John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Pretty sure of it, M’am.” He shoots a look to be sure nobody is listening, bends close and lowers his voice. “In fact, it’s been planned. Gonna be a bit of a rush come time to count the ballots.”

“Indeed.” The Judge has been grumbling around the house about secret plots and cabals all week, more upset by his exclusion from them than by the fact that they seem to exist.

“I got to keep em under control till then.”

“All alone?”

“My — my fellow volunteer was — he had to attend to something.”

“How long do you think you’ll be out here?”

“Oh, as long as it takes, Miss. I haven’t laid eyes on a nigger all morning, which has got to make you suspicious.”

“Perhaps they’ve been discouraged from showing themselves—”

“That’s the general idea, Miss.”

Sally cocks her head and allows herself to look him over. He is a good foot taller than she, a few years older, clean-shaven. He looks a bit like the young man in the Arrow Shirt advertisements.

“I don’t believe we’ve met before—”

He straightens, touches the brim of his hat. “Robert Forrest,” he says. “I come down from Raleigh yesterday.”

“All the way from the capital just to help us out?”

“Least I could do, Miss. The stories in the paper—”

“We are so very grateful.” Sally offers her hand. “Sally Manigault.”

He takes her hand, once more looking to the crowd outside the old barn. Being forthright, she always needs to remind the Judge, is not the same as being forward.

“My father, Judge Manigault, is a great friend of Mr. Daniels of the News and Observer . We visit him there quite often.”

“Well, if you’re ever up there again,” says dazzling Robert Forrest, then leaves the rest to her. He is polite, this young man, and brave, but certainly not gallant .

“Have you and your companion had anything to eat or drink since you’ve commenced your duties here?”

“No, actually—”

“In that case you are in good fortune,” she smiles, and lays the basket on the ground. “I have a tureen of coffee here, sandwiches, some pie—”

“Oh—”

“In response to your initial question, Mr. Forrest, where I was headed was here — to lend my support to the cause, so to speak.” She flips the lid of the basket open and the boy looks into it, somewhat stunned.

“That is very kind of you.”

“Nonsense. It’s the least I can do. Let me pour you some coffee—”

Flirt with them, Myrtle Talmadge always says, and you win their hearts. Feed them, and you own their souls.

There are two dozen outside the icehouse, staring at him. One of them, a red-haired man with a face ruined by smallpox, steps out to block his way but is whistled back by Turpin the druggist.

“This is Dr. Lunceford,” he says with a hard smile.

Turpin is a Fourth Ward man, yet seems to be in charge of this bunch blocking a polling place in the Fifth. Dr. Lunceford himself would not be here were his house on the west side of Eighth rather than the east, though geography and race are not so closely wed in Wilmington. Colored and white are poor, uneasy neighbors in much of the Fifth Ward, and not an inconsiderable show of white workmen live north of the Creek in Brooklyn, outnumbered five to one in the First.

“How we know he supposed to vote here?”

“Dr. Lunceford represents this ward.” Turpin touches his hat and gives a tiny bow. “One of our distinguished aldermen.”

“If he was extinguished,” says the pox victim, “we’d all be better off,” and the white men laugh.

“Now, now,” says Turpin. “Make way for the gentleman. We don’t want any complaints once the numbers come in.”

They stand aside ever so slightly, eyes mocking.

Dr. Lunceford can’t help but think of the revolving gun. The cylinder that housed the barrels was on a swivel, and one could direct the torrent of projectiles easily, back and forth, like a fire hose. He imagines the crank in one of his hands, trigger finger of the other squeezing hard as he faces this clot of leering white men, imagines their flesh and bone tearing apart, the terrible swift justice of it, the job done in five quick heartbeats. His father must have killed men, white men, when he wore the blue uniform. It was, however, like his youth in bondage, a matter he would not elaborate upon.

“Expect we’ll have quite a turnout today,” says Turpin as Dr. Lunceford passes through their gantlet, eyes fixed straight ahead. “Hell, we got folks been buried five, six years coming out to vote.”

The white men laugh.

Dr. Lunceford feels his perspiration chill against his body as he steps into the icehouse. There are only a handful of men there by the table, a pair of kerosene lanterns hung from the rafters to light their task. Laughlin is behind the Republican box, and Dr. Lunceford wonders how many of the other white Fusionists have dared come out today. He fills his ballot out quickly, stuffs it into the slot. Laughlin meets his eyes.

“How is it out there?”

“About what you’d expect,” says Dr. Lunceford, “given the saber-rattling that has preceded. Will you be safe here?”

Laughlin looks to the other men in the room, two of them colored, all of them worried. “It’s the end of the day that worries me. When it’s time to count.”

“We petitioned the governor—”

“Yes, well, none of those famous yankee bayonets seem to be at our disposal. You be careful out there.”

The poll-watchers are less interested as he steps out, and he can’t help then but to think of the rest of it. The shredded flesh, the blood. He treated a man once who’d been shotgunned at very close range, a pox of buckshot on the parts of his body that had not been torn away by the blast, tissue crushed, bones snapped. He amputated what was left of the right arm, cut out a ruined eye, extracted a palmful of lead pellets. He is no surgeon, but none was available at the moment, and the man died a week later from blood poisoning. He can’t help but wonder, should the rapid-fire gun be turned today on its owners, on its inventors, if he would lift a hand to treat them.

“We know who you are,” calls the red-headed man as Dr. Lunceford turns to walk home, “and we know where you live.”

Jessie is rewriting her last letter to Royal in her head, for the hundredth time, when Dorsey steps through the front door. She can’t help but cry out, feeling guilty—

“Dorsey!”

He crosses to her, takes her hand. “You’re shaking—”

“I was so worried,” she says. “Worried about you, out there—”

She will no longer allow herself to lie, she tells herself, unless it is to spare the feelings of another.

“I’m fine.”

“How is it?”

He sits at the table, right where she was just thinking about her lover who she will never see again, and slumps like he has been carrying a great weight for a long time.

“I went around to see some of the boys.” He calls the men who work in the tonsorial parlors his boys. “Hoke Crawford say he was by the polling spot, there was a mess of white folks with guns outside, taking names.”

“So you didn’t go.”

Dorsey turns his face away from her. “No point to it. Won’t be an honest count.”

Jessie fills the coffee pot with water, places it on the stovetop. He says he drinks coffee when he comes home from work, that it helps him think.

“I expect my father voted,” she says and immediately regrets it. Now he looks at her.

“Dr. Lunceford treat colored,” says Dorsey, “so he got nothing much to lose. Half my business is white heads.”

“I’m glad you’re back safely,” she says, and it is no lie. “There’s been so much talk about violence—”