Read Online Conceived in Liberty by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

dropped out, went to Boston, and later heard that her man had never reached Quebec. She fell in with a group of Maryland militia—became a camp follower. It was not difficult to understand.
    She tells me about it in a slow, truthful voice. “I don’t hide anything, Allen. But I was a good woman once. I swear to God I was a good woman once. I’m nineteen years, Allen, and I’m a slut already. You don’t have any call to love me, Allen.”
    Our tears come together, slow tears of weakness. We cling together, and she clutches desperately at my filthy body. I cry the way no man would cry. Each successive wave of sleep is relief.
    What she says, she has said before. We dream about it day and night. “You can desert, Allen——”
    I think of Edward. Eight days ago, he walked out. He said, simply—he was going to the Mohawk. He took his gun, and nobody answered him, or tried to stop him. He was a great, strong man. “He’ll walk through,” Ely said. Jacob raged like a madman. Nobody believes but Jacob. We hate the revolution; we hate our officers and each other. Jacob believes. That you must keep in mind. A man can be parts of many things, or a man can be only one thing. And those who believe in only one thing are like torches; they don’t burn forever. That you must keep in mind to know how Jacob is—without weakness, without fear. He hates officers because they are a contradiction. He is not a man for thinking too deeply, and what he believes he believes instinctively. And he believes this—that the people are one. Officers are not of the people; they separate themselves: so he hates them but endures them because they lead the revolution. Yet he refuses to believe that they are part of the revolution they lead. But more than that, he hates weakness. A man is nothing, and the revolution is all. Edward was his friend; for years Edward had been his friend;, yet Edward was weak, putting himself before the revolution. For that he cursed Edward—who was dead.
    He raged like a madman, and then when he had used himself up, he sat by the fire, sobbing hard, dry sobs for hours.
    I would have gone with Edward, but I was afraid. I was afraid of the great distances in front of me.
    Some of McLean’s foragers brought Edward back. He had gone only a mile. They found him in the snow. Captain Muller came to us and said: “Did he desert?”
    â€œHe’s dead, isn’t he?” Jacob muttered. “What does it matter now? The man’s dead.”
    â€œHe was hunting,” Ely said, lying. But even Ely could lie for a man who had died that way—alone and in the snow.
    We went to bury him. He was huddled up, his limbs hard and fixed.
    â€œHe was sleeping,” Ely said. “I thank God he was sleeping. He didn’t know. It’s an easy way to die, when a man’s sleeping …”
    I ask Bess: “Where would we go?”
    â€œI’m not dreading dying, Allen. But if you go away without me——”
    Ely enters the dugout. He closes the door and stumbles over to the fire. The strength of Ely is no thing that can be measured, it’s not the strength of a man’s body.
    He sits by the fire and stares into it.
    We climb out of bed and crowd round him. Our faces are sunken death’s-heads. Bones stand out through the clothes. Ely looks at us, but he doesn’t speak.
    Jacob said: “You brought food, Ely?”
    â€œI walked to his house,” Ely said. “It’s a wonder to see the fine stone houses the officers have. You go in and you hear no sound of storm outside.”
    I try to visualize it. The houses where the officers are quartered are a mile away. I try to understand a man beating his way there and back. Ely hasn’t eaten in three days. Edward walked a mile in the snow and they brought back a dead man. Ely is here by the fire.
    â€œGod damn them,” I said.
    â€œThey told me a food