John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

He leads the company over the bridge, a pair of local sports in white linen outfits gawping at them from some sort of high-wheeled pony carriage stopped in the middle — that’s right, fellas, there’s people darker than you in this world — and then they jam up behind Company E and the rest in a little plaza.

“What’s the deal, Sarge?” calls Hardaway. “What we waitin for?”

Hardaway has a burning need to be informed, a hopeless business for anyone pursuing a career in the military.

“We are waiting,” Jacks answers, “because we stopped moving ahead.”

“Oh,” says Hardaway, for the moment accepting this as an explanation.

There are shops and stalls all around the plaza and the proprietors, mostly Chinese, come out to stare.

“Where this is?” asks Cooper.

Sergeant Jacks looks at the map they’ve given him. “Binondo,” he says. “Does it matter?”

“We gone billet here?”

“No.”

“Then it don’t matter.”

When you come into a place like this you never know if you’ll be back. Jacks waits for what feels like ten minutes of being steamed, then breaks rank and saunters forward. Take a look, at least.

“Where you going, Sarge?” asks Hardaway.

“General MacArthur is supposed to be somewhere up ahead,” he calls back. “Figure I ask him what’s for supper.”

“I don’t like the look of it,” says Royal.

“You didn’t like the look of Hawaii either,” Junior reminds him.

“I saw a rat in a palm tree.”

“All the places in the world you could be a rat,” says Too Tall, “up a palm tree in that Honolulu would be my pick.”

“They don’t want us here.”

“Didn’t want us in Missoula at first, neither,” says Corporal Pickney, who has been in since before the Pullman strike.

Royal turns a full circle. They are supposed to stay in rank and be ready to march but Jacks is gone and there is no brass in sight. He meets the eye of a red-faced Chinese pacing in front of his storefront. The man gets even more agitated, yanking his broad-brimmed white hat off then slapping it back onto his head several times. A pair of white soldiers, volunteers from their uniforms and drunk from the wobble in their progress, come past them heading for the bridge. The two stare like they’ve never seen such an apparition in their lives. The dirty sky that was hanging offshore has crept forward and hangs over them all now, low and threatening to rain.

Coop, grinning from ear to ear, calls out to the vols.

“Where you boys from?”

“Oregon,” says the shorter one, tapping an insignia on his arm like it should be clear to anybody.

“Damn,” says Coop, acting impressed, “did we win that in the war too?”

The Oregons glower at him as the other boys laugh, then change their direction and go to join the red-faced Chinese, all three disappearing into the shop. Unlike most of what they’ve passed, this building has a proper glass show window, full of brightly painted gimcracks that Royal can’t make any sense of.

“What I’m saying is,” Royal continues, turning to scowl at the plaza, “this here must have come to a sorry state if they bringing us in.”

“You don’t like the duty,” says Pickney quietly, “you shouldn’t of signed up for it.”

Junior gives Roy a look. Junior has been coaching him all the way from San Francisco on how you have to apply yourself to the task and be an example everybody can be proud of. Only there’s nobody here, Royal thinks, who I give a damn what they think of me. If we get into a scrap, sure, you got to fill out your end of the bargain, do what you have to for the sake of the others, but none of it, not even Cuba which everybody wants to write a song about them for, makes any sense to him now.

“It aint just we’re a new color they’re seeing,” he says. “This is their country and they don’t want us here.”

“Man been on shore twenty minutes and he got the whole deal figured out,” says Cooper.

“What it is,” says Too Tall, “is that folks here been dealing with these volunteer outfits, can’t find their dingus in their own trousers without a Manual of Instruction and a drill sergeant to turn the pages for em. We can’t expect no parade from people been puttin up with them jokers.”

“Runty little bastids,” says Willie Mills, watching a trio of Filipino men pass by. “Aint gonna make much of a target, once we get into it with em.”

“They learn fast, though,” says Coop, pointing.

The red-faced Chinese is in front of his shop again, pasting a sign that says WHITE ONLY, in fresh ink, onto his show window.

“Aint that nice? Make us feel right to home.”

And then the sky opens and they are soaked in an instant.

Father—

My sincere apologies for the tardiness of this missive, but writing paper has been in short supply again and prone, in this wet and unconscionable heat, to dissolve in one’s hand. We arrived with Company E under Lieutenant Caldwell somewhat in advance of the rest of the 25th, and were immediately put to work guarding the reservoir to the northeast of Manila. This is a vital position, of course, and the rebels’ former control of it a key to the eagerness of the Spanish garrison within the “Walled City” to surrender to our volunteers. Though there was little glory to be had in this transaction, one cannot but laud the relative paucity of casualties resultant on both sides. The volunteers, mostly units that never set foot in Cuba, are overly impressed with themselves for this and subsequent engagements that would have been “business as usual” for our fellows, and are in general quite insufferable. Most are from the Western states, with the predictable lack of discipline and prejudice against our race. There have been times when we profess to miss the “crackers” we camped with in Chickamauga and Tampa, who at least share a long and contentious history with us.

Junior on the groundcloth in the airless little tent, paper laid flat on the top of an empty wooden ammo crate, pen hot in his fingers. The boys not on leave are throwing dice outside on a poncho thrown over the mud, argument between them almost constant as to which way the die is leaning against its folds and wrinkles. He is stripped to his underclothing, his uniform draped over the top of the tent to dry. The mosquitoes that seem to come every time the rain lets up for a day have discovered him, and he keeps his hat by his side to wave them off.

The duty at El Deposito, where the waterworks are located, was mostly uneventful, the rebels there nocturnal creatures satisfied with the odd sniping “potshot” that does more to disturb the sleep than to penetrate the epidermis. The only scrape with destiny came when Royal Scott and I, on a rare afternoon without assignment, endeavored to take advantage of some rock tanks nearby for a bath. Personal hygiene is a constant struggle in this heat and filth and wet, and I never pass up an opportunity for ablution, a habit which has earned me the sobriquet of “Waterboy” among my cohorts. There were a number of Chinese, who we and the other units employ as bearers when on the march and general factotums when in camp, engaged in cleaning cookware at the other end of the man-made pond, so Pvt. Scott and I resolved to keep an eye on the clothing we had just shed (the Chinese being notorious filchers) and entered the water. We had only just begun to employ the abrasive bricks of what the Army issues as “soap” when we spied a serpent of at least four yards’ length (this is not an exaggeration) undulating rapidly across the surface in our direction. Needless to say, Pvt. Scott and I quit the water with extreme haste, then, dismayed to discover that the creature’s mate (more than its equal in size) had curled up to nap upon our uniforms, we continued at a gallop to the encampment. There was a good deal of merriment provoked by our naked condition, as well as skepticism voiced as to its cause until a pair of the Chinese appeared, clutching, head and tail, one of the writhing snakes and recommending that it would make excellent “chow.” Luckily a third coolie followed with our clothing and dignity was restored. Our boys left the feasting to the bearers, all but Pvt. Cooper, who claims to have partaken of a good deal of “rattler” in his former life and declared this Philippine delicacy its equal.