A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  There has been a lot of talk during the long, stomach-heaving days at sea as to where exactly the islands are and what the nature of the people on them is.

  “They’re just like Cuba and Porto Rico,” insists Corporal Grissom, who has never been to either of those places, “only farther away.”

  “It’s part of China,” says Private Falconer, “only the Papists got there before the other religions.”

  “You sit under a tree,” says Sergeant LaDuke, “and take a nap, and when you wake up your lunch has dropped down into your lap.”

  Runt, before they booted him out for being too small and too young, showed them the islands on a map he got hold of somewheres.

  “Jesus, lookit em all,” said Neely, impressed. “We got to liberate every one of those?”

  “We just wrap up the big one here,” said Runt, poking his finger onto an island called Luzon, “and the rest of em tip over like dominoes.”

  Manigault strolls by them, wearing a white duck uniform and white canvas shoes like the navy officers.

  “Dig in, fellows,” he says jauntily. “This will have to last you quite a while.”

  “We been hearing plenty talk here, Lieutenant,” says Corporal Grissom. “There was some sailors at the wharf who see everything that comes on the wire, and their scut is that after what Dewey done to the Spanish fleet it’ll be over before we even get there.”

  Manigault gives him a pitying smile, then nods toward an enormous roast pig being carried past on a litter by two barefoot Kanaka men.

  “There is no feast,” he says, “without a slaughter.”

  FURLOUGH

  Halfway home on the Comanche, Royal is strong enough to climb up to the steamer’s aft deck and see the dolphins. The creatures, sometimes three, sometimes four, power along in their wake then leap again and again, sleek and glistening, to the cheers of the men. It is the best he has felt since Chickamauga.

  There is a full band on one of the battleships plowing alongside the returning fleet, and several times a day the thump of bass drums is heard across the water, military airs and the new Sousa marches pounding out to cheer their passage. Royal is not stirred. He grips the aft rail tightly, still weak at the knees, and thinks of what a small thing his death would have been. His mother would have mourned him, and his brother Jubal, and his uncle Wicklow and Junior, for a while. They turned to waste so quickly, the bodies of the dead. A white man with a clipboard came through the sick tent, stopping by the cots of the ones who were thought to be dying.

  “Next of kin?” he asked Royal.

  “Jessie Lunceford.”

  Her name came without thought, and when it was out it seemed right. To be mourned by Jessie Lunceford would mean you were someone in the world. You were not easily replaced. The Luncefords kept a horse and carriage, they lived in a house with white folks on either side of them. They were people the world looked at, wondered about, tried to be like.

  “Relation?” asked the man with the clipboard.

  “We’re going to be married,” Royal answered.

  He is no longer delirious, or dying. But he will make it happen.

  The Judge confronts him halfway into the street, brandishing a newspaper.

  “Have you seen this?”

  It’s hard for MacRae to make out anything on the paper with the Judge still waving it. “What is it?”

  “It’s today’s Record, is what it is, and it is the most vicious slander.”

  “I’m not in the habit of reading the colored sheet, Judge.” MacRae pulls his watch from his vest, glances at it. There’s a meeting with the fellows across the street in Bellamy’s building and he’s late already.

  “Nor am I. But when it was brought to my attention—” the Judge slaps the rolled newspaper hard against his open palm. “Measures must be taken!”

  “Are you mentioned by name?”

  “I am not, damn it, but if he ever dare print it in this vile rag, I will—”

  “Mr. Manly is not reticent with his opinions.”

  “His opinions are criminal! This is part and parcel of what has become of the entire state. Our homes are no longer safe, the streets are overrun with insolent darkies who have been told they are our equals, no, that they are superior to us, men of proven value and social standing are ignored while the governor doles out state commissions to every shitheel Republican with two nickels to rub together—”

  “The governor,” says MacRae, laying a calming hand on the Judge’s shoulder, “will not plague us for long.”

  “His term is—”

  “His term has meaning only so long as he controls the legislature. We have an election coming up.”

  “And every one of these grinning monkeys will be lined up at the polls, lording it over us—”

  “That will not be allowed. Not this time.”

  The Judge is brought short by the bluntness of MacRae’s reply.

  “And who will prevent it?”

  The difficult part will be the timing. Building the pressure without letting it explode too soon, keeping secrets from your friends as well as your adversaries.

  “Men of substance,” he says. “Men of honor. Men, as you put it, of proven value.”

  “But the legalities—”

  “The legalities will be dealt with as they arise. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  They are distracted then by the loud rattling of an empty dray, a high-stepping horse heading directly at them and the teamster, a young, hatless negro, pointedly neglecting to rein it in.

  “Pardon me, gennemen!”

  The Judge and MacRae both have to scramble back onto the curb to avoid being trampled. Both men stare after the wagon as it speeds away toward the river, incredulous.

  “When the time comes, Judge,” says MacRae, his voice shaking with anger, “trust me—you will be called upon.”

  Jubal pulls the dray in front of the loading dock at the lumberyard. Dap Mosely, the foreman, is sitting with the others eating their lunches, legs hanging over the edge of the platform.

  “Got Mister Rankin load ready?” asks Jubal.

  “Lunch don’t end till I say it do,” Dap smiles. “An I aint said so yet. What’s your hurry, young man?”

  “This one always in a rush.” His Uncle Wicklow sits on a pile of railroad ties back in the shade of the awning, shoes off, wiggling his toes. “In a big rush to get nowhere.”

  “What you doin here, Wick?”

  “Oh, just resting my feet. Listening to Broadnax here read the news.”

  Percy Broadnax, who is missing two fingers from a sawmill accident, waves a copy of the Record. “Gonna be trouble over this one. Get all the white folks in a fuss.”

  “I just put a few of em up on their toes,” says Jubal, stretching out on the seat of the wagon. “My Nubia pert near run Mr. Hugh MacRae and that old Judge Nannygoat over.”

  “What you want to do that for?” says Wick, leaning forward with a frown.

  “They was standing right out in the middle of Market Street like they own it. You got to leave people room to do their bidness.”

  “Hugh MacRae probly does own Market Street,” says Dap. “Spect he thinks he does, anyway.”

  “What you care about them, anyhow?” says Jubal. His uncle has done livery work for plenty of white families over the years, but none of them lived in a castle. “They aint your people.”

  “Got to treat white folks and snakes just the same,” says Wick. “Don’t rile em less you got to.”

  “Well this gonna get em hissin and spittin, all right—” Broadnax holds the paper at arm’s length to read it, “If these alleged crimes of rape were so frequent as has been reported in our state’s newspapers, Mrs. Felton’s plea might be worthy of consideration.”

  Teeter Williams, brushing cornbread crumbs off his pants, whistles. “Damn. That boy Manly can articulate.”

  “Say his grandaddy was governor back before the war, had him a fondness for the gals back in the cabi
ns.”

  “Well, he act like he’s king of somethin.” Jubal shakes his head. “I haul his paper around every morning to them that sell it. I see him up there in his office—he hardly look at a man. Just cause you look white don’t mean you got to act it.”

  “It’s his mama the one got the brains in that family,” says Dap Mosely, who is nearly as old as Uncle Wick and seems to know everybody in the city. “Woman is sharp. She aint so light-complected as her boys, cause she don’t come from the Manly line, but she don’t miss nothin.”

  “However,” Broadnax reads, raising his voice to regain their attention, “some white women who cry ‘Rape!’ in this regard may be exaggerating the truth.”

  “How you do that?” says Jubal. “Exaggerate—”

  “He means lying.”

  “Right. Some lowlife dog either rape a woman or don’t. Aint no exaggerate about it.”

  “Only the truth and a lie. But either one get your neck stretched.”

  “Many black men,” Broadnax continues, “are sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them.”

  Jubal straightens and shows them his profile. “Yeah, an I’m one of em.”

  The men laugh, all but Wicklow.

  “You be careful how you talk,” he says.

  “Relax, Wick—”

  “Here it’s a joke. Somebody else be listening, you find yourself tied up to a tree.”

  “Uncle Wick still got them old plantation ways in his head.” Jubal winks to the others. “Fraid the Massa gone come back and get him. Them days over.”

  Dap stands and stretches. “You go back and ask your Mr. MacRae about that, young man. See what he got to say about it.” He turns to the others. “Stir your bones, gennemen. We got some wood to load.”

  Judge Manigault is in the editor’s office when Milsap arrives. The Judge comes at least once a month, fulminating about one outrage or another that must be redressed in print, but Milsap has never seen his face quite this crimson before.

  “Furthermore,” reads the Judge, shouting though Mr. Clawson sits only feet away from him, “in the light of the continued rape and seduction of black women by white men, we must ask these carping hypocrites how they can cry aloud for the virtue of their women while they seek to destroy the morality of ours. Sir, I ask you—”

  “It came across my desk this morning,” says the editor, calmly.

  “This must not be tolerated!” The Judge hurls the folded newspaper on Mr. Clawson’s desk. “Scurrilous, vile—”

  “Yes, Judge, they gone way past cheeky in this town.”

  “And what do you intend to do about it?”

  Clawson swivels in his chair, scooping up the paper. Milsap can tell from the doorway it is the Record. Eight pages, cheap paper.

  “I have only just begun to formulate my editorial comments—you may read them in tomorrow’s issue. Mr. Manly’s absence from our community is strongly advised. As for this fortuitous bit of calumny,” the editor slashes a blue pencil across the first and last paragraphs of the piece in front of him, then holds it out toward Milsap, “we must first be sure that our readers are aware they have been so maligned.” He finally looks over. “This goes in today, Drew.”

  Milsap steps in to take the paper, glances at the article. “Just the middle part of it?”

  “Cut to the heart of the insult. Header—” the editor tilts back in his chair, musing for a moment—“ ‘A Negro Defamer of the White Women—of the Christian White Women of North Carolina.’ Lead column left, change the typeface from our own.”

  “They use Baskerville—”

  “That will be fine. And the other front-page piece—”

  “ ‘Attempted Assault by Black Brutes.’ ” Some colored boys had thrown stones at a trolley on Fourth and Red Cross. “I’ve already set the column.”

  “Redo it with a subhead so it looks like a continuation. Then beginning tomorrow we’ll run Manly’s statement in a box, center bottom, front page.”

  “Yes, sir.” Milsap turns to go.

  “And Drew—”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Be sure to have them hold onto the slugs. We’ll be reprinting this in every issue till Election Day. Center bottom, first page.” The editor swivels back to smile pleasantly at the Judge. “In a box.”

  The justification of the article is terrible, as it always is with the Record, but the text makes it hard for Milsap to concentrate on the borders of the column. His fingers dig into the keys, matrices rattling down the chutes of the Linotype—

  We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely, as Mrs. Felton says, thus giving no opportunity for the human fiend, be he white or black. You leave your goods out of doors and then complain because they are taken away.

  Milsap is not married, never even engaged, but can imagine the anxiety of leaving a wife or daughter at home unprotected with marauding beasts at large, intent upon rapine and murder. Is that all the provocation necessary, to let them step out into the light of day? Seeing old Manigault has made him think of the Judge’s daughter Sally, strolling past his room with her friends on their way to Bible class, made him think of his own furtive thoughts, the few regrettable instances of self-pollution that have followed them. But to violate another, to touch them against their will—

  Poor white men are careless of protecting their women, especially on farms. They are careless of their conduct toward them, and our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women.

  Milsap feels dirty just to read this, and setting it into the machine makes him sweat, the seat of his pants sticking damp to his chair. It always makes his stomach go funny if one of them is pressed against him in a crowded trolley car, man or woman, especially on a hot day. They have a smell that is peculiar to their race and are unpredictable in their moods. In Charleston when he visited his Aunt Hepatha they had the Jim Crow rule in effect and everybody seemed comfortable with it. But here—

  Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman’s infatuation, or the man’s boldness, bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape

  Milsap stops halfway through the line. His pulse is racing. He tries to imagine what sort of white women would willingly, no, willfully submit to—has he ever met such a creature? Haskins the inker and some of the others who work the cylinder press like to go on about the women in Patty’s Hollow, teasing him about what they could show him if he’d only come along with them some night, but those places are only for white men and as far as he knows the negroes must have prostitutes of their own color. It is not something written about in the newspapers, except for a rare mention of a disorderly house. How debased a woman would have to be to—but that is the point, it is a lie, a projection of this Manly’s own twisted fantasies. A window into the criminal mind—

  Every negro lynched is called a Big Burly Black Brute, when, in fact, many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for fathers, and were not only not “black” and “burly,” but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them, as is very well known to all.

  The light-colored ones were always like that, impressed with themselves, making assumptions. There is a condescension, a challenge in that as is very well known to all that makes Milsap burn. He knows no such thing. That he knows no women of culture and refinement, not personally, is beside the point. Such ladies would naturally be even closer to the feminine ideal than those he is familiar with. When tomorrow’s Messenger reaches the public, with Mr. Clawson’s editorial—

  And then he understands it. Understands it all. The daily headlines of outrage, the editor’s meetings with important men, the cartoons reprinted from Raleigh, even the arsenal he stumbled upon the other day in the storage room—cases of shining new Winchesters and Colt pistols. It is a
campaign. Not a campaign like the trash collection or the county voting or the smallpox warnings earlier in the year. Intricate plans have been made, strategies devised, and the press, the shining jewel of American democracy, is to be the sharp point of the sword. He should have known. The way Mr. Clawson was with the Judge, so relaxed, a player with all the aces in his hand. He looks at the last line again, seeing now that it is somebody’s death notice, and is thrilled to be here, humble as his part in it will be, the man who feeds the machine.

  Milsap yanks the lever and the hot metal flows.

  It is Frank, with his usual long face.

  “He wants us out.”

  Manly sits by the electric lamp, writing. They are so much superior, steadier. Stay with gas light and he’ll be blind by fifty.

  “We have a lease,” he answers. Frank can be an alarmist. Frank has assured him, many times, that the newspaper will ruin them all.

  “He says there’ll be a county sheriff here at ten o’clock.”

  “What gives him license to do that?”

  Frank sighs, points at the article he has pinned upon the wall. “Your reply to Mrs. Felton. What do you think?”

  “It’s been out for days. Old news—”

  “The Messenger just reprinted it. And the Raleigh News and Observer.”

  “Ah.”

  Manly rises, looks around at the press crowding the tiny room. “I suppose we’ll have to cease operations tomorrow, make arrangements—”

  “Anything left in this room,” says Frank, “they destroy or confiscate.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  Frank keeps staring at him. Of course they can do that, and much worse.

  “It’s already dark out.”

  “Good,” says Frank, beginning to stack piles of paper on other piles of paper. “Maybe nobody will see us.”