Sometimes the voice in my head would insist that no one knew me. I could leave and become Deborah Samson again, and Robert Shurtliff would simply cease to be. That voice was a liar, and I called it such. Robert Shurtliff could cease to be, yes, but the world of Deborah Samson was no longer available to me. She had no home, no clothes, no possessions. She had no family to welcome her or gainful employment to keep her fed. Anything would be better than this, the voice insisted, but I learned to turn my thoughts to silence, or if not silence, to fill the space with proverbs and psalms. Sylvanus was right. When my own words failed me, the things I had memorized kept defeat and despair at bay.
“What are you muttering about?” a man named John Beebe asked me several days in. He was a talker, acquiring the nickname Buzzy Beebe the first day out. He kept up a steady stream of dialogue with anyone who would listen, and he’d made his rounds as the miles stretched on, seemingly unaffected by anything but boredom.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Your lips are always moving, but you don’t ever say anything,” he argued. “You don’t talk to any of us and you keep to yourself. You’re mad as a hatter or you’re just unfriendly. Which is it?”
“Both.”
He hooted, and then he repeated what I’d said to the two fellows behind us. Jimmy Battles and Noble Sperin were their names, and I liked them. Jimmy reminded me of Jeremiah and Noble reminded me of Nat, the two bookends of the Thomas boys. Both grunted at Beebe, neither of them interested in the conversation. Or perhaps it took too much stamina to engage.
“I think you’re entertaining yourself,” Beebe contended. “That’s just mean not to share. I’m bored. If you’ve got a story or a song, you should tell me.”
“It’s just scripture.”
“Scripture?” he crowed, and turned to Noble and Jimmy again. “Did you hear that? Shurtliff would rather quote scripture than talk to me.”
“He’s bashful. Leave him alone,” Noble insisted.
Beebe threw his heavy arm over my shoulder. “Come on, now. Share the good word with me. I’m in need of salvation.”
I shrugged him off with a shudder and a hard push, and he staggered into the man on his left, sending a rippled stagger down the line.
“Bonny Robbie doesn’t like to be touched,” he said, laughing.
“So don’t touch him,” Noble interjected again. “And for hell’s sake, hold your blathering tongue.”
Beebe grumbled, “Seems awful unfriendly to me.”
I had drawn negative attention only a few days in. My weariness became worry as the men around me dropped into exhausted silence, and Beebe fell back and found someone more amenable to conversation.
He was not a bad sort. None of them were. No one seemed mean just for the sake of meanness, and none seemed too soft or especially scared. That was good. I was scared enough for all of us, but I changed my strategy after that, making myself useful instead of holding myself apart. I couldn’t roughhouse, but I could serve, and I looked for ways to ingratiate myself on my own terms. Physical distance was necessary, but comradeship was too.
I made it known that I was a decent barber—only fools used a razor on their own face without a mirror—and spent one evening shaving the whole company and greasing their hair back into tight tails. I also offered to write letters for those who lacked the skill, and even Beebe had me draft a message home. His incessant chatter didn’t translate to the written word. He could read a little, though, and saw me writing to Elizabeth, who he assumed was my sweetheart. It wasn’t a bad thing for my company to believe, and I let him rib me without ever setting him straight. His nickname for me stuck, unfortunately, and Bonny Robbie or Bonny Rob was what most of the men called me.
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.