John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

This is what they’ve come for, and the reaction is enormous. Sally is swept up by the excitement of it, standing and applauding with the others. But Tillman is in no hurry, and draws back.

“Now I’ve been told,” he says, “that your numbers up here come out to two white men for every black.” He makes a puzzled face, holds his arms out at his sides. “Now if that is true, what, short of idiocy, has kept you people from prevailing over negro domination?”

An uneasy laughter follows this. The Judge notices that Colonel Waddell, who he had not seen on the train, is but two rows below them, chuckling and shaking his head.

“This is not meant as an insult, for I am your guest. But I have been invited here as a man of some experience in these matters, a surgeon, if you will, and as such I must not spare the knife when it needs be employed. Your politicians have betrayed you, they have delivered you into the tender mercies of the negro party for their own profit and glorification, and you are seeing the fruits of that irresponsibility, of that treason, in the increasing boldness of those who would put big ideas in small minds.”

Tillman looks to the Float of Purity below him to the right, extending a hand to indicate the ladies, then swinging it toward the audience before him, seeming to look directly at Sally. “I can’t help noticing,” he says, “how many very beautiful girls we have among us today. They are our pride, they are our greatest treasure.”

Yes, thinks the Judge, this is it. This is it exactly.

“And every one of these fine young Christian ladies,” Tillman continues, voice rising in power, “lives in constant peril of losing her most precious possession!” He slams both fists down on the podium. “Why don’t you people get your damn niggers under control ?”

And if any had been present they certainly would have been torn apart, with bare hands if need be, such is the vehemence of the reaction. Sally seems bemused, looking around her, taking the curses and protestations as a compliment. Which in a way it is. What do we fight for, thinks the Judge, if not the virtue of our women?

“I have three daughters,” says Tillman when it is quiet enough to be heard, sadness and reflection creeping into his voice, “but so help me God I had rather find any one of them killed by a tiger or a bear and gather up her bones and bury them, conscious that she had died in her purity, than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her maidenhood by some black fiend!”

Again the Judge marvels at his daughter’s powers of concentration as men all about forget themselves and curse at the top of their lungs. It is the Southern woman’s great ability to shape reality by recognizing the existence of only those things they wish to, to smooth a rough or awkward moment with a pleasant phrase, to remain pure in the most compromised of situations. His wife, may she rest in peace, was a nonpareil of the breed, in command of any social situation, able to float above the unpleasant, able to disengage herself from — from everything. Sally has inherited much of this, but there is a warmth in her, a womanliness—

Judge Manigault looks at his daughter and Tillman’s image, a sooty paw on her pellucid, ivory skin covered with the finest golden down, overwhelms him to the point of nausea, his hands curling into fists. He knows that much of it is buncombe, an orator’s trick, but the diamond-hard kernel of it is undeniable. Their women will not be dishonored.

“From this day forth,” cries the Senator, “let the enemy live in terror of the slumbering giant he has awakened! The Anglo-Saxon will not be ruled! I don’t care if you been a Populist, Democrat, Fusionist — there must be only one political party in the great state of North Carolina, and that is the White Man’s Party!”

The Red Shirts wave their fists, the maidens on the float wave their hats, the White Government Unionists screech and stomp, flasks of whiskey passing from hand to hand. The Judge holds on to Sally’s arm and to the rail as the grandstand shakes, men pounding the boards with their booted feet. The old Confederate battle flag is waved atop a dozen poles. The rabble have been roused, the fuse lit for an explosion that will rock the state. The Judge decides that they will return on the train after the picnic, though they had planned to stay over at the hotel.

Tonight, he is certain, Fayetteville will not be a safe place for a young lady.

The moon is bright and high in the night sky by the time Royal stumbles back to the 25th.

They regroup, those not dead or wounded, in the mango grove to reclaim their blanket rolls and haversacks. The order comes to take the road back to El Pozo. Trudging through the dark jungle, too tired to talk, unsure if the day has been victory or defeat, Royal surrenders himself to the sight of Junior’s back in front of him and the mindless rhythm of one step after another. In the middle of the night they are allowed to stop and sleep next to the La Cruz plantation house, lying on their gear with their hands on their rifles.

Royal dreams of bullets.

A horizontal hail of bullets, singing down from the top of the endless slope in deadly sheets, no hiding from them, no cease in their nightmare waspwhine swarming till Kid Mabley blows him awake an hour before sunrise.

They are ordered to move to a ridge overlooking Santiago under light fire, intermittent pops and the occasional cry, a man from Company C catching one that smashes the bone of his elbow, his forearm hanging useless. Some of the red-tile roofs below them show damage from artillery. Black smoke rolls up from a fire. Only Cooper seems serious about hitting the few uniformed Spaniards moving behind the breastworks.

“Them I didn’t get yesterday, Imonna get em today,” he says, up on the firing step in the trench some other outfit has left them, peering over his Krag. “Counted a dozen I’m sure is dead and a couple I knows I winged em.”

“Watch out for them truce flags,” says Willie Mills. “You pop one whilst they under that, Sergeant Jacks nail your ass to the shithouse door.”

“White flag only last till I hear a shot comin our way,” Cooper tells him, squinting to aim at a spot where he’s seen movement. “Then all bets is off .”

There is thunder from the bay in the afternoon, the men wondering if the counterattack has begun, if the Spanish reinforcements have come with artillery. It lasts less than an hour, then stops as suddenly as it began.

By dusk Cooper’s count is up to seventeen despite the white flags hustled back and forth and Royal has identified three different kinds of lice living on his body. The regiment is marched back down to the base of the ridge and told to hack a new trench from the hard ground. They were given three days’ rations before the attack and there is nothing left to eat. They dig through the night.

“What they got us down here doin nigger work for,” grumbles Cooper, “when they Spanish left to kill?”

Royal’s hands are bleeding, his bowels starting to twist. The Captain has them pile the breastworks on the rear side, as if they might be attacked from behind.

“You don’t eat nothin,” says Willie as they finally lay out their gear to sleep in the open again, “you starts to shit your body out. Keep this up and we won’t be nothin left but eyes and assholes.”

In the morning, refugees from Santiago appear on the road that cuts through their trench line. Hundreds of them, hungry-looking and scared, old men, women and children, even a few dogs skulking along nervously at the edges of the sorry stream, casting a suspicious eye on the watching soldiers.