A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  It is a middling-sized cemetery, not nearly so pretty as the Oak Grove in Wilmington, but there are some old dates on the stones in the colored section. People been resting here for a long time. It brings Mama to mind, and Royal, who nobody has heard from for so long.

  “As I pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” says Reverend Endicott, “I shall fear no evil—”

  Jubal wonders how he would do, passing through the Valley of Death like his brother done in Cuba, where you don’t know is it you they gone to kill or the man next to you and it’s not for the moving pictures. The closest he ever come was the riot and there it was just busting out all around you with no sense to it and nobody expecting you to act brave. If we had guns, all the men said afterward, but the ones who did have guns ended up shot dead and sunk to the bottom of the Cape Fear River.

  The Reverend finishes his words and then Miss Alma who used to work for the Luncefords steps out to sing.

  Even though he stands back at the edge Jubal can see tears shining on her cheeks, all dressed in black and singing like to pull your heart out—

  Just a closer walk with Thee

  Grant it Jesus is my plea

  Daily walking close to Thee

  Let it be, dear Lord, let it be—

  He has always admired Miss Alma, love the way she smile, how she carry herself, but never known she had a voice like this—

  When my worldly life is oer

  Time will be for me no more

  Something melts in Jubal and he wants to cry for all of them—Mrs. Lunceford and the Doctor and Jessie and poor Junior buried so far across the ocean and Royal lost in the Valley of the Shadow and all of them wandering here in what the Jamaica man who hollers on the corner call Babylon, all of them run out from their homes and their lives and lost in this City—

  Guide me safely, safely oer

  To Thy shore, Thy kingdom

  To Thy shore

  What kind of woman carry a voice like that in her? She is tall and handsome and wide-shouldered and Jubal didn’t even know she come up here like the rest till now. Miss Alma ends the song and it is quiet but for the rolling of the carriage wheels over on Bushwick Avenue, never gets all the way quiet in the City, even out here. Dr. Lunceford drops a handful of dirt in the hole and then Jessie, who is older now but still look like an angel cut in butter, does the same and the people start away. If this was home it would be a hundred or more to pay their respects, but up here Jubal only counts nine and then him who maybe doesn’t even belong there.

  Dr. Lunceford carries himself heavy when he step by. He set Jubal’s arm back when he break it falling off Jingles and was as polite with Mama as if she was a white lady.

  “That is a man of stature,” Mama would always say when his doctor buggy pass by. Only he don’t appear so high right now, hair gone to gray, lost his wife and son one right after the other.

  Jessie comes past next with the baby in her arms and if she sees him she doesn’t let on. It is a girl baby, not enough hair yet to put a twist in. Jubal nods to the ones he knows and to the Reverend and waits for Miss Alma, who is lingering, reading off the headstones.

  “Miss Alma?”

  She smiles just a little bit. “Jubal Scott.”

  “Yes, M’am.” He nods after the mourners. “You still doin for the Lunce-fords?”

  “They can’t keep nobody now. Doctor lost everything he had.”

  “He have some money if they sell that house.”

  “They took the house.”

  “How they do that?”

  Miss Alma shakes her head like he is a fool. “Same way they took the city. How you think?”

  He frowns and falls into step beside her, still carrying his hat.

  “How you keepin, then?”

  “I got on with some Jewish people, mind their little boys. Ira and Reuben. They had a German girl, but she gone moody and set their place on fire.”

  “You a nursemaid.”

  “They too old for nursing.”

  “Jewish people.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I aint seen no horns, if that’s what you wonderin.”

  He laughs. “May I offer you a ride, Miss Alma? I got a wagon.”

  She looks him over. She is maybe five, six years older than him, and nearly a inch taller. “What you haul in it?”

  “Cameras,” he says. Mr. Harry give it to him to have the springs changed out but the shop don’t open till Monday. “For the moving pictures.”

  Miss Alma laughs. Her laugh is just as good as her singing. “You always been a lucky one. Jubal Scott fall in the creek, he come out with a catfish in both pockets.”

  “You member Mr. Harry Manigault? Mr. Harry is who I’m working for.”

  She look like she just swallow something bad. “That other one aint up here, is he?”

  “No, M’am. Mr. Harry say he went over fightin Filipinos, just like my brother, and now he gone missin.”

  She is still frowning. “Well let him stay missin.”

  She stops to ponder the writing on the side of the panel wagon, looking struck by it. “Cameras, huh. What they take pictures of?”

  “Mostly people act out stories and they take pictures of that.”

  She nods. “I heard of it, but I aint never seen one.”

  “Maybe I take you to see it sometime. They put the stories up and then there’s singing and dancing and whatnot.”

  Miss Alma looks the wagon over like she doesn’t know if it’s safe to get on it. “You carry a lot of gals around on this?”

  “No, M’am,” he says. “You the first one I ast.”

  She smiles at him then—Lord, that smile—and he unties Hooker and climbs quick into the seat and pulls her up after. People walk by and stare at the writing on the panel and he gathers the reins and the horse’s ears go up.

  “That up there is Hooker,” he says, pointing. “She been through a lot, but she got plenty good years left.”

  “Her and me both,” says Miss Alma Moultrie.

  AMBUSH

  Royal is loaded with the rest of the food, with sticks for the fire, with the cookpot and ground mats and the empty Winchester of Joselito, who has come up lame, when they are surrounded by the other band. He counts about thirty of them, just as hungry-looking as his own outfit, many of them stepping close to look him over. He puts only the cookpot down, meeting their stares evenly as the Teniente palavers with the head man, who is staring at him suspiciously. It isn’t an argument exactly, but the Teniente is tight and frowning when he comes back to talk to Royal.

  “I told them you are with us. If I don’t say this they will take you as a prisoner with the others.”

  “Others.”

  “Act as if you are not afraid.”

  The new band escorts them up a rocky, zigzag trail to the saddle of the mountain. They’ve seen yanquis patrolling the area, says the Teniente, and an ambush is planned.

  There are three American prisoners in the camp.

  Two of them are Colorado Volunteers in uniform, a lieutenant and a private, and the other a man in civilian clothes, sitting with their hands tied, backs to the trunk of a stunted acacia tree, with a single rope around their necks that holds them tight to it. They look even more starved than the rebels, and the private is only half-conscious, eyes swimming.

  “Oh, Jesus,” says the lieutenant when Royal passes, “it’s him. It’s Fagen, come to murder us.”

  They are allowed to unload and start a cookfire, the rebels around them watching Nilda as she moves. There is no joking. Royal’s legs are knotted from the climb, his back sore. The Teniente squats beside the head man, who is taller than most of them and bearded, some kind of a Spanish mix, scratching in the dirt with a stick. Bayani steps by Royal on his way to join them, catching his eye and putting a finger to his lips.

  There is nothing he can do for the prisoners. He is in his underwear shirt, his uniform blouse sewed up by Nilda to make a carrying pack, the arms serving as straps, and he
hasn’t shaved or had his hair cut since the river. Look like some nigger gone wild, he thinks as he steals a look over to the hostages. The private’s head is lolling, rope cutting into his neck.

  “They want us to join the ambush with them in an hour,” says the Teniente when he returns. “You will have to attend.”

  “What they gonna do with those three?”

  “Perhaps they will able to trade them for some of our own people,” he says. He doesn’t sound hopeful about it.

  The new band has not been resupplied for a week, so Royal’s bunch shares their food—handfuls of corn, the sweet-potato-looking thing they dug up on the way, some bananas. There is not much for anybody once it is all divvied out. The prisoners are not fed. Nilda sits by Royal while they eat, which she has never done before. A couple times she has done for the chigger bites on his legs without him asking, spitting tobacco juice on them and rubbing it in, and the welts have gone down some. There is no taste to the food, but it is gone quickly and then they are preparing for battle.

  The Filipinos have rituals. Some kneel and pray and make a cross—head, heart, and shoulders—with their right hand. Others of them have charms they wear around their necks or wrists or put in their hats or in their mouths and some do the kind of witchy business his mother used to, like they’re putting some kind of spell on their rifles and bolos.

  The Teniente gives him Fulanito’s Mauser and its one round. The boy sits sulking by the dying cookfire.

  “They’ll be watching you.”

  “They can watch all they want,” says Royal. “I aint shootin nobody.”

  The men from Teniente’s band, Bayani, Kalaw, Legaspi, Pelaez, Ontoy, El Guapo, Puyat, and Katapang, seem to take no notice of him as he joins them filing back down the mountain. They walk for nearly an hour, silent, then deploy in the pass at the bottom, some in the sharp rocks jumbled at the base of the slope and some in the trees a bit ahead and on the other side where the pass makes a bend, offset so they don’t shoot into each other when the smoker begins. They are supposed to wait for the head man, whose name is Gallego, to fire before they open up on whoever walks into the trap.

  If it is the 25th or one of the other colored outfits he supposes he will have to try to switch sides. If it is white soldiers he doesn’t know. There are a couple of Gallego’s rebels in the rocks just above and behind him and when he looks back one has him sighted.

  It is hot again and the shade is on the other side of Royal’s boulder. The one round for the Mauser is still in his pocket. He tries to work his way into a position where nothing is digging into him, then closes his eyes.

  The first gunshot wakes him. Regulars, white men, one hit and writhing on the ground and the others forming up, kneeling or flopping down in a rectangle to return fire. Royal stands and works the bolt a couple times, pretending to shoot, and hears one of them shout “Get the nigger!” before he ducks and the rocks before him are blasted into chips by a concentrated volley. The firing is wild on all sides then and Royal keeps his head down till he hears whooping and looks out to see the white boys charge the woods, shooting as they run, and take the position in a moment. The two sides, dug in, trade shots and insults for a while, the engagement hot at first and then cooling down to an on-and-off, harrying fire. Royal does not bother to pretend to shoot again. If they try to retreat back up the mountain now they’ll be exposed, so he has to hope the regulars won’t make another charge before it gets dark.

  “Come on out you yellow-footed, back-shootin nigger,” drawls a voice across the pass. “We seen you, you goddam turncoat. Come on out and die like a man.”

  Gallego’s man is still there and if Royal answers he will likely be shot from behind. If he managed somehow to cross over, the regulars would probably kill him on the spot instead of dragging him back to Manila to be tried and hanged.

  In that land of dopey dreams

  Happy peaceful Philippines—

  —the regulars sing from behind the trees now—

  Where the bolo-man is hiking night and day

  Where Tagalos steal and lie

  Where Americanos die

  There you hear the soldiers sing this evening lay—

  Royal knows the words and sings along softly, thinking about Junior and the boys in the 25th—

  Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos!

  Slant-eyed khakiac ladrones

  Underneath the starry flag, civilize em with a Krag

  And return us to our own beloved homes!

  It is not nearly dark yet when one of the rebels signals by shooting a chunk out of the rock not far from his ear. Or maybe trying to kill him. The man jerks his rifle for Royal to come up, then draws a bead on him again. There is cover here and there but wide spaces between it and he is scrambling uphill on loose rock with the Americans whooping in joy and trying to nail him and by the time he dives behind the first outcroppping he has been grazed on the arm and is soaked with sweat. He catches his breath and on his second run there is some covering fire and he can see other rebels climbing around him so he is not the only target. His next dash is sideways across the base of the mountain to where the footpath starts and there behind a tangle of uprooted trees he finds the Teniente with Bayani, who has been shot up bad.

  “We have spotted another patrol on the way,” says the Teniente. “We must retreat.”

  Bayani is shot in the hip and through one side under his arm, having a tough time breathing. Got a lung, thinks Royal, and hands the Mauser to the Teniente, who has his own rifle and Bayani’s captured Krag as well. Royal turtles down and the Teniente helps Bayani, surprisingly light, onto his back. They wait until there are others climbing and being shot at before they move, Royal almost running uphill with the wounded Filipino till they are behind cover again and he can get his wind back. Bayani clenches his grip tight a couple times but doesn’t make a sound and the Teniente hurries behind them, the rifles rattling on their slings.

  “It hurts when we move,” Bayani reports, “and it hurts when we stop.”

  When they get back to the camp the American drops to all fours, exhausted, and Diosdado helps the woman from Las Ciegas pull Bayani off his back and lay him out on a mat.

  “The other time I was shot,” says Bayani, “it didn’t hurt like this.”

  There is not much to do without a doctor. One bullet has passed through his chest and out his back but the one in his hip is embedded. Another wounded man, hit in the jaw, is already there drooling blood on the ground. Diosdado waits for his own men to arrive—Legaspi, then Ontoy, then El Guapo, then Kalaw, then Katapang and Pelaez and Puyat, then Gallego stomping into the camp, furious.

  “We have them outnumbered and your maldito africano doesn’t shoot.”

  “He ran out of ammunition,” Diosdado says to him. “He never had a chance.”

  “I’ll give him a chance.”

  The American has caused him no trouble and in time might even join their cause, but now Bayani is hurt and they need to get him down to help, so when Gallego has his men drag the negro forward, hands him a bolo, and demands that he execute the prisoners, Diosdado does nothing.

  The negro, Royal Scott, raises the bolo over his head. The prisoner who is a lieutenant of volunteers cries out “No, don’t do it, boy, don’t do it! I got land here, plenty of land and I’ll give you some!” and the other man who is not in uniform tells him to shut his mouth. Royal throws the bolo down so it sticks in the ground.

  “Hell with it,” he says. “Yall want em dead you can do it yourself.”

  The Colorado lieutenant starts to weep.

  There isn’t room for him on the tree, so the negro is tied hand and foot and thrown on the ground next to the man with the shattered jaw.

  “He saw his father’s nakedness.”

  The Correspondent only groans.

  “Noah drank of the wine,” Niles whispers feverishly, “and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and tol
d his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

  The Correspondent, dullard, does not stir.

  “It is more than Genesis, though,” hisses Niles. This is important, this is so very important. “There is Leviticus 20:11—If a man has sexual intercourse with his father’s wife, he has exposed his father’s nakedness.”

  “Lunatic,” mutters the Correspondent.

  “He must have been a lunatic, no doubt, to do such a thing and at such a time. For there were three that copulated on the ark, and all punished—the dog was doomed to be tied, the raven to spew his seed into the mouth of his mate, and Ham, Ham was smitten in his skin, and thus was darkened the face of Mankind. They are the sons of Ham, the descendants of Canaan.”

  None of the tormentors are awake. It is only Niles, Niles ever vigilant, beyond sleep—

  “Their blackness comes not from their time in the sun, but the dark source from whence the degraded race sprang.” If his hands were free to gesture he would indicate all of those sleeping about them. “These are the children of vile incest, and thus have been cursed with darkness. Darkness of the skin, of the mind, of the soul. That nigger—it was Fagen, the demon. He was going to smite us but I fixed him with my eye. They cannot abide that. As long as we are steadfast, as long as we do not sleep, they cannot slay us, for we are the children of God. It is written on our faces.”

  This is a test. Noah was tested, and Abraham, and poor sweet Jesus on the cross, and now Niles Manigault. He will not falter. He will not fail. He will not pray or plead, for God loves a forthright man, a self-reliant man, a manly man. The nigger with the sword was only a test, a creature from Hell, and I stared it in the eye and it was vanquished. The Hamites are our servants, it is written in the Book and they know it within their hearts. When they rise up, when they rebel, they know in their hearts that He will not let them succeed, for they are the spawn of filth and wickedness.