Conceived in Liberty by Howard Fast

drags me toward the fire. I hear, as from far away, Ely telling Jacob of Clark.
    Then I am in bed, and Bess is trying to warm me. I know how little strength she has, and I wonder how she can work so desperately. But the cold won’t leave me. I tremble and my lips flutter. My lips are broken and bleeding.
    She says: “Rest—rest, my darling.”
    I feel for her warm face, for her hands, for her breast. I want life desperately. I cling to her for the sense of life.
    Then I sleep.
    I wake out of my dream, and speak with it: “Clark put a curse on me—he’s dying. I should drive you away. He made me promise.”
    Her cry of terror was the most terrible thing I had ever heard.
    I try to soothe her. I whisper: “No—I was dreaming.”
    But she lies there, awake, and I can feel her fear of the cold night, of being away from me.

VI
    W E KEEP alive. Days pass, and days slide into one another, days and nights mingling to form a grey. But we keep alive. A strange knowledge comes to me, a knowledge of the strength in men. I can see how layer after layer of life may be taken from a man; take all the strength that is any man’s, and still there is strength underneath.
    So we keep alive. How many days pass, I don’t know. A new man is in the dugout. His name is Meyer Smith, and he was an innkeeper in Philadelphia once. The Jew is sick. We think of Moss Fuller. The Jew has the same racking cough.
    Ely said: “A bite of frost. His lungs are frozen. Maybe in the place he calls Siberia. When a man’s lungs are frozen, they never heal.”
    We sit round now trying not to notice that hacking, incessant cough. When we look at the Jew’s face, the bony features rising out of the shadow of his bunk, we are forced to think of something we don’t want to remember.
    â€œI call to mind Christ was a Jew,” Jacob said—strange words for Jacob.
    The Jew’s name is Aaron Levy. We are very tender with him. With us, it is different: we are born and bred to the land. But the Jew has come great, shadowy distances. The distances keep us away from him, and he is alone. His loneliness oppresses us. In his sleep, he talks in a language we don’t understand.
    Smith was in the dugout two days when he learnt that Levy was a Jew. He said:
    â€œI’ll not sleep with a bloody Jew. I’ll not sleep with any Christ-killing bitch.”
    Jacob almost throttled him. We had to tear Jacob away, and the marks of Jacob’s fingers were on Smith’s throat for a week after. Jacob pleaded with us to let him go to let him kill Smith. Jacob cried:
    â€œHis death won’t sit with me. I’ve seen too many better than he go.”
    Smith was afraid. He leaped for the gunrack, tore out a musket and faced Jacob. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed. “Stay off! I’ll kill any man who lays a hand on me.”
    Ely walked up to him and wrenched the musket from his hands. “You’re a low, bitter creature,” Ely said quietly.
    Smith crawled into his bunk and lay the rest of that night in silence. We pitied him; we were beyond hate. I could see the madness coming in Jacob, in myself, in Smith, in Henry Lane. I began to fear Ely’s death. One day, I pleaded with him not to die; I pleaded with him hysterically. We lived in him. Ely smiled; he was the only one who could still smile.
    Now we sit and talk a little. Bess crouches by my side, her hands touching me, feeling for me always. They tell me that when I go out on sentry duty, she lives in an agony of fear.
    â€œYou’ll go out once—and not come back,” she told me.
    â€œThere are other men.”
    â€œNo other man,” she said.
    She sits by me now. We talk of the British attack and what holds it. We are all of us here but Kenton, who is on sentry duty.
    â€œThere’ll be no attack,” I say. “The war’s over. In two months, there’ll be no army. Why should they