John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Alma!” cries Junior when he stomps into the kitchen. “How’s my best girl?”

Early is at the crate and Coop knows it’s his lucky night. A quick peek from the swinging door that leads from the store in the front — nobody here yet he’s got bad blood with — and he steps up to the bar.

“Look what crawled back from the grave!” calls Brunjes, laying him down a cold one in a mug. “Must be the Judgment Day.”

There is a table of young sports in the corner who look over wondering who he is, Early playing it fast and ragged, nodding to him over the keys, three or four women he doesn’t recognize and the usual Harnett Street crowd. Simon Green is there, like always mimicking the sausage-eater he works for.

“ Gott im Himmel! ” he cries when he sees Coop. “ Ist der schwartzer goniff! ”

There is some back-slapping and old jokes then, a few happy to see him and the others with one nervous eye on the door. He almost killed Pharaoh Ballard here one night, or Pharaoh almost killed him, and the police must have come sniffing round more than once after he left town.

“Somebody told me you was on a work gang down South Cahlina,” says Brunjes.

“Still there,” Coop gives him a look. “If you know what’s what.”

Little Bit appears at his elbow.

“Clarence. Gone, but not forgotten.”

“Little Bit. Forgotten, but not gone .”

The old boys laugh at this. A couple of the sports drift over.

“Way I recollect, you owes me fi’ dollars.”

“Damn, must of left it in my other pants.”

More laughter.

“How bout that uniform, brother?” asks one of the young ones, who Coop can’t place. “You was down there fightin?”

“Smack in the middle of it.”

Some of the women are pressing close now. There is a short one in a green dress, little bit of a thing, got her hair in a Indian braid.

“What them Spanish look like?”

“Oh,” says Coop, turning to rest his back against the bar, “mostly they look just like white folks. Dark hair, but white-complected.”

“And they let you shoot em?”

“As many as I could hit.”

The crowd laughs and Brunjes tops his beer off. “On the house tonight, brother.”

Little Bit has stopped looking at him. “Fi’ dollars aint a pit tance.”

You don’t want to take Little Bit too light. Smallish man like that, known to handle a wager, he’s got to back it up with steel.

“I’d of paid you back already, brother, if cir cumstances hadn’t come between us.” A few chuckles. Coop can feel the others, especially the young ones, hoping for a fight. But he’s not in the mood for one yet. “What you say,” and he puts a hand on Little Bit’s shoulder, “we get up a card game later, and the first fi’ dollars you bet comes out of my pocket?”

It isn’t a surrender and it isn’t a holdout, either, and in front of all these eyes Little Bit knows it’s the best he’ll do without killing the man. He tips his little bowler. “I looks forward to it.”

Early switches to a waltz now, but cutting it up with his right hand. After the thudding oompah of the regiment band it brings a smile to Coop’s face.

“Almost forgot what mu sic sound like.”

“But you got a band come with you to the battles.” It’s the young sport that asked about his uniform.

“Yeah, and a mule got a dick.” The Indian-looking gal laughs with the others. “But aint much gonna result from it. Way the military is, everything by the numbers , see, which means right square on the beat.”

“You carry a pistol?” Another of the young ones, more familiar.

“Officers got the sidearm — that’s for shootin snakes and deserters. Fightin men, that’s the sergeants on down, we carry a Krag rifle. Drill a hole in your skull a hundred yards away.”

The boy, cause he is not out from his teens yet, looks once to the door before asking. “Any way a man get one of them without he’s in the Army?”

Coop recognizes him. “You Twyman Wilson’s brother.”

“That’s right.”

“How he is?”

The boy shrugs. “There was a accident at Sprunt’s.” Sprunt owns the cotton press and half of the waterfront. “He passed.”

Coop nods. “Sorry to hear that. What you want a rifle for?”

“Things getting bad.”

“Things always bad.”

“Fire and pitchfork bad,” says Twyman’s brother, and nobody contradicts him. “Man gonna need to protect himself.”

Both Simon and Brunjes look away. Coop thought the blind man was only passing gas, entertaining a customer for the length of a shine.

“You try somebody in one of them volunteer outfits,” he tells the boy, moving away from the counter. “Regular Army aint handin out no rifles.” He takes the hand of the girl in the green dress, Early pushing the waltz tempo a bit, and calls across the room.

“Loosen them cards up, Little Bit! Imonna carry this pretty thing round the floor a couple times and then we play. What’s your name, darlin?”

“Hazel,” she says, not even pretending to be shy.

“Let’s see what you got, young lady.”

Jubal is riding. Just riding. Aint so many colored men in this town got a horse just to ride on its back, not hitched to a damn thing, and sure as hell not a horse like Nubia. He got some Arabian in him along with whatever else, got the blood and the high-stepping pride and when Jubal make him shine there aint a gal in Brooklyn won’t turn her head and stare. There is men put their pay into clothes, and they do fine with the ladies, but a ride —

A skinny man in a blue uniform is leaning up front of his stalls and it is Royal.

Jubal jumps down and ties Nubia off and feels how much of his brother is gone, a rack of bones when he hugs him.

“I told em all,” he beams. “They can’t kill no Royal Scott!”

“They did their best,” says Royal, quiet like always but sounding moodier with his face so thin.

“You home now?”

“One-day leave,” says his brother. “Let us see our people on the way.”

“You been to Mama?”

“That’s next.”

“She gone bust out, man, see you back and in one piece.”

“You moved out.”

“Couldn’t take the smell , man. Them medicines old Minnie brew up—”

Royal laughs. “And this all is yours?”

There is a room over the two stalls, stairs to it on the outside of the building.

“I rents it from Mr. Longbaugh.”

“Mind if a take a look?”

“Be my guest. I just put my ride here in with old Dan.”

“That’s a fine-looking horse, Jubal.”

Jubal can’t stop grinning. “Aint he though?”

Jubal’s room smells fine. He has hung a half-dozen of Mama’s lavender sachets from the low ceiling, cutting the horse odor from below. The bed is narrow but almost level, and there is a pile of clean linen on a chair, which makes Royal smile. Mama still doing his wash. There is a little window, with a view out to Swann Street and Love Alley. He sits on the bed. There are pictures of famous racehorses tacked up on the walls. It could be worse.

Jubal steps in, steps to the little basin to wash his hands.

“I been savin,” he says. “Got my eye on a nice hinny mare, team her up with Dan. Once I can haul the big loads, I make some real money in this town.”

Royal looks at his brother and is suddenly enormously relieved that Jubal has asked him not one thing about Army life. One colored boy they won’t get to kill.

“I need to ask you a favor,” he says. “Bout using this place tonight.”

Jubal’s grin does not change. “This aint who I think.”

“The less you think,” says Royal, knowing she probably won’t come, that he will spend his night of leave staring at pictures of long-dead racehorses, “the better it be for all of us.”