by John Sayles
“Look like we the first colored been up this far,” says Too Tall. “Folks don’t know what we about.”
“Then it’s up to me to spread the news,” says Coop.
Clouds hang low in the broad sky. Companies H and F in dusty blue march down the red dirt road between deep green rice paddies dotted white with cattle egrets, one hundred twenty men with rifles on their shoulders and two dozen coolies staggering after them under packs and cases. It is rice-harvest time, women in broad hats bending to sickle handfuls of the stalks close to the ground, then binding them into bundles hung on tentlike wooden racks to dry. The Filipinas are careful to keep their faces turned away, but a huge carabao steps forward to get a closer look, chewing, snot running from its nose, a cloud of flies lifting and following, then resettling on its glistening black hide when it stops at the edge of the dirt road.
“Lookit that, Too Tall mama come out to greet us.”
“She that good-lookin, Too Tall, how come you so ugly?”
“And what that big ole thing hanging twixt her legs?”
“Googoos come after you sorry-ass niggers,” says Too Tall, who is dark-skinned and used to this, expects it, even, “don’t count on no help from me.”
“Somethin wrong,” says Corporal Pickney suddenly, looking up into the sky.
“What that?”
“It aint rainin.”
“Got to wait till they not one tree left we can stand under,” says Gamble, “then she gonna dump on us. I see one way over there.”
“My people had come to these islands, see what the weather is like, they would of kept on sailin.”
“Sailin, shit. Didn’t nobody in your family ever get let up on the deck to look at no islands, man.”
“I’m talkin way back. Story is they sailed in boats, knew how to swim—”
“If they was ever in the water it was with a rope around their ankle, some white man trolling for alligators.”
“Couldn’t use you for bait. Scare them gators away.”
“This enemy territory, less you all forgot,” calls Sergeant Jacks. “Might want to keep that noise down.”
“We aint sneaking up on nobody, Sarge,” Cooper calls back. “Hell, they can see for clear twenty miles across these fields.”
“Yeah, right about now they gone to wake General Aggy up from his nap, tell him the 25th is coming to grab his little googoo ass.”
“Can’t catch nobody you can’t find.”
“Hey, if we was to catch him—”
“Aguinaldo, shit,” says Coop. “Aggy aint but just one damn general. These people got more generals runnin around in these boondocks—hell, you own a pair of shoes they gone make you a Captain at least.”
“What’s this?”
Junior steps out of formation and pulls off a square of paper tacked to a telegraph pole.
“Junior mama left him a grocery list.”
There is a drawing of a black man at the top of the paper, hanging dead from a tree, his head cocked at an unnatural angle.
“To the Colored American Soldier—” reads Junior.
“That be us,” says Hardaway.
“Why do you make war on us, freedom-loving men of the same hue, when at home the whites lynch your brothers in Georgia and Alabama—”
“And Mississippi and Florida and Texas—”
“It is without honor that you shed your precious blood. Your masters have thrown you in the most iniquitous fight with double purpose—to make you the instrument of their ambition. Your hard work will make extinction of your race—it’s very well written,” says Junior, scanning down the page.
“—and Kansas and Missouri and Indiana—”
“The googoos think we gonna join up with them?”
“Hell yeah. Lookit all they got to offer—” Gamble sweeps his free arm at the rice fields around them. “Give us forty acres and one of these water buffalos that look like Too Tall mama.”
“Maybe if they throw in one of these little long-hair gals—”
“This not our country,” says Royal.
Too Tall laughs. “That’s what old Geronimo used to say bout that sorry pile of rocks where we built Huachuca. But now it is.”
“That’s what old King Cannibal say when the white mens come to take your grandaddy out from Africa. And they took him just the same.”
“But what they’re saying—”
“What they’re saying don’t mount to muleshit,” says Corporal Pickney. “ ‘Freedom-loving men of the same hue—’ that’s a laugh. Aint none of these people my color.”
“White folks calls em niggers just like they do us,” says Hardaway.
“A wolf and a dog may both be referred to as canines,” says Junior, folding the paper and slipping it inside his shirt. “But there is no confusing the two.”
“Junior—I’m sorry—Corporal Junior—have got that right on the money,” says Coop. “Even if he is a iniquitous sumbitch. But in this story we the wolves.” He jerks his head at a pair of the Filipinas across the field, shaking grains loose from dried bundles of rice straw. “And these people just shit out of luck.”
They come on the village of Las Ciegas in the late afternoon, the usual cluster of nipa huts scattered around the plaza in front of a tiny stucco church, Jacks sending a squad around to the rear of it to catch anyone trying to sneak away and the rest of them rushing in with bayonets fixed and voices barking.
“Front and center!” they shout. “All you googoos come on out! Fuera, fuera!” Two men rushing up each of the little ladders and onto the platforms of the huts and chasing people out, mostly old or women with children but a handful of younger men who scurry out with their hands on top of their heads crying “Amigo, yo soy muy amigo!,” herding them all into a mass in front of the church and telling them “Bajo, bajo!” to sit on the ground and some crying while the search is made, bayonets poked and probed and stashes of supplies dragged out and chickens and turkeys flapping and dogs hysterical at their boots and a bristly black hog tied to a tree with a knotted rope through its ear squealing in panic, squealing and trying to bolt, like to tear that ear right off till Coop puts one between its eyes to shut it up and impress the googoos and Royal biting his cheeks the whole while, hating them for this, pushing a man twice his age who is the size of a middling boy, all bone and gristle, pushing hard enough that the man falls over on his face.
“Get up! Arriba, goddammit, don’t make me be draggin your sorry ass over there! Up!”
One squad surrounding the villagers while the rest stab their bayonets into walls and floors and bedding, Coop and Too Tall digging with theirs under the hut platforms hoping for buried gold.
And then Captain Coughlin singles out one or another of them, jerked up and slapped onto a beautifully carved wooden chair in the middle of the plaza to face him and the turncoat interpreter whose name is Dayrit but the men call Stubby. Royal is the one supposed to pull them out, stepping over the cowering, crying mess to stand over the one he thinks they’re pointing to and saying “This one? You want this one?” and then grabbing hold of skinny arms to yank them up and drag the suspect stumbling over the others, gabbling and crying, to be interrogated.
I am death, he thinks. I am their angel of death.
One musket, useless to fire, is found in Las Ciegas, and a store of rice maybe too big for one family, and, under the mayor’s big hut that sits behind a little staked fence, a stack of Mexican silvers buried in a bamboo safe.
“I knew it!” cries Coop when he pries the lid off the bamboo section and pours the coins out on the dirt. “They just pretendin to be so raggedy-ass. Got their whole deal hid away somewhere.”
And the story from the ones set in the chair is always the same. This is a poor village. Some of the young men were killed by the Spanish, some have been kidnapped by the insurgentes or by gangs of bandits. If you take our food we will starve. We are amigos, friends of the Americans, and know nothing about fighting. And then, when it is clear that the soldados n
egros are not moving on, that they are going to garrison this town, they point out the mayor who is the only one with shoes on and can explain how the Spanish used to do it.
There is one young woman who does not cry and sits a little apart from the others. When Royal stands over her she gets to her feet before he has to grab her. He can smell cocoanut oil in her hair.
“She say her husband is died,” Stubby tells the captain when she is planted in the chair. “She say the kastilas kill him in Manila.” He puts his hands around his fat neck and makes a choking gesture. “Some time ago.”
“They all say their husbands were killed,” growls Captain Coughlin. “There’s nothing but widows in this country.”
Stubby grins and nods. “Widows, yes. We have many of these.”
“Tell her I don’t believe her. Ask her where he is.”
Royal watches the woman as she answers the shouted questions. She looks like she is maybe his same age. She looks like she is past hurting.
“She say he is en la tumba,” says Stubby. “He was called Fecundo Maga-puna.”
Captain Coughlin bends to put his face very close to hers, but her eyes are unwavering.
“Get her away from me,” he says and Royal moves but she is already on her feet. He follows her back to where she was sitting, cocoanut oil the sweetest thing he’s smelled in weeks, and when she turns to look into his eyes he mutters to her.
“Perdóname,” he says.
He is not sure if that’s right, if it’s only what you say if you bump a lady on a crowded trolley, if it doesn’t count unless you take your hat off first, but she does not glare back at him, only keeps looking, and for the rest of the questioning he can feel her eyes on him.
Nilda, he heard her say when Stubby asked her name. Nilda Magapuna.
They are bigger than the Spanish, much bigger. And dark, some of them, some as dark as the negritos up north and some closer to her color, but the ones in charge are all white men. So it works the same with them. They are men with rifles and do what is always done. At home in Zambales when she was a girl the Spanish did the same, and took everything there was to eat, but these men seem to be staying. If they stay long she will leave, after they relax their vigilance, leave and try to go back to Zambales. There is nobody here in Las Ciegas for her anymore, Fecundo buried and his mother gone to the coast so now they can talk about him openly, how he left owing money to so many, a gambler and a layabout and where did he find that girl?
When she looked into the eyes of the one it surprised her at first. They are just men. Just men with rifles like the Spanish are men or the ones fighting still to the north are men and if she doesn’t leave, soon, that will be trouble.
Hilario, the capitán de barangay, is pointing her out now.
She really is a widow, he says. She lives in the house of her dead husband’s mother who has left for the coast and that house is a good place to put some of your soldiers. If you pay her she can cook and wash your clothes. Hilario’s wife is glaring at Nilda because the wife knows Hilario has been after her since the day she arrived from Mariquina. The dark soldiers are all under the houses now, stabbing the ground with the blades on their rifles, looking for treasure. She hopes if they find any more they don’t start to fight over it. Some of them are looking at her, too, and the other young women. We are treasure, Nilda thinks, but only for a moment.
WARRIORS
Call it sentiment, but a guy will naturally back a slugger of his own complexion. Of course, if the scrap is a mismatch and his own pile of cocoanuts is on the line it is a different proposition. Which is why I, Private Runyon of the Minnesota Volunteers, give no odds when the mess-hall donnybrook between the Chief and the rock-knocker becomes a public event.
Previous to the incident they go for pals, these two, as much as any pair of one-stripers in the vols—the Chief being as talkative a representative of the feather-and-warpaint outfit as you are likely to bump up against and the rock-knocker, a hard-luck case out of Montana, an area where such individuals are in oversupply, always happy to give him an ear. Before their dust-up you could figure that whither goest one of them the other is never far behind, to the point where when the rock-knocker lands his tail in the jug for nixing his looey in the line of battle, in goes the noble savage as well. Fortunately for them, said officer is snatched by the googoos whilst on an excursion of dubious intent out of town, and charges against the two evaporate.
The exact cause leading to their sudden exchange of knuckle bouquets is difficult to nail down, though the dope which circulates after suggests that Atkins, which is the handle the rock-knocker chooses to be known by, commits the error of revealing a Kodak of his innocent sister back in Bozeman or whichever such burg he hails from, and the Indian, who states that his moniker is McGinty though everyone addresses him as Chief, makes a comment inappropriate to his stripe and hue. What with the mercury popping high and the general boredom served our hitch here in the Pearl of the Orient it is not unusual for rank-and-filers to altercate with each other based on one does not care for the manner in which the other peeps at him over their morning java, and when skirts are involved, no matter what color hide they are wearing, the stakes are likely to double.
Whatever the kick-off, here comes Atkins flung over from where the Colorados are laying on the feedbag, smack down onto our table with tin cups of java flying this way and tin plates of mutton stew flying that way and the Chief right after on top of him like Strangler Lewis attempting to twist his hat-holder off. Threats and remonstrations are traded—dirty savage this and red nigger that and I will kill you you paleface son of a bitch and things of this sort while all of us Minnesotas step back and provide them room to settle their disagreement—Atkins using the opportunity to test a rattan-mesh sitter on the Indian’s skull and the Chief lifting the rock-knocker by his shirt several times and throwing him against the floor to see if he will bounce until Captain Sturdevant arrives to spoil the entertainment.
Now this Sturdevant I know from the cow town of Pueblo, Col., a feedlot operator and promoter of contests of skill and science who owns half interest in a sporting club and has parlayed his status in that burg into a position of military importance. As a captain he has his detractors, consisting principally of those of a rank either higher or lower than his own, though I am told he is well regarded by his peers, the fellow captains of Companies A through H. I myself do not personally care for the gent, as he is the one who seconded a certain lieutenant’s pegging me as a runt not worthy to risk his hide next to the other stalwart sons of the Centennial State, forcing me to cast my lot in with the Minnesota delegation, who upon arrival in Googooland were made, of all the undignified possibilities, military coppers in charge of the deportment of both American fighting men and slant-eyed denizens of our newly acquired Walled City and its surroundings.
The captain suggests very forcefully that we separate the combatants, and it takes three of our huskier squarehead volunteers to drag the Chief back onto the reservation. I decline to participate, judging that after being blackballed from one outfit and wangling my way into the other I have done my share of volunteering and no more is necessary, as they can always find something to keep you busy whether it needs doing or not.
The aggrieved parties stand drilling holes into each other with their glimmers while Captain Sturdevant struts back and forth in between them, which is his specialty. I personally have never seen an officer could hold a candle to Sturdevant in the strutting department, slapping his little swagger stick against his leg and clearing his throat over and over which is the sign he is about to issue a pronouncement.
Since you two cannot comport yourselfs as soldiers, is how he says to them, perhaps you would prefer to settle it in the ring.
This comes as no surprise, knowing myself that the captain has been a steadfast voice to make prizefighting legal in our fair state, staging many of what are loosely termed exhibitions of the manly art in order to prepare our citizens for that happy day and give
the sporting men among them practice in the art of the wager, from which he extracts a generous percentage. Plus he already prescribes the same remedy for a couple goldbricks from B Company who were carrying a grudge, on which occasion I am set to make a bundle only the bout is called when one of the stiffs begins to pour blood out of his beezer and the mental defectives in his corner cannot stop it. I myself have only seen so much of the red stuff one time when Private Gustavson and I interrupt a pair of googoo sports carving each other up on the Escolta.
If you do not feature a contest of skill and science, the captain adds, there is always lodgings available back in the Bilibid Prison.
The Dagoes who rule the roost here before our arrival built this accommodation, with little thought to the finer amenities, such as air circulation or plumbing. Atkins is the first to speak up.
I will fight this heathen bastard, is how he puts it, any time and any place.
This promotes a hearty cheer from both the Colorados and the Minnesotas, as we are retired from the googoo-hunting business now and there is not much to occupy our attention until a suitable bucket can be shanghaied to haul us back home.
The captain struts over to the Indian then, gives him a once-over, and asks if he is game for the proposition.
The Chief never lifts his glimmers off Atkins. If this bird should fail to step out of the ring alive, he informs the captain, let it be on your conscience.
Sturdevant’s kisser goes from cream to crimson in a second, either because the Chief did not tack a “sir” onto this statement or at the suggestion that a captain of volunteers possesses a conscience for something to weigh upon. He turns and shows both of them the back of his neck, calling out that all will be settled in the riding ring tomorrow night.
This promotes another round of approval from the ranks, the ones in charge of holding back the two opponents forgetting their mission, but Atkins and the Chief once unleashed only shoot a last skull-splitter look at each other and take a powder in opposite directions, Atkins wearing most of our supper on his back.