John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“What have we done?” she asks. “What have we done to deserve this?”

Percy laughs. “He make the black man to sin,” says the King of the Creole, eyes gleaming, spreading his spindly fingers over his chest, “and the white man as our punishment.”

“It wasn’t a sin.” He is crazy, she knows, but there has been murder all day and she is standing soaked and freezing in a cemetery on a moonless night. “Nothing done in love can be a sin.”

He laughs louder now and gives his cape of hair a shake. “Only one question for you, Little Dove — are you prepare to accept His judgment?”

“No,” says Jessie, backing into a row of tombstones. “I have to find my husband.”

Rain blows in over the Cape Fear River, rain dousing the small fires that have been left unattended, rain puddling around the bodies left uncollected, cold, steady rain that drives the last of the vigilantes, hoping for one last triumph for their cause, finally to shelter. Rain falls steady and cold on the people huddled in the cemetery and in the dark swamp, rain collects and rolls in sheets from the sides of the bridge others have sheltered beneath, sudden creeks of rainwater appearing on the downtown streets, rushing downhill for the swollen river, the storm drains backed up with debris, the city unable to swallow any more.

It is still raining early in the morning when they pull them out of the jail. Dr. Lunceford is tied with rope to the others, to Ike Lofton and Toomer the patrolman and William Moore who represented the anti-vaccination crowd in court, to Arie Bryant the butcher and Bell and Pickens the fishmongers and Tom Miller at the rear complaining that his watch has been stolen. There is little slack so when the major raises his hand for them to halt each man bumps into the back of the one in front. At least their hands and legs are free, the deputies all on their first day of service and ignorant of how to attach the shackles.

White people, men and women, line the street jeering at them as they are herded to the station, nigger this and nigger that, some walking parallel with the soldiers to unload their contempt, a group of boys trying to time their spit to fly in between the gaps in the escort. It is very early in the morning for such outrage, and he assumes these are people unable for whatever reason to participate in yesterday’s action and feeling left out.

And then he sees them, standing on the other side of Third, his wife holding the broad umbrella and his daughter, looking exhausted, huddled beneath it. They are safe. Now he can bear anything. He catches Yolanda’s eye and she covers her mouth for a moment, then waves, regally, the way she does when she sees him off on any other train journey.

“When you think they’ll let us get off?” asks Salem Bell.

“Told me there’s a lynch mob waiting at every train stop from here to Washington,” says Frank Toomer. “I aint getting off till I seen the last of Dixie.”

“Close your yaps,” the major calls back to them. “Else I’ll put a muzzle on you.”

Dr. Lunceford wishes he could have been present to see their faces when they came looking for him and found his wife instead, in her parlor, when they got a dose of Yolanda Lafrontiere. They’ll steal the house, of course, they own the law now and there will be taxes due or ordinances passed and within months some white man rewarded for his participation in the coup will be sitting in his favorite chair. A house is wood and brick. His Yolanda has come through it safely and will be with him for whatever comes next. She will save what she can, will help Jessie bury her husband, and then, as is their long agreement, the plan almost a joke between them, she will reunite with him whenever she is able in the city of Philadelphia, on the steps of Independence Hall.

Jessie wants to follow him to the depot but her mother says no, he knows we’re safe now and there is so much to do. She means putting Dorsey into the ground. Jessie spent the night in the cemetery and then walked home, to her old home, to find the windows shot out and Alma weeping and her mother saying He’s gone, you poor child, he’s gone. She thought it was her father and then could tell from the tone it was Dorsey.

“Your father has been banished from Wilmington,” her mother told her, holding her shoulders and looking straight into her eyes, “and your husband has been murdered.”

Jessie is still shivering even after the bath and changing her clothes and her throat is raw, frantic and without sleep all night in the rain in the cemetery. There is a woman walking straight at them from the jailhouse, somebody she should know.

“Jessie,” says Miss Loretta. “Mrs. Lunceford.”

Jessie looks at her like she doesn’t recognize her. She hasn’t seen the girl in months and here she is on this terrible morning with her little belly sticking out.

“They have my father in there,” Miss Loretta says, indicating the jail. She wishes she could hold Jessie for a moment, for her own comfort if not for the girl’s, but even if it was allowed she is not sure it would be welcome. “He’s being sent away. I shall follow, I suppose.”

Mrs. Lunceford nods.

“He’ll be on a later train than your husband,” she says to Jessie’s mother, then smiles bitterly. “So there won’t be any race-mixing.”

Dr. Peabody says it is only a twinge, brought on by the Judge’s extreme choler and the unnecessary exertion. The old man lies in his bed upstairs, frowning out at the drizzle, Harry standing awkwardly to the side, hat in hand. He has not slept, and there is blood on his shoes, acquired while he was attempting to help the ambulance men with their gruesome duty.

“I have made my decision, Father,” he says. “Or, rather, it has been made for me. I will be leaving.”

The words do not seem to register.

“Today.”

The Judge turns his head to look at him then, eyes not unfriendly, nods. “Don’t let them make a yankee of you,” he says.

Alma is trying to get all the glass up from the carpet when Wicklow looks in.

Once the sun went down the shooting began, first the windows on the ground floor, then the second, and finally even some around the back. If it had been all at once it would not have been so bad, but they just come every half hour or so all night, shooting another pane out and yelling their filth and strolling away to brag about it. She sat on the upstairs bed in their big bedroom while Mrs. L wrapped the silver and sewed her jewelry into the lining of a jacket and fussed about what clothes she should bring for him if they had to leave.

“You folks made it all right?” asks Wicklow when he peeps through the open window.

“They kilt Dorsey Love,” she says, trying not to cry again. “Who my little Jessie married.”

Wick shakes his head. “Sorry to hear it. That was always a nice polite boy, Dorsey. They killed a good score more than him. Talk is about bodies in the river, people thrown in ditches and covered over—”

“Don’t make any sense.”

“Got what they wanted, I spose. Had to send my nephew off. Jubal. There’s hundreds pulled out last night, hundreds more gone follow as soon as they can. They made it plain enough that this aint a town for us no more.”

Alma leans on her broom for a moment and sighs. She has never felt this tired.

“Don’t make any sense at all,” she says. “Who gonna do all the work?”

Milsap knows he is already late for work but he doesn’t care. He has been drawn back to the blackened, dripping ruins of the Love and Charity Hall, no screaming mob now, no Kodak bugs snapping photographs. He steps into what’s left of the ground floor, rain collecting in the burned-away remnants above and funneled into little waterspouts that drizzle down onto the debris. There is a large hole in the ceiling where the bulk of the press fell through, machinery lying tilted on its side draped with a layer of charred newspaper. Milsap picks his way across the floor, poking with his toe till he finds a melted hunk of lead. It is still warm in the palm of his hand. He turns it over a few times, deciding that there is no telling what letter it was, then sticks it in his pocket with the brass N he found yesterday. He comes out from the ruined building, then absently switches it to the other pocket. Force of habit — you always want to keep your brass and your lead separate.