From Sea to Shining Sea (36 page)

From morning till night, Jonathan saw plights that would make his heart squeeze: a shoeless sentry at dawn, wrapped in a ragged blanket, shaking so hard he could not have raised his musket, so hoarse he could not have challenged a passerby. A soldier sleeping curled up on the frosty ground with his hands between his thighs and his bare feet buried in dead leaves because he had no blanket. A soldier gnawing a soot-blackened chunk of pumpkin shell. No, he would see not one but fifty soldiers like that. And there was nothing he could do about it, except pray, pray that the next morning would dawn dry and mild with enough sunlight for the soldiers to feel, or pray that Nathanael Greene, now Quartermaster General, would find a ton of boots or beef or blankets or brandy somewhere, or that good weather would permit the soldiers to finish their hut-building a few days sooner. That was all Major Jonathan Clark could do about it. Pray. He had just written a letter to Sarah Hite, asking her to pray also.

Jonathan watched another sticky glob of rice come out of the kettle and go into another soldier’s cup. He remembered how his mother fixed rice on holidays. With turkey livers and bits of onion and butter and sage cooked in. Or as a pudding with currants and apple-pulp and black-walnut meats in it and a bit of maple-sugar cake crumbled on the top.

Well, there’ll be a time for that some other day, he thought. Meanwhile,
Thank You our divine Providence for this plain and honest rice.

And for this Thy vinegar.

N
OW RIDING AT THE HEAD OF A FILE OF FRONTIERSMEN
muffled in fur hats and wool blankets, George crossed over the snowy Alleghenies and led the descent toward old Red Stone Fort, which was to be his recruiting station.

He drew a long breath at the sight of the flint-gray Monongahela, the lavender stain in the evening sky above the western ridges. He always felt as if he were leaving a close room and emerging outdoors when he crossed the divide from the seaboard into the western watershed. This time the sense of space and change was doubly thrilling, because he knew he had now committed himself to an enterprise that would demand every shred of his wit and nerve for months to come.

The men behind him, except for Cousin Johnny Rogers, were old comrades from Dunmore’s War and the defense of Kentuck. Len Helm, the legendary “man with the whiskey spring,” had signed on as a captain when told that the enterprise would be as bodacious as anything Benedict Arnold had done. Joe Bowman was there as second-in-command, his brother Isaac a lieutenant. John Montgomery was there as a company commander, and then there followed half a dozen men these officers had brought with them. Bill Harrod, brother of Jim Harrod the town-builder, was supposed to be already at Red Stone Fort, at work enlisting a company he would command. And William Bailey Smith had promised he would be waiting at the mouth of the Kentucky River in March with two hundred men from the Holston Valley country. Not a one of them knew what the destination or purpose was, but they had come with George simply because he had convinced them all that he was fixing up the liveliest doings west of the mountains. He had promised them parcels of Kentucky land, and an adventure they’d someday tell their grandchildren about. That was enough for them.

Johnny Rogers was riding alongside Leonard Helm, Johnny had been appointed a lieutenant in Helm’s not-yet-existent company. Helm was saying to him:

“Now, lad, if I was to act on all the intelligence those Orders o’ th’ Governor tells me, I’d still be a-sitting in Floyd’s Tavern
where you found me. But I know your cousin’s up to somethin’ right glorious, because he told me so. And I believe what-all he tells me, because he is not only as good a fightin’ man as I ever saw, and the longest thinker, but he can be trusted. Yes sir, it is known by all that George Rogers Clark is as honest as a cockstand.” Johnny whooped a laugh in the cold air.

George knew, as his horse picked its way down the snowy trail into the valley, that it was not going to be as easy to recruit five hundred men as it had been to get these old compatriots of his. Most men fit for soldiering were already in the Continental army, or serving in their own state and county militias. But he had Henry’s orders, telling all the county lieutenants to cooperate with him, and he had the authority to offer each rifleman 300 acres of land, and he had his own reputation, which, west of the mountains, was considerable. And he knew that among them, his captains knew personally just about every long hunter, sharpshooter, ridge-runner, desperado, and Indian fighter west of the Alleghenies.

And for the mission he had dreamed up that night last year by the hearth fire in Harrod’s Town, those were exactly the kinds of men he needed.

J
OHNNY
C
LARK SAT WRAPPED IN A BLANKET, BUT HE COULD
not stop shivering.

Most of the American officers confined in this room, which was a converted gun room and thus without windows or portholes, simply remained in their bunks on days like this, when the dank harbor wind seemed to come straight through the uncaulked cracks. Johnny had had to get up for a while, unable to lie any longer on his aching joints and bedsores.

The only heated quarters on the
Jersey
were those of the British officers, just above. Johnny could hear them walking back and forth up there, so constantly that he had decided they must have a dart board on the wall to play with. The deck planks creaked above as they walked about. Sometimes one could hear their voices. Now there was a bit of laughter. Johnny scowled up at the massive oak beams overhead, and snarled, “Laugh, ye bloody furuncles! God, laughter is a sacrilege on this dungeonship!”

“Nay,” said the Poet. It sounded like “Day,” because the Poet’s nose was, as always, stuffed. Like most, he had the grippe, and had it perpetually.

Johnny looked quizzically across the table at the Poet, whose real name was Captain Coffin. Before him on the table were
sheets of paper and a quill in an ink bottle. He was not writing his poems at this moment; he was sitting with his hands between his thighs, trying to warm his fingers enough to write the next line. Captain Coffin had his blanket up over his head. He looked rather like a monk, a narrow-faced monk with a runny nose, Johnny fancied. Like those who copy Bibles by hand in their cells all their lives. Johnny admired the Poet, admired his patience, admired his ability to write verse under any circumstances and discomforts, however hopeless, and even admired what he had heard of his verse. But the Poet was hard to abide sometimes; he had too much forbearance; he was too much like a saint, like a martyr. It was uncomfortable to live with someone who never complained and always forgave. “What d’you mean, ‘Nay’?” Johnny challenged. He was testy. His old sweet soul had soured.

“I mean,” said Coffin, “laughter’s always good to hear. It’s music. Especially here, now. There’s precious little of it aboard this sad vessel.”

“True,” said Johnny. “But I wish ’twas
us
had cause to laugh now and again, not
them.
” He glowered at the ceiling again.

“It
would
be a sacrilege if
we
laughed,” someone said from the gloom of a nearby bunk. The bunks were, in actuality, makeshift shelves, three high, allowing their occupants only about two feet of space in which to turn on their straw bedding. In the shadows of nearly every bunk there was a pallid face dimly visible. Other officers lay with their faces to the walls. The only light in the room was that of a candle lantern hanging from a beam over the center of the one table in the center of the room. This table was the place for what little activity there was in the cell; here they wrote, here they read if they had anything to read, here they sat if they wished to talk face to face, here they had, now and then, what they called their “Town Meetings” to draft petitions against the squalor and the slop of their daily lives, and here they sat to eat the slop their petitions never caused to improve. Some of the officers made a ritual of getting up and taking seats at the table once or twice every day so that they might still consider themselves civilized beings rather than mere burrowing animals. Johnny was one who did this. Some never came to the table, except to eat. Some had become too ill to do even that. The lantern burned day and night, a fuzzy light always in a pall of bad air and, now and then, tobacco smoke, when the sutler’s store on the main deck had acquired a few twists of it, when some officer turned up some valuable to barter for a few shreds of it. The candle burned and was replaced, burned and was replaced.
One could tell day from night only by the slits of daylight between the uncaulked planks and timbers.

Through those same planks and timbers came always a dismal murmur, the voices of the enlisted men, who were packed by the hundreds between decks in the holds forward. “You think we’re close in here?” one Lieutenant Hoag had told Johnny one day long ago. “Down there, they’re packed like mackerel in a barrel.”

“An apt analogy,” the Poet had said.

“It is, and that’s why I used it,” Hoag had replied. “They smell like mackerel down there.”

“Aye,” another officer had said. “Spoiled mackerel, at that.”

“Like what our slop’s made from,” a Massachusetts lieutenant had said.

“They let ’em lie too long after they die,” Hoag had said. “They ought to remove a man soon as they know he’s dead.”

“Turnkey tells me they do,” said the Poet. “But sometimes there’s so little difference between the poor mortals dead and those nearly so, that they don’t know for quite a time.”

It was during that discussion that Johnny had inquired about the British ensign’s remark. “Is it true that no one’s ever left this ship except in a canvas shroud?”

“Some few hardy fools have jumped and tried to swim—in fairer weather, o’ course,” Hoag had answered. “The result, about the same. Just saves the deadboat a trip out.”

“I’d ’spect,” Johnny had said after a pause, “that a stout swimmer might make it.”

“Might,” Hoag had replied, casting a speculative eye at Johnny. “Are you a stout swimmer, perchance?”

“All us Clarks have swum since we could crawl down to the water.”

“Well, sir, Mister Clark,” Coffin had intercalated then, “if you get the urge to swim—I mean, come fair weather—mind this: the guards aboard be picked marksmen, and they’re always listening for a man-sized splash. A man in the water is fine practice for them.”

“I see,” Johnny had replied. “Then one would want to go over without a splash, would ’e not? I’ll remember that, come fairer weather.”

Those first few weeks, then, he had calculated plans for slipping silently over the side some fine spring day during above-decks exercise. Surely one could work his way like a spider down the hull and slip silently into the water; surely one could swim mostly underwater until out of musket range; surely one could
stay afloat and get to shore, particularly with an incoming tide; Johnny knew a means of improvising a float by tying one’s water-soaked breeches shut at the knees and catching air in them, and then resting one’s chin on them for bouyancy when exhausted. He had thought about it a lot, and in his mind’s eye he had made the escape time after time.

But spring was still weeks away, and already he felt so weakened by the constant cold, the fevers, the dysentery, the sheer inactivity, and the insipid diet, that the distant shores were beginning to seem impossibly far away. He doubted now that he’d have the strength to swim the ship’s length.

Besides, his breeches now were full of holes from the splinters in the bunk.

Come spring, though, he would think sometimes, come spring we’ll see how we feel about swimming.

“W
HY ARE YOU SHAKIN’, SOLDIER
? C
OLD OR AFRAID
?”

“Cold, sir.”

“Not afraid, eh? That’s good,” Jonathan Clark said.

The soldier didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes was pure terror. He looked as if he might faint. So did half the other men in this company.

Oh, they were cold, too. They were standing in ranks in an inch of snow, and a third of them were barefooted. Some had no coats, others no hats.

But they had been cold all winter. Now they were afraid. So it was time for Jonathan’s lecture. He had given it to about half the companies so far.

“Now, hear me,” he began. “I know how ye feel. You’d be shaking in your boots, if y’ had any boots to shake in.”

That brought a chuckle from some of them, and it brought their attention a little way around toward him. They looked at this tall, broad-shouldered young officer with the dark but cheerful eyes, the pock-marked but handsome face, and his warm voice and good humor were somehow reassuring, as they faced this unthinkably dreadful thing that was about to be done to them. He had obviously had the dread pocks, but was a hale man withal. Now he went on.

“I’m Jonathan Clark, Major, 8th Virginia, and I give ye my word: You’d have more cause for fear if we were
not
doing this.

“As you’ve heard, there’s small pocks in camp. We’ve done all we can to keep it isolated, but that malady has a way of getting about, wherever there are many souls crowded together.

“You’ve probably heard it said already—I’m sure y’ have, as rumor gets around an army camp about five times as swift as orders do.” Again, an appreciative chuckle. “You’ve likely heard already that what we’re doing in this hospital,”—he pointed toward the hovel in front of them which went by the name of hospital—“is that we’re deliberately infecting men with the pocks.

“Well, if that was all of the truth, I’d not blame ye for shakin’ in those boots y’ don’t have. But let me tell you what a miracle it is that the good Doctor O’Fallon is doing in there.” They were listening well to him, doing their best to believe, though it was against their instincts to believe such a thing.

“I have already had the pocks, as you can see. I came down with it in an epidemic after the siege o’ Charles Town. Because I’ve had it, I have no fear of it anymore. I can go amid an epidemic of it without fear. Know why? Because a man can get the pocks but once—I mean,
this
pocks. The other kind we don’t much need to worry about here, as there’s not been a harlot in sight all winter.” They laughed now. “It might be,” he said, “that the British in Philadelphia are getting all that. See how lucky we are?” They were having a good time now, laughing at these thoughts.