John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Tampa is a fever dream.

Tampa is a fever dream lying by the fetid Gulf, writhing hot with fear and desire. Camp followers have swarmed the miasmic city to feed upon the soldiers and each night, drawn to light and noise, those soldiers dare each other to be the drunkest, the loudest, the lowest. The pianos are all warped out of tune, the liquor smells of kerosene and the Army is a guest who has stayed overlong. Tampa wishes he would leave but can’t help selling one more cocoanut, one more drink. And there are guns everywhere, guns are the point of it, guns and flags and men marching or staggering in groups and the hard slap of a black man in uniform a reminder that there is a price for this boon, this bonanza of war, an insult that must be swallowed to keep the riches flowing. Tampa is a cackling reverie, flushing hot in fevered temples, teetering on a point of chance—

Finally, Coop is the shooter. It’s the first time he’s held the dice all night and up to now he’s just nibbled around the edges of the table, for it is a table and not a poncho behind a tent or chalk marks on a floor, throwing the nickel minimum in on hopping bets with long odds and the house has taken his nickels. The house used to be a butcher shop from the hooks on the ceiling and the smell of it, with a half-dozen games working and Army-issue tin cups, a boxcar-load of them seems to have been stolen and spread around Tampa, that you rap on the pine three times when it’s time for a refill. Coop puts his half-full cup down to press the dice between his palms.

“These bones been waitin for a man knows how to treat em,” he says, closing his eyes and rubbing the cubes. “They feelin awful cold.”

“What you play?” The boxman is a Chink in a vest and bowler hat. A light brown boy with a harelip is ragging a tinny little piano at the rear where the heavy breakdown used to happen, blood stains mottling the wall beside him.

“No pass, what you think? Lay a dollar down, Willie.” Willie always handles his money when he is rolling. Making change interrupts the flow.

“Train leaving the station,” says Coop, rattling the dice next to his ear now. “You boys better jump on board.”

Some of the boys he knows and some he doesn’t get on it while he heats them up and then Too Tall shouts “Come out, brother!” and he whips them down on the felt. It really is felt, too, recently razored off a billiards table from the marks on it, and an easy eight bounces off the rail.

“No pass,” says the Chink with the bowler hat. “Point is eight.”

Coop will play whatever is running but he likes craps the best. Straight poker is slow, feels like you’re slaving at the mercy of all that royalty on the cards, and roulette you can’t ever hold nothing in your hand, but craps is ever-shifting, like trying to catch fish in a river while bouncing through its rapids. And he’s always been good with numbers.

“What you paying for hard-ways?” he asks as he scoops the dice up.

“Nine to one.” Jerome, who is black as a wood stove and twice as wide, is dealing and wielding a bamboo cane for a stick at the same time. “But for a sportin man like yourself we make it ten.”

Coop smiles. “Put me down five, Willie.” Cheers and whistles from the boys. “Gone roll me a hard eight.”

The floor man is a tough-looking cracker who sits on a high stool with a shotgun across his knees. Coop has never seen a white man shoot craps, one of the things he likes about it, but has no doubt that’s who owns the bank here. Willie puts the cash on the layout.

Coop rolls a five, and then a ten. Fagen, a big old local boy from the Scrub who soldiers with the 24th, leads a few men over from the other games. Coop feels their heat around him, feels snug and happy in the smoke and noise and music, gulps whiskey and bangs for more. He knows the secret and they don’t. He rolls a four.

“The man is hot !” Willie calls out. “Keep back or you catch fire off him.”

Yes, there is luck, he knows, but it smiles on nobody. The rain is going to fall or not fall whether you put a crop under it or not, enough people scratch for gold someone is likely to find it, and you can be the slickest thief in the Carolinas but a day will come when you’re in the wrong place with the wrong mule.

“Show me a five, keep it alive,” he chants and snaps them down on the table and yes, it is a five but it could have been anything. He starts to laugh.

“He got the pow er,” calls out Rufus Briscoe from A Company, who is sweating the way he does when thoroughly drunk. “He got the touch.” And doubles his bet on the point.

Most of them are making deals with God, but Coop knows better. He knows the secret. “ Oh Jesus, if You love me slip me a queen on the draw .” Jesus don’t play that game — Jesus is the house and the house always wins. The black come up five times in a row it’s just as likely to come up a sixth as to go back to red. Company of men go running at a lot of people shooting a lot of bullets and some number of them, good soldier or bad, is going to get killed. That’s the odds Jesus will give you. You have to forget about winning and just be happy to hold the dice for a while.

Coop hurls them down and the twin fours come up. There is a cheer and men slapping him on the back, half the room following his game now, and even fat Jerome pretends to smile.

“The Lady didn’t just smile at this boy,” says Fagen when the shouting settles down. “She done sat on his face.”

Coop nods and Willie pockets his winnings. He rolls an eagle to the Chink. There are shots then, just outside the door.

“Bout time the show got started,” says Coop before he rolls boxcars and craps out.

Tampa is a fever dream.

When they step out of the arcade there are men with guns and a woman screaming and a child held upside down. It is hard for Royal to focus at first, he’s been looking at the views in the little machine, a train coming straight at him but contained on the rectangle and if he looked away it wasn’t there. But this is all around him on the street and won’t go away, a black woman screaming and cursing as the white boys, Ohio Vols, laugh and hold her back and another down the street holds the child, who is screaming too but with an animal terror, swinging by his ankles gripped in another soldier’s hand, the man holding him out like a rabbit just killed, a shell on a leather thong dangling down from the boy’s neck, and then Junior grabbing Royal’s arm, Watch out he’s saying and then the shot, coming from behind him. Yet another Vol, feet spread apart but body swaying with liquor, one eye closed as he aims his Colt at the swinging shell.

“You don’t hold that pickaninny still,” he calls, “Imonna plonk him for sure.”

The man fires again and then the street seems to brighten under the gas lamps, colors flaring as Royal steps toward the one with the Colt, Junior dragging on him and the woman screaming “God damn you! God damn you to hell!”

But before Royal can reach him the Vol with the Colt grunts and collapses on one knee, a dark stain blooming on the man’s light blue trousers just below the hip. He looks around, stupid with drink, sees Royal and raises his pistol but his balance is all gone and he pitches sideways to the street. More shooting then and there are others, Coop is one of them, running out from a raw-pine building across from the arcade, many of them firing and it’s then Royal realizes he left his pistol in camp. Junior said it would be best, but Junior is now shouting and waving to get off the street, dammit, and a blue shock cracking behind his ear and the pavement comes up fast to thump him hard. There are night-pass boots in his face, stomping, he can smell the wet polish, and then he’s rolled under falling bodies.