A Girl Called Samson (33)

I didn’t take part in the competitions, the wrestling and the races, though Jimmy challenged me and I would have liked to see how I stacked up. It was not unlike living in the Thomas house, though I heard and witnessed things that scorched my ears and my eyes. I had no idea men were so obsessed with women or with their own anatomy; the brothers had spared me that.

We traveled the entire length of Connecticut, including New Britain, and I reported to Elizabeth that it looked as I imagined it would, though like Massachusetts, there were very few places that had not been battered by the war. We moved through villages and slept where we were welcome and even where we weren’t. I was so fatigued one night, I did not make it inside the house in which I was quartered. I awoke in the grass, shivering in the light drizzle, my messmates having abandoned me for a roof over their heads. Had the mistress of the house not come outside to gather eggs and taken pity on me—“Come inside, boy, with the others”—I would have thought I’d been left behind.

I became adept at sleeping on demand. I had always slept on my side, curling around myself, hands clasped between my breasts. I no longer had any sort of ritual or preferred position. I slept with my musket in my arms half the time, staring up at the sky because sleeping flat on my back on the ground was easier than any other position.

One night, I slept in a furrow of a freshly plowed field. There, in the soft dirt, the sides cradling me like a mother’s arms, I enjoyed the best sleep I’d ever had. But that was not the normal way of things. I stopped keeping track of the food in my belly and the hours of rest I didn’t get. My menses came halfway through the march, but the flow was so light I hardly noticed it. Either I was becoming a man in truth or I’d become too lean or depleted to bleed. I thanked God for that mercy in my prayers.

Every man had to skulk off to do his business alone sometimes. It didn’t seem enough to arouse suspicions that I did so more often than the others, but I held my water until I was full to bursting. The one time another soldier caught a glimpse of my flank, squatting deep, he turned on his heel, assuming he’d caught me at something else, for which every person must sit.

No one bathed or changed their clothing to sleep. The clothes we wore when we left Worcester were the clothes we all still had on when we arrived at West Point two weeks later.



The British controlled New York City, and we did not go near it, cutting through the territory considered neutral. The miles were populated with farms and settlements that gave way to thick forests as we neared the area known as the highlands.

In every direction, an endless expanse of green hills bowed beneath a blue sky, hugging the curves of the winding river, and I could not imagine a more beautiful spot. My awe returned, my wonder and hope too, and my well of miseries dried up in the face of my new horizons.

“This is why I’m here,” I whispered. “This is what I wanted.”

We crossed the glassy Hudson, often simply called the North River, at King’s Ferry, a landing on the east side of the river bustling with all manner of vessels and troops, and debarked on the west side of the river at Fort Clinton, a rocky edifice that overlooked the water. Having never been posted anywhere, I had nothing with which to compare the stronghold, which was actually one of several forts making up the encampment known as West Point. Constitution Island jutted out into the river directly across from it, another fort and two redoubts visible behind the batteries there as well.

Where the river curved back on itself, a massive chain was stretched across from the Point to the island to prevent British ships from passing through, though Captain Webb claimed they’d never even tried. But that was not the only marvel.

On the other side of the garrison walls and behind Fort Clinton stretched a flat, grassy plateau at least a half a mile wide with an impressive artillery park on the south end and a sprawling encampment at the rear, completely invisible from the water.

We were given a hasty tour of the layout—quartermaster, bakehouse, prison, officers’ huts, headquarters, forge, commissary, hospital, stores, and rows of long wooden barracks, where we were instructed to choose a berth and drop our sacks.

A wide parade ground was centered in the encampment, and we were herded onto it and told to stand at attention as we awaited further instruction. I was not the only wide-eyed soldier, my gaze endlessly skipping over the sprawling encampment, the rugged landscape, and the silvery ribbon of water that curled through it.

It was not until a pair of drummers at the edge of the green took up a cadence, signaling the arrival of a mounted officer, that I managed to pry my attention from my surroundings. He approached from the direction of a big red house barely visible through the trees. Captain Webb indicated it had been there before the base was established.

“General Washington used it as his permanent headquarters for a time, and he still stays there when he comes to the Point,” he had added.

My awe swelled again. I might see General Washington.

The horse the officer rode was white with a charcoal mane and tail, and though it pranced like a princess, it was built like a gunship, all muscle and mass. Beebe whistled his appreciation as the rider dismounted and handed the reins to a sentry who stood at attention nearby. Colonel Jackson, Captain Webb, and several other officers from the other regiments stepped forward to greet him.

“General Washington gave him that horse. Some say it was a bribe to return to service, though General Paterson would cut out yer tongue if he heard you say it.”