A Moment in the Sun (37 page)

The fat man shrugs, embarrassed. “One of Harry’s ideas. The newspaper would promote it.”

“And you could donate one of your old opera capes,” says Masterson, turning away, “to use as a tent.”

The fat man grips his cane with both hands. “If you weren’t armed, Mas-terson—”

“Gentlemen,” interrupts Niles. “We agreed that this would be civil. Have we settled on a referee?”

“It’s Reddy’s hall,” says Otto Floto. “He wants to run the bout.”

“No objection,” says Masterson. He sits back on the stool, looking at the pistol held in his lap. “There was a different filmist in Carson City,” he says. “This one had a special tower built by the ring, with a slot cut out for all three of his cameras, and he made sure to throw some money at both Fitz and Corbett before the battle.”

“Ensuring a prolonged contest,” ventures Niles.

“I was there,” says the fat man.

“As was I.” Masterson’s glare is like a bullet. “Earp and I providing security in case a riot ensued—”

“Like the one Earp started in San Francisco.”

Masterson idly twirls the pistol on his finger. Niles takes a few cautious steps to the side. “Photographed every bloody minute of it. Jim knocking the starch out of Fitz, but the bald-headed little bastard hanging in, and his wife there by the corner—I wouldn’t like to meet her in a prize ring, either—‘Hit him in the slats, Bob!’ she hollers. ‘Hit him in the slats!’ and out he staggers in the fourteenth and does just that, square on the mark, and Jim is done for the day.”

“The film is a sensation,” says Niles. “They set up a special projecting machine called a Veriscope, and—”

“I’ve seen it,” says the gunfighter flatly.

“And your impression?”

“Greatly inferior to my own remembered impressions of the bout,” says Masterson. “Smaller than life.”

“The man has made a fortune.”

“That I do not deny. At the presentation I attended more than half of the spectators were females, and I do not mean those of the lowest stripe. Something is afoot here that I mislike.” He stands and looks at Hod again, then at the sleeping man beyond him. “Do you know what they showed before they put the fight up on the wall? Professor Welton’s Boxing Cats! The noble art, turned into a raree show.” He turns to Floto.

“Your man,” he says, pointing to the sleeper at the bar, “Chief Rain-in-the-Face—”

“He’ll be fine for twelve if I tell him.”

Niles interrupts. “The Blonger brothers specified ten.”

“The Blongers can lick my kiester,” says Masterson. “Do you think he’d put the warpaint on?”

Otto Floto makes a face. “We tried that once. It got on the gloves, in the fighters’ eyes—”

“A headdress perhaps? When he comes in the ring—”

“I think Harry has one at the paper.”

“Little prick probably puts it on when nobody’s looking. And your boy here—”

“Brackenridge,” Hod calls out.

“A name that is neither here nor there,” says Masterson. “Something Irish—”

“I’m not Irish.”

“And Fireman Jim Flynn is a Dago, what of it?”

“He fought before under Young McGinty,” Niles blurts.

Niles promised Hod before that it wouldn’t be McGinty, just in case the warrant has traveled from Alaska, but now only puts a finger to his lips to warn him off.

“Young McGinty versus Chief—?”

“Strong Bear,” says the fat man.

“It’s a match. We advertise a prize of five hundred dollars, and out of that the fighters share—”

“Excuse me,” says Niles, holding up a hand. “If we’re talking business—”

He holds a fiver out to Hod. Masterson and Otto Floto and Niles and even the artist all stare at him as if he shouldn’t be there. Hod takes the five and steps to the back of the room.

“That’s to feed yourself,” calls Niles jovially. “Not for an excursion to Holliday Street.”

He gives the sleeping man a nudge as he passes on the way out the back door. “Lunchtime, buddy.”

They are out on 18th before Hod realizes that the man is Big Ten.

“If you don’t mind,” says the Indian, eyeing the five, “I haven’t eaten in days.”

They find a place two blocks up serving steak and eggs and settle in.

“The fat gink,” says Big Ten, “is some kind of newspaper writer who also promotes shows. I pulled his coat for a handout over by the Opera House and he pitched this boxing idea.”

“Jail in Leadville?”

“One week, they got tired of feeding me. Took me to the freight yard, told me to catch the first thing smoking.”

The Indian doesn’t look any thinner. Fighting him will be like punching a tree stump.

“You know what you’re doing in the ring?”

“Hell no.”

“What they paying you?”

Big Ten shrugs. “The fat man got me a flop for the night,” he says. “Then it’s twenty for showing up and then the sky’s the limit, he says, depending on how I handle myself. What about yours?”

“I think he owes Masterson a lot of money, so this is mostly on the cuff,” says Hod. “But if I catch him before he can reach a faro table I might see a few dollars.”

Big Ten sighs as the food arrives and they dig in.

“There was a sign over that bar,” says Big Ten. “Said it was against the law to serve an Indian—less he’s been cooked first.”

“The whole deal sounds like lots of lumps for short money.” Hod stares out the window at the characters circulating on 18th. “I’d recommend taking a powder, only these people always got an in with the law. If they catch us—”

“If you promise not to hit too hard,” says the Indian, “I promise not to fall down too quick.”

They linger over their coffee, just thinking, and are on their way back to the Windsor in a light drizzle when a tramp steps up on the sidewalk to block their way.

“You fellas spare some change?”

The man is swaying a little as he stands, skin and bones, hair wet and wild, looking slightly through rather than at them like fellas will do when they put the touch on you. Big Ten gives him a nickel and a penny.

“That’s it, buddy,” says the Indian. “Now we’re as busted as you.”

“That’s white of you,” says the tramp, who Hod recognizes from Butte, a mucker on the day gang with a Polish name longer than an ore train. The man staggers around them, almost falling off the curb.

“Always does the heart good,” says Big Ten, “to see somebody worse off than you are.”

On the next block they see the recruits.

There are three of them, two normal sized and one half-pint kid, standing at stiff attention in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Elite Saloon.

“Our sergeant said he needs to kill his thirst,” says the kid, who the others call the Runt. “Or maybe he just gone in to
wound
it. One way or the other, we got to stand here at attention till he comes out.”

“We’re volunteers,” says one of the normal-sized ones.

“Sure you are,” says Big Ten. “I can’t see how anybody’d
pay
you to stand out in the rain.”

“In the
Army
,” says the Runt. “Off to battle the Spaniards.”

“You don’t say.”

The Runt closes his eyes, then opens them and begins to spout.

Oh it’s Tommy this, and it’s Tommy that

and it’s “Chuck him out, the brute!”

But it’s “Savior of his Country”

when the guns begin to shoot!

The biggest one looks embarrassed. “He does that. Right out of the blue.”

“We come up from Pueblo and he latched on to us,” says the middle one. “But they took us anyway.”

The sergeant comes out from the saloon then, a long man with a long moustache drooping off his face. He glares at his volunteers. “Have you been talking to these civilians?”

“They were asking about enlistment, sir,” says the Runt, eyes forward, chin tucked in, his scrawny body held rigid. “And I was explaining the opportunity.”

The sergeant turns to look Hod and Big Ten over. “I’ve got one deserted already and one lost to the clap shack,” he says. “You boys ready to take the trip?”

The Polish miner wasn’t a drinker, Hod remembers, just a steady, hard-working fella trying to keep grits on his table. He looked like hell, a ghost of a man out there alone in the rain. This is not Hod’s war, the plight of the oppressed Cuban a subject he has barely considered. But it had felt right, that one moment, marching with the Skaguay Guards, and there will be three squares a day and a chance to see the palm trees and it won’t be Soapy Smith or anyone like him running the deal. Hod, light in the pocket and blackballed from the mines, exchanges a look with the big Indian, who he can tell is also considering the offer.

“Where to?” asks Big Ten.

“Five blocks over to the Armory,” says the sergeant, “and then on to Glory.”

ARMADA

The Americans are there before the sun comes up. Just
there
, out in the bay, somehow passing the Corregidor batteries without a shell being fired.

“
Como Pedro por su casa
,” says the Spaniard next to Diosdado at the sea wall, a long-nosed
ayuntamiento
clerk wearing the yellow armband of his volunteer unit. It is first light and already there are hundreds lined up along the Malecón to watch, men only, though there are a few women among those fleeing behind them on the Paseo, the poorest with their rolled
tampipis
over their shoulders, the wealthiest trailed by barefoot coolies staggering under bulky pieces of furniture. This day has been known, has been inevitable, for weeks—what can they have been waiting for?

“Do you think they’ll bombard the city?” asks Diosdado. His orders are to gauge the mood of the people, both Spaniard and Filipino, and it has required a sociability he never thought himself capable of.

“That is the present subject of discussion,” the clerk tells him. “Do you see their light?”

At the bow of one of the still distant American warships a beam flicks rhythmically on and off. The clerk points across the road behind them, where a corporal and his capitán stand on top of the Baluarte de Santa Isabel, the capitán watching the signaling ship through binoculars and the corporal wig-wagging a pair of flags, one red, one white, in a complicated sequence.

“If General Augustín promises not to fire from the shore batteries,” the Spaniard explains, “their Admiral Dewey may agree not to level the Intramuros.”

“So you think no shells will fall on our heads?”

The clerk gives Diosdado a weary smile. “Leaving more available to murder our boys in the fleet.”

The fleet, if the less-than-a-dozen Spanish ships fanned out uncertainly in front of Las Piñas, escape route blocked by Sangley Point, may be conceded that name, has nowhere to go.

“What are they doing?”

The clerk watches the closer ships for a moment.

“One would hope,” he says finally, “they are making their peace with the Creator.”

This same bitter humor, this mix of exasperation and stoicism, has infused every conversation Diosdado has engaged in or overheard since the news arrived that the Americans were steaming away from Hongkong. Haunting the Escolta in his moustache and country planter’s outfit, in for a quick drink at the Tabaquería Nacional or La Alhambra or the San Miguel beerhouse, rubbing shoulders with the
peninsulares
, infantry, cavalry, volunteers—for every Spaniard between sixteen and sixty has been called to service—it has been the same shameful story.

“We have been abandoned,” said the
teniente
, said the merchant, said the cargo inspector. “The people in Madrid make speeches and wave their fists, but they send us no ships, no arms, no men.”

“They have the insurrection in Cuba to deal with.”

“An insurrection fueled by
yanqui
gold.”

“Nonetheless—”

“They have abandoned us. They have hooked a monster this time, have roused the interest of these overgrown Americans, and have decided to cut bait rather than endure the fight.”

“But
we
will fight,” they all add. “If only for our sense of honor. If only to stand as men, under our flag and God’s eyes, till the very end.”

And then, enraptured with their own tragic Iberian nobility, intoxicated with sentiment for their beloved archipelago, their Pearl of the Orient, each Spaniard will turn to lay a hand on Diosdado’s shoulder and speak as if to a brother.

“
Y tu, amigo
—what will you do?”

They do not mean what will Diosdado Concepción do, or Idelfonso Ledesma, the name on the newest
cédula
the Committee has given him. They worry, they obsess, about what the Filipino people will do.

“So many of our prominent figures,” Diosdado reassures them whenever asked, “have sworn to stand with our mother Spain against these invaders. Look at those already leading volunteer battalions—Pio del Pilar, Buencamino in Pampanga, Paterno, Ricarte, Licerio Gerónimo, the Trias brothers—”

Diosdado has spoken to almost all those that Alejandrino, too well-known by the Spaniards to operate secretly, has not been able to reach. Hurrying about the provinces in his flimsy disguise, General Aguinaldo’s faceless envoy to those he hopes will follow him in a revived insurgency. They are all, perhaps with the exception of Ricarte, practical men, and have deduced that the safest position in the coming upheaval is at the head of a large body of armed men, preferably from one’s home province.

“But will they stand to the end?”

And because he is an imposter, with a radically different notion of what that end should be, Diosdado can look the Spaniards in the eye and say, honestly, “I hope so. With all my heart.”

He raises his binoculars as the American ships form a line, one behind the other, speeding past the Malecón now, the shore batteries silent. The lead vessel is within two hundred yards when the Spaniards begin to fire. One by one the American ships turn hard right and run parallel to the Spanish line, rapid-fire cannons delivering a continuous broadside, balls of smoke and then the booming report over the water. The
Regina Cristina
and the
Don Juan de Austria
charge forward and immediately begin to come apart. They are old, badly fitted, wooden-hulled relics facing gray-painted fortresses of steel. It is target practice. The
Mindanao
is on fire off Las Piñas beach, the
Castilla
is sinking, only its chimney stack still above water, and the
Regina Cristina
explodes with a concussion that jolts the solemn watchers all along the sea wall.