A Moment in the Sun (39 page)

Pepito Leyba, younger even than Diosdado, translates for the General, managing to transmit both the White Admiral’s condescending yet friendly demeanor and his lack of specificity.

“This is reassuring for me to hear,” responds the exiled General. “My colleagues, however, will be more reassured, more likely to rally to our cause, if they could read of your intentions in an official statement.”

“An official statement like the one you signed with Spain,” counters the Admiral, sitting back on his wicker throne, “that stipulated your permanent exile?”

There are men, friends of Diosdado’s, who will never forgive the General for the Treaty of Biak-na-Bato. To accept money from the Spaniards, to accept amnesty and exile, even if—

The General appears unperturbed. “The Spaniards did not honor the Treaty,” he says flatly.

“And so you will see,” smiles the White Admiral, “that the word of honor of an American is more positive, more irrevocable, than any piece of paper.”

The exiled General flicks his eyes to Diosdado when Leyba says the word
irrevocable.

“
Manatili
,” Diosdado translates. Leyba speaks Spanish, French, English, Tagalog, and who knows what else, but perhaps the General is asking for more than a word here.
Do not trust these people
, Diosdado thinks, and hopes the thought is transmitted through his eyes.

The General’s expression does not change. The White Admiral either will not or has not the power to promise their independence if Filipinos lead the fight to expel the Spaniards. If they do not fight, however, do not show their willingness to kill and be killed, how much more likely, with German warships hovering in the bay, with the Japanese so rapidly building up their own navy, that the
yanquis
will choose to stay?

“We must proceed with the liberation of the islands,” says the White Admiral, “and must act toward each other as friends and allies.”

On being introduced, Diosdado feigned that he had never before met the General or Pepito Leyba, had shaken hands formally and stepped back into his place. After the General is gone the Americans will ask him for his impressions, and he will say “I think he believes everything he said.” And then later he will report to the General and be questioned and say he thinks the Americans have not yet made up their minds. And though both statements are obvious and true he will be a spy, and neither side will give him their complete trust. The Americans have destroyed the Spanish fleet, the dreaded gunboats that precluded any chance of Filipinos attacking Manila, their blackened hulks still visible in the shallows off of Sangley Point. The Americans have taken the Cavite Arsenal and have their big guns trained on the Spanish garrison within the Walled City of Manila. There is no saying how they will fare in Cuba, the liberation force as yet to leave American shores, but here, here they have been godlike in the speed of their devastation. If the White Admiral lacks guile, it is because up to this moment he has not required it. Whereas Aguinaldo—

“I am willing to sacrifice my own life in this great undertaking,” says the exiled General, “as is every true patriot in our nation.”

In the pilot boat on the way out the American ensign who came for him was much amused by the crowd of
lanchas
being poled back and forth with their loads of
zacate
fodder and piled stems of bananas.

“Look,” he winked to Diosdado, “it’s the Filipino Navy.”

The White Admiral rises above them, an avuncular smile on his face, and offers his hand.

“Go and start your army,” he says.

THE LOST WORLD

Tampa is a fever dream.

They wake to a fusillade of noise, every regiment on the Heights with its own drummer up and driving the sticks, men cursing on their ponchos before the bugle’s first assaulting note. The chigger bites along Royal’s ribs remind him where he is. The scramble for socks, the insult of the woolen pants and he’s out with the others, the canvas of the tents whiter than the sand, ghostly rows like headstones in the failing wisp of moonlight. There is no warning of the heat to come. Royal pulls the flannel shirt on, sits to wrestle with his boots. Junior crawls out from the tent, then Little Earl, looking surprised, as he always does, to find himself awake at this hour. No one speaks. The air is bitter with the coffee Stewpot Sims has begun to boil on his cookfire, one of a half-dozen glowing throughout the camp. The 25th stumble forward to be counted.

Sergeant Jacks knows his book and expects the same from you. His eyes remain calm, even when chewing on some rookie who does not know his left from his right or his bunghole from a bayonet. He allows them to drill without their blouses due to the heat, except for the one day the company dogged it so bad during the morning close-order routine the lieutenant let him lead them on a five-mile jaunt around the camp weighed down with full kit, Merriam packs, and three days’ provisions.

“You think this is bad,” he said during one of their pauses to see if a fallen man was dead or just resting with his face in the sand, “wait till we get to Cuba. They got your
steam
heat.”

There is a rumor that their winter-issue uniforms will be replaced soon, but that seems the unlikeliest of all the many stories contaminating the Heights. Yes, the Army might load them into their transports tomorrow or send them to China to pacify the yellow hordes or make peace with the Dons and call off the whole Cuba invasion, but the idea of Supply, in this fly-ridden dump of men and munitions, coming up with anything to make a common soldier’s burden lighter is unimaginable.

Sergeant Jacks wears his blouse though, all day long, service stripes halfway down to his wrists. No one has ever seen him take a drink of water, or step away to relieve himself, through Coop won a two-dollar bet the day the sergeant allowed himself to squash a mosquito crawling up his neck.

“Man eat bricks and shit gravel,” Coop will say when the sergeant is out of earshot. “Probly kilt more nigger privates than he ever did Indians.”

Jacks calls their names and the men bark out in response and then he announces Sick Call, which nobody who can stand dares report for since the Doc has taken to dosing all internal complaints with a ginger-root concoction that cleans you out, and not gently, at both ends.

“We have the healthiest regiment in the camp,” muses Sergeant Jacks with the tone in his voice that substitutes for a smile. “Fall out.”

They make their way to the chow-line then, and as Junior is first it falls on him to do the honors.

“What have we today?” he says, raising his voice to be heard by all. “Sowbelly with no bread or sowbelly with no eggs?”

“No breakfast,” says Stewpot Sims. Thick, stumplike Sims, who if he even hears the kicking anymore does not respond to it. “Coffee if you want it.”

Royal dips in, coffee scalding in his pint can, dark coffee this morning, with an acid taste that lingers for an hour after but is better than nothing. He tried to drill one day with nothing in his stomach, hung over from a night in Ybor, and by noon his legs were jelly.

“No breakfast. Maybe they packed it all up on the transports, we be leaving today.” Little Earl is the source of many camp rumors. Royal likes to hear how they have grown, have sprouted arms and legs by the time they’ve circled back to the company at the end of the day.

“Maybe it just smelt so bad they had to bury it,” says Corporal Puckett, one of the veterans from Fort Missoula.

“Not yet, they haven’t,” says Coop. “Don’t no hole get dug in this camp but what I digs it. Something to eat got buried, I’d know.”

The men laugh. Coop is the sergeants’ favorite goat, though there is nothing visibly wrong with his soldiering. He jumps when jump is called for and flops on command. Something in his eye, though, the way he stands, an attitude. I am here, it says. Royal and the other greenhorns all with their shoulders pinned back, chins down, guts pulled in, trying to be invisible to the officer of the moment while Coop stands there taking up his space as if it belonged to him. As if he still belonged to himself and not the 25th Regular Infantry, Colored.

“You ever been hanged, Cooper?” Sergeant Jacks asked him just the other day at muster, body almost pressed up against the taller private.

“Not yet, Sergeant.” Voice innocent of tone, but steady.

“Must be an oversight.”

The men who smoke keep one eye on the bugler, Kid Mabley, trying to burn one down before he brings the metal to his lips. The sand crabs are up now, skittering from hole to hole as if their business, whatever it might be, needs finishing before sunrise. Royal forces the coffee down and takes a few steps in place. The blisters are still there, no chance to heal, but not too angry yet. The worst is taking the boots off at the end of the day, something Junior and he help each other with, comparing the size and state of their raw spots.

Dellum from Company C moves close to him. “Any tobacco on you, rookie?”

“Don’t use it.”

“That’s no reason not to
have
it.”

“I get hold of any,” says Royal, “I’ll let you know.”

The veterans ragged them pretty hard at first, pushing at the new recruits to see how far they’d give, but there was nothing mean in it. Except with Coop sometimes, coming back weary from whatever punitive duty he’s caught that day, Coop will go right back after them. Even Scout, the little spaniel they keep for a mascot, spoiled on mess-hall scraps and stolen biscuits, knows enough to slink away when he sees Coop with that look on his body. Once he held Little Earl by the throat so hard, over a remark that had nothing to do with him, that there were bruises the next day, bruises that showed on a black man’s neck.

At a nod from the lieutenant, Kid Mabley blasts into
Drill
, humping his chest down hard to let the whole camp hear. Mabley is the best on the Heights and knows it, all the other buglers, even the white boys, coming by in the evenings to trade licks with him, holding their campaign hats over the horns to mute their playing in case someone wants to get a head start on their shuteye. No shots have been fired in camp so far, that’s what town is for, but a few men have been left bloody in the sand.

“Spaniards don’t get him,” says Dellum, a nervous sleeper, eyeing Mabley as he starts away, “Imonna kill that boy.”

Tampa is a fever dream, fever rising with the sun.

The Krag, even unloaded, makes it seem real. The weight of it in his hands, the heat of the barrel once the sun comes up, the way every action must be altered to accommodate the ever-present fact of it makes Royal feel like a soldier. Sergeant Jacks makes sure the Krag never leaves their grasp from the instant drill begins till Kid blows
Recall.
They are drilling by companies today, Junior and Royal and Little Earl in Company L marched with most of the other recruits, four abreast, two miles south of camp skirting the City of Tampa to end up in the dunes facing Davis Island across the bay.

“Company halt!”

To the east, in a jumble of masts and stacks and flagpoles, is the mongrel fleet of coastal packets and converted yachts that word has it will take them to fight the Spanish. Some of them. The men are winded from keeping up with Sergeant Jacks, but stand as steady as they can at right-shoulder arms, waiting. Royal casts a glance at the surrounding dunes, deep pockets of shadow forming among them as the sun begins to creep over the horizon, and wishes there had been something to eat.

“Form by platoon—march!”

They separate into their two platoons. The lieutenant hasn’t come along. Drill is shorter when he comes—he gets hot or bored and pulls out his pocket watch which Sergeant Jacks somehow senses without looking and wraps things up. Without the lieutenant it could be a long morning.

“First platoon, deploy as skirmishers, on the flank—march!”

Royal pivots around Corporal Pickney and the rest follow, stepping off their two paces from the next man, each squad spread out fifteen paces from the other. It seems a waste, now that they’ve gotten the hang of it, of the manual of arms, of close and extended-order marching and maneuver, now that they’ve learned to stack and take arms, to clean, repair, and fire their weapons, to adjust sights and judge distances, to respond correctly and with dispatch to vocal, whistle, or bugle commands, to make and break camp and dig entrenchments and all of the thousand daily duties of the Regular Army soldier, a waste for their Company L to be the one left behind in Tampa to look after equipment and maintain a base of operations. But that is the order, straight from the Colonel.

“Second platoon, in support, as skirmishers—march.”

The rest of the company spreads out behind them. They have their backs to the bay, facing a series of dunes.

“Observe Sergeant Cade.”

Cade appears at the top of a dune over a hundred yards away, waves his hat.

“That is the enemy position. You will advance by rushes, maintaining your lines, on my command. Company, port arms!”

The shadows of a phalanx of pelicans ripple over the sand in front of them. Royal feels the first little bit of heat on his cheek.

“First platoon, double time, forward—march!” shouts Sergeant Jacks and they are off, Royal aware only of the other seven men in his squad strung out beside him, boots sinking into the soft sand as the dune slides away beneath their feet, stubbornly surrendering as they lift their knees and pound it under, climbing till Cade is just visible over the crest and—

“Down!”

Royal flops forward, easier on the uphill slope than on flat ground, raising the Krag to aim—

“Three rounds—fire!”

A metallic clicking all down the line as the men sight their weapons and pull the trigger. Sergeant Jacks always has them check the magazine and set the cutoff before they leave camp, and Royal has only had two brief sessions with live rounds back at Chickamauga. Jacks calls behind them.

“Second platoon, double time—march!”

Royal has put three imaginary shots through Sergeant Cade’s forehead by the time the second platoon comes huffing past—