John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“On the Ark,” Niles sighs, his heart racing, all his senses open, alive to epiphany. “With his father’s wife. Can you imagine such evil, such bestiality? On the Ark .”

“Stark, raving mad,” mutters the Correspondent.

They have men waiting down the pathway to shoot if the Americans decide to climb up after them, but nobody above and nobody on the other side of the mountain. Everybody left in camp is asleep but Roy and the man who was shot in the jaw, who has his eyes closed and is crying. Even the other American prisoners sleep now, heads nodded forward and to the side, the rope binding them to the tree digging into their necks. Nilda takes a small sack of the corn and an American canteen that is almost full of water. Her knife is dull from splitting bamboo and it takes a long time to saw through the hemp around his wrists and ankles. They soaked it before tying so the knots can’t be untied. Roy says nothing and watches her face, which makes her cheeks burn. They have left him at the edge of the camp, far away from the fire, and his hands are cold to the touch. He shouldn’t have to die. None of them should have to die, but they are set on their war and haven’t decided to stop fighting yet.

When he is free, they stay low and walk as silently as possible. There are fireflies dancing all around them, and it feels like magic, like the other men will not wake up as long as the spell continues. In the village there would be dogs but the dogs here in the monte have been eaten. She leads when they start to climb, careful not to pull any rocks loose. She can hear his breath behind her. When they are over the crest and starting down the other side she is less worried. The men won’t bother to come after once they’re out of sight.

Once, on the far side when it is very steep, he holds her arm to help her down and it is a strange feeling. She has been inside herself, alone, since Fecundo left her for the last time, saying she was his problem, that you couldn’t bring a village girl to Manila and expect to become wealthy.

Nilda doesn’t know if her parents are still living or not. If they are, seeing her with the dark American will not make them think any worse of her. If she is truly dead to them they will give her what she needs to move on. Nobody wants to live with ghosts.

The way it works is you got to fill in between one picture and the next. The Yellow Kid is feeling about as bum as a newsie can without he’s croaked on the pavement but the yarn on the screen takes him away for as long as it lasts. A girl in a green dress stands in a spotlight next to it, singing along with a violin, one of those weepers about she misses her Dear One who’s across the sea. Not much of a canary but she’s easy on the glimmers.

It starts out how they always do when it’s a war story, with the soldier boy in his outfit kissing off the old folks and his girl, who is another looker. His old lady don’t stop honking into her snotrag the whole time and his old man who is one of those Mr. Whiskers like they trot out for parades all the time is pounding the soldier on the back and probly saying Go over there, boy, an give em hell. It’s like when you look in through the window displays at one of the swell shops on Broadway and there’s people inside jawing and waving their paws around and you try to suss out what they’re saying. The first picture in the story ends when the soldier marches out the door and the looker throws herself down on the ottoman and hides her head under her arms. These people got such a big room, fit a whole floor of apartments from East 5th Street in it, so you wonder how she’s got anything to kick about.

The canary gives her pipes a rest and the screen goes dark for a second the way it does and then they’re in the jungle, big tall palm trees all around and the soldier boy with a bunch of his pals blasting away with their rifles at something you can’t see. There is lots of smoke from the rifles and they shoot off some firecrackers in the Hall so the pair of old babes sitting right by the Kid with their big hats on blocking the view cover their ears and make with the Oh my oh dearie me and then the soldier boy tells the others to scarper, that he’ll stay back and cover their keisters. So they run off the screen and drums start pounding at the back of the Hall and on the screen this bunch of darkies run in wearing skirts made of palm leafs and nothing else only a couple got a bone in their nose, waving their spears and swords and the soldier boy uses his last shot to plug one of them dead and then they’re all over the guy, grabbing his rifle and one stabs him with a sword and they got him down on his back and start to do the googoo dance while the biggest darky stands over him with a spear ready to finish him off. The Yellow Kid is sweating and his head feels hot, maybe cause it’s the jungle or he’s worried about the geezer gonna get croaked or cause there’s so many people crowded in the seats here even on a Tuesday or maybe he’s just down with the crud. It don’t even help when this doll wearing not much more than the darkies runs in and throws herself on top of the soldier. She isn’t so dark as the other characters, but you can tell she aint white. Still she’s a doll and for some reason she’s telling the one with the spear to hold his water. The Kid wonders if he missed something or if the other paying customers have read about this deal in one of the rags he peddles. Even if she seen him fighting in the jungle at some point a doll, even a Filipino doll if that’s what she’s sposed to be, wouldn’t tumble for a guy that quick. Dolls take some heating up is what Specs and everybody behind the Journal building says, you got to blow them to a good feed or do the candy-and-flowers routine before you can lay the first digit on em.

Only this one must be bughouse for the soldier boy, cause even when the big geezer puts the spear to her throat she don’t leave off begging for him to be spared. Then the pit band plays Hot Time in the Old Town and there’s more fireworks and the pals who scrammed come blasting back onto the screen, bagging the big one and chasing the rest away. When their smoke clears somehow there’s the looker from back home kneeling by the wounded soldier boy and the pals have got the drop on the native doll. Only then the wounded guy does a lot of palavering and pointing and finally the girl from home falls wise and gives the doll her necklace as thanks for saving his bacon and the soldiers lay off of her. She seems pretty gaga about the necklace, clutching it to her melons and falling on her knees in front of the white girl. The looker from home and the soldier grab hands then and the two old babes start to blubber and the spotlight comes back on the canary in green only now she’s with a geezer decked out like a soldier only you can glim that he’s not the same one, the pair of them looking lovey-dovey and warbling at each other and the Yellow Kid can’t take no more.

He stomps over the old babes’ trotters on his way out of the aisle and makes a beeline for the exit. There is more on the bill, Wheezer and Spats and then The Great Bendo and then Professor Poodle which is what he really come to see but right now he needs air.

14th Street never smelled so good. He feels dizzy but the sun is out and the cabbies are trotting their nags up and down and the moll-buzzers are shuffling by the box office and some old wop with an accordion is wheezing away and the only thing that don’t seem right on the block is maybe the monkey dancing on the sidewalk, and even he is wearing a fedora.

The Yellow Kid sits on the curb and watches the carriage wheels roll past and waits for his head to clear. The evening edition will hit the bricks pretty soon and he’s got to get hisself down to Park Row. When he holds his head in his mitts it is still cooking, which makes it hard to think and is maybe why he missed how the looker gets herself all the way to Googooland just in time to save her boyfriend.