John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“From the beginning of creation God made them male and female,” says Reverend Cox with his big deep voice, “that they might be one flesh.” Dorsey has seen him preach once or twice, coming back from Raleigh on a Sunday and stopping halfway for church. A joyful messenger for the Lord. Dorsey is joyful now, surely more joyful than Mrs. Lunceford with her handkerchief to her eyes and Dr. Lunceford grim-faced and wishing it was over and Jessie, so beautiful in her yellow dress holding the yellow roses it was so hard to find, a brave little smile on her face like a girl waiting for her smallpox needle. Dorsey doesn’t mind any of it. There is joy in his heart, and in time hers will follow.

“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves unto his wife,” booms Reverend Cox, voice filling the tiny nave they’ve requested to avoid the empty, accusing pews in the main hall. Reverend Cox knows this is not a judge’s sentence but a joyful sight under Heaven, and thunders out the Scripture while Mrs. Cox keeps an eye on the clock. Dorsey noticed the party waiting in the main hall when they passed through, the girl showing six months if it’s a day. With Jessie you’d hardly guess, maybe just a little butterfat here and there, make her look more womanish.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things—”

Dr. Lunceford endures the Reverend’s words with shoulders set and chin thrust upward. Dorsey has cut him once or twice, in the days before he moved to the Orton Hotel for the white trade. A serious man, Dr. Lunceford, a race man. People have nothing but good to say for him as a doctor, but the rest scares them some, showing so proud in the world, making the white folks jumpy. They are Episcopalians, the Luncefords, but have chosen Reverend Cox because it’s Magnolia where nobody of any account knows them and because the Reverend is understanding of what he called the ex post facto of the situation. Dorsey expects some heavy ribbing from the boys who cut for him over that, maybe even from some of the white gentlemen at the Orton when they finally hear. But no matter the circumstances, from this day forward Dorsey Love and Miss Jessie Lunceford will be bound in holy matrimony.

“I do,” says Jessie, quiet and sweet and dry-eyed as she speaks.

“I do,” says Dorsey, feeling shivery as the words come out. His life will never be the same.

There is no way to cross the river of white men. Jubal pulls back on old Dan and sits as still as he can, watching them pass, white men in red shirts riding through the colored section of Wilmington, whooping their rebel yells, some already taken with liquor and all of them shiny-eyed with the power of their numbers. Jubal watches and is careful to avoid meeting the gaze of any of them, knowing how easy they can spook. There are the horsemen in the red shirts under the old slavery flag and then a bunch on foot, the first two holding up a banner that says WHITE CITIZENS’ UNION which is the ones he has been losing hauling jobs to, the bossman saying Sorry, Jubal, I got to hire white till this election business blow over, three dozen Paddy-looking characters ambling along in sloppy rows singing—

Onward Christian sojers

Marching as to war—

Making it sound more like a drinking song than a hymn—

With the cross of Je-sus

Going on before

Then there is another mounted group, ten or twelve riders in buff uniforms and campaign hats. ROUGH RIDERS is written on the banner the first two support, the third man carrying the American flag on a long pole. This bunch gets the biggest noise from the white folks lining the street, as if they are all veterans of the recent triumph.

Two of them detach from the rank and ride up on either side of Jubal, a big one with a beard and a mean-looking little one.

“Come to gawk at the parade, Rastus?” says the little one.

“Nawsuh. Just waitin to cross.”

“We aint holdin you up, are we?”

“Naw. Yall go ahead first.”

“That’s white of you, Rastus,” says the little one and the big one laughs. The little one tugs at the front of his shirt. “You know what this uniform mean?”

“Mean you been to the Spanish war,” says Jubal. “Like my brother Roy.”

The white men trade a look.

“We was meant to go,” says the little one. “North Cahlina Volunteers. Only they pushed them nigger outfits in front of us.”

The big one indicates the parade passing behind him. “Know what this all about?”

“Aint sure I do.”

“This here’s the White Man’s Rally. It’s about how we gonna take this city back.”

Jubal says nothing.

“What you think about that?”

There is always the point where you got to guess which way it’s best to move. “ You don’t never show a mad dog your back ,” his uncle Wick always says, “ and you never look a papa bear in the eye .”

“Don’t spect I think nothin about it, one way or the other.”

The little one nudges his horse closer. “You playing with me, boy?”

Jubal is a little above him on the wagon seat. Dan won’t bolt no matter what you hit him with, been trained for that, so even if the path ahead was clear there is no way out of this. He just hopes they won’t look into what he’s hauling under the tarp behind — Dorsey Love would surely skin him alive if that got messed with.

“Nawsuh, I aint playin.”

“You gonna vote tomorrow?” asks the big one.

“ And there aint many white folks ,” Uncle Wick always finishes, “ who merits the truth .”

“I aint never voted,” says Jubal, looking the little one in the eye with as empty a face as he can muster. “And I don’t spect I start up tomorrow.”

The big one grunts. “Sounds like a wise plan of inaction.”

“We gonna be out here tomorrow, supervisin,” says the little one. “We see you anywhere near a polling spot, you be one dead nigger.”

They yank the reins and are gone then, trotting to catch the other Rough Riders. There are gaps in the flow of the white people coming down Bladen now, just the stragglers, black folks starting to pop their heads back out from their houses, but Jubal is in no hurry to push through.

Her father insists on running up the colors when they pass. He has lost several flags to vandals in the past, even after he fenced the yard with pickets, in the annual battle of the dead. When Miss Loretta was a girl and the bluecoats still a presence in town her father would march with them up to the National Cemetery on Decoration Day, though he had never been a soldier, would drag her along by her skinny arm, mortified, to hear the yankees speechify and the negroes sing. Honoring the Nation’s Sacrifice is what they said, but really it was only the graves of the Union men and some of the colored who had served with them they were praying over, and there were many in town who wanted to reroute the New Bern Road so they wouldn’t have to pass by the entrance gate. She was twenty-four when the bluecoats marched to the train station, gone forever, and since then every tenth of May when the rest of white Wilmington flocks to the Oakdale flying the old Dixie flag to mourn the Confederate Dead her father raises his defiant Stars and Stripes to shame them all. And here he is today, Roaring Jack, ramrod straight beside the pole, banner rippling above him, glaring his contempt over the white pickets to the horsemen passing by.

“Daddy,” she says gently, stepping out on the lawn to touch his arm, “just come in and pull the shades down. This will only spur them on.”

“White Citizens’ Union,” he snarls, then raises his voice in a shout to the men on foot who follow the Red Shirts. “Passel of damned layabouts, got nothing better to do with their time! Shiftless trash—”