John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I catches the one who took em,” he repeats, over and over, “I cut him to the bone .”

There is a different kind of time inside the sick tent, fever-time, each man in his separate sticky hell. It keeps raining, rivulets, then streams running under the tent edges and cutting away the ground beneath their cots. Royal finds himself tilting, feet higher than his head, and no one comes to set him level again. The delirious man is shouted at, told to shut up, threatened, but none of them lying there has the strength to get up and strangle him.

When he is conscious enough to sustain a thought, Royal realizes that all of it — the drumthumping of recruitment, the long training, the weapons and uniforms, the soul-wearying marches, the waiting in vomit-sloshing ship holds for the bilious, ocean-tossed transport of their blue horde to this steaming island, the flags and the stirring horns and the frank judgment in his comrades’ eyes pushing him forward, willingly if not eagerly, one foot in front of the other, obeying the order of the moment — are just parts of an intricate, implacable process meant to bring a sharp-nosed, shrieking bit of metal and his own forehead to the same spot at the same instant.

But the machine has failed somehow, too many moving parts, too much room for error, and so he lies here with rotting bowels waiting to feed the sweet-smelling, poisonous green jungle that grows and decays around him.

Royal is swept by waves of fever. The heat generates inside him then flashes through his body, a shimmering liquid heat beneath his skin cooking out in fever-sweat, his clothes sodden with it, heat concentrating as it rises to a place behind his eyes, brain boiling, images flashing, images first of battle, of the angry whine of bullets sizzling by, of metal ripping through flesh, but then as the days pass (if they are days and not only waves of clarity and unconsciousness) the images soften and swoon and there are times that Jessie comes to him, Jessie in a way he’s never dared to imagine her, loose and naked and steaming amid the hot green jungle plants, Jessie smiling, her tongue impossibly red, her breasts oozing sticky white pulp that drops, spat , on the broad green blades of the foliage below, her skin slick and oozing like the fleshy succulent plants and hot and wet and her sex a purple orchid red at the pistils yielding hot and wet and fleshy to embrace him, tightening in a sweet hot grip around him, squeezing, constricting, pulsing hot until he bursts and she is gone, his uniform cold and wet and heavy as a shroud on his trembling body.

The chills start then, shimmering through bone-aching limbs, pulsating Northern Lights of sensation that flutter, icy and electric, clear through him and he understands that he is dying despite Junior talking somewhere close You’re o.k. you’ll be fine don’t worry and piling on blankets — where did he find blankets? — that press on Royal but bring no relief from the icy wind that blows in his blood. And sometimes, suddenly, a patch of smooth water after the chilling rapids, Royal vaguely conscious and aware of sounds, a snatch of voices from the living outside the tent, the ones who can still prop themselves up at their posts and shiver under the searing noon sky, aware of where he is and who he is, aware of bright light strained through dirty white canvas overhead and mosquitoes whining by his ears and dying men groaning and Junior there again, giving him a drink from his cool metal cup and Royal hasn’t the strength left to lift his own head, then, slipping back down, flushing hot with fever as he is swept under another wave, lost to another steaming nightmare.

Days pass in waves of heat and chill.

Rain drills the tent canvas at night, stormwater cutting a deeper furrow below the cot, somebody weeping, weeping.

And Royal is a sidelong bulge of panic in a horse’s eye.

The horse is churning without direction in a hot, acid sea, snorting saltwater after each new wave slaps its upstretched head, nostrils barely above the surface, legs pedaling desperately, hooves seeking solid ground and finding none, not lathered despite the effort but huffing and pedaling in a lather of ocean, slapping waves incessant and blocking sight on every side, the powerful forelegs beginning to tire, saltwater rushing into the nose and down the long gorge and still it struggles, frantic, without the sense to surrender to liquid, a machine of slamming heart and burning muscle torn from its mooring but powering forward nonetheless, no thought, no plan in the beast’s mind only a shrill unwavering note of fear—

!

!

!

Royal is a sidelong bulge of panic in a horse’s eye.

If it was me, thinks something just a little removed from what used to be his conscious mind (not a thought, really, or a voice, just a knowledge that is separate from his body), if it was me and not this thrashing animal I would give up, give in, let the water fold over but they can’t see ahead, horses, eyes set off on each side of the great head, they can’t see what’s straight in front of them, can’t understand that there is no safe harbor to swim to, that the kicking and huffing and bulging out of eyes is a waste. When the dying man, Royal, saw something like this there were dozens of them, horses and mules churning the sea into a lather with their fear and their pedaling legs and a few of the last ones saved, that’s right, saved when a bugler already on shore played Boots and Saddles and they obeyed the order of the moment, unthinking like good soldiers and swam to the shore that led to the pathway that led through the poisonous jungle to the steep murderous slope where the angry waspwhine bullets waited to burn through them and carry their parts away. But that’s over now, and he’s not needed anymore, different fevered men crouch atop the hill, and he is free to give in, to accept the warm caressing water if he was Royal still and not the sidelong bulge in a horse’s eye, was not thoughtless panic and thrashing and here it comes, a big one, more than a wave a mighty lathering swell rising up and over, blotting out the sky, and the nostrils swept under and the powerful forelegs spasm, barrel chest pressed in a vice, lungs flushed with acid saltwater, no air, no air, no air, till the machine jolts, wrenching his throat open with a crying gasp and wheezing, dragging the hothouse sick-tent air into his lungs, sopping wet and cold now lying on solid ground with the taste of brine in his mouth.

“What happened?”

Junior is standing over him. “Fever broke.” Junior is hollow-eyed, un-shaven. He holds himself upright leaning on his rifle.

“You look like hell, Junior.”

“You want to see hell,” says Junior, smiling a gaunt, death’s-head smile, “I’ll get you a mirror.”

“No calls,” says Royal. Something that has been gnawing at the edge of his consciousness, a lack, something missing in the air. “No reveille.”

“Kid Mabley’s in the other tent, almost as bad as you. And none of the others got the wind left to blow.”

Royal shifts his weight slightly and feels the pool of sweat beneath his back and buttocks. He is lying on a cot, beneath a tent, and knows now that he’s not going to drown. But the rest of it is distant, unformed.

If there’s no bugle, he wonders, how do we know which way is the shore?

Father—

Junior off on water detail, writing hidden behind a tree so the others won’t know he has paper. His hand trembling, paper propped on an empty canteen on his thigh. Something dead is nearby, buzzards wheeling overhead.

You have no doubt read reports by now of the gallant show made by our force at El Caney and the San Juan Heights. It was, from a military point of view, an inelegant and possibly ill-advised assault, though the results appear to be much more auspicious than expected. The Spaniards put up a desperate fight, and any doubts about their valor on the battlefield have been put to rest. Santiago, and possibly the war, have been won at the cost of much precious American blood, and certain notables with political aspirations are already elbowing their way into position to take full credit. We have not received any papers since our arrival, and thus I have no way to know if the role played by our colored troops has received adequate attention. The 24th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry were instrumental in the capture of the San Juan Heights, while my own 25th led the last desperate dash to take the fortifications at El Caney. The sons of Ham have made quite a military record for themselves here, and I can only hope that this will be justly recognized and celebrated throughout our homeland.