A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  Where am I, ask the redskin then, and Who shut the lights off and things of this nature as he sits up and plops his hat-holder into his big, bandage-wrapped mitts. There is resin on his kisser where it hit the canvas, his beezer scraped a little, but he looks pretty chipper for a guy who has just been coldcocked in the ring.

  Who won? asks the Indian and Captain Sturdevant and the other brass crowding around get a laugh out of that but I do not.

  I do not laugh when I settle accounts with all the boys, nor when I hand over a sack of my own hard-won cocoanuts to the rock-knocker, as it should be known that the Runt, if that is how you choose to address me, is no welsher. Atkins is bruised and battered but still in possession of all his choppers.

  Private Neely informs me you take my play at six to one, he says to me, laying a swollen-knuckled hand onto my shoulder. That is extremely white of you.

  I do not laugh either when later, being of a suspicious nature, I sneak back and shake the lumps of sponge from their boxing gloves, the last substance one would expect sworn enemies should be stuffing into their mittens, nor when I see them together in the mess a few days after, chumming around like there is no hard feeling betwixt fellow ring warriors. I judge from his haymakers that the Chief has not previously taken part in a contest of skill and science, but somewhere, perhaps in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Extravaganza, he learns to take one hell of a dive.

  And as for sentiment—unless you have got both fighters in the satchel you can forget about it.

  SQUAW MAN

  “Arizona,” he lies.

  It has gotten to be a habit, like calling himself Tommy Atkins. If the railroad man has noticed Hod’s cheek swollen from the fight he’s at least not staring at it.

  “Arizona and New Mexico, mostly. Little outfits digging for gold and silver, though the ore isn’t as rich there as they hoped.”

  The recruiter eyes his uniform. “And when exactly do you become a free man?”

  “Ship leaves Friday.”

  “And if I was to check with your lieutenant—”

  “Googoos got him about a month back. But any of the other officers—you know—‘Service honest and faithful.’ ” If they bother to check he is sunk, but this is not the minefields and they are pretty hard up for white men.

  “We won’t be digging tunnels right away. How the line is set up now, it’s just maintenance—”

  “Hell, I helped build the White Pass Railroad in the dead of winter,” he lies again. “Back in the Klondike. And I spent a good deal of time on the Northern Pacific and the Denver and Rio Grande.”

  The recruiter, who says he is from Idaho, narrows his eyes. “You been all over the damn map, haven’t you?”

  Hod gives him a smile and speaks softly, thinking how Jeff Smith would play it. “Yes, sir, and I think I finally found a spot that suits me.”

  The recruiter has an electric fan pointed straight at the back of his head, making his little bit of hair stick up, and does not appear happy to be in the Philippines.

  “Your work gangs will be mostly coolies. You speakee any of that?”

  “No, sir, but we had em to carry our supplies on the march. You just sing the right tune in American and they’ll hop to it pretty good.”

  Mei has taught him a few words, useful to tell a shopkeeper he is a thief and a liar and you might pay half of what he says but not a penny more.

  “Foreman’s wage is fifteen a month, which is plenty when you think how cheap it is to live here.”

  “Bout what I get now,” Hod nods, as if agreeing on the salary. “Course nobody sposed to shoot at a section boss. How far up the line you think I’ll be?”

  It is always good to talk like you already got the job. Make their mind up for them.

  “From here to Dagupan, wherever we need a road crew. Till we start to expand.”

  “And that would be—?”

  “Whenever they get the damn bandits under control. You people,” and here he points at the single stripe on Hod’s uniform sleeve, “been taking your sweet time about it.”

  “Yes, sir, I spose we have.”

  Hod pictures the recruiter sweating it out, surrounded by a bunch of insurrectos with their bolos in hand. Hearing that guff from the regulars is one thing, but from a civilian—

  “And you know we don’t give any pay in advance.”

  “I’ll draw a full month when I muster out. That should tide me over.”

  The recruiter looks like he still isn’t sure. “You a temperate man?”

  There has been more shooting in Manila lately than any time since the first days of the war, men bored and drunk and dreading the confinement of the long ship ride home. A provost guard got killed the other night by an Oregon crazy on beeno, some of the men still preferring jungle juice to anything with a label on it.

  “I haven’t taken the Oath,” Hod smiles, “but liquor don’t set right with me in the heat.”

  The recruiter nods. The front of his face is running sweat. “And you understand the deal with your citizenship?”

  General Otis has decreed that volunteers may not remain in Manila to engage in business, forced either to be shipped home or re-enlist for immediate service.

  “I think so—”

  “Mr. Higgens prefers you go for a British passport, since they own the road. He can help at their embassy—”

  Hod grins. It is a big step, he knows, giving up on America, but so far he’s surprised at how little the idea bothers him. “Long as they don’t send me off to fight them Dutchmen.”

  The recruiter doesn’t think this is funny. “Africa,” he says, writing Hod’s made-up name onto a list, “can’t be any worse than this.”

  Hod walks out through the switching yard, a boxcar being loaded with crates full of tinned peaches. There are all kinds of fruits hanging off the branches here, pineapples busting out of the ground, but he’s never seen a peach tree. That would be an angle if he knew how to farm, growing things that Americans want and don’t have here yet. Manila is a boom town, he thinks as he cuts south on Abad Santos, no less than Cripple Creek or Creede or Skaguay or Leadville in its day, filling up now with sharp-eyed Americans dressed in new Hongkong suits looking for the main chance and paying double for whatever they hanker for from home. Jeff Smith would be a millionaire in a year. A man with a lemonade stand—

  There are a half-dozen Filipino boys, the littlest only in a dirty shirt that comes down to his knees, trying to play base ball out in front of the laundry. The batter has a wooden bed slat that he holds cross-handed, and the pitcher windmills forward then backward before underhanding a scabby-looking rubber ball toward the paint-can lid that serves as home plate. The end of the bed slat splits as the batter makes contact, the ball thunking off the side of a passing carabao drawing a cart and bouncing unevenly down the street, small boys dodging through hooves and wheels till one catches up with it, runs back and thunks the advancing runner between the shoulder blades with a vicious throw. There have been inter-regiment games on the Luneta, well attended by both Americans and locals, and the boys seem to have picked up the basics.

  “You’re out!” calls Hod, jerking his thumb up, and steps into Lavandería Hung.

  The front counter of the laundry has no wall behind to block it off from the works, though on one side the finished orders, wrapped in brown paper with black Chinese characters scrawled on them, are piled several feet high. Three Chinese men, stripped to the waist, stand over huge steaming vats, stirring a heavy porridge of clothing with thick paddles, their queues dripping water, their skin flushed red with the heat, while another younger one hustles about with sticks in hand tending the fire under each vat. One of the stirrers hoists a steaming mass of clothing with his paddle, swinging it dripping behind him to slap down into a cooling trough. Yet another Chinese lifts one garment at a time from the long trough and cranks it through an iron mangle to squeeze out most of the water. Behind him are two more men lifting heavy irons from the top of a woodstove to
smooth out the wrinkled clothing on a plank, while another wrestles a huge skillet-like affair with glowing coals on top of it, using it to press pants flat. Darting between them, a pair of Chinese women run the clothes out through the back door to hang-dry. It is hard to see how anyone can keep the orders separate. An older man, maybe Hung himself, appears out of the steam to stand behind the counter.

  “You got tickee?”

  Hod shakes his head. “Just come in to look your operation over.”

  “No tickee,” says the older man, “you go scram.”

  The boys are still playing ball when he steps back onto the street and heads for the Walled City. He feels the grouch bag stuffed with his winnings from the show with Big Ten snug against his belly. Just a little set-up at first, he thinks. Hire a couple coolies, maybe right off the road crew or bring them over on contracts, pay them a little better so they want to keep the job. What he’s won and his muster pay and a couple months’ work on the railroad should cover the equipment, and then you just need to be near a good supply of water.

  If she’ll have him.

  Working the Dagupan line he’ll be able to scout the right location, wherever the Americans plan to dig in and send out east–west rails. Mei would only be up front, with a wall behind her to keep the steam off, running the whole deal with her good English and her head for numbers. Never seen a woman could juggle sums like her—the once he took her to buy some clothes she jawboned the fella down way below what Hod was willing to pay and told him all their business sliding beads around the rack was just for show, that she had the figure in her head way before they got to clicking and clacking.

  If he can only lay the deal out right, be sure not to spook her.

  He turns down Azcarraga Street. There are more and more shop signs in English, mostly the ones run by Spaniards and Chinese. Only the Filipinos don’t seem to have got the message yet, and they’ll be the ones left in the dust. Like back home where the only Indians selling anything are carved out of wood and got a handful of cigars.

  Big Ten is sitting on his favorite chair by the trolley terminal in Plaza Santa Cruz, having his boots polished.

  “How’d it go?”

  Hod shrugs his shoulders. “I’ll find something. If they gonna bring this country up to snuff, they be needin some experienced hands. And then when I get my own operation runnin—”

  “Hell, you’ll make out fine.”

  “If you was interested—I mean, you go back and it aint any better than it was, I could use a partner—” Hod has no idea if the British will take an Indian for a citizen or not.

  Big Ten smiles. “Naw—I can’t take the heat.”

  Hod sighs. “Well then.”

  “I got no worries,” says Big Ten. “I’m a Ward of the State.”

  The soldier is sitting on the wall outside the hospital, waiting for her. There are a lot of karayuki-san selling themselves in Manila now, and she watches as three of these stop to offer themselves to him and then walk on. He has come to tell her he is leaving.

  All the sick and wounded ones of the Colorado, and of the Oregon and of the Minnesota and of the Dakota are being prepared to leave on a hospital ship, their time of bondage to the Army over, and they say the healthy ones are going as well. They make jokes about taking her with them.

  “If I could fit you in my rucksack,” they say, “we’d go do San Francisco together.”

  He is the nicest one, Hod, a soldier who takes his hat off when he talks with her and bought her shoes and a silk dress she has only worn once so he could see her in it and brings her food sometimes, American food in metal cans that she has kept hidden in her room because she has no way to open them and is afraid the Americans who run the hospital now will find them and think she is stealing. He has even brought presents for Bo, toys that he bought on the street. Radiant Star in Hongkong was taken once and kept for a year by a very rich trader who fed her and dressed her like a rich woman till he was tired of her and found a younger girl. When she came back she told Mei and the others what it was like, how easy, such a crystal life, and they all tried to imagine this. She didn’t talk about what words he used when he told her he had a new girl.

  Mei steps out to the soldier, to Hod, and breathes hard through her nose so she won’t cry. Her only worry now, really, is that with all the soldiers going home they may change the hospital or close it and to take care of Bo she will have to be Ling-Ling again out walking with the Japanese girls.

  He stands and takes his hat off when he sees her, smiles. His cheek on one side is swollen, as if he’s been in a fight. She thought he was funny-looking at first, like they all are, but now she likes to see his face. The one time he touched her with her clothes off, in a rented room after she wore the dress for him, his hands were very rough from working and he said he was sorry about that. But her own hands are rough too, a farmer’s hands, boiled now in the water every day, and if she has to walk with the Japanese girls maybe she will wear gloves and keep them on till the deal is struck.

  He kisses her on the cheek like he does, as if she is a little girl.

  “Let’s walk.”

  It is the part that is the strangest for her, this walking in front of everybody’s eyes. In the Walled City the other soldiers smile and wink at him and the Spanish and Filipino ladies who walk in twos and carry parasols make faces and turn their heads away and in Binondo the Chinese merchants hiss terrible words at her, acting like she is still Ling-Ling and not just a woman who works in the American hospital, almost a Daughter of Charity.

  They walk down Legaspi together, a couple feet apart from each other.

  “There are some things I got to say to you,” he says, still holding his hat in his hands. She breathes in hard through her nose. She will not cry now, she will wait till she is back in her room at the hospital, till she takes her new shoes off and puts them under the bed with the metal cans of American food.

  “You are leaving.”

  He looks at her. She feels stronger, saying it before he does.

  “Well, that kind of depends. What I was thinking, see—” and he sighs like it is hard for him to tell her. Perhaps it is.

  “They got a boat for the regiment now, yeah—”

  Some soldiers at the corner look at them as they pass and laugh, not a kind laugh, and it makes her angry. She moves closer as they walk, shoulders almost touching.

  “So when everybody goes—see, boiling clothes aint so different than boiling anything else. And you got your Chinese and the local lingo and half the time your English sounds better than mine, so it’s a shoo-in we could open a shop somewheres up the railroad line.”

  Sometimes her English is not so good. “Shop?”

  “Not a big one at first, just get our feet wet, see how it goes. Or hell, you hate the laundry idea, it could be a lunch counter. Chop suey or whatever. You wouldn’t have to cook, just run the business.”

  He has stopped walking now, looking at her, worried.

  “Of course first we got to find one of these Jesus-peddlers showing up here every day who can say the words without choking on em. Or whatever you folks do for it, some Chinese deal, that’s fine with me. Anybody don’t like it, that’s just their lookout.”

  Mei feels dizzy, her vision blurring, like she is being tossed in a storm at sea and cannot tell which is sky and which is water.

  “Bo,” she says.

  The soldier lifts his shoulders. “Too bad he got to learn his English from someone like me.”

  Mei thinks of the card with her photograph on it, the one she tore up and burned and the one the Comisaria de Vigilencia still has, with all the things about her written on it.

  “I am only a no-good China girl,” she says.

  “I aint much of a bargain either.”

  He holds his arm out then, bent at the elbow for her to walk with him the way the Spanish men walk with their ladies on the Luneta at sunset.

  “So what do you think?”

  The breathing hard throu
gh her nose doesn’t work. Lan Mei takes the soldier’s arm and holds on to it with both hands. Holds on to it for her life.

  SINGING WIRE

  The women cross themselves when they see Diosdado sitting on the dike. They adjust the bundles on their heads and fix their eyes on the road ahead as they hurry past, muttering incantations in Pampangano. Diosdado and his band have become phantoms, haunting the balete forests between Guimba and Malolos, creatures whose existence is understood but whose presence is feared. They are the shadow government, collecting taxes for the fugitive Republic. They are the unwritten law, whispering decrees and punishing collaborators. They are, he hopes, the fabric of American nightmares, the thing the yanquis fear most when daylight drains from the sky. It is an intermittent, skulking war that they wage, waiting in ambush for forces they never outnumber, shooting and running with no time to assess the damage inflicted, firing at night-lights and noises in the occupied baryos, stealing sleep from the enemy.

  And every day the cutting of the wire.

  Half the men still believe it is magic, a metal string that goes on for miles and miles and sings its secrets to the yanqui invaders. Pressing their ears against the wooden lances to listen the high-pitched keening of the wire, or holding a cut length in their hands, turning it this way and that, trying to divine its power, keeping a few silenced yards to hang their wet clothes from in camp.

  “The wire is their mark, their claim on our land,” Diosdado tells his men. “Wherever we let it stand belongs to them.”

  If there is time they pull the lances out of the ground, one every fifty-five paces, then chop the insulators off, cut the wire in several places, and scatter it all in the woods. Closer to the garrisons or in an area with regular American patrols they only stand a nervous guard while little Fulanito shinnies up and uses the cutters Orestes Pulao stole from the signalmen’s shed before he ran from San Fernando. The taut wire zings in protest as it whips apart, the flow of coded orders and reports broken off, telegraph bugs up and down the line gone mute. Fulanito backs down quickly, bare toes gripping the wood, and they all fade back into rumor.