The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (35 page)

All at once Cowper tried to straggle up:

“What did you say about my arm, doc—?”

“That I can’t save it, son. I have to saw it off.”

“Please don’t. Oh God,
please!
I’m left-handed, doc. I need both hands to work a plow—I’m a farmer,
I can’t run a farm with one arm gone
—”

Cowper was shrieking now. Philip turned away, closed his eyes a moment, tightened his hands on Cowper’s shoulders as the wounded man tried to wrench himself off the bloody table.

“Goddamn it, you’ve got to hold him down!” the surgeon shouted to Philip. The orderly shoved the rum bottle between Cowper’s teeth, up-ended it until Cowper fell back gagging and slobbering from the liquid gushing into his mouth. Against his will, Cowper swallowed several times. The wild wrenching subsided.

More wounded men were being carried into the tent on litters, put down in rows near the entrance. There were six surgical tables working; the steady grind of the trephining saw filled Philip’s throat with bile again.

Cowper’s lids fluttered closed as the rum began to take effect. The surgeon shoved the musket ball between Cowper’s teeth:

“Bite.”

Cowper didn’t respond. Using both hands, the surgeon pressed his jaws together:

“Bite, son,
bite
—that’s it.” He dashed sweat from his eyes. “Give me the saw.”

An orderly passed him the instrument. It still showed stains from the last amputation. The surgeon walked around to the left side of the table, stumbling once. Another orderly caught him, held him until he was able to stand on his own.

The surgeon scrutinized the exposed shoulder joint for a moment, then put the center of the notched blade on the spot he’d selected. With quick back and forth motions, he began to saw.

Blood ran. Muscle parted. Bone rasped. Cowper turned white, started to writhe. An orderly clamped hands on Cowper’s mouth so he wouldn’t cry out and swallow the ball.
Grate
and
grate,
the saw cut deeper—

Philip expended every remaining ounce of his strength to hold the farmer’s shoulders. At last, the awful rasping noise ceased. The severed limb thumped into the dirt beside the table.

The surgeon passed the saw to an orderly, wiped his forehead again, looked around, turned almost as red as his apron:

“Where the hell is the tar?”

“Had to heat up a new batch, sir. Here it comes—”

Two more orderlies struggled to bring up a small cauldron of bubbling pitch that had been heated on the fires burning in the hospital yard.

“Watch your eyes,” the surgeon warned those around the table. An orderly took a stick and tilted up one side of the cauldron. Hot tar cascaded onto the bleeding stump just below Cowper’s shoulder, cauterizing, sterilizing—

Cowper woke again, screamed and fainted. The pitch slopped and hissed on the board table, clotted sticky-black on the end of the stump. The blood-flow stopped.

Cowper’s chest barely moved, so thin was his breathing. Philip thought he couldn’t stand there an instant longer—

“Appreciate your assistance, soldier,” the surgeon told him. The man rubbed a red hand across his lips and gestured to Cowper’s still form. “Clear him away and bring the next one.”

His eyes returned to Philip.

“There’s hot water outside. You can wash up. You look like you took a bath in somebody’s blood. I hope it was one of the British.”

Outside, the near-scalding water dipped from a kettle hanging over burning logs restored Philip to some semblance of sanity. But that was almost worse than the semi-delirium of his twenty or thirty minutes in the hospital tent.

Drying his face on a rag from the ground, he tried to shut out the almost continual din of shouting and screaming from the other side of the canvas walls. It was impossible—just as winning this accursed war was impossible—

A face, bright red hair, caught his attention from the other side of the fire. The Marquis de Lafayette’s fine uniform was stained and torn in several places.

“Philip! I thought I glimpsed you when I rode in. Thank God you’ve survived the day—”

Gil hobbled around the fire. Only then did Philip see the bandage tied tightly around the trouser leg. A ball had torn the outside of Gil’s left thigh a few inches below the groin.

Gil gestured to the hospital tent:

“Were you wounded in the’ action? I notice no evidence of it—”

Too tired to speak immediately, Philip shook his head. Then:

“Man from my unit lost an arm. I brought him here.”

There was a strange despair in Gil’s eyes. He tried to conceal it with a shrug and a weak smile:

“Well, as you can see,
messieurs les anglais
favored me with a gun-shot. It’s trifling. I shall wait until the doctors finish with the urgent cases.”

“Where were you when you were, hit?”

“I do not know, exactly. General Sullivan’s men were all around me. I was endeavoring to urge them to turn and stand when the ball knocked me from the saddle—”

His eyes shifted toward the bedlam of the tent; a man was baying like an animal. His face wrenched:

“I have never seen such chaos! Or such cowardice! A formal retreat is one thing—the enemy carried the day decisively. But these men run like hares. To control them—to command them—it can’t be done!”

Philip sighed. “I guess that’s why we keep losing battles.”

“The laxity I saw when I first rode into the encampment will be our undoing!” Gil fumed. “Undisciplined children running helter-skelter, disobeying orders at their whim, cannot defeat the British. Only an
army
can defeat them.”

Philip’s face, still marked with dried blood at the hairline and around the ears, looked utterly weary and despondent:

“I know, Gil. And that’s the one thing we still don’t have.”

Gil’s silence represented total agreement.

The Brandywine position was lost on the eleventh of September. For two more weeks the rival armies feinted and skirmished through the countryside around Philadelphia. Then the beaten Americans withdrew to erect a temporary camp at Pennybacker’s Mill, on a creek that flowed down to- join the Schuylkill. The first hint of autumn nipped the air as Philip and the men in his mess—now down to three with Pettibone and Adams dead and Cowper off in a recovery area—wearily raised their tent.

Philip had visited Lucas Cowper once. Although conscious, the farmer refused to speak or even acknowledge Philip’s presence. A stained bandage was pinned over the stub of Cowper’s arm. He lay staring at the roof of the recovery tent, never blinking. After asking a score of quiet questions and receiving no answers, Philip crept away, totally depressed.

He tried to remember that if every man in the army allowed himself to fall prey to an erosion of the spirit such as he was again suffering, the struggle was already over for good. But it was hard to keep going; hard to be at all encouraged in the face of a shambles like the Brandywine. And its equally humiliating aftermath:

“It’s ’ficial,” Breen announced, late in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh. He’d just come from the sutler’s.

“What’s official?” Royal Rothman asked in a listless voice.

“Every man-jack in the Congress skedaddled out to Lancaster a week ago. And yesterday, ol’ Cornwallis marched the grenadiers into Philadelphia.”

“So the city’s fallen?”

“’Pears so, Royal. All the damned Tories should be mighty happy.”

“What the devil happens to us?”

“Oh, we just go on drawin’ our liquor ration an’ doin’ what they tell us. Be winter soon. Doubt there’ll be much more fightin’.”

Having listened in gloomy silence, Philip burst out, “Why don’t we try to re-take Philadelphia, for God’s sake?”

Breen shrugged in a laconic way. “Have to ask General George about that. But I wouldn’t, even if I had the chance. I understand he’s in mighty mean spirits. Maybe your Frenchy friend could tell you. I sure God can’t.”

Breen scratched his belly, hiccoughed, took a couple of wobbly steps toward the tent, pivoted back:

“Oh—and ’fore you ask, no, they ain’t payin’ us. Again.”

“We haven’t seen a penny in three months!” Royal protested.

Breen shrugged. “What’s the difference? You can’t hardly spend them bills they printed up for the paymaster. Only place they’ll take ’em ’thout a bitch is the sutler’s. I heard half the colonies—”

“States,” Royal corrected primly. Breen ignored him:

“—is makin’ jokes about the money. ‘Not worth a Continental’ is what they call somethin’ absolutely not worth a damn.”

Breen lifted the tent flap, acting unusually sober all at once.

“Sure’s funny ’thout old Pettibone hangin’ around. S’pose they’ll send us some green replacements, Philip?”

“Eventually.”

“An’ Cowper—what the devil’s that poor feller gonna do? He told me once his daddy couldn’t work no more. Too old. So there wasn’t nobody except Lucas to tend the farm.”

“I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t want to think about it.”

“You was there when they sawed—”

“Yes, I was there. Shut up about it!”

A moment of silence. Breen looked contrite:

“Sorry.”

“Yes—me too.”

Breen rolled his tongue in his cheek. “You’re an all-right sort, Philip. I don’t ’pologize to no other kind, y’know. That’s why I can admit I don’t miss Mayo Adams one whit. Wonder what become of him?”

Philip studied the sky. “Took a British or Hessian ball, probably.”

“Yeh, probably.”

Breen pulled up his hunting shirt to scratch his stomach again. Philip noticed a wrinkled sheet of paper stuck in the older man’s hide belt.

“Breen, what’s that?”

Fuzzily, Breen peered down. “My bellybutton.”

“No, dammit,
that
—” He pointed.

“Well, damme if it didn’t clean slip my mind. Fer you—”

As he pulled the paper loose, Philip practically leaped for it:

“A letter?”

“Yessir, mail finally come through. Picked it up ’fore I bought my ration. Clean forgot I had it. Maybe it’ll perk your spirits up some. Royal, when the hell you gonna start our cook fire? I’m hungry as a grizzly cub in April—” Blinking, he ambled on into the tent.

Philip almost whooped for joy as he examined the badly wrinkled letter. The handwriting was Anne’s.

He tore the letter open, read the date—late July—swiftly skipped down the lines for the essential details, his spirits soaring:

His wife was well.

Abraham was growing, talking and in good health.

Captain Caleb’s two new privateers were nearing completion on the ways at Sawyer’s.

The final paragraphs riveted his gaze and turned him, cold.

I do not wish to put additional worry on you when your task is difficult enough, my dearest. But at the moment, there is no one else with whom I can share a problem that is proving troublesome.

I have received two notes from Will Caleb’s hired captain, Mr. Rackham, whom I am certain you recall. In each, he has invited me to Sawyer’s to view the vessels under construction—which struck me as an altogether suspect invitation, considering his behavior that day last winter. Neither missive received an answer, of course. However, my silence did not end his improper interest. Indeed, it produced two visits from the obnoxious man, on our very doorstep here in Cambridge.

Both were likewise of the briefest nature. I let him know I did not welcome his attentions. He seemed to treat the reply as a joke. I am honestly fearful the fellow is a reckless libertine, no doubt encouraged by the thoughtless talk of some women whose husbands are away serving; such women proclaim their loneliness to any available male who is not in his dotage. So upsetting were Rackham’s smiles and hints, I have decided to ask our neighbor Mrs. Brumple to share the house with me. She craves company, and I believe her presence would help deter any further forwardness on Rackham’s part.

At first I hesitated to mention the matter to you, dear husband. Yet here I am pouring out my concerns in an unseemly way. With you so distant, a great portion of that strength of which I have sometimes foolishly boasted now seems altogether lacking—proof, if it were needed, that man and wife become a new whole, far different from what each might have been as an individual. What I am attempting to do, I suppose, is to reassure both myself and you that nothing is amiss—and that with Mrs. Brumple occupying the spare room, no further difficulty could arise.

I can also promise you that at the first opportunity, I shall speak to Captain Caleb about his associate’s unwelcome overtures. However, the captain is presently put out into the ocean with Eclipse for a week or two, during which time her guns and procedures for operating same are to be brought into perfect trim. I will contact him the moment he returns to Boston Harbor.

God protect you, my beloved, and may your son and your eternally affectionate wife soon be blessed with your presence, or, until that joyous day, further word that you are safe and well.

Ever yours,

Anne.

The cool September breeze fluttered the page. Philip stared at the amber clouds and a flight of wild geese streaming toward the southern horizon. But he saw only the insolent face of Captain Malachi Rackham.

That night he actually thought about desertion; about damning this futile war and hurrying home.

Tempting though the idea was, he put it out of mind because he knew that it was wrong for him, no matter how anyone else chose to act. It was also wrong because it would be the most foolish kind of weakness to give in to fears that were, for the moment, of small substance. Anne was taking steps to deal with the problem of Rackham. Those steps would probably prove effective.

The mere thought of desertion made him ashamed for other reasons, too. If he did what many had already done—simply went home the moment he felt like it—he would be one of those whom Tom Paine scathingly denounced as summer soldiers; sunshine patriots. More important, if mass desertions continued, there would soon not even be a semblance of an army left. And the larger purpose, of which the army was the sole instrument of fulfillment, would be lost. He believed in what the army was fighting for, even though up till now most of the fighting had been poorly done.