A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

“Shine?”

  “Wouldn’t mind one.” Coop sits and props his feet up. The old man is surprisingly limber, squatting down to probe at his shoes with an oxblood finger.

  “Black.”

  “That’s right. Make em sparkle.”

  Snapper wipes the leather down. “New in town?”

  “May as well be,” says Coop. The old man’s scalp is yellow brown where the hair is gone on the top. “How things workin for us these days?”

  “Oh, lively, lively.” Snapper taps a dab of polish onto one shoe, begins to work it in. “Repubikins got the mayor’s seat again, ony there’s three different gangs of em claims it. Mist’ Wright seem to won out, an he aint a bad man. Then there’s that old fox crowd, they’s Democracks, been rilin up the peckerwoods somethin awful. Got these Red Shirts and Rough Riders—not the Teddy Rooseville kind, these is local boys—marching around, makin speeches, shootin off their pistols, say they gone make this a white man’s city again.”

  Coop snorts a laugh. “What they think it is now?”

  “I spose they won’t be happy till they push us all the way back down to slavery days.” Snapper starts to buff the shoetops, popping his rag. “We got three of us that’s aldermen, we got police, mail carriers, Mr. Dancy who runs the Customs at the port, got Mr. Miller that own so much property he got white folks owes him money—and that don’t sit right with these plantation colonels. What they want is our vote, see, and we aint givin that back.”

  “They took it in Georgia,” says Coop, standing to hold the shine in the light, one foot at a time. “South Carolina too.”

  “Well, then, they got some sorry niggers down there.”

  Coop has never voted. It starts with giving your address to register, and why make it easy for them to find you? “So where’s a black man ought to go after dark?” he asks, changing his tone. “I only got tonight.”

  Snapper glances up at him. “What you lookin for?”

  “Hot dice and cold beer,” says Coop. “That’ll get me started.”

  “Oh, there’s Darden’s, there’s Pompey Galloway’s place on Castle, there’s Brunjes’ saloon in George Heyer’s store, he allus got a crap game goin.”

  “Probly usin the same old bones, too. Lopsided little pocket-robbers.”

  Snapper grins. “I know you! You Clarence Rice, took off four, five years back!”

  “That boy dead and forgotten,” says Coop, tossing an extra coin into the blind man’s cigar box and stepping down to go. “Let’s keep him that way.”

  Jessie is thrilled to see her brother, of course, to feel the new strength in him when they embrace, but then there he is, Royal, standing back out of the light like a word that nobody will utter. Father is smiling, it’s so wonderful to see him really smile, but when he turns to Royal it hardens somehow and her heart sinks, the impossibility of it all, the silliness of her fantasies coming home to her and she stands immobile in the spot she has chosen where the best of the afternoon light slants in, smiling prettily but no more than that, not even able to take his hand.

  “I’m pleased to see you’ve passed the test as well, young man.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Scott, isn’t it?”

  He knows it’s Scott, of course, Royal’s own mother cleaned his office for years before he discovered she was selling home cures to her neighbors and had to dismiss her. Jessie’s cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Royal says it evenly, without deference, and she sees he is different too. He is thin, sickly thin, but it’s like he knows something about them he didn’t know when he left. Mother feels it as well, made uncomfortable, and does not call to Alma for cool drinks.

  “Your mother must be so relieved to have you back,” she says. “You have seen her, haven’t you?”

  “I’m on my way,” says Royal. “Just wanted to pay my respects, M’am.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” Mother, who tells her that an awkward situation can always be defused with the proper grace and charm, Mother just smiles at him and lets the moment hang and Junior is about to step in when Royal saves him the trouble.

  “Thank you M’am,” he says, and turns to her and nods—only that, or is it a bit of a bow?—and says “Miss Jessie,” and turns to leave.

  “In the morning, old man,” calls Junior.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Then he is gone and all the strength rushes out of her while Mother reacts to the hard news that Junior has only the one night to spend here before he’s off to the West and Royal too, thinks Jessie, I’ve lost him, lost him before I ever had him! Unless, and this is all that gives her the strength to stir herself from the suddenly oppressive patch of sun and take part in the family conversation, unless she read the haunted look in his eyes correctly, the look he gave when he nodded or half-bowed to her upon leaving, a look that made her hear his voice, his true voice, inside her head.

  Save me, he said. Save me.

  Alma is in the kitchen peeling yams, one of Junior’s favorites, wondering why they haven’t called her out to greet him yet, she wiped that boy’s nose enough times, when there is a rap at the back door. It is Royal Scott, looking tragic in a uniform too big for him.

  “Little Roy,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron. “Aw honey, you come back all right.”

  Royal nods, hands her a folded note. “Would you give this to her?”

  Jessie has pestered her with a thousand questions about him, about what he’s really like, about what he might think of her, but Royal has never asked Alma to go between them before. She stuffs the note in her apron pocket. It will be trouble, whatever she does with it.

  “If I get a chance,” she says. She thought she heard him out front before, so this is secret business, not just a hello. “You back for good?”

  “Just tonight. We’re chasing after the regiment.”

  “You know the one calls hisself Cooper?”

  “He got off the train with us.”

  Alma smiles. “Well, sometime later, I get alone with her, I’ll pass this on.”

  “I preciate it.” He steps away.

  “And tell your mama Imonna be by for more poke root.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She can hear Junior telling stories in the music room when she goes back to the yams. He’ll come in, by and by, and make a fuss over her. A thoughtful boy, Junior, and she wonders if he had him one of those Cuban gals in the drawings, if he’s more than his daddy’s little echo after being to war. Maybe Clarence—Coop—will be by later. Man like Coop is a cool breeze in August. It don’t last long, feels good when it turns your way, then leaves you sticky and wanting more. Never know when a breeze like that coming up, but you won’t get through the heavy days without one.

  “Alma!” cries Junior when he stomps into the kitchen. “How’s my best girl?”

  Early is at the crate and Coop knows it’s his lucky night. A quick peek from the swinging door that leads from the store in the front—nobody here yet he’s got bad blood with—and he steps up to the bar.

  “Look what crawled back from the grave!” calls Brunjes, laying him down a cold one in a mug. “Must be the Judgment Day.”

  There is a table of young sports in the corner who look over wondering who he is, Early playing it fast and ragged, nodding to him over the keys, three or four women he doesn’t recognize and the usual Harnett Street crowd. Simon Green is there, like always mimicking the sausage-eater he works for.

  “Gott im Himmel!” he cries when he sees Coop. “Ist der schwartzer goniff!”

  There is some back-slapping and old jokes then, a few happy to see him and the others with one nervous eye on the door. He almost killed Pharaoh Ballard here one night, or Pharaoh almost killed him, and the police must have come sniffing round more than once after he left town.

  “Somebody told me you was on a work gang down South Cahlina,” says Brunjes.

  “Still there,” Coop gives him a look. “If you know wha
t’s what.”

  Little Bit appears at his elbow.

  “Clarence. Gone, but not forgotten.”

  “Little Bit. Forgotten, but not gone.”

  The old boys laugh at this. A couple of the sports drift over.

  “Way I recollect, you owes me fi’ dollars.”

  “Damn, must of left it in my other pants.”

  More laughter.

  “How bout that uniform, brother?” asks one of the young ones, who Coop can’t place. “You was down there fightin?”

  “Smack in the middle of it.”

  Some of the women are pressing close now. There is a short one in a green dress, little bit of a thing, got her hair in a Indian braid.

  “What them Spanish look like?”

  “Oh,” says Coop, turning to rest his back against the bar, “mostly they look just like white folks. Dark hair, but white-complected.”

  “And they let you shoot em?”

  “As many as I could hit.”

  The crowd laughs and Brunjes tops his beer off. “On the house tonight, brother.”

  Little Bit has stopped looking at him. “Fi’ dollars aint a pittance.”

  You don’t want to take Little Bit too light. Smallish man like that, known to handle a wager, he’s got to back it up with steel.

  “I’d of paid you back already, brother, if circumstances hadn’t come between us.” A few chuckles. Coop can feel the others, especially the young ones, hoping for a fight. But he’s not in the mood for one yet. “What you say,” and he puts a hand on Little Bit’s shoulder, “we get up a card game later, and the first fi’ dollars you bet comes out of my pocket?”

  It isn’t a surrender and it isn’t a holdout, either, and in front of all these eyes Little Bit knows it’s the best he’ll do without killing the man. He tips his little bowler. “I looks forward to it.”

  Early switches to a waltz now, but cutting it up with his right hand. After the thudding oompah of the regiment band it brings a smile to Coop’s face.

  “Almost forgot what music sound like.”

  “But you got a band come with you to the battles.” It’s the young sport that asked about his uniform.

  “Yeah, and a mule got a dick.” The Indian-looking gal laughs with the others. “But aint much gonna result from it. Way the military is, everything by the numbers, see, which means right square on the beat.”

  “You carry a pistol?” Another of the young ones, more familiar.

  “Officers got the sidearm—that’s for shootin snakes and deserters. Fightin men, that’s the sergeants on down, we carry a Krag rifle. Drill a hole in your skull a hundred yards away.”

  The boy, cause he is not out from his teens yet, looks once to the door before asking. “Any way a man get one of them without he’s in the Army?”

  Coop recognizes him. “You Twyman Wilson’s brother.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How he is?”

  The boy shrugs. “There was a accident at Sprunt’s.” Sprunt owns the cotton press and half of the waterfront. “He passed.”

  Coop nods. “Sorry to hear that. What you want a rifle for?”

  “Things getting bad.”

  “Things always bad.”

  “Fire and pitchfork bad,” says Twyman’s brother, and nobody contradicts him. “Man gonna need to protect himself.”

  Both Simon and Brunjes look away. Coop thought the blind man was only passing gas, entertaining a customer for the length of a shine.

  “You try somebody in one of them volunteer outfits,” he tells the boy, moving away from the counter. “Regular Army aint handin out no rifles.” He takes the hand of the girl in the green dress, Early pushing the waltz tempo a bit, and calls across the room.

  “Loosen them cards up, Little Bit! Imonna carry this pretty thing round the floor a couple times and then we play. What’s your name, darlin?”

  “Hazel,” she says, not even pretending to be shy.

  “Let’s see what you got, young lady.”

  Jubal is riding. Just riding. Aint so many colored men in this town got a horse just to ride on its back, not hitched to a damn thing, and sure as hell not a horse like Nubia. He got some Arabian in him along with whatever else, got the blood and the high-stepping pride and when Jubal make him shine there aint a gal in Brooklyn won’t turn her head and stare. There is men put their pay into clothes, and they do fine with the ladies, but a ride—

  A skinny man in a blue uniform is leaning up front of his stalls and it is Royal.

  Jubal jumps down and ties Nubia off and feels how much of his brother is gone, a rack of bones when he hugs him.

  “I told em all,” he beams. “They can’t kill no Royal Scott!”

  “They did their best,” says Royal, quiet like always but sounding moodier with his face so thin.

  “You home now?”

  “One-day leave,” says his brother. “Let us see our people on the way.”

  “You been to Mama?”

  “That’s next.”

  “She gone bust out, man, see you back and in one piece.”

  “You moved out.”

  “Couldn’t take the smell, man. Them medicines old Minnie brew up—”

  Royal laughs. “And this all is yours?”

  There is a room over the two stalls, stairs to it on the outside of the building.

  “I rents it from Mr. Longbaugh.”

  “Mind if a take a look?”

  “Be my guest. I just put my ride here in with old Dan.”

  “That’s a fine-looking horse, Jubal.”

  Jubal can’t stop grinning. “Aint he though?”

  Jubal’s room smells fine. He has hung a half-dozen of Mama’s lavender sachets from the low ceiling, cutting the horse odor from below. The bed is narrow but almost level, and there is a pile of clean linen on a chair, which makes Royal smile. Mama still doing his wash. There is a little window, with a view out to Swann Street and Love Alley. He sits on the bed. There are pictures of famous racehorses tacked up on the walls. It could be worse.

  Jubal steps in, steps to the little basin to wash his hands.

  “I been savin,” he says. “Got my eye on a nice hinny mare, team her up with Dan. Once I can haul the big loads, I make some real money in this town.”

  Royal looks at his brother and is suddenly enormously relieved that Jubal has asked him not one thing about Army life. One colored boy they won’t get to kill.

  “I need to ask you a favor,” he says. “Bout using this place tonight.”

  Jubal’s grin does not change. “This aint who I think.”

  “The less you think,” says Royal, knowing she probably won’t come, that he will spend his night of leave staring at pictures of long-dead racehorses, “the better it be for all of us.”

  Minnie Scott always brings a rake and her collecting basket. The rake is for the acorns, which can pile up inches deep on the graves in the late fall, rotting underneath, getting musky and black if you don’t keep on top of them. There aren’t so many headstones here in Oak Grove, sometimes just a rock with a name scratched on it or a rusted child’s toy or something about the departed. One man who was a plumber before he gambled it all away is under a cross made of pipe, and another beneath a dented, discolored trumpet. Leaper, gone to Glory these many years, has a proper stone now, that she was able to buy and have scribed. But that’s only for the sake of the living. The Lord don’t care what you lay on top, He’s only after souls.

  Minnie rakes his site clear, acorns making a neat little rectangle around it when she is done. He was a good man, Leaper, never raised a hand to her or the children, did his best to find work. But the weakness for spirits was there from the beginning, it dogged him his whole poor life and left them nothing to send him off with when he turned yellow and died. Most of her family was in Pine Forest behind the white folks, but they were all so cross at Leaper, even her brother Wick and Reverend Christmas at the Central Baptist, that they let the town bury him here.


  “No sense pourin money into a hole,” Wicklow said when she came to him. “Just like when he was with us, you give him money, you knowed what it was going for.”

  Leaper had said it himself, coming home sweet and unsteady, sitting hard at the table and looking around like he could barely recognize his own house. Then smiling that beautiful smile when he’d see her, smile that could break your heart. “There’s my girl,” he would say. “There’s my Minnie.” And then later, after she’d helped him out of his clothes and maybe bathed him, he’d say in that far-off voice he got when he was tired, “When I go, just lay me out in the Oaks.”

  She blames it on the yankees. The first story he told anyone about himself was him and Jimmy Shines tippin off one night from the indigo plantation, ten years old, stealing a boat and rowing out to the blockade ships. How they shouted and banged their oars on the hull of one till the yankees hauled them up, how Jimmy fell out of the ropes and drowned a few days after but Leaper, they give him a little sailor suit and made him mascot and filled him up with rum most every day, setting him up on a box to sing dirty songs and curse the Rebels. And him thinking it was all right since he was already bound for Hell, having robbed Mr. Ralston of himself and Jimmy.

  “I caught a taste for rum,” he like to say, “that I never lost.”

  Minnie bends carefully to wipe the headstone clean. She’s got the water on the knee now, too many years cleaning floors and pulling up roots, not so easy to get back off the ground. Taking liquor isn’t a sin, not the way some would have it, it’s how you act once the liquor is in you. Leaper called it “his medicine” and without it he would brood, he would lay up in the house without moving for a whole day, or if he thought she couldn’t hear he’d weep like a child. The only people he had were sold away before he came to know them, and when the boys was born he would look but never touch, smile at her admiringly like a baby was something she’d done on her own. The Royal Scot was the name of the blockade ship, and he had taken Scott for his name when a yankee census man came through to count heads and explain the voting. Leaper had been one of Mr. Ralston’s favorite hounds that he said was the same shade of brown as the little nigger boy and as many times as Minnie begged him to be born again as someone with a Christian name, Luther maybe, he wouldn’t have it.