John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Niles says he is there to visit Private Burns and is waved through.

“He’s in isolation,” says the orderly, lowering his voice meaningfully. “Doesn’t look like he’ll see tomorrow.”

Burns and a half-dozen others from the company are in with the typhoid, no surprise in this pesthole, and the flux is ubiquitous within the volunteers, not to mention the growing number sidelined by the wages of sin. The life of a soldier. Niles checks to be sure the orderly is not watching after him and then cuts left toward the dispensary. The air is laced with ammonia and carbolic acid, stinging his eyes and the back of his throat. No telling in what manner the Spaniards, never the most hygienic of races, operated the hospital, but the Medical Corps have obviously given it a thorough scouring. Niles pauses at the doorway of one of the ambulatory wards, men chatting in groups or with playing cards laid out on the beds between them, the legs of the beds standing in small pans of liquid, kerosene most likely, to keep the marauding squadrons of biting ants from climbing up onto the patients as they sleep. Plain water had been used for this purpose in Cuba until it was found to breed mosquitoes, which proceeded to torment and re-infect the quarantined unfortunates. One of the ambulatories looks his way.

It is the hard-rock miner, late of Skaguay, dressed in Army-issue pajamas and slippers.

“Enjoying yourself, Private?”

The miner, who was Brackenridge and then McGinty and now something else, is not happy to see him.

“The chuck’s no better in here,” he says with an insolent tone, “but I prefer the company.”

He is a chronic kicker, this one, not so much in words as with his attitude — the way he looks at you and moves his body a challenge to every order. Harboring some grudge, perhaps, or just incorrigible. Niles looks beyond him into the wardroom. “So this is where they house the slackers.”

“Venereals,” says the private, turning to walk away from him. “Watch out you don’t catch something.”

Supply Sergeant Slocum is in the solarium, talking with a mopey-looking artilleryman who slumps in a rattan-backed rocker. Slocum sees Niles, nods almost imperceptibly. The sergeant is something of a wizard with figures, and like many similarly afflicted, believes this increases his ability to fill an inside straight. A fantasist, doomed to be mulcted even without Niles’s dexterous mastery of pasteboard royals.

“In the morgue,” the man mutters as he brushes past. “Give me five minutes.”

Slocum’s camera, an old Turner Bull’s-Eye forfeited in the same poker game, hangs from a strap around Niles’s shoulder. There is a handsome slant of sun coming into the high-ceilinged room from the east windows — he pulls the device out and kodaks the long row of convalescents in their rockers, hoping the light will be sufficient. A Chinaman he’s found in Binondo makes prints most reasonably, and the Judge has written that he is eager for views of “the Pearl of the Orient” and the American boys who have liberated it. Harry was always the photo bug, even learning to develop his own snaps, but never goes anywhere interesting enough to record.

Corporal Grissom, who shilled for Niles in the game, was rewarded with Slocum’s pocket watch.

The morgue is at the rear of the building, cool and windowless, with its own peculiar smell. There is a body on a draining table, rigid beneath a rubber sheet.

“Passed this morning,” says Sergeant Slocum when Niles arrives, his voice echoing under the vaulted ceiling. “Infection. He was shot through the lungs the day we took the city.”

“War is hell,” Niles intones. To be killed in a mock battle engineered to salvage the honor of some peacock Dago general — a dismal hand to be dealt. Slocum lays a heavy wooden box on the table next to the dead soldier, snaps open the brass fastenings and lifts the lid.

“They accidentally shipped a double order,” he says, fixing Niles with a look. “Which I have not made record of.”

The box is segmented into dozens of compartments, each containing a vial cushioned with cotton wadding. Niles pulls several bottles out to examine them. Mostly quinine, with some tincture of chloroform, laudanum, ipecac syrup, and a quantity of strychnine.

“No medical supplies besides ours have entered the city since the Filipinos began their siege months ago,” says Slocum. “This might as well be gold.”

He is eyeing the camera. If he had been a gracious loser, a gentleman, Niles might entertain the idea of returning it as part of the present transaction. But no, the man is a boor. An egotist, a yankee, and a boor.

“You should be able to sell these for far more than the amount I owe you,” he continues. “The anti-malarial alone—”

“But I shall be the one incurring the risk,” says Niles, and closes the case.

Slocum hands Niles a form in three pages, white copy duplicated in yellow and pink.

“In that case you are transporting these to Brigade in Cavite,” he says. “In the event anybody inquires.”

The supply sergeant opens a somewhat battered leather satchel, carefully places the wooden box into it.

“The luggage belonged to a missionary gentleman from Nebraska, a Presbyterian, I believe. Sampled a bit too much of the local water.” He closes and fastens the satchel, placing it at Niles’s feet. “Gentle with this,” he says. “And give me the whole five minutes this time.”

Slocum leaves Niles in the morgue. They’ve only had a few fatalities in the regiment so far, and unless the natives learn to shoot, disease will be the greatest enemy. If Burns succumbs Niles will be forced to write his first letter of condolence. He lifts the rubber sheet to view the dead soldier’s face. His skin is blue-gray, and they have tied a bandage from the top of his head under his chin to hold his jaw closed. Niles does not recognize the boy, not from his outfit, and wonders if his mates have begun the collection to send the body home. He has visited Paco, the most celebrated of the local mausoleums, viewed the circular wall of cement with niches for the deceased one atop the other, rentable for five-year residencies. Cracked skulls and jumbled bones of the evicted lay heaped in one area, while domesticated turkeys and a small, bristly pig patrolled the grounds. The dead rest here, but only if they can make the rent.

Niles does not plan on dying in the Philippines.

In Hongkong Mei lived in a house on the steep hill behind the Victoria Barracks. Madame Qing was in charge of the house and the first thing she did, before learning their names or giving them new clothes, was to have each new girl demonstrate how to use the water closet. The house was made of wood, with wooden floors and stairs leading to a second set of rooms with windows that looked over past the Victoria Barracks to the harbor. Mei had not eaten much on the road and was sick on the steamboat ride, so it was a long time sitting on the hole in one of the three water closets before she could shout to Madame Qing and show her what she had done.

“Pull the chain,” said Madame Qing, and they both watched. It seemed like a waste of both dung and water. “Now pull your pants down.”

Mei was afraid because Ma had always done everything in the household while she had worked in the field and soon they would discover how useless she was. She turned and pulled her pants down.

“What did I tell you the paper was for?”

There was white paper rolled up beside the hole, softer, but the same width as the paper on which she had written the characters Second Brother showed her, the paper she had hung as a banner outside their hut when Ma died.

“You are a stupid, dirty girl,” said Madame Qing. “Now show me how you clean yourself with the paper.”