John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

The porter who works the dining car, still awake, comes back to sit across from him, grinning.

“Allus likes to see another man in uniform.”

It is a joke, the porter running his finger down his long row of buttons.

“Yours fits better.”

“You boys was down there?”

Royal nods.

“You in the Nigger Ninth?”

Royal shakes his head. “25th Infantry.”

The porter smiles and lifts his cap. “Yall was in the middle of it then. Regulars.”

“That’s right.”

“You done us proud . Ever time you or the Cavalry boys or the 24th make a move down there it’s all up and down the line.” The porter waves a finger back and forth to indicate the rail they are riding. “This here the colored man’s telephone.”

Royal forces himself to smile. Since he’s been back in the world the white people just look through them like always, even with uniforms on, but everywhere the colored folks stop and gladhand and want to know where they served.

“How far you headed, son?”

“Just to Wilmington,” Royal tells him. “Then we’ll get on something headed west, catch up with our regiment in Arizona.”

“Out to the Territories.”

“Fort Huachuca. Near where Chief Geronimo gave up the warpath.”

“Wa-chew-ka,” the porter sounds it out. “But you too young to be in on them Indian wars.”

Royal nods. “I suppose now we’ll just sit back and watch the jackrabbits run by. Unless the Chinamen get up in arms.”

The porter chuckles. “Young man your age, you seen nearly as much of the world as me. And I been some places. You got people in Wilmington?”

“Yes sir. Born and raised.”

“Got a gal there, I suppose.”

Royal is surprised to feel his heart race at the question. He still gets dizzy if he stands up too quickly, still feels like his insides have been bruised. “I suppose I do,” he answers, glancing over to Junior, snoring softly now by the window.

“She aint around, young war hero won’t have no trouble findin another. If we could change uniforms for one night,” the porter winks, “I be a happy man.”

Alma opens the cellar door to a racket and a swirl of black dust. She shuts it quickly, grabs the house bucket and steps out back to find Wicklow shoveling the morning delivery into the chute.

“Got some of that for me?” she calls, loud enough to be heard over the rattling coal.

Wicklow turns, leans on the wide-bladed shovel and cricks his neck to the side, wincing. The Crosbys’ rooster over on Queen Street is announcing himself, and the backyard is still in shadow.

“Miss Alma,” he says, smiling. “My first ray of sunshine.” He has a sweet tongue, Wicklow, but is never free with his hands like Calvin Hines who brings the ice. Alma always keeps her broom in hand when Calvin comes by.

“How you be this morning, Wick?”

“Sore all over, truth be known.”

“You getting old.”

Wick laughs. “That’s true enough, young lady, but also I been helpin my boy Jubal, got the dray bidness, move Mr. Manly’s press.”

“He leavin town?”

“No, M’am, he only been ast to vacate his office by the white man owns the build ing.”

“What I heard,” she says as Wicklow scoops smallish chunks with his hands to fill the house bucket, “he lucky he still got his head on his shoulders. Though Lord knows what he use it for, talking like that.”

“He didn’t say nothin, Miss Alma, he wrote it. Wrote it out in his newspaper.”

“That’s even worst. You speak out wrong and they come after you for it, you can always tell em folks just misheard what you really said, or even that you was drunk when you said it, act the fool and save your neck. But to print it out in black and white—” Alma shakes her head, lifting an armful of kindling from the pile against the back wall and crossing to add it to the fire already crackling beneath the huge galvanized kettle.

“Wash day again,” Wicklow remarks, watching her hips as she moves.

“Blue Monday.” Boiling the clothes and linens, wringing them out and hanging them up, the endless ironing — on top of all of what she usually does for the Luncefords. “Ever damn time I turn around it come up on me.”

“You got to admit,” the old man continues, “wasn’t nothin he wrote in his article that’s un true .”

Alma doesn’t read the newspaper. She barely has time for a chapter of her love stories at the end of the day, measuring them out so a book will last a month, all through work wondering at what will befall the poor girl next and then finding out by candlelight and falling hard into sleep. But she’s heard about what was written, heard that it had to do with colored men and white women, and if Manly is so smart and educated he ought to know better.

“ True don’t have one little thing to do with it,” she says. She licks her finger and touches it to the kettle — getting there. She tosses a handful of the powdered bluing in. If she’s lucky Miss Jessie won’t lay up in bed too long and she can strip the sheets off. “You know Mrs. Beauchamp, got that big red whatever-it-is growing on the side of her neck?”

“Sits two pews ahead of me in church.”

“Well then, you meet up with her on the steps, no place to look her but right in the face, and she know it’s there and you know it’s there — but do you say ‘Lord, Mrs. B, if that aint growed twice its size since I see you last!’? You do not.”

“That’s just po lite ,” says Wicklow, turning back to the pile of coal. “This here with Mr. Manly not about manners, it’s about prin ciples.”

Alma snorts. “Who tole you that?”

“Mr. Manly. Last night whilst we were hauling all his machinery upstairs over the Love and Charity Hall.”

“Where Doctor have his Lodge meetins.”

Wicklow nods. “That’s the new headquarters of the Wilmington Daily Record . Would you believe ever damn one of them letters they use to print the paper is made of lead ? I’d knowed all that mess was going to the top floor I’d of told Jubal to go chase hisself.”

“Manly help you carry?”

“Him and his brothers. Course Mr. Alexander that’s the editor is the one that look most like a white man. Talk like one too. He wanted to, he could move off somewhere and pass , easy as pie.”

Alma has seen the Manlys out in their carriages, has heard the story of how their grandfather was governor of the state, how the great man set their father, his son, free, even before the War.

“Don’t matter how white he look ,” she says. “People read that paper they see a colored man speakin through it, and a colored man got to have more sense than just shout out whatever little idea fall into his head.”

Wicklow draws himself up to his full height. “A man can’t live thout principles.”

“Well I can live without em,” says Alma, picking up the coal bucket and heading inside. “Specially ones that’s bound to get me lynched.”

Wicklow shovels in silence for a moment after the screen door bangs, frowning and flinging the coal hard into the chute.

“Man laid out the truth ,” he mutters finally. “In black and white.”

Alma feeds coal into the maw of the cooking range, flicks water on the stovetop to see if it’s ready. She has the bacon sliced and the eggs ready to fry for Doctor, who will be out early on his rounds. Jessie and Mrs. Lunceford only take toast and tea before climbing back upstairs to face their corsets, but Doctor is an old farm boy no matter how he works to cover it over, and wants some fuel for the day.

The bacon is sizzling, starting to curl in its fat when someone, probably Wicklow asking about the carriage, knocks at the back door. Alma flips the slices and hurries out. It is Clerow, Hattie Pettigrew’s boy, with a telegram.