A Moment in the Sun (47 page)

He reaches a little dip, a depression running across the hill for several yards in which Jacks and half a platoon are lying, and falls down beside them. The artillery has been firing from behind them all this time and finally it seems to have found the range, one shell blowing a breach in the barbed-wire fencing and the next blasting the front of the fort itself, snapping the flagpole off and sending the Spanish colors tumbling to the ground. The men around him cheer. Royal is heaving for breath and drenched in his own liquid and he burns his hand on the barrel of the Krag, hot only from the sun and not his few random shots and he drinks again as more men reach the dip and flop down. They are only a hundred yards from the first of the trenches now and the Mausers are cracking, bullets spanging off rocks and flicking up dirt in front of their faces and it is unthinkable that he will have to stand and go forward.

“Sharpshooters!” yells Jacks, who seems to be the ranking officer on this part of the hill. “Articulate fire! Get those loopholes in the fort, get those bastards in the pits!”

Sharpshooters have been designated back in Tampa and Royal is not one of them. He looks down the ragged line of soldiers, sees men pushing up on their elbows to sight and fire, some rising on a knee, pulling the trigger, working the bolt, rolling on their sides to reload. It is methodical, hot work, and he is suddenly filled with awe for these men and hopes some of them will survive.

Coop aims at the spot where the white hat had just been. Fuck em. Kill em. The hat reappears and he fires and it drops out of sight. He cranks the empty out and pans down the trench line searching for another. Take your time. Sons of bitches have been trying to shoot him all the way up the fucking hill, had hours to get the job done and here he still is so fuck them, kill them, blow their damn brains out. He empties his magazine once, twice, three times—yes they’re shooting back still but they better not pause to aim or he’ll put one in their Dago skull. He stops once to refill his cartridge belt, slow and steady, not dropping a round, and when the corporal beside him gets it he slithers over to use the body for cover, propping the Krag barrel on the dead man’s hip. They are taking fire from the left, from the blockhouses and the village and whatever passes high over the 4th is hitting them but that will have to come later. Now it is the fort, bullets pocking the stone front like hard rain on dusty ground, the fort that has to be taken before the men inside it can kill him.

The little ditch isn’t much cover, not with the crossfire from the blockhouses, and it’s Sergeant Cade who jumps up to scream Let’s go and all of them rise at once, up, screaming their Comanche yell, scrabbling up the last steep pitch of the hill through corn stubble, the 4th still pinned down but Company C filling in to the left, Coop firing and running and firing and running till he flops again just short of the first of the trenches and jams his barrel through the barbed wire to fire down into it. A man steps out into the doorway of the fort with a white flag and Coop drops him, then another picks it up and is torn apart by several shots down the line then the sergeants are screaming to cease fire. No fire from the fort now, though still from the blockhouses and the village to the left. Another rush comes up behind him, men yelling Let’s take it and Coop stands to join but is banged from behind into the barbed wire, wrapped by it, kicking and chopping with his Krag till he tears his skin away and rolls untangled into the firing pit on top of a carpet of dead men. All of them lying in their blue-striped, mattress-ticking uniforms with holes in their foreheads, jumbled on top of each other. Coop gets hold of his rifle and squirms to his knees and sees one still alive, weeping, sitting on top of the others with no weapon in hand. Coop jumps out of the pit and dashes to the fort.

There are dead men lying in the way and he runs over their bodies and slams hard against the front wall, then joins the others who have made it, firing a few rounds into the loopholes cut in the wooden window plugs then rushing for the doorway. He loses his feet just inside, hip cracking hard on the blood-slick floor, then stands and steadies himself. Bodies everywhere and a few on their knees begging not to be shot. Fuck them, Coop thinks, kill them, but he is out of ammunition.

Men from the 12th have come up behind the fort on the right and Sergeant Jacks waves at them to keep down, heavy fire sweeping across from the blockhouses now. The firing pits are filled with dead and more lie dead and dying amid chunks of stone blown off from the fort. A black-bearded civilian in a long coat, maybe a newspaper man, sits on the ground beside him with a hole in his shoulder and the dust-covered Spanish flag in a pile in his lap.

“I did it,” says the bearded man, looking dazed at the red and yellow cloth. “I did it for the
Journal
.”

Jacks scurries, bent low, a quick lap around the hilltop to see what’s left. He saw Lieutenant McCorkle get it at the beginning, saw Bevill go down in the pineapples and Gilbert knocked backward on the hill, but there are a lot of blue shirts up here and some of his people who have stripped to the waist in the heat. They’re taking heavy fire from the blockhouses and the town but the bulk of the firing line has made it and the 12th is here and the 4th and their own reserve companies hustling up and they hold the high ground now, can swing even higher and shoot down through the roof of the nearest blockhouse. No officer up yet, no telling what is happening with the main force at the San Juan Heights, no orders. He sees one of the rookies, Scott, crouching behind the fort wall next to another who is holding the side of his neck with a bloody hand and having a hard time breathing. The rookie’s cartridge belt is full.

“Take him back,” he yells to Scott, who is shaking hard but seems to understand. “If he can stand take him back down where they can do something.”

The rookie gives him a searching look. “Where do I take him?”

“Back the way we came. Somebody will know where the field hospital is.” The other one is shaking too, his eyes starting to glaze over.

“Get him as far as he’ll go,” says Jacks, “then get your ass back up here. Move!”

They just be in the way, both of them, and there is work left to do.

A captain from the 12th strides past trying to separate his white boys from the 25th. “Form up!” he is calling. “Form companies!” He is walking upright and stiff-legged, feigning disregard for the bullets still chipping away at the stone walls, but the men on the hilltop are too busy to be inspired. The rookie helps his friend up and they stagger away together.

The artillery has been hopeless all day long, the little battery still a half-mile back in the jungle, and if the Spanish send reinforcements over from Santiago the hilltop will be impossible to hold. Jacks curses, then rises and runs, tapping men splayed out on the ground as he goes, calling them to follow. He makes it into the trench on the west side of the fort, facing the village, and a dozen men pile in after.

“We take the blockhouses one at a time,” he tells them, “then go get that fucking church.”

They lift the bodies of the dead Spaniards up then, and add them to the breastworks behind the barbed-wire fence.

The shaking seemed to catch up with Royal, chasing him all the way up the slope and over the wire and the bloody pit and overtaking him only when he was safe and solid against the stone wall of the fort, catching him like a chill hand at the back of his neck and then down through the rest of his body and now only movement will mask it. Royal leads Little Earl back down the hill, passing much of C and D Company still struggling up, sidestepping down and reaching back to support his friend when it gets too steep.

“They got surgeons,” he says. “Surgeons that know all about bullet wounds. They got drugs for the pain and on one of the ships they got the X-ray machine, look right into your bones.”

If Little Earl is reassured he doesn’t say so, keeping his hand pressed hard to his neck. There is blood but it isn’t throbbing out, just keeping his fingers wet, and he stares at a spot level with his eyes as if he can’t look down or at Royal for fear of losing his balance. They move in silence, past more troopers climbing and broken bodies left on the slope and bodies left in the pineapple rows, bodies left in the scrub and suspended awkwardly on the
trocha
of barbed wire. Royal leads Little Earl back as quickly as he can without dragging him, certain that now that he’s been to the top the ones still shooting from the village will discover he’s no longer dead and will murder him.

Hardaway is back guarding their bedrolls and haversacks behind the treeline.

“We done it!” he says with a gap-toothed smile. “Can’t deny the 25th.”

“Where’s the field hospital?”

“Sposed to be at El Pozo.”

“Where’s that?”

Hardaway just points back into the trees. “Think we was near there two, three days ago. You keep walkin, somebody bound to know.”

Royal finds his gear and pulls the first-aid roll out from it. He folds the arm sling a few times, making a compress.

“Look pretty hot up there,” says Hardaway, watching Royal’s hands. Hardaway is another rookie and feeling sheepish he wasn’t on the hill.

“Hot enough.”

Royal gives the folded cloth to Little Earl to hold against his neck.

The sun is slanting low and the firing from behind more sporadic by the time they find the dressing station. It is only one young doctor’s assistant and a pair of litter bearers with a small supply of bandages. The doctor’s assistant looks at the hole in Little Earl’s neck, blood starting to ooze out again, then scribbles on a red-white-and-blue tag and loops it with copper wire through a buttonhole on his shirt.

“There many more behind you?” he asks.

“Hard to tell. Half of who was on the hill run over to the village. Don’t think we be much help for San Juan.”

“Oh, we took that near two hours ago,” says the taller of the litter bearers. “They shot the hell out of us getting there, but the boys run up and took her.”

The shorter of the litter bearers walks a ways with them to be sure they are headed right. He reads Little Earl’s tag, gives Royal a dark look.

“Don’t give him no water till they say so,” he says. Little Earl seems not to be listening, seems barely to be there at all anymore but keeps following, putting one foot in front of the other. “And don’t be stopping to rest.”

Coop stands in the plaza in front of the church in Caney, looking down on a dead Spanish general. There are only scattered shots popping now, back in the village. The general is a goat-bearded, white-haired man spread out on a stretcher on the ground, shot through the legs and in the head. Some of his hair is stained with blood and stuck to the canvas of the stretcher. Coop nudges the body with his foot.

The village is mostly just palm huts but in the stone and stucco houses there were holdouts, most of them civilians, who had to be burned out and shot. Achille and Too Tall have a group of maybe forty prisoners, fever-looking Spanish soldiers, standing by the church doorway with their hands up on their heads.

“Get over here,” calls Too Tall. “We gone need you.”

“Need me for what?”

“We spose to march these boys back and hand em to the Cubans.”

“If they know where they headed,” Achille adds, cocking an eye, “they try to bolt for sure.”

“You mean if they know where they
be
headed,” says Too Tall and they both laugh.

In their light blue pinstripes the captured men and boys look like hospital patients in pajamas.

“Why I want to hook up with your detail?” Coop asks.

“Cause come nightfall everbody else gone be digging trenches for the white boys over on San Juan.”

Coop laughs and crosses to join them. “At your service, gennemen.”

It is nearly dark when Royal finds the Santiago–Siboney road. They follow it to the field-hospital tents, sitting in high wild grass between the road and a little brook, three big ones for operations and dispensary, one slightly smaller for wounded officers, then six bivouac tents for enlisted men. These are all full, a hundred men crowded inside each where only sixty should be, and a dozen long rows of wounded lie on the ground outside.

Royal has to grab the shoulders of the orderly trotting by to get his attention.

“I got a wounded man here.”

“You aint the only one.”

“It’s real bad, I think.”

The orderly glances at Little Earl’s tag without looking at his wound, then points to a line of men lying at the base of a cluster of piñon bushes. “Set him down at the end there,” says the orderly. “He’ll get his turn.”

“They any blankets?”

“Not less you brought one.”

Royal pulls Little Earl to the end of the line of waiting wounded. Some of them are moaning and rocking, or weeping quietly, and more sit or lie staring blankly. A few are dead. Little Earl tries to rest on his side but starts to choke and Royal helps him sit up.

“Won’t be long now,” he says to his friend. There are nearly thirty men ahead of them. Some of them have had their shirts or trousers stripped off to uncover their wounds, and as the light goes the temperature is dropping. There seems to be no system to bring water to the waiting wounded or to the hundreds more who have already been through the tents. Royal squats on the guinea grass and realizes he is dizzy himself.

“I’m going for water,” he says, squeezing Little Earl’s arm. “I be right back.”

He passes the open flap of one of the big tents on his way to the brook. A white soldier makes choking noises, writhing on a table as a pair of orderlies work a rubber hose down his throat, blood frothing out the sides of his mouth while a blood-spattered surgeon stands waiting, his eyes closed as if sleeping on his feet.

“Easy does it,” coos the orderly who is pinning the wounded man down on the table. “Easy does it.”

The brook water is cool and Royal drinks from his cupped hands till his stomach starts to hurt. Litter squads are still arriving, adding their damaged men to the line of the waiting, then staggering back toward the front. The night frogs begin to chirp. He fills his canteen and a pair of orderlies come carrying something heavy rolled in a blood-soaked sheet between them, leaving the whole load just up the bank from him and stepping away quickly.