John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Cristy there,” says the deputy, nodding after the jailer as he leaves, “was one of them got stabbed by our desperadoes.”

“They had knives in jail?” the reporter’s bowler sits on the desktop beside him. He writes with a pen that doesn’t need to be dipped in ink over and over.

“Made them some daggers. When boys are gonna make the drop, you got to let them say farewell to their families, which with a Mex is half the damn county. And they go in for all that hugging, even the men. Abrazos . Don’t know how you spell that—”

Royal is used to white men not looking at him, pretending not to see him, but with the uniform on it is more of an insult. He is just a private, “lower than muleshit” as Too Tall would say, but still—

“Some one of these folks slipped some fence wire to them that they twisted into shape and sharpened on the wall blocks that night. Next day, there’s thousands outside, mostly Mex, fillin the streets, up on the rooftops, like they gonna see us do our business inside here. The hour arrives and we open the cells, and they both jump out — Parra and this Antonio Flores who’s already stabbed to death some little señorita over in Smelterville who’d turned him down one too many times. Flores commences to jabbin my buddy Ed Bryant in the gut with this wire contraption while Parra goes after Cristy there and Officer Ten Eyck who was the first ones in. Took a half dozen of us to pull them frog-stickers away and get the cuffs on. The Mexicans call handcuffs esposas ,” winks the deputy. “The same word as wife .”

But the uniform, thinks Royal, is something. Enough, maybe, if you break no laws and stay south of Second, east of Santa Fe Street, to keep a cracker deputy off of you. He wasn’t much back in Wilmington, just another nigger millhand, and from what they tell of the white folks’ takeover he be even less now. At least in the regulars it’s always clear where you stand — look on a man’s arm and you know how tight your asshole got to squeeze.

“None of the wounds were fatal?” asks the writer.

The deputy grins, spits into his mug. “You can’t hurt a Texan with no fence-wire dagger,” he says. “Nothin but chicken scratches. We sent Flores up first, and he wasn’t too pleased about it, from what I could tell with the hood over his head. Made a good loud snap when he run out of rope, didn’t need no doctor to know the job was done right. With Parra, well — Geronimo put on some weight in the Santa Fe hoosegow, and with his drop it popped that vein in your neck, blood pourin out from under the hood and all over the floor, and when Captain Hughes pulled it off the man’s head was just barely holding up his body by one little strap of tendon.”

“Oh my,” says the Easterner, laying his pen down.

The deputy spits. “He needed killin.”

Royal sees someone coming down the corridor toward them, a colored man in a regular’s uniform, with the jailer Cristy behind him.

“We let the gory details out to the Mex crowd right away,” says the deputy, raising his voice and turning his head slightly toward Royal and Junior. “See, what we got here in El Paso is just a col ony, handful of decent white folks sandwiched between thousands of them bean-eatin sonsabitches on both sides of the Rio.” He looks Royal in the eye for the first time. “Now and then you got to make a dis play .”

The prisoner is Cooper, barefoot and without his hat.

“Get him out of town,” says the deputy to Junior. “And tell your colonel to keep better track of his niggers.”

Cooper sits alone in the bed of the wagon as Royal eases past the courthouse.

“Where are your boots, soldier?” asks Junior, turning back to glare.

“Talk to me like that, you sididdy little butt-wipe,” says Cooper, almost calm, “I cut your heart out.”

“You’re a deserter.”

“I only got two goddam days left on my hitch — what the hell I want to desert for?”

“Then what were you doing out on the International Bridge at midnight, out of uniform and—”

“I been to the Chinaman.”

Cooper says this quietly, looking away from Junior, as if it explains everything.

“That where you left your boots?” asks Royal, pulling the reins to take them right.

“Maybe. You know how it is — puts you in a different mind .”

Royal doesn’t know how it is, has never gone with the few that smoke it, but did pass out drinking mescal one night and wake to see his father, ten years dead, tipping one back at the other end of the bar.

“I come out and it was dark,” says Coop. “All that nice music they play comin out from the cantinas, and it hit that they wants me, they needs me to come over to Juarez.”

“To do what?” asks Junior.

“You ever been?”

“No. It’s off limits—”

“Then I can’t ex plain , can I?” Cooper looks around to get his bearings, sees the post office. “That Alligator Plaza just up here, Roy. Got to get something before we go back.”

Royal steers the pair over the Southern Pacific tracks and into the plaza, pulling the wagon up beside the gazebo. There are a couple dozen people scattered around, all colors, and the fountain in the middle of the circular moat is spilling halfheartedly.

“He’s our prisoner,” Junior protests. “We can’t—”

Royal giving his friend a hard look. “I can do any damn thing I please.”

Coop laughs and hops down, crossing barefoot to the low wall around the moat. Royal ties the horses off to a post on the gazebo and follows with Junior. There are two alligators, six-footers, sleeping on the ground just inside the low wall, so still they might be dead and stuffed, and another slowly swimming, eyes just above the surface of the murky green water in the moat. A metal statue of a little boy stands by the fountain on the little island in the center, right leg bare and holding a boot up with real water running out of the toe.

“Look like that boy found his boots,” says Coop, rolling his pant legs up.

“You left something here?”

Coop looks about to see there is no one near with a badge or a stripe, then high-steps over the wall. “First thing into town I got my ashes hauled over on Utah Street,” he says, passing between the two sleepers, “then I come down here to set a spell. Bought some chicken necks in case they still hungry.” He steps into the water, begins to move in a slow zigzag, head cocked, searching with the bottoms of his feet.

“Junior,” he calls, “you see that gator make a rush at me, I needs you to shoot it.” He touches an eyeball. “Right here.”

Junior turns, scanning the plaza for somebody who might disapprove, but the noontime idlers seem to be used to people wading in with the reptiles.

“I was carryin my pro tec tion,” says Coop, moving sideways now, “which a man be crazy to do without in this town, no matter what the damn post regulation say, and these two police start to pass by me, up and down, three-fo times, and I figure it’s either have it out with the crackers right then and there or put it where they can’t find it on me.”

Junior turns back. “You had a pistol ?”

Coop shows all his teeth in a smile, reaches up to his shoulder into the water and comes up with a slime-dripping, short-barrel Bulldog.

“Just this little ole thing. Don’t look like much, but she bite you.”

The alligator floats just in front of Cooper’s legs then, not more than two feet away. He watches it pass.

“They don’t care for the dark meat.”

Royal has Cooper’s revolver tucked in his boot when they come back to Bliss, Junior dealing with the sentries, the armbands and the colonel’s name getting them onto the parade ground.