by John Sayles
He nearly jumps to his feet as the President enters from the door to his study.
McKinley is shorter than he had imagined, though he is a fleshy, sturdy-looking man, clean-shaven, with the large head and noble profile of the newspaper illustrations. He holds out his hand.
“A pleasure to meet you.”
They shake hands. “Thank you for seeing me.”
The President sits in a wooden swivel armchair at the far end of the long table, surrounded by inkstand and pens, a wooden stationery holder, wearing a vague smile on his face.
“And how may I help you, Mr. Manly?”
He has rehearsed this over and over, Carrie serving as coach and audience, searching for the proper balance between his respect for the personage and his outrage over the offense.
“I imagine you have been informed of the events in Wilmington over the past election—”
The vague smile does not change. The President’s eyes, expressionless, seem empty of thought, of emotion—
“—voters intimidated, killings and expulsions, my own press burned—”
“You are a newspaper man.”
If he has in fact heard of the riot, the President is an excellent actor.
“I was, until my property was destroyed and my life threatened.”
“This sounds like an obvious legal complaint.”
“A futile one, I’m afraid, Mr. President, in the courts of North Carolina.”
“North Carolina.”
The President says the words as if they are the key to a room he does not wish to enter.
“I believe the outrages fall under the purview of the federal government. Constitutional rights have been violated, property illegally seized—”
“This was on Election Day?”
“On the following day. An armed mob, led by members of the political faction that has since gained power, fired indiscriminately into several neighborhoods, killing an untold number of citizens. Men were rounded up and forced to leave their homes and families without legal proceedings or even complaints, women and children forced to cower in the woods overnight during a rainstorm—”
A small frown creases the President’s forehead. The interview has veered into territory he has not been prepared for. “You saw these things with your own eyes?”
“Not personally, no—”
“Ah—”
“I was forced to flee just before the—”
“I see—” Losing him, fleshy hands on the arms of his swivel chair now, ready to rise, to bequeath him to the appropriate supernumerary—
“I only escaped because my skin is so light.”
Confusion on the President’s face.
“But I have the testimony of dozens of eye-witnesses, many who have suffered more than I. This was mob rule, highly organized and specifically targeted at bringing the Democrats, despite their numerical disadvantage on the voter rolls, back into power in Wilmington. As my people have been among your greatest supporters in the past, they naturally hope that you, as a last resort, could offer some sort of just response to this—”
“You’re a negro?”
He asked no subterfuge of Congressman White in setting up the audience, and assumed none had been necessary.
“Of course.”
The President flushes a deep pink, like a gulf shrimp suddenly boiled. His fingers tighten on the arms of the swivel chair.
“You’ll have to leave.”
He is angry, and what is worse, what is more disappointing, he is afraid. This white man at the far end of the long, polished table, is visibly shaking.
“I am an American citizen,” says Alex Manly, “a registered Republican, and, until recently, the editor of a—”
“You must leave this room!”
The voice much louder now, though not firm. On the other side of the door, leaning against the wall reading newspapers, were a pair of men who Manly had taken for Pinkertons, involved somehow with the President’s security. He stands slowly, hands spread slightly in a placating gesture.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
The President does not answer.
Mr. Cortelyou frowns at him as he steps out, and one of the security men flicks his eyes over the newspaper, suspicious. The floor beams seem to shift under his feet, he feels unsteady. The petitioners, nearly in unison, move up a seat. He passes an older colored man mopping the stairway on the way down.
“We will now enter the Public Audience Room, often referred to as the Banquet Room or East Room,” says the young man leading a dozen visitors along the Cross Hall past the foot of the stairs. “Mourners gathered here to view President Lincoln’s body after his assassination, and it has provided the setting for many a gala affair. This room, more than any other in the residence, belongs to you.”
Manly exits through the North Portico, perspiring now under his suit as he hurries past soldiers rigid on either side of the doorway, their eyes fixed on an invisible locus. He does not look back.
DREAM BOOK
NOTICE
TO RESIDENTS OF ILLINOIS ONLY
If you live in any other State
you do not have to send the “Sample Letter.”
It seems Illinois is worried about minors buying firearms through the mail. But if you write the catalogue people a letter saying you are twenty-one or older, they will send whatever you order. It makes the Assassin wonder. Is there some way they can check to be sure? Do they bother? His name is on lists, he has had to change it more than once.
But outside of this one state, they make it so easy—
REVOLVERS
The following quotations do not include cartridges.
42033
Eclipse vest pocket single-shot pistol, Nickel-plated, wood stock, 2½ inch Barrel; weight 5 ounces; for BB and conical caps and .22 caliber short cartridge, safe and reliable, barrel swings to the right to load.
Each... $0.50
By mail, extra… .05
So easy to conceal, but only that one shot. You have to be close, close enough to put it to the temple. To look the man in the eye.
BIG BARGAINS,
AMERICAN BULL DOG REVOLVERS
This line of revolvers are strictly first-class in every respect. The quality of workmanship and material is best; all have rifled barrels and are good shooters. All 5 shot. These are not toys but good big guns. We can sell them at these prices because we buy them 5,000 at a time.
American Bull Dogs, all double-action, self-cocking, all have rubber stocks, all beautifully nickel-plated, all have saw handles, all have fluted cylinders, all have octagon barrels—
There are so many to choose from. Forehand and Wadsworth, Harrington and Richardson, Hopkins and Allen, Colt, Smith and Wesson—it is hard to know. The higher calibers will do more damage, of course, but the pistols that deliver them tend to be bigger, longer, harder to hide—
HANDSOME REVOLVERS
ACCURATE RELIABLE
47146
Colt’s New Navy
This revolver has been adopted by the U.S. Navy and every one has to pass a rigorous inspection.
Double-action, self-cocking, shell-ejecting revolver, nickel-plated or blued finish, rubber stock, beautifully finished, finest material; length about 12½ in., 6 shot, weight 2 lbs., 4½ or 6 in. barrel, 38 caliber using 47981 cartridges.
Each… $12.00
By mail, extra… .35
The Assassin is a metalworker but not a gun person. He looks at his hand, tries to imagine it holding something with a six-inch barrel. Military men shoot to kill all the time, they are trained for it, but the military belongs to them, it is the whip hand of the State. In all the strikes the military and the police have had the guns, have had the power—
52338
Iver Johnson “Safety Automatic”
“A Sure Shot”
Small-frame double-action top break revolver; nickel-plated, hand-checkered wood grip, exposed hammer, 3 in. barrel. 6 shot, chambered for S&W .32 cartridge.
>
Each… $3.10
By mail, extra… .17
It is no bigger than the palm of his hand. The Assassin has seen them for sale in hardware stores, short and heavy-looking. He has even lifted one in his hand, pretending to consider buying it. Even without the cartridges loaded he felt a different man. A man who could make some difference in the world.
A man of destiny.
HOW TO ORDER—
A DEATH IN CABANATUAN
Diosdado carries his uniform in a sack, easy to toss away if they encounter the Americans. No point in drawing more fire than you need to. The men, remnants of four companies, walk on ahead and behind him through the head-high cane, ducking away from the razor-sharp leaves, rifles slung over their shoulders, silent, listening to the terrain in front of them. A pair of hawks wheel slowly overhead, hoping the troop will flush something edible into the open. With dead, wounded, and deserted it is only twenty-five of them left plus the boy, Fulanito, who appeared one day carrying a Spanish Mauser nearly as tall as he is.
They pause at the end of the cane, Sargento Bayani crossing the road first as always, moving unguardedly into the rice paddy with a bolo resting on his shoulder. The enemy is too confident to bother with ambush, impatient to fire at anything that moves, and Bayani insists he is an irresistible target. He walks for a full minute, then turns to wave them ahead.
There is no telling what the reception will be in Cabanatuan. General Luna has ordered every telegraph line in the province cut and by the time runners have traveled back and forth the situation may have changed completely. General del Pilar, busy gathering his own men for a forced march to Bayambang, only nodded when Diosdado informed him that the men had voted to stay together rather than be split up and reabsorbed into other units.
“Go to headquarters,” he said. “They’ll find something to do with you.”
Diosdado’s troop is a mix of Zambals, Ilocanos, Pampangans, and Tagalos, bound now by blood and suffering. The rumors—that the ilustrados are selling the country to the Americans, that General Luna is secretly forming his own army, that the Jesuits are behind it all—do not seem to concern them. They talk about food and women and gamecocks, they make fun of each other, play liampo, gripe about the rebuilt shells jamming in their rifles and the true provenance of dried beef. They are good Catholics, kneeling for a quick Jesus, Maria, y José even in the roofless shell-blasted churches, and believe deeply in the miraculous power of the saints. Kalaw who writes an oración on a circle of paper and puts it in his mouth before a battle, careful not to swallow the hosta redentora till the danger has ended, Rafi who wears a vest with a red-eyed, sword-wielding angel embroidered on the back, the Pampangano brothers who empty their pockets of all metal when the shooting starts and say that Dr. Rizal is not really dead, that he will be resurrected on the day the americanos are driven from Luzon.
The boy, Fulanito, carries messages and brings water and spies on the yanquis but does not speak. It is not clear whether he ever could.
The cane fields give way to a series of hills, Diosdado keeping the troop off the main road as they begin to climb. It is morning still, but the men are careful when shifting their rifles on their backs not to touch sun-heated gunmetal with bare skin. He wonders if his boots will give him away as an officer if they are captured by Americans. Goyo del Pilar looked immaculate as they left San Isidro, a warrior in white astride his steed, breaking hearts in every barangay he rides through. Diosdado can’t imagine Goyo hiking through the mountain passes in rags and a straw hat, no matter what the danger.
Sargento Bayani drops back beside him, using the bolo now and then as a walking stick as he climbs. He has taken to carrying it instead of a rifle as an example for the men, saying that this is their future, that before long they will have nothing left to fight the Americans with but their bolos, and on that day they will be true Filipino patriots.
“Maybe they’ll send us to General Tinio in Ilocos,” he says. “Somewhere they know how to fight.”
Tinio is younger than Goyo del Pilar, only Diosdado’s age, but already making a name for himself around Vigan.
“Why would they send us away from the front?”
Bayani shrugs. “Because we’re not Tagalo and they don’t trust us.”
They climb silently for a while. Diosdado had been thinking the same thing, but resists seconding his sargento’s cynicism. An officer must appear to be above politics—
“Maybe to Zambales, di ba?” Bayani smiles. “It would be nice to see San Epifanio again before they kill us.”
Diosdado shoots his subaltern a look. “How do you know my baryo?”
“Because I’m from the same place.”
Diosdado feels a chill. He studies the man’s face as they climb, sees no one from his past. “There was no Bayani in—”
“A name I took after I left. My mother was Amor Pandoc.”
The sargento says it lightly, eyes on the faint trail through the rocks, waving his bolo at his side like he is on a stroll in the country. Diosdado can think only of a day riding back from Iba with his father, passing a tiny patch of ground about to be swallowed by the jungle, a woman with dark skin and fierce eyes rising up from her sweet potatoes to stare, and a sullen boy some years older than him on his knees in the mud next to her. Don Nicasio kept his eyes forward and did not speak for the rest of the ride home. Diosdado had seen the woman in town for holy days and at the misa de gallo while he yawned through his duties as an altar boy, always a hushed tone in the churchwomen’s voices when she was spoken of, some scandal that, like the countless others in San Epifanio, was never revealed to him. His first year back from Manila he heard that this woman, this Amor Pandoc who never had a husband mentioned with her name, had died of tuberculosis and that her son had run away to join the tulisanes in the mountains.
“I remember there was a celebration when you left for school,” says Bayani, deadpan. “A feast for all of Don Nicasio’s laborers, with fireworks and everything.”
“You were there?”
Bayani looks away. “I heard about it. People were very proud.”
Diosdado scowls. “Rich men send their sons to university because they’re not fit for anything else.”
“But you learned.”
“Nothing of use here.” He indicates the rocky path, the line of straw-hatted soldiers ahead of them.
“You have languages,” says Bayani.
“So have you.”
“I have the languages of ignorant people. You have proper Spanish—”
“Which my father spoke in our house. English is from our trips to Hongkong. At university I learned only Latin—”
“You know sciences.”
“The theories only. Nothing practical, like how to make gunpowder—”
“You know history.”
“So do you.”
Bayani snorts. “I know stories—”
“History is only stories written down.”
Bayani looks disappointed. “Then how do the young ilustrados occupy their time in Manila?”
Diosdado sighs. “Some drink and gamble. Some put on their frac coats and bowler hats and spend their nights attending the theater and courting young ladies. My friends and I spent most of our time trying to impress the padres with our intelligence and our cultivation,” he says, “and the rest of it plotting their destruction.”
“You wanted them to like you?”
“We wanted them to love us like their perfect children. We wanted them to respect us. But no matter how we parroted their language, no matter how much we learned from their books, we were never more than indios to them.”
“They insulted you.”
Indios sucios. It is what his father had called the majority of the people who lived in San Epifanio, people who cut his cane and processed his hemp and picked his mangoes in the orchard, indios descalzados, indios tontos, indios sinverguenzas, and Diosdado had spent his young life striving not to be anything like them. But even with Padre Peregri
no, whose pet he had been at university, he was never more than a curiosity, an indio who won honors in Latin, a talking monkey.
“We were so full of hope,” he says to the sargento, “so full of energy and patriotismo. We would not become rich and corrupt like our fathers, we would fight and fight and never sell ourselves, we would never—”
“Take money from the Spaniards and run to Hongkong.” Bayani looks up the hill to the summit, speaking casually.
“That was a strategy, carefully thought out by General Aguinaldo. A chance to heal and to plan—”
Bayani turns to look him in the eye. “If the americanos had not come, you would still be there.”
They have stopped moving, as have the men behind them. Joselito runs down to them from the top of the hill.
“Yanquis ahead of us, Teniente. On the other side.”
Diosdado gestures and little Fulanito rushes forward with his binoculars. The boy loves to carry them, the strap around his scrawny neck, bumping in their leather case against his knees. The men ahead are already sitting, eyes following Diosdado as he hurries up past them with Sargento Bayani.
The uniform shirts are a beautiful bright blue against the brilliant green of the rice paddy on the plain below. Two full companies, most resting on the side of the plantation road, a dozen standing stretched in a firing line. Diosdado twists the focus ring on the field glasses until the others come clear.
PATROL
There are ten of them, in the simple white cotton with blue stripes, straw hats scattered on the ground behind them. Their arms are tied behind their backs, their bare toes curled over the stone of the low dike they stand upon, facing a shallow trench they have just finished digging. The Americans raise their weapons in unison and there is a dotted line of smoke puffs. The Filipinos have toppled out of sight into the ditch before the rifle report echoes up from the plain.