Conceived in Liberty by Howard Fast Page B

nothing. We have eaten nothing that is food.
    Snow has drifted up to the roof of the dugout; snow in the valley in drifts twelve and fifteen feet deep. There are no parades, no drills. There has been no parade for two weeks. There is a rumour that much of the army has disappeared, but we have no check on rumours. As our strength goes, we move slowly, fretfully, the way old men move. A path is cut through the snow for sentries. We hate sentry duty, curse it, but it keeps us from going mad.
    Today, we lie in bed, huddled close for warmth. The fire gives out no heat. Only Kenton sits close to it, painstakingly carving a rhyme on his powder horn. His big hunting knife glints in the light, his large hands guiding it with difficulty. On and off, for months now, he has been working on the carving of the rhyme and the picture of a child with arms clasped about the end of the horn. He can forget things with his carving, remembering only that he began it in the warmth of the summer. Now and then he asks Charley the spelling of a word. Kenton is not much for writing words or spelling them out.
    We wait for Ely, who has gone to the commissary. The light from the fire lingers in the centre of the dugout; the bunks are in the shadow.
    With Bess beside me, I lie in a broken dream. Sometimes I speak aloud, and then Bess says: “Allen—Allen, what are you saying?”
    I don’t know. I try to explain a figment of a dream. I try to explain that my mother’s name was Anna, that if we have a child, her name will be Anna too.
    â€œA girl?” Bess asks me.
    â€œA boy and then a girl.”
    I sleep again; I wake and my hands grope for her body, frantically. I say: “You slut—you God-damned little slut, you’ll go back to the Virginians. You’re no fit woman for a man.”
    â€œAllen—what are you saying?”
    I close my eyes, and my lightheadedness takes my mind away. I am at all places at once. I am out in the snow, pacing a sentry beat. I am in the deep lush, bottom valleys of the Mohawk. With her hands, Bess tries to reassure me. Her hands travel over my torn clothes, seeking out parts of me. Her hands unravel my beard.
    I sink into sleep, and I dream, and I dream that I am a child. It is the morning of a hot, sunny day, and we are moving westward. Where we came from is not very clear to the child in the dream, from some place many marches to the east—Connecticut, perhaps. There are four wagons, four narrow, old, swaybacked wagons. Brown canvas covers them, stretched over bent hickory hoops. The road is bad, and the wagons surge and rock and threaten to fall apart with every step the horses take. But somehow the wagons hold together. They’ve held together a long time.
    I sit at the back of the first wagon, my feet hanging over the tailboard. The hot sun is in my face. Mr. Apply, driving the second wagon, keeps grinning at me. Now and then he snaps his long whip and cries:
    â€œGotcha then, Allen!”
    We both laugh. It’s a standing joke between us, the whip. Mr. Apply is a lean old man who sits on his high seat with a long musket balanced across his knees. Somehow, no matter how the wagon sways, the musket never slips from his knees.
    My mother cries: “You, Allen, come in or you’ll take a fall under Mr. Apply’s horses!”
    The whip flicks out again. Half-asleep, I cling to the dream. I want the hot sun. When I know that the dream is over, I close my eyes and still try to feel the sun on my face.
    When I awake, I turn to Bess with deep, childlike love. A love that’s different from the love of a man for a woman. She’s warmth for me; she’s something for a weak, dying man to hold onto. She doesn’t complain. She has never complained. I know she is dying, but I know she won’t die until I am gone.
    She married a Virginian farm boy at the outbreak of the war. She tried to follow him to Quebec, in the expedition of Morgan’s riflemen. She