A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  Niles remains tight and distant as the minstrels reappear and trade a few more jokes and then exit gaudily, cakewalking out to There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. He holds the pose, never once laughing or commenting during the olios, not when the soubrette reappears in front of the curtain to sing On the Banks of the Wabash or the equilibrist and his lovely assistant Rose who tosses Indian clubs for him to juggle while rolling precariously along the edge of the orchestra pit atop a huge medicine ball or the tenor back with a beautiful rendition of Silver Hairs Among the Gold that has Harry teary-eyed again or even Gerta Wetzel the Human Pretzel and her grotesque bar act that has the audience wincing and turning their heads away at the most extreme of the contortions or the little fellow in leather breeches and campaign hat who is introduced as the Great Teethadore who Harry supposes is meant to be Roosevelt of New York. The little man’s routine, high-stepping in place and singing If Uncle Sam Goes Marching into Cuba, is the only one that doesn’t draw even polite applause, the local folks not sure if it is meant to be funny or patriotic. Niles is still stewing when Perfessor Scipio Africanus steps out for his lecture.

  It is Brother Bones again, only now he is wearing the Interlocutor’s frock coat, gripping on to the lapels and striking an orator’s pose. “Ladies and gennlemens, extinguished guests,” he begins, “the tropic of my discoursation tonight is entitled ‘The Enfranchisement of the Lower Orders,’ or ‘How come we gots to let them Irish vote?’ ”

  Niles snorts a little laugh through his nose.

  “It has come to my retention,” the Perfessor continues, “that this fair city—” and here he pauses to look up at the sports in the balcony, “—aint near as fair as it might be.”

  The colored sports thinks this is funny, slapping hands on the railing and on each other’s backs. “Doesn’t nobody but trash go to those shows,” Alma used to say when she was still with the family, before the incident with Niles. But maybe she only meant among her own people, for nobody in Wilmington would think of Judge Manigault’s boys or the Lassiters or the Bellamys or the de Rossets, all well represented here tonight by their younger generations, as trash. Harry misses Alma—the new one Judge has hired can’t cook much and is painful to look at, with some sort of goiter sticking out on her neck.

  “Leastways it don’t look so fair if you is hangin roun City Hall waitin fo a handout or one a them gummint jobs what used to go to members of the Caucasian Persuasion.”

  It is maybe too uncomfortably true to get much of a laugh, thinks Harry, but somebody has clearly done their advance work.

  “But what I caint unnerstan is how this great big ole city, the largest metropopulist in the Old North State, has got itself one hunnid an sixty-nine saloons and houses of ill dispute—an I been to em all, fokes—but only five mayors.”

  This breaks the house up. There are, in fact, at least five distinct slates of mayor and aldermen claiming the reins of the city, including the one the Judge is backing that just suffered defeat in a Raleigh courtroom. The Judge has no use for the bunch declared winners by the governor, and can rant for hours about the hell there will be to pay if they are allowed to serve out the full two years left in their term.

  “This yere is a sorrowful state of affairs,” says the Perfessor, “an I intends to correctify it by thowin my own hat into the ring—as soon as I pawns it back fum Mist’ Miller.”

  Niles starts to giggle. He owes money to Miller, quite a bit, and has made Harry swear never to reveal to the Judge that his son is in debt to a colored man.

  “As the sixth or seventh mayor of this fine city, I promises to do my nutmost to put a chicken in every pot—and for them what aint got no pot, we’s passin em out down to Repubikin Hindquarters tomorrow mo’nin.”

  “Ten dollars, then,” says Niles, affably, and holds his hand out without taking his eyes off the stage, as if ten dollars is nothing, as if the hundreds before, yes, it must be hundreds now, have been a passing trifle. Harry feels strange, exchanging money in a public place like a carnival tout, but digs out the bill and lays it in his brother’s hand.

  “An since the Consternation of the United States says how it’s the perjority of the people what gets to call the shots, I promises to insinuate Negro Abomination here in Wimminton!”

  Boos and hisses now, not all of them good-natured. The Perfessor holds his ground.

  “The white fokes has abominated the political spear here in Wimminton long enough, and all they done so far has been to run the jint down to its present state of putrification, their gummint caricatured by pecuniary misfeasances and gross incontinence. Now it’s our toin!”

  More boos, though a few shout Amen from the balcony. Fun is fun, but it is possible to cut too close to the bone.

  “I spose they’s a good number of you fokes out there considers youself Confederates.”

  Cheers and rebel yells answer this. Niles looks around with shining eyes as the boys downstairs, most of them his old friends, hoot and stomp their feet. Their daddy, the Judge, fought for the Great Lost Cause, as did any man of his generation with two legs and ballocks hanging between them. The comedian has touched a nerve.

  “An I is a former advocate of the Fusionist Party.”

  Booing again. The Fusionists are the alliance of carpetbagger, nigger-cosseting Republicans and poor white Populists who dominated local politics in the last election.

  “So I suggests we jine together an forms a co-lition betwixt the Confed-erates and the Fusionists—we call it the Confusionist Party.”

  It is good enough to get most of them back on his side. If people get this het up over a pretend colored politician, Harry thinks, what will they do if a real one appears?

  “Cause politics in Wimminton is the confusinist thing I ever try to wrap my nappy head around!”

  Applause now, people conceding the truth of his point.

  “If any of you fine peoples,” the Perfessor finishes, “care to hear the rest of my perambulation, I can be foun at the Abysinnian Embassy—Fo’th Street, co’ner of Bladen.”

  The Darktown address gets the Perfessor a nice laugh to part with, the curtain beginning to rise before he is fully into the wings.

  There is a battleship upon the stage.

  Coop has done it in a carriage before, but never with springs like this. Usually they creak and groan, bringing out a lot of shushing from the gal, as if anybody from the house could hear. White people’s carriages. It always give him a little thrill, to think of the Mister and maybe even the white Missus parking their bottoms where his bare black ass been only hours before, busy at what they never want to imagine. Sweet Alma is on him, big warm breasts nestling his cheeks, rolling on him slow and tight and the leather against his ass so soft and warm. And these springs. A quiet ride, that’s what it is—if he ever runs into old Wicklow again he’ll have to compliment the man. Alma grips the back of the seat and presses close to him, smelling like cinnamon, calling him Clarence, Clarence baby, but that’s okay because there’s no one else to hear, not even the coach horse like a few times in white folks’ barns, grinding their oats without interest only a stall panel away. Maybe that’s how he’ll do it, he thinks, be Coop with the Indian gals by the Fort or whatever ones you can buy in Cuba if they go, be Coop for the stripes and the brass and the white men and the whole damn world you got to bow down to, and save Clarence, save the real man, for a sweet pretty woman like Alma Moultrie.

  “Darlin,” he says to her, her big eyes drinking him in, the carriage rocking ever so slightly but with no complaint from the springs, “I been needing this for so long.”

  The battleship rocks on plasterboard seas, and there is an intake of breath followed by a hum of comment as people recognize it as the Maine. It is only scrim, of course, unpainted but with the details somehow projected from behind it. Harry smiles at the relatively crude wave effect at its base, two long cutouts of blue swells that rise and fall rhythmically against each other to create a peaceful, safe-harbor illusion.
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  The operetta begins with the tenor up on deck in his uniform and Dolly St. Claire below, isolated in a spotlight extreme stage left, trading verses as the light turns golden sunset yellow—

  Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low

  And the flickering shadows—softly come and go

  —the soubrette back home thinking of her loved one as he does the same on board in Havana’s harbor.

  The Maine. Harry has studied the pictures, has read the accounts of witnesses and experts, and entertains the possibility that it was nothing but a boiler bursting to disastrous result, an unsurprising phenomenon given the enormous pressure brought upon rivet and seam in the massive steam-powered vessels. They are floating bombs, as every engineer will agree—but a torpedo in the night and an underhanded foe make for better newspaper circulation.

  The soubrette and the tenor, called Aura Lee and Ensign Tom in the program, join in harmony for the last chorus—

  Though the heart be weary, sad the day and long

  Still to us at twilight comes love’s old song

  Comes love’s old sweet song

  “Excuse me, old boy,” says Niles, rising. “Got to put out a fire.”

  It is a joke between them, recalling the first time the Judge took them on a hunt, and to entertain themselves after the day’s killing was through and the men had begun drinking they wandered back into the thick pines and Niles started a fire in the underbrush using the magnifying glass he’d got for his birthday and they tried to put it out with their own water. Each had consumed a full canteen of lemonade during the day and felt bloated enough to irrigate a cotton field in July, but the fire had outrun their ability to pee on it and the men had to be called to avoid disaster.

  “Boys do what boys do,” the Judge had said, leading them deeper into the woods away from the smoke and the mocking hunters, “and men do what men do.” They had supposed he was going to cut a switch and have at them with it, choosing an isolated spot either to spare them public humiliation or preclude intervention if he was truly furious, but he only stopped and took his own out and proceeded to relieve himself for what seemed like the better part of an hour. No words were spoken, just the splatter of almost clear liquid onto dry leaves, the Judge staring into the distance with a placid look on his face.

  “I would hope you boys have learned something about fire today,” he said when he’d led them almost all the way back to camp, “and something about bourbon.”

  Old Uncle Zip, who had belonged to the Judge’s family before the Invasion and still served as guide for the hunting trips, came to them later with some praline candies he’d smuggled along. He sat on a log with them, sharing the candies, chuckling and shaking his head. “Don’t you boys worry none,” he told them. “The Judge boint down the backhouse at his daddy farm in Delco tryin the same speriment. An he uz years older than either of you.”

  Harry watches Niles apologize to the last patron in the row and head back up the aisle. It is unlikely he will return, concocting some story about an old friend met in the lobby the next time they see each other, an old friend in some sort of a scrape that called for immediate assistance. The invitation to join him at the show has been a pretense, of course, a maneuver to put Harry in a genial mood and in a spot where raised voices and recriminations would draw the wrong sort of attention. Niles is devious, but so consistent in his ways as to be transparent.

  Captain Sigsbee, played by the runt who looks like Roosevelt wearing a white beard and moustache, orders the young officer to undertake a vital and perilous mission—transporting a message from the President of Our Great Nation past the vicious minions of the Butcher Weyler, through the steaming Cuban jungles, and into the hand of the wily insurgent general, brave Calixto García. Captain and Ensign hold their hats over their hearts to sing The Army of the Free—

  For the people of America

  We’re marching in the van

  And will do the work before us

  If the bravest sailors can

  We will drive the despot’s forces

  From their strongholds to the sea

  And will live and die together

  In the Army of the Free—

  It is a yankee war song, of course, but Harry can feel the audience downstairs loosen to it as they hear the altered lyrics. Who does not want to be a part of the Army of the Free? A few of the colored sports in the balcony are singing along, and it is a stirring moment. As he sings, the tenor exchanges his navy jacket for a torn shirt and places a battered sombrero on his head, climbing from deck to floor on a rope ladder. His Captain sings the final verse alone, an audible gasp of amazement from the audience as the massive white hull of the Maine suddenly melts into a green and brown tangle of jungle—

  We will shield our steadfast brothers

  Neath the Flag of Liberty

  And will live and die together

  In the Army of the Free!

  The tenor swings a machete and walks in place as the jungle behind him moves in the opposite direction, creating the illusion of travel, the pianist creeping along suspensefully on the bass keys.

  A shot rings out, the tenor beginning to run in place as the orchestra leaps into a breakneck snatch of the overture from Rossini’s William Tell, the bows seeming to ricochet off the strings, a stirring, galloping chase motif as two Spanish sentries appear from the wings in pursuit. The jungle behind is nearly a blur now and Harry realizes it must be some manner of diapositive projection that can be twirled at varying speeds, operated behind the translucent hull of the “ship.” One of the Spaniards raises his rifle and fires again and the tenor, wounded in the leg, drops to the ground.

  The jungle scenery jerks to a halt, the sentries catching up to take Ensign Tom prisoner.

  “Ay, Señor,” says one of the sentries, “soon ju will weesh ju was never born.”

  Jessie has read all the books. The ones her tutors have insisted on, Miss Alcott and Mrs. Stowe, and the ones Alma gives her that she keeps hidden beneath the mattress—Charlotte Brame, Metta Victor, and her favorite, Laura Jean Libbey. There are no young ladies of color like her in the books, only a few dusky parlor maids meant to portray someone of Alma’s station, but as she reads she imagines herself in the position of the heroines and by the end of the tale Nell Lestrange or poor Minnie Taylor or Little Rosebud are no longer so pale.

  It is from the books and from Alma’s chatter and from the cautionary lectures with which her mother describes the world that Jessie has learned there is but one great adventure open to women.

  And that hers has begun.

  It was true! What her brother had said was true! He was not above teasing her, despite the moustache he had so recently grown her brother was still a boy in many ways, with a boy’s fondness for pranks and mischief. But when he had said of his handsome fellow soldier “He inquires of you constantly,” her hopes had been raised, and when the young man stood in their parlor, shy and self-effacing, her pulse had quickened so alarmingly she was afraid it would betray her, that her father, with his physician’s skill of diagnosis, would at once sense her infatuation. And she felt a fool, cheeks burning with shame, for at first the young man seemed barely to recognize her presence, exchanging polite conversation with her father, hat at rest in the crook of his arm, stiff with a military bearing that only enhanced his good looks. But his words at their parting—

  “I hope to see you again.”

  He had said that, he really had, looking straight into her eyes when he took her hand and bowed slightly to say goodbye. Junior was worried about missing the transport and Mother was in tears to see her boy go off possibly to war and Father was cramming in every last bit of advice, which gave them, Royal and Jessie—it makes her flush now, lying back on her bed, just to intertwine their names in her thoughts—gave them an almost private moment. He held her hand much longer than you would if she was wrong about it and he squeezed it, he did, she wasn’t fooling herself about that. Yes, he was saying with that squee
ze, you are right. I am too.

  They had been children together, he a few years the elder and wonderful in her eyes, sitting bareback high up on their coach horse Boots while his uncle dealt with the harness straps. He let her play with his jacks and his marbles, and pet the field animals he found and cared for awhile, and never taunted her the way some others did for being female or for her manners or for her abrupt departure from their games when it was time for the day’s lesson. And then one day it was over, Mother explaining that she was a young lady now and must learn to dwell in a more prescribed environment, to leave that easy camaraderie of bare feet and imaginary battles behind. Sometimes she would look off from her piano bench, out the window to the side yard, and he would be there, watching her. His clothes were threadbare but always clean, his shoes no doubt several generations removed from their original owner, but there was a dignity in him, calm and kindly, that stirred her in the genteel prison of her parents’ fine house.

  Junior says he’ll send an address as soon as they’ve got one and that Royal will send his own letters through Alma. Without Alma she would be lost. Father has his ideas of what is right for his daughter and he means the best for her but it is her adventure, her only one, and she knows from the books and from Alma’s lurid stories what happens to girls who ignore their heart and think only of what is sensible. His chest looked massive in the blue uniform, his arms thick and muscular, his hands—she has always loved his hands, loved to watch them at work. Once he let her help him and his brother Jubal groom Boots after a long day’s riding and they had barely spoken, just the sound of the brush on the animal’s coat, the smell of horse strong in her nose and them standing close together, hot in the crowded stall and she thought her thumping heart would explode. Jessie thinks of his arms around her and rolls over onto her front and wonders if this is wicked, wonders what it must be like to be Alma, whose life has been so filled with men, so filled with adventure compared to Mother’s placid account of her brief season of availability, married at seventeen with not a ripple of excitement between courtship and contract.