by John Sayles
Harry tries to walk as steadily as he can around the wet spot, not using the cane till he reaches the stairs outside. The cold hits him like a fist, still a surprise. It is night now, the streetlights glowing. He stands on the walk in front of the Eden Musee, the folded paper forgotten in his pocket, slightly dizzy. His heart is racing again, and he hasn’t even started across 23rd Street.
REGULARS
The armbands are supposed to make it all right, but you never know in El Paso. Royal is holding the reins, Junior never much with a wagon team, as they roll along Second, white folks’ brick houses to the left and Mexican baked adobe to the right. They are both wearing the armbands and strapped with pistols, usually forbidden, but this is a provost detail. Royal keeps his eyes straight ahead, glad it’s noon and most everybody is inside.
“We’ll be back in the thick of it in no time,” says Junior beside him, rubbernecking around like a tourist. “The Philippines, China—”
“You don’t know that.”
Junior has been on him all week to reenlist, their hitch officially over tomorrow and lots of the boys who come in with them at Missoula saying they’re going to hang it up.
“It stands to reason.” Junior holds tight to the seat as Royal turns the team left on Campbell. “We’re experienced, disciplined—”
“Don’t want to shoot them people any more than I wanted to shoot a Spanish.”
“We don’t get to choose our enemies, Royal.”
“If you’re not in the damn Army you do.”
“It will be more like police work by the time we get there. Maintaining order—”
“Don’t care for that neither.”
Junior scowls. “Suppose you were to accept discharge. What would you do?”
Royal has been trying not to think of this. He shrugs. “Go back to Wilmington.”
It is a sore point between them, Junior bragging after every letter he gets about how good his people are making it up in New York, like they never lost a step, while Royal, who gets no mail at all, doesn’t call out the lie. If he even says the name Wilmington, Junior gets all tight and says that’s over, that the colored man’s future all up North now.
Or in the regulars.
“What I’ve heard,” says Junior, turning his head away, “is they even told Mr. Sprunt he can’t hire colored anymore.”
All Royal knows, from the other Wilmington men in the unit, is that his mother wasn’t hurt and Jubal took off and hasn’t been back. It was Junior who told him Dorsey Love is dead and Jessie gone up to a better life in New York.
“Set me there with one dozen of these wildass colored regulars,” said Coop when he heard, Coop who used to be Clarence Rice at home and didn’t come back from leave last night, “and they be a mess of redneck crackers floating in that Cape Fear River.”
Royal pulls the wagon off the street, hitching the pair in the shade of the alleyway next to the jail. He and Junior straighten their uniforms out, set their hats, and step inside.
The deputy leans back in a swivel chair behind a scarred-up desk, chewing tobacco and spitting the juice into a coffee cup in his hand while an electric fan blows air on his face. Another man, an Easterner by his dress, sits across from him writing in a notebook.
“We don’t use it so much as the old days,” the deputy is saying, “but we keep the hinges oiled. I’ll show it to you in a minute, up on the third tier of the tank.”
“And is it usual to have multiple executions?” asks the dude, who must be a reporter.
“Hell, there probly been a double-header before this,” chuckles the deputy. “But not since I been here in El Paso.”
“Excuse me, Deputy—” Junior starts, and the white man just holds his hand out and keeps talking.
“The thing is, we had Flores set to go, and we been trying to get old Geronimo Parra back here to stretch ever since he kilt Charlie Fusselman in a shootout up in the Franklins near ten years ago.”
Junior steps forward and places the folded order in the deputy’s hand. The white man does not look up, and Junior takes two military steps back to stand by Royal again, not quite at attention.
“But Parra slipped under the border, then got caught rustling over in the Territory and ended up coolin his heels in the Santa Fe lockup.”
The deputy glances at the paper.
“Cristy!” he shouts, then spits a big gob of black liquid into the coffee mug.
The newsman never stops scribbling. “You tried to extradite?”
“They wouldn’t stand for it. Only our Captain Hughes, who’s from the same Marfa outfit of Rangers that Charlie Fusselman come from, has been on Parra’s trail all these years and that old boy don’t quit. He runs into Pat Garrett in a saloon—”
“Garrett who killed William Bonney?”
“The very same, still a Territory lawman. Garrett says how they’d do anything to get holt of this bad character name of Agnew, spose to be hiding out in Texas, and proposes a swap.”
“An exchange of prisoners.”
“Agnew wasn’t a prisoner yet,” grins the deputy, teeth flecked black with tobacco. “But with a chance to bring Geronimo Parra home to justice, Captain Hughes jumped on his pony and went looking. Caught Agnew working as a ranch hand on the Big Bend, and we had our deal with the Territory.”
A jailer in a blue uniform appears, the deputy waving the colonel’s paper at him.
“Bring that nigger trooper out.”
Sergeant Jacks, who grew up in this town, has warned them all about dealing with Texans, the white ones, told them scare stories about John Wesley Hardin and lynch law and the Rangers, especially the Rangers, who are death on Mexicans and not much fonder of colored. The colored and Chinese here live in the Mex section, Chihuahua, and there’s even supposed to be a couple of the old black Seminole scouts left over in Juarez. Royal has come in on leave with the others a dozen times, tequila making quick work of him.
“Cristy there,” says the deputy, nodding after the jailer as he leaves, “was one of them got stabbed by our desperadoes.”
“They had knives in jail?” the reporter’s bowler sits on the desktop beside him. He writes with a pen that doesn’t need to be dipped in ink over and over.
“Made them some daggers. When boys are gonna make the drop, you got to let them say farewell to their families, which with a Mex is half the damn county. And they go in for all that hugging, even the men. Abrazos. Don’t know how you spell that—”
Royal is used to white men not looking at him, pretending not to see him, but with the uniform on it is more of an insult. He is just a private, “lower than muleshit” as Too Tall would say, but still—
“Some one of these folks slipped some fence wire to them that they twisted into shape and sharpened on the wall blocks that night. Next day, there’s thousands outside, mostly Mex, fillin the streets, up on the rooftops, like they gonna see us do our business inside here. The hour arrives and we open the cells, and they both jump out—Parra and this Antonio Flores who’s already stabbed to death some little señorita over in Smelterville who’d turned him down one too many times. Flores commences to jabbin my buddy Ed Bryant in the gut with this wire contraption while Parra goes after Cristy there and Officer Ten Eyck who was the first ones in. Took a half dozen of us to pull them frog-stickers away and get the cuffs on. The Mexicans call handcuffs esposas,” winks the deputy. “The same word as wife.”
But the uniform, thinks Royal, is something. Enough, maybe, if you break no laws and stay south of Second, east of Santa Fe Street, to keep a cracker deputy off of you. He wasn’t much back in Wilmington, just another nigger millhand, and from what they tell of the white folks’ takeover he be even less now. At least in the regulars it’s always clear where you stand—look on a man’s arm and you know how tight your asshole got to squeeze.
“None of the wounds were fatal?” asks the writer.
The deputy grins, spits into his mug. “You can’t hurt a Texan with no fence-wire dagger,” he
says. “Nothin but chicken scratches. We sent Flores up first, and he wasn’t too pleased about it, from what I could tell with the hood over his head. Made a good loud snap when he run out of rope, didn’t need no doctor to know the job was done right. With Parra, well—Geronimo put on some weight in the Santa Fe hoosegow, and with his drop it popped that vein in your neck, blood pourin out from under the hood and all over the floor, and when Captain Hughes pulled it off the man’s head was just barely holding up his body by one little strap of tendon.”
“Oh my,” says the Easterner, laying his pen down.
The deputy spits. “He needed killin.”
Royal sees someone coming down the corridor toward them, a colored man in a regular’s uniform, with the jailer Cristy behind him.
“We let the gory details out to the Mex crowd right away,” says the deputy, raising his voice and turning his head slightly toward Royal and Junior. “See, what we got here in El Paso is just a colony, handful of decent white folks sandwiched between thousands of them bean-eatin sonsabitches on both sides of the Rio.” He looks Royal in the eye for the first time. “Now and then you got to make a display.”
The prisoner is Cooper, barefoot and without his hat.
“Get him out of town,” says the deputy to Junior. “And tell your colonel to keep better track of his niggers.”
Cooper sits alone in the bed of the wagon as Royal eases past the courthouse.
“Where are your boots, soldier?” asks Junior, turning back to glare.
“Talk to me like that, you sididdy little butt-wipe,” says Cooper, almost calm, “I cut your heart out.”
“You’re a deserter.”
“I only got two goddam days left on my hitch—what the hell I want to desert for?”
“Then what were you doing out on the International Bridge at midnight, out of uniform and—”
“I been to the Chinaman.”
Cooper says this quietly, looking away from Junior, as if it explains everything.
“That where you left your boots?” asks Royal, pulling the reins to take them right.
“Maybe. You know how it is—puts you in a different mind.”
Royal doesn’t know how it is, has never gone with the few that smoke it, but did pass out drinking mescal one night and wake to see his father, ten years dead, tipping one back at the other end of the bar.
“I come out and it was dark,” says Coop. “All that nice music they play comin out from the cantinas, and it hit that they wants me, they needs me to come over to Juarez.”
“To do what?” asks Junior.
“You ever been?”
“No. It’s off limits—”
“Then I can’t explain, can I?” Cooper looks around to get his bearings, sees the post office. “That Alligator Plaza just up here, Roy. Got to get something before we go back.”
Royal steers the pair over the Southern Pacific tracks and into the plaza, pulling the wagon up beside the gazebo. There are a couple dozen people scattered around, all colors, and the fountain in the middle of the circular moat is spilling halfheartedly.
“He’s our prisoner,” Junior protests. “We can’t—”
Royal giving his friend a hard look. “I can do any damn thing I please.”
Coop laughs and hops down, crossing barefoot to the low wall around the moat. Royal ties the horses off to a post on the gazebo and follows with Junior. There are two alligators, six-footers, sleeping on the ground just inside the low wall, so still they might be dead and stuffed, and another slowly swimming, eyes just above the surface of the murky green water in the moat. A metal statue of a little boy stands by the fountain on the little island in the center, right leg bare and holding a boot up with real water running out of the toe.
“Look like that boy found his boots,” says Coop, rolling his pant legs up.
“You left something here?”
Coop looks about to see there is no one near with a badge or a stripe, then high-steps over the wall. “First thing into town I got my ashes hauled over on Utah Street,” he says, passing between the two sleepers, “then I come down here to set a spell. Bought some chicken necks in case they still hungry.” He steps into the water, begins to move in a slow zigzag, head cocked, searching with the bottoms of his feet.
“Junior,” he calls, “you see that gator make a rush at me, I needs you to shoot it.” He touches an eyeball. “Right here.”
Junior turns, scanning the plaza for somebody who might disapprove, but the noontime idlers seem to be used to people wading in with the reptiles.
“I was carryin my protection,” says Coop, moving sideways now, “which a man be crazy to do without in this town, no matter what the damn post regulation say, and these two police start to pass by me, up and down, three-fo times, and I figure it’s either have it out with the crackers right then and there or put it where they can’t find it on me.”
Junior turns back. “You had a pistol?”
Coop shows all his teeth in a smile, reaches up to his shoulder into the water and comes up with a slime-dripping, short-barrel Bulldog.
“Just this little ole thing. Don’t look like much, but she bite you.”
The alligator floats just in front of Cooper’s legs then, not more than two feet away. He watches it pass.
“They don’t care for the dark meat.”
Royal has Cooper’s revolver tucked in his boot when they come back to Bliss, Junior dealing with the sentries, the armbands and the colonel’s name getting them onto the parade ground.
“So what do you think?” he says to Royal. “They’re making the pay up, and once you’re off the books—”
“Give me one more reason,” says Royal, easing the pair to a stop in front of the stockade. “One good reason.”
Junior leans in and speaks quiet enough that Cooper, brooding in the back of the wagon, can’t hear.
“Because you’re my friend,” says Junior. “And I can’t do it without you.”
Sergeant Jacks is in the little guard shack with Lumbley, the duty officer.
“You didn’t make it to the other side,” says Jacks, looking Coop up and down.
“I was about to the middle of the bridge when I trip over them trolley tracks,” Coop shrugs. “And then it feel so good, layin on them boards, my head in Old Mexico and my feets in the United States, I just decide to take a nap.”
Jacks steps close and looks into Cooper’s eyes, searching. “You wonder what could put an idea like that in a man’s head.”
Junior makes a noise to get his attention. “I’ve come to a decision, Sergeant,” he says, straightening up and locking his eyes forward the way you only need to do with captains and higher. “I’ll be reenlisting.”
“I’ll call the War Department,” says Lumbley. “They been holdin off on their plans.”
Cooper starts to laugh. “Me too, Sarge. I mean after I does my little stay in here, you can sign me up.”
Jacks shakes his head. “If you survive the next three weeks’ punishment, and if the 25th Regular Infantry, Colored, in its ill-advised generosity, agrees to accept your petition,” he says, “you will have to earn those boots back, Private.” He turns to Royal. “How bout you?”
Fort Bliss is like Huachuca, is like Missoula. Some mountains on one side and then just open land with hardly a soul upon it. Nothing out there. Royal sees himself walking in the great emptiness, on and on, no uniform on his back, a part of nothing with nowhere to go.
Junior won’t look at him but is listening hard.
“Yeah,” says Royal. “Count me in.”
INCENDIARY
This is not the first time Tondo has burned. Twice while he was at the Ateneo the chapel bells rang and the Manila firemen stumbled over each other and the British sent their shiny wagon into the streets and the sky was alive with floating embers all through the night. Diosdado ducks low and zigzags through the maze of nipa huts, thrusting the torch to anything not already ablaze. Men and women and children scatter b
efore him, barefoot, carrying whatever they value most and searching for a pathway through the flames. The plan is to move from east to west, advance runners warning the people and the next wave firing their homes, driving everyone before them to the sea. But the wind has shifted several times, torch-men have run ahead of the ones crying the alarm and there are screams now, lifting above the crackle and roar of the conflagration, screams of fear and more hysterical screams that Diosdado doesn’t want to think about and bamboo timbers exploding like rifle shots and the pop-pop-pop of real rifles to the east as their snipers engage the first of the Americans to respond. He has to backtrack quickly as a nipa hut ahead erupts into flame, a burning dog squealing as it scampers out, tail on fire, the rush of heat like a blow to the side of his face and there is panic in the firelit eyes of the scattering people, panic in their shouts to each other and the pop-pop-pop closer now with what must be every chapel bell in Manila ringing at once. The local firemen are out there somewhere and the British, no doubt, never miss a chance to show off their new steam pumper, and the Americans with whatever equipment they’ve loaded off their great ships—but when Tondo burns it burns to the ground.
A small boy is staggering under the weight of the plaster statue of Saint Joseph he carries on his shoulder, trying to escape but driven back from a wall of heat in each direction. Diosdado shouts and the boy whirls, sees the torch in his hand and backs away from him, terrified, before turning to disappear into the thick black smoke rolling in from the west.
Diosdado edges away from the smoke and tries to gasp a clean breath, the scorched air searing his lungs, worrying that his clothes and hair, despite their dousing before the raid, will burst into flame. He is trapped. The burning is only a diversion, meant to draw some of the Americans away from Binondo before General Luna’s attack on their northernmost lines. It is the last hope, more desperate even than the defense at Caloocan when the enemy first pushed north from the river, Diosdado’s company among four thousand dug in by the chapel and the Chinese cemetery, lying in the muck of the rice fields with the American artillery raining down from La Loma and the Gatling gun tearing the sod off the ditches and the yanqui infantry advancing like a murderous flood tide as the colonels flapped and postured and squawked at each order from Luna saying Aguinaldo, Aguinaldo was the supremo and they would obey only him while their men fought bravely, desperately, uselessly and the railhead and the five locomotives with all their cars sitting on the tracks were lost.