John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Of these we had the addition, shortly before our departure, of a fellow Royal recognized as a figure of some ill-repute in Wilmington. Cooper (not his real name according to Pvt. Scott) is the devil-may-care type often attracted to the service in search of adventure, or, as I suspect in his case, refuge from legal authorities. Though no shirker when it comes to our daily routines, he is lacking in the esprit de corps one would wish for among fellow rookies, repeatedly suggesting that the bicycle experiment is a ruse designed to humiliate the colored soldier rather than an opportunity for him to stand out from the pack. Our reception, however, has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and cordial, a seemingly endless celebration, though some disappointment is voiced on the discovery that we do not also play instruments. (Our 25th band is lauded as the finest musical aggregation in western Montana.)

We have passed through mountain, meadow, desert, and prairie on the way, alternately slogging through rain and “gumbo mud” and baking, with insufficient water, for days through the aptly named Badlands, vagabonding in conditions many a cavalryman would not deign to expose his mount to, averaging something less than forty miles a day on vertical terrain and something more than sixty on the horizontal. For this odyssey we carry a full kit including half-tent, rifle slung over the back, and fifty rounds of ammunition in our belts, plus food, water, and cooking gear, but severe rain and hailstorms and the great distances between points of resupply have often forced us to travel on extremely short rations. The mountains require “walking” the bicycle up the slope and a cautious, serpentine descent to avoid loss of control. Where wagon roads do not exist we follow the railroad — our machine is not designed for progress on stone ballast or cross ties, and Lt. Moss imagines a special attachment enabling us to “ride the rails.” We camped one night on the Custer battle site, wild roses of various colors growing on the hills that witnessed that great slaughter. Most trying, as it turned out, were the sand hills of Nebraska, the roads unpaved, the temperatures well over 100 degrees each day, and water only available from railroad tanks erected at considerable distance from each other. Despite these deprivations, or perhaps because of them, I shall never forget this trip, particularly Sgt. Sanders’s fine tenor cutting through the hail that pelted our faces somewhere in the Great Plains to lead us in a heartfelt chorus of The Girl I Left Behind Me or Marching Through Georgia (humorously replacing “darkies” with “crackers” in the second verse of the latter) or the thousands, yes, thousands of spectators here in St. Louis, black and white, who cheered our drills and demonstrations upon our arrival yesterday at the Cottage in Forrest Park.

Father, I have seen (and cycled across) the Mississippi River. It is not a disappointment.

There is some talk that we will be returned to Ft. Missoula by rail — whether prompted by recent events in Cuba (or, perhaps, China) or merely that we have made our point to the Dept. of War, I do not know. The people we speak with throughout the country are “spoiling for a fight,” especially the youth, and it seems not to matter who the opponent shall be. Our near neighbors at the Fort, the Salish (popularly termed Flatheads, though their heads are not flat at all), have never developed a taste for the warpath, due either to a congenitally pacific nature or the ministration of the Jesuit worthies in their midst. Their chief, one Charlo, seems if not content at least resigned to their recent removal from the Valley to a reservation farther north, and our Missoula post remains an “open fort” without walls to block our sight of the magnificent vistas nor to shelter us from the punishing winter winds. (I do hope that October affords us the opportunity of battle in sunnier climes.) The tales Sgt. Sanders relates of our regiment’s role during the labor troubles haunting the Northern Pacific in Coeur d’Alene and other locales sound more like police work than “Injun fighting,” and at times I worry I have chosen the wrong unit in which to prove myself. But a soldier’s lot is to keep himself prepared for hazardous duty at all times, and to accept that he has no say in how his services will be employed.

A humbling lesson for Yrs. Truly.

(But if the next war is to be fought on bicycles, the 25th shall be in the van.)

Please share this offering with Mother and Jessie, and let them know they are ever in my thoughts. Do inform me of the latest concerning the “politicking” at home. The other fellows are much entertained by accounts of our little struggles there.

With respect from your wandering son,

Private Aaron Lunceford, Jr.

Junior kneels, as if praying, facing an orderly row of bicycles, and the unit’s rifles stacked in pyramids — polished, oiled, unloaded. The celebration continues, a band playing a patriotic air, but it is very far away.

The screw is supposed to sever your spine at the base of the neck before you are choked by the collar.

Of course no one has ever survived to report whether this is true, and the official document lists judicial asphyxiation as the cause of death. Maybe the man who turns the crossbar, the executioner, knows, standing just behind the condemned — maybe he can hear a crack of bone, perhaps sense the moment when the desperate message from the brain is cut short, sense the sudden slackening of convulsing limbs.

Diosdado files onto the balcony that overlooks the courtyard of the Cuartel de España with the others — two militares , a choleric haciendero over from Mindoro, Benítez the defense lawyer from the Ministry of Justice, and Padre Peregrino. There is another fraile waiting in the courtyard below, a round, red-nosed Franciscan, knotted rope taut around his stomach, waiting to deliver the sacrament. Diosdado moves to the extreme left, with the box, hidden under his coat, pressed against the balcony rail. He is sweating as much from nerves as from the heat. When the Committee asked him to do this he agreed at once — he has been among the witnesses before, his political sympathies not yet known to the authorities, and he was able to ask to be invited without arousing suspicion. It was only some hours later, after they had given him the box and made sure he knew how to operate it, that the consequences fully dawned upon him. Once the photograph is copied and distributed there will be no doubt as to who has taken it, and his enviable life in Manila will be ended forever, or at least until a better day.

Men must have felt the same way in ’96, when Bonifacio told the crowd to rip their cédulas to pieces. With this act, thinks Diosdado, I not only tear free from Spain, but destroy my own identity. The Committee has given him a new, forged cédula personal that displays his face with a different name, and have promised to wait till he wires from Hongkong, safe with the other exiliados , before they spread copies of the photograph across the country.

“For murderers and thieves we admit the public,” says the Comandante to his visitors as they settle in, “but with the políticos , these days, a bit of discretion must be observed. No use stirring everybody up for nothing.”

“An occasional blood-letting does a body good.” The general is a tall, pox-scarred man with an impressive moustache. “Blood that is never spilled can only fester, eh Padre?”

Padre Peregrino frowns. “I have never cared for the public ones,” he says. “A dying man should be alone with his God.”