John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“In volley, front line,” calls a white man on a horse, “fire!”

The front line fires and two of the runners fall, the other two just sprinting on through and they continue to march, the Light Infantry in the van, not a one out of step as Milsap follows the loose squadron of irregulars behind them.

“On your left,” calls Captain Kenan as they take fire from another house on Brunswick, “top-floor window. Fire!” Another volley and the front of the unpainted house is blistered with rounds. A pair of the infantrymen stop when they reach one of the men who was just mowed down. The top of his head is gone, and there are brains spread in the sand.

“Nigger got himself a haircut,” says one Red Shirt to the other.

Milsap feels dizzy, and then sees Mr. Clawson up by the wagon that carries the Gatling. He has heard there was a demonstration, a display for the colored that he was not invited to, and he would love to see the mechanism in action but not today. The detachment moves over to Bladen Street where the original trouble was reported and continues to move west, firing at whatever moves unless it is white and sensible enough to throw its arms up and declare loyalty.

“Keep your eyes open, Drew,” Mr. Clawson tells him cheerily, dropping back a few yards as they head for Manhattan Park. “Won’t see many a day like this one.”

Milsap nods, but when the editor strides away he lingers and then crosses to sit on the porch. There is gunfire from every direction now, screams and cursing, black powder smoke hanging in the air. A straggling Red Shirt with a shotgun steps over to him.

“Can’t stay here without us, buddy,” the man says. “They see a white man on his lonesome, they kill him for sure.”

This is probably true and his hands are shaking but he feels more weary than scared. “I live here,” says Milsap, nodding at the little shotgun shack behind him. “This is my home.”

Dorsey had this nightmare just last night. Trying to find his way back to Jessie but every path blocked, knowing she’s in the house and something might be wrong. Reverend Telfair went back to the cotton press hours ago, left before the worst of the shooting began to tell them it was not so bad. But now the alarm bells strike a constant warning, a clamor of metal in the air on every side, and all of Brooklyn is a running gun battle. Whatever street Dorsey turns down there are men who want to shoot him and what began as a search for a safe passage home has become nothing but flight, turning to walk, not run, away from the spots where they are killing.

If you run you’re just a target.

Without Jessie it would be easy, just get down to the river and make his way to the Orton. The whole colored staff will be there, safe, behind their wall of quality white folks. But without Jessie nothing matters and the least thing a man can do and hold his head up in the world is to protect his woman from harm.

“That’s him!” he hears, and his heart falls.

There are too many of them, and too many with rifles to run. They back Dorsey up against a building, dozens of them, wild-eyed and cursing, so close he can smell whiskey, and he thinks he sees Mr. Turpin at the back looking on. He holds his palms up in front of himself.

“I’m just trying to get home, people,” he says. “I don’t want no trouble.”

“That’s the one!” A different voice this time. “That’s the one shot Bill Mayo!”

“I don’t know any Mr. Mayo,” Dorsey says, trying not to sound as scared as he is. If you’re too bold or too scared they lose control—

“I saw him up on a roof! Shot right down at Bill!”

“I aint been on any roof,” Dorsey says, feeling the bricks hard at his back. He wants to put his hands down over his privates where one of the men keeps poking him with the barrel of his rifle but you have to keep them up where they can see. “I don’t own any gun.”

“Crafty nigger, huh? Think we believe that?”

“I’m Dorsey Love,” he says. “I own property. Mr. Turpin, he can tell you—”

But Mr. Turpin, if he had been there, has disappeared. A man grabs Dorsey by the collar and yanks him stumbling out into the middle of the street with the others jeering and the rifle barrel poking him hard, again and again, in the ribs now and then a hard blue shock of light and he is down with his face in the sand and he smells blood and it is his own making mud next to his cheek and they kick him, kick him over onto his back and there is a big one with a chunk of lead pipe in his hand peering down.

“Did you kill him? Is he dead?”

“I hit him in the head,” says the big one. “You know they got skulls like cast iron.” And there is laughing and hands pulling him up till his jaw is grabbed and forced open and someone, he can’t see who with the blood stinging his eyes, jams a pistol into his mouth cracking his teeth and he can taste blood now, his own, and you can’t talk peace with a gun in your mouth.

“We gonna give you a chance to do what niggers do best,” says the man pushing the pistol into him. “Either you run or you stay here and eat this.”

He always knew it couldn’t last, that they’d find out sooner or later and put a stop to it. Raggedy-ass little orphan boy, what he do to deserve all he got, own himself a business, got the most beautiful young wife. Dorsey blinks till his eyes clear. He can see the way to Jessie. The man pulls the pistol out and gives him a shove, the others screaming for it now, veins standing out in their necks, spit flying. He runs to her.

Jessie listens to the gunshots and wishes he was here. She knows he will be trying to get to her, that’s Dorsey, sweet and courtly, though he should just stay in his shop and let it blow over. She will be fine, she knows, if you don’t step outside it’s only noise, the havoc of the alarm bells and the angry popping of guns. There’s nothing you want to see happening out on those streets.

Jessie sits at the table watching the door and misses the trees. At home — at her parents’ house — there are trees lining all the streets, white ash and chestnuts and live oaks and a kind of shade and shadow they make that smoothes the sharp edge off life. Over here north of the Creek the trees have mostly been cut down and the few left are twisted and scraggly. Sand blows into the house from the street and though there’s colored and white living side by side the feeling is different than where she grew up — harsh words and meanness all the time. She wishes he was home. If he gets here she will hold him and be glad and he’ll know it, he’ll feel it even if she can’t find the words for how good he’s been to her and what he’s done for her and what she thinks of him as a man. She’s been holding herself inside and that isn’t fair to him and she feels him out there, worrying, that’s Dorsey, a worrying man, and her heart lifts at the first hollow footfall on the wood of the front step.

The door is kicked in so hard it smashes against the wall behind it and sends a hung picture crashing to the floor. There are six of them, two in the red shirts, and one has a list he reads from.

“Dorsey Love,” he says.

“He isn’t home.” Jessie stands, thinking strangely of her mother all of a sudden, the lady of the house. What she would do.

“He’s on the list.”

“You may not come in here,” she hears herself tell them. This is Dorsey’s home. He works so hard to keep it—

“Look under everthing,” says the man with the list. “He’s probly crawled under somewhere.”

The men spread out, kicking and throwing and tearing and smashing, not looking at all, and Jessie can only stand where she is and hope they won’t turn on her and that Dorsey won’t arrive till they are long gone. One of the men stands scowling at the piano, as if its presence is a grave insult.