Pete Hamill - Forever

The black patrol waited, saving ball and shot. They could hear scrambling in the woods behind them, men panting. A bony farm boy came up from the river’s edge, his gun as useless as a reed, yelling, “Run, run, there’s thousands of them.” Bantu shot him and picked up his rifle.

The naval barrage was ferocious. Cormac didn’t need to tell the black patrol to lie flat, to use tree trunks as shields. Now trees were falling, splintered by cannon shot, and more young men were running past them in the dark.

“Don’t shoot them!” Cormac shouted. “Let them assemble in the rear!”

Now they saw four Hessians lumbering up the hill from the river’s edge. They waited. Then killed them all. Cormac felt nothing. They come to kill us, he thought, and so we kill them.

As the sun struggled to rise in Brooklyn, they could see Kip’s Bay more clearly, and the steady movement of empty longboats returning for more soldiers and packed longboats rowing toward the shore. To the left, Cormac glimpsed a long blur of scarlet. He gestured to Bantu, pointing to the rear, then went down and told the others. Big Michael didn’t want to retreat.

“I come to kill these bastards,” he said. “Let me kill them.”

“We will,” Cormac said. “Come.”

“Where we go, man?”

“The rock pile.”

They eased around in the darkness in a single file, glancing behind them at the blue-and-scarlet lines. The cannon kept exploding the earth and felling trees, and new troops of the Crown chose to pause until the fierce barrage had ended. The six men of the black patrol found their way to a cluster of jagged boulders at the crest of a hill. Now they could see the Americans in flight: farm boys and city lads, brave while marching, panicky in the face of cannon and bayonets. It was one thing to wave Common Sense on the streets or join the mob that toppled the statue of George III in the Bowling Green; it was another thing to face English guns. The young Americans dropped their ancient flintlocks and old fowling guns, their dragoon pistols and close-bore rifles. They abandoned a few pieces of cannon. They left tents for the invaders. They were in full flight.

“Don’t show yourselves!” Cormac told the others. “And don’t shoot our own lads. Hold as long as you can.”

They knew that the six of them would have to cover the retreat of thousands. Cormac thought: It’s absurd. The amateurs are running, and the professionals are coming. But we have to stop them, for at least an hour. And so they waited, huddled down, peering at the assembled scarlet-and-blue masses below them. Off to the left, smoke had begun to rise from a fire on the forest floor. Cormac thought: Good. That will give us some cover, a dark screen.

Then two columns began climbing the slope, about twenty yards apart.

“Wait,” Cormac said.

The climbing men were heavy with packs and rifles.

“Wait,” Cormac said.

A lanky Hessian paused, looked behind him, then squinted at the drifting smoke. He took a deep breath, said something to the men behind him, and resumed the climb.

“Wait,” Cormac whispered.

A fat, sweaty Englishman led his column into their view on the right. He mopped his brow with the sleeve of his free hand. In the other hand he held a rifle.

“Now,” Cormac said.

The air exploded as they poured fire on the troops below. Men fell like broken dolls, face forward or whipped to the side. A few knelt to fire and were knocked over. Cormac aimed at one Englishman but then saw his face explode from a shot by Big Michael.

“Gone down,” Big Michael exulted, starting to rise. “He gone down.”

Then Big Michael was dead. A ball tore open his chest, and he sagged and went down with one leg twisted under him. The black patrol kept firing, and saw the blue and scarlet uniforms turning to find cover. Cormac saw a beplumed officer and shot him between the shoulder blades. Then he turned to the others.

“Toward the smoke,” Cormac said.

They fired another volley and then ran, one at a time, squatting low, spaced apart, toward the screen of smoke, leaving Big Michael where he’d fallen. Bullets and balls whizzed around them and pinged off stone. Then they were in the smoke.

So were hundreds of the retreating Americans, coughing, gasping, climbing, falling, desperate to reach the crest of the hill and the plain beyond, all of them beaten without firing a shot. Cormac and Bantu, Silver and Aaron and Carlito aligned themselves in a picket, ten feet apart, and raised hands to break up the panic.

“Stop running!” Cormac shouted. “Stop or we’ll shoot you for desertion!”

One brawny blond-haired man lowered his rifle to shoot his way out. Carlito killed him.

“Hold this ground,” Cormac yelled at the deserters. “Face them and fight them!”

They ignored him and ran to the side or plunged back down the slope, hands in the air, to surrender. He heard shots crackling below and knew the Crown forces were killing those who wanted to surrender.

And then through the smoke and noise, they saw Washington. He was high on a sorrel horse, waving a sword in his right hand, his eyes ablaze, his mouth a tight slash.

“Are you soldiers or mice?” he shouted. “What do you call yourselves?”

He swung the sword at one fleeing man and missed, and then glanced at Cormac and the blacks and then peered down the slope at the advancing blue and red uniforms. He paused, and then started forward. Into the guns. It was as if he wanted to be shot down to end his shame.

Cormac grabbed the reins of Washington’s horse and wrenched with all his strength and turned the horse.

“Stop, you stupid bastard!” Cormac screamed.

“Unhand this horse!”

“We need you alive, God damn you,” Cormac said, and hauled the horse around and pointed him west. Bantu ran up and slapped the horse hard on the haunch, and away he went, carrying the general through the trees.

Silver and Aaron and Carlito stood laughing, bumping one another’s shoulders. Then they turned, backing up, and killed more men.

In the vast camp in Harlem Heights, Cormac was escorted to Wash ington’s tent. Almost five thousand men were sprawled around the camp, cleaning guns under a dim moon, soothing horses, eating at campfires. A few were singing. Many were sleeping. Two lieutenants flanked Cormac as if he were a prisoner.

The general was seated in a camp chair, examining his gleaming fingernails. An empty chair faced him. His cocked hat was on a table, with gloves folded neatly on its crest, and the buttonholes of his frock coat were embroidered. The man took care about the way he dressed. Too much care, Cormac thought. Behind Washington was the famous six-and-a-half-foot-long cot that was carried with him everywhere. A coal fire burned in a stove. Maps were spread on a table, along with a few plates and a bottle of wine. He didn’t look up.

“You can leave, gentlemen,” he said to the officers. They stepped outside.

Washington turned over his large hands and looked at his knuckles.

“You’re the man who jerked my horse?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that I’m the commanding officer of this army?” “Yes, sir.”

Washington stood up as if stabbed, the hands turning into fists, the eyes blazing.

“Why did you do such a goddamned thing?”

“To keep you from being killed, sir.”

“That’s for me to decide, God damn it. And how could you be sure I would die? How could you be sure that they would not run?”

“You’re one man, General. One ball could kill you. One of my men—”

“They can’t kill me!”

“They can kill anyone they can shoot, General.”