To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 Page 6

  “What kind of store?”

  “Dry goods and leather from a tannery we own,” Jonathan said softly.

  “So your family’s there now?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “You see ’em when we retreated through the town?”

  He looked at the sergeant and shook his head.

  “Haven’t seen my family since I joined up.”

  There was more than a wistful tone in his voice. Looking closely, Jonathan could see that the sergeant was an older man, in his thirties at least, maybe forties.

  “Wife and four children in Philadelphia,” he sighed. “At least, last I heard.”

  He gazed off.

  “Last I heard,” he said again. “I don’t know if they’re still there or took off. Word is half the city emptied out when Congress fled. The ones that stayed, most of them are Tories just waiting for us to be finished off.”

  “Same in Trenton,” Peter replied bitterly.

  Jonathan shifted uncomfortably.

  Peter gave him a sidelong glance. He fumbled a bit and lowered his head. “At least that’s what I heard.”

  Howard gazed at them.

  “Guess it will be hard on you two, guiding us in to the attack. I mean, friends, neighbors, kin in the way.”

  “It’s what we volunteered for,” Jonathan said. The bitterness in his voice was evident. “We have to beat the British to be free, and we are going to.”

  He slouched lower against the wall and pulled his damp cape, actually just a tattered worn blanket, in tight around his body. Sergeant Howard drew back, as if sensing that a raw nerve had been touched.

  Sitting there Jonathan studied his feet. The shoes his parents had given him had disintegrated and rotted off long ago, even though as tanners his parents had made sure that James and he had shoes of the finest leather, with even an extra pair tucked into their packs. He had given the second pair to Peter, an act of pity, and now both of them were barefoot, feet encased in strips of burlap, toes sticking out, swollen, cracked, filthy.

  He had given up trying to patch his trousers. The frayed ends rose over his ankles, both knees sticking out, the thighs of the pants no longer white but black. As to his backside he was ashamed that only the blanket covered that nakedness. His hat did little to keep out the rain, the heavy felt long since matted out, the crown split open for several inches along a crease.

  This is what I volunteered for, he realized. The romance of it was long gone. The girls who had so eagerly kissed him as he proudly marched out of Trenton would most likely recoil with disgust if they saw and smelled him now. Or, worse yet, count him a fool. So many others had stayed, as his parents had begged him to do on the day when what was left of the army passed through Trenton; they were safe at home, well fed, warm, and offered the protection of a forgiving and benevolent king.

  “Damn my brothers,” he whispered softly. “Damn all of them.”

  He thought again of what he might do when this army took Trenton back, as surely it must. He remembered far too clearly what James had done and what he suspected his other brother Allen might now be doing. When the army had retreated through Trenton three weeks ago, he deliberately avoided going to his house out of fear of what he might discover. But after this? After all this if we survive the night? He would not back down this time.

  His parents? They had professed leanings for the patriots in the heady days of summer when the Declaration had been read from the steps of their church. But now? Hessians were most likely quartered in their home and store, and without a doubt his father, who had come to this land forty years ago and could still speak Dutch and even some German, was most likely drinking a Christmas toast with them at this very moment.

  Another seizure of coughing took him. Leaning forward, he gasped for air, Peter bracing him, slapping him on the back as if that would actually help to clear his lungs.

  He coughed up more phlegm and fell back against the wall of the stall, shivering, and then feeling hot. Peter, more a brother to him now than anyone else in this world, looked at him with concern.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, forcing a smile.

  He closed his eyes, letting his thoughts drift back to summer, the warmth. Being the youngest and indulged by his mother he had been able to slip off from chores, most especially the noisome tasks at the tannery, his mother arguing that her boys were now of the upper class, as was she, and they did not need to stink of curing leather. She had dreams that he would have started this autumn at the college up in Princeton, for he could already read Latin and even some Greek. Even though it was a Presbyterian college and they were Lutherans, she had dreamed of her youngest being educated——a minister, perhaps, or a lawyer.

  He smiled at the thought. Now I’m a private, dressed in rags. If we fail tonight and I’m taken alive, I’ll rot in one of the prison hulks anchored in the East River off of Brooklyn. So much for my Latin and Greek.

  And yet no regrets. If anything, his heart was even more hardened to see it through.

  The coughing spasm having passed, he opened his eyes. It was a bit brighter in the barn; someone had managed to strike a flame, lanterns had been found, a few men were fishing out stubs of candles. Sergeant Howard actually looked somewhat absurd, holding his cupped hands over a candle set atop the wall of the barn stall, rubbing them over the tiny flame, trying to get the chill out.

  Jonathan fumbled under his blanket in what was left of the once smart-looking hunting frock; underneath he still had something of an actual linen shirt, not washed, though, in months, and, if washed, would most likely crumble into rags. He found his Bible, tucked down near his belt, and pulled it out. By the pale light of the candle he could have made out some of the words, the book easily opening to the Ninety-first Psalm. He didn’t actually need to read it; he knew it by heart, could even say a few lines of it in Greek. Howard, watching him, moved his hands so as not to block the flickering candlelight.

  Folded over and tucked into the Bible were a few sheets of paper, stitched together, that he was actually looking for, and he pulled them out. He held them close to his face, the words hard to see by the faint light and harder to read when a bout of shivering struck him, the pamphlet trembling like a leaf on a wind-swept tree.

  Outside, the wind was howling, rattling some loose boards, the candle flame nearly going out. Howard cupped his hands around it again to protect it until the gust had passed. As the wind died away, Jonathan could hear the hard pelting of sleet and freezing rain against the side of the barn.

  “What you got there?” Howard asked.

  “Thomas Paine, he just wrote it.”

  At the mention of the name Thomas Paine, those around him looked in his direction.

  “You got that new pamphlet by Paine?” someone asked. He looked up. It was one of the Marylanders.

  “Yup. They passed out a few of them with my battalion yesterday.”

  “Major Bartlett got a copy, he read a bit of it to us earlier,” the Marylander announced. “And that’s the same thing?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  The Marylander turned.

  “You men, let’s have some quiet here.”

  “What the hell for?” came a reply.

  “That boy from Jersey, he’s got the new pamphlet by Tom Paine.”

  “Give it over here, Jersey.”

  It was the Maryland lieutenant.

  Jonathan rose to his feet and shook his head.

  “No, sir, it’s mine.”

  The lieutenant gazed at him as if judging what to do with the defiance of this militiaman, from New Jersey no less, and then turned back.

  “Barry, fetch that lantern over here.”

  A moment later the lieutenant was by Jonathan’s side, holding the lantern high, its bright light illuminating the tattered and water-stained pamphlet.

  “Go ahead, Jersey. Read it.”

  “These are . . .” Another coughing spasm hit. Embarrassed, he leaned over, gasping, coughing up more phlegm.


  “Can you read it?” the lieutenant asked, as Jonathan stood up. There was no insult in his voice. It was a simple question.

  “I was camped beside him up in Newark the night he started to write this,” Jonathan announced, his voice filled with emotion. “I can read it.”

  The lieutenant fell silent. All around him were silent. The only thing that could keep him from being heard was the howling of the gale outside, sweeping across the ice-choked Delaware, carrying with it the distant sound of men laboring to load a cannon on one of the boats, other men struggling with the lead of a horse that had slipped off the dock into the freezing water and was now crying out pitifully.

  He held the pamphlet tight, but strangely, he no longer even needed to read it. It was in his heart and soul.

  “The Crisis, by Thomas Paine,” he began, trying to hold back his emotions. “Number one.”

  “These are the times that try men’s souls . . .”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Newark, New Jersey

  November 24, 1776

  Rain. Blinding sheets of rain lashed down from an angry heaven.

  A chilled river of it was coursing through the thin, worn fabric of his tent, trickling down his neck, and, even worse, splashing on the page of foolscap he was trying to write on, smearing the first lines.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he snapped, scooping up the soggy sheet of paper from the slab of wood he had been writing on, crumpling it and throwing it to the muddy ground.

  Thomas Paine, more than a little drunk on this disgusting November evening, pushed his “writing desk,” off his knees, stood up, and drove the sheet of paper into the mud with the heel of his boot.

  His head brushed against the peak of his tent, triggering another cascade of water on his bare head and down his neck.

  It didn’t worsen his condition. Inside a tent or out, everyone was drenched on this miserable night. At least he had shoes on and wool socks. An adjutant to General Greene had insisted he accept them earlier in the day, along with the tent. He knew he was supposed to feel guilt for having these luxuries——shoes, socks, a tent——while the rest of the army was out in the open tonight, shivering around smoldering fires, nearly all of them barefoot, more than a few of them all but naked under a blanket cape. Even the best of those, including that worn by “His Excellency the General,” were threadbare and worn.

  At least I have this, he thought ruefully, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a leather sack, still half full of rum. He took a long pull on the flagon, resealed it, and stuck it under his jacket. At least it gave a momentary warmth, dulled the pain, the memories, and put off the problem of what he was supposed to write next.

  Since coming to America, he had rarely indulged but tonight, in this miserable muck, he no longer cared, and besides, half the army was drunk, the other half wished they were.

  The rain, the suffering, the fear——they were almost secondary now. What in hell should I, can I, write?

  The American Crisis. He already knew the title. He had written it twenty times on that sheet of paper now crushed into the mud, but beyond that?

  He uncorked the flagon, took another drink, and sat back down on another luxury General Greene had provided for him, a field cot so that he didn’t have to sleep in the mud, the way the men he claimed to be one of would try and sleep this night.

  Why did they all look to me? Because they believe I can write? They were the ones who had faced fire at Long Island, Manhattan, White Plains, and still were with the army.

  His own service? A joke, other than that he could write.

  Common Sense had been in everyone’s hands for nearly a year now. It had been easy enough to write last winter, safe and warm in Philadelphia, the argument for this war no longer being about Englishmen defending the rights of Englishmen; this was now a war about a new nation, a new concept, an ideal called America. We are Americans now and will die for the right to live free.

  He had written it because he had to. It had flooded out of him in a dream, a burst of energy pent up for nearly his entire life, a life of degradation, poverty, and tragedy. His pen had given him, at last, the means to lash back at the world, the Old World he had fled in disgrace and abject poverty, where he had left behind an embittered wife and the threat of debtor’s prison.

  Squatting on the wet cot, rubbing his hands against the cold, he could not help but smile at his current state. Poverty? At least in prison, if you had a few pence to bribe the turnkeys, you could get a dry room, even a fire and a cooked meal. Here? Hell, the only money the sullen citizens of Newark would take for food or a dry corner in a shed was British or Spanish silver. The wads of paper money being handed out as pay were all but worthless. More than one soldier had sarcastically used a five-dollar note as kindling or, in a more dramatic statement of crude humor, publicly wiped himself with it to the laughing taunts of his comrades.

  Yet I would not trade being here rather than being back in England for a hundred pounds sterling. He was feeling more than a bit woozy as he took another pull on the flagon of rum. Despite his cynicism about all that life had handed him so far, he felt for the first time that he belonged to something. He had helped to start something. Now he was being asked to ensure that it survived, and that was exactly why he was drunk.

  He was not sure what to write.

  Two years ago he had been an utter failure, a stay and corset maker like his father. That had ended when his first wife, Mary, died trying to give birth to their child. He drank himself half to death after she and the baby were put into the ground. Friends helped to get him a job as an excise collector. My God, he thought ruefully, I actually collected taxes for that damned king. Finally lost that position, too, sinking the ship when, among other things, he had written a protest pamphlet demanding better conditions and pay for the excisemen who squeezed the taxes for the crown. It was hard to admit to another reason, that, more than once, rather than showing up for a day’s work, he was passed out drunk. Even tried a tobacco shop. It failed. Tried a second marriage. It failed, and as he looked back upon it, he could not blame Elizabeth for pushing him out of her bed and life. Perhaps memories of Mary had haunted that second marriage and brought it to a rapid and untimely end.

  He opened the flagon, looked at it, and forced the cork back in. He knew where this was leading. Finish off the rum, collapse on the cot, shiver through the night, and, at dawn, fall back in with the troops, swarming southward, away from British-occupied New York, panic-stricken in retreat. And not a word on paper to explain why.

  They want me to explain why. They look to me to give meaning to their sacrifice and pain. Their eyes look hauntingly in expectation.

  “I’m cursed by my own success.”

  And penniless as well. That was the joke of it. He could picture his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush shaking his head at him and his self-inflicted poverty. It was Rush who had literally carried him off the boat two years earlier when it docked in Philadelphia, half the passengers near dead from typhoid, and nursed him back to health. It was Rush who had told him to write, that writing was his God-given mission for “the Cause.”

  Common Sense had sold over a hundred thousand copies so far, the most popular work ever written on this shore, and yet he had barely collected a pound for it. One evening Rush had run a calculation for him, how many hundreds of pounds he should have in his pocket this day, and he had given it all away, telling publishers to print it and be damned who made the money. In his passion for “the Cause” many another had freely published his work and he had pocketed only a few guineas, which he had quickly drunk away.

  Rush called me a bloody idealistic fool and blessed me for it, he thought with a sad smile. Published it for “the Cause,” and now I sit here penniless, half drunk, freezing. And they want me to write another uplifting, compelling, reassuring pamphlet. General Greene had openly begged him for it. Rush had sent him a dozen missives, each one with more pressure than the last, even “His Excellency” George Washingt
on had sat him down and said, “You have to write something! Anything!”

  “Damn them.” He sighed and stood up, his head brushing the inside of the tent, the sodden canvas spilling more water onto his bare head.

  He had given his hat away the day before to a piteous freezing scarecrow standing picket, shivering with fever. He took an old scarf, hanging on the inside of the tent pole where it was supposed to dry out a bit. The wool was wet, stinking of sweat and filth. He covered the top of his head, and tied it under his chin, pulled back the flap of his tent, and stepped out.

  The rain was easing slightly, coming in fitful bursts, a cold edge to it. Snow by morning most likely, he thought. Maybe a blessing; maybe it will just make the suffering worse.

  The vista before him was pathetic. The small village of Newark, a few hundred homes and shops huddled along the banks of the Passaic River, was packed to overflowing. It was shrouded in mist and the smoke from hundreds of sputtering, hissing campfires. Every house in the village had been requisitioned for the sick, staff, or officers; the citizens who had cheered them all so loudly in the summer, had withdrawn in silence, hiding their livestock and food in the nearby marshlands, demanding payment for dry firewood, howling with rage when desperate men told them to go to hell and took the wood anyhow. He hated this place, hated all of New Jersey for that matter, which, now that the army was in retreat, had, overnight, gone Tory. Even now he could imagine the citizens of this village pulling the Union Jacks out of hiding places in the attic, eager to hang them out their windows when this forlorn army decamped at dawn and continued its retreat toward Philadelphia. By this time tomorrow the pursuing British and Hessians will have marched in . . . with shining guineas and German coins in their pockets.

  It was rumored that the British general Howe was preparing a proclamation for the citizens of New Jersey: If they would step forward and sign an oath of renewed allegiance to King George, all would be forgiven and hard currency paid for goods acquired and to any who would take up arms to suppress the traitorous rebels. It was a rumor he knew was most likely true. By tomorrow night the “citizens” of this town would be lining up to sign it, and to be paid for doing so.