John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Send one to the moon, Rastus!” calls the sheriff through cupped hands.

“I sho’ly do mah best, sah!” he answers, bugging his eyes wide. He walks with his buttocks stuck out and arched high, and waggles them to great amusement as he settles in at the plate.

“Send me the sauce, Boss!” he calls to Coleman.

It is bad enough down here in this shithole Georgia not knowing if there’s going to be a war or not or if there is will they be allowed to go and wearing the damn woolen tunics in this heat while you drill and then what’s supposed to be your own people who you are fighting for treating you like dirt every time you wander off the reservation.

Jacks sees it coming.

Jacks sees it coming in the way Coleman holds his body. In the way he grips the ball, but he just stands at his position and says nothing.

Too Tall sends one upstairs and the blackface boy hits the dirt.

It is dead quiet for a long moment.

“Ball one!” calls the second lieutenant, and gives Jacks a look.

The crackers and a good number of the boys from the 12th are screaming as he walks to the mound this time, faces red, a few stepping across the lime onto the infield to make their threats. He hears nigger this and nigger that, something about when the sun goes down. The 12th are regulars, a good outfit, but the pastel ladies are here now and it changes everything. Both the colonels are standing up in the bleachers, looking concerned.

Jacks takes the ball from Too Tall. “You don’t really have nothin left, do you?”

“Spose not,” the pitcher says, turning to spit tobacco, face a mask as the crackers shout. “If I still had it, I’d of tore that boy’s head off.”

“You walk straight for the middle of our fellas over there, keep your eyes to yourself.”

“I can get these bastards out.”

“You done enough today, Trooper. Nice job.”

The private walks extra slow to the waiting wall of blue shirts, tucking his glove under his arm and seeming not to notice his life is being threatened by the mob on the other side. Jacks waves for Hooks to go in at center, and brings Scott in to take the mound. The word is that the Carolina boy can throw it some, and at this point he wishes Colonel Burt would step down and run the damn team like he did when they played the railroaders in Missoula.

“Get us through this inning alive,” Sergeant Jacks says to Scott as he hands the ball over, looking him hard in the eye. “You know what I mean.”

The boy, Royal is his name, gives him a big grin. “Sure thing, Sergeant.”

He takes his time getting ready, strolling over to say something to Corporal Ponder at third base and giving him his glove. Ponder trots to the bench, whispers something to the one they call Mudfish, and returns with a different one. The crowd, impatient, are shouting for action as Scott puts this one on. He winks to the second lieutenant.

“My pitching glove,” he says.

He asks for a couple warm-up throws then, which brings a new howl of protest from the white side, and proceeds to out-coon the batter, windmilling his arm in an elaborate windup, catching the return throws behind his back like the boys do when they’re just fooling among themselves. The white folks aren’t sure what to make of it, and neither is his own side, but the burned-cork boy looks a little embarrassed now, waiting to take his turn.

“Batter up!” calls the second lieutenant. Jacks crouches and pounds his glove.

Scott rears back and throws hard overhand — only he doesn’t let go of the ball, instead wheeling off the mound and striding over to the bench, the 12th men and the locals catcalling again as he gets his original glove back from Mudfish.

“Sorry, sir,” he calls to the umpire as he takes the mound again. “Just didn’t feel right.”

The minstrel boy digs in, looking pissed off to have the attention of the crowd pulled away from his antics.

“You aint gonna need a glove if you’ll throw me that thing,” he calls. “You gonna need bi noc ulars to follow where it’s goin!”

“Comin right up,” smiles Scott, and goes into his windmilling wind-up.

The pitch he lobs in is so fat Jacks could run to the sidelines, grab a bat, and still get to the plate in time to hit it. The white boy in the blackface takes a mighty swing, connecting with it square over the plate — but instead of a crack of wood there is a heavy, soggy THOOMP! , the ball flying apart into a hundred little bits that spray outward like a fireworks explosion. Jacks is hit on the shoulder with a piece of it, a wet scrap of orange, the peel made white with lime from the basepaths.

People are stunned at first, minds taking a moment to grasp the phenomenon. Then the whole 25th falls out laughing, whacking each other on the back and miming the batter’s dumbfounded reaction. Even a few of the white folks join in, the white ladies clapping their little gloved hands with delight. The second lieutenant, though, is not smiling as he steps to the mound.

“Let’s cut out the nigger show and play ball.”

“Nigger show is at the plate, sir,” Scott tells him, nodding toward the batter, who is looking sheepish and still picking flecks of orange off his front.

“You gonna get serious,” says the officer, “or do I call a forfeit?”

“Yes, sir.” Corporal Ponder tosses Scott the real ball. “I will seriously strike this coon out.”

And proceeds to put the side down with only nine pitches — in-shoots and drop-offs, fast balls that seem to hop at the last moment and a big roundhouse curve that starts out heading halfway between home and third before hooking back over the heart of the plate, the regiment whooping louder after every strike. The last man to whiff slams his bat down in frustration and Jacks hurries to join Scott as they leave the field.

“Don’t smile, don’t wave your hat,” he says. “Just walk off.”

Of course Scott is the first batter up to begin the ninth. The pitcher gives him a long look and then throws a steaming fastball into his ribs. There is a sound like the orange exploding and Scott drops to his knees and then it is very quiet again.

If this was two white teams or two colored teams it would just be base ball, part of the game, and if there was a fight with nobody sent to the hospital they’d all meet after at the canteen to compare bruises over beer and pretzels. But instead Jacks and Mingo Sanders have to grab Cooper to keep him from running across the field and the officers are out of the bleachers waving their arms to keep the regiments apart and the crackers are asking Scott if he thinks he’s so damn smart now and when the whistles start blowing Jacks thinks it’s the provost guard come to make some arrests. But there is Colonel Daggett with a quartet of majors around him, marching up onto the mound, and in a flash the junior officers and noncoms have their people in formation, base-ball uniforms scattered among the blue, the 25th formed on the third-base side of the field and the 12th on the first, and Daggett waits till even the civilians are on their feet and silent before he speaks.

“I’ve just received a wire from Washington,” he says, “and it applies to both regiments present. We have orders to break camp, pending transport to Tampa. The Congress has voted and it is on , gentlemen.”

A cheer erupts on both sides of the field. Hats fill the air. The ladies in the bleachers spin their parasols in excitement.

The game has begun.

WAR!is the one word the Yellow Kid can read. The rags have been hustling the WAR!for months, and now here is Specs passing it out in the day’s first special edition behind the Journal building. Specs has got an ink smudge on one of the lenses of his cheaters, ink all over his hands.