There is one Hessian who was never captured by Washington’s forces at Trenton. He retreated from battle. He made his own journey across the Delaware River, back into Pennsylvania, into the thick, snapping woods. He never even wanted to be a soldier. He liked writing children’s stories, albeit of the insane variety. For example, a young child’s frostbitten toe detaches itself and wanders off to look for a whore; a headless horse who only knows its way back to Frankfurt; a woman with four sets of breasts who decides for some unexplained reason to leave her family and become a cow to a rich and terminally ill farmer. You get the gist. The Hessian, after escaping the Continental Army, found himself in a small town where he took on the identity of a local portraitist who had gone missing (it was later theorized by local historians that the missing portraitist had gotten so drunk one night before Christmas, he wandered off into the Pennsylvanian cold and froze into the bramble—his corpse was mistaken for a missing Continental soldier by the name of Thibbs. Where Thibbs ended up wasn’t the concern of the local historians.) In any case, the Hessian lived many years as the missing portraitist in the small town. Nobody even questioned his diminished talents. He was surely not the same caliber of portraitist he was before he went missing. War changes things, they admitted. The other odd thing was he seemed to live on forever, which also wasn’t questioned, as most of the townsfolk died as they’re wont to do. He lives there still. He will never die. You can get your portrait done by him still for colonial prices. He’s lived forever but still doesn’t understand inflation. His portraits, on the other hand, have taken on a compelling yet unknowable element. They are surely the work of a talent burdened by the absence of any end.