literature

One Life

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Literature Text

Joseph Lawrence was dying.

He lay on the ground, the blood blossoming from his side where the musket ball had gone in, and out again. He heard the shouts of victory around him. But he could not cheer along; he could not do anything, except wait for the coldness growing inside to consume him entirely. The thought terrified him.

Someone carried him out of the way of running feet. "We took the fort, Joseph," he heard his friend Andrew's voice above him. "Gibson, help me stop the bleeding!"

The sounds around Joseph bled into one another, and his eyes turned upward toward the heavens. The sky was so hot, but clear, like that day…

It was late September, 1776, and the sky was that clear, cool blue reserved for autumn, aside from the smoke that still rose from the previous night's fires in one direction. Joseph was sixteen, almost a man, and he was breaking the Sabbath to help his uncle, to whom he was apprenticed, pack up and leave New York for South Carolina, where Joseph's family still lived. The city was in ruins from the fire, and the war, and John Lawrence never gave fate a second chance.
Joseph walked past a gathering of people in an orchard. The agitation in the air was palpable, and their words rolled off it towards him. Apparently the British had caught a spy for Washington's army the night before. Joseph stopped to listen curiously.

"Did he have anything to do with the fire?"

"They didn't say, but that doesn't matter; they have him for spying. He'll hang today-they're already setting up under that tree. He's in the tent waiting right now with one of the officers."

Joseph had seen hangings before and had little intention of watching another. Gruesome and cruel, he thought it an unacceptable death, even for a spy. He turned away, but collided with a pale faced young woman, the tools from the box he carried scattering everywhere. Muttering his apologies he scrambled to gather them up, but it took time, and the crowd grew. By the time he retrieved them all he could not wedge his way out without spilling the tools again.

Joseph sighed. I guess this is punishment for breaking the Sabbath, he thought to himself, waiting for it all to be over and the crowd to disperse.

Before long several soldiers led a man out of one of the tents set up near the orchard. Joseph paused when he looked at the man. Surely he couldn't be the spy!
The man was still very young, not much older than Joseph himself, but he was a head taller than everyone around him. He had flaxen hair, pure blue eyes, and a handsome face marred only by a little scarring on the side of his forehead. No one would be fool enough to send a man like that into enemy territory as a spy-he stood out too much!

But there he was, and ever so calm at that, standing in the shade of a tree, whose leaves were just beginning to turn the same fiery colors as the inferno the night before. He stood there with the birds singing, the sun ever so bright, with the scent of smoke in the air and a noose in the branches, waiting for him.
The provost marshal, a sinister looking man by all accounts, called on the man to confess his crimes. Joseph listened intently to the man, who spoke with an authority that told of self confidence and experience.

"I am Captain Nathan Hale of the Continental Army. I tell you now I am satisfied with the cause I have chosen, for is the duty of every good soldier to obey the orders given to him by his Commander-in-Chief, and to be prepared at all times to meet death in whatever shape it might appear…"

The crowd began to murmur. A Captain in the army? An Educated Gentleman? How did such as he ever stoop to the level of spy? What was the reason for this man, barely more than a boy, to be here, now? Silence fell as he continued.

"My country, America, has declared itself free and independent, and to my country I am loyal, and I have committed no crimes. You soldiers of Britain are shedding the blood of the innocent; you are shedding the blood of your own brothers. Our cause is just, and if I had ten thousand lives I would lay them all down, if called to it, in the defense of this injured, bleeding country…"


Joseph jerked back into the present when Andrew all but dropped him on the ground away from the chaos, the pain from his wound and the coldness in his body reminding him of his own imminent death.

But the terror he had felt moments earlier abated as he remembered the fearless captain. He remembered remaining in the orchard for a long time before his uncle found him, fixated; all desire to flee now vanished. Only an overwhelming admiration for the man named Nathan Hale had remained.

The day he turned seventeen, when his uncle and father would allow him, Joseph enlisted in the Continental Army, the memory of Hale's loyal last words burning in his mind, guiding him through four years as a soldier.

But the last refrain of Hale's speech was clouded in Joseph's memory now, his momentary travel back to that day shattered for the last time. He was grasping at the words he had never forgotten before, he had to remember before the cold and the darkness closed in. He had to take them with him.

"Joseph, I'm sorry," Andrew's face appeared above him, looking tired and drawn. "We can't stop the bleeding, it's—it's such a damn shame."

"No," Joseph whispered, "No shame."

He smiled. There they were –he remembered the words now. He spoke them aloud without even knowing, as the face he saw above him changed from Andrew's to Hale's.


"'I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.'"
So I wrote this story for class a while ago and I've not put it up sooner because at my professor's request I submitted it to a literary contest. I lost, so I can put it up now without anyone freaking out and saying "but we wanted to put it on the university site!" or something.

It's pretty straightforward, so I'll not say much more about it.
© 2011 - 2024 Imalshen
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mandalorianmedjai's avatar
isn't it strange how one man who died 235 years ago and who many people don't even know about can still give those who admire him such incredible strength and courage? where would we be without our captain hale? :)
this is beautiful. it made me wanna give nathan a hug ...then again, when DON'T i want to give nathan a hug :D lol
my fav part is "No," Joseph whispered, "No shame." such a beautiful line... :)