To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (13 page)

“Yes, sir!” Knox replied, and yet again the formal salute, which he returned, and an instant of a shared intensity, almost as if Knox were saying, “I was half hoping, sir, but, damn it, if you are game for this, so am I.”

Knox left the room, trailing a river of slush. The door closed. Seconds later he could hear Knox’s booming voice.

“Damn you. If need be, put a blinder on that damn horse and get him aboard the boat. Keep moving!”

Washington looked around at his staff. No one met his gaze. All affected a studied indifference. Some slouched down in their chairs, feet toward the roaring fire, hats pulled low over their eyes. One of the men stirred, went to a sideboard where a pot of tepid tea sat, poured himself a cup, looked his way with a gesture, and Washington
shook his head in reply. The officer gulped the tea down and returned to his chair and settled in, making a show of acting as if he were about to relax and fall asleep.

Washington settled back into his chair. The only one to meet his gaze directly, Billy Lee, still squatting by the fire, absently poking at the logs, picked up another split log of slow-burning chestnut and tossed it in.

For several long seconds Billy held his gaze, and the man smiled at him, as if conveying approval.

He nodded in reply, then closed his eyes to hide his feelings.

I know what I am fighting for, he found himself thinking. But what of Billy? Loyalty to me, yes. But what of him? The thought was troubling. There were so many thoughts to trouble him this night, though, and he pushed it aside.

He kept his eyes closed, and like many a seasoned veteran at such a moment, he drifted off to sleep, to grab a few more precious minutes to gain energy before the crisis to come.

“Maryland line! Maryland line, fall in!”

The cry startled Jonathan van Dorn from his fitful slumber.

Like nearly all who awake in strange surroundings there was a moment of disorientation. Am I home? In my bed, a plush goose down pillow under my head? Feeling guilty as well, for he had been dreaming that Diana Mueller was actually alongside him. Dear, dear Diana, who had kissed him on the lips and flung her arms around him on the day the Burlington militia paraded down Queen and King Streets in Trenton and marched off to the war.

She had been half asleep beside him, her eyes greeting him in the dream he had been having, her arms going around him, pulling him in closer to her side . . . and then . . .

No. Embarrassed, he opened his eyes, wondering if any had heard or noticed what he had been dreaming.

Instead, he found himself curled up in the corner of a pig stall in a stinking filthy barn. The frozen manure of the pigs under his backside
and thighs was thawed by his resting in the filth, and soaked through his threadbare trousers.

He stank, became aware of the hundred itching sores from the lice infesting his jacket. Like all soldiers of this forsaken army, he awoke to scratch, still half asleep but hoping he would find one of the little bastards so he could exact revenge and crush it with his cracked and dirty fingernails.

“Maryland line! Maryland line! Fall in, we’re crossing over!”

Jonathan opened his eyes.

The candle that someone had placed on the railing of the stall above him while he had read from Thomas Paine was still glowing but was slacked halfway down. He must have drifted off for an hour or two. The tattered pamphlet by Paine was still in his hands.

Confused, he looked about. Had he fallen asleep while reading?

Peter was by his side, not Diana, but there was a deep love there nevertheless, his friend’s head resting on his shoulder. He was still asleep, shivering, muttering something undistinguishable. Not to disturb him, he did not move, struggling to suppress a spasm of coughing that was about to hit.

“Maryland line! Damn you all, fall in!”

A hundred or more men were standing up, cursing, rolling up tattered blankets, most draping them around their shoulders and with a bit of burlap or leather tying them on as capes.

Men were coughing, hawking, and spitting. Jonathan saw several passing around a bottle, draining off the last of the contents. A sergeant was kicking, but not too hard, a drummer boy who cursed him vehemently, to the delight of the men already standing, the sergeant then extending a hand to pull the boy to his feet, the boy still half asleep and leaning against the sergeant for support.

“Clean out your pans but don’t put in fresh powder, boys. Wait till we get there,” the sergeant announced.

The men did as ordered, opening the locks of their muskets, using a bit of rag or dirty fingers to wipe out the damp powder, that in most cases was a greasy paste that never would have fired. The few that
had a brass or bronze wire with them used it to clean out the touchhole, then loaned the valuable tool to their neighbors, who did the same. They checked their flints, carefully wiping them clean, then they took a strip of oiled or grease-covered cloth and bound it back around the lock in what was most likely a vain attempt to keep it dry.

The door to the barn was wide open, admitting an icy blast of wind, bringing with it sleet and thick, heavy flakes of snow.

“Come on, you bastards! Move it!”

The sergeant led the way. The men, cursing, complaining, shuffled along after him, many pausing for a moment to check the bindings of the rags wrapped around their feet. A few, gazing out, seeing the futility of foot rags on such a night, pulled them off, tucking the damp rags under their jackets, and ventured out barefoot.

One of the last to leave was the officer of the Maryland line whom Jonathan had nearly come to blows with earlier, the officer shoving along the reluctant few who were holding back.

The lieutenant looked his way and their gazes locked. It was a long-drawn-out matter of but a few seconds. Protocol demanded that Jonathan come to his feet and offer some sort of salute, but he did not want to stir, to wake Peter from his deep slumber, and besides this man had insulted him.

The moment held, and then the lieutenant nodded.

“Luck to you, New Jersey.”

Startled, he could not reply.

“You read that Paine like you know it by heart.”

“Like I said, I met him once,” Jonathan replied.

“I’ll see you in Trenton, and we’ll give them hell.”

Startled even more, Jonathan offered a salute in reply, even as he remained seated so as not to disturb Peter.

“Luck to you, too, sir,” he replied.

The lieutenant forced a smile, then shook his head, looking out through the door at the wintry blast.

“Ah, what the hell, chances are we’ll all be dead come dawn anyhow. Frozen or shot. But what the hell.”

Jonathan could not help but smile.

“Then I’ll see you in hell, sir. At least it will be warm there.”

The lieutenant shook his head and laughed softly.

“See you in hell, Jersey,” he replied, and then went through the barn door, slamming it shut behind him.

Peter was still asleep, and though struggling to control his cough, Jonathan could not help but let a spasm overwhelm him. It did not wake his friend.

Peter was still shivering in his sleep, and Jonathan reached around, and pulled up his own frayed blanket around his friend. A loving gesture but also a pragmatic one, their body heat would help warm each other, and he held him closer. Not Diana to be certain, but at this moment he loved his friend just as intensely and cherished his warmth. Peter’s shivering died away, and like a child his friend drifted deeper into slumber, again whispering something he could not quite understand, but it sounded as if he was saying something to his mother.

From outside the barn Jonathan could hear orders being shouted for the men of the Maryland line to fall in and form ranks. Men were cursing the cold, the war, the weather, each other, cursing everything one could ever imagine. He could hear them sloshing off, drifting their way to the ferry dock.

Now that the barn was no longer packed to overflowing with men, there was at least one blessing. The wretched stench of a hundred or more soldiers packed tight together was gone. The stink of unwashed bodies, foul uniforms, of so many suffering from dysentery and every other damned illness imaginable was washed away as the icy wind shrieked through the cracks between the boards and eaves. The only men still inside were Peter, Jonathan, and the troopers of the General’s personal guard. The one drawback to the Maryland line’s leaving——the temperature inside the barn
plummeted in a few minutes to well below freezing. He started to shiver.

The remaining troopers stretched out on the floor of the barn. Sergeant Howard, who had befriended him, walked by, looked down at the two of them, and reaching into his jacket he pulled out a leather sack of rum and offered it.

Jonathan gratefully took it, swallowed a few gulps, the hot warmth of the rum coursing through him, hitting him hard so that his head swam.

“You feeling better, son?”

“Yes.” It was a lie. His chest felt like it was on fire.

“That stuff will cure you right quick.”

“It certainly does.”

“Good for you, lad. Rest easy now. They’ll call us when the time comes. It might be hours yet.”

The sergeant, like a mother hen checking her chicks, moved on, leaving the two of them alone in the pig stall. If not for Peter asleep in his arms he would have crawled out of the stench and found some hay or straw to rest upon, but he did not wish to disturb his friend, and so, curled up with him, he sat beneath the flickering candle.

Sleep would not come again.

He tried to conjure up the image of Diana by his side but it would not come. Besides, with Peter asleep in his arms, the thought seemed strange and uncomfortable. What would Diana say if one day he should tell her of this moment and admit the secret desires he harbored. That would never do, for her father was a deacon of their church and surely she would be repulsed by such thoughts.

The cold crept in around him, icy tentacles that penetrated the thin, worn, damp blanket and threadbare uniform so that he began to shiver uncontrollably. He wished the sergeant would come back again and offer another drink, and then another. In the army he had learned to drink. At least for a few minutes a drink would ward off the cold that seemed part and parcel of this wretched existence,
not just warding off the cold of the body, but also the cold of the soul.

But he could not bestir himself, and besides, it would break what dignity he still had to go and seek a drink from another.

His thoughts drifted to that night they camped before Newark. Not the memory of his brother James deserting. That was a memory he worked diligently to wash out of his soul forever. Instead, it was of his friend Thomas Paine.

I can call him my friend, he thought, for he called me brother. Thomas Paine called me brother, and he remembered how his friend so readily produced the sack of rum and shared it with him and the others around their campfire, and without complaint accepted the miserable head of a carp and ate it without protest. Jonathan had been more than eager to offer him the choice morsel that he had been allotted.

He remembered how, after Paine had left their company, he could not get to sleep thinking about it. A new custom was emerging in the army. Soldiers were asking the famous author to place his signature on copies of his pamphlet
Common Sense.
He had lacked the nerve to ask, and besides, on such a miserable night how could one do so without pen or quill? Perhaps when this is all over I’ll seek him out. Perhaps he just might remember me and I will ask him to sign it and we will laugh together about our shared meal and forget how it ended with my brother James deserting. Perhaps, just perhaps, I somehow helped him, for he had written down what I said to James. “You try my soul!”

Could I have helped him to create that? Jonathan wondered. If so, then maybe all of this is worth it, he thought, as he held Peter closer to stop his own shivering.

After Mr. Paine had left their miserable fireside, Sergeant Bartholomew had acted so strangely. Gone was his gruffness and endless stream of obscenities. Bartholomew had sat by the fire, poking the coals with his bayonet, muttering to himself.

Poor Bartholomew. When they finally reached Trenton and from there retreated across the Delaware, the skiff Bartholomew was in upended crossing over to Pennsylvania. Powerful man that he was, Bartholomew could not swim a stroke and disappeared in the ice floes and swirling current.

He wished he could write to the poor man’s wife to tell her of her husband’s fate, to somehow, like Mr. Paine, find the words to explain. But he did not have paper or ink and pen to do so. Nor did he even know where his sergeant had come from, for the man rarely spoke of his family, his wife and the five children he had left behind to go and fight this war. He had joked that he had joined the army so he could have a night of peaceful sleep without squalling brats and a wife pestering him to help make another. All of them had seen through that. He loved them, he missed them, and now he was drowned, as dead as if struck down in battle, and his family would never know.

When this is over, I will seek them out and tell them, Jonathan resolved.

Peter sighed and nestled in closer by his side. Jonathan pulled their blankets in closer around Peter’s shoulders and his own, settling back.

On the other side of the thin boards that separated him from the raging storm he could hear the wind howling, feeling the cold sweeping in, hear the distant sound of the men of the Maryland line loading aboard the boats to cross over to the Jersey shore.

“Get some sleep, boys.” It was the sergeant whispering. “The General can’t go over there without us. We got a few hours yet. Get some sleep.”

Jonathan closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. Each breath was a labor, and with each breath he fought not to cough and awaken his friend.

His thoughts raced.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” his friend had written.

But for this moment, the warmer thoughts of a girl who had kissed
him but once made him smile, and for a few precious moments he did drift off to sleep.