John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Manigault finds the bird, a large, glossy-black crow, dead on the floor. He lifts it up by the tip of one wing.

“I’m afraid the intelligence of these creatures has been overrated,” he jibes. “This fellow managed to find a way in, but evidently forgot where it was.”

The back of the Correspondent’s neck begins to prickle, usually a presentiment of unfortunate events, and he turns to find the room filled with intruders, barefoot insurrectos with bolos in hand.

The Correspondent reels, dizzy, while Manigault’s free hand drops to the butt of his holstered Webley but freezes there as the one man wearing boots jams the barrel of his antiquated rifle against the lieutenant’s chest and begins to scream in one of their many confusing lingos.

The demon with the rifle gestures to the floor. Manigault gently lays the unfortunate bird on the painted clay tile before prostrating himself. The Correspondent keeps his eyes fixed on the blade of the nearest insurgent as he kneels, relieved to see no blood staining its edge. The voices of the men above as they argue with each other are high and nervous, like parrots screeching. He smells urine. The tile is cool against his sunburned cheek.

Dead or alive, he thinks as his heart gallops, unharnessed and wild in his chest, they’ll give me four columns at least.

They send a captain he’s never seen before. Big Ten has been in Bilibid since the dust-up at the bridge, sharing a bullpen with a dozen goldbricks, thieves, and deserters in a building reserved for Americans. The poop is they’ve got Hod somewhere in isolation, the long rectangular cellblocks spreading out from the central hub of tower and chapel, more than half of them filled with locals. On the far side of the wall that splits the prison is the presidio where they keep another five hundred and you get to walk around a little more. The guards haul him out just after reveille and march him across to the office building by the warden’s quarters. In the room there is nothing but a plain wooden desk with the captain he doesn’t know planted behind it and Corporal Schreiber beside him ready to go with pen and ink.

He stands at attention.

“McGinty.”

“Sir.”

Corporal Schreiber starts scratching on his paper.

“You were in Company G on the tenth of June.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’d like to hear your version of what took place on that day.”

“The scrap in the morning or what happened later?”

“Start at the beginning.”

He thought there was supposed to be a judge and a jury, lawyers. How dumb, he wonders, does this fella think I am?

“It was hot,” he says.

The captain is dripping sweat. There is a ceiling fan turning lazily above them but Big Ten, standing with his head right under it, feels no stirring in the air.

“We’re in the Philippines, Private. It’s always hot.”

“Not like that day it isn’t. We mustered up in the morning and you couldn’t breathe, it was already so hot. Men started falling out right away, marching to Parañaque, and then there’s the shoot-out, charging up the hill at their trenches, and they get Major Moses—”

“And you and Private Atkins—”

“We’re in the thick of it. Sometimes the googoos just shoot over your head and run, it’s a joke, but these ones were holding high ground in the woods and knew what they were up to.”

“Lieutenant Manigault took part as well?”

“Oh sure. Don’t anybody have a problem with the Lieutenant when there’s lead flying.”

“No contretemps between the Lieutenant and Private Atkins?”

He figures that means something bad.

“No, nothin between them. We been in a lot of these smokers, sir. The fellas pretty much go to it, orders or no.”

“And then later in the day—”

“They sent what’s left of our company ahead to scout, marching wide around Las Piñas while they shelled it, and it’s even hotter and more men start to fall out, which puts the Lieutenant in a mood. He’s feeling the heat too, I suppose, like anybody would, and then there’s this googoo fella out in a field — why he don’t have the sense to go lie down in the shade I don’t know — but he waves and grins and calls out that he’s muy amigo the way they do, and like I said it’s hotter than hell and Lieutenant Manigault takes offense at this and—”

The captain cuts him off. “That’s not the incident I’m interested in.”

“Oh.”

The thing about the Army is when an officer asks your opinion that means he don’t want to hear it.

“When you reached the Zapote Bridge—”

“Well, sir, we was operating as a recon patrol by that time, so we never got right up to it—”

“Lieutenant Manigault issued an order—”

“He issued a good number of them, all day long—”

“He issued an order to Private Atkins.”

“Atkins was still there, I do remember that. We’d had all kinds of fellas fell out on the way, left a trail of em behind us, but Atkins kept up till the bridge. It was around then that the sun got to the Lieutenant—”

“ Got to him.”

“Yes sir. He went down like a sack of spuds.”

“But before that, was the Lieutenant acting erratically?”

Big Ten has been staring at a brown lizard twitching in a crack in the stone wall behind the others. He looks down into the captain’s eyes.

“I’m just a private soldier,” he says. “It aint up to me to judge whether an officer is bughouse or not, is it?”

The captain meets his gaze for a long moment.

“Did Private Atkins refuse an order from the Lieutenant?”

Big Ten ponders it. “There was some debate on tactics.”

“Lieutenant Manigault gave an order and the private refused to carry it out.”

The way the captain says it Big Ten realizes it is an offering. One day here is worse than a month in the Leadville box and there is no telling how much time they can throw at him. All he has to do is say yes and his part in the deal will be over. He’ll walk out of Bilibid and leave this shithole island with the rest of the outfit. As for Hod—

“The way I remember it,” he says, carefully, “and none of us was thinking too clear on account of the heat, the Lieutenant said something that didn’t make no sense and then Atkins asked if that’s what he really meant and the Lieutenant he jumped to conclusions. Such as that his own men, starting with me and Atkins, were fixing to do him in.”

“And were you?”

He shakes his head. “Who’d believe a thing like that, Captain?”

The officer considers for a moment and then grabs the paper Corporal Schreiber has been writing on and crumples it.

“You lose two months’ pay,” he says to Big Ten, “and when you go back to your company you keep your lip buttoned.”

Big Ten feels a little dizzy. The chuck in Bilibid is about what you’d expect it to be and his stomach hasn’t been right from the second day inside.

“I don’t know, Sir — what with Lieutenant Manigault thinking I’m out to—”

“Lieutenant Manigault,” interrupts the captain, “is no longer with us.”

Big Ten comes upon Hod out in front of the prison, looking pale and skinny and staring up at the Teatro Zorilla, which is presenting something called Bodabil .

“Look who else bust out of the hoosegow today.”

Hod sees him and grins. “What you tell him?”

Big Ten shrugs. “All a big misunderstanding. Plus Manlygoat’s gone and they don’t know if he’s coming back.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s been LaDuke trying to put the screws to us.” They walk toward Calle Iris.

“Lose your pay?”