John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Get him as far as he’ll go,” says Jacks, “then get your ass back up here. Move!”

They just be in the way, both of them, and there is work left to do.

A captain from the 12th strides past trying to separate his white boys from the 25th. “Form up!” he is calling. “Form companies!” He is walking upright and stiff-legged, feigning disregard for the bullets still chipping away at the stone walls, but the men on the hilltop are too busy to be inspired. The rookie helps his friend up and they stagger away together.

The artillery has been hopeless all day long, the little battery still a half-mile back in the jungle, and if the Spanish send reinforcements over from Santiago the hilltop will be impossible to hold. Jacks curses, then rises and runs, tapping men splayed out on the ground as he goes, calling them to follow. He makes it into the trench on the west side of the fort, facing the village, and a dozen men pile in after.

“We take the blockhouses one at a time,” he tells them, “then go get that fucking church.”

They lift the bodies of the dead Spaniards up then, and add them to the breastworks behind the barbed-wire fence.

The shaking seemed to catch up with Royal, chasing him all the way up the slope and over the wire and the bloody pit and overtaking him only when he was safe and solid against the stone wall of the fort, catching him like a chill hand at the back of his neck and then down through the rest of his body and now only movement will mask it. Royal leads Little Earl back down the hill, passing much of C and D Company still struggling up, sidestepping down and reaching back to support his friend when it gets too steep.

“They got surgeons,” he says. “Surgeons that know all about bullet wounds. They got drugs for the pain and on one of the ships they got the X-ray machine, look right into your bones.”

If Little Earl is reassured he doesn’t say so, keeping his hand pressed hard to his neck. There is blood but it isn’t throbbing out, just keeping his fingers wet, and he stares at a spot level with his eyes as if he can’t look down or at Royal for fear of losing his balance. They move in silence, past more troopers climbing and broken bodies left on the slope and bodies left in the pineapple rows, bodies left in the scrub and suspended awkwardly on the trocha of barbed wire. Royal leads Little Earl back as quickly as he can without dragging him, certain that now that he’s been to the top the ones still shooting from the village will discover he’s no longer dead and will murder him.

Hardaway is back guarding their bedrolls and haversacks behind the treeline.

“We done it!” he says with a gap-toothed smile. “Can’t deny the 25th.”

“Where’s the field hospital?”

“Sposed to be at El Pozo.”

“Where’s that?”

Hardaway just points back into the trees. “Think we was near there two, three days ago. You keep walkin, somebody bound to know.”

Royal finds his gear and pulls the first-aid roll out from it. He folds the arm sling a few times, making a compress.

“Look pretty hot up there,” says Hardaway, watching Royal’s hands. Hardaway is another rookie and feeling sheepish he wasn’t on the hill.

“Hot enough.”

Royal gives the folded cloth to Little Earl to hold against his neck.

The sun is slanting low and the firing from behind more sporadic by the time they find the dressing station. It is only one young doctor’s assistant and a pair of litter bearers with a small supply of bandages. The doctor’s assistant looks at the hole in Little Earl’s neck, blood starting to ooze out again, then scribbles on a red-white-and-blue tag and loops it with copper wire through a buttonhole on his shirt.

“There many more behind you?” he asks.

“Hard to tell. Half of who was on the hill run over to the village. Don’t think we be much help for San Juan.”

“Oh, we took that near two hours ago,” says the taller of the litter bearers. “They shot the hell out of us getting there, but the boys run up and took her.”

The shorter of the litter bearers walks a ways with them to be sure they are headed right. He reads Little Earl’s tag, gives Royal a dark look.

“Don’t give him no water till they say so,” he says. Little Earl seems not to be listening, seems barely to be there at all anymore but keeps following, putting one foot in front of the other. “And don’t be stopping to rest.”

Coop stands in the plaza in front of the church in Caney, looking down on a dead Spanish general. There are only scattered shots popping now, back in the village. The general is a goat-bearded, white-haired man spread out on a stretcher on the ground, shot through the legs and in the head. Some of his hair is stained with blood and stuck to the canvas of the stretcher. Coop nudges the body with his foot.

The village is mostly just palm huts but in the stone and stucco houses there were holdouts, most of them civilians, who had to be burned out and shot. Achille and Too Tall have a group of maybe forty prisoners, fever-looking Spanish soldiers, standing by the church doorway with their hands up on their heads.

“Get over here,” calls Too Tall. “We gone need you.”

“Need me for what?”

“We spose to march these boys back and hand em to the Cubans.”

“If they know where they headed,” Achille adds, cocking an eye, “they try to bolt for sure.”

“You mean if they know where they be headed,” says Too Tall and they both laugh.

In their light blue pinstripes the captured men and boys look like hospital patients in pajamas.

“Why I want to hook up with your detail?” Coop asks.

“Cause come nightfall everbody else gone be digging trenches for the white boys over on San Juan.”

Coop laughs and crosses to join them. “At your service, gennemen.”

It is nearly dark when Royal finds the Santiago — Siboney road. They follow it to the field-hospital tents, sitting in high wild grass between the road and a little brook, three big ones for operations and dispensary, one slightly smaller for wounded officers, then six bivouac tents for enlisted men. These are all full, a hundred men crowded inside each where only sixty should be, and a dozen long rows of wounded lie on the ground outside.

Royal has to grab the shoulders of the orderly trotting by to get his attention.

“I got a wounded man here.”

“You aint the only one.”

“It’s real bad, I think.”

The orderly glances at Little Earl’s tag without looking at his wound, then points to a line of men lying at the base of a cluster of piñon bushes. “Set him down at the end there,” says the orderly. “He’ll get his turn.”

“They any blankets?”

“Not less you brought one.”

Royal pulls Little Earl to the end of the line of waiting wounded. Some of them are moaning and rocking, or weeping quietly, and more sit or lie staring blankly. A few are dead. Little Earl tries to rest on his side but starts to choke and Royal helps him sit up.

“Won’t be long now,” he says to his friend. There are nearly thirty men ahead of them. Some of them have had their shirts or trousers stripped off to uncover their wounds, and as the light goes the temperature is dropping. There seems to be no system to bring water to the waiting wounded or to the hundreds more who have already been through the tents. Royal squats on the guinea grass and realizes he is dizzy himself.

“I’m going for water,” he says, squeezing Little Earl’s arm. “I be right back.”

He passes the open flap of one of the big tents on his way to the brook. A white soldier makes choking noises, writhing on a table as a pair of orderlies work a rubber hose down his throat, blood frothing out the sides of his mouth while a blood-spattered surgeon stands waiting, his eyes closed as if sleeping on his feet.