.
No speech.
No trumpets, and no rockets’ red glare.
The general has a word with Colonel Glover, and then the boarding begins. Captain Hamilton goes first. Following him are a couple of officers, and then, without ceremony, General George Washington, all six feet two inches of him, walks aboard. Colonel Glover has hold of his left arm, and, as General Washington steps aboard, Captain Hamilton takes him by his right arm.
The Father of Our Country is grim, but very determined. But I’m not sure he’s entirely in his comfort zone sitting on a boat. I’d bet anything he’d rather be sitting on his horse.
Eight men follow. I’m counting, because I’m worried that at the last second they’ll run out of room.
But they don’t. Bev and Brandon and I are last in line, and Colonel Glover waves us on. I think General Washington notices—he shakes his head just a bit, and looks even grimmer, if that’s possible—but doesn’t give the order to toss us out.
Every set of eyes on the Pennsylvania side watches.
Then we’re off.
That is to say, we’re pushed away from the dock, and we begin our journey across the Delaware River.
Five feet out, the weather gets worse. Or maybe it was this bad in the first place, but we didn’t know it on land.
Wind. Freezing snow pelting our faces. Totally, one hundred percent awful.
Now we’re maybe seven feet out. Nobody on the dock appears much farther away, that’s for sure. And the other side? The bank on the New Jersey side, where we’re headed? Might as well be a million miles away.
The Marbleheaders manning our boat start cursing under their breaths. The chunks of ice clogging up the river bang against our boat, making horrible scraping noises. One particularly large chunk, maybe about the size of a big hot tub, slams into us.
First we rock, then we roll. And I think: Did that put a hole in the hull? How sturdy is this thing, anyway?
“Think we’re going to sink?” Brandon says. His red hat is white with snow and slush.
“Nah,” I say. “They know what they’re doing.”
“I hope you’re right,” Bev says. Her eyes are wide, and her face is white, but there’s no tremble in her voice. It must be her acting gene.
“Bev?” I say. “You okay?”
She nods as though saying yes, but her eyes say no.
“It’s going to be fine,” I tell her. Not that it’s so great right now. We’re what—twenty feet from where we started?
Thirty?
I don’t know why it’s taking so long. Plus, if you ask me, we’re sort of headed wrong. We’re headed upstream, against the current, against all the ice flowing downstream. Some of the chunks are poked away by one of the Marbleheaders.
But we are definitely fighting a losing battle. I know the idea was to get to the midpoint of the river, and then we’d go downstream, which is supposed to put us at the designa
ted landing spot on the Jersey side, but this is ridiculous.
We’re going backward, not forward, and if I’m not mistaken, we might be getting closer to the Pennsylvania side, not the New Jersey side.
The Marbleheaders curse.
Someone raises a voice.
From on shore we hear a horse neigh.
Then somebody does something pretty dumb.
If you guess Brandon, you guess right.
“I’m moving up,” he says. “I don’t like being on the end.” He then flashes his iPhone. “I’ll get some clips while I’m at it.”
“Brandon, this is a small boat,” I say. “You can’t just move around.” Then I try to hold on to him, but it’s too late.
Brandon might like to play the dumb one for laughs, and he might not be as dumb as he acts, but sometimes? He can be totally dumb. First of all, you don’t move around in a small boat crowded with men. There’s equilibrium, and balance, and too much weight on one side of the equation and not enough on the other. Second, you don’t move around while trying to get across an ice-choked river in a storm.
“Yo, Brandon,” I say. “Do you really need to get in the middle of the boat that bad? At the risk of tipping the whole thing over?”
Does Brandon listen to me?
He does not.
Brandon shuffles along the inside edge of the boat. Someone grumbles. Someone curses. We dip, I swear, ten degrees leeward, or maybe it’s windward.
The left side goes down and the right side goes up.
Then we get double tapped. First one ice block, then another. We lurch. People bump into each other.
Brandon is shoved, and not too kindly, to the back of the boat, where he belongs.
And in the middle of all this, seven, ten feet away from me, is General George Washington. Our commander in chief. And I have to tell you, he’s not like he is in the famous painting of this event, which was painted I don’t know how many years after the fact.
First off, our commander in chief isn’t that old. He’s in his forties, remember. Not like the gray-haired dude in the painting. Second, he doesn’t look so terrifically determined and noble to me. I think he’s as wet, cold, stressed, worried, and miserable as the rest of us, but he’s not about to let any of his men know that. He just stares straight ahead, and endures.