John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

And I am merely sitting on some unlucky fuck’s arm, thinks Hod, while my comrades in arms, the kind of people who tried to smash my head in with clubs back in Montana, torture him to death for no fucking purpose.

“We’re wasting time on this amigo ,” says the Lieutenant, kicking the suspect hard in the ribs and eliciting another heave of blood-tinted water from him. “Everybody up!”

The moaning is general as the rest of the platoon drag themselves to their feet, faces stupid with the heat, the suspect’s torture being the only rest they’ve had all day. Big Ten crawls to his Krag and climbs up it to his knees, then stands, wobbly and soaked through with his own sweat. He wears the straw hat shaped like a pith helmet that many of the volunteers have adopted, their campaign hats worn out, and has lost a good deal of his bulk to the shits.

“We get to this bridge,” he says, “there damn well better be a river underneath it.”

As Hod reaches for his own weapon the Lieutenant appears in his face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, loud enough for the others to hear. “If I catch you skulking behind me, I’ll have you shot.”

The lead dog can never relax. He can never, once they’re all out of the traces, let the others slink behind him. Niles has seen it more than once here in the Yukon, the other curs waiting, watching, hatred building with every shock of leather cracking on their hides, with every deep, freezing snow they have to struggle through or die, with every scrap of fish jerky the lead dog chases them off of, till the moment the scales tip — the lead dog coming up lame or finally too old or too weakened from the trek or just not savage enough to dominate the three or four who jump him and get him on his back and eviscerate him before fighting among themselves to be the new leader. Men with guns are ever more devious, the courage to pull a trigger available to the weakest if you pour a half bottle of whiskey down his craw or place a subversive thought in his hate-crazed mind. It is such men, drunkards, cowards, who cut Soapy down in Skaguay, Don’t go, don’t go I said and Doc and Rev Bowers and Old Man Triplett all said Don’t go but him hot-eyed with pride saying that nobody, no body tells Jeff Smith where he may go and what he may do in this or any other town, marching to the pier with his Winchester in hand, ready to discipline the pack as he’s done so many times before, keep them in line, all of us from the Parlor following to the base of the pier saying Wait, Jeff, at least wait till sunup when they have to look you in the eye but Jeff striding, striding tall and proud as he’d been on his mount in the 4th parade till out steps Frank Reid who thinks because you’ve drawn a map of a town you ought to own it and knowing he has Si Tanner and a dozen other guns ready behind him grabs the barrel of the Winchester and tugs it down and draws his Colt on Jeff. “For God’s sake don’t shoot!” cries Jeff, knowing a standoff when he sees one and they fire into each other so close each can smell the whiskey on the other’s breath and then the rest of the dogs pile on and Jeff Smith, who’d be Emperor of Manila by now, Army command or no, is on his back and the rest of us are running out of Skaguay like greenhorns before an avalanche.

The Macabebe catches up with Niles, walking silent and fast, not even a footcrunch on the snow, not even nodding as he passes to join the platoon ahead, and one assumes he has dealt with the suspect in the appropriate manner. The lead dog should barely have to growl. They are skirting wide around Las Piñas, no reason to give the boys on the Monadnock a chance to misfire and tear them apart, smoke rising from where he expects the native village to be, and he half hopes there will be an ambush ahead to dispose of the worst of this band of assassins he has been placed in charge of.

It is cold, killer cold, a cold that makes the thoughts freeze and snap off before you can form them in your mind, and the only remedy is to keep moving, keep pacing, keep the blood flowing in your extremities while the dullards all around you flop in the snow and let the cold creep into their bodies.

They have stopped ahead, crouching in a drift. Niles draws the Webley from its holster, cold metal stinging his hand. Bare the teeth and raise the hackles, he thinks as he steps forward, and don’t let them out of your sight.

Hod is on a knee next to Vásquez as the Lieutenant comes up, crouched low, the pistol out and ready. Please let there be shooting, he thinks, shooting and running and confusion like this morning on the heights and bullets winging this way and that and anybody likely to get plugged in the heat of it. The best would be to pick up a Mauser from the googoos once they’re overrun and do it with that, a tidy hole between the peepers that nobody will question, only they leave their dead and wounded sooner than they leave their weapons, two bolomen behind each soldier with a firearm, ready to scoop the rifle up and continue the fight. I want him to be looking at me when I do it, too, so a stray round from behind is out, though there’d be a dozen men in the platoon they’d have to consider as its author. Manigault kneels by the Spaniard.

“Why have we stopped?”

Vásquez points. “The bridge is down there.”

The Lieutenant rises to gaze over the top of the razor-edged grass and sees what they all have seen, googoos in number on both sides of the river at the base of the stone-span bridge, working in spite of the brutal heat to reinforce their breastworks, digging in for a serious smoker.

Manigault kneels again, turns to stare at Hod. “You,” he says. He hasn’t called Hod anything else since his return from the clap shack. “Get up there and take a look.”

They have been spotted by now, the lack of gunfire meaning only that the googoos know they’re just out of range, and this demented cracker wants to waste time just to get him killed.

“I can see well enough from here,” says Hod, not moving.

Niles brings the pistol up into his face. Ever since he got the Webley he has been overly free with it, as if the pistol alone bumped him up a few bars in the pissing order. “Are you refusing an order, Private?”

Big Ten is off to the left and Hod hears the bolt on his Krag first, followed by several others. No telling who will take which side in the disagreement if it comes to blood, but if he goes forward now the googoos will shoot at him and miss high like they always do and then start running and waving their bolos and it is too fucking hot to run, even to save your own hide. So he might as well just settle it here.

“If that’s the way you want to hear it, Lieutenant,” Hod answers him, “sure.”

He can’t tell from Manigault’s eyes if he is too sun-baked to know he will be the second one to die, and damn quick too. They are still pounding the hell out of Las Piñas, the whump! whump! north of them now, and the shellbursts punctuate the long silence between the men.

“When we return,” says the Lieutenant finally, “you shall be court-martialed.”

“Fair enough.”

Manigault turns to eyeball each man in the platoon. “You all witnessed what has just transpired. Sergeant LaDuke, relieve this man of his weapon.”

LaDuke takes Hod’s old Springfield, then gives it to Corporal Grissom to carry, who lays it off on Neely as they come out from the tall grass and back onto the road, Hod walking ahead with the Macabebe scout, who seems unperturbed as usual.

“Son of a bitch,” gripes Neely behind them. “You done that just so’s you wouldn’t have to lug your damn rifle comin back.”

They have not gone too far when Lieutenant Manigault starts to weave on the road, drifting from this side to the other and muttering to himself.