John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

My sweetheart’s the Man in the Moon

I’m going to marry him soon

T’would fill me with bliss just to give him one kiss

But I know that a dozen I never would miss!

Harry and the other visitors, slightly embarrassed, look to the dozen or so children in their party, the only ones still rapt in the illusion now that they have left the realms of Galactic Flight for that of Music Hall. There are adults, he knows, who will only visit the movie parlors if they bring their children with them, some lingering unease at giving themselves up to the gossamer images on the screen.

I’ll go up in a great big balloon

And see my sweetheart in the moon

Then behind some dark cloud, where no one’s allowed

I’ll make love to the Man in the Moon!

They lose Harry in the Palace. It is only a proscenium, however elaborately decorated, the giants seemingly bored, the tumbling dwarves no better than circus performers, the Moon Pageant replete with shifting scenery and flashing colored lights but without dramatic tension, the greenish gorgonzola offered by beaming Moon-Maids more than he can stomach this early in the day. Moving, projected views, he thinks, to replace the lantern slides. They can only be tinted, of course, till the color problem is solved, but think of the illusion, think of the impact, if while you are being moved forward in a vehicle all that you see from the front and side portals has been filmed in some foreign capital or natural vista! You could tour the streets of Mexico from any city in the States, and never step out of the carriage.

The show ends with a promise of friendship between peoples. “Just as the nations of North and South America have come together at this great Exposition,” says the Man in the Moon, “thus shall the citizens of my realm be ever bonded with those of your planet Earth.”

They exit through the shadowy gorge and jaws of a dragon-like creature called a Moon Calf onto the raucous, steaming Midway. Just one entrance down is the Old Plantation, a glimpse, as the brochure describes it, of the sunny South before the War. Sweat begins to run down Harry’s forehead from his hat brim. He wonders how they keep it so cool on the moon. Dozens of spectators, yankees, are flowing through the doorway of the “mansion” that fronts the exhibit. Harry checks his pocket watch, digs out a quarter, and follows them in.

Pretty, ringletted girls in stiff pastel dresses greet the visitors, all smiles and coquetry. Harry has been to gala occasions something like the one presented in the chandeliered ballroom they pass into, Sally’s coming out for one, though never with a colored band playing Dixie , and certainly never with so many colorful fans fluttering in ladies’ hands. There are unpainted slave quarters out back, along with log cabins claimed to have been occupied by Abraham Lincoln and Jeff Davis, and a swarm of negroes unlike any he’s ever encountered, even in South Carolina. Cotton-headed old uncles, pipe-smoking aunties doing wash and spinning yarn, clean but raggedy children running everywhere. Men and women stoop and pick cotton in several rows planted at the far end of the compound, several pale women with parasols watching intently. One knot of white visitors gathers around two little boys doing a frantic, barefoot buck-and-wing to the ministrations of a grinning banjo player, while others ring an old man sitting on a porch chuckling and giggling and slapping his knee with every response to their queries. Harry drifts over by a young fellow filling buckets of water from a hand pump.

“Good morning.”

“Mornin to you, Cap’m,” replies the young man, touching two fingers to his forehead in salute but continuing to pump.

“Where you folks from?”

“Oh,” he sighs, straightening to look around at his fellow Plantation dwellers, “mostly it’s Georgia, Alabama, M’ssippi. Me, I’m fum Valdosta.”

“You stay here at night?”

“Mostly, yassuh.”

Harry looks over toward the pickers. “That cotton,” he says, “what happens when it’s all been harvested?”

The hint of a smile tugs at the water boy’s mouth. “Well, Mr. Skip who run the Plantation, he bring in another patch by’an’by, but most mornins we gots to get up an stick them bolls back in the plants fore they open up the fair.”

“That seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

“Yessuh, an that’s why he got him some per fess ional niggers like us. You see them what’s wanderin around the Midway, fum this yere Buffalo? That ain but am aters.”

“I see.” They both turn as the toothless old man on the porch emits a particularly high-pitched cackle, rocking back and forth in mirth as he entertains a growing crowd of yankees.

“That Laughin’ Ben. He ain right,” says the water boy, touching his temple with a finger. “But the white fokes sure love him.”

“I can see that.”

“You not fum up here neither, is you, Cap’n?”

“North Carolina.”

The boy nods. “Thas one of them in-between states. We run through it on the train.”

Harry bids him good day and manages to reach the exit just as the pickers and spinners and tale-tellers all drop what they’re doing to join the eleven o’clock cakewalk. His leg is hurting him, sharp pains running from ankle to hip, and he has perspired through to his vest.

At least, he thinks, pushing hard with his cane to make time through the crowded Mall, they haven’t included an Irish Pavillion.

He finds Paley still in the restaurant, comparing the apple and cherry pie selections.

“Anything good?”

“The Trip to the Moon—”

“It’s on my list,” says Daddy, extricating himself from the table. “But Skip Dundy wants a fortune to shoot it.”

“I had another idea. What if we were to stage a battle in the Filipino Vil-lage? They’ve got huts, palms trees, a lagoon with canoes, real Filipinos—”

“And who’s going to ask the Boss for the money to do that? There’s woods in Jersey, right near the shop.”

“If we’re going to stay competitive—”

“When Mr. Edison’s lawyers finish their business,” says the cameraman, helping arrange the apparatus and tripod on Harry’s shoulder, “we won’t have any competition.”

“But think of the excitement it would add, the verisimilitude.” Harry has pictured the view in his mind. A young captain, maybe even Niles himself, leading a desperate charge into the village as insurrectos leap from the huts to fire at them. And then a shot — the roller chair could be employed here — as if the viewer himself was running through the melee, native rebels firing directly at him—

“We’ve nabbed Aggy, my friend. That war’s over.” Paley stabs a last forkful of pie and snaps it down. “We’d better get over to the Esplanade.”

The Assassin watches him approach, preceded by marching bands and squadrons of cavalry, snug in his open victoria pulled by four glistening steeds, waving affably to the cheering citizens who line the Causeway. The Assassin leans on one of the piers till the carriage has passed, then joins the throng across the flag-draped Triumphal Bridge in pursuit.

Idolatry. The word has been pressed in his mind since his entrance this morning. The dreaming woman’s massive face, the Sphinx over the Beautiful Orient, Cleopatra, the Baker’s Chocolate maiden, the Goddess of Light perched on the Electric Tower, the kindly President in his silk top hat and frock coat — this is the Pantheon of false gods, and these poor, deluded sleepwalkers have come to worship them.

Applause as he climbs down from his carriage, is led onto the platform that has been set up in the Esplanade. The Assassin tries to move forward through the multitude as the Expostion head introduces the President. People are hot, ladies have their parasols open against the noonday sun, all are pressing forward to see closer, hear better. More applause as he rises, begins to speak. The words are unclear at this distance. The Assassin passes the men he saw in the gondola, now with their tripod mounted on what look like apple boxes to see over the crowd, the fat one with his eye pressed tight to it, cranking all the while. A man in a suit silently moving his lips on a platform decked with bunting that will be without color. Pointless idolatry. Men glare as the Assassin pushes between them. He can make out words now, but still they make no sense. He comes to a wall of policemen, standing face to the crowd, hands folded behind their backs, immobile. Expressionless. More statues. The grounds are full of statues, heroic statues, allegorical groupings, Indians in wax and wood, massive bear and buffalo and moose and elk, statues representing Labor and Capital and Motherhood and Bounty. The Shield of Despotism, this grouping could be called, or The Blue Wall of Tyranny.