by Howard Fast
Then the voice of Washington broke through: “Mr. Hamilton, will you inquire which of the three men killed McLane’s trooper?”
Hamilton turned to us. Kenton lurched to his feet. He said hoarsely: “I did.”
I heard Charley’s voice, as from far off: “He’s lying.”
I found myself saying: “He’s lying——”
I find myself crying: “What difference? You want to know who killed him? You made us into beasts! You made life a joke! There’s no life in this place—only death, nothing but death! You don’t bury us; you pile us in the snow, like logs of wood—” I find myself laughing, sitting there and laughing like an idiot.
Kenton’s arm is around me, his voice whispering: “Easy, easy, Allen.”
Charley says, clearly: “God damn you—you can all go to hell!”
I sit there, feeling away from them now, beyond any pain or power of theirs. They sit around the table like dolls, a little bewildered. Hamilton’s face is drawn and twisted; he doesn’t look like a boy any more.
“Take them out, Mr. Hamilton,” Washington says, his voice cold, tired.
We stand up. Hamilton moves through the door with us. The guards form round us, and Hamilton leads us into the next room.
“Sit here,” he says. “There’s no need for you to stand. I’ll go back, and maybe they’ll let me talk some more. I don’t know—” He takes a pipe out of his pocket, a small bag of tobacco, and drops them on the table. “You can smoke.”
He goes out. We sit and look at each other. Charley says: “A fair lot of talk——”
“I’m afraid,” I whisper. “Christ——”
“It’s an awful bitter thing to hang,” Kenton says. “I can’t call to mind that I ever thought to hang. It’s a bitter thing to be out there in the cold, hanging from a gibbet.”
“It may be that we’ll not hang.”
“No. It’s in their minds to hang us.”
“That man Hamilton made a good plea for us. It’s a wonder to me that he spoke so long for us.”
“I’m thinking, he hates McLane.”
“It was fair talking.”
We stare at each other, keep staring, then abruptly turn our eyes away—anywhere. It seems to me that I can hear the clock ticking in the next room. I say:
“Strange to see a clock beating out the time.”
The room we sit in is shadowed with twilight. Outside, the early winter night is beginning to fall. A low fire burns in the room. We look around curiously, at the fine furniture, at the rugs on the floor.
Kenton remarks: “They live well, these Quaker people.”
I reach out toward the pipe. “He was meaning for us to smoke it,” I say.
“I’m sick for food, not for smoking,” Charley mutters.
“We could draw on the pipe a spell, pass the time.”
“They’ll sentence us.”
“I’m thinking so.”
I stuff the pipe with tobacco, go to the fire and draw a spark to it. The smoke makes me dizzy. I hand the pipe to Charley.
Charley looks at it and says: “Ely was a great one to be puffing on a pipe. Night and day, when we had tobacco, he had a pipe in his teeth. You recall?”
“It seems like years past.”
“He could take a quiet enjoyment out of tabacco like no other man I’ve seen.”
“He could.”
“It’s a strange thing that Ely should watch us die. I think back to how Ely watched me grow,” Kenton says.
I say: “If we hang, Kenton, I’ll be no man. I’ll be sick with fear.”
“It’s a dreadful thing to hang.”
We sit and we smoke. It grows darker in the room. The fire throws mottled shadows over us. We seem to tremble and waver in the firelight.
“God—I’m hungry,” Charley whispers.
My throat is dry and numb. I think of drinking a glass of clear water.
“They ought to be through with their talk,” I say nervously.
“They’re making out to hang us.”
“Christ, Kenton, leave be,” Charley mutters.
Kenton has the pipe. He says, sadly: “I did a fool’s thing to smash the other pipe. He was noways mocking at us, giving us the pipe.”
We hear steps outside, and we turn to the door. Hamilton stands there, the guards behind him. “You’ll come back with me now,” he says tonelessly.
I think we know, all of us. We follow Hamilton back into the room where the court-martial is being held. There are some candles on the table. The faces behind the candles waver, change colour.
“Stand at attention,” Mercer says.
Hamilton goes to the window. He stands there, back to the room, hands clasped behind his back. I see Washington’s big face. It seems to me that the muscles are relaxed, that the compact coldness has given way to loose lines of pain. Wayne stares at the table. Greene looks over our heads. Lord Stirling bites his nails, his face vacuous. Conway has a sort of smile.
Mercer reads: “It is the decision of this court that Allen Hale, Kenton Brenner, and Charles Green be found guilty of high treason and murder. It is the decision of this court that they be paraded before the assembled brigades of the Pennsylvania Line, drummed out of their regiment, be publicly stripped of arms and insignia, and then be hanged by the neck until dead.”
Kenton laughs softly. Charley Green’s hand grips my arm, fingers biting into my flesh. I cry out, in spite of myself, and then my throat chokes up and I can say nothing. The guards press out of the room. They stand round us while the officers file past.
Hamilton says: “God help us all for this. I’m sorry. You believe me?”
We can’t answer. He goes, and we fall into step between the guards.
XIII
WE SIT in the guardroom at Fort Huntingdon. The room has no fire, no window. Four log walls and a flat roof. A space between the roof and the walls for currents of air. No lack of air. The cold of the night seeps in, the eternal, awful cold of this winter.
The commandant had a firebox brought in. He said: “You poor devils’ll freeze tonight otherwise. No damned sense letting you freeze before you hang.” The firebox is red-hot with glowing coals. It may hold its heat for three or four hours.
We sit round the box. Through a crack in the roof, we can see a bit of the sky, a narrow bit with a single star. I look at the star first, and then the others, and then we sit with our eyes fixed on that single star. We sit, and our dumb longing fills the place; senseless yearning in the cold of outer space.
“Tomorrow—” Kenton starts to say. Then his voice and his thoughts drift from him. Words are an effort for us now, each word a distinct and separate effort. We shiver; close to the box, its heat scorches our shins, leaves our backs cold. Kenton says:
“That was a great lot of talk——”
“I had in mind that we would go back northward,” I say. “I had no thought in mind that we’d be taken. I had in mind that spring would come on us in our journeying.”
“I had that in mind,” Kenton agrees.
“I shouldn’t have spoken up to them the way I did,” Charley mutters. “I lost hold of my senses.”
“It’s no matter.”
“I’m sick with the thought of going to the gallows. I call to mind that as a child my mother would warn me I was born to be hanged. As a way of joking.”
“Your mother’s living?” Kenton asks Charley.
“She’s an old woman in Boston—if she’s living. If she’s dead, she’ll curse me when I come off the gallows. She had no way with war. Christ, how she hated war! She took a stick to Sam Adams one time when he came to my house to leech me on a matter of printing. She took a stick and beat the dust out of his dirty back. He says, All right, my fine Tory. She answers, All right, my fine beggared bastard. Only keep off from my son and keep your dirty feet outa my house!”
Kenton laughs; he says slowly: “I’m not thinking there’s aught after death—no matter for a man to fear, no matter of starving and f
reezing and whoring.”
“I can’t,” I say. “I had no thought of dying. Now I tell myself, I’m twenty-one years, and I’m going into a great blackness.”
Charley says, gently: “There’s no matter of going alone, Allen. Look, boy, there’s no matter at all of going alone. There’s Kenton and me and a fair lot of good men all the way down.”
I cover my face with my hands; I feel the chill in my heart. I feel a terror so awful that I want to scream and scream again.
When I look up, our faces glisten dully in the glow of the firebox. Kenton and Charley are regarding me strangely.
“You think I’m afraid——” I whisper.
They shake their heads. I put my face in my hands and stifle my sobs.
It might have been an hour or less after that that Hamilton came in. He stood by the door, wrapped in his blue greatcoat, his breath steaming in a red glow.
“I brought you some meat,” he said, holding out a wooden bowl. Kenton took it. Kenton said:
“You made a fine plea for us. We’re not ungrateful.”
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
“We had no thought that we’d be made free by officers.”
“You’re not dead. The General said he’d speak with me tonight.” He looked at us oddly. “One of you come along, He’s no hard man, the General.”
“Go along, Allen,” Kenton said. Charley nodded. I shook my head.
“Better go,” Kenton said gently.
I stood up, holding onto Kenton’s shoulder. He stared at me, his thin face old and drawn, his beard ruddy in the light. Charley was nodding, whimsically.
Outside, the sentry stopped us. “I have orders to keep these men, Colonel Hamilton.”
“I’ll stand for him,” Hamilton said. He had a curious way of speaking, as if he wasn’t to be doubted. Then he walked on. I followed him, his orderly behind us.
At the door of the stone house, he told the orderly to wait. The sentries came to attention. He walked in, and Hamilton said to me:
“There’s no need to fear him. He’s a strange, hard man, but there’s no need to fear him.”
Hamilton tapped on the door of the same room that the court-martial had been held in. Then he went in. Washington was there alone, sitting at the table, writing. He didn’t look up when we first came in. He was wrapped in a woollen jacket, a small cap on his head. There were a few candles on the table. I could see how slowly his hand moved writing.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Colonel Hamilton.”
“Come in, my boy. And close the door. There’s a draught.”
Hamilton said: “Thank you, your excellency.” He closed the door softly. We stood there, in front of the door. I could see that Hamilton was nervous, biting his lips and staring down at his hands.
Washington was all intent on his writing, squinting through his spectacles. He looked like an old man in the jacket and the cap. The large spaces of his face were filled with shadows. Finally, he laid aside the quill and looked up, half a smile on his face. The smile went, and a sullen, rigid coldness replaced it.
“What is the meaning of this, Colonel Hamilton?” he demanded.
“I thought, your excellency——”
“By God, you go too far, Colonel Hamilton! What do you mean by bringing this man before me? Where is your authority?” He had risen from the table, his whole being rigid with sudden fury.
“I have none, sir.”
“Then take him out of here!”
I moved to go, but Hamilton stood where he was. He had dropped his head. He spoke softly.
“I will, your excellency. I wish to resign my commission at the same time. I no longer have a place here.”
I thought for a moment that Washington would hurl the table aside and fling himself on Hamilton. His rage was awful and terrible. Then, in a sudden, it collapsed, like a pricked bladder. He dropped back into his chair, limply, staring at us, his face old and tired. He leant his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands.
“Resign your commission?” he said, unbelievingly.
“I must.”
His face was broken. I had never seen a face so broken all in an instant. He spread his hands hopelessly, murmured: “You too—I might have known. Stirling spreads his tales, and Conway plots, and Varnum mocks me, and Wayne is half-mad—and now you too. God, I’m alone. It’s too much for me.”
I didn’t know whether he was acting; if he was acting, then he was a marvellous actor. His hands spread wide on the table, his mouth open just a bit, his eyes staring at Hamilton and unseeing at the same time, his face trembling, he whispered:
“Go on—get out—leave me alone. God knows, I’m alone. Always alone. You’re no different. I thought you believed—but you’re no different.”
I glanced sidewise at Hamilton. His face was a reflection of the General’s, pain and a deep sorrow in his half-veiled violet eyes. He stood stiffly, his hands a little in front of him.
“Get out,” Washington said hoarsely.
Still Hamilton stood there, for moments; and then he stepped backward toward the door, slowly.
“Wait—” Washington had wilted; he was an old, old man. He said, tonelessly: “Why are you resigning your commission? Why do you want to leave me?”
“I don’t want to leave you, sir. Believe me, as sure as there is a God in heaven, I don’t want to leave you, sir. After I leave you, there is no reason for me to live. Sir, I have no other reason to live than you and our cause.”
A sort of hope in Washington’s face, love and a groping toward Hamilton. He stretched out a hand.
“You won’t leave me,” he said.
“Sir, if one life is taken unjustly, if one man must die because of jealousy and hate, then a cause is already dishonoured. The cause exists no longer. Men can suffer for it no longer. It marks the limit of all suffering, all——”
Washington rose to his feet, crashing his hand down upon the table. The change in him was sudden and furious, like the change in a man gone suddenly mad. We recoiled from him. I felt suddenly that the room was too small for us. He wrenched out from behind the table, stood panting, cried:
“You talk of suffering! My God, you talk of suffering! What do you know? What have you suffered? Does anyone believe in me? Can I trust anyone? Do you know what it is to be alone—always alone, feared, hated?. Whom do they come to? They come to me pleading, crying! Men are starving! Have you seen me touch food today? Do I sleep? Do I rest? Is there any peace for me, ever—until the day I die? Is there anything ahead of me but a rope and a gibbet in England? They talk about ambition, about King Washington. Christ!—don’t deny it. I’m cold—I’m ice waiting for a throne! Look out of that window and you’ll my throne! Look out of that window and you’ll see my throne in the ice on Mount Joy! Howe swore I’d hang there! Who’ll be with me then? Whom can I trust? Can a man go on alone, always, endure ——”
He stands there, a pitiful giant, used up with his own fury. His arms drop limply to his sides. His cap has fallen to the floor. He fumbles at his glasses, puts them on the table. He reaches for his chair, then walks across the room to the fire. Trembling, he tries to warm himself at the fire, seemingly unaware of the fact that we are still in the room. Hamilton murmurs:
“Sir—I’m sorry.”
“We’ll endure,” he says quietly. “We’ll endure.” He has taken hold of himself. He walks back to the table and sits down. He says:
“I’m sorry, Colonel Hamilton. I owe you an apology. If you wish to resign, that is your affair. I can do nothing.”
“You can, sir—only say you need me.”
“God knows, I do.”
“You’ll hear me?”
“Go ahead, Colonel Hamilton.”
“Sir, this man is condemned to death. You know that. He and two more deserters were condemned to hang for shooting one of Captain McLane’s troopers. Sir, I didn’t bring him here to mock at your decision; I brought him here to appeal to your mercy
. I want you to see what war and suffering can do to a boy of twenty-one. I say that he has already atoned for his crime, that the others have atoned.”
“There’s no place for mercy in an army.”
“But there’s a place for justice.”
“They confessed to the crime.”
“But, your excellency, their act was an act of passion, of self-defence.”
“I told you, Colonel Hamilton, that civil law cannot apply to an army in the field. The British hang deserters.”
“But we’re not the British.”
“No—we’re a rabble, a caricature of an army. But so long as one man is left, that man will be under my command. If he’s naked and without arms, he’ll still be under my command.”
“Then one man can hang. One is enough. Only one of McLane’s men died.”
The General shakes his head slowly. He says: “Colonel Hamilton, the only justice I know is the justice I have kept an army together with for three years. We’re in hell, and hell is not gentle.”
“Sir, we are human beings in hell. Once we are not—then where is the use in going on?”
The candles are burning low. I stand there wearily, trying to keep from hope, trying to forget the pain in my feet. The General becomes a blur in the light of the candles. There is a long time of silence. He sits behind the candles, a bewildered man away from the world, unable to be part of the world, staring ahead of him and looking at nothing. Finally he says, uncertainly:
“I’m writing to the Congress for shoes, Colonel Hamilton. The Congress have shoes. They have a thousand pairs, but I can’t plead humbly enough. I can’t. You’ll write it over for me, Colonel Hamilton.”
“I’ll write it, sir.”
He looks at me, stares at my feet, at my face. It seems that he is trying to break me apart from five thousand men. “Which one of you fired the shot?” he asks, not ungently.
I shake my head. “We don’t know, sir,” I say.
