A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  “Tender chicken,” he says, smiling with all his face, “pitter-pat away from her roost.”

  His clothes are filthy, his face streaked with grime, his hair hangs in gnarly ropes past his narrow shoulders. He is the skeleton of a man who calls himself Percy of Domenica, King of the Creole, and appears throughout the city with his message of Repentance.

  “You frighten of Percy, child?”

  She could run, turn and run back toward the Baptists shouting for help, but that would be the end of it, would mean explanations and recriminations and the end of trust and liberty. “No sir,” she tells him.

  “Little chicken tell me proper.” He waves a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand, the liquid inside it not the right color. “Only ting we got to fear now is the Wicked One come out when sun is down, work himself into our heart.” People say he is from the islands, which ones they don’t know, and his speech is like song. “You let the sun shine on your body, child?”

  “I do.”

  “All your body?”

  He is blocking the sidewalk but not crowding her. She saw him almost on this very spot, last year when she talked Alma into taking her to the tent that had been set up to exhibit the Nightingale. It was ten cents admission, collected by a man who claimed to be a Doctor of Deformity and sold the sisters’ pamphlet, “Written by One of Them,” which contained the details of their unfortunate birth and subsequent adventures. But once inside Mille-Christine McCoy herself recounted those events. Mille, who was on the left as you faced the Nightingale, concentrating on the harrowing incidents of kidnapping and privation, while Christine countered with tales of rescue and impressions of European nobles they had met in their travels. As they demonstrated their facility with six languages, sang prettily in close harmony, employing all four legs and all four arms as they moved about the platform, Jessie was so enthralled she did not notice who it was who took the seat beside her. It was his odor that distracted her first, sweet and thick, like overripe pears, and then his constant chuckling drew her to look.

  “God make a joke,” he said as the sisters were reciting The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Mille in English and Christine in German. “Bond two woman together, give them only one hole for pizzle, one for poop.”

  Tonight he smells of persimmons.

  “Do you let the sun shine on all your body?”

  “Whenever possible,” she answers.

  The King of the Creole smiles again with all his face. “The High Spirit loves you, child. How many year you got?”

  “I’m sixteen.” She thinks of telling him she’s older, to seem less vulnerable perhaps, but his gaze, guileless and unblinking, has her transfixed.

  “Then you must fast for sixteen day, purify the soul. You promise Percy this?”

  “I will do my best.” She has fasted once for two days, after reading Robin-son Crusoe, pushing her plate away at every meal until Father gave her a dose of ipecac, thinking she had been poisoned by tinned fruit.

  “Percy sense a young woman at her crossroad, cyannot decide which trail to accept.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Forward. Always forward to the Light. The Wicked One dog our passage—turn back and we are lost forever.” He holds the Coca-Cola bottle out to her. “But first you must partake from the Source.”

  “I really couldn’t—”

  “Cyannot refuse the Blood of Christ, child! Drink, and it make holy everting you do this night.”

  Jessie holds the neck so it doesn’t touch her lips, tilts the bottle. It is warm, just water, and she manages to swallow a tiny bit. Percy smiles and takes the bottle from her and steps aside with a gallant half-bow.

  “Go forth, then,” he says, “and mul-ti-ply.”

  He moves aside and she walks toward the river, resolute, the lunatic’s blessing filling her with courage, till she turns right to cross over the railroad bridge into Brooklyn. The gaslights are far behind her and the grand houses too and the paint is peeling on many of these houses, or was never applied, someone is making frightening noises on a piano a few blocks ahead but this is the only way, the way to save Royal, to save the two of them, to come to him in servant’s clothes and do something she can barely imagine.

  Something irreversible.

  Coop is leaving Hazel, smelling her on his clothes, when Toomer steps out with his hand on his pistol. They stand a few yards apart, facing each other, Coop feeling himself reel slightly with the gin that followed the beer, and stare at each other’s uniforms. Toomer laughs first.

  “Who you steal that from, Clarence?”

  They are on Brunswick Street, just the two of them. Toomer keeps his hand on top of the holster.

  “Second squad, Company H, 25th Infantry,” says Coop. “And what you sposed to be doin?”

  “Keeping the peace. Protecting folks from the likes of you.”

  “I’m just passing through, man—”

  “Far as I know,” says the police officer, “you still a fugitive round here.”

  “White people’s bidness.”

  “I work for the law. Law cuts both ways.”

  “Yeah? They let you ’rest a white man?”

  “If it come up, that’s my job. Only don’t many of em show their faces this part of town.”

  “So you out keepin us wild niggers in line.”

  “Let’s say old Pharaoh Ballard come around, find out some soldier boy passin through has been next to his gal Hazel,” says Toomer, easing his hand off the holster and hooking his thumb in his belt, “and Pharaoh commenced to waving his blade around and bragging how he’s gonna cut a certain lowlife son of a bitch up for fishbait.” Hazel didn’t say nothing about Pharaoh, but it make sense she got somebody. “It be my responsibility to advise him to reconsider, and if he go ahead and do it, to bring him to justice.”

  “That happens, you best shoot before he sees you.”

  Toomer nods. He was the best pitcher on the Cape Fear Mutuals when Coop left, a long-armed house-painter whose brother Granville owned a furniture store Coop and Tillis had hit once. “You understand my position.”

  “I didn’t come here to mess with him.”

  “Then you best stay clear of the waterfront. He get off his shift at Worth and Worth in a half hour.”

  If he was staying they’d need to have it out, him and Pharaoh, no way he was skulking around Brooklyn avoiding a fight. But passing through like this—

  “Don’t spect we’ll meet up.”

  “How long you plannin to be in town, Clarence?”

  “When the westbound pull out this morning at seven,” he says evenly, holding Toomer’s eyes so the man knows it’s his own choice and not the threat, “I be on it.”

  Toomer smiles. “25th Infantry. The heroes of Santiago.”

  “That’s us.”

  “With feet to field and face to foe,” he intones, “In lines of battle lying low—The sable soldiers fell!”

  “That’s the Ninth. We were on a different hill.”

  “Lots of folks walking tall in this city when that news hit town.” Toomer steps aside to let Coop pass. “You done more than free them Cubans, brother.”

  It smells like lavender. She is shaking so hard, even just hurrying up the stairs outside, that he thinks she is freezing and takes Alma’s coat off her and holds her tight. The shaking calms down some but he kisses her on the mouth and it starts up again and she says she’s sorry.

  “Got nothin to be sorry about,” he says.

  They both know what they are up to, though. That going all the way through with it means there is no going back, not for Mother and Father either. It is the only way. Jessie can hear the animals stirring below, hooves on hollow wood, snortings and shiftings. Once the horse is out of the barn—she has heard her father say it more than once, treating ruined girls over in this section of town or closer to home.

  Royal is looking her straight in the eye, his face so close it makes her shake even more. “I just got to know,” he says, “that this is what
you want.”

  Jessie takes his hand then and places it over her breast, something she read once in one of Alma’s love books. She doesn’t have much there, she knows, and she is still in the shift, but in the books it is always how the chapter ends and you’ve got to imagine what happens next.

  She nods.

  On the bed he puts his hand on her thigh, Alma’s shift riding up, and then he moves his fingers under. She never thought of that, even when touching herself. The shaking stops and she has to breathe deep and he is still looking at her, that is the most incredible thing of all, looking deep into her eyes right as it is happening. She reaches down and curves his fingers just the right way, leans herself against him and closes her eyes when it happens. Amazing that he would know. Even this much, she thinks, if I went home now having done even this much maybe they would be forced to reconsider, but she sees how his pants are, just like Alma told her they get, and knows there is going to be more.

  His bare skin is reddish in the lantern light, darker than hers, and she is glad there are no mirrors on the walls, only pictures of beautiful horses. How did he know how much she loves them?

  She is shaking again and really cold now, she is never naked except in a warm bath, and he has her squat on the edge of the bed facing him and then lower herself down. Junior showed her a picture in one of Father’s medical books once, but it was pink and wrinkly and not hard like this. This is not in Father’s book, this is not in any book she has ever read or imagined.

  “Easy,” he says in her ear, “easy.”

  And it is like when Alma draws the bathwater too hot, you have to let yourself down a little at a time and maybe come back up a little bit and then ease down and the second time down it isn’t so bad, a little farther, a little deeper, and then suddenly you are all the way in and it only stings for a tiny instant.

  “I can’t believe this,” Royal says, looking at her, their faces even closer now, his eyes digging into her and she kisses him so maybe he will close them. He has his tongue up past hers, even that, they even put that up into you.

  When she opens her eyes he is still looking.

  “We won’t get stuck, will we?”

  He smiles. He has a kind smile, never teasing. “You mean like dogs? That doesn’t happen to people.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He takes hold of her under and lifts all of her up a little and then eases her down, once, twice, three times. She must be wet or he must be wet because it slides. “If it could happen, there’s nobody I rather be stuck with than you.”

  Who is doing this? she thinks as he somehow lifts her around so she is on her back and he is standing on the floor with it still in her, pointing down. She is not wearing Alma’s clothes anymore, not any of them, and when he pushes it deeper, if that is possible, it is her name he whispers hot into her ear.

  “Jessie. Jessie Lunceford.”

  He is as beautiful, in the lantern light, as she imagined, thinner even, muscles and bones standing out under his beautiful dark skin as he pushes in again and again and now each time she can’t help but squeeze it a little, like you do when you hold your water, like she won’t let him pull it back.

  “Jessie,” he says, “I can’t hold back anymore,” and then he sighs deep and lays heavy on top of her, holding her tight.

  He is the one shaking when he steps away and cleans himself off at the basin and then brings the lantern over to look at her closer.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I been sick.”

  “Something you can catch?”

  She means it as a joke, but he doesn’t smile.

  They don’t talk much after, Jessie telling him no, he shouldn’t write to Father, not yet. She has no idea what time it is. They lie under a rough blanket for a while, her cheek on his chest, listening to his heart beat, and she wishes she could sleep here, sleep and then wake to discover it is fine, everyone has agreed and they will be allowed to be this way forever. Jessie reaches up and touches his face, moved by the incredible fact that this is now something allowed between them, that for the moment she owns this right, at least while they are alone together. The books are no use now. Debased has no meaning for her, nor virtue or ruined, the familiar litany of traps for the young and foolish do not seem to apply. She cannot imagine, now, being Alma—how can she have been intimate with more than one man, how can the heart bear it?

  “I should start home,” she says.

  “You’re not walking,” says Royal. “Not alone.”

  How can he know?

  It was her very first dream of him—night, black night with a full moon and her arms around him and the horse’s body hot between her legs, no saddle, just the power of the muscles flowing. And waking out of breath.

  “What does he call it?” she asks as Royal guides the beautiful horse over the railroad bridge.

  “Nubia,” he says, eyes wary for whoever might be out this late. “I think he calls him Nubia.”

  Alma has left the back door unlatched. Jessie finds her asleep in a hard chair in the kitchen. She frowns when she wakes, taking Jessie’s hand and looking her in the eye.

  “Child, I’m sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I promise you won’t get into any trouble.”

  “Not me I’m worryin about.”

  Jessie turns away from Alma’s eyes. “Did yours come?” Alma has let it slip about her soldier being in town.

  “Not a sign of him.” Alma crosses to the range, rubbing her eyes, lays a pot on the heat. “You gonna drink some tea.”

  Jessie sniffs the few inches of brown liquid in the pot. “What’s in it?”

  Alma shrugs. “Squawroot, pennyroyal, little bit of rum.” She doesn’t add that she bought the herbs from Royal Scott’s mother, for her own use, a few months ago. “If you been up to what I think, you need to drink some.”

  Jessie wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “You got five, six weeks I can maybe help you, girl,” says Alma, pulling down Jessie’s favorite cup. “After that you in the hands of the Lord.”

  Royal puts the horse back in its stall, rubs it down. Steam comes off the sides of the animal as he works, and he can feel his own muscles, feel the blood moving in him again, back with the living. Just maybe on his way to being somebody in the world instead of a little barefoot nigger whose daddy had a dog’s name. The horse is asleep and the sun just rising by the time he locks up and starts for the train station. He falls in with the early shift heading for the docks, many of them, the colored workers, asking about his uniform and reciting the highlights of the campaign. Ben Chesnutt is among them, and Moses Toney and Nat Washington who he knew from his days working at the creosote yard, and Vernel Underwood who played left field to his center on the Mutuals.

  “Always knew you was gonna turn out o.k.,” says Vernel, winking. “No matter what anybody say.”

  Henry Cooper is there, dozing on a bench, Junior a few feet away looking unshaven and exhausted.

  “I feel like I’m running for governor,” says Junior as Royal sits.

  “Your daddy has his way, you be doing that soon enough.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “Fine. Living along.”

  “Jubal?”

  “Jubal got his horses, keeps him happy I guess.”

  Coop wakes then, making a face. “Mouth feel like cotton,” he says. “And that water fountain is bust.” He looks at them, disoriented. “Yall made it.”

  “With time to spare.”

  Coop stretches, yawns. “Met a gal last night, like to wore me out. How bout you, Roy? You plant the flag somewheres?”

  Royal knows he’s just ribbing, but with Junior looking at him, a little smile on his face, the question prompts a guilty sweat.

  “Naw,” says Royal. “Just took care of some family bidness.”

  THE MARCH OF THE FLAG (II)

  Hod and the others walk toward Fort San Antonio Abad in double file, wading knee-deep in the river where it
spreads and spills into the sea. To the left he can see Dewey’s ships steaming parallel to them, moving into position for the attack. It is cold still, having rained all night, and the men clutch their rifles with grim resolve. There has been shooting and shelling almost every night since they replaced the Filipinos in the positions facing the fort, but nothing much to shoot back at. Rumors of surrender without a fight have been running through the regiment, but here they are, marching straight into it. There is no cover as they climb up onto the sand and move forward toward the stone walls, only the Bay to the left and the flat beach ahead. A perfect killing ground.

  “Fear not, gentlemen,” says Niles, or Lieutenant Manigault as he must now be called. “This is mere formality. Our worthy adversaries have their backs to the ocean and a hundred thousand overexcited niggers seething at the gates. They know we’ve come to preserve their posteriors.”

  Niles hints that he is privy to the inside dope, that the men with stars on their shoulders confide in him, that today’s action will be a stroll in the park. But even he flinches at the first percussive boom of the cannon.

  “It’s the Admiral, gentlemen,” he calls out, recovering. “He’ll soften them up for us.”

  Smoke coughs out from the five-inch guns of the ships, broadside to the Spaniards, in a piston-like sequence. The return fire from the shore battery is sporadic and ineffectual. They are close enough now to see chunks of masonry flying from the seaward walls whenever Dewey’s guns find their mark.

  “If the Dagoes haven’t shot me by now,” says Big Ten, walking big as a house just behind Manigault, “they aint even trying.”

  The barrage is a brief one, followed by much wig-wagging of signal flags on board the Olympia and atop the wall of the Spanish fort, and then there is only the sound of the waves spilling out over the sand. The fort looks something like a beached stone vessel, triangular in shape, with cannon on the parapet walks and poking out from holes in its walls, several of them, it seems to Hod, pointing directly at him. Major Moses organizes them, Hod’s 2nd Battalion spreading out on the sand in support of the firing line before them, and then it begins. Rifle fire from the Spanish trenches in the sand in front of the fort now, a thin whining of Mauser balls overhead, and now and then a Dago running frantically to get the fort between him and the advancing volunteers. Hod holds his rifle ready but does not fire as they walk forward. He feels very calm. Not me, he thinks. Not today. If they’re really shooting at us, why aren’t rounds kicking up the sand?