Queering Benedict Arnold 3 May 21, 1759: Poughkeepsie, New York By Jake Preston
"Queering Benedict Arnold" is historical gay fiction. The story alternates between twenty-first century scenes in which Jake Preston and Ben Arnold (a descendent) investigate Benedict's life, and eighteenth-century scenes imagined by Jake and Ben. Some characters and allusions hark back to "Wayward Island" (in nifty's file on Beginnings). Jake Preston is the narrator in both works.
Most episodes are faithful to history, except for sexual encounters, which are fictional. You should not read this story if you are a minor, or if you are offended by explicit gay sex.
Benedict Arnold was an American military genius who was treated unfairly by jealous rivals while he lived. After his death, he was denounced as the archetypal traitor in history and folklore, but he was a target of inexplicable hatred long before his treasonable conspiracy with John André to surrender the fort at West Point to the British. Taken as a whole, "Queering Benedict Arnold" is an attempt to discover the origins of that hatred. Comments welcome: contact Jake at jemtling@gmail.com.
Nifty stories are free to Readers, but donations are encouraged.
It was mid-July (2012), warm enough for a makeshift camp in the woods outside Poughkeepsie. When we talked about Benedict Arnold, Ben referred to Arnold family secrets as "clean facts." He meant truth unsullied by folklore or insidious omissions. "I've read many books about Benedict Arnold, and very few clean facts," he would say. He retrieved one of the offending books from his rucksack and waved it above his head, derisively. "The Traitor and the Spy"—he read the scandalous title, and below, in smaller letters, "Benedict Arnold and John André. Just look at the first sentence in Chapter One," he said.
"Why do I get the feeling that you're about to read it to me?" I quipped.
"As brave on the battlefield as any man who lived, Benedict Arnold told a patriot leader that `his courage was acquired, and that he was a coward till he was fifteen years old'."
"What's wrong with that?" I asked.
Ben read the sentence again, accentuating as any man who lived' and a patriot leader'. "Damned with faint praise," he said. "If he had wanted to, the author—his name was Flexner—could have remarked that Benedict led his troops into battles from which others retreated. He's forced to admit Benedict's courage against the British Army, but omits the clean fact that Benedict took risks that other so-called patriots avoided. In his fictional version of history, Flexner sorts his characters into two distinct groups, patriots and traitors. Because of Benedict's treason in 1780, his earlier patriotic efforts are found to be tainted by his villainous character."
I thought about this. "Maybe the style is a bit slanted," I admitted.
"And what's up with this shit about `a patriot leader'?" Ben asked, rhetorically. "Flexner is quoting from a letter that Benedict wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of his closest friends in Philadelphia. What's his motive? Why suppress Benedict's friendship with one of the earliest intellectuals in America?"
Ben had a point.
"Then there's the barn-burning episode in Canterbury," Ben said. He flipped over two pages, and read a paragraph that described Benedict as "annoyingly brave" on an "evening when the whole town turned out to watch a house burn. The firemen had given up and were standing in the crowd, their painted leather buckets dangling at their sides, when a dark figure appeared high up, in the very center—or so it seemed—of the flames. Benedict strolled out along the already cracking ridgepole, lit by the splendor of fire."
A colorful story, but it happened in a barn in Canterbury, not in a house in Norwichtown. "I know this might seem like Arnold family trivia," Ben said, "but when a serious historian plays fast and loose with known facts, why would we trust his judgment on important matters like Benedict's motives and character?"
"Not to mention that it must have been volunteer firemen," I pitched in— "if there was any organization to it at all. I think it likely that there were no firemen, just neighbors trying to help out."
That was two strikes against the barn-burning episode in a book that passed as serious history: wrong setting, mythical firemen. Ben added strike three: "The ridgepole already cracking and ready to fall: if that were true, it wouldn't have supported Benedict's weight. Flexner made it up. Dr. Cogswell's letter to Hannah Arnold mentions Benedict balancing on a ridgepole, but says nothing about it cracking while he was on top of it."
Ben had another book in his rucksack that was even more biased against his ancestor, but daylight faded to dusk. He contented himself with showing me a darkened Xerox-copy of a page from the New York Gazette, dated May 21, 1759. On it a number of want ads' or personals' (as we now call them), crowded in small print. In one of them, a British Army Captain, James Holmes, offered a 40- shilling reward for the apprehension and return of a new recruit named Benedict Arnold, who had deserted his company at Albany after serving for thirteen days. The entry described Benedict Arnold as "18 years old, dark complexion, light eyes and dark hair." Ben had another Xerox sheet from the New York Gazette, dated April 5, 1758, in which Dr. Joshua Lathrop, Apothecary, offered a 40- shilling reward for the return of a duly apprenticed youth named Benedict Arnold, who had run off the join the Army.
We started a fire and laid tarp for a bed. Holding each other for warmth, we watched stars appear in the darkening sky, one by one at first, and then in constellations. I would have preferred the intimacy of a motel bed, but there were nights when Ben felt safer in the open air. On those occasions, I worried that our fire might attract the attention of the local constabulary, but Ben always picked a campsite on ground that was hidden by ridges or thickets. "There is no cure for PTSD," Ben said: "I'll always be like this." No matter. If Ben needed to sleep under the stars, that's where we'd camp.
Every morning and evening, Ben applied lotion to his left side, from shoulder to thigh: a remedy for a recurring itch in his burn-wounds. The first time I watched him, I offered to do it for him. When he brushed my hand away, we had our first lovers' quarrel. He could do it himself, he said. "I know that, Ben, but it's the duty of lovers to care for each other's bodies," I said. "It's something I need to do. If it makes you feel better about it, you can massage the kinks in my back when we're done." This became routine as a prelude to love-making in the evening, and sometimes at dawn. Now, in the light of our campfire, Ben got naked and silently waited for my touch. While I applied the ointment, Ben told me what he knew about Benedict Arnold's adventures during the French and Indian War.
The war started with a local skirmish in Pennsylvania in May 1754. Tribes fought on both sides. As the fighting escalated, the French-backed Abenaki and Ottawas won most of the battles, which spread toward Lake Champlain in the next three years. Even so, to colonists in Connecticut the war seemed remote until August 1757, when the French and their Indian allies captured Fort William Henry (on Lake George) and massacred almost 2,000 English of both genders and all ages. Alarmed by the possibility of an invasion, townsmen in New England formed city militias and marched to defend the northern frontier at Lake Champlain. Benedict Arnold was eager to fight, and Dr. Joshua Lathrop gave him permission to join the Norwichtown militia. When Hannah Arnold learned of this, she protested that sixteen-year-old Benedict was too young, and needed at home to care for his ailing mother, so he was sent home.
The war continued, and Benedict was bored with his chores in the apothecary. On March 30, 1758, he ran away from home, joined the Westchester militia, and marched with Captain Reuben Lockwood up the Hudson River toward Fort Ticonderoga. It was then that Dr. Lathrop published a reward for his return in the New York Gazette, and Benedict was back in the apothecary by mid- April. Next April (1759), Benedict answered a general call for volunteers, and joined a New York militia commanded by Captain James Holmes, who had been his platoon leader a year earlier. This time, neither his mother nor the Lathrops objected. Soon after his company reached Albany, Benedict received a letter from Hannah (his younger sister), urging him to return because their mother was gravely ill. After thirteen days of military service (during which he saw no fighting), Benedict deserted the Army and made his way home, hitching rides with farmers and sleeping in barns. That's when the notice of his desertion appeared in the New York Gazette.
"Hannah's letter to Benedict has never been published, but I've seen it in our family papers in Calgary," Ben said. "That's how I know that the news about their mother came from his sister. She was seventeen at the time."
I sidled at Ben's right, and ran my hand along rough ridges of skin on his left, dermatological reminders of Ganjigal. My cock throbbed rigid against his thigh. I nibbled at his uninjured ear and his neck. Ben sighed at the stroke of my fingers on his cock. It hardened in my hand. I cupped his scrotum, fingered his pubes, and ran my hand over his torso in a gentle massage.
Our mode of foreplay was a game of tag-team story-telling—aided and incentivized by mutual fondling. In co-constructed discourse, we imagined ourselves with Benedict Arnold on his journey back to Norwichtown. Ben started the narrative. After that, we took turns. The only rule was that each new episode in the story had to be consistent with what was told before?
BEN:
It was morning when Benedict reached Poughkeepsie—a Hudson River town noted for taverns, lumber mills, a hattery, a Dutch Reformed Church, a granary and two whale-rendering shambles. As he walked down Mill Street, he heard the sound of a drum behind him—the signature beat of Redcoat recruiters. He had followed a similar contingent, announced by a drum, when he volunteered in Norwichtown. A crowd of Dutch and English citizens gathered. The Redcoats' Sergeant read an Army proclamation, calling for recruits to fight the French and the Indians. Following that, the Sergeant called out a list of deserters, each with 40-shilling rewards for their capture. The names were alphabetical. Benedict Arnold was second on the list. He ducked into an alley and crept into one of the whale-rendering shambles. He hid beneath a low table that was loaded with chunks of whale-meat.
"What's a whale-butchery doing so far inland as Poughkeepsie?" I asked Ben.
"Whale-rendering was a major business in Poughkeepsie," Ben said. "From colonial times through to the mid-nineteenth century, seamen used tugboats with sails and paddles to tow the whales up the Hudson from Fisherman's Wharf in lower Manhattan."
"Wow! A whale going up the down-current of the Hudson," I said. I probed the tip of my finger into Ben's rectum for emphasis.
"Look it up if you don't believe me," Ben said. He tightened his sphincter around my penetrating finger. "Now that you've stopped me, it's up to you to find a way for Benedict to escape from Poughkeepsie."
JAKE:
Benedict hid beneath a table loaded with whale-meat, waiting to be cut into slices for the smokehouse. Then he realized that the shamble was empty. The butchers were on Mill Street, attentive to the Sergeant and his contingent of Redcoats. More drumbeats; and the Redcoats marched toward Main Street. Benedict heard voices of the butchers, who were returning to the shamble. He hustled toward a side door, but slipped in a pool of whale-oil and tumbled to the floor. Looking up awkwardly, he saw some leather butcher-aprons hanging on pets in a row on the wall. Some of the aprons were clean; others were stained with whale-oil and bits of cetacean flesh. He donned a filthy apron to match his cetacean-stained trousers. It served him as a disguise as he retreated from Poughkeepsie.
"Very clever exit," Ben said. He rewarded me with a bit of cock-fondling.
"Now it's your turn, Ben," I said.
BEN:
Benedict hiked south along the Hudson, mainly through woods and fields. To him the dusty road was dangerous. If Redcoats crossed his path, they were certain to detain him. His progress on foot was slow. At times he had no choice but to walk on the road. That's when he was overtaken by a Dutch farmer, driving a horse with a wagon loaded with hay. The farmer offered Benedict a ride. Benedict joined him on the bench at the front of the wagon. His name was Pieter Van Heuveln, a robust man in his forties, a sandy-haired fellow with a beard to match. Van Heuveln's brother owned a field near Poughkeepsie, he said, and he was transporting surplus hay from there to his farm. He asked if Benedict was a whale-renderer, and why he was wearing a butcher's apron.
"Now it's your turn, Jake," Ben said.
"You got me on that one, Ben," I said. He had a hand on my thigh. I guided it to my cleft. "Why would Benedict be wearing a butcher's apron in the woods? Let me think..."
JAKE:
"Young man," Van Heuveln said to Benedict, "I suggest that you roll up your apron and stash it under the bench. You won't be able to explain it if we get stopped by a Redcoat. They've started patrolling the road, because there are so many deserters traveling south to New York City. Is that where you're headed?"—"Connecticut," Benedict replied; "Norwichtown." They drove two more miles. Van Heuveln commanded the horse to stop. "Yesterday when I drove this way, there were sentries stopping travelers about a mile ahead," he said. "My advice is that you should hide yourself under the hay." Van Heuveln helped Benedict into his hiding place. He scruffled hay to conceal any trace of tunneling. Fifteen minutes later, they came to a sentry-post manned by an English Captain, his Sergeant, and two Privates.
"Your turn, Ben," I said. I fondled his cock. "Make it a good one, if you can ignore the distraction."
BEN:
One of the Redcoats, an English sergeant, brandished his sword in random directions as he approached Van Heuveln's hay-wagon. "Ye colonials shan't be trusted worth hoag-shi-it!" He exclaimed. He menaced the horse and the farmer with his sword: "Best there be nothin' mo' than hay `n this'n here wagon." Hiding under the hay, Benedict recognized the dialect as rural Somerset. In 1635, fifteen years after the Mayflower, his great-great-grandfather had migrated from Ilchester to Massachusetts Bay Colony, and with him his great-grandfather, Benedict Arnold I, at age nineteen. Benedict recognized the Somerset dialect from the speech of his grandfather, Benedict Arnold II. The Somerset Redcoat stuck his sword in the scruffled hay and shimmied it. The blade bit Benedict's thigh and drew blood. The Redcoat saw blood splotched on the sword. "Hah! I've found you out, ye Dutch scoundrel," the Redcoat shouted. "There's a body under this here hay!"
"It's your turn, Jake," Ben said, triumphant as the Sergeant. "You've got to get Benedict out of this one, or we won't have a story!" I had read Plutarch's Lives and was up to the challenge.
JAKE:
"That blood is from my horse, you idiot!" Van Heuveln raised his voice to match the Sergeant's tone. "Swinging that goddam sword around, you stabbed my horse in the leg, see here!" The Somerset Redcoat glanced at the farmer's horse. It was a rabicano-roan Rhenish draft-horse—red with white ticking—so the blood wasn't immediately visible. The Sergeant looked closer. Sure enough, it was bleeding in the left hind leg, near the rump. Quick-witted Van Heuveln: While the Redcoat probed hay with his sword, the farmer stabbed the horse with his knife, and buried the bloodied knife in a leathern fold of the rendering-apron that Benedict had stashed in a roll under the bench at the front of the hay-wagon. Van Heuveln concealed his ruse in a pretense of outrage. He huffed and puffed and compressed the horse's wound with both hands, to give the impression of a large swath of sword.
The Redcoat Captain intervened: "That's enough, Sergeant, let the hay- wagon pass." Benedict hid under the hay, holding fast to his bleeding thigh until the wagon reached Van Heuveln's farm. In the privacy of the barn, the farmer helped Benedict out of the wagon, and led him to his cabin. It was a one-room home, crudely rustic, below the side of a cliff from which a waterfall formed a clear-water pool that streamed out in a brook that ran to the Hudson River.
"You're making this too easy, Jake. I was wondering how Van Heuveln was going to get Benedict out of his pants," Ben quipped.
"In the art of story-telling, some narrative problems are hard, and some are easy," I said. "But be careful what you wish for. Once you get something started, you never know what'll happen next."
"Just don't let that Dutch farmer shove gourd in Benedict's arse," Ben said. "It's too soon for that."
"I thought there were no rules," I said. Ben probed my cleft with fingers.
BEN:
Van Heuveln helped Benedict out of his cetacean-oiled, blood-stained, sword-torn trousers. He examined the crescent-shaped sword-wound. It was shallow, but eight inches long. Fortunately for Benedict, he had escaped a direct stab by the sword. The bleeding had stopped, except for some hematonic ooze at the crescent's top horn, where the sword had first penetrated skin. Van Heuveln alternated his gaze between Benedict's wound and the enticing curves of his backside. "This here butt is gonna need some doctoring," he said. Benedict shifted his weight while Van Heuveln pulled his shorts down his legs and off. The clinical spectacle was brightened by a vaguely erotic aura, shared man-to-man.
"I've got a healing compound in my gear that should help with the wound," Benedict said. "It's a Mohegan compound made from the ground roots of three species of milkvetch." Van Heuveln eyed Benedict's his seminude figure as he bent over to retrieve a leather pouch from his side-gear. Benedict improved the scene by doffing his shirt.
Van Heuveln lit the stove to heat water in a pan. From a large leather flask, he poured smuggler's rum into two coffee mugs. "I've got to stitch up that gash, Benedict, so you'd best drink deep." While they waited for the water to boil, Van Heuveln used a second pan of water to rinse the wound. He noticed bits of straw in the gash. Benedict protested when Van Heuveln tried to extract a piece with his fingers. "Running water is what we need for this wound, Benedict," he said. He led Benedict outside to the waterfall. "The water is cool here, it might soothe the pain."
Benedict walked unsteadily. Even a tough guy needs time to recover from the shock of an eight-inch sword-gash. Van Heuveln got naked and guided him into the pool while supporting his weight. Benedict yelped when the spray of waterfall touched his wound. After this initial encounter, the cool water soothed him, and steadied his stance. Even so, he let Van Heuveln take his arm when they waded under the heavy stream of falling water. Van Hauveln carried the rum- flask with him in the waterfall. "Keep drinking until you feel woozy, Benedict," he said. Benedict liked it that Van Heuveln caressed his name in repetitions when they spoke.
Van Heuveln supported Benedict's weight during their trek back to the cabin. He left his clothes behind at the waterfall, but he didn't forget the cask of rum. He stretched Benedict out on the kitchen table, where light from the front window was brightest. He applied milkvetch to the wound. His dexterity ranged to neighboring regions of thigh and butt. Benedict closed his eyes in surrender to the touch. He gave Benedict another sip of rum, and another. He threaded a needle with silk thread and soaked it in the boiling water on the stove. Benedict groaned through clenched teeth while Van Heuveln sewed his gaped skin together. Forty stitches were counted. Van Heuveln placed a white handkerchief over the wound as a bandage, and secured it with a cloth wrapped tightly around his thigh.
"All right so I'm the expert on war-wounds and you're the expert on sex," Ben said. "It's your turn to tell what happened next."
JAKE:
Van Heuveln was impressed by the courage with which Benedict endured forty stitches. Rum dulled his pain, and made both men giddy. Van Heuveln led Benedict to his bed in a corner by the fireplace, and lay beside him.
"Is there a Mrs. Van Heuveln?" Benedict asked.
"I was hoping I'd be lookin' at `im," Van Heuveln replied. "I was hoping you'd be my Missus, at least for tonight." He fondled Benedict's butt.
"I can't give you that, Pieter," Benedict said, droozily. "But I'm grateful for your rescuin' and doctorin'. Maybe we can think of something else..." He drifted into sleep. Exhausted by shock, his rum-induced giddiness turned suddenly soporific.
"Oy, that's no fair, Jake!" Ben exclaimed. "My story was four times longer, and now you're ending it with a prick-tease."
"Who said the story is over?" I said. It wasn't a question. "Maybe I just want to see how you would end it. Imagine yourself as Benedict Arnold, and I'll be Pieter Van Heuveln."
"I AM Benedict Arnold," Ben laughed: "Benedict Arnold the Sixteenth or Eighteenth, depending on which Benedicts you're counting."
BEN:
After two hours of sleep, Benedict awoke with painful throbs in his thigh. Daylight faded into dusk. Beside him lay Van Heuveln, a sleeping bearded giant. Benedict fingered the hairs on Van Heuveln's arms and chest; hands descended to belly and pubes. Fondling his body took his mind off the pain. Van Heuveln could have forced him earlier, but didn't. Van Heuveln had saved him from arrest by the British Army, maybe even from hanging, at risk to himself, so why should he think of this hulky Dutch farmer as a threat? Benedict decided to give love a chance, even at the cost of virginity if it came to that. He bent over Van Heuveln and sucked his flaccid cock. A slight hint of smegma stirred his lust. Cock hardened in his mouth. Van Heuveln awoke. Hands pressed Benedict's shoulders and the back of his head. He didn't pull away from Van Heuveln's warm cock- swell. The first swill of splooge hit the back of his throat and slid down his esophagus unawares. Additional gobs of jism were tasted and swallowed by Benedict in a resolute act of the will.
Benedict expected no reciprocation. He underestimated Pieter Van Heuveln's passion and his capacity for fair play. He lay on his abdomen and guided Benedict's hand to his butt. As Benedict fondled, the cleft widened in silent invitation. Benedict mounted. At the sides of his legs, his skin seemed depilated, almost feminized, enfolded between the hirsute legs of Van Heusen, whose cleft-hairs stimulated Benedict's cock. Bulbourous-wet with emission, Benedict's cock was caught in the thicket of Pieter. The only direction was down the rabbit-hole. Pieter reached behind him to guide the way through his intercursal valley. Benedict pushed his glans past the sphincter. When Pieter groaned and feathers scattered from the tooth-torn pillow in which he buried his face, Benedict knew that his rod was widening a virginal shaft. Another shove; a third, and penetration was complete.
Pieter was inexperienced, but Benedict was not. He applied lessons learned from Red Feather. Pieter experienced his virginal fuck as mainly an internal massage, not without pain-busting bursts of Benedictine energy. By the time that Nature took its course, Pieter's anal canal was felt as a love-tunnel, body-and-soul-ready for the seminal ooze of Benedict.
In the aftermath, Pieter and Benedict embraced with unspoken tenderness. To give time for his sword-wound to heal, Benedict stayed on Van Heuveln's farm for a fortnight. Their sex was not without variety, but their first union determined the roles that they played as lovers. As friends, they conversed about many things—colonial politics, the French and Indian War, farming, the Mohegans, the apothecary. Three times in the past, Van Heuseln admitted, he had harbored young deserters in his farm, and fucked all of them. What was it about Benedict that turned the tables on him? They talked about mutual affection and sexual desire, but never mentioned how Pieter lost his virginity.
"How strange that something so important should go without saying," I said. Ben disagreed. Some guys are chatterboxes who talk about everything, he said, but two men in love can communicate without words.
I took this as a challenge. Like Pieter Van Heuveln in Ben's story, I lay on my abdomen and spread my legs enough to show cleft-cleavage. Ben ran his hands over me and zeroed in on the cleavage. "Go for it!" I wanted to say. Instead, I arched. Ben pushed in a finger anointed for this purpose. He got in the saddle and pushed in his glans. I couldn't help but groan. I had been out of practice for weeks. He liked that I groaned when he shafted me to size. Imitating Benedict Arnold, he fucked gentle until nature took its course. Afterward, he asked how he could reciprocate. "Just lay still and keep my back warm," I said. Sex isn't always about pay-back.