John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

How the turkeys gobbled that our commissary found

Even sweet potatoes leapt out willing from the ground

While we were marching through Georgia!

— singing still as they double-time across the bridge by squads, bullets from hidden assailants flying at them from every direction, from the rooftops of the tall church steeples visible over the moss-covered walls ahead of them, from the covered barges tethered in the water below, from the bamboo shacks they just left behind—

Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee!

Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!

So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea

While we were marching through Georgia!

— Hod bending over his rifle as he runs, as if there is anything but pure dumb luck keeping him, keeping any of them, from being hit—

And so we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train

Sixty miles of latitude, three hundred to the main

Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain

While we were marching through Georgia!

But there are no cheering darkies at the far side of the bridge, only Lieutenant Niles Manigault waiting for them, pistol in hand and a look of displeasure darkening his countenance.

“The next man who utters a line from that blasphemous ditty,” he announces, “will have his brains blown out.”

Blockhouse 14, though manned by the cazadores of the 73rd, who have never retreated before, is finally abandoned and Diosdado and his men follow the yanquis , marching just far enough behind that it is not worth the Americans’ effort to turn and try to disarm them, following as they circle wide around another blockhouse that is already burning, ragged shards of wood blown out from the walls as the munitions inside explode, then squatting in a rice paddy to shoot past them again as the Spaniards try to make a stand in the little baryo of Cingalon, the yanquis leaving their wounded in the church to be cared for later and moving on as the enemy retreats northward. Diosdado’s men linger in Cingalon after the Minnesotas march out, searching the dozen Spanish dead but finding no weapons.

Then the firing from the north stops. The navy guns to the left are silent. Diosdado has the sergeants form the platoon into a ragged skirmish line and they hurry to catch up.

The Americans have dug in behind the trenches on the far side of the Paco road.

Their rifles are facing south.

Bayani and Ramos walk forward with him to meet the Minnesota captain in the middle of the road.

“Show’s over, fellas,” says the yanqui . “This is as far as you go.”

Diosdado points. “The enemy is that way.”

“Enemy no more. We just got word, there’s a white flag been up for hours.”

Bayani asks what the captain is saying and Diosdado tells him. He asks to borrow the binoculars.

“Orders now are to make sure you insurrectos don’t slip in and queer the whole deal. Take revenge on the Dons, loot the city—”

“It is our city,” says Diosdado.

“Not at the moment,” says the American, his ocean-blue eyes unblinking. “I suggest you take your outfit and back off a ways. Don’t want any trouble if we can avoid it.”

“The flag isn’t white,” says Bayani in Zambal. There are tears of anger in his eyes as he takes the binoculars away from them. “It is red and white stripes, with a blue square in the corner. It’s the fucking yanqui flag!”

Diosdado takes the glasses and adjusts them until the field becomes clear, turning to the northwest, searching till it comes into view. There are American soldiers sitting on the ground in the Luneta, American soldiers marching on the drawbridge that crosses the overgrown moat that faces the thick walls of the Intramuros, American soldiers already posing for photographs on top of the Revellín de Real like a group of tourists, and above them, rippling in the late afternooon breeze that comes off the Bay, their gaudy banner.

There is no breeze on the Paco Road. It must be low tide, the little esteros that run inland from the bay beginning to smell.

“I am still waiting for orders,” he tells the captain.

“Well, you just move back on out of sight and wait for them there. It wasn’t for you little monkeys riling up the Spanish we could have marched in there hours ago without a single casualty.” The captain turns as his men cheer. Very faintly, from the direction of the Walled City, come the wobbling strains of the yanquis ’ strange anthem.

“We should have been first into the city,” Diosdado says bitterly, and turns to stride back to his own lines.

More yanquis , the reserve units of the day’s campaign, step around Dios-dado’s men as if they are fence posts, crossing the road to join their countrymen. Bayani and Ramos follow Diosdado back.

“You fucking people,” says Bayani, in Tagalog for the sake of Ramos, “you fucking people have given them our country.”

He means all of the ilustrados , of course, the educated, the wealthy, the ones who make treaties and wear tailored uniforms and get to float safely to Hongkong in between massacres, but under Bayani’s unwavering glare Diosdado feels personally responsible.

This wasn’t a battle, he realizes — it was a show staged by white men. Not a liberation but a changing of the guard. And still not a word from Aguinaldo.

Ramos is red-faced, chest heaving as if it is hard for him to breathe. “What do we do now, mi teniente ?”

“Now?” The platoon has gathered around them, confused, suspicious, angry. They stare into his eyes. He is the only one of them who has ever been out of the country, the only one, excepting maybe Bayani, who can read. He feels exhausted, though they have not traveled so very far today.

“If the Americans have the city,” he tells them, feeling his own fury rush to his head, “we will have to take it back.”

The fishhook pokes up through the northern tip of Luzon, snagging it securely.

The Cartoonist has arranged the other islands, eliminating many of the smaller ones, to suggest the body of something long and twisted, a fighting pickerel perhaps, with Luzon the head and Mindanao representing the tail flukes. Sitting forlornly upon the northern isle, under a drooping, sickly-looking palm, is a Filipino man, hatless, elbows on knees and head in hands, his tattered shirt open to reveal the slat-ribbed torso of the undernourished. A poor brown little bugger despondently facing away from the hook and its line, which extends tautly across the Pacific to the tip of the slightly bent cane pole held in Uncle’s firm, knobby-knuckled hands. Uncle has rolled his striped trousers up and cools his bared legs to the shins in the rolling sea.

SHALL I REEL HER IN?

— asks the caption, Uncle turning his head to query the reader with bushy eyebrows raised. An extremely unseaworthy-looking dinghy is being rowed away to the northeast of the hooked fish by a white-moustachioed Spanish admiral, with a greasy merchant balancing a bag of loot at the prow, and a fat, tonsured friar in the rear, turning his head back for a last sad glimpse of his Paradise Lost.

The Cartoonist has modeled the friar after Hastings in editorial, and hopes no one will notice till after the paper hits the street.

Hod watches the cards pile up in front of him, still a little dizzy from the wine Neely smuggled in. Company G is back from the defensive line that’s been set up north of the Pasig, scattered now in the nipa huts serving as their cantonment by the reservoir at the edge of a neighborhood called Sampalac or Salampoc or something just as hard to get your mouth around. They’ve named it Camp Alva after the governor, just like back in Denver.