Johnny One-Eye

by Jerome Charyn

  “I would sunder your heart,” John André said to the throne and the nabobs in camp chairs, “incite you to anger, if I chose to compile every sin of John Stocking, the condemned man in this court.”

  “The accused,” Clinton said, waking up long enough to correct André. “We are not barbarians. ’Tis a British tribunal.”

  André bowed to the throne. “The accused lost an eye during the Canadian campaign of ’75 and has been on parole. But he offered his services to General Washington and used Holy Ground as his headquarters. I beg the court to deliver this self-professed enemy agent to the hangman, who is present, and will watch over him until—”

  Clinton opened his other eye. “The court feels that you are still riding much too fast…Mr. Stocking, have you something to say?”

  Clara was right. My education had left me in a parlous state. I was but a shipwreck that could still walk. Yet college had also kept me cold and cunning—they were nothing but inkpots, these men of the tribunal.

  “Excellency, I was the king’s own scholar at my college.”

  “The king’s scholar? André, is this true?”

  “All the more to prove his perfidy,” André said.

  “I did lose an eye in Canada, fighting beside General Arnold. I was his secretary.”

  Clinton perused me up and down. “A secretary with a sword?”

  “Mock heroics,” André said. “A wooden soldier.”

  “Wait, I am intrigued.”

  “Arnold was a general unlike any other,” I said to Clinton. “He would dictate to me in the middle of a charge.”

  “You carried a quill as you burst into Quebec?”

  “No, Your Excellency, I would remember wholesale whatever he wished, line for line.”

  “André, I like this fellow. He has fine blood for an American.”

  The Fiend grew nervous, began to twitch.

  “Sir,” he said, “I most humbly disagree.”

  “Then I shall query the poor chap…Mr. Stocking, you stand accused of treason. How say you to this charge?”

  “I am a man most divided, milord. I love my king. I could not have attended college without him. I might have become a wig-maker or a boy who delivers ale. ’T was not any anger at the king that bought me to Arnold’s tent in Massachusetts, or deep sympathy with the rebel cause. Quite the contrary. My sponsor, Sir Harold Morse, prodded me. I was to penetrate the American ranks as best I could. That was my mission. And I did. “Arnold confided in me. He was dreadful as a speller, not very acute with the quill. But kind he was with his men, loath to flog them. And when our rations ran out in the woodlands, he fed the lads with his own food. I saw him starve. I starved with him.”

  André interrupted. “I beg you, sir, this must stop. He gives us Chinese opera rather than a real defense.”

  That’s when Clinton clutched his bell and rang it with a fury. “Do shut up, man. I’m listening to the boy.”

  “I could not betray Arnold, Excellency. I would not. Perhaps I was not the best of the king’s soldiers.”

  “You were never one of ours,” André hissed.

  The nabobs rocked in their camp chairs and made little noises, mousy squeaks, while Clinton clacked his bell until I thought an army of the king’s cows might enter this throne room and stampede us all.

  “You’ve had your go at him, André. Shut up, before I have the bailiff gag you.”

  And I stepped in like the sweetest choirboy. “May I continue, General?”

  “Please do,” says he.

  “I took a bayonet in the eye, but the British never captured me and I was never on parole. I wasn’t released from the New York Irregulars. It was Harold who brought me home, plucked me from a poorhouse, and we fled to the Queen’s Yard. A nunnery, as Major André says, but General Howe’s unofficial headquarters. I saw him there every night. Gambling was his tonic, sir. He could not have gone to war without a good round of vingt-et-un.”

  “You must not shame us, boy,” Clinton said. “Sir William was a bit of a rowdy and a rake.”

  “I mean not to shame him, but prove his proximity to Sir Harold. ’T was Billy—Sir William—who put Harold in charge of all the blacks on the island. Harold formed a brigade at his own expense, a black brigade, and I was its liaison.”

  “With what legality?” André asked.

  “None.”

  “There,” André said. “We have him, sir.”

  Ah, how I led him to the dénouement, tricked him with his own tricks.

  “But pirates lurked in the city. Women dared not venture abroad without a bodyguard. And we served as the police. We looked for pirates in the upper reaches of Manhattan, for errant Cowboys and Skinners. That is what brought us to Commissary Loring’s farm.”

  And here I was as agile as a London barrister. I lied. I could not refute Loring and the Hessian officer. I had no witnesses.

  “Milord,” I said, leaning close to Clinton’s chair. “We were in our cups. I have a fondness for the beverage. I did not set a good example. And my lads might have been rough with Loring. But they were wild after being cooped up in their barracks.”

  And I dabbed my one seeing eye with the edge of André’s neckcloth, that piece of silk he had given me.

  “Sir, I was a ruffian, worse than the Cowboys, and for that you must punish me. But I did not betray the king.”

  Clinton coughed into his own handkerchief.

  “Boy, no man shall hang you. I would go to Hades on your behalf, even if I had to wrestle with the Crown. Yet I am caught in a quandary. You are not a spy or a British soldier. And I judge you with a certain peril. Had there been no rebellion, you would have gone to a different court. But we are where we are. And as much as I like you, Mr. Stocking, and your mettle, you are an impostor, to say the least. You intruded upon me and my headquarters with a false note. Had I known of your late employ as Arnold’s amanuensis, I should have exiled you to a far corner. As a rebel soldier who ran from his service, maimed as you were, I have no choice but to treat you as a prisoner of war and confine you for the duration.”

  I did not rejoice. I thought of Clara climbing the wall, her long legs wrapped around me like a delicious spider, and I watching her green eyes go round and round in her moment of delirium. That noise she made, the sweetest of squeals, as I remained silent.

  I wanted to hold her forever with her bum in the air. But the tribunal intruded upon my dream, the one remembrance that mattered to me. I could see Redmund laugh with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to deal with my neck. The choir of generals in front of me kept scratching with their quills, as if the earth might move to their particular music, while the nabobs and their wives humphed at me with great contempt.

  Only André was idle, his dark mien devoid of color save for the rouge he wore.

  And then Clinton rose, bundled up his sword belt, as the bailiff shouted, “Attention! Court’s dismissed,” and that fat little general disappeared behind his door.

  But my victory was far from complete. André held both the black and red aces. The nuns were in his custody. He could permit them to flourish on Holy Ground, or reduce them to ragamuffins. But he would not forget Clara’s little rhapsody in court. He would bide his time, and while Clinton slept, he would slither around and strike with all his virulence. And I was a lad in leg irons, a lad who could be of no help.

  Anno Domini 1779

  THE JERSEY

  Philadelphia

  JANUARY 1779

  He could not encamp his army this winter in one place. His lines of supply were much too thin—’t was simpler to scrounge for food from many smaller camps on both sides of the Hudson. The paper he had was without value—it lost five percent day after day. Continental currency, he would complain to his captains, was now “a rat in the shape of a horse,” growing larger as it was worth less and less.

  And so he went to Philadelphia, to seek funds and punish peculation. He saw nobody but moneymen—his main suppliers—who fattened themselves while
his army dressed in rags. He longed to go into their temples of commerce on Market Street and break their bones.

  He would dine in Philadelphia, attend parties, flirt with patriotic widows, and then flee to his own cramped winter quarters. He would not sleep far from his troops. “The army,” he told an aide, “requires constant attention—to keep it from crumbling.”

  And then, perchance, he caught a glimpse of Arnold’s chariot—his bravest general riding over Philadelphia like some rajah on an elephant. He’d met with Arnold earlier in the month, but resisted dining with him. He could not bear Arnold’s pomp in the midst of so many suffering soldiers. And when he saw that angel in the chariot—Peggy Shippen, with a whole choir of chaperones—his heart leapt. He’d known her as a child, had adored the little blond creature, so flirtatious and full of curiosity.

  And he had a most unkind thought—what was Peggy Shippen doing with this dour man? He chided himself for having belittled Benedict Arnold.

  He must rid himself of Philadelphia and all its sirens.

  Forty-Two

  I ENDED 1778 WITH NOTHING TO READ—NOT A book, not a pamphlet, not a letter from Clara or Gert, not even a venomous note from André. From my bird’s-eye window in the attic wall—a hole not half as big as my thumb—I could watch the Britishers on our island plunge toward the New Year. Officers and their sweethearts skated on the frozen pond of City Hall. Tory princesses and their beaux gathered whatever firewood was left in the streets of Manhattan. One little lass rubbed against the ice on a rocking horse.

  A sudden boom shot across the attic as if to announce the end of the world—the warships in our harbor were saluting 1779 just as they had saluted ’78. It had been a rattish year, with the Brits enfeebling us and adding to their dominion over our island. If Washington was across the Hudson, I could not hear him. There were no salutes or salvos from his side of the river.

  I still had some resources. I bribed a guard with the last shillings in my purse, convinced him to carry a letter to Holy Ground.

  He was rather shy. “Is it treasonable stuff, old son?”

  He tore the letter open and glanced at it, his lips moving over each line like some rodent. And I realized that he did not live inside the kingdom of words. “Read it to me.”

  I wouldn’t deceive the rogue. I had to give him something juicy, or my letter was lost. He would not deliver it.

  “Dearest Clara, I must be brief. I consider you every moment of my wakeful hours. I consider you in my sleep. Let them deny me ink and pen. I shall pass my whole incarceration imagining letters to you. Please tell Gertrude that I miss her so. Your most humble and adoring servant, John.”

  The guard seemed disappointed. “What kind of love letter? You never speak of her cunt.”

  I had to woo him as I’d wooed Sir Henry Clinton in André’s court.

  “’Tis secret writing, old son. If you could but follow the code, you would find a plethora of cunts.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, whilst I, without the least hope of a holiday, supped on stale biscuits and a dish of dry peas…and thought of Washington in his tent somewhere, half his soldiers without shoes, his orderly, Sparks, without a winter coat, and the farmer forced to play vingt-et-un with peas instead of pounds. New York was a mere river away, but he had neither the men nor the cannons to take it from the Crown. The French fleet would appear and disappear, battling the British in the West Indies or on Narragansett Bay, but even if that fleet had come in full force, it could never dislodge Clinton from our harbor.

  I was stirred from my reverie at five in the morning, kicked awake by a pair of André’s policemen, redcoats who served as prisoners’ police. They bundled my meager belongings into a blanket, clamped me in irons, and carried me down from the attic as if I were their own mischievous child. A wagon was waiting for us, filled with yobs like myself—ragamuffins and misfits, men without a future, sailors who had the misfortune of being captured on some American ship, pirates who were nabbed inside a British granary, suspicious foreigners found bobbing in American waters.

  Our carcasses bumped up and down as the wagon brought us to the docks, where a whaleboat was waiting for us. We were shoved onto the boat, chained together, and carried out to sea, with ourselves as the oarsmen and the cargo. Our captors did nothing but smirk and spit and pass morsels of food among themselves. We rowed across the East River to Wallabout Bay, with a nest of ghostly ships moored in the mud flats, ships without masts or sails or rigging, all the beauty gone, so unlike the munificence of flags and guns on board Black Dick’s blessèd Eagle.

  I wasn’t blind to the village that receded from our view. The bottom of Manhattan was like a black ball in dark silver water, with specks of light coming off the Battery, until that light was only an illusion and Manhattan fell away with the mist.

  We were hauled onto the deck of a retired man-o’-war, with bars placed over the gun ports. But there was barely a soul aboard—a few feral sailors with muskets. The other prisoners were led below, but I was taken to a little makeshift house on the poop deck, with canvas ribs and an awning to occlude the sun. It could have been a tent in Canvas Town, but this tent had a glorious oak chair. Joshua Loring sat preening in the chair with his legs crossed. He had embroidered britches and silk hose that could not hide the feebleness of his calves. With him were those loutish horsemen who had nearly kidnapped Mrs. Loring’s chariot. And I realized who these lads were—overseers of a little fleet of prison ships that stole the prisoners’ grub and then put on masks to rob the rich and relieve farmers of their cows and milkmaids.

  “Well, hello, Johnny One-Eye. Quite the clever scholar to out-duel André in his own court and dazzle Clinton with your soliloquies. And then to say that you and your niggers were in your cups and beat old Loring about the ears. Ought to hire you as my solicitor, eh?”

  “Where’s Mrs. Loring?”

  He winked at his brethren. “I was about to ask you that very question. The whore’s gone. Methinks she fled to Britannia with Sir Billy. The hottest bitches always follow their knights home from war.”

  “You slander milady,” I said.

  “Milady, he calls her,” the good Joshua said with a snort. “I’d call her hag—a jade poisoned with the pox.”

  “I am at a disadvantage, sir, held in irons, or I should slap you silly.”

  Loring and his henchmen guffawed in my face.

  “I am mistaken, Johnny. You’re her knight. But know this. You will never leave the Jersey alive. I’m commander of this fleet. Tobias,” he said to his fattest friend. “What’s the mortality rate on my Jersey?”

  “Six or seven corpses a night.”

  “And how long will a lad like our Johnny last?”

  “A month at the most, milord.”

  “That’s far too kind. I’d like him dead within the week…laddy, you can poke fun of the British and their military tribunals. But I’m not the British. I would have had the bailiff squash your head. You shouldn’t have meddled with my wife.”

  I began to cry in front of these yobs. I would not see Clara again.

  “Look,” said Fat Tobias, “he’s bawling like a baby. Soon he’ll shit his pants.”

  My bowels were tight as a fist—’t was my mind that was porous. I couldn’t stop thinking of Benedict Arnold. Who would save him from Peggy Shippen? Thou shouldst not have gone to Philadelphia. He had a fondness for baubles and decorations on his military coat. His enemies in Congress said he was a horse trader and should not have been given a single command. But I’d rather have been commanded by Arnold than any other officer. Those who had been at his side in battle were spoiled for other commanders and other wars. And so, lads, I had little to lose.

  “Loring, I did not ever go to sleep with your wife. Sir Billy’s brute shoved me out of her bed in the middle of the night.”

  He leaped from his chair and meant to pluck out my good eye. Fat Tobias had to stop him.

  “He’ll only live longer, Sir Joshua. We’ll have to take h
im aboard the hospital ship. And there they give ’em better grub. Leave the lad to us.”

  “Whatever you do, do it slow. I want it to be the bitterest week he’s ever had.”

  He prepared to go. But I was not without a battle plan, despite my shackles. He passed a little too close to me, like a blind ship in the night. And Johnny the serpent bit him on the cheek. I could taste the blood as my teeth sank in. I wanted to suck the life out of Loring. I wanted to drink him dry and might have done so if the horsemen hadn’t kicked at me.

  Loring howled in agony. “He’s Beelzebub, he’s Beelzebub.”

  And suppose I am.

  I thought of Arnold’s bastinadoes—he’d oblige a few recreant soldiers to undress and slap their feet with a stave of wood until they promised never to desert again. But Loring’s lads had an Oriental touch. They didn’t even rob me of my clothes. They leaned honest John over the chair, pulled off my stockings, and attacked the poor soles of my feet with a schoolmaster’s cane. I yelped like a cur.

  I would have signed a ticket to hell. I cared not about harbors and sailless prison ships, only about Clara with red paint on her cheeks as she stood in André’s infernal witness box. Beautiful is her body, I sang to myself. But their bastinado began to drive the songs from me. I could not dream or reconsider. I lived in the now, where the pain was like a savagely sharp knife on my sweet skin.

  They’d stop and start again, with malignant delight. It was devilish, because as sharp as that knife was, ’t did not allow me to swoon. There was no relief from the bastinado of Wallabout Bay.

  And then Fat Tobias punched me to sleep with the wind inside his fist, a wind that was like some long sad caress.

  Forty-Three

  I HAD NEVER SEEN SUCH A BRACKISH YELLOW— colorless as candle drip—a constant inundation of yellow, as if some mischievous god had stamped all men with grim, impossible faces. That’s what I woke to, a stinking hold with hundreds of such yellowish men. It was not only the stench of vomit and sour blood and human shit that assaulted me. It was the decay of corpses lying in our midst. The living and the dead were crawling with lice. The only glimmer we had in that hole was the feeble light of a lantern that came through little cracks in the bowels of the Jersey. And if that lantern light wavered or pulled off course, we had to lie in the foul blackness.