John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Most of the officers have gone to what is advertised as “Warren’s Combined Shows,” but Niles has never cared for the circus. He sits in his white drill playing bid whist, no jokers, with two Nebraska lieutenants and a major from the Signal Corps. There is money on the table, gold and silver coins and paper bills, and he and his partner, the wire-stringer, are only a trick away from taking the pot. He’s pulled all the trumps from the Nebraskas, and his partner, eyebrows wig-wagging a code they set beforehand, has made clear what he’s still holding.

“I had my doubts about this game,” says Niles, pretending to consider his cards only to prolong the losers’ agony a few delicious moments more, “but I’m beginning to see its merits.”

Niles can recite the order of every card played in last week’s poker game, has memorized the nicks and flyspecks on the backside of the worn deck they are using, has caught two reneges already this evening, Lieutenant Coombs too distracted by the lizards on the rectory walls to follow suit.

“They still haven’t moved,” he keeps saying. “But if they were dead they’d fall off the wall, wouldn’t they?”

Niles has suggested that the friars glued them in place for some manner of reptilian penance, but the Nebraskan remains fascinated, much to his partner’s dismay.

“Coombs here is as much help in a card game as our little brown brethren were in taking the city,” says Lieutenant Spottiswood. “With friends like these—”

Niles slips the jack from his hand, raises it high—

It is something like the effect of rain on a metal roof. A few hard drops, scattered and tentative, then thickening, the thin pop of Mausers and louder bang of Springfields and then a hammering onslaught of gunfire, really pouring now, all coming from the defensive positions to the north.

“That sounds like us,” says Coombs, laying his hand down with a frown and rising from his chair. The lizards skitter out of sight.

Spottiswood, much relieved, begins to sweep money into separate piles, as if he can recall who wagered what. “Afraid we’ll have to call it a night. That is most definitely us. Trouble with our amigos across the river.”

Jeff Smith once held a pistol on a steamship captain, forcing him to play out his hand despite the news that his vessel was sinking off the Juneau Pier. Niles can only scowl at the Nebraskans’ abandoned cards. “If you don’t have the queen of spades in there,” he says, “those niggers are going to pay .”

It is coming out of Hod, hot and liquid and seemingly with no end as he squats alongside the convent and listens to the bullets chip the stone away. All hell has broken loose and there are signal rockets streaking across the sky and I got the trots again, fuck these fucking islands and please let me die with my pants pulled up. The googoos must be shooting high, well over the heads of the boys on the front, for their bullets to be landing this far back and now here’s Lieutenant Tarheel, chuckling, stepping around and over the men who have grabbed their rifles and laid down on their bellies to wait for orders.

“Word is we’ve got them coming in all through our lines, gentlemen,” he says, pointing to the north with his cane. “It looks like the dance has begun.”

Hod gets himself buttoned up and joins the others, shaky legged, as they are mustered on Calle Alix, Companies F, G, and E marched quickstep in Indian file out past the dark cemetery to dig in just south of the Balic-Balic road, looking across at the googoos that must be holed up in Blockhouse 6. It is all bamboo thickets and just-harvested rice fields around the road, Hod peering into the dark every few yards of the march for a good spot to flop if they run into an ambush. By the time they are in position the firing has thinned out, the blockhouse a black shape against a blacker sky ahead. Hod manages to crawl over an irrigation dike and pull his pants down around his ankles again. He is only just started when Sergeant LaDuke slides down next to him.

“You too,” he says, unbuckling his belt.

“It aint nerves, Sergeant,” says Hod, wishing he could be left alone by the Army for one solid minute, if only to relieve himself in peace. “This country’s got my bowels in a twist.”

“Artillery will start in on that at sunup,” says the sergeant, eyes bright with excitement, jerking his head back toward the enemy blockhouse as he squats to deliver. “And then the shit is gonna fly .”

The moon is just peeking over the horizon when the Chinese come with coffee, a huge tureen of it suspended on poles they carry across their shoulders, running and squatting, rising and running again with their quick bow-legged shuffle that always makes Corporal Grissom laugh so hard he almost chokes. It is quiet over by the big bridge and only a random potshot from the blockhouse now, but the Chinamen are trembling like gun-shy puppies by the time they arrive.

“No toast and jam?” says Neely. “That tears it — Sergeant, I want to go home.”

“Sugar and cream?”

“Hey, it’s still hot. Attago, Chop Suey.”

All the Chinamen are Chop Suey or Chow Mein or Foo Young or You Yellow Pigtail Bastard and they give Hod the willies. Windy Bill Bosworth who he double-jacked with in Montana worked with them in California and said they were demons in a hole, do-anything rockbusters who the white miners eventually ran out so they wouldn’t have to compete. These two just stay close to the ground and watch the tureen, wishing for it to be empty so they can hurry it away from the front.

“Just think if they’d sent us to China,” says Grissom, poking one of the coolies with his boot. “This is what we’d be facing.”

“I doubt these two are Boxers.”

The coffee is hot and acid, better than nothing but only just. Hod doesn’t expect it to stay in him for too long.

“Same breed,” says Grissom.

Donovan is shivering as hard as the Chinese. “If we’re not to fight,” he says, “lave us go back under our blankets and wait till it’s serious.”

“Do they even have rifles, the Chinamen?” Grissom is still staring at the coolies as if he’s never seen one before.

“Chopsticks. They fight with chopsticks.”

“I seen one swing one a them laundry skillets at another once—”

“And the tong gangsters use hatchets and meat cleavers—”

“Wouldn’t stand much show in this mess.”

Hod can see the front of the blockhouse, washed by moonlight now, a solid square built of wood beams with one eye-level firing slit on the side and a little roofed lookout platform on the top. He hopes if they have to make a charge the artillery will have had time to work on it some.

Grissom tosses the dregs of his coffee into the ditch at Hod’s feet. “Then they oughta get them a couple breech-loaders and a Long Tom rifle,” he mutters. “Join the human race.”

It is cold, bone-cold, when Capitán Grey y Formentos announces the counterattack, a heavy dew gathering, Bayani’s breath visible as he complains to Diosdado.

“Why did he wait?” hisses the sargento, crouching with his back to the wall of the cockpit as they wait for the order to charge. “He can’t look into the fucking sky?”

Diosdado looks, the moon rising over the hill behind them, and then Grey y Formentos fires his pistol and cries for them to charge across the bridge and he is up out of the pit and running, men beside him shouting and he fills with pride to be leading them as their feet strike the planks of the bridge and the whine of American bullets concentrates to a roar, a solid typhoon wind of destruction sweeping across the river at them and the pride is replaced by something else as they begin to stagger and fall. “ Con pecho desnudo ” he thinks as he stumbles on the body in front of him. With open breast —