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The Looting of Washington City - Part Four

By Nick Arvin

To seek their fortunes, or to seek rum and women? Paul and the ugly soldier faced a difficult decision. First, however, the British deserter wanted to rest. He'd best remember to keep a close eye on the woman who was looting the same house they targeted.

They began in the house they were in. They pulled open the cupboards in the kitchen, opened drawers and trunks and armoires. Paul climbed a ladder and put his head into the attic, where the dust and the scent of dust were thick and a breeze hissed uneasily over the shingles. The only things of value to be found were the silver the lady had dropped, and, hidden behind a bedstead, several bottles of rum which the ugly soldier promptly uncorked. They began to drink. "We should go on," Paul said. But nothing happened, and he felt too tired to repeat the point.

The night went by, and the soldier fell asleep on the floor. Paul got up and wandered into the bedrooms. In a dresser was a pile of musty-smelling women's undergarments. He discovered a corset, and pulled it around his torso. He turned it around backwards so that he could lace it up. It was tight. He muttered to himself, "Pride feels no pain." Once he had it laced, he turned it forward again. A pair of cups were positioned to push the breasts up, and he adjusted them so that they were properly located. He discovered a pair of baggy muslin pantalettes, and he pulled them over his legs and tied them at the ankles. All this he wore over his own soiled coat and trousers, and looking down at himself he laughed. He adjusted his posture, arching his back a little, and took several mincing steps around the room. He was pleased by the stiffness of the whalebone against him. He looked in the trunk again and found a sausage-shaped bustle which he examined a moment, then tied around the waist, with the roll in back to give the posterior amplitude. He giggled. He pulled out another, shorter corset and pressed it to his nose. There did seem to be some other odor under the stale scent of storage. With his tongue he tested the inside of a breast cup.

Then he heard something, faintly, a low voice possibly, from outside. Paul dropped the corset and sidled to the window. Coming down the street, already nearly at the house, were a dozen British soldiers, and with them was the thin-legged woman, hissing and whispering to the troops around her.

Paul looked down at himself, in terror. He yanked ineffectually at some of the straps. Then he gave it up and ran downstairs in the undergarments to the parlor doorway and called, holding his voice low, "Soldiers, soldiers, here. She's brought back soldiers."

The ugly soldier in his sleep twitched his head.

Paul stepped toward him, but then loud as musket shots someone hammered on the door. The ugly soldier sat up, looking wildly about. The door smashed open. Paul sprinted through the house to the kitchen. Voices behind him shouted incoherently. He opened the window and slithered out, landing face-first on the ground. Boot steps sounded around the side of the house. Paul gained his feet and ran. Shouts followed him. A shot exploded behind him, and the muscles in his back tensed convulsively in anticipation of a wound that did not come. He did not glance back. As he ran the whalebone prodded his ribs and the bustle bounced like the puff of a white-tail deer.

After several turns and running a quarter mile or so he heard no one behind him, but still he ran, until he was winded and finally he had to slow to a jog. He twisted mid-stride to look back, and could see no soldiers. He slowed to a walk. He looked around himself more carefully. Seated on a porch with a rifle on his lap was an old man with a pinched, lean face, staring at Paul with squint-eyed curiosity.

Paul felt bitterly aggrieved by the attention and by the fact that a man might sit on his porch watching passersby as if this were any normal day. Half-choking with rage and exhaustion, Paul screamed at the old man, "Go away!" The old man varied neither position nor squint. Paul, in the middle of the street, furiously, laboriously, with trembling fingers, pulled off the bustle, the corset, the pantalettes, and hurled them one by one into the dirt of the street. With a series of great leaps he stomped on the garments.

He stalked away from this scene with his hands bunched in fists, and at the first chance turned on a side street. He walked a while aimlessly, keeping mostly to the shadows, watching his boots mark the road and feeling the fog of panic and fury inside himself slowly dissipate. Only when he looked up and happened to see a group of British crossing the street ahead, and among them the ugly soldier, did he realize he had been circling back. The ugly soldier wore heavy rusting shackles on his wrists and legs and hobbled painfully. The soldiers around him pointedly did not look at their prisoner. Paul followed at a distance. They passed the desiccated Capitol, headed toward the Armory.

It appeared much of the British army had converged around the American Armory. From a distance Paul watched as the ugly soldier was brought to an officer, dressed in a red coat and bright braids, and a series of consultations ensued between this officer and other officers and soldiers. Then the ugly soldier was tied face-first against a cottonwood. Some minutes passed. An officer came forward with a horsewhip.