John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“God make a joke,” he said as the sisters were reciting The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner , Mille in English and Christine in German. “Bond two woman together, give them only one hole for pizzle, one for poop.”

Tonight he smells of persimmons.

“Do you let the sun shine on all your body?”

“Whenever possible,” she answers.

The King of the Creole smiles again with all his face. “The High Spirit loves you, child. How many year you got?”

“I’m sixteen.” She thinks of telling him she’s older, to seem less vulnerable perhaps, but his gaze, guileless and unblinking, has her transfixed.

“Then you must fast for sixteen day, purify the soul. You promise Percy this?”

“I will do my best.” She has fasted once for two days, after reading Robin-son Crusoe , pushing her plate away at every meal until Father gave her a dose of ipecac, thinking she had been poisoned by tinned fruit.

“Percy sense a young woman at her crossroad, cyannot decide which trail to accept.”

“I don’t—”

“ For ward. Always forward to the Light. The Wicked One dog our passage — turn back and we are lost forever.” He holds the Coca-Cola bottle out to her. “But first you must partake from the Source.”

“I really couldn’t—”

“Cyannot refuse the Blood of Christ, child! Drink, and it make holy everting you do this night.”

Jessie holds the neck so it doesn’t touch her lips, tilts the bottle. It is warm, just water, and she manages to swallow a tiny bit. Percy smiles and takes the bottle from her and steps aside with a gallant half-bow.

“Go forth, then,” he says, “and mul-ti-ply.”

He moves aside and she walks toward the river, resolute, the lunatic’s blessing filling her with courage, till she turns right to cross over the railroad bridge into Brooklyn. The gaslights are far behind her and the grand houses too and the paint is peeling on many of these houses, or was never applied, someone is making frightening noises on a piano a few blocks ahead but this is the only way, the way to save Royal, to save the two of them, to come to him in servant’s clothes and do something she can barely imagine.

Something irreversible.

Coop is leaving Hazel, smelling her on his clothes, when Toomer steps out with his hand on his pistol. They stand a few yards apart, facing each other, Coop feeling himself reel slightly with the gin that followed the beer, and stare at each other’s uniforms. Toomer laughs first.

“Who you steal that from, Clarence?”

They are on Brunswick Street, just the two of them. Toomer keeps his hand on top of the holster.

“Second squad, Company H, 25th Infantry,” says Coop. “And what you sposed to be doin?”

“Keeping the peace. Protecting folks from the likes of you.”

“I’m just passing through, man—”

“Far as I know,” says the police officer, “you still a fugitive round here.”

“White people’s bidness.”

“I work for the law. Law cuts both ways.”

“Yeah? They let you ’rest a white man?”

“If it come up, that’s my job . Only don’t many of em show their faces this part of town.”

“So you out keepin us wild niggers in line.”

“Let’s say old Pharaoh Ballard come around, find out some soldier boy passin through has been next to his gal Hazel,” says Toomer, easing his hand off the holster and hooking his thumb in his belt, “and Pharaoh commenced to waving his blade around and bragging how he’s gonna cut a certain lowlife son of a bitch up for fishbait.” Hazel didn’t say nothing about Pharaoh, but it make sense she got somebody. “It be my responsibility to advise him to reconsider, and if he go ahead and do it, to bring him to justice.”

“That happens, you best shoot before he sees you.”

Toomer nods. He was the best pitcher on the Cape Fear Mutuals when Coop left, a long-armed house-painter whose brother Granville owned a furniture store Coop and Tillis had hit once. “You understand my position.”

“I didn’t come here to mess with him.”

“Then you best stay clear of the waterfront. He get off his shift at Worth and Worth in a half hour.”

If he was staying they’d need to have it out, him and Pharaoh, no way he was skulking around Brooklyn avoiding a fight. But passing through like this—

“Don’t spect we’ll meet up.”

“How long you plannin to be in town, Clarence?”

“When the westbound pull out this morning at seven,” he says evenly, holding Toomer’s eyes so the man knows it’s his own choice and not the threat, “I be on it.”

Toomer smiles. “25th Infantry. The heroes of Santiago.”

“That’s us.”

“ With feet to field and face to foe, ” he intones, “ In lines of battle lying low — The sable soldiers fell! ”

“That’s the Ninth. We were on a different hill.”

“Lots of folks walking tall in this city when that news hit town.” Toomer steps aside to let Coop pass. “You done more than free them Cubans, brother.”

It smells like lavender. She is shaking so hard, even just hurrying up the stairs outside, that he thinks she is freezing and takes Alma’s coat off her and holds her tight. The shaking calms down some but he kisses her on the mouth and it starts up again and she says she’s sorry.

“Got nothin to be sorry about,” he says.

They both know what they are up to, though. That going all the way through with it means there is no going back, not for Mother and Father either. It is the only way. Jessie can hear the animals stirring below, hooves on hollow wood, snortings and shiftings. Once the horse is out of the barn —she has heard her father say it more than once, treating ruined girls over in this section of town or closer to home.

Royal is looking her straight in the eye, his face so close it makes her shake even more. “I just got to know,” he says, “that this is what you want.”

Jessie takes his hand then and places it over her breast, something she read once in one of Alma’s love books. She doesn’t have much there, she knows, and she is still in the shift, but in the books it is always how the chapter ends and you’ve got to imagine what happens next.

She nods.

On the bed he puts his hand on her thigh, Alma’s shift riding up, and then he moves his fingers under. She never thought of that, even when touching herself. The shaking stops and she has to breathe deep and he is still looking at her, that is the most incredible thing of all, looking deep into her eyes right as it is happening. She reaches down and curves his fingers just the right way, leans herself against him and closes her eyes when it happens. Amazing that he would know. Even this much, she thinks, if I went home now having done even this much maybe they would be forced to reconsider, but she sees how his pants are, just like Alma told her they get, and knows there is going to be more.

His bare skin is reddish in the lantern light, darker than hers, and she is glad there are no mirrors on the walls, only pictures of beautiful horses. How did he know how much she loves them?

She is shaking again and really cold now, she is never naked except in a warm bath, and he has her squat on the edge of the bed facing him and then lower herself down. Junior showed her a picture in one of Father’s medical books once, but it was pink and wrinkly and not hard like this. This is not in Father’s book, this is not in any book she has ever read or imagined.

“Easy,” he says in her ear, “easy.”

And it is like when Alma draws the bathwater too hot, you have to let yourself down a little at a time and maybe come back up a little bit and then ease down and the second time down it isn’t so bad, a little farther, a little deeper, and then suddenly you are all the way in and it only stings for a tiny instant.