Citizen Tom Paine (38 page)

“Done with,” he shrugged. “Now it's Napoleon. There's nothing of the republic left.”

“And will the French support him? I can hardly believe that.”

“They'll support him. They are good people, but now the whole world is ranged against them. What else can they do?”

“I gather you intend to devote yourself to writing,” Jefferson said, and could not help, adding, “The administration will be glad for your support.”

“One does not make revolutions at my age,” Paine smiled.

“No—no, naturally. A long life, well filled, a battle well fought, you might say. So much of what we have, we owe to you; so much of what was done, Paine did. And now a comfortable old age.”

“Old age?”

“Only in a manner of speaking. We are none of us so young as we were, Thomas.”

Holding out a hand that trembled in spite of himself, Paine said defensively, “The machine runs down, but my mind isn't old. Did they accuse Franklin of being an old man? I have no family—”

“The farm?” Jefferson speculated, referring to the piece of property at New Rochelle that Congress had granted Paine after the war.

“I'm not a farmer. A man wants work, he doesn't want to be laid on the shelf like a piece of old goods.” That was as near as he could come to asking Jefferson. Well, he understood a little of what the president was thinking, but an old man becomes irritable, wrapped up in the few years that are left to him. Jefferson stared moodily at the backs of his hands and said words to the effect of a president not being his own master, of a new, democratic administration having to start with an uphill fight, of a political alignment that was most complicated. He would never want anything to come between him and Paine; they were too much old, good friends for misunderstanding.

“I see,” Paine nodded.

Jefferson said morosely, “You will find you have your enemies here, Thomas. The letter you addressed to Washington—”

“I won't talk of him,” Paine growled.

“No, I'm not condoning him. But understand his position, nursing a babe of a state, in no way united, England prodding us and prodding us, and all of us knowing that another war would destroy us. You were in France—”

“Waiting for the guillotine!”

“I know, Thomas. But Washington was a strange man, not brilliant, not discerning; his heart was hurt, and there was a layer of rock over it. You think of the glory and the shouting, but what was that to a man who never in his life had anything he really wanted? He saw his duty, and he tried to perform it—”

“Even if it meant condemning me to death.”

“Even if it meant that,” Jefferson admitted.

There was a while of silence, and then the president mentioned
The Age of Reason
. He pointed out that the whole administration had been attacked as atheistic. Paine was tired now; seeing how things were, he wanted to get it over with and go.

“If you were to enter the government,” Jefferson finally added, “it would be just the wedge our enemies are seeking.”

Paine smiled and nodded.

“Perhaps in a year or two,” Jefferson said.

In a hotel: “Paine? This is a godly house. We want no part of Paine.”

In the street: “There goes the old beast.”

In a tavern: “Drink with the devil, boys. Antichrist is here!”

And the children, flinging mud and rocks: “Damned old devil! Damned old devil!”

A woman: “You filthy old beast—you filthy, filthy old beast!”

A crowd: “A rope and a tree, and let's get it over with!”

Paine was home.

He went to visit his old friend Kirkbride at Bordentown. Kirkbride had written that he would be happy—most happy—to see Paine, and when Paine had speculated that perhaps a visit there would do harm to Kirkbride's reputation, Kirkbride waved the objection aside and begged him to come. Paine still owned the small piece of property at Bordentown, and of late a new, tremulous fear of poverty had taken hold of him. He thought he would look the land over and see whether it was worth selling.

It was good to be back in Bordentown. Word had gone about the Jersey countryside that Paine would be at Kirkbride's, and any plans the people might have had for abuse and demonstration were nipped when a dozen veterans gathered to pay their respects to their old comrade. Not the leaders, these, not politicians, but brown-skinned dirt farmers, light-eyed, slow-speaking men in their forties and fifties and sixties who had not flown high enough to leave all their memories behind them. Religious, they were, but not so religious that they excluded belief in God and men from their creed.

Gathered in a half-circle around the roaring fire, they paid a drawling tribute to their friend, and they gave Paine the last evening he would want to remember. Speech was slow and hard in coming to these men; their farms far apart, such gatherings were a rare occasion, and it took a good many rounds of old-fashioned flip before their tongues were loosened. Then, like careful masons, treasuring cement in a land where no more mortar could be had, they re-created scene after scene, passing the telling of a tale from one to another, not jealously but calculatingly, as one does with a good thing. They recalled the composition of the first
Crisis
paper, lingering over such details as the drum Paine had used as a desk.

“Pot-bellied—”

“Rib drum, I think.”

“Now reckon it out, that was a right fancy drum with brass fittings. Johnny Hopper's, it was.” They passed on to talk about how Johnny Hopper, the little drummer boy, had died at Brandywine, aged sixteen. “Poor damned little tyke.” Then, from him, one old face after another was brought back. It shocked Paine to know how many were dead. Had a whole era, a whole age passed away? It was a roll-call from beyond the grave, Greene, Roberdeau, Putnam, Hamilton, name after name. “Disbanded,” someone said.

But for all the talk of what had been and was no more, it was a good night for Paine, a sweet, warm night, a night to be remembered on such an occasion when as later, after leaving Bordentown, he passed through Trenton on his way to New York and changed coaches there. He never concealed his identity; he was Mr. Paine, and proud of it, but the pick-up coach driver told him:

“Damned if you'll ride in my stage.”

At which Paine bowed his head and said quietly, “Very well, I'll wait for the next.”

Between coaches, a gang of teen-age hoodlums gathered. It was amusing to kick the old man's luggage around, and then to clout him over the back with a stick or a lump of mud when he went to get it. And the best part of it was that grown folks stood about and laughed and cried, “Go to it! Give the old devil what he deserves!” Better fun to spit in his face as he lost his temper, to jolt him with hip or shoulder, to dance just out of his reach, screaming, “There ain't no God! Paine says so! There ain't no God!” Best fun of all when Jed Higgens tripped him and sent him face down in the mud; and then, while he lay there, whimpering like the old coward he was, Jed opened his grip, threw out half the clothes, and stuffed it with the empty whisky bottles that littered the station.

It might have gone on for a pleasurable long time, had not Mark Freeburg come along. Mark had only one arm; he had lost the other in the war, but the one was strong enough to send the young blades running and help the old man to his feet.

He stayed a while in New York, before going on to the farm at New Rochelle. His side was troubling him again, and his hands trembled worse than ever. He didn't mind discomfort in other parts of his body, but if he could not control his hands, how could he write? And writing was the only thing left to him. In addition to that, the long arm of Napoleon reached across the Atlantic and touched him. Bonneville was in trouble with the new government; his paper had closed down, and he was afraid for his wife and children. Now he could not leave the country himself, but couldn't Paine make some provision for Madame Bonneville and the children? Perhaps she could keep house for Paine? In France, under Napoleon, there was nothing left for a man who loved freedom, and it was said that Paine was a great man in America—

Yes, Paine wrote, he would do something.

So to add to other things, there was a woman and three small children on his hands.

It was all much too involved for him; his head ached with the strain of it, so many things to do, so many matters to attend to. Jefferson was running for the presidency again, and Paine, after a pet of childish rage, fought the issue out with himself and decided to support the president. Writing articles and pleas—but his hands shook so. Then the Bonnevilles came, and he shipped them off to the place in Borden-town. Too old to be bothered with children. He would forget something, and then walk round and round his little New York room, trying to recall what he had forgotten, and then go out into the street in slippers and dressing-gown, realizing what he had done only when the laughter and jeers of people woke him to it. There were the fits of depression when the brandy bottle was his only solace, and he drank until the glass slipped from his trembling fingers.

Then Madame Bonneville returned from Bordentown, bored, after so many years in Paris, by life in a rustic village where no one could speak a word of French. She took rooms in New York, and when Paine protested that after all he had given her a house, and that he was not wealthy enough to pay for an apartment too, she said:

“And who took care of you in Paris?”

He was old enough to be bullied now; he wanted peace; he was not too certain in his mind any more about what debts he owed to what people.

He tried to live alone on the New Rochelle place, but it was peopled with ghosts. When he lit a fire at night, to the accompaniment of brightly beating drums and shrill fifes, the past came marching out of the flames, ragged continentals with their long firelocks over their shoulders, shouting forlornly, Hello there, old Common Sense! It was more than he could stand; he didn't want memories. He flung dishes at them and begged them, “Leave me alone, leave me alone!”

He had a stroke and tumbled down the narrow flight of stairs in the house. Crying softly, he lay at the bottom, not quite sure what had happened to him, calling aloud for help when he found he could not use his hands. There was no help; no one heard his cries. He lay on the floor until he had enough strength to climb into bed, and he lay there for a horrible week during which he somehow managed to keep alive.

Then he was afraid to be alone, and he got Madame Bonneville to come and keep house for him. She was little enough use; three children that ran like rabbits kept her in perpetual fear that they would be lost in the woods and kidnaped by Indians. Paine could not explain to her that there had been no Indians near New Rochelle for a hundred years. She was convinced; she alternated her fear with mournful longings for Paris, and to the sick old man she was more of a nuisance than a help.

“Go back to New York,” he finally told her. “I will take care of the bills.”

She had talked him into leaving a legacy for her and the children, and now she reminded him of it.

“It will be done, it will be done,” he said.

But he couldn't be alone. He wasn't afraid to die, but he feared the terrible, paralyzing effect of a stroke, and the doctor had assured him that it would come back sooner or later. So he found a hired man, named Derrick, who would work for him.

Derrick was jealously religious; religion was all his, his personal, dread possession. With the angels behind him, he came to work for the devil, his long, horse-like face wary and determined. He could do nothing well, not plow a furrow, not cut a tree, not split a rail, but that didn't matter for his chief occupation here was watching Tom Paine, stealing manuscripts he imagined were written in consort with the devil, burning them, carrying tales, making remarks about his employer. He also stole his employer's whisky and was frequently drunk.

At last, Paine discharged him; it was better to be alone. A few days later, Derrick returned, crawled up to a window where Paine was sitting, and let go with a large-bore musket, buckshot-loaded. He was drunk enough to miss the old man, but he shattered the window and filled the wall beyond with shot.

On his part, Paine was sorry that Derrick had missed. Better to have gone that way, quickly and painlessly, than to linger on here in an empty house. In the village, Derrick boasted about his feat until they were forced to arrest him, but Paine would not press any charges.

The old man feared the occasional trips he had to make into the village of New Rochelle. Not a mother had neglected to tell her child that Paine and the devil were in league, and when the thin-faced, bent old man came shuffling into town, he would attract as many children of all ages as the pied piper. It did not matter that he tried to be good to them, that he never chased them from his orchards, that he sometimes filled his pockets with candy in an attempt to bribe them away from their torments; that was to no avail, for what other game presented such fascinating possibilities as baiting old Tom Paine? Throw enough mud, rocks, and sticks at him and you could get him to lose his temper, and then you could lead him a merry chase. And there were wonderful rhymes you could sing as you danced out of reach, such as:

“
Benedict Arnold and Simon Girty
,

They were false to flag and country
,

But compared to Paine they weren't bad
,

He played false with Washington and Gad
.”

or

“
Make a revolution, blood and flame
,

I'm the one who does it, my name is Paine
.

I should have gone to the guillotine
,

Too bad I didn't—I'm just too mean
.”

And never a grown-up to reprimand you, but only to say, “Give it to him, give it to him,” as they smoked their pipes and looked on.

In New Rochelle, there was no hope of an old comrade coming to his aid. This was Tory country during the war, and fiercely anti-Jefferson now, as most of Westchester County was. The villagers had not fought in the war; their neutrality swayed the comfortable way, and they gave all the aid they could to the British and to the Tory counterrevolutionaries called Rogers' Rangers. That they had not forgotten the war was proven to Paine when he came into town to vote in the 1806 election.