John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I am willing to sacrifice my own life in this great undertaking,” says the exiled General, “as is every true patriot in our nation.”

In the pilot boat on the way out the American ensign who came for him was much amused by the crowd of lanchas being poled back and forth with their loads of zacate fodder and piled stems of bananas.

“Look,” he winked to Diosdado, “it’s the Filipino Navy.”

The White Admiral rises above them, an avuncular smile on his face, and offers his hand.

“Go and start your army,” he says.

Tampa is a fever dream.

They wake to a fusillade of noise, every regiment on the Heights with its own drummer up and driving the sticks, men cursing on their ponchos before the bugle’s first assaulting note. The chigger bites along Royal’s ribs remind him where he is. The scramble for socks, the insult of the woolen pants and he’s out with the others, the canvas of the tents whiter than the sand, ghostly rows like headstones in the failing wisp of moonlight. There is no warning of the heat to come. Royal pulls the flannel shirt on, sits to wrestle with his boots. Junior crawls out from the tent, then Little Earl, looking surprised, as he always does, to find himself awake at this hour. No one speaks. The air is bitter with the coffee Stewpot Sims has begun to boil on his cookfire, one of a half-dozen glowing throughout the camp. The 25th stumble forward to be counted.

Sergeant Jacks knows his book and expects the same from you. His eyes remain calm, even when chewing on some rookie who does not know his left from his right or his bunghole from a bayonet. He allows them to drill without their blouses due to the heat, except for the one day the company dogged it so bad during the morning close-order routine the lieutenant let him lead them on a five-mile jaunt around the camp weighed down with full kit, Merriam packs, and three days’ provisions.

“You think this is bad,” he said during one of their pauses to see if a fallen man was dead or just resting with his face in the sand, “wait till we get to Cuba. They got your steam heat.”

There is a rumor that their winter-issue uniforms will be replaced soon, but that seems the unlikeliest of all the many stories contaminating the Heights. Yes, the Army might load them into their transports tomorrow or send them to China to pacify the yellow hordes or make peace with the Dons and call off the whole Cuba invasion, but the idea of Supply, in this fly-ridden dump of men and munitions, coming up with anything to make a common soldier’s burden lighter is unimaginable.

Sergeant Jacks wears his blouse though, all day long, service stripes halfway down to his wrists. No one has ever seen him take a drink of water, or step away to relieve himself, through Coop won a two-dollar bet the day the sergeant allowed himself to squash a mosquito crawling up his neck.

“Man eat bricks and shit gravel,” Coop will say when the sergeant is out of earshot. “Probly kilt more nigger privates than he ever did Indians.”

Jacks calls their names and the men bark out in response and then he announces Sick Call, which nobody who can stand dares report for since the Doc has taken to dosing all internal complaints with a ginger-root concoction that cleans you out, and not gently, at both ends.

“We have the healthiest regiment in the camp,” muses Sergeant Jacks with the tone in his voice that substitutes for a smile. “Fall out.”

They make their way to the chow-line then, and as Junior is first it falls on him to do the honors.

“What have we today?” he says, raising his voice to be heard by all. “Sowbelly with no bread or sowbelly with no eggs?”

“No breakfast,” says Stewpot Sims. Thick, stumplike Sims, who if he even hears the kicking anymore does not respond to it. “Coffee if you want it.”

Royal dips in, coffee scalding in his pint can, dark coffee this morning, with an acid taste that lingers for an hour after but is better than nothing. He tried to drill one day with nothing in his stomach, hung over from a night in Ybor, and by noon his legs were jelly.

“No breakfast. Maybe they packed it all up on the transports, we be leaving today.” Little Earl is the source of many camp rumors. Royal likes to hear how they have grown, have sprouted arms and legs by the time they’ve circled back to the company at the end of the day.

“Maybe it just smelt so bad they had to bury it,” says Corporal Puckett, one of the veterans from Fort Missoula.

“Not yet, they haven’t,” says Coop. “Don’t no hole get dug in this camp but what I digs it. Something to eat got buried, I’d know.”

The men laugh. Coop is the sergeants’ favorite goat, though there is nothing visibly wrong with his soldiering. He jumps when jump is called for and flops on command. Something in his eye, though, the way he stands, an attitude. I am here, it says. Royal and the other greenhorns all with their shoulders pinned back, chins down, guts pulled in, trying to be invisible to the officer of the moment while Coop stands there taking up his space as if it belonged to him. As if he still belonged to himself and not the 25th Regular Infantry, Colored.

“You ever been hanged, Cooper?” Sergeant Jacks asked him just the other day at muster, body almost pressed up against the taller private.

“Not yet, Sergeant.” Voice innocent of tone, but steady.

“Must be an oversight.”

The men who smoke keep one eye on the bugler, Kid Mabley, trying to burn one down before he brings the metal to his lips. The sand crabs are up now, skittering from hole to hole as if their business, whatever it might be, needs finishing before sunrise. Royal forces the coffee down and takes a few steps in place. The blisters are still there, no chance to heal, but not too angry yet. The worst is taking the boots off at the end of the day, something Junior and he help each other with, comparing the size and state of their raw spots.

Dellum from Company C moves close to him. “Any tobacco on you, rookie?”

“Don’t use it.”

“That’s no reason not to have it.”

“I get hold of any,” says Royal, “I’ll let you know.”

The veterans ragged them pretty hard at first, pushing at the new recruits to see how far they’d give, but there was nothing mean in it. Except with Coop sometimes, coming back weary from whatever punitive duty he’s caught that day, Coop will go right back after them. Even Scout, the little spaniel they keep for a mascot, spoiled on mess-hall scraps and stolen biscuits, knows enough to slink away when he sees Coop with that look on his body. Once he held Little Earl by the throat so hard, over a remark that had nothing to do with him, that there were bruises the next day, bruises that showed on a black man’s neck.

At a nod from the lieutenant, Kid Mabley blasts into Drill , humping his chest down hard to let the whole camp hear. Mabley is the best on the Heights and knows it, all the other buglers, even the white boys, coming by in the evenings to trade licks with him, holding their campaign hats over the horns to mute their playing in case someone wants to get a head start on their shuteye. No shots have been fired in camp so far, that’s what town is for, but a few men have been left bloody in the sand.

“Spaniards don’t get him,” says Dellum, a nervous sleeper, eyeing Mabley as he starts away, “Imonna kill that boy.”

Tampa is a fever dream, fever rising with the sun.

The Krag, even unloaded, makes it seem real. The weight of it in his hands, the heat of the barrel once the sun comes up, the way every action must be altered to accommodate the ever-present fact of it makes Royal feel like a soldier. Sergeant Jacks makes sure the Krag never leaves their grasp from the instant drill begins till Kid blows Recall. They are drilling by companies today, Junior and Royal and Little Earl in Company L marched with most of the other recruits, four abreast, two miles south of camp skirting the City of Tampa to end up in the dunes facing Davis Island across the bay.