John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

It is a division yard, big, with lots of other freights on the sidings and lots of car-knockers hurrying to and fro with their lanterns. Hod and Big Ten get down off the side of the boxcar and creep low along the train trying to get their bearings, feet on the crossties so they don’t crunch the ballast.

The railroad bull is standing hidden on top of a coupling, with no lantern and a shotgun in his arms.

“Run and I blow your damn heads off.”

Hod glances to Big Ten, who turns to stone.

“Where we at, Mister?” asks Hod without turning around.

“You’re in my freight yard is where you’re at. March.”

He brings them to the switchman’s shed that is lit up and has a sheriff’s deputy and another fella wearing some sort of badge inside, both drinking from a pint bottle and in a playful mood.

“What we got here?” says the deputy, feet up on the desk.

“Got this broke-nosed tramp here,” says the railroad bull, “and the Last of the Mohicans. Or maybe the Next to Last.”

“You come in on that freight?” asks the deputy.

“You know, it did cross our mind to jump on it,” says Hod. It is always a negotiation with the bulls. If you’re too scared they walk all over you and if you’re too bold they crack your skull. “But we had second thoughts.”

“You trespassing on railroad property. That’s a crime.”

The other one stands up then and looks them both over, putting his face too close.

“Ever do any mining?”

“Some.” Hod answers him. “I can handle a Burleigh and I can work the timber, and hell, anybody can lift a shovel.”

“How bout you, Chief?”

Big Ten takes a long time to answer, considering his options, and when he speaks he looks at Hod instead of the man in front of him. “They’ll stick me underground when I’m dead,” he says. “No need to push my luck.”

The deputy and the other man with a badge and the railroad bull all laugh at this, then the deputy puts the irons on Big Ten and takes him off to jail. The Indian doesn’t look back. They aren’t friends, exactly, but when you travel with someone for a distance—

The man whose badge is for the Ibex Mines leads Hod outside and off in the other direction.

“What’s your name, son?”

They are stepping over the shunt tracks and in between cars being shifted back and forth, the business of the yard continuing despite the threat of two hungry, jobless men stealing a ride on a boxcar. For an instant Hod considers giving his real name but then thinks better of it.

“Metoxen,” he says. “Henry Metoxen.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Polish.” The headache is back now, worse than before, and he is having a hard time catching his breath. “We’re pretty high up, aren’t we?”

“This is Leadville, son. The Cloud City.”

There are lots of lights up on the hill they have started to climb, and from the flats off to the right Hod can hear music. They pass a little cemetery, crooked stones and crosses leaning into the slope, and he thinks of the Indian girl behind the school. He thinks of his mother’s lonesome grave back on the old man’s folly of a quarter section, the Mennonites shaving a little closer to it with their plows every year.

“You’ll make two-fifty a day — three dollars if you really can run a drill. First week goes to the deputy down there — that’s your fine.”

“Thought the silver kings all went bust.”

“We’re still pulling gold out of the Little Johnny, lots of it.” He indicates ahead of them. “This is Carbonate Hill — we’ll put you up in the company barracks here, charge a dollar a day.”

“Meals?”

“That’s your lookout.”

Hod wishes there was more air to breathe, and he made three-fifty back in Butte, but he’s done enough jail for a lifetime. The mine dick gives him a look as they climb.

“You a drinking man?”

Kansas was dry and his old man a temperance fiend and somehow that has stuck with him. “No sir.”

“You stay in Leadville,” smiles the man with the badge, “you’ll want to take it up.”

The game is friendly till the ladies arrive. The 12th are regulars, at least, though Sergeant Jacks is convinced their moundsman is a ringer, snuck in from the Atlanta pro team after the officers made their wagers. He has a smoking fastball and a wicked, late-hooking curve that has the right-handed batters back on their heels and popping up. It has stayed tight only because the boys he’s picked for the outfield, especially Scott in center, cover their ground at a gallop and rifle the ball to the proper base when the white team makes a hit. Private Coleman, who they call Too Tall, has been adequate in the box, but is starting to tire from whipping fastball after fastball over the batters’ slab.

“Don’t you have a change-of-pace pitch, son?” Sergeant Jacks asks him when he trots forward from second after calling time-out.

“Course I do,” the veteran answers. “I rolls the ball to the catcher.”

“What I thought. How’s the arm?”

Too Tall spits tobacco and works his shoulder a few times, cocking his head as if listening to something inside the muscle. “Won’t be able to lift her tomorrow,” he says. “But now she’s fine.”

Jacks nods and moves back to his position. They are down four runs to two, a runner on third and a single out. A couple hundred of the 12th are gathered along the first-base line cheering their batter, a big, sunburned boy with a dent in his nose, while an equal contingent of the 25th urge Coleman on from the third-base side. Colonel Burt and his rival sit together with some other officers and the sheriff from Lytle and other dignitaries on a little set of bleachers that has been set up, sipping whiskey from tin mess cups and enjoying the contest like plantation lords, while the rest of the cracker civilians over from town are either clumped behind home pulling for the whites or scattered in the outfield, moving out of the way or becoming obstacles depending on which team’s ball is in play. It is dusty as ever but enough breeze to keep the flies from settling on you. Jacks tries to spit but can’t make enough water.

The batter, overswinging, fouls the first two pitches off, and as they are playing the old rule there is no count against him. Coleman has been throwing for seven innings now, putting the mustard on every pitch, and it’s clear the white boys aren’t afraid of him anymore.

“Come on, Pitch,” Jacks calls, adding his voice to the infield chatter. “Throw that pellet past him!”

Coleman delivers high and wide for a ball.

The 25th was the first unit to arrive at the Chickamauga camp, helping to clear new roads in the park, to dig the near-useless wells. Then the other regulars started coming and finally the state volunteers with their swagger and their suspicion and their amateur officers. There are too many men here and not enough for them to do and if something doesn’t change soon the flies are going to win the campaign. Combat will be no problem, combat keeps them occupied, but this — a hodgepodge of units waiting for orders, regulars and volunteers all mixed together under the pines, their sentries challenging each other for the pure spite of it, Lytle a hellhole for the colored troops and Chattanooga, if you’ve got the time to get there, not much better. Missoula was pie, the town used to them, friendly even, cheering them onto the trains and telling them to be sure and come back. But the reception has cooled with every mile farther south traveled and they are still only to the very top of Georgia. Short of combat, of course, a ball game is always the best way to let off some steam.

Even better if you win.