John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“He’s our new mayor.”

Jack laughs then, and if he could the Judge would join him and then both men are in tears.

“Look what we’ve come to, Cornelius,” says Jack, shaking his head. “Look what we’ve come to.”

When the newly minted Special Constables knock and the daughter, Loretta, who never married, lets them in, the Judge is beginning to get some feeling back in his fingers and toes.

“I am Judge Cornelius Manigault,” he tells them, the fist behind his lung tightening again. “You leave this man be.”

“Manigault not on our list,” says the cretin in charge of the arrest, and they haul Jack away before he can find his hat.

He didn’t think there would be so many people on the tracks. It is raining now, and cold, raining since the sun went down. Jubal keeps Tobey at a trot, leaning forward in the saddle to try to make out where the flat ground along the track bed is. You got to know what’s ahead or there can be trouble. There are folks walking up on the rails or resting along the way, some empty-handed and some carrying canvas tarps or mattresses rolled up, set to spend the night outside. They startle when they hear Tobey’s hooves coming up behind and Jubal keeps calling out, softly, “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

It is not all right, and the people, mostly women and children, are fleeing out of Wilmington in the rain and the cold and none of them sure when it will be safe to come back. Even Tobey knows something is wrong, skittish and sharp-eared, a horse that’s never been rode at night without a carriage hung with a lantern hitched behind him.

There are lanterns on the bridge up ahead, sentries. The Hilton drawbridge has been raised up all day to keep people on the poor side of the Creek, and this way, the tracks over the railroad bridge, is the only stretch they haven’t been patrolling. Jubal has his friend Denson up in Mount Olive and if he can follow the rail far enough out of town and then cut north — unless the whole state gone crazy. Used to be a black man got worried, white folks in his town mad at him or just looking at him funny or there’s no work, he pull up and come to Wilmington. This our town, people used to say, don’t nothing move unless it’s us that moves it. It’s the only place he’s ever lived.

“Who’s that?” calls a voice from up on the bridge and he feels Tobey twitch with fright under him and he kicks hard with his heels and they are galloping, rain hard in his face and shots coming after and cursing and dark shapes of people leaping out of the way and it is dark, dark, so dark that for all he knows there might be nothing up ahead—

The cemetery is filled with living souls, wandering in the rain. Jessie lights her kerosene when she comes upon the first miserable group of them, but is shouted at to kill the flame.

“Them men still about,” says a woman with a half-dozen sniffling children clinging at her. “They see a light in here they shoot at it.”

Jessie lays the lantern on top of a stubby tombstone and keeps searching, pushing her face close to whoever she meets to see if it might be him. There are dozens, maybe hundreds among the headstones, all with a different story.

“They decided to kill us all. It come down from the governor.”

“Naw, it’s the North and South War that’s started up again. There’s Federal soldiers with bayonets coming on a train to take our side.”

“It just got out of hand, is all. Fed them redboys too much liquor.”

A very old woman tells her there are even more people run all the way to the swamp back of the Smith Creek Bridge.

“Nobody can survive out there,” Jessie protests. “Not on a night like this.”

“You be surprise what folks can get through,” says the very old woman, who sits on the wet ground with her back up against a stone angel. “Even your own little self.”

Jessie is wet to the bone and cold, her hair plastered down on her head and streaming with rain and there is no shelter, no shelter, only the wet, cold stones and the frightened people haunting this ground waiting for the sun to come up or to be chased farther into the woods and it feels like this rain, this dark, will last forever, a sodden limbo of fear and not knowing.

She hadn’t started out to be here. When the shooting had settled down to a distant pop she’d taken the lantern and set out to find him. She’d headed first for his colored shop and there was a dead man spread out in the middle of Brunswick Street in the rain, but too tall, not his clothes, and another man curled in a ball at Hanover and Third and she’d had to put the lantern down by his face to be sure. The man’s lips had curled back so he looked like a dog about to snap and she hurried on, sand turning to mud in the streets and at Campbell the sentries began, white men and sometimes just boys challenging and a few just letting her pass when they saw she was a woman, while others had to step close and throw their lights over her and tell her to go home, there was nothing she could do now for her man. Dorsey’s colored shop was closed up but none of the glass broken, no fight there, and she thought of going back to Dorsey’s house, going home, but with the inside torn up and the piano smashed apart out front it didn’t seem safe anymore, didn’t seem like where she should be.

She was trying to get to the Orton Hotel, maybe they’d kept the bunch of them there from leaving, there were so many guns around town, when the boys stopped her. Boys almost men. They had rifles and mocking eyes and had draped their jackets over their heads against the rain so they looked like neckless creatures, surrounding her.

“Look at this one,” said the boldest of them. “She got a pickaninny on the way.” Then he touched her belly and she swung the lantern hard but only hit him in the side and they told her turn back, nigger bitch, before we get any ideas.

She felt numb walking back then, soaked and shivering already, and met the people carrying their crippled boy up to the cemetery.

“I seen em outside the Central Baptist,” the mother told her. “Whole mess of them in their uniforms, come up with that big swivel-gun in a wagon and set outside whilst a dozen of em go in and tear the place apart. Churches aint safe, house aint safe, we got to get out where they can’t find us.”

They cut through backyards and under fences, Jessie swept along, numb and cold, taking her turn with the boy on her back. His arms were tight around her neck and his legs no more than little sticks and he weighed nothing, nothing at all.

“They tell me they coming back to kill my Charles,” said the mother, “but I aint seen him all day.”

Jessie wanders through the gravestones, looking for life. She can’t really imagine that Dorsey will be here, he’ll be all about finding her, the last man to think only of himself. But she approaches everyone she finds, seeing in their eyes the same searching, the same hope to recognize somebody who’s been missing. There is a figure alone by a tall pillar.

“Little Dove,” he says. “Caught out in the wet.”

It is Percy of Domenica, smiling. How can his eyes shine so bright when it is so dark?

“Little Dove,” he says, “got to fly from the nest.”

The wet has bushed out his matted locks of hair, making him wider, more substantial. He places his palm on her belly.

“I see we been fruitful, Little Dove.”

Jessie steps back. Nobody should be touching her there but Dorsey.

“You know bout Armageddon, child? We seeing the End of Days now. Satan have gathered him Host, arm them to challenge the High Spirit. Today begin the Final Battle.”

“I need to find him,” says Jessie.

“Oh, Him soon come, don’t you worry. Pronounce upon the wicked and the righteous.” Percy points to her belly and she takes another step backward. “Even them what never see the light.”