A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  Diosdado puts the binoculars down. Sargento Bayani lies on his belly beside him, his face impassive.

  “If we cut around the hill to the north we should be able to miss them. Unless you want to try an ambush.”

  “General del Pilar told us to report to headquarters, nothing more.”

  The sargento fixes him with a look. “A sus órdenes, mi teniente.”

  They crawl away from the top, then stand to head back to the men. “We swing to the north,” says Diosdado. “General Aguinaldo should be informed of how close they are.”

  It is a hot, airless, dusty march around the hills, past noon when they reach the outskirts of Cabanatuan to be greeted by dogs in an ugly mood. There are dozens of them, scabby, ribs showing, shifting around the troop in a loose pack that seems to have no leader, snarling with their ears laid back. The men throw stones but the dogs only scamper away a few feet and then regroup. Diosdado halts the makeshift company by the first decent-looking dwelling they come to, and asks the betel-chewing old woman in front if he can go inside to change clothes.

  The tunic is not so white now, hanging loose on him, buttons unpolished. His friends at the Ateneo called him flaco sometimes, and he hadn’t thought he had any weight to lose.

  “Por favor, mi teniente,” jokes Kalaw when Diosdado steps out of the hut dressed to report to Aguinaldo. “Ask the General if we can have a week’s leave in Manila. They say the americanos have the lights working again.”

  Bayani walks with him into the town. There are more dogs, growling low as they pass, and dozens of the Presidential Guards lingering in the plaza, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Something bad happening here, hermano,” says Bayani.

  Sometimes it annoys Diosdado when the sargento calls him brother, and sometimes it seems like a compliment.

  “They’ve probably heard the Americans are close.”

  Bayani shakes his head. “We’ve seen these Caviteños before. This is the bunch that Luna disarmed after we burned Tondo.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You can wash their faces and stick them in red pants,” says Bayani, “but they’re the same putos tagalos. You better be careful.”

  “Go see if you can find the men something to eat.” Diosdado wishes there had been a mirror in the woman’s hut to comb his hair. He wonders if General Aguinaldo will remember him from Hongkong.

  Scipio Castillero, wearing a spotless white suit and polished leather shoes, is lounging by the entrance to the casa parroquial next to a pair of sentries. He grins when he sees Diosdado.

  “It’s Brother Argus, all dressed up like a soldier.”

  Diosdado is too tired to smile. “Look who’s visiting the war.”

  “I’m here with Don Felipe,” says Scipio, pointing upstairs. Don Felipe Buencamino is Secretary of War, one of the old guard who are said to be autonomistas, willing to trade Spanish domination for that of the yanquis. “How about you?”

  “Reporting to General Aguinaldo.”

  “Miong isn’t here.”

  “We were told he was.”

  Scipio shrugs. “This may not be a good day for you to be here, compa. Something in the air.”

  Scipio has always been the one with the inside information, the one at school to steal the answers to the history examination, the first one in their class to start spying for the junta. He wears the smile of a man who knows what you don’t.

  “I have to take care of my company.”

  “The best thing you can do,” says Scipio, not smiling anymore, “is march them far away from Cabanatuan until things settle down.”

  Diosdado steps past him into the building. “Politics must agree with you,” he says. “You’re getting fat.”

  It is hotter, if possible, inside the casa parroquial than in the plaza, and there are flies everywhere, crawling on the walls and windows, buzzing lazily in the air, dead flies littering the tile floor. The encargado behind the desk, a nervous-looking sargento, also tells him that General Aguinaldo has left Cabanatuan, and does not know when he will return.

  Diosdado sits on a bench by the wall to wait. The next superior officer who comes in can give them orders. He sits with his back straight and concentrates on keeping his eyes open, occasionally wiping at the sweat rolling down his face with the back of his hand. His stomach is making noises, low rumbling under the drone of the flies and the squeaking of the lopsided fan that turns overhead, barely managing to stir the air. Better that the supremo doesn’t see him in this state. He has developed, if not patience, the talent for waiting that is vital to a military career. He counts flies, living and dead. A Presidential Guard teniente sticks his head in the door, glares at Diosdado, then disappears. Diosdado hears some pacing upstairs. He guesses it is near three o’clock when there is a chorus of barking from the plaza, then angry shouting just outside and a slap and then General Antonio Luna stomps into the room. Diosdado jumps up and snaps to attention, but the encargado, surprised halfway to his desk with a wastebasket in hand, can only freeze with his mouth hanging open.

  The general is in his usual fury. “Have none of you people been taught how to greet an officer?”

  The sargento drops his trashcan and salutes. Colonel Román and Capitán Rusca step in behind Luna, looking around the room. Paco Román nods to Diosdado.

  “I have come to see the President,” Luna announces.

  “He is not here, mi general,” says the encargado.

  Luna yanks a folded paper from inside his jacket, waves it in the air.

  “Then why has he summoned me, in his own hand, to report to him at this place and time?”

  “I don’t know, mi general. I only know that he is not here. He has gone—away.”

  Luna, seething, suddenly turns to fix his glare on Diosdado.

  “I was told the same,” says Diosdado. It does not seem the moment to ask if the general will give his bastard company an assignment.

  Luna snorts, then steps up close to the sargento. “This is the seat of our government. The headquarters of the army of our nation. This paper says I am to head a new Cabinet. Is there anyone here who can offer me an explanation?”

  “Only Señor Buencamino is upstairs, sir.”

  The general’s face turns a deeper red, almost purple, as he turns to Román and Rusca. “We are engaged in desperate battle,” he says in a barely controlled voice, “and they leave a traitor in charge of headquarters.” He pushes past the sargento and bangs up the stairs. Paco Román rolls his eyes toward Diosdado before he and Capitán Rusca follow.

  There has been more bad blood and trouble. Another officer refusing, at Bagbag, to honor Luna’s authority, the general pulling two companies off the line to confront him and his troops, and Bagbag falling rapidly to the yanquis.

  “He was almost killed at Kalumpit,” whispers the sargento as Diosdado sits, uneasy, back on the bench. “Shot off his horse with the yanquis all around him. The say he was like this when the colonel saved him.” The encargado points an imaginary pistol to his skull. He seems disappointed by the outcome.

  There is shouting from upstairs then, two voices. Luna’s is the louder, cursing. Diosdado hears the word traitor more than once. Buencamino has no place here, shouts the general, no authority. A capitán of the Presidential Guard strides into the room with a half-dozen of his men, ignoring Diosdado to look up the stairs with a tight face. Diosdado’s stomach drops as he realizes that the capitán is Janolino, whose brains were very nearly blown out by General Luna after the burning of Tondo. “Be prepared,” says the capitán to his men, “but do nothing without my order.”

  The men bring up their rifles and bam! one discharges, the bullet shattering the glass of a framed photograph on the encargado’s desk.

  The yelling upstairs stops abruptly.

  “Mierda,” hisses Capitán Janolino.

  The flies stop buzzing.

  General Luna charges down the stairs, livid, the summons to report clutched in one hand and the other
on the butt of his pistol.

  “Who fired that shot?”

  Before there is an answer his eyes fall on Janolino, also gripping his sidearm.

  “You. What are you doing here?”

  “I am commander of the Presidential Guard—”

  Just as Colonel Román appears at the head of the stairs a pair of the soldiers leap forward swinging their bolos, metal hacking into bone before the general pushes clear of them, blood spurting from the side of his head, yanking his pistol out to fire wildly, chips of stone from the wall stinging Diosdado’s face, Luna staggering out the door and down the front steps with Janolino’s men rushing after. Román and Capitán Rusca run down the stairs and out past Diosdado and then there is a ragged volley of rifle fire. Diosdado trades a look with the terrified encargado, then rises and goes to the door.

  Paco Román lies splayed at the bottom of the stairs and the plaza dogs howl as at least a full company of the Caviteño guardia surround the stricken general, firing indiscriminately now, Luna still on his feet with eyes blinded by his own blood shrieking “Cobardes! Traidores!” and firing his pistol till it is empty and he falls to his knees and immediately the bolomen are in hacking, hacking, as the dogs bark and snarl and nip at the backs of their legs in a frenzy of excitement. Diosdado feels a hand on his shoulder.

  It is Scipio, somehow inside the room now. “A very bad day for you to be here, compa. Out the back door.”

  Diosdado takes a last look, Capitán Janolino yanking the bloodied summons from the dead general’s fist, then turns to hurry past the weeping encargado and out through the rear of the casa parroquial.

  Sargento Bayani, running, finds him halfway back to the men.

  “What is it?”

  “They killed Luna.”

  “Carajo.”

  “They killed Luna and Paco Román is dead and Rusca I don’t know—”

  “General Aguinaldo—”

  “Was not there.”

  Dogs are scampering past them toward the plaza. Diosdado has never seen so many dogs in one town before.

  “Luna lost his temper, as he always does, but this—”

  Diosdado knows he is an officer in the Filipino Army and should not be shaking. He should be calm and clear-headed and decisive. The side of his jaw is wet and there is blood on his fingers after he touches it. He feels dizzy.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Bayani puts a hand on his shoulder. “Tranquílate, hermano. The men are all ready to march.”

  “But where are we marching?”

  “Home to Zambales,” says the son of Amor Pandoc, as if this has been their plan all along.

  WATER CURE

  Hod is happy to sit, even if it is on the suspect’s arm. Neely arranges himself on the other arm and Big Ten across the man’s skinny legs, holding the ankles and facing himself away from the whole business. Hod is just back on the line and wants to puke from the heat and the recon march and the battle to take the high ground this morning when they hacked Major Moses’s arm near off his body. The suspect isn’t even trying to move now, just lying there with the whump of the shells they’re dropping onto Las Piñas from offshore coursing up through his pinioned body and if Hod could manage to spit he knows it would sizzle in the air and burn off before it hit the dust. The platoon is down to twenty with the injured carried back to Manila by coolies this morning, and others falling out on the side of the road and Lieutenant Manly Goat saying if we pass this way again and they’re still alive maybe we’ll pick them up. He is waving his damn cane around and acting like every fucking shitheel boss Hod has ever hated, the Lieutenant, every company gun thug with a mean streak, like a dog gone bad that somebody ought to put down and Hod would gladly volunteer only he is too jaded with the heat to raise his hand.

  “Pry it open,” says Niles, pacing and pulling out his fancy new British pistol. “Let’s put this show on the road.”

  Sergeant LaDuke, who even without the heat is no great thinker, tries to ram the sun-heated barrel of his Krag down the suspect’s throat, busting a couple of teeth in, which the man proceeds to swallow and then choke on.

  “Jesus Hiram Christ,” sighs Manigault. “Flip him over.”

  Hod and the others roll off and Sergeant LaDuke and Corporal Grissom yank the man onto his belly and dig their heels into his back till he coughs out the teeth in a gout of blood. It is the Monadnock doing the shelling, Hod able to recognize the pitch of its ordnance whistling in from the sea, and they struggle to get the suspect pinned again, just some poor googoo in a field who waved and called out “Amigo” and Lieutenant Manigault said The hell with this amigo business, grab the yellow son of a bitch. Vásquez, who interprets from Spanish for the Macabebe scout, just stares down the road, and the Macabebe, looking disgusted with them all, kneels beside the man’s head and works the tip of the buffalo horn he carries into his blood-smeared mouth.

  “Let it pour,” says Manigault, and Corporal Grissom carefully tips the kerosene can, filled with muddy water at the creek they just crossed, into the wide end of the horn. The suspect’s arm begins to jerk underneath Hod, the man making strangling noises and arching his back, and Hod looks away trying to concentrate either on his plans for Mei when they get back to Manila or how to shoot Manigault the first chance he gets, anything but thinking about the heat that cooks off all the air before you can breathe it, that is like a hot poker down your nose and into your throat, that the Spanish and the natives are smart enough to hide out from and only volunteer lieutenants and the half-wits above them would expect you to march or fight in. They said in the clap shack how if you have the pox and let it go you might look almost normal as you get older but your head will never be right, which goes a long way to explain the folks running this army.

  A good deal of the five gallons gurgle out before Sergeant LaDuke says stop and has the Macabebe pull out the horn so he can stomp hard on the googoo’s distended belly. Hod lets the arm go so the suspect can half roll and puke up water, pink with blood, mostly onto Neely.

  “What the hell you doing?” asks Neely, offended.

  “He’s got to get it out or he’ll drown.”

  “Well he don’t have to get it out all over me.”

  “You pin this suspect down, Private,” the Lieutenant growls to Hod. “And keep him down.”

  Manigault has always been shit, a card-cheat and an errand boy and a faker, and he knows that Hod has him pegged, all the way back to Skaguay. But there is a different look in his eye today, wild and fry-brained, and there is that pistol—

  The Macabebe says something to Vásquez, who turns to the Lieutenant.

  “What do you wish to ask this man?”

  “Ask him?”

  Vásquez sighs. He seems like an educated man who, for whatever reason, is not so welcome back home. “The suspected one. You wish to ask him something. That is the reason for this—” he indicates the writhing, choking googoo.

  Manigault stares at the Spaniard for a long moment, having clearly forgotten what he wanted to know, if in fact he ever had anything in mind.

  “Ask him if they got as many pin-head officers in their outfit as we do in ours,” says Big Ten.

  Manigault glares at the Indian, then makes sure the suspect is back to his senses before sticking the barrel of his pistol to the man’s forehead.

  “Ask him how many troops they have waiting for us in Las Piñas,” he says.

  Vásquez says this to the Macabebe in Spanish and the Macabebe repeats it in whatever lingo he thinks the suspect talks and the suspect manages to croak out a few words before the scout slaps him and barks something to Vásquez.

  “This man asks who would still be in Las Piñas,” Vásquez reports to Lieutenant Manigault, “when your navy has been shelling it for six hours?”

  Blam! Manigault fires the pistol into the baked dirt just to the side of the suspect’s ear, causing him to urinate in his trousers and startling Neely so bad he rolls onto his side and covers his head.
>
  “Jesus, Lieutenant,” he complains, rolling back onto the man’s arm. “How bout a little warning?”

  “Ask him something else,” says the Lieutenant.

  “If they are going to make a stand,” the Spaniard explains, “it will be at the Zapote Bridge. We fought them there many times before you arrived.”

  “Ask him about that, then.”

  “But if we know this already—”

  Manigault points the pistol at Vásquez. “Ask him!”

  Vásquez does not take his eyes off the shrill-voiced Lieutenant as he speaks to the Macabebe scout. The scout shouts into the ear of the suspect, who sobs something back. Hod doesn’t want to look in the suspect’s face. The Macabebe says something to Vásquez in Spanish.

  “He says he has not been across the Zapote Bridge for many days.”

  “Well—that is very unfortunate for Mr. Nig.” Manigault nods to the Macabebe scout. “Give him another drink.”

  The scout pinches the suspect’s nose shut till he opens his mouth to breathe and then pushes the tip of the buffalo horn back in. The Macabebes don’t look so much like the other natives here, the rumor going that they’re Mexican Indians brought long ago by the Spaniards to work the crops, and of course the fellas expect Big Ten to be able to palaver with them.

  “C’mon, Chief,” they say. “You’re holdin out on us.”

  “You know how many Indin languages they got back home I can’t say a word of?” he tells them. “I barely remember any Ojibwe after a year with you people.”

  Corporal Grissom yanks the suspect’s head to the side so he sees, then pisses loudly into the mouth of the kerosene can while Sergeant LaDuke giggles. After I shoot Manly Goat, Hod thinks, these two will have to be next. And maybe the Macabebe too, though this is his country after all and he is entitled to play his cards the way he wants. Corporal Grissom, who has been on the warpath since his monkey disappeared, convinced that the Chinese porters ate it, rebuttons his fly and begins to dump the liquid into the buffalo horn, splashing far too much of it onto Hod.