John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

And how did she know to wear her pearls?

It goes by so fast. People shooting and smoke and soldiers with the flag and everybody in the theater cheering and then him flopping round so the horse don’t stomp him. People laughing in the theater when he run off, the white folks like that, and then it is over. He wants to say to Miss Alma that there was more to it, that if they had more cameras looking from different spots they’d of got the whole story. But Miss Alma grabbed his arm when the volunteers charged and he fell down, Jubal sitting with her back where the colored are supposed to, or at least where they always do sit in the theater. They don’t have it marked off up here. It goes by so fast and then they are in Auburn.

Buzzing from the folks when they see the title. When the train runs across the screen in front of the prison wall Miss Alma gasps. It’s her first time seeing a moving-picture show and Jubal is feeling proud he is the one to take her.

There is another view of the front of the prison from high up, nothing moving but the camera, the way you’d swing your head from left to right to look for something, and then they are in the hallway.

“Assassin!” cries somebody sitting up with the white folks. “There’s the assassin!” and sure enough there he is behind the iron bars of the door to the left while the prison guards wait on the right for their orders.

“Murderer!” hollers somebody else, standing up from his seat and pointing, and for a moment it is so real Jubal thinks maybe they will rush the screen and hang the man themselves.

But then the guards, four of them, march to the cell and one unlocks it and goes in to bring the killer out. He is not in the striped suit but in dark pants and a gray jacket and there is one guard on each side of him and two behind as they walk off to the right.

Next the picture kind of goes hazy and then comes clear and they are in the Chamber itself. Jubal leans over to Miss Alma. “I help build that,” he says, and she looks impressed and squeezes his arm.

There is the Edison man who got a board filled with light bulbs laid across the arms of the Chair and when they turn the juice on to test it in front of the Warden and the doctors all the bulbs flash on. The Edison man takes the board off to the left then and the guards march the Assassin on from the right and put him in the Chair and are all over him tying straps — straps on his wrists and on his ankles rolling up one leg of his pants and straps over his thighs and chest and even one across his forehead. Then the Edison man come out and check that they’re all fixed tight and nods to the Warden that it is ready to go.

Jubal can feel Miss Alma holding her breath beside him. There are three different times they put the juice through, the Assassin trying to rise up but the straps keep him down — Miss Alma like to crawl in his lap when they make sparks crackle up on both sides of the screen and people cheer.

“Kill him!” hollers the man who stood up. “Fry the sorry son of a bitch!”

Jubal looks over and Miss Alma is crying. Got a soft heart, even for a white man shot Mr. McKinley.

“That’s only the actor,” Jubal says to her, quiet. “I seen him get paid afterwards.”

One doctor puts the heart button against the Assassin’s chest and listens and then hands the earpieces to another doctor who has been feeling the man’s wrist for life and he listens and they nod to the Warden who is a long drink of water, and he turns to look right at them in their seats like they are the witnesses and if you watch his lips he say “The Assassin is dead.”

Big cheering then, lots of the white men and even some of the colored standing up to clap their hands. Then the lights come on and the band starts playing and it is the next act, Moke and Smoke.

Moke and Smoke are two colored men who tell jokes and act funny but they got the cork ash rubbed all on their face to make them even blacker and wear suits that is green and yellow with big square checks and Miss Alma is not laughing. The more folks in the theater laugh, even the colored around them, the less she think it’s funny. They go on rolling their eyes and saying their jokes and end with singing a song about Old Alabamy but she is crying again. Miss Alma always seem like one who could go through the Fire and not drop a tear so Jubal ask does she want to go and she says yes.

Another time he would worry about people staring at him, leaving down the aisle while the show is still running, but Miss Alma still got hold of his arm and he can’t help but smile.

Look who I got.

He takes a look back right before they step out into the lobby room. Teethadore the Great who is a friend of Mr. Harry is coming out, dressed up like Mr. President, which is what he is now, and right away people start up clapping.

Teethadore does not run onto the stage anymore. The strut is slow, confident. Presidential. There is a full minute of applause and he lets it fill him up, chest out, grin locked in place. He puts one foot slightly in front of the other, squares his shoulders. The diapositive flashes on the screen behind him.

AMERICA AND THE PHILIPPINES

— it says in bold letters.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

—he says, and there is another wave of applause from those familiar with the verse—

Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples

Half-devil and half-child—

Nilda hangs the Bleeding Jesus over him in the morning.

“ Para los santones ,” she says.

It is two squares of cloth connected by red shoestrings, one hung down on your chest and the other in back between your shoulders, both with Christ on the cross sewed on them and some words Royal can’t read, Catholic words probably, and He is bloodied up something awful. There is a tiny stitching of blood from the thorns and from the spikes in His hands and feet and the spear in His side and little red dots of blood-tears down His cheeks. It is more of their hoodoo that doesn’t work as far as Royal can tell, meant to protect you from bullets, but he doesn’t fuss when she hangs it on him any more than he did when Mama put herbs and bird bones in a little sack round his neck. She, Nilda, cut him loose and is leading him, he hopes, away from folks who want to shoot him or cut him up, so why kick about it?

The sun is on their right the whole morning, the two of them heading north, following a foot trail that runs just below the mountain ridge. She knows where she is going, slowing to turn and look at him a few times, stopping once to share the last potato. Royal tries not to think any further ahead than he can see and not to think behind at all. It is not so bad except he’s thirsty. Royal’s undershirt is torn and his leggings stolen and his boots still on his feet only because they didn’t fit none of the rebels who tied him down. He wishes he had his hat and some wet banana leaf under it the way he’s seen them do. The sun isn’t high but already it is cooking his skull.

There is a man walking toward them on the path. Barefoot, his hair longer and wilder than any of the rebels. When the man steps aside to let them by, his eyes burning, Royal sees that his shirt is hanging open to show off a dozen of the cloth squares, different colors and pictures and words on each. Nilda keeps walking like it’s nothing so Royal follows. They come to a swaying bridge made of bejuco rope and bamboo slats suspended over a little gorge, and halfway across he feels it shudder behind him. The man is following, maybe twenty yards behind, and is muttering something to himself.