A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  His facility with the two tongues, his lector’s erudition, has led the Junta to employ Quiroga as an interpreter for their overtures to the American command. But the latest meetings on the vast porch of the Tampa Bay have been polite in protocol alone, the Junta being told in no uncertain terms to tend to their flag-waving and leave military intrigue to the professionals. Undaunted, they have convinced themselves of dire Spanish plots to reveal details of local troop maneuvers, when in fact the schedule of Don Vicente’s trolley service into Tampa City is harder to divine than the open and predictable drilling of Shafter’s regiments. No doubt the Crown has spies in Tampa, feverishly translating the reports of the flock of war correspondents that hovers about the palatial hotel waiting for something, anything, to happen, but Aragon the puro artist is not likely to be one of them.

  It shamed him, the American officers smug in their rocking chairs, cocktails in hand. Arturo Quiroga knows when he is being condescended to. He wanted to tell the yanquis to keep their ten thousand men and send instead fifty thousand rifles with twenty rounds of ammunition each, to tell them that with these Cuban patriots would control the country in a week. It made him wish he was a true orator, not just a medium, a channel for other men’s words. Martí—he met the man at the Pedrosos’ boarding house just after the Spanish tried to poison him—Martí should have been on the porch of the Tampa Bay Hotel. “The belly of the Beast” Martí called America in his speech at the Liceo, the speech praised or blamed for starting the Ten Years’ War, “he vivido en la barriga del Monstruo del norte,” and offered no apologies when the quote was picked up by the yanqui papers. He was a little man, slight of build and stature, but the voice, the eyes—he spoke and every Cuban in Ybor became a believer. Quiroga was there listening on the stage with his own brother, Pablito, not much more than a boy, who was moved to buy a pistol and join Martí’s fated expedition of ’95, and gunned down in Dos Ríos at the side of the Apostle.

  He is no orator though, Quiroga, only a channel for other men’s words, other men’s ideas. The torneadores have their favorites, books they love to hear again and again, Mr. Dickens and Monsieur Dumas fils prominent among these, but occasionally he is able to widen their scope, to introduce them to authors and ideas of his own choosing. It is a tiny act of persuasion, an act not of revolt but of subversion. “Each serves as he may,” said Martí, standing not an arm’s length away from him in the boarding-house parlor, “and ideas may triumph while weapons fail.” Are they listening, these bowed heads, stacking, pressing, rolling, binding, cutting, fingers ever moving, these human machines spread at the benches below his platform? And if listening, do they intuit a connection, decipher a metaphor, find instruction or reassurance in the lives of those fictive characters? Or is it all just a story, buzzing over their heads?

  Quiroga is beginning a novel today, and has some question as to how its content will be received. Don Vicente Martínez-Ybor, though a Spaniard by birth, is said to be sympathetic to La Causa, allowing on the premises the collection of monies to arm and organize the revolt, Quiroga faithfully tithing his ten percent like most of the others. But Don Vicente’s opinions on organized labor are less tolerant, the move from Key West blatantly an anti-unionist stratagem, and though the old man rarely enters the factory these days, his ears, as they say, are long. Freedom, true freedom, is not only a matter of what flag flies above your head. After the star and the triangle are raised over Havana, the struggle will truly begin—

  The fingers keep moving.

  Quiroga opens the new volume gently, attempting not to crack the spine.

  “Germinal,” he announces. “Escrito por Don Émilio Zola. Capítulo Uno.”

  A GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT

  The White Admiral sits in a wicker chair in his quarters on the flagship of the victorious Fleet. He is dressed in white, with a white head of hair and a thick white moustache, resplendent against the stateroom’s dark, polished wood. This could be a room in a grand hotel, the Olympia so huge that they are barely rocked by the waters of the Bay. The White Admiral crosses his hands and rests them against his middle, while the smaller brown men sit facing him with their hats in their laps, afternoon rays slanting into their eyes from the skylight above. One of them, the exiled General, ventures to speak in careful Spanish.

  He congratulates the White Admiral on his great naval victory.

  The White Admiral smiles and nods when this is translated for him.

  “We have come,” the Admiral says in English, looking the exiled General directly in the eye, “to lift the yoke of Spanish rule from the backs of the Philippine people.”

  Diosdado sits behind and to the side of the White Admiral, hired by the Americans to help if the exiled General cannot say what he wishes in Spanish and needs to revert to Tagalog. But Aguinaldo’s Spanish is adequate if not elegant, and Diosdado only listens.

  The exiled General expresses his admiration for the grandeur and beneficence of the American nation. It is a courtly dance, between partners who have been only recently introduced.

  The White Admiral asks if the exiled General will not soon return to his country and lead his people against the Spanish forces still occupying it.

  “My people are willing,” replies the General, “but lack arms with which to demonstrate their patriotism.”

  The White Admiral and the exiled General discuss details of bringing arms into the country. A quantity of Mausers and ammunition are already here, carried up from Corregidor Island, and many more can certainly be purchased and shipped from Hongkong with the help of the U.S. Consul. An aide to the White Admiral, standing discretely to one side and speaking as if it is a somewhat insignificant consideration, mentions the sum of seven American dollars per rifle, of thirty-three dollars and fifty cents for a thousand rounds.

  The exiled General is soft-spoken and polite as always, his expression guileless. Did his face look like this, wonders Diosdado, when the Bonifacios were led away to be slaughtered?

  “I must tell you,” says the General to the White Admiral, “that there is some uneasiness among my fellow patriots, men who worry that once the Spaniard is vanquished and we are weakened by the struggle, your country may decide to replace them as our masters.”

  The White Admiral nods pleasantly. The floor of his stateroom is littered with wicker baskets overflowing with congratulatory cables and letters and gifts. There is a rumor that his cook travels into the blockaded city by launch every day, to buy fresh fruit. He answers slowly in English, as if reassuring a child frightened by a storm.

  “America is wealthy in both land and resources,” he says. “It has no need of colonies.”

  Pepito Leyba, younger even than Diosdado, translates for the General, managing to transmit both the White Admiral’s condescending yet friendly demeanor and his lack of specificity.

  “This is reassuring for me to hear,” responds the exiled General. “My colleagues, however, will be more reassured, more likely to rally to our cause, if they could read of your intentions in an official statement.”

  “An official statement like the one you signed with Spain,” counters the Admiral, sitting back on his wicker throne, “that stipulated your permanent exile?”

  There are men, friends of Diosdado’s, who will never forgive the General for the Treaty of Biak-na-Bato. To accept money from the Spaniards, to accept amnesty and exile, even if—

  The General appears unperturbed. “The Spaniards did not honor the Treaty,” he says flatly.

  “And so you will see,” smiles the White Admiral, “that the word of honor of an American is more positive, more irrevocable, than any piece of paper.”

  The exiled General flicks his eyes to Diosdado when Leyba says the word irrevocable.

  “Manatili,” Diosdado translates. Leyba speaks Spanish, French, English, Tagalog, and who knows what else, but perhaps the General is asking for more than a word here. Do not trust these people, Diosdado thinks, and hopes the thought is transmitted through his eyes.
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  The General’s expression does not change. The White Admiral either will not or has not the power to promise their independence if Filipinos lead the fight to expel the Spaniards. If they do not fight, however, do not show their willingness to kill and be killed, how much more likely, with German warships hovering in the bay, with the Japanese so rapidly building up their own navy, that the yanquis will choose to stay?

  “We must proceed with the liberation of the islands,” says the White Admiral, “and must act toward each other as friends and allies.”

  On being introduced, Diosdado feigned that he had never before met the General or Pepito Leyba, had shaken hands formally and stepped back into his place. After the General is gone the Americans will ask him for his impressions, and he will say “I think he believes everything he said.” And then later he will report to the General and be questioned and say he thinks the Americans have not yet made up their minds. And though both statements are obvious and true he will be a spy, and neither side will give him their complete trust. The Americans have destroyed the Spanish fleet, the dreaded gunboats that precluded any chance of Filipinos attacking Manila, their blackened hulks still visible in the shallows off of Sangley Point. The Americans have taken the Cavite Arsenal and have their big guns trained on the Spanish garrison within the Walled City of Manila. There is no saying how they will fare in Cuba, the liberation force as yet to leave American shores, but here, here they have been godlike in the speed of their devastation. If the White Admiral lacks guile, it is because up to this moment he has not required it. Whereas Aguinaldo—

  “I am willing to sacrifice my own life in this great undertaking,” says the exiled General, “as is every true patriot in our nation.”

  In the pilot boat on the way out the American ensign who came for him was much amused by the crowd of lanchas being poled back and forth with their loads of zacate fodder and piled stems of bananas.

  “Look,” he winked to Diosdado, “it’s the Filipino Navy.”

  The White Admiral rises above them, an avuncular smile on his face, and offers his hand.

  “Go and start your army,” he says.

  THE LOST WORLD

  Tampa is a fever dream.

  They wake to a fusillade of noise, every regiment on the Heights with its own drummer up and driving the sticks, men cursing on their ponchos before the bugle’s first assaulting note. The chigger bites along Royal’s ribs remind him where he is. The scramble for socks, the insult of the woolen pants and he’s out with the others, the canvas of the tents whiter than the sand, ghostly rows like headstones in the failing wisp of moonlight. There is no warning of the heat to come. Royal pulls the flannel shirt on, sits to wrestle with his boots. Junior crawls out from the tent, then Little Earl, looking surprised, as he always does, to find himself awake at this hour. No one speaks. The air is bitter with the coffee Stewpot Sims has begun to boil on his cookfire, one of a half-dozen glowing throughout the camp. The 25th stumble forward to be counted.

  Sergeant Jacks knows his book and expects the same from you. His eyes remain calm, even when chewing on some rookie who does not know his left from his right or his bunghole from a bayonet. He allows them to drill without their blouses due to the heat, except for the one day the company dogged it so bad during the morning close-order routine the lieutenant let him lead them on a five-mile jaunt around the camp weighed down with full kit, Merriam packs, and three days’ provisions.

  “You think this is bad,” he said during one of their pauses to see if a fallen man was dead or just resting with his face in the sand, “wait till we get to Cuba. They got your steam heat.”

  There is a rumor that their winter-issue uniforms will be replaced soon, but that seems the unlikeliest of all the many stories contaminating the Heights. Yes, the Army might load them into their transports tomorrow or send them to China to pacify the yellow hordes or make peace with the Dons and call off the whole Cuba invasion, but the idea of Supply, in this fly-ridden dump of men and munitions, coming up with anything to make a common soldier’s burden lighter is unimaginable.

  Sergeant Jacks wears his blouse though, all day long, service stripes halfway down to his wrists. No one has ever seen him take a drink of water, or step away to relieve himself, through Coop won a two-dollar bet the day the sergeant allowed himself to squash a mosquito crawling up his neck.

  “Man eat bricks and shit gravel,” Coop will say when the sergeant is out of earshot. “Probly kilt more nigger privates than he ever did Indians.”

  Jacks calls their names and the men bark out in response and then he announces Sick Call, which nobody who can stand dares report for since the Doc has taken to dosing all internal complaints with a ginger-root concoction that cleans you out, and not gently, at both ends.

  “We have the healthiest regiment in the camp,” muses Sergeant Jacks with the tone in his voice that substitutes for a smile. “Fall out.”

  They make their way to the chow-line then, and as Junior is first it falls on him to do the honors.

  “What have we today?” he says, raising his voice to be heard by all. “Sowbelly with no bread or sowbelly with no eggs?”

  “No breakfast,” says Stewpot Sims. Thick, stumplike Sims, who if he even hears the kicking anymore does not respond to it. “Coffee if you want it.”

  Royal dips in, coffee scalding in his pint can, dark coffee this morning, with an acid taste that lingers for an hour after but is better than nothing. He tried to drill one day with nothing in his stomach, hung over from a night in Ybor, and by noon his legs were jelly.

  “No breakfast. Maybe they packed it all up on the transports, we be leaving today.” Little Earl is the source of many camp rumors. Royal likes to hear how they have grown, have sprouted arms and legs by the time they’ve circled back to the company at the end of the day.

  “Maybe it just smelt so bad they had to bury it,” says Corporal Puckett, one of the veterans from Fort Missoula.

  “Not yet, they haven’t,” says Coop. “Don’t no hole get dug in this camp but what I digs it. Something to eat got buried, I’d know.”

  The men laugh. Coop is the sergeants’ favorite goat, though there is nothing visibly wrong with his soldiering. He jumps when jump is called for and flops on command. Something in his eye, though, the way he stands, an attitude. I am here, it says. Royal and the other greenhorns all with their shoulders pinned back, chins down, guts pulled in, trying to be invisible to the officer of the moment while Coop stands there taking up his space as if it belonged to him. As if he still belonged to himself and not the 25th Regular Infantry, Colored.

  “You ever been hanged, Cooper?” Sergeant Jacks asked him just the other day at muster, body almost pressed up against the taller private.

  “Not yet, Sergeant.” Voice innocent of tone, but steady.

  “Must be an oversight.”

  The men who smoke keep one eye on the bugler, Kid Mabley, trying to burn one down before he brings the metal to his lips. The sand crabs are up now, skittering from hole to hole as if their business, whatever it might be, needs finishing before sunrise. Royal forces the coffee down and takes a few steps in place. The blisters are still there, no chance to heal, but not too angry yet. The worst is taking the boots off at the end of the day, something Junior and he help each other with, comparing the size and state of their raw spots.

  Dellum from Company C moves close to him. “Any tobacco on you, rookie?”

  “Don’t use it.”

  “That’s no reason not to have it.”

  “I get hold of any,” says Royal, “I’ll let you know.”

  The veterans ragged them pretty hard at first, pushing at the new recruits to see how far they’d give, but there was nothing mean in it. Except with Coop sometimes, coming back weary from whatever punitive duty he’s caught that day, Coop will go right back after them. Even Scout, the little spaniel they keep for a mascot, spoiled on mess-hall scraps and stolen biscuits, knows enough to slink away when he sees Coop
with that look on his body. Once he held Little Earl by the throat so hard, over a remark that had nothing to do with him, that there were bruises the next day, bruises that showed on a black man’s neck.

  At a nod from the lieutenant, Kid Mabley blasts into Drill, humping his chest down hard to let the whole camp hear. Mabley is the best on the Heights and knows it, all the other buglers, even the white boys, coming by in the evenings to trade licks with him, holding their campaign hats over the horns to mute their playing in case someone wants to get a head start on their shuteye. No shots have been fired in camp so far, that’s what town is for, but a few men have been left bloody in the sand.

  “Spaniards don’t get him,” says Dellum, a nervous sleeper, eyeing Mabley as he starts away, “Imonna kill that boy.”

  Tampa is a fever dream, fever rising with the sun.

  The Krag, even unloaded, makes it seem real. The weight of it in his hands, the heat of the barrel once the sun comes up, the way every action must be altered to accommodate the ever-present fact of it makes Royal feel like a soldier. Sergeant Jacks makes sure the Krag never leaves their grasp from the instant drill begins till Kid blows Recall. They are drilling by companies today, Junior and Royal and Little Earl in Company L marched with most of the other recruits, four abreast, two miles south of camp skirting the City of Tampa to end up in the dunes facing Davis Island across the bay.

  “Company halt!”

  To the east, in a jumble of masts and stacks and flagpoles, is the mongrel fleet of coastal packets and converted yachts that word has it will take them to fight the Spanish. Some of them. The men are winded from keeping up with Sergeant Jacks, but stand as steady as they can at right-shoulder arms, waiting. Royal casts a glance at the surrounding dunes, deep pockets of shadow forming among them as the sun begins to creep over the horizon, and wishes there had been something to eat.