Johnny One-Eye

by Jerome Charyn

  Clara touched my hand, then slid away and trudged back to headquarters with Treat, Champe just behind them. I could have raged at the moon, but I saw none to rage at. Clara was, I could now see, much more of a soldier than I. Damn my own reticence, my own inclination toward folly—I was always at the edge of things.

  The Rhode Islanders had already gone, and I marched out of the woods all alone.

  Sixty-One

  THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF WAS FOREVER ON his horse, riding hither and beyond, scrutinizing trenches his own engineers would not have been able to build.

  ’T was Washington who accompanied the French engineers into the foulest weather. And at dusk on the 11th of October, as the sappers prepared to dig, these engineers realized that they could not complete their system of trenches. Two of Cornwallis’ little forts, known as Redoubts Nine and Ten, jutted out too far, and it would have been much too dangerous to dig.

  Washington ordered his cannoneers to subject Redoubts Nine and Ten to a relentless barrage of fire. And on the afternoon of the 13th, Hamilton’s own sergeant major went about camp selecting lads for some kind of secret mission. I was proud as the Divil to be among the chosen.

  We were moved to a much smaller camp, where I met parts of my own New York battalion. I saw Rhode Islanders; I saw Royal Deux-Ponts. I saw Hamilton and Lafayette and a little string of aides. But there were no marching orders. Nothing was said. The Rhode Islanders puffed on their pipes, dreaming up maneuvers mingled with tobacco. The Royal Deux-Ponts batted a dried pumpkin with their heads; so skilled were they at it that the pumpkin never touched the ground.

  And then the commander in chief arrived at our camp on his chestnut mare. He did not climb down to greet Hamilton or Lafayette. Our three little armies encompassed him—Rhode Islanders, Yorkers, and Royal Deux-Ponts sans pumpkin. We had not scaled a single wall so far, had not seen the enemy’s eyes. Hamilton had not led a single charge. But Washington told us from his saddle that we had to capture Redoubts Nine and Ten, else we could not win the war. Cornwallis had reinforced the redoubts—they were manned with muskets and mined with sharpened sticks to discourage and repel even the hardiest of attackers.

  “Clinton’s armada is sailing from New York. We must take Cornwallis before that armada arrives in the Chesapeake.”

  Washington spoke with his usual reserve—yet ’t was his very difficulty, his unmusical voice, that left so large an impression—the silences between his sentences seemed to reveal a prodigy of feeling. He had not remained with us more than fifteen minutes. But in some primitive fashion, he already inhabited our insides, tightened our bowels.

  THE ROYAL DEUX-PONTS were meant to attack Redoubt Nine with their own war engines—bayonets and hooked ladders, heavy axes and little explosive bombs—while Rhode Islanders and Yorkers in ragged uniforms would attack Number Ten, with Hamilton leading the charge. I was wrong about Ham. He had not really thrived as Washington’s aide-de-camp, had been more like a brilliant somnambulist. I had never seen such a glow upon him, the glow of a warrior angel.

  He met with every single one of his boys, knew every name. He shook our hands, shared a pipe with the Rhode Islanders. He hugged me and kissed my cheek in front of the boys.

  I barked at him with much affection. “Colonel Hamilton, you never did require a secretary. You have always been your own.”

  “Forgive me, John. You have uncovered our little fraud. But I wanted you with us. You’ll wear the green sash—’t will be our banner.”

  We’d spent the night in our own little encampment. I did not dream of war. I’d dreamt of Gert and the nuns. But in my dream, Clara was not inside the nunnery. And my own mother would not reveal Clara’s whereabouts. But I knew, of course—Clara was at Yorktown.

  We did not eat much in the morning; near sundown we crawled into the trenches, with Redoubt Ten but a quarter mile away. I wasn’t thinking of the Royal Deux-Ponts and their own mission. I thought of Washington on his mare—a general who offered so few signs of his feelings save a slight quiver in the cheek.

  Promptly, at seven o’clock, Washington’s cannoneers fired six shells into the night—six booms—that defied nature for a few moments and lit the sky with a sense of false daylight. We’d been ordered not to fire a single shot of our own lest we lose that element of surprise. We would charge the redoubt with unloaded muskets, greet the Brits and the Hessians with our bayonets.

  Hamilton was the first to clamber out of the trenches with the Rhode Islanders, and the rest of us followed behind. We ran over the pocked ground, filled with craters and other signs of exploded shells. I near fell into a hole, but I stabbed my hanger into the earth and it propelled me forward.

  The Hessians lit that no-man’s-land with cannon bursts; what they discovered in the light would doom them, make the Hessians scream with fear, “the Moors, the Moors.” They had never been assaulted by such a mottled army. They fired upon us with their muskets, hurled grenades, all the while bemoaning our Moors. We’d arrived at their little field of sharpened sticks in front of the fort. But it had been ripped asunder by previous bombardments. And the Rhode Islanders hacked at whatever sticks were still in place, hacked at them with hatchets and with their hands.

  Beyond this field was a great ditch—meant nothing to the Rhode Islanders, who built a bridge with their own bodies, leaning low and collecting together, so that we could climb right over their backs. And whilst they stood there, they let out war cries that could have impaired the flow of any man’s blood.

  Hamilton jumped right into the redoubt from a Rhode Islander’s back. Seems Cornwallis had his own “Moors”—the faces of his soldiers were blackened with grease and gunpowder. They struggled against our bayonets. I could not bring myself to hate these men. But I went at them with my hanger. I did not count the dead. I could hear the Rhode Islanders’ war cry—its ferocious melody calmed my own blood.

  The odor of excrement overwhelmed me for an instant—the Hessians had fouled their britches. They could not have dreamt to meet Moors at Yorktown. The fighting was like a curious minuet in the dark, soldiers digging with bayonets under the clay walls of Redoubt Ten; different partners rose and fell ’til redcoats and Hessians walked through the dust and smoke with white handkerchiefs waving in the air.

  ’T WAS A MUCH LONGER MARCH back to my own tent, without the Rhode Islanders’ chant in my ears. I longed to scream at the Hessians, “Disperse, ye lubbers! Run home!” Yet the home of these unfortunate men was their very next war.

  I could not sleep. I heard a noise in the dark, the rustle of cloth. “Answer,” I howled, “who goes?” And then, of a sudden, a freckled face hovered over me, licking my eyelids—’t was Clara in all her flesh, without an article of clothes. But she would not allow me to take off my stinking britches.

  “Johnny,” she whispered, “there’s no time. Treat is coming to kill ye.”

  “A bagatelle,” I told her. “I’ll survive Malcolm Treat—’tis better than a miracle to find you without your clothes.”

  “You have to leave this instant.”

  “I have blood on me, Hessian blood.”

  “That ain’t much of a bother,” she said. “You’re going to Canada.”

  “And live among Loyalists? Why the Divil would I go there?”

  “Canada’s the one place where Treat can’t find you and the British won’t bother to look—Johnny, ’tis no accident I’m at Yorktown. Gert kept hearing intelligence from agents passing through the nunnery, how Treat wanted to hire them to do ye harm.”

  “I am surrounded by secret agents.”

  “Posh,” she said, “I’m a nun who carries silver bullets from time to time.”

  It pained me, lads, forced me to reconsider Anne Harding, and wonder if the whole world was filled with prison ships and female agents with their infernal silver bullets.

  “Clara, I’ll face Treat, kill him if I can.”

  “You dasn’t,” she said. “Mr. Washington cannot do without him. He sent me here.”
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  “Washington? I will not believe it.”

  “He says there’s no one to replace that reptile, no one with his daring.”

  “Then if I am to be sacrificed, Clara, you have brought me a wondrous bullet.”

  I could not even change my britches or wash the blood off me at the well near our latrine. I cursed this little military exercise of running from Treat and losing Clara at the very same moment, like a horse that kicked you twice in the head.

  Clara had already worked out my route. I would ride downriver in a barge, catch a whaleboat to Newport, where a victualler would carry me into Canadian waters.

  I watched Clara’s shoulders move as she got into her clothes, desperate as I was to commit each dimple to memory. She gave me a parcel from Gert. I opened it, thinking to find some souvenir, or a very long letter at the least—it was packed with London pounds.

  “But where’s the letter that goes with the money?”

  “Johnny, Gert couldn’t write. Suppose the letter fell into enemy hands? I had to hide that parcel under my pannier—don’t you dare frown. Gert’s penmanship is rotten. And she didn’t want you to catch her mistakes.”

  “I would have adored her mistakes.”

  “Hurry,” she said. “Time is against us, Mr. One-Eye.”

  We had much difficulty sneaking out of camp. Malcolm Treat and his lads skulked about with lanterns, swords under their capes—lads loyal to Treat alone. We couldn’t have lasted another minute in my tent. And I feared we’d never find an avenue into the forest.

  They cawed at us in contempt. “Where are ye, Johnny boy? Come on home to your Maker.”

  I could feel the foul wind of their bodies, taste their murderous whiskey breath. I near banged into Treat himself, but Clara clutched my hand and led me into a wisp of darkness that even the most conscientious of assassins couldn’t conquer with their incessant lantern swings. We found some little crack, the one flaw in their infernal focus of light. We still wouldn’t have gotten through had the assassin nearest us not been a drunken sod who ranged his lantern a little too high.

  Clara would not cross the woods and accompany me down to the river. She had to deflect Treat.

  “Clara, I’ll come back to haunt your bed.”

  “You’ll stay put in Canada until you’re called back—you killed Tobias. You can’t return to York Island. And Treat will hunt you down everywhere else. When Mr. Washington has no need of him, then Gert and me will help you kill him. I’ll kill him myself, drown him in a pool of sulfur.”

  “But if I think of you, Clara, think of you while I’m gone, will you think of me back? I’ll feel it in my head.”

  “All the way from Canada?”

  “Further even—I’d feel it far as Siam.”

  She looked at me as if I’d insulted her. “Then you won’t miss me much, will ye? Because you’ll have my thoughts. They’ll be like pages in a book—oh, Johnny, go on down to the river. If I palaver much longer, I’ll run to Siam with you, and I dasn’t.”

  She held me in her arms, rocked me the way a very tall little girl might rock her favorite doll, and then she abandoned that doll and ran back into all the hullabaloo with great big galloping legs.

  DOWN BY THE RIVER I saw six burly men. They were standing near a gondola, but these were not simple ferriers. They had the look of assassins. And I thought to myself—the little major has a longer reach than Washington himself. But I had my hanger, and least I could do was send one of the assassins into hell.

  Yet ’t was more insidious than I could have imagined. Even without the semblance of a moon, I noticed what they wore—they were members of Washington’s Life Guard, with their gold buttons and other regalia. Ye gods, Major Treat must have owned the farmer from A to Z. “You filthy yobs,” I screamed, brandishing my hanger. “I’ll fight ye five or six at a time.”

  They chortled, laughed in my face, plucked the hanger out of my hand, and hurled me into the gondola. I rolled over, right on my arse. A man sat next to me, wearing a long cloak. I could not mistake the red, red hair of the Marquis de Lafayette.

  He smiled, kissed me on the cheek.

  “Petit,” he said, “I am so sorry, but the Chief could not come to bid you bon voyage! He would have sent Ham, but you see, Ham is too impetuous, and would not have agreed to this exile. It was my own idea. To lose you, petit, until the war will wind down. And we can survive without the major’s services. He will not harm you in Canada. You have my word of honor, petit, my parole.”

  “But General, sir, I could hide in Little Africa.”

  “And endanger whoever is near you? He will burn Little Africa to the ground—no, Canada is best. Adieu, petit.”

  Lafayette climbed out of the gondola and left me to the Life Guard, whose members rowed me across the river. I shivered in my bloody britches, lonelier than the loneliest dog.

  PETIT. AS IF I WERE HIS DWARF, his homunculus, his manikin. Petit. He knew how to wound a lad, this Lafayette did. His six yobs delivered me to a barge, where I lay for a week, living on crumbs of bread and cheese, and a drop of Madeira that might have come from Washington’s own war tent. My new ferriers were waiting for some squall to pass. The wind rocked my wooden cradle, and I thought we’d sink right into the Chesapeake. A multitude of frogs landed in my lap—an inauspicious sign, if ever there was one.

  I must have been transferred to a schooner while I slept. I found myself in my own private cabin, like some kind of duke, riding along the Atlantic coast, but this duke was not allowed beyond his own door.

  I would sit in my cabin and recall the clutch of Clara’s hand as we escaped that insidious lantern light of Malcolm Treat and his little band—’t was worth a hundred calvaries, a hundred campaigns. We were like children running from wolves with pale human eyes.

  The winter cold would seep through my cabin window. I watched the snow capture entire towns near the coast, transform some steeple into a great white hump. The schooner’s captain tried to steal my legacy of London pounds, but I must have looked ferocious with Hessian blood all over my breeches. Finally he left me alone.

  Anno Domini 1782

  GENTLE JACK

  New Windsor

  MAY 1782

  He was playing vingt-et-un every single night. It had been his one addiction of the war, fed him whenever he failed to sleep. He could not field an army without his colored troops. Yet what could he promise them? A pension they would never collect? It saddened him that ’t was all a subterfuge. And such contradictions troubled the commander in chief.

  He remained attached to Hercules, his mulatto cook, who always rode on top of his carriage at Mount Vernon and would battle with Washington’s overseers like a British boxing champion. He could never punish Hercules. And the paradox was that he would not even consider bringing Hercules to headquarters as his military chef and risk losing him at the end of the war. He counted on Hercules, depended on him.

  And amid his own gloom, a letter arrived from one of his colonels, Lewis Nicola, begging him to become king of these United States lest the country fall into chaos. A king would bear more heft than a commander in chief, a king would be welcomed and congratulated by his officers, a king would comfort them. But Washington was appalled that such ideas existed in his army, ideas that could only lead to the greatest mischief—he had not sat on a saddle for six years with boils on his buttocks so that he could install a king’s crown over the United States.

  But then he was overcome by the Tempter’s own thoughts—if he did wear a crown, he could dub Hercules royal chef-for-life, with a stipend that would also declare Hercules the first colored knight in the kingdom of America—a slave, a knight, and a chef.

  Such an imbroglio drove out his insomnia, and he slept like a babe.

  But he woke in the morning to the rottenest news. His orderly, Sparks, took ill. Sparks didn’t have Hercules’ flair. Sparks never rode at the top of his carriage, never cooked a soufflé, never wore a chef ’s fluffy white hat. But Sparks had no li
fe apart from Washington, tho’ he was a freed man, and Hercules was not. Washington couldn’t have survived the hellish winters without Sparks, who shared the same room or tent with the commander in chief, often the same cup of wine. And Sparks never had to be polite. He wouldn’t accept wages from the commander in chief.

  “Does the army pay you, gen’ral? Then why should it pay me?”

  “I am a farmer of means. Should I burden a bankrupt nation with my own salary? Better to buy leggings for my men.”

  “Can’t your orderly contribute to the same fund?”

  “Damn you, Sparks, but you are a most obstinate fellow.”

  “No more obstinate than you, gen’ral.”

  But Sparks had fallen down the stairs after fixing breakfast. It might have been a bout of apoplexy, or carelessness, or weakening eyesight. The commander carried him up to his own bed, tried to feed him broth, but Sparks never regained consciousness, never opened his eyes. And Washington buried him in the little boneyard behind headquarters that did not have a separate plot for Negroes. He could not scribble a letter to Sparks’ next of kin, or even say if Sparks had had children or a wife. He was woefully ignorant of his orderly’s personal effects and affairs.

  He found a large tobacco tin under Sparks’ cot. But there was no tobacco inside, just a little purse with one gold coin and a silver dagger polished to perfection. Pinned to the purse was a little note in Sparks’ own hand:

  For G. Washington, Upon My Demise

  And Washington shivered at the knowledge that he, and he alone, was Sparks’ next of kin.

  Sixty-Two

  I LANDED A FEW DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS IN A dot between wilderness and water—they called it Fundy, the Bay of Fundy. It had been the site of an old French fort—St. Jean—on the north shore of the bay. There was a British garrison on a hill overlooking the water, but Fort Howe, as it was known, kept to itself and did not mingle with the minuscule community of Saint John, or with Lower Cove, a haven for smugglers and brigands right on the wharves, where I came to rest. Such brigands felt safe here, since ’t was truly the end of the world—forests and water, and not a coffeehouse in sight.