John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“The Americans are going to vote,” Diosdado tells the sargento. “Back in their own congress. About what to do with us.”

“What to do with us,” Bayani repeats. He addresses Diosdado in Zambal, as always now, as if it is their private language. Diosdado has not garnered the nerve to order the sargento to speak Tagalog like the others.

“The bird that loses, the talunan ,” says Bayani, “goes to the owner of the one that wins.”

“We’re not the losers — the Spanish are.”

“Is that right?” Bayani stares across the bridge, shakes his head. It is too dark to see any movement but there is a harmonica playing, laughter every now and then, shouted challenges and passwords from the river’s edge.

“The generals know more than we do.”

Diosdado hopes it is true as he says it. There has already been too much dissent above him, the Caviteños resenting Luna, the veterans of ’96 discounting the newcomers, each general a warlord threatening to pick up with his regional clan and march home if he isn’t deferred to, flattered, given his proper share of glory. And this only in Luzon. Hard to imagine controlling what develops in Negros, Cebu, Samar, controlling the crazy moros on the southern islands.

“Of course,” says Bayani. “The ilustrados always know what is best for us.”

He says the word in Spanish, with the slightest touch of contempt.

“It’s what I heard up in Malolos,” shrugs Diosdado, angry to be made to feel guilty about his education. “The American congress is meeting. Important men are said to support our cause.”

Bayani cocks his head and studies Diosdado’s face, making him feel as if he is being judged for something long past repair. “If you were a yanqui ,” asks the sargento finally, “and you wanted your government to vote to take our country away from us — what would you want to happen here?”

Diosdado looks down along the outposts, looks to the men lit by the glow from the torches in the cockpit behind them. Most of the sentries have their backs to the river, talking softly with each other or calling to see how the cockfights are progressing.

“The Americans are not the Spanish,” he answers, hedging. “They don’t have the priests whispering in their ears—”

“I’d want a fight. I’d want some dead American boys to throw at the feet of these voters, these ones who will decide what to do with us.”

He is a simple tao , a peasant, Bayani, in manner of speech and appearance, but there is an understanding, a cunning—

“Yesterday the Americans fired every Filipino working behind the lines for them,” says the sargento, spitting into the darkness. “Today they point their cannons at us.”

There is a burst of laughter from the cockpit, then shouting and the squawking of birds. “If they attack tonight,” says Diosdado, indicating the sargento’s lit cigarette, “the first one they’ll shoot is the tanga sitting in front of his breastworks smoking.”

Bayani leans back on his elbows, relaxed. “Unless they hit the teniente standing up next to him in a white uniform.”

The uniform is impossible, a chore to keep clean at the front. Once a week he gives it to a girl who smuggles it past the yanquis into the Intramuros and brings it back the next morning, clean, starched, and smelling of woodsmoke.

“Maybe the vote will go our way.” Diosdado starts back down the line. The men should at least be facing in the right direction.

“You know, in the sabong , if you hold the birds back from each other too long,” Sargento Bayani calls after him, “they will burst and die.”

In the daytime it seems very little like there will be a war. The land on this side belongs to the Tuason family, the rice mostly harvested, a handful of their kasamas wandering over from Santol to compete with the flocks of maya birds, gleaning what has been dropped in the fields. The Englishman McLeod has a house on the hill above them, as do a couple of the Tuasons, and the carabao, untethered, pass their days dozing in the shade of the cane thickets and lumbering down to wallow at the edge of the San Juan.

“An orderly transition,” Diosdado says in his lectures to the men about not drinking on duty and taking more care with their firearms. “We can only hope these people will be as civil as the Spaniard when they decide to leave.”

In the pit, Kalaw and Nicanor hold their cocks head to head, the birds pecking furiously at each other, neck plumage bristling—

“ A ra sartada! ” cries the chino and the men let the cocks go and step back quickly, the birds smacking together in a flurry and shooting upward, squawking and clawing, feathers flying, the razor spurs unsheathed.

“ Vaya , Destino!” call the men who have bet on Kalaw’s bird. “Cut him to pieces!”

“Get on him, Butcher!” call the others. “Don’t let him go!”

They are both well-bred, Diosdado notes, standing with his back to the pit but looking over his shoulder. Small heads, long thighs, necks like steel cable, one rusty and barrel-chested, the other sleek, gray with black stippling and now flecks of his own and the other bird’s blood.

“Take his eyes out!” cries Kalaw, crouching with his hands balled into fists, doing a little dance as he shadows the movements of the fight. “What’s wrong with you?”

The fowl leap and flap and peck and claw, chests heaving, blood spattering, their tiny eyes red and implacable in the torchlight, till both stagger back, exhausted.

“Break!” calls Locsin, and the men gather up their champions, Kalaw spitting water into his wounded bird’s face and cooing endearments, Nicanor taking Butcher’s comb into his mouth and sucking the fighting blood back into it as Private Ontoy hovers over both with his needle and thread in hand, ready to sew off a torn artery if needed.

“ Ristos! ” calls Locsin, who receives a good deal of teasing because he can’t pronounce his l ’s, and the men again push their gamecocks’ faces together.

“ Rucha! ”

The renewed struggle is easier to follow than the opening brawl, both birds clamping on with their beaks and trying to pull the other down, Destino dragging a broken wing, Butcher blinded on one side, yanking at each other desperately and then resting as if by agreement, their tiny hearts visibly hammering in their bodies, feathers slick with blood and gaffed claws digging for purchase in the trench dirt. Diosdado hears fireworks coming from the east, his first thought that at least his men are not the ones out of control with their celebrating, and then a private whose name he has never learned falls into the pit, shot through the eye.

“They’re coming!” shouts Bayani from the river. “The americanos are coming!”

The fireworks are on top of them now, the air filled with angry wasps and the men scatter, most leaping down into the pit, some going for their weapons and the rest just going.

“To the front!” calls Diosdado, standing tall and feeling sick about it. “Everybody to the front! Cover the bridge!”

The birds, excited by the noise and the movement, break apart and begin to swipe at each other again and two more that were pegged waiting for the next fight are kicked loose in the scramble and go for each other and Diosdado finds himself stepping forward to the nearest outpost and pointing at the foot of the bridge as if his men don’t know by the muzzle flashes where the attack is coming from.

“There!” he shouts, over the whine of bullets and the hysterical squawking of gamecocks. “Concentrate your fire over there!”

There is no cover, he thinks, a tiny redoubt next to the bridge on the American side but then the exposed, low-railed bridge itself and the open water — they must be insane. They will be slaughtered, even at night. He turns to shout an order to Sargento Ramos, but for some reason Ramos is down on his hands and knees, crawling—