by John Sayles
Burning.
Nilda squats with the others in the cogon grass, mosquitoes feeding on them all. Her cousin’s little bahay kubo in Mariquina is in flames and there is another battle ahead of them, gunfire and explosions, so they hide and wait. The yanquis usually leave before it is dark, but this time there will be nothing left.
It isn’t her town, just a corner of the room in a tiny hut where she has curled up since they killed Fecundo, washing and cooking for the wife of the capitán de barangay and hiding under the copra shed whenever the yanquis come through. There are others like her, floating people, on the run back to their home provinces or with nowhere left to go, and she supposes she will join them on the road in the morning, heading north ahead of the Americans, feeling bound to tell Fecundo’s mother of his capture and execution. Many of the wanderers are children, sick with hunger, heads too big for their bodies. Too many of them to be cared for. The ground shakes beneath them as the yanqui bombs explode. The sun has a good while left in the sky and then they can creep back to whatever is left of Mariquina. Sometimes there are animals burned, cooked, after a town is razed, and Nilda hopes to find one for her journey.
You got to give the little monkeys credit—they dig a hell of a trench. Maybe not so deep as the vols with their longer legs, but deep enough to fit a lot of bodies in. Big Ten grabs the arms on the ones that still got both and Hod takes the legs and they swing them down onto the pile.
“Artillery tore these people up,” says Hod, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.
“Some of them.” Big Ten rolls a man over and indicates the hole in his forehead. “This one, you got to say it’s superior marksmanship.”
“Stupid bastards try to fight us nose to nose. Your outfit never did that.”
“My outfit.”
“You know—”
“Sure they did, way back. Never turned out too good, though, so they gone back to Indin tactics.”
They heave the body. There is still gunfire to the north, just potshots from the sound of it, and Lieutenant Manigault is over with the brass, all of them waving their sticks around.
“Here’s another one.”
Big Ten squats to examine the hole in the man’s head. Not one of his. He is one of two dozen in the company they give a Krag to the other day for “outpost duty,” but really cause he shoots better than the rest. “Chief got them eagle-eyes,” the fellas say, “like all Indins.” Only his father had to wear glasses he bought over in Bemidji and his brother Laurent couldn’t hit a chestnut tree at ten paces. It’s either you got the feel for it or you don’t, and Big Ten knows for a fact he didn’t shoot nobody through the head. If they were squared off to fire he snapped their collarbone opposite the rifle side and if they’d started to run he put one in the thigh. What the other fellas done when they come upon these wounded wasn’t his business, he figures, it’s just one more little monkey I don’t have to deal with tomorrow.
They heave the body.
“What’s that, thirty-four?”
“I just shoot em,” says Big Ten. “Don’t ask me to keep count, too.”
He used fourteen rounds in the fight, hit fourteen men. The other fellas say they just shoot into the crowd, sitting ducks, they say, but Big Ten can see what kind of weapon they’ve got and if they’re an officer or not and whether they close their eyes when they fire. An awful lot of them, and this is supposed to be their best people up on the line, shut their eyes just as they pull the trigger. Plus their artillery is a joke, old cannons off Spanish ships that blow apart as often as they send a ball flying.
“We’re supposed to be counting.”
“Make up a number. Manly Goat aint gonna climb down in here and check.”
The next one they got to toss in pieces.
“Shell must of fell right on him.” Hod is looking queasy.
“He’s not any deader than these others. Grab them feet.”
Big Ten can knock down a squirrel in mid-leap at a hundred yards through a stand of yellow birch. The rounds run smooth through the Krag, and make half the mess the Springfield .45s do when they hit somebody. Not fit for the stewpot, as his father used to say of birds they brought back too full of pellets. Big Ten has never, he thinks, been as good at anything as he is at this soldiering business.
If only he liked it more.
“You think they’d of learned by now,” says Hod, using his feet to position a body so they can get a grip on it. The Filipinos don’t weigh much more than a middling-sized Ojibwe child, his brother’s son René maybe, and don’t carry money into battle, which has pretty much scotched the likelihood of getting volunteers for clean-up duty. “They ought to fight shoot-and-run, like your outfit.”
“Sure,” says Big Ten, heaving. “Just look how good we come out.”
“Well, if I was their general,” says Hod, wiping something sticky and yellow off his hand onto the side of his pants, “I sure wouldn’t waste any more people in these trenches.”
Corporal Grissom wanders back and looks at the jumble of bodies in the pit.
“How many we got in there?”
“Forty-one,” says Hod without blinking. Grissom looks to Big Ten.
“We got a smoker goin ahead at the river, Chief. Lieutenant wants you up there on the double.”
“What about me?” asks Hod.
The corporal shrugs. “Didn’t say nothin about you.”
Hod picks up his old Springfield. “Well I aint draggin these dead men around on my own.”
“Suit yourself.”
They pass more enemy dead on the walk to the river, a few on their bellies with triangular bayonet wounds in the back. The flying column wasn’t supposed to take prisoners unless they might have important information. From the look of these little monkeys, nobody asked. They pass the porters kneeling in a circle in their cast-off Army clothes, throwing dice next to a small hill of equipment, and Grissom shouts for them to go back and cover the pile of Filipino that Hod and Big Ten left. Chinks will do about anything you pay them for except fight or touch dead bodies.
Lieutenant Manigault and some bigger brass are back in the trees, while the boys are hunkered down wherever there is cover from the snipers on the other side of the water.
“This is the one I told you about,” says Manigault. “Never misses.”
“Then get him cracking,” says a colonel with a big moustache.
The Lieutenant and Corporal Grissom lead Big Ten and Hod to the riverside, where Sergeant LaDuke lies cursing behind a tree stump.
“Every time we send somebody out he gets plinked by those sonsabitches over there. They must be renegade Spaniards.”
“Spanish can’t shoot worth shit either,” observes Corporal Grissom.
“Maybe it’s Lenny Hayes from I Company,” says Hod.
Hayes fell in love with a Filipina and went over to the other side, and is supposed to be moving fast up through the ranks of the googoo army.
“Can you see them?” Manigault asks Big Ten.
“Not unless they pop up to shoot at somebody.”
Manigault looks to Sergeant LaDuke. “Well?”
“Stick your head out there,” LaDuke orders Hod.
Hod gives Big Ten a dirty look. Big Ten points.
“Just haul your freight over and get behind the bank where it rises up there. They won’t get more than a couple off.”
Big Ten sights on the tangle of trees across the narrow river. “Go.”
Hod runs and two men rise slightly from behind a downed tree trunk to fire at him. Big Ten sits one of them down with a round through the collarbone.
Crack! a piece of bark flies off next to his face. LaDuke curses.
“That came from high,” Big Ten says to Manigault. “They probably got a bunch in the trees.”
“Can you get them?”
“Only if they got a reason to show themselves.”
Manigault turns to the sergeant. “Take your squad,” he orders, “and trot along the bank like yo
u’re looking for a good place to cross.”
“Like ducks in a goddam shooting gallery.”
“On the double, Sergeant.”
LaDuke curses and calls his men over. Hod pretends he can’t hear but Grissom goes to get him. As the sergeant begins to run Big Ten rolls into his spot, bracing the Krag on top of the tree trunk and firing, one—two—three—four—five—six—the other volunteers along the bank cheering as they see bodies drop out of trees and then the 1st Kansas is up and whooping, charging into the water.
The colonel with the moustache and some of the other brass and everybody else but the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration come up to congratulate Manigault on having such a valuable asset in his company. Only one of the squad, Clete Standish, was hit by the snipers while running decoy, shot through the hip, and he is being carried back by Hod and little Monroe who used to tend bar at the Arcade in Denver.
The colonel thumps Big Ten on the back. “If your outfit had a few more bucks could shoot like you do,” he winks, “I might never have made it out of Arizona.”
Big Ten watches the 1st Kansas wading neck-deep under halfhearted fire with their rifles, bayonets fixed, held high over their heads. Never miss a chance, the Kansas, to stick whoever is left crawling on the other side. He knows he hit at least three of the men in the trees, not showing much of themselves, right between the eyes.
“My outfit never crossed an ocean to kill nobody, either,” he mutters, and heads off to help Hod with the wounded man.
ROUNDSMEN
You don’t like to see a white foot on a dray horse. Hooker got three of them, and Jubal checks them over after he brushes her, getting her to lift each foot so he can look for splits and see how the shoe is wearing. She is a dapple-gray Percheron, seven, maybe eight years old, and been used hard, which is why they give her to Jubal when Mr. White sent him over from the Island. New man get the sorriest ride. Somebody had bob-wire in her mouth, probly back on the farm, she got some scars and don’t feel the bit lest you put some boss into it. Call her Hooker cause she always pull to the left but that was only a shoulder sore let go and Jubal has healed it up. He makes sure to do everything in the same order in the morning, like you need to with the jumpy ones, which means he lets her eat hay from the iron manger while he looks her over for rub spots.
“You take this to keep her off you,” Duckworth said on the first day they moved him onto the city job, handing him a rusty railroad spike, and she did try to crowd him against the stall boards, but every time he just duck under and go to the other side till she give up on it. Horse can’t kick back on you when you between its legs and it don’t have the patience for mischief that a mule does.
Jubal ties her lead line off to the post, hangs the collar over her neck, straps it shut, and then fixes the hames in the groove.
“Gone be a good day for us, Hooker,” he croons, crossing the trace lines over her back to keep them out of the way. “Get out and see the world some.”
He is only started laying the harness saddle on her when her tail goes up. He steps back and lets her pee like she always does, still got the nerves even with how he treats her. He waits for it to soak into the straw a bit, then cinches the harness saddle, keeping it loose. Horse like her only got one question in its head—how they gone hurt me next? She’ll bloat on you at first so it’s no use pulling that cinch too tight. Jubal lays the britching over her rump, lifting her tail gently to fix the backstrap and then buckling the cropper down to it before snapping the top strap onto the saddle. This was the hardest part when he first come, maybe somebody twist her tail or put a stick up her behind before. Lots of ignorant people think they know how to make a horse act right.
He replaces the halter with the bridle then, slipping the nose band over, working his thumb into the space between her front and back teeth to get her to open and pushing the bit into place. He gets the crown piece over her ears and snugs it all up, being sure the blinkers don’t rub on the eye and tightening the throat latch strap. She holds nice and still for him, lazily switching flies with her tail, not twitching under the skin like she done the first week. He had to come in a hour early those days, but now they know each other and got a understanding.
“Gonna be a hot one,” calls Jerrold Huxley, walking past with Spook, who is a light sorrel Belgian. “Be quite a number of em fore it’s over.”
“Spect there will.”
It was Jerrold he rode with to learn the job, Jerrold who helped him find the room on 27th. There is colored from just about everywhere in the building, from the Carolinas and Maryland and Virginia and up from Georgia and Mrs. Battle from the country of Jamaica and even one big-headed boy says he was born right in the City, that his people go back here from before it was United States and didn’t never belong to white folks. Rent is more than on Barren Island but it smells better and there is something to do at night.
Jubal runs the narrow end of the reins through the terret ring on the saddle, pulling them back through the horse-collar guides and then up to the bit rings on the bridle. He tucks the loose ends of the reins under the back strap and backs her out of the stall.
Tiny Lipscombe is on the ramp ahead of them leading Pockets, a beautiful bay with black points who will bite you if you come at him from the right. At the bottom they pass the grooms throwing dice on a blanket and move on to the wagons.
He backs Hooker up between the wagon shafts, then loops an arm’s length of rein around a post to keep her in place. Butterbean comes over from the dice game and holds the shafts up for Jubal to get the tug loops over them. He threads the traces back through the belly-band guides and hooks them to the wagon body, Butterbean stepping away the minute he’s not needed. None of the stable boys like to deal with Hooker. Jubal tightens the cinch another few inches and checks the traces for twists. Jerrold is doing the same at the next wagon over.
“Mulraney in yet?”
Jerrold shakes his head. “Aint seen the man, but he might be about. Likes to tip up on people when they not looking.”
Mulraney is the dispatcher and is always out to catch you with a bottle. Duckworth says it’s cause he can’t drink no more, doctor’s orders, and can’t stand the idea of somebody getting away with a nip under his same roof.
“He catch a sniff of liquor on your breath when you come back to the stable,” Duckworth told him the first day, “that is the end of you.”
Jubal takes the reins in hand and climbs onto the seat of the tip-wagon, watching Hooker’s ears to see that she is ready to go. He clucks and gives the slightest jerk on the lines and Hooker starts them out of the stable.
Mulraney is not in his office when they pass, old Doucette who stays through the night sitting there watching the telephone, afraid he will have to pick it up. They don’t really start to drop until noon, though now and then there is one that has laid out all night before somebody reported it.
Jubal gees her out through the doors to join the tail of the line on the Avenue. It is all kinds of horses they got working for White’s Sons—Shires and Suffolks and Haflingers and Belgians and big tall Percherons like Hooker. The breweries take up the Clydesdales for their delivery teams, and it seems like all the saddle horses gone off to the Philippines or been sold to the English for their war in Africa. There are six wagons waiting in a row, horses blinkered with their heads down and ears slack, some of them probly asleep, while the teamsters lean back and tilt their faces up to the sun rising over the tenements to the east. He’s never known Hooker to sleep in the traces, not even with a long standing spell, too busy worrying what somebody might surprise her with. No telling how many owners she been through to this point. Had her on a farm buggy maybe, mowed some hay, then when she got her size was sold into the City. Before the electric come in they run the streetcar and omnibus teams in all weather, uphill and down, till they were wore out. Every time a horse change hands it got someone new to deal with, someone got a whole nother way of doing to you. It puts Jubal in mind of his Mama’s stories abou
t slave days and people being traded out for livestock or stores. Hell, he thinks, I’d balk plenty you put a hand to me. Get away with whatever I could.
Jerrold calls out as a couple of the shitwagon boys roll by, bringing their street manure to the pier.
“You boys had a busy night.”
“Yeah, we gonna lose these road apples and put the nags away,” answers the lead driver. “Then I’m gonna look up that gal you been keepin with.”
The teamsters laugh. Jerrold’s wife is a big, rawboned woman who scares the daylights out of everybody but him.
“Aint no woman got a nose will let you near em,” calls Duckworth after them. The shitwagon boys ride all night between sanitation stations and then ship it out at dawn. White’s Sons sends a dozen wagonloads upstate every day, stable manure bringing a price while the road puckey just gets dumped somewhere. “You boys is ripe.”
Mulraney shows up then, nodding sharp at them all. “Gentlemen,” he says, like always. Mulraney is not so bad for an Irish, he don’t call you nothin or tell you how to do your job if you do it right. Knows his horses, too, and word is he trained racers before the bottle got the best of him. He’s the one who says when it’s time to sell a horse out or send for the Cruelty people and put it away. You need a horse doctor to say it’s an accident and shoot it if you want insurance, but the Cruelty people are free if you say it can’t work no more and will suffer. Hooker was almost out the door to whatever ragpicker would buy her when Jubal came.
“She’s found her man, she has,” the dispatcher says whenever he sees her back in the traces. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon.”
The sun is two fingers over the rooftops when Jubal’s turn comes up, one of the stable boys ducking his head out the doorway.
“Thirty-eight between Nine and Ten,” he calls, and Jubal puts Hooker into motion.
He tries to keep to the streets with paving block, cobbles dealing hell to a white-footed horse, and keeps her to a slow trot. Hooker likes to run, which makes him think she was maybe once on a fire truck, and you got to keep some drag on the reins. Ninth is already crowded with traffic, hacks and delivery wagons and ice carts, a few pony phaetons and fancy carriages and the streetcar sparking up and down the middle. The hacks you have to watch out for, and the two-wheel cabs are even worse, cutting in and out of the flow to pick up or leave their fares, drivers waving their sticks and yelling at each other to stay clear. On the busiest day of the year in Wilmington it was nothing like this. When he first came, on foot, Jubal made his neck sore staring up at the buildings, one taller than the next, but driving you have to watch the cross streets, watch the rig ahead of you, watch for little ones trying to get under your wheels and you don’t dare look up at anything. At the end of the day he can barely open his hands, which never happened back home no matter how long he drove.