John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“My father took me to see you play the Dutchman when I was ten years old,” he says, attempting not to gush forth. “I thought that they’d hired a young actor and his grandfather to handle the transition.”

“You were a very suspicious young man.”

“Raised in a steamer trunk. My father toured with Mrs. Stowe’s melodrama.”

“Such a modest little lady,” muses Jefferson, “to cause such a big war.”

“I saw you do it again in my twenties. I was transfixed.”

“At the beginning they marveled at my ability to play the ancient Rip,” says Jefferson. “Now they are amazed that I can portray the young one.”

“Does it ever trouble you? Being so — so i den tified with one role?”

The old man looks at Teethadore, thinks for a moment. He points across the room to William Gillette.

“He may not know it yet, but that fellow will grow old playing his Sherlock Holmes. And the man he is speaking with—”

It is James O’Neill, waving his arms to tell a story—

“You mean the Count of Monte Cristo?”

“My point precisely. Mansfield has managed to transcend his Jekyll and Hyde, poor Edwin was a man of many faces, but for most of us, if we are fortunate, there is one defining role, a character the public cannot get enough of, who not only pays the rent but becomes something of an extension to our own less vibrant personalities. Mine, fortunately,” the old man winks, “affords me the opportunity to do some napping on stage.”

“But Rip van Winkle is fictional,” says Teethadore, hoping to get at the root of his misgiving. “He is finite , trapped within the strictures of the play. My fellow is still breathing, and, I must say, extremely unpredictable.”

The aged player’s face lights up. He places a hand on Teethadore’s shoulder.

“Then Fortune has provided you a spirited mount. Ride him, my good friend! Ride him to glory!”

It must be noon by now but they’ve taken all the clappers out of the church bells. The bells in the little baryos ring out every time a patrol is sighted nearby and the ones fighting have time to hide themselves, so the colonel always says “Cut their tongues out!” even here in Las Ciegas when they came back to garrison. Most of the day the googoo mamas are out hulling rice, pounding down with their clubs on the couple handfuls they’ve tossed into the hollow on top of the belly-high wood stumps that stand in front of each hut, hooking into a rhythm that Kid Mabley will sometimes try to play his horn to. But it must be noon now because even they are out of sight, unhusked rice waiting, spread out to dry on wide bedrolls of woven bamboo and the dogs lying flat on the dirt of the plaza, still as death, baked by the sun. There is only the woman, Nilda, hanging the soldiers’ wet clothing on a bamboo rack to dry and Coop at her elbow with a can of goldfish and a fistful of hardtack, pestering.

Nothing else moves.

“This here is good to eat, see?” he says. “Yum-yum. All you got to do is pop inside for a little bit, give Uncle Coop some jiggy-jiggy.”

It is none of Royal’s business, really, that is the unspoken agreement between all of them, but the sun is boiling the blood in the angry part of his brain and it vexes him. He slowly crosses the plaza, weaving around the prostrated dogs.

“This is hardtack — like crackers, see?” Coop has a tough time breaking off a piece. “See? Won’t go soft, even in the jungle. Like me.”

The woman, moving as if she can’t hear, lifts clothes from the huge woven-reed basket, shakes them out, and goes up on her toes to hang them so the ends don’t drag in the dirt.

“And inside this here is goldfish—”

“That stuff is poison,” says Royal, stepping over as casual-looking as he can manage. “Even the coolies won’t eat it.” There is a Chinese who sneaks up once a week to sell the men beeno , and canned salmon is the one thing he won’t take in trade.

“She get a taste of me, she won’t worry about no food.”

“She’s not interested in you.”

“Get your own damn squaw, Roy.” Coop, a bit taller, harder, turns back to the woman and wiggles the can inches from her face as if she needs to smell it. “You aint never had nothin like this, darlin.”

“If she needs food just give it to her.”

Coop turns to step back close to Royal. They are both in their undershirts, pouring sweat from the heat. When the clothes are washed and dried they feel good on your skin for a few minutes and then you are soaked through again.

“You triflin with me?”

“There’s plenty of jiggy-jiggy girls in Manila.”

“We aint in fuckin Manila.”

“Then you’re gonna have to try someone else.”

Coop smiles. “You know I can whup your ass.”

“Most likely.”

Coop half turns as if to say something to the woman, who still hasn’t looked at him, then pivots to smash Royal on the side of the head with the can, knocking him off his feet.

The woman freezes, bent over the clothes basket.

The nearest of the dogs gets up with some effort, watching the men warily as it slinks several feet farther away, then pancakes itself to the ground again. A few of the men peek groggily out of the huts they are billeted in. A few natives look out too, but see it might be a fight and duck back inside.

Royal gets halfway up, decides, and bullrushes Coop, catching him around the hips and driving him into the bamboo clothestree which collapses into the dust with them.

He has a chunk of Coop’s cheek in his fingers, trying to rip it off while Coop thumps him on the back and neck and ribs with the fist that isn’t pinned down. He wants some distance so he can really hit but Royal is strong and won’t let loose, their boots scraping the dirt for purchase, the two writhing crookedly across the plaza like a half-stomped cinch bug that just won’t die and the men come out now, the ones not on outpost or patrol, most just in their underclothes and barefoot forming a shifting ring around the pummeling men on the ground.

“What they scufflin about?”

“Don’t matter much, do it?”

“Got that woman’s wash all dirtied up again.”

“Too damn hot to fight.”

“Yeah — ought to just shoot each other and be done with it.”

Royal is underneath, his forearm wedged under Coop’s throat, trying to feel out a way to break his neck but if he moves anything Coop will be able to pound him again in the ribs where they feel broken. The thumb in his eye might be his own. There is a little bit of shade from the men closed in around them and then it is gone and a bucketful of warm water smacks down on them and it is Lieutenant Drum’s voice.

“You men get on your feet.”

The lieutenant has dressed himself in a hurry, the buttons on his tunic out of line with their holes. The bridge of his nose has been blistered by the sun. He seems more weary than furious.

“Since you obviously don’t appreciate your rest time,” says the white man, “we’ll have to find a way to make use of it.”

Royal can’t tell if he’s bleeding or not. The water cooking away on his skin and hair feels good, and he is glad that Sergeant Jacks is out on patrol. It has been all marching and guard duty and aimless patrols — Las Ciegas to Bamban, Bamban to Iba, Iba down to Subig to San Pedro and Botolan and Angeles and Castillejos and the place they never learned the name of and now stuck back here in Las Ciegas, their lives dragged out between bugle calls, sunup and sundown the same every day. Junior says it’s because they’re on the Equator. Royal stands at attention, eyes forward, as the lieutenant announces their punishment. Behind, the woman stoops to lift wet, dirt-dragged uniforms from the ground.