John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

The footpath picks up on the other side and there is a little bamboo shack next to it, and then another a little farther along, the houses here roofed with grass instead of palm, and then as the path widens there are men walking alongside them, men wearing the religious squares and medals and crosses on the outside of their shirts and all of them with eyes red and burning, muttering, like a humming prayer, as they walk. These men have bolos dangling from a thong around their wrist or some gripping tight to the handle. An older man, wild hair touched with gray, stands blocking the way in the center of the little group of huts that make up the town. The old man has dozens of pictures hung on him, Bleeding Jesuses and red crosses and lots of the Holy Mother and he has a flaming cross painted or maybe even tattooed on his forehead.

Mama wear some things, some homemade and some boughten, but not like these people. There was a crazy man at home, called himself Percy of Domenica, who jingled and clacked with all sorts of hanging charms and grew his hair down long and woolly, but he never had a follower. The man with the cross on his head starts to bark at Nilda and she answers back steady while the mumbling men surround them and other people, women among them, step out from the huts to watch. Sometimes Mama go off at the Pentecostal. The first time it scared the living Jesus out of him and Jubal, Mama hollering in the tongues and her body twitching and the sisters in white not able to get down the aisle before she could knock her head on the floor a couple times. The flaming-cross man pushes past Nilda and fixes his hot eyes onto Royal’s and yanks the Bleeding Jesus out from under his shirt.

“ Your Mama been saved ,” the righteous sisters would say over their shoulders. “ She give up on her evil ways .”

At least one of those sisters come to Mama later for a root cure to lose a baby, but that first time it felt better to know the twitches and hollers were about Salvation and not some sickness that come on her.

The mumbling men are very close, hot breath on his neck from behind and all of them gripping hard on their bolos, make him think of Junior all cut apart, think of the man he shot with the gun barrel almost touching his body and there is a desperate note in Nilda’s voice now and the flaming-cross man is shouting questions Royal can’t answer right into his face.

“ You don’t call Him ,” Mama always say. “ You just open all the way up an in He come .”

He sees Junior at the river, hacked apart like a side of bully beef.

“ Kasheeebobobobobobobobobosheegowanda !” Royal cries out, eyes rolling back in his head. “ Kwasheeedavasagavasagachooogondadada !”” He sinks to his knees and the Spirit, or whatever it is his fear has called up, rattles through his body like a runaway freight train, his right arm curling up to his chest and his left shooting straight up over his head, fingers splayed out wide. The bolomen back away. Royal jerks forward, his forehead rapping hard against the ground and his stomach begin to heave, spasming his body like when he got the fever in Cuba though nothing but a taste of bile comes up and then for a little while he loses himself to it and doesn’t know what he is doing exactly. Finally he is able to right himself and sees through eyes streaming with water that Nilda is kneeling and rocking and praying and making the Sign, head, heart, shoulder, shoulder and he makes it too, again and again, the Spirit or whatever it was run through him and gone now, so he sings, as holy as he can sound, rocking back and forth—

Life is like — a mountain railway—

— being the only song he can think of at the moment—

With an engineer that’s brave

We must make the run successful

From the cradle to the grave

— rocking and singing, never the voice that poor Little Earl had, but nothing to be ashamed of—

Watch the curves, the fills and tunnels

Never falter, never fail

Keep your hand upon the throttle

And your eye upon the rail

The cross man barks something and a woman steps into a hut and then comes out with a piece of pork wrapped in a leaf and some cooking bananas and lays them beside Nilda—

Blessed Savior, wilt Thou guide us

Till we reach that blissful shore?

— Nilda gently guiding him to his feet and the cross man stepping aside and her leading him, still singing, through the sorry little village—

Where the angels wait to join us

In God’s grace forevermore!

— on down the path and away from them, Nilda carrying the food, safe now but singing because it feels good, because it puts him in mind of Mama and Jubal and himself before he ever killed anybody—

There you’ll meet the Superintendent

God the Father, God the Son

With a hearty, joyous greeting

Weary pilgrim, welcome Home

When he finishes singing Nilda stops and takes the cloth of the bleeding Jesus hung on his front in her hand and kisses it in thanks. Royal wants to kiss her back.

They leave Gallego’s band and take only what they came with, food all gone, Legaspi and El Guapo lifting each end of Bayani’s camilla and Kalaw shouldering the extra ammunition and the iron cookpot. “Every time I lift something heavy,” says Kalaw, “I’m going to miss that negro .”

“Without us he won’t survive,” says Diosdado. Pelaez leads the way down the mountain on the far side, raising his arm in warning when the slope grows treacherous. It is a clear morning, clear enough to see all the way across the misty coastal plain to the distant horizon-line of sea. “If the headhunters don’t get him the cristeros will.”

“No — if he’s with that woman he’ll be safe. I wouldn’t want to cross her. A real Zambala .” Kalaw shakes his head. “The ones still tied to that tree though—”

Diosdado shrugs. He had avoided talking to the three tied by their necks. “That is their problem.”

It is hard going down the pathway, Bayani having to clutch the sides of the litter, cursing, to keep from being pitched off it. Diosdado gives him the last of their medicine, black poppy tar they bought in Pampanga, and he chews on it grimly as they descend. They reach the bottom at noon and stop to replenish their water at the stream that crosses Don Humberto Salazar’s property, crossing fields of petsay till they come to the north road and hear the loud chok chok chok of a karatong ahead of them, someone beating the bamboo gong to announce that strangers have arrived. Diosdado waits for Fulanito to shinny up the telegraph pole and cut the line, then puts his pistol in a sack and sends the boy ahead, telling him to fire a warning shot if he sees any sign of the Americans, then run as fast as he can. Fulanito hurries away, excited as always to have a mission.

“He’s your best soldier,” says Bayani. The wounded sargento’s eyes are all pupil now as the narcotic takes effect.

“He doesn’t even know what he’s fighting for.”

“The war is his home. He fights to keep it alive.”

Diosdado looks across the familiar fields. “But one day we’re going to win,” he hears himself say, “and it will end. You’re going to live to see a Fili-pino Republic.”

Bayani holds a hand over the wound in his side as he laughs silently. “Is this a promise or a threat?”

The men spread out around them at the side of the road.

“Let me tell you a story, hermano ,” says Bayani.

“Are there women in the story?” asks Kalaw.

“Not the kind you like,” the sargento answers. “These are the kind that will cut your pinga off.”