From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “God willing, when all this is over, Betsy and I should be together.”

  The hand squeezed on his with its tiny bit of strength. “That’s … on y’r word, Mister John Clark?”

  Johnny’s scalp prickled. He had not expected to be making promises to a dying man.

  But, after all, he had said only “be together.”

  Still, as his mother had used to say: What a body understands your promise to be is the promise you’ve made.

  But he could not deny this brother what he needed to hear.

  “On my word, Mister Freeman.”

  “God bless ye, Mister John Clark.”

  “God bless y’rself, Mister Freeman.”

  The next week, Freeman—Johnny had learned from the ship’s officer that it was Mike: Private Micajah Freeman of the Sixth Virginia—left the Jersey in a canvas shroud, one of five victims of putrid fever to go ashore that day to wherever it was the British took the hundreds of cadavers from the ship.

  He took Johnny Clark’s promise with him.

  LIEUTENANT HOAG, OF COURSE, FOUND IT ALL DELIGHTFULLY ironic, the best thing he had heard since he had been confined on the Jersey. “The sins and the false vows of your lusty youth return to haunt you!” he laughed. “Poct, you must do a verse, on the come-uppance justly due such careless swains as leave a trail of light promises and fluttering hearts behind them! Ha, ha!”

  “Indeed,” replied the Poet, smiling fondly at Johnny’s gloom, “I am already composing!”

  “Compose, please,” chuckled Hoag. “I shall lie here meantime and continue to decompose.”

  Johnny would not have told them about the vow that Micajah Freeman had extracted from him, but they had caught him coming in, shaking his head and muttering and looking like one deeply damned, and by cajolery and kindness they had made him tell the tale of his visit down forward. Now their raillery made him wish he had kept it to himself.

  “A scold, is she?” Hoag said, shaking his head slowly. “There’s nothing worse than a scold! I suspect that Johnny Clark the Fourth, that erstwhile carefree swain and sower of wild seed in Caroline County, Virginia, may be the first inmate in the Jersey’s history ever to choose a permanent berth, rather than go home to the fate that awaits him there!” He lay in his bunk chuckling, asking others what they thought of such a thing, and wasn’t it wonderful that there really is some justice in this unjust world after all, and so on, till some of the wretches were actually enjoying themselves, and looking at Johnny with fondness and archness in their expressions. The Poet sat over his paper and tapped his temple and scribbled.

  “Wait,” he would say every minute or so, raising his quill, “I nearly have it here.”

  And even Johnny was beginning to laugh at his own plight, at the absurd coincidence of it, by the time the Poet finished his verse and read it aloud.

  The Day of Judgment falls most just

  Upon the fickle-hearted swain,

  Who left her pining, and now must

  Fulfill the love which he didst feign.

  Johnny laughed feebly, ruefully, at this, at all the attention, but his laughing brought on his coughing, terrible, wet, phlegmmoving coughs. Now the rag he used as a handkerchief was sodden and slimy with mucus, and there was blood in it. He saw blood in it now for the first time, and he sat and looked at it for a while.

  Maybe that promise is nothing to worry myself on after all, he thought. Maybe I’ll never get home to face Betsy Freeman at all.

  13

  VALLEY FORGE, PENNSYLVANIA

  May, 1778

  SIX THOUSAND CONTINENTAL SOLDIERS PARADED DOWN THE long side of the sunny, May-green meadow, in perfect step to the beat of drums. From a distance, with their neat ranks and billowing banners, they looked like a perfect army as they tramped down toward the little hillock on which General Washington stood waiting to review them. From close by, where Jonathan Clark marched, there were pitiful details visible, traces of their poverty and the miseries of winter. Many were still shirtless and hatless and barefooted. The gentle May sun shone on bare shoulders and backs and scalps, healing the boils and ringworms and skin infections that had afflicted them during the long, wretched winter. Most were as skinny as whippets. But their eyes were bright and their steps were light, their muskets and bayonets were polished.

  On the high ground with Washington were General Gates and General Greene, and the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron Von Steuben. The talk in the army was that this parade was not just an ordinary review for a commander-in-chief, but Von Steuben’s personal gift to General Washington; he was as proud of this army as Washington himself was, and today he was demonstrating to His Excellency how much it was improved. All the men were aware of this, aware that it was Herr Schpittenschlobber’s great day, as they tramped down the field toward the general officers, and so they fairly strutted in their eagerness to make it a big success for their beloved drillmaster.

  For everyone agreed that Von Steuben was the best thing that had happened to the poor American Army since the victory at Saratoga. Steuben, with his cursing tantrums, his unintelligible profanities, and his ridiculous, jabbing little swagger stick, had, in months, turned General Washington’s half-starved, half-naked, half-spirited mob of an army into an organization that could pivot and flank as smartly as Prussians, march without straggling, load and fire twice as many volleys per minute on voice commands as they had been able to before, and could make as orderly a bayonet charge as any line of Redcoats. The whole army loved the little brute-faced tyrant, because he made them feel smart as an honor guard, potent as a legion, but especially because of something he had said at an officers’ dinner in General Washington’s headquarters. “No European army,” he had said, “could have held together through the hardships of this winter here!” That tribute had been overheard and carried back to camp, and had spread throughout the army.

  And now they were on review, a new-spirited army ready to come out for the spring campaigns, and they were determined to repay his tribute. They were going to show General Washington what the Baron had made of them. They were as aware of him on the hillock as they were of the commander-in-chief himself.

  As the 8th Virginia neared the reviewing stand, the fifers joined the drummers, and they were playing that piece that always gave Jonathan the martial shivers.

  It had been a British marching tune, before the Battle of Lexington, a merry song meant to make a mockery of the American yokels. But after chasing the Redcoats back to Boston, the “yokels” had adopted the song as their own, and now “Yankee Doodle” was their own, a song and a joke combined.

  Now the 8th Virginia was abreast of the mounted officers, and there was Washington, big, monumentally dignified, sitting high on his great dappled gray warhorse, that fellow Virginian farmer with his stolid, kindly face; and there beside him was the Baron, intent, high-colored with whatever emotions of pride or anxiety he must be feeling, and Jonathan was so stirred by the sight of them that a silly grin broke out all over his face. He raised his sword hand in a salute and went by, his step in cadence with the tread of his regiment, and when Washington returned his salute and, it seemed, slightly nodded to him, Jonathan was so crowded with feelings of pride and affection that the spring-green trees blurred in a curtain of tears.

  The six thousand stood at ease in their ranks after the parade, stood in the mild spring breeze, and listened to Washington’s voice as he read the great news. Even those in the farthest corners of the field could hear him distinctly; it was a strong voice, though few had ever heard it raised before. The Marquis de Lafayette sat smiling handsomely at his side as he read the announcement, and it was therefore as great a day for Lafayette as for Von Steuben. The news was that King Louis of France had signed an alliance with the colonies. In the pauses, the calls of a cardinal and an oriole rang in the nearby woods, and Jonathan thought of this news and what it meant; it meant that this impoverished, lonely new country, fighting its former king, now had a rich and powerful ally that
had declared war on England. America was no longer alone in the world.

  A dense hush lay over the meadow when the announcement was concluded; then, at a signal from Von Steuben, the artillery began firing volleys. The birdsongs stopped. The guns thundered again and again, a volley for each of the thirteen colonies. The smell of gunpowder drifted over the field, and when the last echoes had rumbled away, Washington cried:

  “Long live the King of France!”

  And the army roared, as in one voice:

  “LONG LIVE THE KING OF FRANCE!”

  The chaplain gave an invocation then, in a straining, reedy voice, thanking God for moving King Louis’ heart, thanking God for the friendship of Steuben, and for the faith and fortitude that had carried the army through the desperate winter, and for the holy cause of Liberty that it could now pursue with renewed strength.

  The army remained hushed as Washington, his hat held against his chest, slowly raised his head from the prayer and, his face working with emotion, reined his warhorse around to ride away. They watched his broad back above the stallion’s massive haunches, and they wondered at him.

  Then they saw him rein the horse in, and bring it about. They watched him stand in his stirrups, his jaw muscles working; they watched him raise his cockaded black hat high over his head. And then they heard him yell out in a huge voice, for once casting away his usual reserve:

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  Jonathan snatched off his own hat, flung it in the air, and cried, “Hurrah!” All along the lines now, hats were spinning in the air.

  “HURRAH!” the army bellowed. “HURRAH! HURRAH!”

  And General Washington rode off the field and into the woods.

  THE POET AND LIEUTENANT HOAG HAD TO SUPPORT Johnny, one of them under each arm, to get him up the companionway and out on the deck where he could sit in the May sunlight. He was dizzy, and his lungs bubbled.

  He sat on the deck on the port side of the ship with his blanket over his legs and his back against a bulkhead of the quarterdeck, and from here he was able to look over the sparkling blue water at that misty-blue stretch of land that was Long Island.

  Johnny sat with the sun on his face and pretended that he could feel it baking the poisons out of him. He breathed the suncharged air through his open mouth, as if he could actually inhale sunlight into his lungs where it would dry them and heal them. He sat this way for an unmeasured time, listening to the waves lapping on the hull, hearing the drone of many voices, the raspy coughings, out on the main deck where hundreds of enlisted prisoners were sitting and sprawling in the sun; he sat hearing above him the slow tread of pacing guards, hearing wisps of conversations that surfaced and submerged in his consciousness without beginnings or meanings or endings; he heard the raucous cries of gulls, and once looked up to see one gleaming white and incredibly graceful against the deep blue sky. It was holding itself against the wind, lazily soaring but going nowhere, staying there about twenty feet above the ship’s rail. Johnny had time to study its remarkable beauty, even to the delicate bluish tips on its white wings, as it soared unmoving there.

  Bird, if I were you, and I could do that, I’d turn away from this reeky putrid hulk and sail off over there to the clean land. Why don’t you go there? he wondered.

  He watched the hovering gull and remembered that day less than a year ago when he had sat just like this under a willow tree on the bank of the Brandywine, trying to write a poem that had turned instead into a letter to his father. He thought of that day and all that happened since to turn him into a dying man.

  He watched the beautiful gull in the air and then realized that the reason it stayed here instead of going to a beautiful clean place was because it was waiting for slop to be thrown off the ship.

  God, but it’s a shame the way things are, he thought.

  He decided that he probably would never be able to write a snip of poetry again, knowing as he did now how things really are in the world.

  This was not like any other springtime. Every other springtime that Johnny could remember, he had been about the business of falling in love. Even if there had been no particular girl he had loved at the coming of a spring, he had fallen in love with the probability of being in love, and then every spring when he had been like that, some girl or another, or more than one, had entered into the sunny mist of love-feeling all around him, and she had become the specific object upon which all that feeling had come to bear. For a while. Till the next one.

  And where’s that got me? he thought. I’ve had to promise my soul to one I’d already escaped from. All because of a ridiculous coincidence.

  He tried to remember what it had felt like to desire Betsy Freeman. He could not remember her face now. He could remember the night of the wedding party when he had lain making vows and caressing her, and his hands could even remember the caresses. But he could not remember her face, and his body was too sick to remember desire.

  But he could remember the face of Micajah Freeman down in the odorous below-decks darkness, and the light that had come into his dying eyes when he had made that impossible promise to him. When he tried to remember Betsy Freeman’s face he would instead see the death’s-head of Micajah Freeman.

  Hell’s fire, he’s dead, he thought. That promise doesn’t mean anything now.

  Nay, he thought. It means more.

  I wonder if the family knows I’m alive, he thought. I wonder if the British actually ever send the letters we write.

  He doubted that.

  I ought to write to them again now and tell them I’m still alive, he thought.

  Or maybe I ought to wait and see if I die before I tell them I’m alive, he thought. That amused him a little. He felt his lips smile.

  The sun was making him sweat now and he could feel the sweat tickling down his neck and ribs, and along his groin he could not distinguish between the tickling itches caused by sweat and those caused by lice. He reached down and turned the blanket away off his legs, and he could see the fleas jump on his dirty breeches. His legs were in the shade of the ship’s rail, and when he took the blanket off, the harbor breeze was cold on his sweaty legs and he broke out in gooseflesh and shivered violently and was afraid he would start coughing, that terrible coughing, so he put the blanket back over his legs.

  Can’t stay comfortable, he thought.

  But it’s better up here than down in that tomb of a room where I’ve been so many months. Here there’s sunlight and air. Got to get busy and inhale a lungful of sunlight. The effort tickled, made him burst into coughing, and he filled his rag with bloody mucus. He looked at the crimson gobs of stuff and was sad and angry. He remembered something his mother had said: Blood shouldn’t be seen outside of a body.

  Surely there’s not a hope of getting well, he thought. It’s a waste of life, that’s what it is. And it’s all coming to this over a lot of hot-headed words from looniacs like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine. Before we got infected with those words, we were Englishmen. Just like that one up there.

  A British guard passed above, musket on his shoulder, looking down from the sky at Johnny with human eyes, blue eyes with reddish eyebrows, in a ruddy, healthy face that could have been the face of one of his own brothers.

  Johnny remembered looking into a pair of blue eyes and thinking something like this as he killed an Englishman at the Battle of Brandywine. He remembered what it had felt like to put the sword blade into the man’s innards while looking into his blue eyes, and he wished with all his soul that he had never had to feel that.

  Patriot words, he thought angrily.

  Then the beautiful pure-white slop-eating seagull appeared above the red-clad blue-eyed British sentry, against that deep blue May sky, and hung there in the air again, its little feet tucked back along its smooth-feathered white body, hanging in the air, free to go where it liked and do what it would do, even if that was only to dive into the sea for garbage.

  Nay, Johnny thought. Maybe I’ll get well.
Us Clarks been strong. Flint and steel. I’ll breathe sunlight every day they let me up here and maybe I can get well.

  Tomorrow, he thought, I shall try to come up here under my own power. If I can’t do it tomorrow, maybe I can the next day. The more you try, the more you can do. As Ma always said.

  All I know is, I’m going to stay in sunshine and clean air as much as I can. I don’t know how much a body can recover itself thataway.

  But maybe a body—even such as I am now—could recover itself enough by summer to jump ship and swim over to that land yonder.

  The British sentry was passing again and looking down at him with his blue eyes, and Johnny smiled to himself.

  Isn’t it a grand thing, he thought, that an Englishman can’t ever know what an American’s thinking.

  IN ALL HIS YEARS OF HUNTING, SURVEYING, AND SOLDIERING in the Ohio Valley, George Rogers Clark had never seen a place as much to his liking as this. He stood in a high meadow above the water-falls and gazed westward along the great bend of the Ohio, and the valley had so much the look of a paradise to it that, for the first time in many months, he dreamed of something besides his mission.

  This is the place for the Clark family seat, he thought. God’s love! What a site for a city!

  The valley was wide and fertile, and watered by crystalline springs and creeks. He stood with his back to a sun-dappled grove of mulberry trees. A clear spring gurgled from the earth near his feet. Beyond the meadow, giant, graceful elms and walnuts and oaks and maples towered, some of them five or six feet through the trunk, their spreading limbs casting pools of shade a hundred feet wide on the grass. Far down beyond them curved the mile-wide river, tumbling and spraying, with a constant rushing sound, through a long chute of rapids, descending twenty feet over a great limestone fault.