A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  Brigid pauses a moment at the corner of 24th Street. Father died here. Scraping horse-pies off the stones, the job his cousin Jack Brennan high in the Twentieth Ward Democrats had secured him, and a pair of university boys racing their phaetons, Father able only to stand and face them and hope they’d pass on either side. The Brotherhood had paid for the funeral, so the eulogies quickly turned to calls for Home Rule and the expulsion of Tory landlords.

  “Saint Patrick drove the first nest of serpents from Ireland,” said Jack Brennan, mourning band on his arm and golden harp pinned to his lapel, “and it’s our lot to finish the job!”

  Brigid has gone to a few of the IRB dances and thrilled to hear Maud Gonne, tall and elegant, scold the British in her triumph at the Grand Opera Hall, but the blighted nation’s problems are not hers anymore. If she woke tomorrow with Mount Errigal itself looming outside the cottage window she’d throw the blanket back over her head and pray for the nightmare to end.

  “The most beautiful spot in the world,” Mother would sigh. “But beauty never filled a stomach.”

  He’d been trampled into the stones, Father, first the hooves and then the carriage wheels. Brigid had been called away from work to identify his remains.

  She turns west, breathing through her mouth as the stench from the slaughterhouses thickens the air, hurrying now, afraid he’ll be there early and give up on her, looking out for the Tenth Avenue cowboys, young lads who ride up and down ringing their bells to warn of an approaching freight train, then high-stepping over the tracks and there are others now, the girls all putting on style in bright colors and gaudy hats, American girls by the ease of their movement, people joining in streams from north and south, a human flood driving shoulder to shoulder toward the pier, crowded like the flocks of sheep that follow their belled Judas to be butchered at 42nd. Grania was right, she thinks, among this lot I look like a grieving widow and an old one at that. There are some couples, but more groups of girls and groups of young men, pairs, trios, quartets of them, laughing and shouting from group to group and now the smell of the river and thousands on the pier, it must be thousands.

  “I’m an eejit,” Brigid says out loud, too late now to turn and fight the current of bodies. She can tell that every eye that falls on her sees nothing but a poor Irish scrubwoman from Hell’s Kitchen itself, an ignorant country cailín tarted up like a spud in a silk handkerchief.

  “An eejit,” says Brigid McCool out loud. “And when he sees me he’ll know it for sure.”

  It is more people in one place that he’s seen in his life. Harry is not a small man, but his view is blocked by any number of young giants with bowlers tilted high on their heads, and the hot, indecent human crush of them all, men and women together, has him anxious and wet-browed, struggling to keep his feet. This is not his crowd. Many, if not most, are younger, loudly dressed and raucous in their speech, a half-dozen foreign tongues as well as the grating New Yorkese shouted past him as he pushes through with his uneven gait and tries to locate her in the multitude. I’m the freak attraction they’ve come to see, he thinks, or merely an annoyance to be trodden underfoot in their rush for the pleasure boat.

  And then there she is, striking in satiny black among the garish stripes and dots of the shouting girls, her glorious red hair pulled up on her head, a calm watcher amid the frenzy. Her smile when she sees him seems reserved and he feels his knees go watery with uncertainty. What can a woman like this see in hapless Harry Manigault?

  “I’d almost given up on you,” she says when he reaches her.

  “Next time I’ll come for you in a carriage,” he says, stomach tightening at his own boldness. As if he assumes there will be a next time.

  “We’d better get on board.”

  Harry holds up the tickets he’s bought, limp from the wet of his hands. “They said there’s another in twenty minutes.”

  “It won’t be any less of a mob then.”

  They walk side by side toward the gangplank, ropes narrowing into a chute, the crowd pressing in on them and Harry takes her arm, trying mightily to even his step and be the leader. The bored-looking ferryman yanks the tickets from his hand—

  “Step to the rear, keep moving, step to the rear—”

  They push their way to a spot on the starboard rail, bodies and noise all around them, and Harry is twisted with a sudden shyness.

  “And how was your week?” he asks finally.

  She gives him a sideways glance. “Thursday we polish the glassware,” she says, “and ye can stand or sit. I do look forward to a Thursday.”

  He feels chastened by her tone. A cheer goes up, then, as the ferry horn blasts and the boat begins to churn the water, backing out of the slip.

  “And yerself?” she asks.

  “We made a story. Little boys fool their grandfather with a garden hose.”

  “I think I’ve seen it.”

  “That would be the French version.”

  “Ah,” says Brigid, nodding her head. “If I had any French I would have known.”

  She is mocking him, he knows, but in a gentle way.

  “And yer machine is well?”

  “I’ve been working on a swivel mount for the tripod. It would allow the camera body to be moved—”

  “From side to side,” she interrupts, swiveling her head to take in all of the far shore, “like this.”

  “Yes, actually, that would allow us to—”

  “It would be grand,” she says. “I saw one that was the general who led the byes in Cuba, the fat man—”

  “General Shafter—”

  “—and he rides on the poor little horse across the variety screen and off into nowheres, not more than a few seconds—”

  “Bill Paley shot that before he got sick and the device was damaged—”

  “But where is he riding? That’s what we want to know. If you could turn the head—ye told me ye call it that—”

  “We do—”

  “—ye could follow him along the trail. Even—” and here she raises a finger, imagining the scene, “—swinging the camera view ahead, and see if there’s any Spaniards up in the bushes waiting to do the man harm. I’d have me heart in me throat to see that.”

  It shocks him sometimes, how much she understands his work, how interested in it she seems, and then he chides himself for seeing the cartoon and not the woman.

  “I’ll have to bring you to the shop sometime,” he offers.

  “I’m sure it could use a good cleaning.”

  “I meant,” he has to look away, suddenly embarrassed, “I meant to talk to the boys. Your ideas.”

  She says nothing, but slips her arm into his again. “Will ye look at Her-self, now.”

  They are chugging past Liberty, gulls swooping around her handsome face.

  “I saw the photographs when I was a boy. Postcards. But I must say, close up—”

  “She came out of a fog.” Brigid turns to look after the statue. “We were all of us sick with the waves and sick with not knowing what was here for us and then Herself—” She shakes her head. “If it had been your eagle, or a man with a rifle in his arms—but one look at Her and I felt, all right now, Brigid McCool, this might turn out well. And then they took us there,” she points to the brick buildings on the low island beyond the Statue, “and they put a hook in me eyelid and peeled it back and asked Father a thousand questions, each one I was sure would be our undoing.”

  “You coming on your boat.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I’d been there to greet you.”

  She turns to study his face. The ferry churns past the Battery.

  “And what would ye have said to me then, a great Donegal brute of a girl in a dress made of sacking and her father’s old brogans?”

  Harry feels himself blushing, her bright emerald eyes digging in to him. Niles would have something clever to say, some bon mot to win a girl’s heart that he’d refined through a dozen flirtations. But he is Harry, the quiet one, the lame
one, and can only say the first thing that comes to his head. Which might be the truth.

  “I would have been made speechless,” he says, “at the sight of you.”

  They are quiet then. Brigid squeezes his arm in hers as they lean on the rail together and watch the wheeling seabirds and the river currents clashing and the other boats speeding to and fro, marveling at the great newspaper towers visible from the water, at the structures being built that will soon dwarf them, steaming around the point of Manhattan and churning giddily, if a boat can be allowed an emotion, toward the Brooklyn shore.

  They are nearly to the Island when a group of young sports begin to sing—

  I’ve seen the Tower of London

  The lights of gay Paree

  Now I’m off to see the Elephant

  Though it mean the end of me

  When the Judge speaks of going to see the Elephant it is stories of slaughter from his service during the Great Lost Cause. But these singers are too young for that War. Harry has been told that in the years before he came to New York there was a hotel on Coney, built in the shape of an enormous pachyderm. The rooms in the creature’s head, with their eye-windows and view of the beach, were more expensive than those in the legs, and for a small fee a non-guest could ascend to the observation deck in the howdah on the elephant’s back. But as the immediate neighborhood grew less wholesome the significance of the term was debased until it could be applied to a visit to any house of ill repute—

  You may be wise and worldly

  They sing—

  A rambler bold and free

  But until you see the Elephant

  You’re as green as green can be!

  Brigid, unaware of this darker connotation, trills along gaily.

  There are an unthinkable number of people already on the sand and boardwalk at West Brighton.

  “Will ye look at us?” says Brigid as they are swept down the gangplank, bright-eyed and pulling him forward into the crush. “It’s the whole city here to throw off their cares.”

  Their feet are no sooner on firm ground then a half-dozen touts begin to chatter at them, vaunting their amusements. The West Brighton Hotel is the only solid body in a Bedlam of activity, the rides ahead gyrating and rolling and tumbling and swooping, a cacophony of musics blaring out from them, leaving Harry stunned and looking to Brigid for guidance.

  “I’ve never been to the sea creatures,” she says.

  The “park” is fenced in, next to the lot where the Elephant Hotel burned. Captain Boyton’s sea lions leap and dive, balance on balls, play the xylophone with their flippers, juggle objects on their noses and pause frequently to gulp down whole fish thrown into their sharp-toothed maws. There are lots of children in the gallery, their wails of wonder and delight mixing with the screams of the adventurers risking life and limb on the Flip-Flap Railroad behind them, whipped completely upside-down for a terrifying moment. The bodies of the sea lions are shiny and supple and Harry cannot keep himself from thinking how beautiful they would look on film.

  “I’ve only seen them dead on the strand,” says Brigid, holding a hand to her chest in awe. “Our fishermen kill them with gaffs when they can.” She looks to Harry, apologetic. “It’s that they tear the nets.”

  One shoots up from the depths just in front of Harry, flinging water, twisting to stare at him with liquid black eyes. “They look frantic,” he observes, “but not happy.”

  “The sea lions or the spectators?”

  Harry smiles, but is not sure if she’s being ironic or not. “I meant the animals.”

  Brigid watches as each of the dozen clap their flippers together, then dive backward into the pool. “Content, I would say,” she judges, “but no, not happy. Happiness is only something in the human mind, poor creatures that we are.”

  The sea lions scoot away through an underwater passage and are replaced by Captain Boyton himself, demonstrating his famous life-saving suit. He lays on his back in the rubber suit, feet forward as he employs a double-bladed paddle to move himself about the pool.

  “There are air-pockets in the suit—” Harry explains.

  “No doubt.”

  “He had the idea of transatlantic ship passengers wearing it. In case of an accident.”

  “The women as well?”

  “Of course.”

  Brigid watches as the Fearless Frogman paddles below them, a small circle of his face visible within the tight rubber hood.

  “They’ll never put it on,” she decides. “To be seen in public dressed like that—”

  “Death before dishevelment.”

  “If my corpse is to be pulled up from the cold ocean, it will be in decent attire.”

  Captain Boyton emerges from the water and gives a very brief lecture, finishing with an invitation to observe the celebrated Diving Dobbin perform in the Lagoon behind them. Harry and Brigid make their way with the others, standing together craning up at the platform where a riderless horse steps cautiously to the edge, head low as a boy raps a rolling tattoo on a snare drum, then at the clash of a cymbal gathers itself and leaps splay-legged into the air. Harry feels himself gasp with the others and then the huge splash and the beast churning its legs to reach the ramp at the far end of the lagoon and he can only think of the haunting Biograph view they’ve been showing at Koster and Bials, mules and horses swimming in the waves off Cuba. Niles and some friends had unhitched an old negro’s carriage horse on an excursion to Lake Waccamaw when they were boys, driving it deep into the water by throwing stones, the horse snorting spray out of its great nostrils as it tired, eyes rolling white in panic, treading desperately till some white men came to chase Niles and his friends and catch Harry, too lame to outrun them, and yank him by the ear to where the Judge sat in the shade telling war stories. The Judge had not whipped him, saving that for Niles later, but forced him to apologize to the old uncle.

  “That’s a mean way to do him,” the negro kept saying, shaking his head and dabbing at the cuts the stones had opened on the horse’s hide. “That’s a mean way.”

  Once Diving Dobbin has climbed out and been led off, shaking himself dry, the Shoot-the-Chutes is back in business.

  “Would ye like to try it?” asks Brigid, squeezing his arm and with a hopeful glint in her eye. He hesitates, a lifetime of embarrassments holding him back, and she senses it, adding, “But of course I’d hate to get wet, wouldn’t I?”

  They settle for the bleachers and watch the flat-bottomed skiffs sluicing down the channels then flying off the final lip to smack and skitter across the surface of the Lagoon, passengers shouting and laughing and sprayed with water as they desperately grasp the sides and try not to spill out.

  “They must have made quite a number of tests for this,” says Harry. “Deciding on the slope of the chute, the design of the boat.”

  “Dangerous,” says Brigid, “but not fatal.”

  “I’ve never been much of a dare-devil,” Harry admits, then regrets pointing it out.

  “There’s not many who are,” says Brigid, rising to leave. “Which is why your fillums are such a sensation.”

  They pass under the obscenely grinning Funny Face then, demonic eyes and tombstone choppers gleaming, and into Steeplechase Park. It is another machine with too many moving parts, thinks Harry, and at first he is frozen with indecision, finally allowing Brigid to tug him to a booth where a nickel buys you a dozen chances to break a china plate by throwing a hard black ball. They are a far cry from actual china, of course, but Brigid squeals with glee at each of the three she manages to shatter.

  “I knocked one over in a lady’s cupboard last year,” she says, “and it was a day’s wages lost.”

  He had thought at first that the plates were prizes, not the object of pleasurable destruction, and is impressed with her skill. “I’d never have hit as many.”

  “Oh, we Irish are known for our hurling,” she says, teasing him. “It’s bricks through the landlord’s window and on from there.”


  The Steeplechase horses come whizzing around a curve in the track above them, trailing excited screams from the riders. Harry is still smarting from his cowardice at the Shoot-the-Chutes. “There’s not much of a line,” he says, pointing. “We should go.”

  Brigid stops to look at him. “Are ye sure?”

  “A half a mile in half a minute,” he says, quoting the painted advertisement at the entrance gate. “We have to experience that.”

  They climb the stairs, Harry pulling himself up the railing, and are in the second group of eight couples waiting to mount. The height and the steep decline of the first section of track begin to work on his nerves, and he calms himself by imagining what alterations would allow a camera operator to ride with the device in hand and crank film through the aperture. Certainly an assistant behind to keep him from falling off, and a special housing to reduce the bulk of the apparatus. But would the image be only a blur? Would the spectator in the theater grab his hat, gasp in fear, suffer a queasy stomach?

  “Who’s first?” barks the loader, a slightly cross-eyed man in shirtsleeves.

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” says Brigid.

  “But I’ll block your view.”

  “Ladies first, then,” says the loader and taps his foot with impatience as Brigid anchors her hatpin securely, then steps onto the box and takes his hand, deftly arranging her skirt to throw her leg over the back of the hobbyhorse. Harry has a moment of panic but the loader squats down without comment, offering his shoulder for leverage, and he is able to drag his bad leg over the saddle and get himself centered as the other couples arrange themselves. He feels ridiculous for an instant, a grown man on a wooden horse, but then the starter yells “Ready?!” and he puts his arms the only place they can go, snug around her waist, and the nape of her lovely neck close to his lips, the smell of her hair—he has half closed his eyes with the rapture of it when the bell rings and the horses are released, eight across, eight couples screaming as they plunge down and veer sharply this way and that, Brigid clasping his wrist with one of her hands and he can’t tell if that’s her heart beating with excitement under his fingers or his own, pounding his blood out into his extremities, bits of track and safety wall and sky whipping across his eyes, his hat blowing off his head, squeezing the wooden horse between his knees to keep from being flung out into space and then they are falling abruptly and speeding down the final straightaway, second across the finish line and coasting hoarse-voiced to a stop.