A Moment in the Sun (129 page)

“You have to take care of them, Aaron,” she said on the last day. “They have no one else in this terrible place.”

The baby, against all his expectations, is thriving. The human organism, that can be so fragile, that contains an organ capable of exploding itself, can also prove indestructible under the most inauspicious conditions. And Jessie, who has become a mystery to him, barely speaking these days, is now a toiler, the sort of woman they used to employ to keep the house clean. After this is ended, the phrases uttered, the earth piled over, it will only be him and Jessie and the baby in the miserable rooms across the river, across the island, in a building that looks like a tomb.

His wife is dead of a heavy heart and he cannot bear to live so far away from her.

Jubal stays at the edge. The turnout is not so bad when you think about how far it is from home, Reverend Endicott come up from where he’s staying in Philadelphia to say the words and Felix Birdsong there, and Dr. Mask and Mrs. Knights and Ned Motherwell who used to work at Sprunt’s and Dr. Lunceford up front with Jessie and what folks are sposed to think is Dorsey Love’s baby. It is nice to see some faces he knows here in the City, but Jubal stays at the edge because he didn’t know Mrs. Lunceford so well, just Yes M’am, thank you M’am delivering goods to their big house and because of how it went with Jessie and Royal.

It is a middling-sized cemetery, not nearly so pretty as the Oak Grove in Wilmington, but there are some old dates on the stones in the colored section. People been resting here for a long time. It brings Mama to mind, and Royal, who nobody has heard from for so long.

“
As I pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
,” says Reverend Endicott, “
I shall fear no evil—
”

Jubal wonders how he would do, passing through the Valley of Death like his brother done in Cuba, where you don’t know is it you they gone to kill or the man next to you and it’s not for the moving pictures. The closest he ever come was the riot and there it was just busting out all around you with no sense to it and nobody expecting you to act brave.
If we had guns
, all the men said afterward, but the ones who did have guns ended up shot dead and sunk to the bottom of the Cape Fear River.

The Reverend finishes his words and then Miss Alma who used to work for the Luncefords steps out to sing.

Even though he stands back at the edge Jubal can see tears shining on her cheeks, all dressed in black and singing like to pull your heart out—

Just a closer walk with Thee

Grant it Jesus is my plea

Daily walking close to Thee

Let it be, dear Lord, let it be—

He has always admired Miss Alma, love the way she smile, how she carry herself, but never known she had a voice like this—

When my worldly life is oer

Time will be for me no more

Something melts in Jubal and he wants to cry for all of them—Mrs. Lunceford and the Doctor and Jessie and poor Junior buried so far across the ocean and Royal lost in the Valley of the Shadow and all of them wandering here in what the Jamaica man who hollers on the corner call Babylon, all of them run out from their homes and their lives and lost in this City—

Guide me safely, safely oer

To Thy shore, Thy kingdom

To Thy shore

What kind of woman carry a voice like that in her? She is tall and handsome and wide-shouldered and Jubal didn’t even know she come up here like the rest till now. Miss Alma ends the song and it is quiet but for the rolling of the carriage wheels over on Bushwick Avenue, never gets all the way quiet in the City, even out here. Dr. Lunceford drops a handful of dirt in the hole and then Jessie, who is older now but still look like an angel cut in butter, does the same and the people start away. If this was home it would be a hundred or more to pay their respects, but up here Jubal only counts nine and then him who maybe doesn’t even belong there.

Dr. Lunceford carries himself heavy when he step by. He set Jubal’s arm back when he break it falling off Jingles and was as polite with Mama as if she was a white lady.

“
That is a man of
sta
ture
,” Mama would always say when his doctor buggy pass by. Only he don’t appear so high right now, hair gone to gray, lost his wife and son one right after the other.

Jessie comes past next with the baby in her arms and if she sees him she doesn’t let on. It is a girl baby, not enough hair yet to put a twist in. Jubal nods to the ones he knows and to the Reverend and waits for Miss Alma, who is lingering, reading off the headstones.

“Miss Alma?”

She smiles just a little bit. “Jubal Scott.”

“Yes, M’am.” He nods after the mourners. “You still doin for the Lunce-fords?”

“They can’t keep nobody now. Doctor lost everything he had.”

“He have some money if they sell that house.”

“They took the house.”

“How they do that?”

Miss Alma shakes her head like he is a fool. “Same way they took the city. How you think?”

He frowns and falls into step beside her, still carrying his hat.

“How you keepin, then?”

“I got on with some Jewish people, mind their little boys. Ira and Reuben. They had a German girl, but she gone moody and set their place on fire.”

“You a nursemaid.”

“They too old for nursing.”

“Jewish people.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I aint seen no horns, if that’s what you wonderin.”

He laughs. “May I offer you a ride, Miss Alma? I got a wagon.”

She looks him over. She is maybe five, six years older than him, and nearly a inch taller. “What you haul in it?”

“Cameras,” he says. Mr. Harry give it to him to have the springs changed out but the shop don’t open till Monday. “For the moving pictures.”

Miss Alma laughs. Her laugh is just as good as her singing. “You always been a lucky one. Jubal Scott fall in the creek, he come out with a catfish in both pockets.”

“You member Mr. Harry Manigault? Mr. Harry is who I’m working for.”

She look like she just swallow something bad. “That other one aint up here, is he?”

“No, M’am. Mr. Harry say he went over fightin Filipinos, just like my brother, and now he gone missin.”

She is still frowning. “Well let him
stay
missin.”

She stops to ponder the writing on the side of the panel wagon, looking struck by it. “Cameras, huh. What they take pictures of?”

“Mostly people act out stories and they take pictures of that.”

She nods. “I heard of it, but I aint never seen one.”

“Maybe I take you to see it sometime. They put the stories up and then there’s singing and dancing and whatnot.”

Miss Alma looks the wagon over like she doesn’t know if it’s safe to get on it. “You carry a lot of gals around on this?”

“No, M’am,” he says. “You the first one I ast.”

She smiles at him then—Lord, that smile—and he unties Hooker and climbs quick into the seat and pulls her up after. People walk by and stare at the writing on the panel and he gathers the reins and the horse’s ears go up.

“That up there is Hooker,” he says, pointing. “She been through a lot, but she got plenty good years left.”

“Her and me both,” says Miss Alma Moultrie.

AMBUSH

Royal is loaded with the rest of the food, with sticks for the fire, with the cookpot and ground mats and the empty Winchester of Joselito, who has come up lame, when they are surrounded by the other band. He counts about thirty of them, just as hungry-looking as his own outfit, many of them stepping close to look him over. He puts only the cookpot down, meeting their stares evenly as the Teniente palavers with the head man, who is staring at him suspiciously. It isn’t an argument exactly, but the Teniente is tight and frowning when he comes back to talk to Royal.

“I told them you are with us. If I don’t say this they will take you as a prisoner with the others.”

“Others.”

“Act as if you are not afraid.”

The new band escorts them up a rocky, zigzag trail to the saddle of the mountain. They’ve seen
yanquis
patrolling the area, says the Teniente, and an ambush is planned.

There are three American prisoners in the camp.

Two of them are Colorado Volunteers in uniform, a lieutenant and a private, and the other a man in civilian clothes, sitting with their hands tied, backs to the trunk of a stunted acacia tree, with a single rope around their necks that holds them tight to it. They look even more starved than the rebels, and the private is only half-conscious, eyes swimming.

“Oh, Jesus,” says the lieutenant when Royal passes, “it’s
him
. It’s Fagen, come to murder us.”

They are allowed to unload and start a cookfire, the rebels around them watching Nilda as she moves. There is no joking. Royal’s legs are knotted from the climb, his back sore. The Teniente squats beside the head man, who is taller than most of them and bearded, some kind of a Spanish mix, scratching in the dirt with a stick. Bayani steps by Royal on his way to join them, catching his eye and putting a finger to his lips.

There is nothing he can do for the prisoners. He is in his underwear shirt, his uniform blouse sewed up by Nilda to make a carrying pack, the arms serving as straps, and he hasn’t shaved or had his hair cut since the river. Look like some nigger gone wild, he thinks as he steals a look over to the hostages. The private’s head is lolling, rope cutting into his neck.

“They want us to join the ambush with them in an hour,” says the Teniente when he returns. “You will have to attend.”

“What they gonna do with those three?”

“Perhaps they will able to trade them for some of our own people,” he says. He doesn’t sound hopeful about it.

The new band has not been resupplied for a week, so Royal’s bunch shares their food—handfuls of corn, the sweet-potato-looking thing they dug up on the way, some bananas. There is not much for anybody once it is all divvied out. The prisoners are not fed. Nilda sits by Royal while they eat, which she has never done before. A couple times she has done for the chigger bites on his legs without him asking, spitting tobacco juice on them and rubbing it in, and the welts have gone down some. There is no taste to the food, but it is gone quickly and then they are preparing for battle.

The Filipinos have rituals. Some kneel and pray and make a cross—head, heart, and shoulders—with their right hand. Others of them have charms they wear around their necks or wrists or put in their hats or in their mouths and some do the kind of witchy business his mother used to, like they’re putting some kind of spell on their rifles and bolos.

The Teniente gives him Fulanito’s Mauser and its one round. The boy sits sulking by the dying cookfire.

“They’ll be watching you.”

“They can watch all they want,” says Royal. “I aint shootin nobody.”

The men from Teniente’s band, Bayani, Kalaw, Legaspi, Pelaez, Ontoy, El Guapo, Puyat, and Katapang, seem to take no notice of him as he joins them filing back down the mountain. They walk for nearly an hour, silent, then deploy in the pass at the bottom, some in the sharp rocks jumbled at the base of the slope and some in the trees a bit ahead and on the other side where the pass makes a bend, offset so they don’t shoot into each other when the smoker begins. They are supposed to wait for the head man, whose name is Gallego, to fire before they open up on whoever walks into the trap.

If it is the 25th or one of the other colored outfits he supposes he will have to try to switch sides. If it is white soldiers he doesn’t know. There are a couple of Gallego’s rebels in the rocks just above and behind him and when he looks back one has him sighted.

It is hot again and the shade is on the other side of Royal’s boulder. The one round for the Mauser is still in his pocket. He tries to work his way into a position where nothing is digging into him, then closes his eyes.

The first gunshot wakes him. Regulars, white men, one hit and writhing on the ground and the others forming up, kneeling or flopping down in a rectangle to return fire. Royal stands and works the bolt a couple times, pretending to shoot, and hears one of them shout “Get the nigger!” before he ducks and the rocks before him are blasted into chips by a concentrated volley. The firing is wild on all sides then and Royal keeps his head down till he hears whooping and looks out to see the white boys charge the woods, shooting as they run, and take the position in a moment. The two sides, dug in, trade shots and insults for a while, the engagement hot at first and then cooling down to an on-and-off, harrying fire. Royal does not bother to pretend to shoot again. If they try to retreat back up the mountain now they’ll be exposed, so he has to hope the regulars won’t make another charge before it gets dark.

“Come on out you yellow-footed, back-shootin nigger,” drawls a voice across the pass. “We seen you, you goddam turncoat. Come on out and die like a man.”

Gallego’s man is still there and if Royal answers he will likely be shot from behind. If he managed somehow to cross over, the regulars would probably kill him on the spot instead of dragging him back to Manila to be tried and hanged.

In that land of dopey dreams

Happy peaceful Philippines—

—the regulars sing from behind the trees now—

Where the bolo-man is hiking night and day

Where Tagalos steal and lie

Where Americanos die

There you hear the soldiers sing this evening lay—

Royal knows the words and sings along softly, thinking about Junior and the boys in the 25th—

Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos!

Slant-eyed khakiac ladrones

Underneath the starry flag, civilize em with a Krag

And return us to our own beloved homes!

It is not nearly dark yet when one of the rebels signals by shooting a chunk out of the rock not far from his ear. Or maybe trying to kill him. The man jerks his rifle for Royal to come up, then draws a bead on him again. There is cover here and there but wide spaces between it and he is scrambling uphill on loose rock with the Americans whooping in joy and trying to nail him and by the time he dives behind the first outcroppping he has been grazed on the arm and is soaked with sweat. He catches his breath and on his second run there is some covering fire and he can see other rebels climbing around him so he is not the only target. His next dash is sideways across the base of the mountain to where the footpath starts and there behind a tangle of uprooted trees he finds the Teniente with Bayani, who has been shot up bad.