“I would like to enlist for the rest of the war, sir.”
The sergeant scratched out a few more words. “Can you write your name?”
“No, sir.”
He handed the quill to me and pointed at the bottom of the paper. “Make your mark there.”
I made my X with a bold hand.
“There now.” The sergeant took back his quill. “Private Curzon Smith, you are a soldier in the Sixteenth Massachusetts Regiment, Second Brigade of the Fourth Division, of the Northern Continental Army of the United States of America. We keep our powder dry and our eyes open.”
“Yessir.”
What with meeting the others in the company and listening to the sergeant’s rules, it was near supper by the time Eben and I were out of the earshot of others. We’d been ordered to go to the ammunition tent and roll gunpowder cartridges. I had more important business first.
I stepped off the path and motioned for Eben to follow me a few steps into the shelter of the trees.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“This?” He pulled my small leather bag from his haversack, but he did not offer it to me.
“Why did you hide it?” I asked.
“That Trumbull is what Aunt Patience calls a dirty character,” he said. “But these are his spoons, aren’t they? And the compass, too?”
I shook my head. “That belonged to the redcoat you shot, same as these boots.”
“’Tain’t right to steal, you know.”
“I only took what Trumbull owed me,” I said. “He hasn’t paid me any wages.”
Eben grunted. “So this wasn’t really stealing.”
“Not at all.”
He handed me the bag. “I figgered it would be something like that. But don’t let Uncle see the spoons. He can be peculiar when the mood strikes him.”
“I’ll remember that. Thank you.”
We made our way back to the path. “You going to farm after the war?” Eben asked.
“Zounds, no!” I vowed. “I’m city born and bred.”
“Why do you have seeds in your bag, then? And that lady’s ribbon; who did that come from? Is she pretty? Is she waiting for you to come home from the war?”
I kicked at a rock on the path. “You are overly fond of asking questions, Ebenezer Woodruff.”
“I know.” He grinned. “Aunt Patience says it’s one of my worst sins.”
Before
Isabel wore the ribbon around her wrist.
She collected the seeds and kept them in a small bag made of waxed sailcloth. The seeds came from her home in Rhode Island, the garden behind the house she worked in New York, and a New Jersey field near last winter’s army encampment.
We’d stayed near that camp and found work. Isabel repaired soldiers’ clothes for a seamstress. I was hired on by a cussmouth blacksmith who paid me poorly to keep his forge burning.
We had started out as friends, Isabel and me, but grew to be more like brother and sister—mocking, arguing, and occasionally tormenting each other. I teased her about being a country bumpkin. She called me “Curse-on” because it irritated me and tried to get me to explain the meaning behind my name, which I refused to do, because of my father’s advice. I did not like her to walk alone in the dark. She did not like me telling her what to do.
Everything changed one day in April when I told a funny story about the blacksmith that made her laugh. The sound of it and the sight of her smile caused my heart to gallop and my throat to close up so that I could not speak. I suddenly realized that I did not want her to regard me as a brother anymore.
Of course, I did not tell her that.
CHAPTER X
Wednesday, October 8–Friday, October 17, 1777
THIS DAY THE GREAT MR. BURGOYNE WITH HIS WHOLE ARMY SURRENDERED THEMSELVES AS PRISONERS OF WAR . . . THE GREATEST CONQUEST EVER KNOWN.
—JOURNAL OF NEW HAMPSHIRE MAJOR HENRY DEARBORN
IN THOSE FIRST DAYS I DID NOT REGRET enlisting. The army fed me regular. I had a blanket, boots, and a musket. Sleeping with five fellows in a small tent was a bit of a challenge on account of the snores and farts, but at least I was warm enough.
Most of the wagering around the campfire centered on how long the war would last. Eben thought we’d be free of duty by November. Others said Christmas. One fellow in our tent, a fusspot old tailor with watery eyes named Silvenus, said we’d be in service for years. He was not well liked.
Uncle Sergeant (I thought of him in that manner, tho’ I was careful never to address him so) teamed me with Eben and posted us to the river guard to keep watch for any British boats. We saw snapping turtles, hawks, the paw prints of a large bear, and countless leaves swirl to the ground. The only redcoats we saw were deserters, approaching with their hands in the air.
The British were trapped and hungry. They had no supplies. They could not survive the march north to Canada. To the east lay the New Hampshire Grants, bristling with Patriots. To the west stretched wilderness and certain death. Our army waited in the south, ready to finish the job started on the battlefield.
More than a week after the battle General Burgoyne finally agreed to surrender. Messengers rode back and forth between the two camps (always with a white flag flying so’s nobody would shoot at them), and arrangements were made so that the American army could accept all of Burgoyne’s soldiers as prisoners.
Our days guarding the river ended. I bet the turtles were grateful.
The officers ordered all Continentals and militiamen to line both sides of the road for the official surrender. The day was cool and damp, with dark clouds to the north that Eben said were heavy with snow. He liked to pretend he knew all about the weather, so I figgered we were in for a stretch of sunshine.
While we waited, I piled stones next to my boots. I had a handful of acorns in my right pocket too. Eben asked vexing questions about my weapons, but I didn’t answer. Eventually, he gave up and dove into a story about his mother’s uncle’s cow that gave birth to a calf with two heads. One was the head of a goat, the other a cat; a terrible omen, he said, that foretold the fire that burned the old man’s barn and the fox that killed all his chickens.
I rolled my right boot back and forth over a stone that was as round as a wicket ball.
Near a year earlier I’d been with the American troops who were captured by the British at Fort Washington. They marched all two thousand of us down the Greenwich Road into New York City, where a crowd of lobsterbacks and Tories threw eggs and rotted garbage at us, screaming curses, foul names, and insults.
We had no firewood in the prison. No glass in the windows. They fed us spoiled meat and moldy biscuits, when they remembered to feed us at all. Within weeks, hundreds had died of the cold and pestilent fevers. If Isabel hadn’t stolen me out of there, I’d be long dead too. (I gave my ear a hard tug to force all memories of Isabel into retreat.)
As the British marched by in defeat, I aimed to pay them back for their treatment of me. Pity that I’d not thought to bring a bucket of horse dung.
Distant drums began to beat. Our regimental drummers picked up the call and rattled their instruments like approaching thunder.
“Here they come!” someone hollered.
Our fifers burst into song, playing “Yankee Doodle” to insult our enemy. We all stood straight, muskets at our sides, forming a Patriot gauntlet stretching as far as the eye could see.
The lobsterbacks came first, their regimental flags fluttering weakly. Their arms swung freely, for they had surrendered their guns before this forced parade. Many of the arms were bandaged, the famous red coats torn in their flight through the wilderness. Their breeches were more mud-stain than white. Nearly every man had lost buttons from his coat.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and gripped a fat acorn. I would not throw the first one, for that would bring too much attention to myself. But as soon as the throwing started, I’d join in the fray with pleasure.
The British passed us, row by row by row. On the whole, t
hey were shorter than we were, and mostly man-aged. Their uniforms, though dirty, made them look to be the proper army. They moved as one body with thousands of arms and legs.
We looked like what we were: an army of farmers and poor craftsmen. Some rebels were white-haired grandsires. We had boys younger than me with no hint of whiskers or manhood upon them. Our fellows of middle years came from New England, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania; fishermen, farmers, cobblers, preachers, schoolteachers, woodsmen, and every other job under the sun. We conversated and joked mostly in English, but some spoke in languages from over the ocean, and others in the speech of these mountains, for Oneida, Stockbridge, Tuscarora, and Narragansett warriors stood with us.
We wore all manner of shirts, waistcoats, breeches, and shoes, tho’ some were barefooted. Looking down our lines, I saw every possible color of hair and eye (tho’ some were missing an eye and others were bald-headed), as well as all colors of skin, from the darkest black of men born in Africa to the snow-white pallor of the Scotsmen, and all shades in betwixt the two. The appearance of our army recalled the variations of the trees and leaves in the forest behind us. Each soldier stood tall, each soul afire with pride.
But no one threw a thing. They didn’t shout insults or mock our captives. Even Eben’s mouth was closed.
“Why is no one jeering?” I whispered. “We should shame them.”
“Uncle said we must give them honor,” he said quietly. “This is the first time a British army has surrendered, ever.”
I tightened my fist of acorns. They had not honored us in the prisons of New York. Was not the point of war to beat the enemy? To make them feel the pain of losing?
The drums and fifes ceased. Our ranks stood silent as walls of granite. The enemy continued to march, their boots shuffling along the dirt road. After the British came the Hessians, Germans who fought on the British side for money. Most of them wore green uniforms, some blue. All were filthy, but their curled mustachios were combed neat. After the Hessians came their women and a few children, and a handful of soldiers leading the animals that had become German pets: raccoons, fawns, and two bear cubs.
We stood for hours, all that afternoon, as our six thousand prisoners paraded between our lines in defeat. I did not understand why, but I chose the course of honor. I stood, shoulder to shoulder with the other Patriots, in a powerful silence.
When all the prisoners had marched down to the clearing where they would be guarded until they were escorted to Boston, I took myself down to the river. The turtles were all hiding, so I threw my weapons at the last of the sun on the water.
CHAPTER XI
Saturday, October 18–Saturday, November 15, 1777
WE MARCHD BEFOR DAY FROM THESE WOODS & TRAVELED ALL DAY IN THE STORME & THE WORST TRAVELING I EVER SAW—THE RHODES WAS MOSTLY CLAY WHICH WAS LIKE MORTER—WE TRAVELD TO A SMALL TOWN.
—1777 DIARY OF SERGEANT JOHN SMITH, FIRST RHODE ISLAND REGIMENT
THE NEXT DAY WE QUICK-MARCHED forty miles south to Albany. Rather, my company marched and arrived dog-tired from the pace. On account of my worldly experience driving oxcarts for Trumbull, I drove the company’s supply wagon. Earned myself a few splinters in my backside, but kept my boots dry and my spirits high.
The officers ordered us to build barricades and more barricades in our new camp. We had captured Burgoyne’s men, but the main body of the British army, some thirty thousand soldiers, lay one hundred fifty miles away in the city of New York, a hornet’s nest ready to explode. After the first week’s work, the skies opened and we near drowned in cold and ceaseless rain. A burly lad named Greenlaw claimed he saw Noah sailing up the Hudson in his ark filled with animals. We had a heated argument in our tent about which would be a more lethal foe: twenty redcoats or two oliphants from an ark.
Rain, snow, hail, sleet; no matter what fell from the sky, we shoveled mud and hefted timbers and rocks. At day’s end we looked like muddy ghouls rising up from the grave.
We made sport, of course. The mud formed itself nicely into balls that needed to be flung at the targets we set up—bits of planking shaped with an axe to resemble the tall hats worn by the lobsterbacks. Eben was determined to best me. He would need more practice than Albany could give him. Other fellows joined our competition a few times, which then turned into a great muddy battle. We armed ourselves with clods of dirt and hollered and hooted, reliving the Battle of Saratoga, only no one ever wanted to play the role of the British, so all was chaos.
The washerwomen ended our warfare. They marched to the captain and said they would quit if forced to clean the clothes of boys and men who had ruined their breeches and shirts in play.
Washerwomen were sour-headed and cheerless.
I finally sold my stolen bits of silver and pewter, along with the dead redcoat’s papers and pencils, to a toothless man in a dark tavern. He cheated me on the price, but I had no choice, for our regiment had still not been paid. I bought a new red felt hat, a heavy blue jacket, and a dull knife. The few shillings that remained I spent on a bottle of ginger syrup and vinegar of squills that an herb-lady swore would preserve me from any putrid fevers.
I shared the remedy with the fellows in our tent: Eben; thick-necked Luke Greenlaw, who was an apprentice joiner with scarred hands; Hugh Faulkner, a stoop-shouldered son of a fisherman who liked to draw; the gloomy tailor, Silvenus; and Peter Brown, a farm boy said to be the fastest runner in the brigade. They had started out formal and cautious with me (excepting Ebenezer), for they had never lived side by side with anyone whose skin was not white. One night the cook served us beans and more beans for dinner. Instead of sleeping, we farted all night long, which caused us to choke, sputter, complain loudly, and laugh so hard, our sides were still sore two days later. After that, we were more like friends.
Uncle Sergeant commanded two score of privates—four tents’ worth of us. The tent closest to us was home to a yellow-haired fellow whose enlistment ended before I ever learned his name; the Janack twins, who looked so much alike, it befuddled me when they stood next to each other; and two boisterous fellows, Aaron and Henry Barry, who were distant kin to Eben, but not, he said, from the good side of the family.
The last lad was John Burns. His rude manner declared him my enemy the first time he clapped eyes on me. Burns had white skin that turned red when he was angry (a frequent condition), dirt-colored hair that never stayed tied back in a queue, and small eyes like a badger’s that were forever seeking a way to avoid work. He spat at my feet whenever I walked by. He accused me of stealing my new hat. He said the crudest kinds of things about my parents and grandparents, and he convinced the Barry brothers to join him in his foulness.
My father told me many times that a lot of white people have twisted hearts. “It prevents them from seeing the world properly,” he’d say, “and turns them into tools of the Devil.” Father would have advised me to let God sort out the evil inside John Burns.
I couldn’t wait that long. If I did not stand up to him, he would make my life a misery.
Our lieutenant had ordered that privates rotate the work of gathering firewood. Burns ducked his duty the first time it came round. The second time, the fire had near gone out and the fellows started up a hullabaloo.
“I told you, I can’t,” Burns moaned. “My arm is still poorly.” He pointed at Eben. “Make the blunderhead fetch it.”
Eben took his share of teasing on account of his trusting nature and tendency to talk, but he hated being called a blunderhead.
“Eben took his turn at dawn,” I said loudly. “Get off your plaguey backside and do your duty.”
A few fellows chuckled. Burns tossed a pebble into the dying flames and waited for silence.
“My arm hurts,” he finally said. “Fetch the wood for me, you dirty negar.”
I was on my feet and headed for him before anyone could grab hold of me. Burns stood up and stepped backward until he was flanked by Aaron and Henry.
“It’s not just my arm,?
?? Burns sneered. “My feet are terrible cold. Give me your boots too.”
“Leave off,” called Greenlaw.
I calculated. Greenlaw might take my side in a fight, but then again, he might choose to stay out of it. I could probably beat Burns. He was a bit bigger than me, but I was faster and smarter. I would suffer mightily if all three of them joined in, but I had to make my stand now or forever be their target.
“You want these boots?” I asked. “Ten shillings and they’re yours. Ten shillings more and I won’t piss in them first.”
Burns stepped forward but did not raise his arm. He was afraid to fight, like most twisted-heart bullies. I would take him down hard and fast, before his friends hurt me too bad. If I succeeded, he’d trouble me no more.
“What is this foolishness?” The sergeant stepped between us.
Blast. Eben had gone running for help again. Had to cure him of that.
“Smith?” the sergeant asked. “Explain yourself.”
“He ordered me to tend the fire, sir,” I said. “I took my turn last night. Then he demanded I give him my boots.”
The sergeant raised his hand to stop me from continuing. “What say you?” he asked Burns. “What right have you to take his boots or to force him to do your duty?”
“He doesn’t belong here,” Burns said with heat. “He has a ring in his ear like a sailor, but he doesn’t talk like one. He is so cloaked in falsehood, I am certain he’s a runaway slave, sir!”
The words were a blow to my gut. When my former master enlisted me in New York, he had promised me freedom for serving in the army. I had served that year and was thus free, but I had no papers to prove it, which could make trouble for me with some folk.