A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  “You’re an insult to the cranium, Doc,” says Rev Bowers. “Suds, lay one out for our scrapper here.”

  “Don’t think I could handle any liquor now,” says Hod. “Feels like I ought to keep what wits I got left as clear as I can.”

  More laughter then and Red Gibbs thumping him some more which makes Hod want to deck him and then Niles is on his feet with a toast.

  “To Young McGinty,” he says. “As game a warrior as ever stopped a punch.”

  They drink several more rounds then, laughing, Niles imitating the various suckers they have skinned that night, while Hod props his elbows on the bar and holds his head in his hands. He feels like he might vomit. It’s late, only Jeff Smith’s party still in the Nugget, the wood stove and the whiskey warming them.

  “And the sheeny and his fat Paddy manager,” says Rev Bowers, cheeks glowing, “think they’ve made a killing, tickets paid back to Frisco, when the steamers are so afraid of Jeff it won’t cost him a penny.”

  “We have an arrangement,” Jeff Smith corrects him. “An understanding between business parties. Fear has nothing to do with it.”

  They are halfway to the door, leaving Hod alone on the stool, when he remembers and calls out.

  “Mr. Smith?”

  They all turn as if they’ve forgotten he is there.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  He sees Niles winking to Rev Bowers.

  “In trade,” says Jeff Smith.

  “Trade?”

  Smith moves his eyes to Addie Lee, leaning in the doorway of her little crib, watching with no expression. “You’ll keep track, won’t you Sparrow?”

  She shrugs and slips behind the hanging flag.

  A SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT

  White folks’ hair is easy. Dorsey never stops wondering at the way it just grows out straight from their heads, offering itself up to be trimmed. And the shaving, for the ones like Judge Manigault who don’t keep a beard or moustache, you just pull the skin taut and slide with the blade. It never curls back into the pores to make a bump or get infected like his own. If only they would keep their mouths from moving while you try to work.

  “Humiliation.” The Judge sits in Dorsey’s chair, lathered up next to Mr. Turpin who owns the pharmacy, who is getting his trim from Hoke. Old Colonel Waddell waits near the door, his face hidden behind the Messenger. “We have attempted to hold on to our heritage, to our custom of living,” says the Judge, “and we have failed. So now we must be humbled.”

  “I don’t know, Judge,” says Mr. Turpin as Hoke clips out the hair in his ears. Hoke is a good boy, stay on his feet the whole day if needs be, only sometimes he forget and commence to hum while the gentlemen are still talking. “You scratch under the surface just a bit, you’ll find somebody making a profit on it. That’s what politics is all about.”

  “Russell got sufficiently fat before he was governor. But this appointing of half our aldermen—unprecedented. Another chance to force us to eat crow. I believe the yankees are behind him.”

  “But our own Supreme Court—”

  “Failed in their duty to protect the citizens who maintain it.” The Judge is one of those who keeps his own shaving mug here at the shop, has a favorite razor. He won’t let Hoke shave him, good as the boy is. Dorsey, of course, is famous at the Orton, and hasn’t drawn blood since he was a novice.

  “Lex ita scripta est,” mutters the Colonel, lowering his newspaper a bit. “That was their verdict.”

  “The law as it is written,” the Judge scowls, “is not meant to serve scoundrels.”

  Dorsey cuts the guests at the Orton Hotel—merchants from around the state, politicians, even Governor Russell once when he was still running a dairy across the river—but many of the finest white gentlemen who live in the city come to be trimmed here as well. The Judge is a daily customer, as is Mr. Turpin. Colonel Waddell wears a full gray mane of hair and beard, like he did before the Emancipation, when he was known as a real fire-breather. Looks just like the Jeff Davis statue they put up in Raleigh, and only wants a bit of neatening up once a week. He waxes the tips of his moustache at home.

  “They’ve got the governor and they’ve got the numbers,” says Mr. Turpin. “The way they’ve got it fixed, it’ll take a revolution to push them out.” Mr. Turpin is thin on top, and Hoke is carefully spreading what’s left with his comb to cover the scalp.

  “We must not bow to the tyranny of numbers,” says the Judge. “What if tomorrow the Sprunts decide to bring in five thousand Chinamen to bale their cotton? Should we be ruled then by Chinamen? I think not.”

  Dorsey waits, razor in hand, for the Judge to stop moving his jaw.

  “Humiliation, I tell you,” the Judge goes on. “Russell and his gang sold the farmers and the illiterate mountainfolk a bill of goods, they bought the colored vote with bribes and favors and white men’s positions, and now he means to rub our noses in his success. He means to ruin this city.”

  Dorsey crosses to put a couple towels into the steamer. When the Judge gets going like this it’s best to wait him out. He’s been known to jump to his feet and pace, so you have to be careful with the cutting edges.

  “The Redeemers have worked wonders in other states,” says Turpin, soothingly. “South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana—”

  “Where they’ve looked the thing in the eye and dealt with it.”

  “It could happen here, Judge. And very soon.” Hoke is whisking the back of the pharmacist’s neck. “Somebody’s just got to put the thing in motion.”

  “We’ve got them on the police force now.” The Judge shakes his head violently, ignoring the lather on his face. Dorsey taps a couple drops of witch hazel into his palm, holds it under his nose. Mrs. Scott brews up a batch of it for him and he has Hoke pour it into the store-bought bottles when they get low. The Judge swivels his chair around to face Mr. Turpin, getting himself indignant. “Do you think they’ll arrest their own? Not on your life. And if they do, they’ve got the juries packed and the darky walks out free as daylight and twice as bold as he was before.”

  It is the gentlemen’s right to choose their topic, of course, but Dorsey always prefers sport to politics. He’s one of the sponsors of the Mutuals, and can hold the floor on the relative merits of every ballplayer in New Hanover County, black and white. He can talk horses, he can talk Bible if there’s a man of God in the chair, he can even recite The Arrow and the Song if pressed into service. Politics, though, especially the Wilmington variety, make him sweat.

  “Plato believed that men should be governed by philosopher kings,” Colonel Waddell observes. “I fear we have drifted away from that ideal.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” says the Judge, “that if it serves the interests of these Fusioneers or Repopulists or whatever they’re labeling themselves now, we’ll have women’s suffrage thrown into the mix.”

  “Women, white women, have the sense to listen to their husbands’ counsel,” says Turpin. “Giving them the vote would be redundant.” There is still a separate entrance for ladies at the Orton. Dorsey cannot imagine them in politics—the harangues and heated confrontations, the spitting and swearing. Women are above all that, made to bind up what the men have broken.

  The Judge snorts and lather flies. “Well I daresay they wouldn’t have given the city over to carpetbaggers and Hottentots.”

  Mr. Turpin laughs. “That’s what the illustrious Mrs. Felton would have us believe.”

  “A woman who writes,” Colonel Waddell muses behind his paper, “is like a singing dog. The fascination is not that she does it well, but that she does it at all.”

  Dorsey always starts around the ears, tiny little strokes to outline the sideburns. The Judge has a large mole on the left side he has to be careful of.

  “The key,” says the Judge, finger jabbing underneath the cloth to make a point, “is to have some sort of qualification as to who is allowed to vote. That’s what the Founders envisaged. Responsible government issues from informed voter
s.”

  “You’re suggesting a literacy test.”

  “That is one possibility, yes.”

  “An awful lot of them can read now. I see them at my store with the—what’s it called, Dorsey? Your colored paper?”

  “The Record, suh.” Dorsey advertises in the Manly brothers’ paper for his other shop, where they cut colored hair.

  “Do you read it?”

  “No, suh. Don’t have the time.”

  “Well, there is a group over in Brooklyn got them a bit more leisure,” Turpin winks to the Judge in the mirror. “Unless it’s to wrap fish in, I see an awful lot of em look like they read it.”

  “I would not propose that puzzling out the limited vocabulary displayed in a colored daily constitutes literacy,” says the Judge. Dorsey can do his neck if he’s steady. “If we were to take a section of the state constitution and have the voter demonstrate his competence by explaining its meaning—”

  Mr. Turpin laughs. “We’re going to do that with every voter in the city?”

  “Selectively, yes.”

  “Selectively.” Hoke is bending close to clip out Turpin’s nose hairs.

  “We administer the test to those whom we—we suspect of being illiterate, on a ward-by-ward basis.”

  “I would suspect that half the poor whites in Dry Pond might fail that test, Judge. Including a goodly number of loyal Democrats.”

  “Well, of course, if there is a tradition of voting in the family—”

  “Record turnout in the last election, Judge—”

  “Selling your vote for a glass of whiskey does not qualify as a tradition. What I’m suggesting is that if you can prove your grandfather was a registered voter—”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “—you would be passed unchallenged at the polling place.”

  “The Louisiana clause,” adds Colonel Waddell. The old gentleman been in office himself, before Dorsey’s day, rumored to be a great one for the oratory. He is always very quiet in the shop, but well-spoken, using words like impecunious and recondite that Dorsey makes sure to look up in his dictionary when he gets home and then slip into his conversations at Lodge meetings.

  “Of course, given the present infestation here and in Raleigh, such an amendment to our statutes would stand no chance.”

  “I wouldn’t give it up so easily, Judge. When his back is pressed to the wall, the true white man is capable of—”

  Dorsey catches the Judge’s look in the mirror, just a tiny nod of warning to Mr. Turpin. Hoke is rapidly snipping air with his scissors, made nervous by the turn of the conversation.

  “What?” says Mr. Turpin. “Dorsey? Dorsey doesn’t mix in politics, do you, Dorsey?”

  “I try to keep my nose out of em.”

  Hoke shakes the cloth out and Mr. Turpin stands. “What I tell you? The good ones know enough to steer clear of it.”

  “Almost all absurdity of conduct,” Colonel Waddell observes, “arises from the imitation of those we cannot resemble.”

  Turpin steps a little closer. Dorsey can feel him over his shoulder, watching him do the Judge’s cheeks. “You planning to vote this coming election, Dorsey?”

  The Judge cocks his head. Colonel Waddell lays the newspaper in his lap, waiting to hear the answer. Hoke retreats to get the broom. Dorsey always voted, ever since he was old enough, but nobody made any fuss about it till lately.

  “No, suh,” he lies softly. “Don’t suppose I will.”

  “If the rest of your people show that kind of good sense, it’ll stay peaceful in this city.” It sounds a bit like a threat, but he can see Mr. Turpin is smiling in the mirror, gently tapping the thin layer at the top of his head with his fingers. “Say, Dorsey, how come a good-looking young fellow like you isn’t hitched yet?”

  Dorsey flicks lather off the blade, rinses it clean in the pan. “Oh, I been studyin it, Mr. Turpin. Got a gal picked out.”

  “That’s good to hear.” The pharmacist winks. Dorsey always hates it when they wink, especially if there’s a nasty story coming after. “Before we know it you’ll have a whole tribe of pickaninnies to support.”

  Dorsey turns away, strops the blade hard on the leather. “Whatever you say, Mr. Turpin.”

  “The tyranny of numbers,” grumbles the Judge. “If we bred like damned jackrabbits we might stand a chance.”

  Mr. Turpin leaves two nickels on the counter and turns at the door. “Don’t you worry, Judge,” he calls. “Plans are being formulated. Prominent citizens are involved.” With that he steps out onto the street, setting his hat over his haircut before the breeze can muss it.

  Colonel Waddell settles into the next chair as Hoke flaps the cloth out and drapes it around his neck. “If a move to remedy the situation is afoot,” he says, frowning, “I have not yet been informed of it.”

  The Judge seems lost in thought, and the lather has been sitting on his face long enough. Dorsey reaches two fingers under but doesn’t quite touch him. “Chin?”

  The white man grunts and tilts his head back for the razor.

  Miss Loretta envies the colored girl her fingers. Her own were never long enough, never nimble enough to do justice to Chopin, her left hand adequate at tempo but her right fumbling to arpeggiate his harmonies. She had to think too far in advance, worrying about what pitfall lay ahead, and would lose the emotional thread of the music. But this one, Jessie, glides over the keys, rocking back and forth slightly as she plays the nocturne, closing her eyes for the darker passages and talking softly to her teacher, not so much distracted from the music as allowing it to take on the color of her mood.

  “I love him so much.”

  She does not mean Chopin.

  Miss Loretta does not allow herself to smile. She can recall making much the same statement, in much the same desperate tone, to old Aunt Kizzy while the servant combed her hair out at night. “Chile,” Kizzy would say, shaking her head, “you got yo life all in a knot.”

  “Being in love is a state to be envied,” Miss Loretta responds, flipping through the sheet music in her lap as Jessie lets the final tone decay. “Let’s go back to the études—try the Number Three.”

  The colored girl picks out a single E, hums it, then rocks forward into the Tristesse.

  She has worked so diligently, this one, advancing between lessons much more than she does during them, working at the purely technical exercises without complaint, listening to criticism and acting upon it gracefully. But there is something more, beyond what application and hours at the bench can achieve. She has the gift.

  “This is a stroll through a beautiful wooded glade,” Professor Einhorn said once when Miss Loretta, in her own student days, was struggling through one of the lovelier preludes. “You, young lady, are pulling up stumps.”

  She had been the favorite target of his epigrams, and after each she would press on all the more doggedly with her inadequate digits, clenching her jaw, humiliation roiling within her but never allowing it to color her performance. Not like this one—

  “My father will never accept him,” says Jessie, shaking her head as if it is a new realization, something the music has just informed her of, and not the recurring opera seria that has accompanied every lesson this year.

  “That is what fathers are for, I’m afraid.”

  “If he had any idea of how I feel, he’d lock me in the attic.”

  Jessie plays the agitato departure in the middle of the étude, frowning at the keys. Miss Loretta has never thought of colored living in homes with attics before, but the Luncefords are quality people, Episcopalians, Jessie’s father a graduate of a northern medical college and her mother one of the doyennes of what Daddy calls “sepia society.” They have a lovely house on Nun Street, keep a carriage and a servant girl.

  “You have a well-developed sense of drama, Jessie.”

  “But I’m serious!”

  “I do not doubt that for a moment.”

  Miss Loretta’s father scolded and harang
ued but never took her seriously. Nor did Professor Einhorn, constantly bemoaning of her lack of Empfindsamkeit. Men. Self-important men, towering edifices of consequence. At least now when Daddy interrupts her playing with one of his perambulating tirades she is allowed to continue throughout his aria. Her piece must be slow and unobtrusive, of course—once she accompanied his outburst with the Heroic Polonaise and was cursed for mocking him. I am forty years of age, she thinks, and my father treats me like a dim schoolgirl.

  Jessie leans back as she begins the return, softening her touch, the notes achingly beautiful, the first pale rays of sunshine after a storm, and looks to Miss Loretta with tears in her eyes. Sometimes it is the composition, sometimes her own sixteen-year-old’s romantic anguish—it does not much matter. She is not the singer that little Carrie was and has none of her ambition, but she is a channel for the music the way the truly gifted ones are. A prodigy, yes, though any of the colored girls who can make their way through a classical piece is labeled thus, and the term devalued. With this one Miss Loretta has to concentrate to be of any help, to resist the urge to stop judging and surrender to mere listening. The music is always of a piece when Jessie plays.

  “I know you’re using them all, Miss Butler,” Professor Einhorn said to her once, “but I’m only hearing the white keys.”

  It is, at times, difficult not to be jealous. The girl coming in at twelve and playing, flawlessly, the Minute Waltz, and when her teacher professed amazement saying, innocently, “But Miss Loretta, it’s a song.” And now—

  “Idiocy!” thunders Daddy from the next room.

  He stalks in waving the Messenger. Jessie leaps immediately into the Number Four, attacca il presto as Chopin himself suggested, the piece she likes to call “Off to the Races.”

  “ ‘There is no gain,’ ” Daddy reads in the voice he uses to quote men he thinks to be fools, “ ‘that may be won through the peaceful machinations of diplomacy and commerce equal to that which is ripped from the enemy in the grisly pursuit of war!’ Have you ever heard such rot in your life?”