John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Dewey comes by and watches for a moment.

“You wants to help,” says Coop, not breaking his rhythm, “kill up some a these damn flies be pesterin me.”

“I don’t want to help,” says Dewey. “I just come to see where we going tonight. That’s if they let you out.”

“Tampa City,” says Coop, making Dewey hop back from a shovelful of sand heaved at his feet.

“Been having an awful row with the white folks in there.”

“Yeah, and I aint been in on it yet.” Coop likes Ybor well enough, but the idea that there is something he’s not supposed to do, somewhere he’s not supposed to go, even in the uniform their own damn Army give him — well. “Hear they got some ladies there make your toes curl.”

“Not for us they don’t.” Dewey has been in for ten years and likes a good time without too much trouble.

“Well if them others wants to know,” says Coop, “that’s where I be.”

Dewey watches him shovel for a moment. “That hole gonna just keep filling up.”

“You see Sergeant Cade, you tell him about it.”

“Oh, he knows, Coop. He just don’t want you cooking up mischief. Idle hands is the devil’s instruments.”

Dewey steps away. Though Coop has made some kind of shallow bowl the back-sliding sand is halfway up to his knees now. Keep this up long enough, he thinks, and I bury my own self.

They don’t whip you in the Army, or chain you up at night. They give you real folding money, thirteen dollars a month, instead of cardboard scrip you got to use in their own store and they give you a rifle and teach you how to use it. Just show up telling them you’re Henry Cooper, jump over a stick, cough while the Doc puts his fingers on you, and you can wear the blue. He was skinny, bleary-eyed, a week hiding in the piney woods and two more tramping north and west, with nothing in his pockets and clothes that didn’t fit he had to steal on the way. The recruiter in Kansas City barely looked at him. “Cavalry is full up,” he said, “but if you don’t mind walking we got a place for you.”

Even in war there’s got to be nigger jobs, he figured. Not just the digging and hauling and minding prisoners, but bloody work, something they don’t want to put their white boys in front of. The Indians had been settled in for some time and there wasn’t much talk of this Cuba war yet, they hadn’t blown that ship up, so killing wasn’t even on his mind.

Beats slaving in a damn turp camp with iron on your legs.

One of the white outfits, volunteers, double-times past him in formation, a blue rectangle moving against the bleached sand. Coop recognizes the look on their faces, trying hard not to think beyond the moment, not to wonder when is this particular hell going to end. There been nothing regular about their life since they pulled out of Fort Missoula, the brass just guessing their way along, and you got to grab your chances when they come. Get a chance to get drunk, or for a woman, or for a decent bite to eat and you damn well better jump on it. “ We not paying you boys to think ,” Sergeant Cade likes to tell them, “ just pick em up and lay em down .” The sun is lower now and Coop tosses his sweat-heavy campaign hat to the side of the pit. He hasn’t been to stockade once since he joined, they can’t break him and they can’t shake him and he knows it bothers old Cade, on his tail from first bugle to Taps , but Cade don’t rile him none. Just keep smiling and shoveling and tonight they owe him a pass, strap on the pistol and step out with the boys. Coop can’t read, as such, but he knows his letters, knows when there is a big W on a brand-new sign it likely means “Whites Only” and was stuck up there just for him. There was more of that back home when he visited too, making a point of what a man already know on his own, rubbing you raw in a public way. We will see. The Cubans in Ybor just want your money — hell, they all shades themselves, ebony to ivory, and got all manner of Italians and Chinamen running around in the bargain. But Tampa City it’s your standard-issue crackers, sun-baked and nasty, and a nigger won’t get too many chances in this life to run it down their throats, to carry a sidearm and dare them, just dare the sorry sons of bitches to make something out of it.

Coop pulls his feet free of the sand. Without the uniform, of course, he be a dead man. Dead swinging on a rope or tied to a tree and burned or just shot and left lying for the dogs. Or dead soon enough from the way they work you. It come clear to him in the turp camp before he run off. So whatever the Army or old Geronimo or the Spanish or the Chinamen, if that’s where they end up, got to throw at him is nothing. Better a bullet on a battlefield than be scraped by the week and bled by the season.

And when Sergeant Cade step by to see how the latrine is coming, here is Coop pouring sweat, ankle deep in a long, shallow ditch in the sand, smiling. Shoveling and smiling.

As the sun falls Tampa is a dream. The yearning of a war-hungry nation.

Father—

Junior in the shade of the tent, sides pulled up hoping to catch an afternoon Gulf breeze, Merriam pack across his knees to support the paper, voices shouting cadence drifting from every direction. Junior writes with dashing penmanship—

We have encamped at Tampa pending orders for embarkation. It is a hodgepodge of a town, given over to cigar-making and tourism, the former mostly in foreign hands and the latter in the minds of certain as yet unrewarded entrepreneurs. The arrival of our force, some eighteen thousand men in uniform, has no doubt been a huge economic boon, though one finds nothing but complaint in the local (white-owned) newspapers. Nearly one out of four of the fighting men gathered here is colored, and your pride would certainly swell to observe the account we are making for ourselves. My own 25th is in the thick of the training, and our surrounding volunteer units can only gape in wonder at the precision and brio we bring to field maneuvers and review.

Junior has his boots off, risking a sudden call back into action, his feet throbbing—

There are flying columns of “Cuban freedom fighters” clamoring about town in white linen uniforms, brandishing their long machete knives and waving the one-starred flag. A notably underfed and overheated group, I’m afraid, and if their compatriots on the island are no more impressive it explains a great deal about the lack of success they’ve met over their decades of struggle. These aggregations are notable, however, for their inclusive nature, the white insurrectos marching shoulder to shoulder with the sable sons of Maceo. Emancipation came to the island a mere twelve years ago, and it stirs the blood to see these dark warriors accepted as brothers in arms by their erstwhile masters. We hope the performance of our own colored regiments in the coming battle will weigh heavily against the efforts of segregationists to discredit us, and that the call for Negro officers will be met. Whatever honors we win here will be an advantage for our entire race.

The volunteers are a mixed lot, their comportment and training varying, as one would suppose, with their state of origin. The 71st New York share the Heights with us and seem a steady bunch, while the contingent from Georgia have proved less congenial neighbors. They are all “spoiling for a fight” while my fellow regular soldiers seem content to await orders. The “Rough Riders” have arrived with much fanfare, though we have little contact with mounted units. There are of course more horses and mules in their area than troopers, with the attendant sounds and odors, and I see no hope of transporting them all to Cuba in the “mosquito fleet” so far assembled.