John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I was gonna eat them birds,” said Big Ten, watching them fly. “Now we stuck with fishee ricee.”

The Chinamen and Japs who serve as the crew of the transport always have something you can buy to eat, a nickel here, a nickel there, even doughnuts if you catch them at the right time, but they won’t take Army grub in trade. The yellow men were left on board, helping the stevedores load coal into the ship, when the regiment marched away.

“Yo, Chief!” calls Corporal Grissom down the table. “Introduce me to your sister.”

There have been a lot of them telling Big Ten he looks just like the Kanakas and he takes it like a sport. He turns to the long-haired girl who is serving and speaks some of his lingo at her, but she just covers her face and giggles. There are dozens of the Kanaka girls serving in their bright shifts with flowers in their hair, and white women too, white women in clean white dresses with high collars and little straw hats moving around the long tables under the banyan trees with platters of food and urns of coffee.

“I think she’s a Princess,” says Big Ten. “They aint spose to talk with commoners.”

Corporal Grissom points to the Palace, just visible through the trees. “They say they got the Queen shut up in there. Once the Americans bumped her off the throne she hooked up with some bunch that wanted to put her back on it, so they stuck her under house arrest.”

“Tough duty. Lookit that place.”

“She should of behaved herself.”

“If this was my island,” says Big Ten, looking around, “I’d sure as hell want to get it back. In fact, I think I better volunteer to be on her guard detail, make sure she don’t bust out and cause any more ruckus.”

They all agree that duty here would be paradise, even without women serving you a feast every day. There is a kind of orchestra playing for them while they eat, natives wearing bright-colored shirts and ropes of flowers around their necks and some of the instruments Hod has never heard before. Suddenly it is their table’s turn to give back the compliment and they stand to sing On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away only with the words changed for their section of the country—

Oer my Colorado Rockies flies the eagle

Down the slopes flow rushing rivers clear and cool

Oftentimes my thoughts revert to scenes of childhood

Where I single-jacked for silver, Nature’s school

But one thing there is missing in the picture

Without her face it seems so incomplete

On the ship it is a whore they sing of, each verse nastier than the next, but this is polite company, with officers hovering and white ladies present—

I long to see my mother in the doorway

Of our cabin years ago, her boy to greet

Big Ten has a strong bass voice and can harmonize with anybody. Hod sings along, letting the other voices carry his, wishing he could feel a part of this like he did on the run with the Butte contingent of the Commonweal Army. But all he feels is that he’s hiding from something, that his life is not real, and being here in this dreamland, pleasant as it is, doesn’t help any. When the China was towed up to the wharf there were little Kanaka boys and girls swimming all around the hull who smiled and shouted and dove down under to grab for pennies the soldiers threw overboard. That’s me , Hod thought as he and Big Ten, throwing nothing, watched them splash and shout. That’s my whole damn life . Scrambling for pennies to entertain the folks up high—

Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight in Colorado

From saloons there comes the sound of men at play

Oer the glory holes the caution lights are gleaming

In my sweet Colorado, far away!

“So the Philippines is just like this, right?” says Private Neely when they have received their applause and are allowed to sit down and gorge themselves again.

There has been a lot of talk during the long, stomach-heaving days at sea as to where exactly the islands are and what the nature of the people on them is.

“They’re just like Cuba and Porto Rico,” insists Corporal Grissom, who has never been to either of those places, “only farther away.”

“It’s part of China,” says Private Falconer, “only the Papists got there before the other religions.”

“You sit under a tree,” says Sergeant LaDuke, “and take a nap, and when you wake up your lunch has dropped down into your lap.”

Runt, before they booted him out for being too small and too young, showed them the islands on a map he got hold of somewheres.

“Jesus, lookit em all,” said Neely, impressed. “We got to liberate every one of those?”

“We just wrap up the big one here,” said Runt, poking his finger onto an island called Luzon, “and the rest of em tip over like dominoes.”

Manigault strolls by them, wearing a white duck uniform and white canvas shoes like the navy officers.

“Dig in, fellows,” he says jauntily. “This will have to last you quite a while.”

“We been hearing plenty talk here, Lieutenant,” says Corporal Grissom. “There was some sailors at the wharf who see everything that comes on the wire, and their scut is that after what Dewey done to the Spanish fleet it’ll be over before we even get there.”

Manigault gives him a pitying smile, then nods toward an enormous roast pig being carried past on a litter by two barefoot Kanaka men.

“There is no feast,” he says, “without a slaughter.”

Halfway home on the Comanche , Royal is strong enough to climb up to the steamer’s aft deck and see the dolphins. The creatures, sometimes three, sometimes four, power along in their wake then leap again and again, sleek and glistening, to the cheers of the men. It is the best he has felt since Chickamauga.

There is a full band on one of the battleships plowing alongside the returning fleet, and several times a day the thump of bass drums is heard across the water, military airs and the new Sousa marches pounding out to cheer their passage. Royal is not stirred. He grips the aft rail tightly, still weak at the knees, and thinks of what a small thing his death would have been. His mother would have mourned him, and his brother Jubal, and his uncle Wicklow and Junior, for a while. They turned to waste so quickly, the bodies of the dead. A white man with a clipboard came through the sick tent, stopping by the cots of the ones who were thought to be dying.

“Next of kin?” he asked Royal.

“Jessie Lunceford.”

Her name came without thought, and when it was out it seemed right. To be mourned by Jessie Lunceford would mean you were someone in the world. You were not easily replaced. The Luncefords kept a horse and carriage, they lived in a house with white folks on either side of them. They were people the world looked at, wondered about, tried to be like.

“Relation?” asked the man with the clipboard.

“We’re going to be married,” Royal answered.

He is no longer delirious, or dying. But he will make it happen.

The Judge confronts him halfway into the street, brandishing a newspaper.

“Have you seen this?”

It’s hard for MacRae to make out anything on the paper with the Judge still waving it. “What is it?”

“It’s today’s Record , is what it is, and it is the most vicious slander.”

“I’m not in the habit of reading the colored sheet, Judge.” MacRae pulls his watch from his vest, glances at it. There’s a meeting with the fellows across the street in Bellamy’s building and he’s late already.

“Nor am I. But when it was brought to my attention—” the Judge slaps the rolled newspaper hard against his open palm. “Measures must be taken!”