From Sea to Shining Sea (60 page)

Come on, Mister Clark, he thought.

Come on now. The plan was a brilliant one and it worked as well as it could have and there’s no point in you lingering too long over your handiwork.

Come on.

Then a smile spread on his face. He could hear a heavy tread on the road, one trotting man. Soon on the night-dim surface of the dirt road he saw the big figure of the man coming.

And just as Jonathan pounded to a halt beside Colonel Lee, the inside of the fort turned bright yellow and five quick concussions shook the ground and the night roared. They watched a bright orange, smoky flash balloon over the fort and then, to the gleeful yells of the troops on down the road, watched flaming debris rain down on Paulus Hook. Lee looked at Jonathan in the light of the fireworks and saw a smile of satisfaction on his face. And Jonathan said:

“There.”

They walked happily on down the road. Colonel Lee kept putting his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder and chuckling. Jonathan was thinking:

George didn’t have anyone to stop him, being on his own out there like that.

“Brilliant,” Colonel Lee was saying. “Brilliant!”

“Really, I guess we did quite well. Enough to show that I could … that it could be done.”

A
FEW FEET FROM
J
OHNNY
C
LARK’S
BUNK
IN
THE
GUN
ROOM
of the
Jersey
a young officer was sitting with his face in the corner.
Here the newer prisoners had picked and clawed at the rotten planking of the hull until they had worried a fist-sized hole through to the outside, and here they would take turns sitting with their faces to the hole breathing the fresh air that came through. They called it The Window. “Don’t make it too big,” the Poet had warned them, “for it’ll have to be plugged somehow when the winter winds come.” But these newcomers had not spent a winter on the
Jersey
as yet, and so some of them, while sitting at the hole, would keep picking away at the punky oak to enlarge the hole. Some of them even plotted naively about how the hole might be enlarged enough, in time, to permit a man to squeeze through, drop into the water, and swim ashore. Sometimes Johnny would slump in that corner trying to get fresh air to his lungs and he would hear them talking that way. He would not even bother to tell them how hopeless that was. A breath of air was too precious to waste on advice to men who were as vainly hopeful as he himself had once been.

“What’s that?” said the officer with his face at the hole.

“What?” asked the next one in line.

“It sounds like small arms. Way off. From over by New York. Shh!” He had his ear to the hole now. “Aye. Somebody’s shooting up a lot over there, I’ll swear it.”

“Let me hear.”

“D’ye suppose Washington’s attacking New York?”

“Let me hear!”

“Shhh!”

“Mister Clark wants at th’ Window.” Johnny had hauled himself out of his bunk and was dragging himself over.

“Clark’s not in line.”

“Let ’im, damn your eyes! He’s sick and he’s been a long time here. Let ’im.”

Johnny gasped his thanks and put his face to the hole. If the Americans were taking New York, maybe they would capture the
Jersey
soon and free everyone and the sick could get well. That was what he was thinking, and he wanted to see if he could tell whether that was happening or not.

He couldn’t tell much. He could hear the shooting. It was coming from the west on a slight breeze across the water. It was very far away and hardly audible over the noise of wavelets lapping the hull below. It was very faint, faint as fingertips being drummed on a tabletop. It might be from the vicinity of New York Town but it did not sound anything like a full-scale battle, that was certain. He put his ear to the hole and listened a while. Sometimes the sporadic sounds would fade beneath the sea-sounds, then they would be audible again.

“What d’you make of it, John Clark?” someone said. He shook his head slowly, then turned his face and looked out into the darkness. Just the jagged, splintery hole with a darkening twilight sky outside and the bright spark of, Johnny thought, Venus, and a low, black silhouette of the far shoreline.

“Enough, Mister Clark. My turn,” said the nearest man behind him. Johnny nodded. He was sometimes deferred to by the newer prisoners because of his extreme poor health and his older brother’s recent fame, but he did not like to abuse the privilege.

He was arranging his bones to crawl away from The Window when suddenly he saw a yellow flare on the western horizon, then a glow, and five or six seconds later heard a short rumble like summer thunder.

“Something … something blew up …” he said, and then started coughing painfully. They helped him away and toward his bunk while the next man in line, and several others, all tried at once to get an eye to The Window, exclaiming, querying, cursing, and shoving each other.

When Johnny Clark was back in his bunk he was exhausted, and his heavy breathing precipitated more and more coughing, and that tired him more. It was a long time before he could rest, and he almost did not live through that night to learn a few weeks later that the noises across the water had been an American attack on the British fort at Paulus Hook on the Hudson.

And then for some reason he still did not die, and still did not die, and he was still alive weeks later when a new Yankee captain came aboard prisoner, full of news they had not heard from the outside, among which news was that a Major Jonathan Clark had been commended by His Excellency General Washington and promoted to lieutenant colonel, and awarded a medal of honor by the Congress, for his part in Colonel Light Horse Harry Lee’s daring attack on Paulus Hook.

This new prisoner, a portly, well-informed, and garrulous fellow, somehow had managed to smuggle a silver flask of brandy aboard, hidden somewhere on his expansive anatomy, and he offered to share it with the other prisoners. It was stretched through tepid water far enough to make a small cup of a sort of grog for each officer in the gun room. Once again Johnny Clark rallied enough to come to the table for a celebration. The captain raised his cup toward Johnny and declared:

“General Washington is alleged to have said that in this dismal year of ’79, there were only three bright events: the capture of Stony Point by Anthony Wayne, and of Vincennes and Paulus Hook by two Clark boys of Virginia. I say we raise a cup to the
Clarks of Virginia, but no loud cheering, gentlemen, because we don’t want those God-damned Redcoats gaolers upstairs coming down to confiscate our delicious grog before we’ve drunk it. So, softly, now, for Vincennes,
hip hip.
”

“
Hoorah!
” they all murmured, smiling.

“For Paulus Hook,
hip hip.
”

“
Hoorah!
”

“And for Lieutenant John Clark here,
hip hip.
”

“HOORAH!”

L
IEUTENANT
E
DMUND
C
LARK
STOOD
WAITING
BEHIND
AN
earthen breastwork in a street near the Battery at Charles Town and listened to the unaccustomed silence. The men of his company lay at rest against the piled dirt, sweating, some dozing. For weeks the bombardment from the British fleet had prevented anyone from really sleeping, and now in the silence of the truce they were almost asleep on their feet.

Flies buzzed near Edmund’s ears. The street behind the breastwork was littered with broken bricks and pieces of glass glinting in the hot, hazy sunlight. Buildings along the street showed broken pillars and smashed roofs. Most of the windows were gaping dark, their glass smashed out, and above some the bricks were sooty, showing where fires had burned.

The rumor was that the truce had been called so that General Lincoln could negotiate a surrender, to save the citizens of Charles Town from the bombardment and from further hardship of shortages. Four years ago General Clinton had failed to take Charles Town, but this time he had got ships and artillery in close enough to seal in its defenders and lay a long, deadly siege upon the city. Day by day the bombshells and cannon shot had crashed and exploded in the town. One by one, officers and men Edmund had come to know had been killed, by shrapnel, by flying splinters, by bursting bricks, by concussion. And the troops could do nothing. They had not fired their rifles. The
only fire returned to the British had been by the cannon along the Battery, and it had not been very effective.

Edmund looked toward the headquarters and saw Jonathan coming along the breastwork, his hands behind his back, stopping here and there to speak to some soldiers, answer a question, shake his head. Edmund watched him coming, watched him with a strange, sad affection. Jonathan was almost thirty now; he would be thirty in August: he had been an officer of the Continental Line for nearly five years now, and he looked more like a forty-year-old man. Nine months ago it was that he had been the hero of the Battle of Paulus Hook, and when he had come home on a furlough, he had taken Edmund back to the army with him. Only Billy of all the six sons was still at home now, doing the work of a man to help their father.

Edmund thus far had seen little hope that he would ever get a chance to make such a record for himself as his brothers Jonathan and George had done. Half the period of his enlistment had been spent marching deeper and deeper into the South, and since he had arrived here he had done nothing but watch and hear the British cannonballs smash up the beautiful old city and see the army and the civilians dig out and re-bury their dead. General Lincoln was stubborn and brave and willing to stand the siege forever, but the plight of the civilians was known to be demoralizing him.

Jonathan came to Edmund now, and looked at him with a wistful smile. He put a hand on his shoulder and led him off up the street a little way from the soldiers. Edmund watched him out of the side of his eye. He saw the deep furrows in the pitted cheeks and the sadness in his eyes.

They sat down together now on a stone pedestal where a statue once had been, and Jonathan extracted a clay pipe and a bag of tobacco from his clothing and filled the pipe. He offered the bag to Edmund, and Edmund filled his own pipe. Then Jonathan got out his reading glass and turned until sunlight was focused in the pipe bowl.

The tobacco glowed in white light, and when it began to smoke, Jonathan puffed on it. It smelled good after the harsh odors of brick dust and gunsmoke. He handed the glass to Edmund, who lit his own pipe with it. Jonathan took a deep lungful of smoke and exhaled it with a long sigh.

“Well, Eddie, I think it’s a shame that the doubtless best sharpshooter in the whole Grand Army probably won’t ever get a chance to shoot at a single Redcoat. Or, maybe it’s not a shame.
Maybe it’s a good thing. Pa would be glad to have a son, I guess, who’s not had to shoot anybody.”

Edmund felt heavy inside. “Seems to me what you’re saying is that General Lincoln intends to give us up.”

“He’s heard that Clinton will grant full honors. He’s going to surrender. We’ll be marching out in a day or two. Prisoners.”

“Aw, God.” Somehow this did not frighten Edmund; it seemed to him that captivity would be safe and easy compared with waiting day after day for the cannonball destined for himself. But the future looked infinitely gray now that he had heard this, and he almost wished that he had not heard it and that the bombardment would resume. “Prisoners,” he muttered after a while, thinking of long-lost Brother Johnny.

“I don’t reckon they’ll try to keep us long,” Jonathan said. “They’ve caught a whole army of us. Aye. They’ll likely parole us on our word. That would mean, for you and me and Bill Croghan, the end of the war.”

“For me,” said Edmund, “it ends before it started.”

T
HE
L
ONG
B
LUE
RANKS
MARCHED
SLOWLY
OUT
FROM
BEHIND
the breastworks onto the road out of the city, guns unloaded. They trod to the beat of muffled drums with their colors cased, out between the long red ranks of British troops flanking both sides of the road. Jonathan had told Edmund, “March with your head up. We’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

So Edmund marched with his head up. He glanced aside now and then at the British soldiers. It was the first time he had seen his enemy face to face since he had put on a uniform. Before that he had seen only the detachment of Dunmore’s dragoons outside Doncastle’s Ordinary, five whole years ago, when he had followed Patrick Henry toward Williamsburg. And he had seen the enemy prisoners George had sent home from the West. Now he was seeing them, all these plain faces—they looked like just anybody, men and boys—as his own enemies for the first time, and he was their prisoner.
B-b-b-bmp, bmp, bmp, b-b-b-bmp, bmp, bmp
, went the muffled drums, and the soldiers’ feet shuffled on the dusty dirt of the road, and it was all so calm and sedate that birds were flitting and twittering in the hedges and shrubs along the road. He had not heard any birds all during the bombardment, it seemed to him now as he thought back on it.

Probably it was true what Jonathan had said, that there wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.

But a whole army surrendering! Maybe it wasn’t shameful, but it was ignominious.

It was nice to hear birds again, but birds or no, it was, Edmund was sure, the most mournful day he probably ever would have.

J
OE
R
OGERS
,
ADOPTED
SON
OF
A
FINE
,
WISE
,
WHITE-HAIRED
Shawnee man and wife, lay face down on the ground inside the shattered palisade and pretended he was dead. He could hear the warriors all around him shouting and running about and firing their muskets out through the gun ports, and he could hear the voices of Cousin George’s men whooping and cheering outside, a hundred yards up a slope opposite the stockade. Against his hip he could feel the weight of a Shawnee warrior who did not have to pretend he was dead. The Shawnee’s warm blood was running onto and down Joe’s hip. Joe’s nose was clogged with dust and burned with the smell of gunpowder and he needed to sneeze, but he knew he could not allow himself to sneeze because he was supposed to be dead, although the warriors trapped in here with him probably were too busy and desperate to notice whether one of their dead sneezed. He pressed his nose hard against the dirt to stop the sneeze but could not stop it and it burst from him.