A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  “If a man’s name not even the truth,” he’d say, “than what about him is?”

  Minnie stops to pick some goldenseal that grows just beyond the oak trees, pulling the plants up, shaking the root clean and stuffing them in her basket. Wilma Reaves’s daughter has the pinkeye again.

  She takes the long way home, stopping in a stand of pines on the way to gather some deertongue.

  She believes that the Lord listens to prayer, but is mighty picky about which ones He answers. “Please, Lord,” she would beg every night, sacrificing her knees one last time before sleep, “deliver my man from that devil’s brew.” And maybe He tried, as He is a merciful Lord, but Leaper had as tight a hold on rum as it had on him. Neither Jubal nor Royal never took up with it, praise Jesus, and she lies in bed worrying about her younger son been off to this Cuba, which Reverend Christmas says is one of the islands where they make it.

  It is a long and halting two-horse trolley ride back toward the river and then having to pay again to transfer onto the new electric line. No wonder the acorns build up, she thinks, moving to the front since there’s no old horse’s behind to smell on this one—poor folks can’t afford to get out there. The car is crowded enough by the time they pass Queen Street that the white man who has avoided sitting beside her for three blocks finally surrenders and stiffly takes the seat, body angled so his feet are in the aisle. The Jim Crow has come as far up as Charleston, she knows, but here it is still just a rumor. The man hurries off at City Hall and Minnie can relax till the depot and then take up walking again. By the time she turns down Terry’s Alley the sun is low and she is exhausted, bone-weary from cleaning Judge Manigault’s house all day, man can’t keep no permanent help even with his boys gone, weary from raking at the cemetery and picking the herbs and knowing it will start again before sunrise tomorrow. Halfway to her door she smells the yarrow, overpowering the rest of what she’s got hanging and drying inside. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust, someone standing inside, a flicker of fear and then her knees gone to water as she realizes who it is, how skinny he’s gotten. She drops the rake and the basket.

  “Royal! My poor baby! What them people done to you now?”

  The Love and Charity Hall is full to bursting when they step in, almost all the Lodge membership present plus a smattering of Masons and a few of the city’s unaffiliated colored men of importance. Mr. Lowery the carriage maker is holding forth in one corner and Reverend Moore from St. Luke’s next door and Valentine Howe with a crowd of firemen past and present and at least two of the Manly brothers, who have apparently moved their newspaper operation to the floor above. John Dancy from Customs is already seated, looking up patiently as old Mr. Eagles, elegant as always, jabs his silver-headed cane to make a point.

  “I want to know the purpose,” he is saying, “of raising hopes, of assembling a fighting force, of the training, of the marches and the grandiose speeches, when all along they knew we’d be mustered out before the first angry shot was fired!”

  Mr. Eagles accepted a commission with the North Carolina Volunteers and feels used. There was much public contention over whether officers would be white or colored for the colored companies, and the regiment’s sudden dismissal in February, with the halfhearted explanation that there were already sufficient forces to defeat the Spaniards, was at least an embarrassment to him, if not an insult.

  “The marching and the speeches were the purpose,” says Dr. Lunceford in passing and is treated to a glare. They are on opposite sides of the Russell question, the “Black Eagle” a regular, arguing that the governor should be supported no matter what his printed disparagement of the race, while the Doctor has joined Lowery and Fred Sadgwar and some of the others to form the Independents around the issue of “character.” And him walking in with Junior, a soldier fresh from battle, can only be salt in the old man’s wounds.

  Junior is smiling and shaking hands, modest but firm, grown up in so many ways so rapidly, and the Doctor has a sudden rush of hope that it might be here, Wilmington, that the tide is turned, here that a final, desperate battle against ignorance and disenfranchisement is fought and won. Such hopes had been pinned on young men before, Lowery and Eagles carried the burden in their own day, but look at him, Aaron Jr., handsome, educated, confident—and a war hero. Dr. Lunceford’s own father bore arms for the cause, and was wounded at New Market Heights, and now Junior—

  “Got to be a proud day for you, Dr. Lunceford.” Dorsey Love, moving up behind him.

  Dr. Lunceford nods. “A very proud day.”

  “A credit to his race,” says the barber, smiling admiringly at Junior as he fends off compliments a few yards away. Dorsey cuts white people’s hair at the Orton Hotel, owns a shop on Brunswick where his employees serve negroes.

  “I can only hope that the credit will be rendered.”

  “Oh, they got to take note, Doctor, got to take note. That San Juan Hill—”

  “Junior was at El Caney.”

  “That too, that too. And how is your lovely wife?”

  “Mrs. Lunceford is well. Extremely happy for a visit from her son, of course.”

  “And little Miss Jessie?”

  The barber always calls her “little Miss” to disguise his interest, but the Doctor is not fooled. Love is a decent sort, industrious, a man of property, but uneducated. He has no more chance of success than that Royal boy who always attaches himself to Junior in order to skulk around her.

  “She has a recital coming up in November, after the election. And of course, she’ll be off to Fisk soon.”

  If the mention of the University fazes Dorsey Love in any way he does not reveal it. He has a constant, bemused smile, perhaps a manner he’s adapted for his profession, as if life is a perpetual wonder.

  “That’s a clever girl you got, Dr. Lunceford,” says the barber, shaking his head at the unique quality of the phenomenon. “Gonna make a prize for some lucky gentleman.”

  Dr. Lunceford reminds himself to have a word with Junior about the Scott boy before he leaves tomorrow. The way he looks at Jessie—those people, well-meaning some of them but bone ignorant, living over in the Brooklyn section with their liquor and their crime and their disease. When the smallpox hit in January he was asked, with Dr. Mask, to administer the vaccination program. One would expect open arms, gratitude, at the least a grudging submission to the public good. But instead they were met with suspicion, with lies, with violence. After Dr. Mask’s carriage was despoiled and himself threatened by a drunkard wielding an ax, they petitioned to be relieved of the duty unless law officers were dispatched to accompany them. It was superstition, of course, distrust and fear of the unknown stirred up by those jealous folk practitioners, like Scott’s own mother Minerva, who persist in bilking their neighbors with roots and potions and Indian cures despite the legal prohibitions. Had she not accepted vaccination herself, and made no observable effort to dissuade others, he would have had her arrested.

  Isham Joyner has the gavel by now, rapping the gathering to order.

  “Gentlemen, if you’d please arrange yourselves!” Isham loves his voice like a preacher, and is always the one chosen to recite epic poems or quote Patrick Henry’s exhortations on Emancipation Day. The men still standing begin to find seats.

  “Brothers of the canton, honored guests, this is not an official meeting of our Lodge, and we will dispense with the customary observances and invocations.” He is the Noble Grand Sire and a stickler for protocol, Isham, a stern master of rites when Degrees are awarded. Dr. Lunceford is a Patriarch himself, Treasurer of the Lodge, but is uncomfortable with the swordplay and passwords, the mysteries and symbols, the play-acting around Abram’s Tent and the Oak of Mamre. He would be content to “visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan” without any of the baroque ceremony, but perhaps his Brothers’ secret, allegorical selves are preferable to their everyday ones.

  “We have gathered instead to honor and to listen to remarks from a
young man who not long ago was my pupil—” Isham tutors Latin in the foyer of his undertaking business, “—but, as we will see, he has survived that ignoble apprenticeship to become a guiding star among our youth.”

  Isham spotted Junior first when the young boy’s oration on Remembrance Day overshadowed his own. What to do with the competition but take some part in, and therefore some credit for, its development? Latin was a must for a medical career, of course, but Junior has always exhibited more interest in the Doctor’s political efforts than in his profession.

  “To introduce this paragon, I cede the floor to one who took part in his development at a much earlier stage than I—” laughter here, “—Dr. Lunceford?”

  Polite applause as he steps to the podium they’ve pulled out from behind the bar.

  An excellent turnout, really, Fusionists, many of the more wary Repub-lican die-hards, men who voted but chose to leave their allegiances unspoken, even a few who owe fealty to the Old Fox Crowd, employees or functionaries of powerful white men or those, like Dorsey Love, who are under their constant scrutiny. In light of the racial enmity that has been so publicly encouraged in the state, all will need to pull together to survive this next election, and he hopes this common celebration, this moment of shared pride, will help drive that idea home.

  “When Mr. DuBois,” he begins, knowing that the mention of that controversial gentleman’s name will assure their attention, “speaks, as he often does, of the ‘Talented Tenth’—and I would argue that we can boast of a much higher percentage than that—he is being both practical and political.”

  He sees that Alex Manly is already scribbling. A word to him later about editorial restraint.

  “It does not ordinarily, in this section of the country, behoove us to celebrate our gains too openly. However, the showing made by our colored regiments in the recent conflict—” and here there is more hearty applause, “—brings credit to all of us. I confess my particular pride in sheltering one of these fine young men under my roof. Gentlemen, I present to you—Aaron Lunceford Jr.”

  Men stand on their feet when his son takes the podium. Dr. Lunceford has made many speeches, has won election to a post vital to the community’s welfare, has saved lives even, in his professional capacity, but men have never stood to applaud him. He could be the one, Junior, to build it on. An orator, a tactician, a man with the sound of cannons on his record. A black Bryan, perhaps, a stirrer of men’s souls.

  Junior looks the gathering over slowly before speaking.

  “We are honored tonight to have in our midst men who defended the Union, and I need not add, freed our people, bringing us honor as they fought beneath the flag in the desperate days of ’64,” says Junior, bowing to old John Eagles sitting ramrod straight in the first row. “I have had the honor of carrying that banner to a foreign shore to liberate its oppressed citizens, many of them of our own hue, and can only hope that our performance there is a worthy reflection on the glory of those illustrious patriots.”

  A black Lincoln, thinks Dr. Lunceford, but a handsome one.

  Later, Alma will decide that she was just too weary to oppose it. Her own clothes are hanging between lines of the Luncefords’ sheets, Mrs. L never objecting as long as she keeps them hidden from the neighbors, and dry by the time Jessie reveals her plan. Or is it pure treachery? They pay her a bit more and treat her at least as well as any of the white folks she has worked for, but there is something about Doctor’s tone with her, about the way Mrs. L always says “a young lady of her standing” when she’s talking about Jessie. White folks don’t know any better, plus they’re white and don’t need to do anything to be sure nobody mistakes them for the help.

  And Jessie has treated her as a sister.

  Nothing will come of it, of course, no matter what kind of goodbye they say to each other tonight. Soon enough they’ll ship her off out of sight to the school in Tennessee like they did with Junior, where she’ll play her piano and make friends with other “young ladies of her standing” and meet someone Doctor will approve of. Doesn’t hurt a girl to have a little heartbreak at her age, get used to what’s in store for her.

  If Coop was coming he’d of been here by now.

  “It fits me perfectly,” says Jessie, excited, turning in front of the mirror to see herself in Alma’s gray shift. It is, in fact, a little high at the ankle for her, but uncorseted and wearing a pair of old shoes Mrs. L has ceded to Alma, she even moves like a different person. “Are you sure about your coat?”

  “I got all my clothes in a basket by the cookstove,” says Alma. “I’ll just bundle up.”

  Mrs. Lunceford is at the Household of Ruth meeting, bragging about her son, and gave up looking in on her sleeping Jessie years ago. They have worked out which light will signal what in the house—Jessie has promised to be home at least by ten but there is some little risk of her running into Doctor or Junior when she’s sneaking back.

  “Tell me which way you gonna walk, child. Don’t matter what you passin for, they places won’t no woman go by if she got sense.”

  Jessie sighs dramatically, impatient, and crosses to her dressing table to read the crumpled note from Royal again. “This isn’t the worst part of the city,” she says.

  “You don’t know the first thing bout what’s bad in this city. Let me hear the street names.”

  “Why should I feel like a criminal?” It is one of her favorite sayings lately, along with “They’re determined to ruin my life.” Jessie stands next to Alma, looks at the two of them in the mirror. Jessie is lighter of course, younger, with the good hair and the way of holding herself that says Quality to folks who never seen her before. “Sometimes, Alma, I am so envious of you.”

  Alma smiles. She will pay for this, maybe, if it ever becomes known, but now she is too tired or too weak or too low and contrary to deny her sweet baby Jessie this wish.

  “You want to change places with me, darlin,” she says, “there’s a mess of dirty dishes waitin downstairs.”

  Miss Loretta always says to Jessie that it is the things she never did that haunt her.

  Ruth Hall, where her mother is meeting, is just on the corner. Jessie hurries by, hoping she looks like someone else. She plays at the Hall when there are musical programs, the ladies always very kind, but tonight she doesn’t want them to see her face. She hurries north on Seventh, passing the Williston School that somebody, and Father has his suspects, keeps trying to burn down, and wishes she had a shawl to cover her face with like in the books. Anyone who knows her family who sees her will report back—What was your daughter Jessie doing out alone at night, dressed in serving girl’s clothing? She hasn’t been allowed to walk alone like this since she was twelve and even if she were only to circle the block and return home right now it would feel like a wicked transgression. She crosses Ann Street, crosses Orange, then Dock, then stops at the edge of Market to look up and down. Across the way looms the MacRae castle where once as a little girl she stood outside with Father and was frightened by the screeling of bagpipes, Father telling her it was only a kind of music the white folks had played across the seas before they invaded America. Right next door is Mr. MacRae’s sister who married Mr. Parsley. It was on the street just in front that their little Walter Jr. had run out and been hit by a bicyclist last year, the shades pulled down in their windows ever since, a house in mourning. Jessie waits for a carriage to pass, then hurries across the broad avenue to the north side, tilting her face away as she sees the city lamplighter, Primus Bowen, with his ladder against a pole up on Eighth. Miss Loretta lives on that corner, and just beyond her Carrie Sadgwar who was famous with the Jubilee Singers and teaches at the Williston now, whose grandfather was a white man raised as a slave and whose father is building a house down on Fourteenth for her to live in with Alex Manly, the newspaper man, when they are married.

  She continues up Seventh, using the sidewalk on the east side, and realizes she knows who lives in almost every house, black or white or Jew—the Sol
omons and the Davids and the Bears all off to her left within a few blocks of each other—knows who is related and what their businesses are, knows, from hearing Father and Junior talk, where each of the men stands in the complicated tangle of city and state politics, and she feels a wave of hopelessness course through her. How can she imagine being anyone but Miss Jessie, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Lunceford, who plays piano and sings passably well, soon to be presented in colored society for the consideration of young men whose fathers know and have the deepest respect for her own? “We must set a standard,” he is always saying, mostly to Junior, but she is included within her more circumscribed sphere of activity, “that others will strive to raise themselves to.”

  But here she is walking unaccompanied and “unbraced” as the Shake-speare play put it, in an increasingly strange part of the city, to meet a man she loves—

  The gas lamps end at Red Cross Street. Jessie finds herself caught in a flow of people, mostly older women, making their way into the Central Baptist for an evening service. They are dressed for church, of course, and she is not, but they might expect her to be one of them—floor-scrubbers and pot-washers, laundresses, seamstresses, cooks and caretakers. Aunt Sassy—she never learned the woman’s proper name—who was her great friend Fannie Daltrey’s nanny when Fannie lived on Front Street, passes within a foot of her, walking with difficulty on swollen legs, a hat with glistening raven feathers fastened on her head. The woman barely glances as she goes by. Mrs. Sharpless, who Father treated for palpitations and who sold pecan clusters at the train station for years, looks her full in the eyes with no recognition, no “How we doin, Miss Jessie?” and maybe it is working, maybe the clothes and Alma’s simple, fraying straw hat tilted low over the eye have transformed her. She rushes to cross the street away from the church entrance, and has only taken a few steps into the darkness beyond the spill from its open doors when the crazy man blocks her way.