John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“And yer machine is well?”

“I’ve been working on a swivel mount for the tripod. It would allow the camera body to be moved—”

“From side to side,” she interrupts, swiveling her head to take in all of the far shore, “like this.”

“Yes, actually, that would allow us to—”

“It would be grand,” she says. “I saw one that was the general who led the byes in Cuba, the fat man—”

“General Shafter—”

“—and he rides on the poor little horse across the variety screen and off into nowheres, not more than a few seconds—”

“Bill Paley shot that before he got sick and the device was damaged—”

“But where is he riding? That’s what we want to know. If you could turn the head — ye told me ye call it that—”

“We do—”

“—ye could follow him along the trail. Even—” and here she raises a finger, imagining the scene, “—swinging the camera view a head , and see if there’s any Spaniards up in the bushes waiting to do the man harm. I’d have me heart in me throat to see that.”

It shocks him sometimes, how much she understands his work, how interested in it she seems, and then he chides himself for seeing the cartoon and not the woman.

“I’ll have to bring you to the shop sometime,” he offers.

“I’m sure it could use a good cleaning.”

“I meant,” he has to look away, suddenly embarrassed, “I meant to talk to the boys. Your ideas.”

She says nothing, but slips her arm into his again. “Will ye look at Her-self, now.”

They are chugging past Liberty, gulls swooping around her handsome face.

“I saw the photographs when I was a boy. Postcards. But I must say, close up—”

“She came out of a fog.” Brigid turns to look after the statue. “We were all of us sick with the waves and sick with not knowing what was here for us and then Herself—” She shakes her head. “If it had been your eagle, or a man with a rifle in his arms — but one look at Her and I felt, all right now, Brigid McCool, this might turn out well. And then they took us there,” she points to the brick buildings on the low island beyond the Statue, “and they put a hook in me eyelid and peeled it back and asked Father a thousand questions, each one I was sure would be our undoing.”

“You coming on your boat.”

“Yes.”

“I wish I’d been there to greet you.”

She turns to study his face. The ferry churns past the Battery.

“And what would ye have said to me then, a great Donegal brute of a girl in a dress made of sacking and her father’s old brogans?”

Harry feels himself blushing, her bright emerald eyes digging in to him. Niles would have something clever to say, some bon mot to win a girl’s heart that he’d refined through a dozen flirtations. But he is Harry, the quiet one, the lame one, and can only say the first thing that comes to his head. Which might be the truth.

“I would have been made speechless,” he says, “at the sight of you.”

They are quiet then. Brigid squeezes his arm in hers as they lean on the rail together and watch the wheeling seabirds and the river currents clashing and the other boats speeding to and fro, marveling at the great newspaper towers visible from the water, at the structures being built that will soon dwarf them, steaming around the point of Manhattan and churning giddily, if a boat can be allowed an emotion, toward the Brooklyn shore.

They are nearly to the Island when a group of young sports begin to sing—

I’ve seen the Tower of London

The lights of gay Paree

Now I’m off to see the Elephant

Though it mean the end of me

When the Judge speaks of going to see the Elephant it is stories of slaughter from his service during the Great Lost Cause. But these singers are too young for that War. Harry has been told that in the years before he came to New York there was a hotel on Coney, built in the shape of an enormous pachyderm. The rooms in the creature’s head, with their eye-windows and view of the beach, were more expensive than those in the legs, and for a small fee a non-guest could ascend to the observation deck in the howdah on the elephant’s back. But as the immediate neighborhood grew less wholesome the significance of the term was debased until it could be applied to a visit to any house of ill repute—

You may be wise and worldly

They sing—

A rambler bold and free

But until you see the Elephant

You’re as green as green can be!

Brigid, unaware of this darker connotation, trills along gaily.

There are an unthinkable number of people already on the sand and boardwalk at West Brighton.

“Will ye look at us?” says Brigid as they are swept down the gangplank, bright-eyed and pulling him forward into the crush. “It’s the whole city here to throw off their cares.”

Their feet are no sooner on firm ground then a half-dozen touts begin to chatter at them, vaunting their amusements. The West Brighton Hotel is the only solid body in a Bedlam of activity, the rides ahead gyrating and rolling and tumbling and swooping, a cacophony of musics blaring out from them, leaving Harry stunned and looking to Brigid for guidance.

“I’ve never been to the sea creatures,” she says.

The “park” is fenced in, next to the lot where the Elephant Hotel burned. Captain Boyton’s sea lions leap and dive, balance on balls, play the xylophone with their flippers, juggle objects on their noses and pause frequently to gulp down whole fish thrown into their sharp-toothed maws. There are lots of children in the gallery, their wails of wonder and delight mixing with the screams of the adventurers risking life and limb on the Flip-Flap Railroad behind them, whipped completely upside-down for a terrifying moment. The bodies of the sea lions are shiny and supple and Harry cannot keep himself from thinking how beautiful they would look on film.

“I’ve only seen them dead on the strand,” says Brigid, holding a hand to her chest in awe. “Our fishermen kill them with gaffs when they can.” She looks to Harry, apologetic. “It’s that they tear the nets.”

One shoots up from the depths just in front of Harry, flinging water, twisting to stare at him with liquid black eyes. “They look frantic,” he observes, “but not happy.”

“The sea lions or the spectators?”

Harry smiles, but is not sure if she’s being ironic or not. “I meant the animals.”

Brigid watches as each of the dozen clap their flippers together, then dive backward into the pool. “Content, I would say,” she judges, “but no, not happy. Happiness is only something in the human mind, poor creatures that we are.”

The sea lions scoot away through an underwater passage and are replaced by Captain Boyton himself, demonstrating his famous life-saving suit. He lays on his back in the rubber suit, feet forward as he employs a double-bladed paddle to move himself about the pool.

“There are air-pockets in the suit—” Harry explains.

“No doubt.”

“He had the idea of transatlantic ship passengers wearing it. In case of an accident.”

“The women as well?”

“Of course.”

Brigid watches as the Fearless Frogman paddles below them, a small circle of his face visible within the tight rubber hood.

“They’ll never put it on,” she decides. “To be seen in public dressed like that—”

“Death before dishevelment.”

“If my corpse is to be pulled up from the cold ocean, it will be in decent attire.”

Captain Boyton emerges from the water and gives a very brief lecture, finishing with an invitation to observe the celebrated Diving Dobbin perform in the Lagoon behind them. Harry and Brigid make their way with the others, standing together craning up at the platform where a riderless horse steps cautiously to the edge, head low as a boy raps a rolling tattoo on a snare drum, then at the clash of a cymbal gathers itself and leaps splay-legged into the air. Harry feels himself gasp with the others and then the huge splash and the beast churning its legs to reach the ramp at the far end of the lagoon and he can only think of the haunting Biograph view they’ve been showing at Koster and Bials, mules and horses swimming in the waves off Cuba. Niles and some friends had unhitched an old negro’s carriage horse on an excursion to Lake Waccamaw when they were boys, driving it deep into the water by throwing stones, the horse snorting spray out of its great nostrils as it tired, eyes rolling white in panic, treading desperately till some white men came to chase Niles and his friends and catch Harry, too lame to outrun them, and yank him by the ear to where the Judge sat in the shade telling war stories. The Judge had not whipped him, saving that for Niles later, but forced him to apologize to the old uncle.