My Brother Sam is Dead (17 page)

All through November I tried to find out about the British commissary—whether it really existed or not, and where it actually was. But I couldn't find out anything I really trusted. It was all rumors—the commissary was at White Plains. No, it wasn't at White Plains, it was at Horseneck. Yes, it was at White Plains after all, but the Rebels had it under siege. And so forth. I didn't want to go until I was sure: if I ran into Rebels I'd lose the cattle and probably be put in prison myself. It was only worth the risk if I were sure where the commissary was: otherwise we might just as well eat the cattle ourselves.

So that was the situation on December 3, 1778, when Sam came back to Redding. That morning he walked into the tavern. He looked thin and tired. There were black circles under his eyes and his uniform was torn in about six places. He'd lost his belt and was wearing a piece of rope around his waist, and his hat wasn't an army hat but just an ordinary fur cap. But he was glad to be home, and grinning. “Hello, everybody,” he said.

Mother was out in the kitchen and I'd been stoking up the fire. “Sam,” I shouted. “Mother, Sam's here.”

She burst into the tavern and began to hug him, and I hugged him, too, and then he crouched down in front of the fire and ate a bowl of porridge with honey that Mother brought him. “This is the first time I've been warm for a week,” he said.

So we asked him all the natural questions: where he'd been and where he was going and so forth. “I'm going to be in Redding for a while,” he said. “General Putnam is bringing a couple of regiments here for winter encampment. We're going up to Lonetown and hole up until spring.”

“What's the idea of that?”

“The rumor is that we're supposed to be situated to move either west to the Hudson or south to Long Island Sound in case of a British attack either place. Some say we're mainly here to watch over the magazines at Middletown. I don't know—those are the rumors. But we're building huts so I guess we'll be here for awhile.”

“How did you get off?”

“I've had a bit of luck. Colonel Parsons—Samuel Holden Parsons, that is—has moved into the Betts' house. An adjutant came around and asked if any of us were from this area and I said I was, and Colonel Parsons brought me into town this morning to show him around.” Sam grinned. “To the ladies, mostly. I told him that there weren't any ladies in Redding except my mother and my girl. He said they would do, so Mother you'd better put on your best dress.”

Mother smiled, but I don't think she thought it was very funny. “You're so thin, Sam,” she said. “Are the troops all starving?”

“Everybody in the country is hungry,” he said. “It's going to be worse this winter, too. Have you got any cattle, Tim?”

I was proud that he asked me instead of Mother. “Eight,” I said. “They're not much to look at.”

“Butcher them and hide the meat. Or sell it. You can get a good price for the hides from the troops. Sell what you can. I promise you, the stock will be stolen.”

Mother frowned. “You mean your troops are stealing from your own people?”

“A starving man will steal food from babies.” He shook his head. “There's a lot you don't understand. All of us have seen good friends killed. I had a friend bayoneted, and it took him six hours to die, screaming all the while. All we could do was hold his hand and wait. I saw a captain I loved blown in half by a cannon ball. He was the best officer we ever had, he worried about his men, he put them first. He never ate before we were fed, and I've seen him go without to give his portion to a sick man. The redcoats blew him in half, right into two pieces with his guts dangling out of both parts.” He shivered. “After a few things like that you don't give a damn for anybody but your friends anymore. You kill Redcoats the way you butcher pigs. The troops know that Redding is a Tory town. As far as they're concerned taking cattle from Tories is getting revenge. Sure, lots of them would steal from anybody, whether they were Tories or Patriots or anything else. Some are unscrupulous when they're hungry and some are unscrupulous by nature and they'll take whatever they think they can get away with. Of course the majority of men are honest and won't steal, but if they decide you're Tories, they'll have no compunction about taking your beef. And let me tell you, it's pretty easy to decide somebody's a Tory when you haven't eaten anything but hard tack and pork fat for weeks. I've done it myself.”

“Sam.”

“I won't apologize.”

“War turns men into animals,” Mother said.

“I was ashamed of it afterwards,” Sam said, “but not very and my belly was full.” He nodded slowly. “Tim, butcher the cattle. Let the meat freeze and hide it in the loft under the hay until you need it.” He glanced out the window toward the Betts' house. “I better go. Colonel Parsons may be waiting for me.”

“Don't go yet, Sam,” Mother said. “We've just seen you.”

“I'll be around all winter, Mother. Maybe I can get attached to Colonel Parson's staff. I'll try to get a pass if I can. Anyway, I can always slip out at night. It's risky. Colonel Parson's is not harsh, but General Putnam is in charge. He's a great patriot, but he's rough and tough on men who shirk their duty. A hundred lashes for desertion and if there's too much of it, I know he'll hang some people as an example. That's the kind of man he is. But I'll be back to visit again one way or another.”

He left. We walked out into the yard with him, and he crossed over to the Betts' house and went in. “He's so thin,” Mother said. “I worry that he'll get sick. I couldn't bear to lose another, Tim.” All at once she began to sob. It only lasted ten seconds. Then she turned and went into the house, and when I went in a minute later she was calmly scrubbing some beets.

After December 3rd we began to get used to the sight of soldiers constantly around town. There were always messengers going by and trains of supply wagons crunching over the snow and sometimes groups of soldiers on work parties would appear at the tavern for beer. Having the troops around was good for business. Some of the officers lodged in houses around about. Often in the evening they came up to the tavern to play cards and drink or smoke. Business was good—or rather it would have been good if we had had anything to sell, and people had had anything to pay for it with besides commissary scrip.

The biggest demand was for liquor. Life at the encampment was cold and miserable and the only relief for them was drinking. They didn't care what it was—rum, whiskey, cider, anything we could get. Whiskey was pretty hard to get. The General Assembly had made it illegal to distill whiskey because it was made from grain, and grain was needed for food. Rum was easier to get and we could usually get cider, because every farmer made it. I spent a lot of time riding around among the farmers buying whatever they had. They'd often have rum they'd taken in trade for livestock. I could offer them good prices for liquor because we could get good prices for it: the officers didn't care how much they paid for liquor. As they said when they were drinking, “A short life but a merry one.” Which of them knew when he was going to die?

Of course the ordinary soldiers didn't have much fun. For one thing, there was always the snow. It came down in a great blizzard about a week after the troops had started to build the encampment. Their huts were not finished and they were forced to work in bitter cold and storm. The cold was a problem. The huts were really just tiny log cabins with big stone fireplaces making the whole rear wall. In cold weather they had a lot of trouble getting the mortar to set. Because of this the chimneys leaked so badly that half the smoke blew back into the room. The snow made hewing wood difficult, too. Sam told us that they were having an awful time getting the huts finished Even when they were done they weren't much to live in—twelve soldiers jammed into a 14 by 16 room, breathing more smoke than air and having to stumble over people whenever they wanted to move around. And the snow never stopped falling. By January it covered the countryside three feet deep, so that the stone walls disappeared. You could drive a sled over the snow anywhere you wanted without paying attention to where the roads were.

Sam was able to get into town every week or ten days. Colonel Parsons used him as a messenger a lot because he knew his way around Redding. Sometimes he would come in with a commissary officer looking for lime or nails or leather or all the hundreds of things armies need. The idea was that Sam might know who had things. Often he'd come into the tavern and ask me if I knew who had hay or sleds or something else to sell.

To be honest, I felt uneasy about telling him such things. The commissary people always paid for whatever they bought, but it was usually in scrip, and on top of it, the farmer didn't have much choice about selling or not. But I couldn't bring myself to lie to Sam. It was something I'd never done.

All the time Sam was after us to butcher the cattle, I didn't know what to do. The idea of selling them to the British was gone. With all the Rebel troops around it was too risky trying to move cattle anywhere. Besides, it would have been next to impossible in that deep snow. Still, I kept hoping that I could find someone who'd offer me a good deal for them. But Sam was pressing me. “I'm warning you, Tim, sooner or later somebody's going to get them.”

“I thought General Putnam gave strict orders against stealing.”

“Oh he did, and knowing General Putnam he'll hang any soldier he catches stealing. He's tough as nails but he's honest. Besides, he wants the people to come around to our side, and if he lets the troops forage, he'll lose all sympathy with the populace. Oh, I know him. He's had a lot of men flogged already for disobeying orders, and Pm sure he's just itching to catch somebody stealing so he can make an example of him.”

“Then what's the worry?”

“Don't be stupid, Tim. A lot of men will take a chance anyway, especially when they're drunk. You wait; sooner or later they'll get into your beef if you don't watch it.”

Mother and I kept churning it around between us. She figured Sam was right. “You know what happened to Sally Myles' heifer.” Mrs. Myles was a widow who lived alone in a tiny hovel in Redding. She had a few tough chickens and one scrawny cow. She kept going mostly by selling milk and eggs to the people around.

A few days earlier a half dozen drunken soldiers had noticed her cow in her barn, butchered it right there, and carried the slabs of beef back to the encampment in the dark.

“I know,” I said. “But the thing we need most is rum and the only way to pay for it is with cattle.”

That was the beginning of January. We decided to stick it out through the month. There was a rumor going around that the British were forming up in New York City and were going to raid towns on Long Island. What that meant nobody knew, but some believed that the men from the encampment would be called down there to fight. I just couldn't make up my mind.

The weeks went by. There was nothing anybody wanted but to get through this terrible winter. It didn't seem that the war could really go on much longer. Even Sam thought it would have to end soon. We talked about it one evening when he was there for a short visit. We were sitting in front of the taproom fire one night in late January. “I think something decisive will happen in the spring,” he said. “The English government realizes by now that they're not going to beat us easily.”

“Maybe they figured you're too starved and tired to fight much longer.”

He shook his head seriously. “They might be right,” he said. “The other day some of the men were actually talking mutiny. A lot of them have no blankets, they're short of food, and the pay hasn't come through. A bunch of them decided to march to Hartford and demand their pay. They were about to start out when General Putnam rode up and talked them out of it. Then he had a couple of the ringleaders shot right there. He shows no mercy when he thinks he's right.”

Suddenly he stopped talking. “What was that?” I'd heard it, too—a kind of a thump and then a cow bawling. We listened. There were noises coming from outside somewhere.

“Sounds like something's bothering the cattle,” I said.

“There are people out there,” Sam shouted. “Let's go.”

We ran out through the kitchen toward the barn. It was dark, but there was nearly a full moon reflected on the snow and plenty enough light to see what had happened. The barn doors were open. Two cows were standing in front of the barn blinking, and we could see two more behind. We dashed into the barn. Four of the cows were gone. “Jesus damn,” I shouted.

“Pen ‘em up,” Sam shouted. “They'll be butchering the others somewhere near. There's no chance of driving them very far in this snow.”

He darted around the house toward the road, his eyes following the hoof prints in the snow. I snatched up a shovel and drove the remaining four cattle back into the barn with the handle. They were balky, and it took me a few minutes to get them inside and the door shut and latched. Then I raced across the snow around the house to the road. There I stopped and swung my eyes across the horizon. I saw nothing, but distantly I heard the noise of shouting, off toward the far end of the training ground. I ran in the direction of the sounds, and then suddenly I saw three men walking toward me through the moonlight, side by side. I stopped and waited. They came up. The one in the middle was Sam. His nose was bleeding and there was a cut in his chin. His hands were tied behind his back.

I stood in the open white snow field, surrounded by shadowy trees. “Sam,” I shouted.

“Timmy, get Colonel Parsons,” he cried. “They're taking me in as a cattle thief.” I went cold. Then I turned and ran.