Chapter 3: Susan

The moon was well up when I went back out to fetch Willy an hour or so later. I was feeling very pleased with myself, sexually exhausted and full of the milk of human kindness, thoroughly laid, completely spent. The boy was on his knees with his head against the tree. He looked dead, frozen. I kicked him, and he awoke with a start. I untied him, listening to his teeth chatter, and dragged him into the cabin and warmed him up, made him jump up and down in front of the fire. Susan, dressed only in her mended shift, poured the last of the wine into him and dried his feet. I'm sure she warmed his blood as well as mine.

I explained that I was taking him to Pennsylvania and that if he behaved himself and helped us, he could join our army or go home after the fight was over. He said he understood but did not have a home. I said I would be coming back for Susan as soon as I could. She looked at me, but did not say anything. We had not discussed the idea, and I still was not sure that I would not take up housekeeping with her and let the war proceed without me.

I tied his hands together with a length of rope which I looped around my belt. I loaded and primed my musket, and we set out after Susan kissed us both good-by. She tasted good, like bacon fat.

I dragged Willy down to the river and upstream to the place where I had hidden my small rowboat. It was gone. We kept on along the bank for more than a mile, looking for rafts, canoes or boats, anything that would get us across. Washington's men had run almost everything that floated to the far side of the river and destroyed what they could not take. As we rounded a bend, not far from McKonkey's or that other ferry, we saw a fire flickering up on the bank and a small boat turned bottom-up near it.

I pulled Willy up close to me and whispered to him, "If you want to live to enjoy another girl, a nice girl like Susan, with nobody watching you or whacking you, go get one of them damn Germans to come down here. Tell him you found a body. Just lead him right down this path." I untied him. "Now run, run, like you're scared."

I hit him on the backside with the rope end. He ran in the silver moonlight across the crunching snow, and I heard him gabbling to the pickets in a mix of German and English. I had hoped that the boy's grenadier uniform would lend him credence, and I guess it did. Unfortunately both of them followed him down the path. Willy and the first man, who was carrying a long piece of burning pine wood for a torch, passed my skinny tree, and I heard the boy say, "He's right down here, corporal sir." I stepped out, clubbed my rifle, took a full swing like I was felling a tree and hit the second man in the ear as hard as I could. It made a very satisfactory thunk, and the German threw out his arms and tumbled toward the dark water. I heard him splash as I quickly reversed my musket, stepped forward and bayoneted the second soldier as he turned, looking very surprised. My blade hit his belt buckle and deflected down into his groin. He screamed and dropped his flaming faggot as I ripped him open. I pulled out the bayonet and aimed it for his throat to shut him up. He yelled out again, a German curse I suppose, bending double, holding his belly, and the steel went right in his mouth and out the bacl of his head, jarring my wrists. I twisted my musket and pulled it loose. The dead man fell in the path with my good bayonet still in him.

Willy and I pushed the corporal into the river after I fished his money and tobacco from his pockets. His boots were too worn to bother with, but it was good chewing tobacco. The other man had long since disappeared in the fast-flowing, ice-filled water. The boy was holding up the torch and vomited after I put my foot on the man's face to pull loose my blade. We fetched the sentries' small boat, crossed the river and made our way to Washington's camp by dawn, talking about women most of the way.

Chapter 4 »