John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Don’t you worry,” says Dr. Lunceford. “It won’t be long now.”

The doctor sits on the pallet holding the Yellow Kid, waiting and thinking. Thinking about his life and what has happened to it, thinking about where he should be now, with Yolanda, instead of down this filthy alley in a city of orphans. Junior was about this size the one time they thought they were going to lose him to scarlet fever, Yolanda furious at him for being a doctor and not being able to do more, only hold him and rock him and talk to him while Yolanda pressed the ice packs to his forehead. He felt it in his fingertips when the fever broke and his son was able to sleep, past all danger.

The street boy, shaking weakly, manages to lay his hand over the back of Dr. Lunceford’s.

“Lookit that,” he says in a small voice. “We’re the same color, you an me.”

Jacks watches the sand. The rebels are keeping close to the crashing waves but it isn’t high tide yet and they’ll have to leave track on dry sand to get into the trees. The tip was on the level for a change, some amigo earning himself a couple gold eagles or a pass out of the hoosegow, and if they’d gotten there a few minutes earlier they would have had the rebels boxed in. For some of the terrain here it would be good to have horses, ride down fast on the little shack towns before anybody has a chance to holler, run down whoever tries to light out. This humping around on foot won’t get it done.

“Got to be something wrong with these people,” says Coop. “Don’t know when they been beat.”

“Or maybe they know it, but got nothin better to do,” calls Hardaway from the rear of the squad. “Vex us with sniper fire and make us haul our narrow asses down this damn beach chasin em.”

“Army’s not paying you to eat beans and sleep, Private.” Jacks turns and walks backward for a few steps, making sure his men aren’t strung out too much. There is a good thirty yards of open sand before the tree line here, perfect for a googoo ambush.

“I forgot,” says Hardaway. “We all making a fortune here.”

Coop walks like he’s on a Sunday picnic, rifle held casually in one hand. “We ought to send the ones we caught back home,” he says. “Let them be the niggers for a spell.”

Even on a flat beach the surf can kill you. The wind is moving one way and the current another today, something like a storm collecting out over the water, and the waves are high as Royal’s shoulder with the out-sucking fierce enough that they seem to hang in the air for a moment before slamming down on the hard, bare sand. Bung maneuvers his little banca out beyond the breaker line, looking for an opening, turning the boat out to face the biggest of the swells, now and then raising his oar to be seen when he slides into the steep troughs. He is riding low, like he has a big haul of fish or has taken on water. The outrigger is about the only thing Bung owns in the world and Royal knows he will risk his life to save it.

Bung makes no signal when he starts in, just paddling hard, one side and then the other, trying to ride a medium-high swell in without getting too far down its slope, no reason to think this one is any easier than the others so he must be at the end of his strength. Royal stands up on the beach where the spent waves race around his calves and then hurry away, the front line of the ocean booming, churning white, and wishes Nilda was here. But it is too late to run for her and the surf too loud for him to shout and everyone else is in Candelaria for the festival of Saint Somebody. Bung is moving fast in the banca now, flying like a spear, and on some days when the waves aren’t high and undercut Royal has seen him glide ashore, effortlessly disengaging from the boat to grab the painter at the bow and run it up another ten feet without breaking speed. But today the water comes apart before you can get to the sand, the sea violent against itself, and Royal pulls a deep breath into his lungs before rushing in.

He stands sideways to the first wave and is almost torn off his feet by it, then runs three long steps forward to dive into the base of the next breaker the way he’s seen the boldest of the local boys do, swimming hard to push out the other side of it, and feels right away that he’s never been in anything this powerful, stronger than the water that swept him away from the company, fighting hard just to keep himself pointed out to sea. Three strides and dive, two strides and dive, not making any ground but surviving each wave and not at all sure how he’s going to help but he can’t just watch a man drown. He digs in, chest-deep and able only to duck under the next rumbling wall of water. He pops up to see Bung still coming, looking sideways and back over his shoulder as he paddles, as if trying to outrace the swell he is on. They meet eyes before it happens, Bung indicating with a flick of his oar that Royal needs to get out of the way, and then the next wave is bigger than all the others and Royal is wrenched off his feet as it breaks early and he is tumbled, the bottom smacking him in the shoulder, back, head, knee, head again, a rag doll in the churning white, saltwater driven up his nose and then lying sideways in outrushing foam being pulled back toward the next breaker till Bung, it must be Bung, grabs him by an ankle and pulls him out of the surf.

Royal snorts out water and sand. The banca flips and tumbles down the breaker line, both outriggers snapped off, and Bung is frantically running, bowlegged, to toss flopping fish higher onto the sand before the sea can take them back.

Royal stands. One knee has been twisted, his shoulder scraped, his jaw sore. There is sand in between his teeth. Bung is pointing at Royal, giggling now but with his arms and legs trembling from the struggle and fish, dead and dying, scattered all around him. He sees something beyond and the smile dies on his face. Royal turns to look.

They are coming up from the south, moving fast like something is behind them, with the Teniente in front. He hasn’t shaved or cut his hair for a long time and looks skinnier than ever. Kalaw is still with him, and Locsin and Pelaez and Ontoy and the little boy Fulanito. The segundo , Bayani, is missing. All of them have rifles.

The Teniente speaks to Bung first, but the man is frozen, too terrified to answer. Royal steps in front of him.

“Yall people still running?”

The Teniente does not smile at him. “We need the road to Candelaria.”

“I take you there.”

The men all stare at Bung as they step past him, eyeballing a warning, and Kalaw quickly gathers some fish to stuff in his mochila . Though nobody is pointing a rifle at him Royal feels like a hostage again.

“The war gone come up here?”

The Teniente looks back as they wade across the mouth of the stream where it hits the beach. “It has already arrived. Your men are behind us.”

They squeeze through the stand of nipa palm that lines the far bank, then step carefully over the gnarled, guano-spattered roots of the mangroves, branches laden with sleeping fruit bats hung upside-down, the only thing Nilda ever cooked for him that he wouldn’t eat. Royal leads the band through a maze of boulders then, turning inland when the dunes begin, sandy, palm-studded mounds that lead to the Candelaria road without taking you past any of the fishermen’s huts. The Teniente pauses at the top of the first one, giving Fulanito an order, then waves for the others to keep going.

The boy lays on his belly at the top of the dune, facing the beach, rifle by his side.

“Fulanito will fire when they come into view.” The Teniente’s face is grim. He looks as if he hasn’t slept for a long time. “If they believe they are attacked they will delay their pursuit.”