To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (10 page)

That had been the war experience of his “brothers” among the Associators. As word came back of the unrelenting disasters on the far side of the Hudson, the ardor of his comrades had cooled. The welcome offered by the citizens of Amboy in July had turned to outright hostility by October. When food and liquor were no longer offered for free by grateful citizens, instead were charged for, and then refused, the Associators simply took them.

In the end they had broken up and gone home. One or two a night at first, then half a dozen, and finally the entire command; the men cursing the useless Continental Congress, the ungrateful louts of New Jersey, and even Washington, who they said had actually been bribed to divide his army up so it could be cut apart piecemeal. They had decided they would not be one of those pieces.

His brothers in days of sunshine and warmth had melted away in the autumn cold and gone home, leaving only a few like himself, without unit or command, to fend for themselves.

“We who were patriots in the sunshine?” He wondered. Start with that?

Leaving Amboy, he had walked to Fort Lee, just in time to come running back pell-mell like the others with the British and Hessians at their heels.

On the road north he had passed hundreds going the other way. Most of them were men from the New Jersey militias, but some came from as far away as Virginia, every one of them sick to death of it all. He had camped with a few, chanced meetings on the evening road, they curious as to why he was going the other way, calling him a damn fool until they heard him speak his name. A laughing few claimed he was a damn liar. Tom Paine most likely was safe and warm back in Philadelphia, eating roast goose, drinking fine port wine with all the money he had made deluding them. A few believed him; a few even drew out his pamphlet, torn and battered. One man
wept, sitting by a campfire with him, holding
Common Sense
, starting to read it, and he had realized suddenly that the man could not read; he was illiterate. He had heard it read so many times that he had memorized the first few pages and kept the unreadable pamphlet as a talisman from a time when he believed.

They had fallen asleep side by side. When he awoke next morning, his comrade of the night was gone, slipped away, but he had left half a loaf of bread behind as an offering. It was one of the few times he had cried across all these long bitter months.

“Pangs of physical hunger must not deter us now, for we hunger for a greater prize, a prize our souls have longed for . . . and that is the prize of freedom . . .”

He shook his head. Damn, it just would not work.

He headed into the gloomy mist rising above the Passaic and skirted the edge of the town. If I go into the town I will go into a house, and they will recognize me if there are officers; they will lure me, and I’ll get drunk. Something told him he could not afford that blessed oblivion this night. He would stay with those whom in his heart he still called comrades and fellow citizens.

What was left of the Jersey militias had been posted as sentries along the bank of the Passaic. The logic of it was simple enough. In the hills around the town the rest of the army was camped. Any men from Jersey wanting to desert would have to cross through the ranks of these men from Pennsylvania, the more disciplined troops of Maryland and Virginia, and the soldiers of New England, for whom desertion was nearly impossible since the British blocked the way north.

In reality, though, few seemed to care if a knot of shivering, bedraggled militia staggered through their camp, heading south and west. There might be a few taunts and curses, but no one stopped them. For that matter, even for those who were staying, enlistments would be up either on the first of December or of January of the new year, and then nearly all who were still here could legally walk out. Not even “His Excellency General George Washington” would dare to stop them.

The gloom deepened, occasionally relieved by the dull orange flicker of a campfire some lucky souls had managed to stir to life. There was a flaring up of one nearby, and he wandered over. Another home owner in Newark would awake at dawn to find his well-made, whitewashed picket fence gone. Yet the scene there was not of momentary celebration. Paine heard sobbing. A young boy squatting in the mud was cradling a prone form, an older man, beard gray, features pinched, by the firelight the face ashen, lips drawn back in that grimace the dead so often have. He thought for a moment of his Mary on the blood-soaked bed, the dead baby nestled in her arms, and forced it aside. No, that would break me. The others around the weeping boy were silent, heads bowed, one of the men kneeling down to hold the lad.

“It was his heart. It just must have gave out while you were getting the wood. We’re sorry, Jamie.”

The boy was inconsolable. Tom wanted to stop, to kneel down, to offer a word, but knew it would be a useless intrusion. After all, what could he ever say or write for this boy? Was this worth it to him now? If we lose, it will, of course, be meaningless. And even if we win? Could I ever write something to let him find meaning in the death of this old man, most likely his father?

Several looked up at him. He sensed they recognized him. Strange how so many seemed to know who he was. There were even a few nods, but he did not draw closer to the beckoning fire. It was touched at this moment by death that seemed without meaning. He backed away.

He turned into the gloom. Just go to your tent, get drunk, try to write something tomorrow——it did seem a reasonable thought. The flagon was still inside his jacket. He looked into the darkness. If another was close by, he would feel uncomfortable drinking and not offering to share. He saw no one, and he took a long swallow, feeling again the momentary blessing of warmth.

He walked on, nearly tripping into a shallow ditch and then retching. It was an open latrine, and in the shadows he could hear a man
suffering the agonies of the flux, or dysentery or typhoid. Memories of the nightmare crossing from England, when the drinking water in the lower hold of the ship was discovered to be foul once out to sea and already too far along to turn back. Nearly everyone on board had come down with typhoid.

So much for the free passage that Benjamin Franklin had given him when the two met in England. He still wondered why. What had Franklin seen in him that others had not, recruiting him to venture to America and try his skills there, providing passage and even sending a letter ahead by fast packet to Dr. Rush, his friend, to take the corset maker, failed tax collector, and occasional writer under his wing once he landed in America?

He backed away from the foul sink, struggling not to vomit, edged around it, and pressed on toward the river. Why he headed there he was not sure. It was not the most pleasant of streams, banked on one side by marshlands, lined with a number of tannery mills on this side that dumped their refuse and filth into the waters, a filth to which the people of Newark seemed immune.

He caught sight of a flickering glow and angled toward it. Half a dozen men were gathered about a low fire that suddenly flared up high. As at the last one, these men had apparently slipped into the town to steal something dry and seasoned to burn on this rainy night. A fresh-faced boy, chin mottled with wisps of a scraggly beard, came to his side.

“Brother, can you help me?” he gasped.

The boy was staggering under a load of firewood. Thomas reached over, taking more than half of it, the boy groaning, thanking him. As they approached the fire, he saw two fish dangling from the boy’s belt: carp, big ones.

“Our Jonathan, back from the hunt as well” came a greeting. A couple of men rushed over to help him the last few feet, taking his armload of wood and, without thought of need an hour or two from now, tossed all of it on the fire. Within seconds the dried apple and cherry wood crackled, spreading warmth for the moment.

“Fish, no less!” The boy, obviously proud of his find, untied them from his belt and handed them over.

“You go fishing as well?”

He laughed softly. “No, they were hanging in the woodshed I visited, so I figured to bring them along.”

“Fine bunch of thieves we’re reduced to, stealing a few stinking carp!”

The others around the fire fell silent. Tom could see the resemblance between the forager and the young man complaining about the fish.

One of the men drew out a knife, a short, beefy man with hands like ham hocks. He spilled out the guts of the two fish, and without bothering to scrape off their scales, he drew the ramrod from his mud-splattered musket, impaled the carp, and bracing the ramrod with a log, put the fish out over the fire to roast.

Tom stood watching, still holding the heavy load of firewood. When the short, beefy man beckoned for him to dump his load by the side of the fire, he did so and found that the logs were a dry spot to park himself on, and so he sat down. Carp or not, there was enough food for all of them, and he felt something of an invitation for having carried the wood the last few feet.

“You look familiar,” the young forager said, and extended his hand. “My name is Jonathan. Jonathan van Dorn.”

“Tom,” he replied quietly.

“Just Tom? What regiment you with?”

“Was with the Associators out of Philadelphia.”

There were several snorts of derision. He took no offense.

“So what the hell are you doing here? Word was, all your friends ran for home a month ago.”

“What unit are you?” Tom replied.

There was a pause.

“Jersey militia, out of Burlington County.” There was a slight defensive tone in Jonathan’s voice.

“Well, heard nearly all of you boys ran off as well.”

He said the words lightly, as if offering a joke in reply, but an uncomfortable pause ensued.

“But you and me, we’re still here,” Tom finally added, and that broke the tension.

“Stuck here for tonight,” came a voice from the other side of the fire, “but tomorrow? Word is we’re running again.”

Tom looked over at the man who had spoken.

“That’s my brother James,” Jonathan announced. James nodded, and Jonathan introduced the others, Peter Wellsley, Elijah Hunt, their sergeant, Bartholomew Weiner, who was cooking the fish, and several others, all that was left of the Burlington militia. It was Bartholomew who broke the moment, not looking back as he tended the roasting carp.

“You’re Tom Paine, ain’t you?”

Tom nodded his head. “Yup.”

“Thought so.”

“You’re Tom Paine?” Jonathan gasped and extended his hand. “An honor, sir.”

Tom took it. It was an American custom he was still not quite used to, this shaking of hands. Every American seemed willing to shake every other American’s hand. In England one only did so if the other was of the same class and station. He liked the custom. It was almost a symbol of what they were fighting for.

“So, why are you here?” Jonathan asked.

Tom shook his head. “Studying.”

“Studying what? How to freeze? How to die from the shits?” Bartholomew quipped.

“You could say that.”

“Why ain’t you off with the officers down in the town? They’d let you in. I heard even that George Washington himself likes you, tells people to read what you write. He’d give you a warm bed for the night.”

“Kind of prefer the company here.”

No one spoke for a moment. It was embarrassing. He could
see the open admiration in young Jonathan’s eyes, the cynical glance from his brother James, the weary indifference of the sergeant.

A gust of wind whipped around them, sending up a shower of sparks. Turning away from the smoke, he caught a distant glimpse of glowing lights on the far side of the river.

“They over there?” he asked.

“Coming up thick as fleas on an old dog,” Bartholomew snorted, and then, clearing his throat, he spat. “We’ll most likely pack and be gone come dawn.”

“Not soon enough for me,” James announced.

Tom looked over at him and saw that a couple of the men to either side were nodding in agreement, heads lowered against the wind.

“Stow it,” Bartholomew snapped.

“And I suppose you are going to make me?” James retorted. “I thought the Declaration was about our freedom. Well, damn it, I have the freedom to speak my mind.”

“You flap your mouth too much, lad,” Bartholomew retorted.

There were several glances now toward their guest, as if he had intruded on a family argument, wondering if he would intervene.

“Did you ever think it would turn to this?” James asked sharply, directing his ire at Tom. “I had to listen night after night to my brother there reading your pamphlet. Listened to it so much that I even volunteered for this army out of Bedlam. So what do I have now? Ask the sergeant there how many of our men have died? Barely a one from a bullet, but God knows dozens, scores from the flux, bad food, rotting food while those bastards in Congress eat off fine china, and you encourage us to sacrifice all. And I ask, for what?”

Eyes turned back toward Tom. Even the admiring glances of Jonathan had dulled a bit.

He had not wandered out to do this on this night. He was more than a little drunk, and tired, and plain exhausted with trying to think what he should write, for that was what all of them would want by next morning and the day after.

“We’re here,” he finally said. “Out of so many, we’re the ones who are here. That says something about us, about what we believe in.”

“Believed in,” James replied. “Believed in, but now? This is beyond too much for any to endure. I’m sick to death of it, I tell you.”

“Who the hell isn’t,” Jonathan snapped back. “You think we like it any more than you?”

Bartholomew cursed under his breath as he lowered the ramrod toward the fire to cook the fish faster. The smell of the burning flesh wafted over them, stilling the argument for a moment.

“Shad. Now if only we had some shad,” Peter Wellsley said. “Where you from, Mr. Paine?”

“England, until two years ago. Trout there in the rivers, fat big ones. Would love to have a couple of them roasting now.”

“When the shad run on the Delaware in the spring, you can almost walk across their backs to Pennsylvania,” Peter sighed. “Stuff ourselves on them ’til we burst. Wish that was shad cooking, feel a mite better.”