A Moment in the Sun (51 page)

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Royal is a sidelong bulge of panic in a horse’s eye.

If it was me, thinks something just a little removed from what used to be his conscious mind (not a thought, really, or a voice, just a knowledge that is separate from his body), if it was me and not this thrashing animal I would give up, give in, let the water fold over but they can’t see ahead, horses, eyes set off on each side of the great head, they can’t see what’s straight in front of them, can’t understand that there is no safe harbor to swim to, that the kicking and huffing and bulging out of eyes is a waste. When the dying man, Royal, saw something like this there were dozens of them, horses and mules churning the sea into a lather with their fear and their pedaling legs and a few of the last ones saved, that’s right, saved when a bugler already on shore played
Boots and Saddles
and they obeyed the order of the moment, unthinking like good soldiers and swam to the shore that led to the pathway that led through the poisonous jungle to the steep murderous slope where the angry waspwhine bullets waited to burn through them and carry their parts away. But that’s over now, and he’s not needed anymore, different fevered men crouch atop the hill, and he is free to give in, to accept the warm caressing water if he was Royal still and not the sidelong bulge in a horse’s eye, was not thoughtless panic and thrashing and here it comes, a big one, more than a wave a mighty lathering swell rising up and over, blotting out the sky, and the nostrils swept under and the powerful forelegs spasm, barrel chest pressed in a vice, lungs flushed with acid saltwater, no air, no air, no air, till the machine jolts, wrenching his throat open with a crying gasp and wheezing, dragging the hothouse sick-tent air into his lungs, sopping wet and cold now lying on solid ground with the taste of brine in his mouth.

“What happened?”

Junior is standing over him. “Fever broke.” Junior is hollow-eyed, un-shaven. He holds himself upright leaning on his rifle.

“You look like hell, Junior.”

“You want to see hell,” says Junior, smiling a gaunt, death’s-head smile, “I’ll get you a mirror.”

“No calls,” says Royal. Something that has been gnawing at the edge of his consciousness, a lack, something missing in the air. “No reveille.”

“Kid Mabley’s in the other tent, almost as bad as you. And none of the others got the wind left to blow.”

Royal shifts his weight slightly and feels the pool of sweat beneath his back and buttocks. He is lying on a cot, beneath a tent, and knows now that he’s not going to drown. But the rest of it is distant, unformed.

If there’s no bugle, he wonders, how do we know which way is the shore?

Father—

Junior off on water detail, writing hidden behind a tree so the others won’t know he has paper. His hand trembling, paper propped on an empty canteen on his thigh. Something dead is nearby, buzzards wheeling overhead.

You have no doubt read reports by now of the gallant show made by our force at El Caney and the San Juan Heights. It was, from a military point of view, an inelegant and possibly ill-advised assault, though the results appear to be much more auspicious than expected. The Spaniards put up a desperate fight, and any doubts about their valor on the battlefield have been put to rest. Santiago, and possibly the war, have been won at the cost of much precious American blood, and certain notables with political aspirations are already elbowing their way into position to take full credit. We have not received any papers since our arrival, and thus I have no way to know if the role played by our colored troops has received adequate attention. The 24th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry were instrumental in the capture of the San Juan Heights, while my own 25th led the last desperate dash to take the fortifications at El Caney. The sons of Ham have made quite a military record for themselves here, and I can only hope that this will be justly recognized and celebrated throughout our homeland.

He hears the shouts and splashing of the others on the detail, naked in the river scouring themselves with the little yellow cubes of soap they’ve been issued, black men with ribs showing through their skin, a few just sitting at the edge of the flowing water, too weak to risk the current. Junior, with everything he’s just experienced, still can’t fathom bathing in front of others.

What the citizens at home should also know is that our great victory is in danger of betrayal by the incompetence and self-serving of powerful men far from the clamor and deadly consequence of the battleground. If we are not brought home from this place immediately we shall all be lost to fever and starvation. The rains are upon us—dysentery, malaria, and the dreaded yellow jack have leveled over a third of the regiment, with more taking ill each day. My own company lost Private Charles Taliaferro this morning—a good soldier and a good friend—and the brass have forbidden the firing of a last salute and playing of
Taps
for fear the constant burials will undermine morale. But there is no morale, only the desperate realization that we have been abandoned here to die by an unprepared and uncaring government. There is insufficient food, medicine, shelter, no provision for dealing with the fever season and seemingly no plan for what follows the “liberation” of this island and these people. On the 12th we took high ground and encamped with our backs to the enemy city, told to defend the Spaniards from any incursions by our
insurrecto
allies wishing to wreak vengeance. These Cuban patriots now mutter among themselves, wondering, no doubt, if we have designs on their sovereignty.

Rumors of beheadings, a good deal of theft. The Cuban fighters have kept themselves apart since the rains and sickness began, cutting the strange local fruits open with their machetes and offering them in trade for whatever they don’t have, which is everything. The refugees are beyond pitiful. Apparently the custom here is to be buried by your peers—how many times has a cortège of little boys or little girls passed shouldering the tiny box that bears their stricken playmate? And those are only the ones with enough spark left to care about their sacraments.

Royal Scott, who you will remember from Wilmington, has been through a terrible bout, touch and go for a while but if we receive transport soon he may stand a chance of pulling through. He asks me to send his regards. Desperation is a great leveler, and the observation of “Jim Crow” rules has all but disappeared among the men here, trapped in the same dire circumstances. Sad that it requires such an extreme of suffering to break down the habits of color prejudice. I am eager to see, once privation and the threat of annihilation are lifted, whether our white comrades will return to their former ways.

Junior can smell whatever it is that has died. When the jungle is wet there are many odors of decay, but none so sweet as rotting flesh. The evening of the charge he was on burial detail, pulling Spanish boys out from the trenches where they had been shot and clubbed and bayoneted and smashed apart by artillery. The bodies were surprisingly light, though they had swelled in the heat, and after the first few he was careful to turn them face-down so he wouldn’t have to see dirt thrown into their mouths and eyes. That had bothered him more than the smell. And then yesterday, when they found the mule mired with a broken leg and Coop shot it and the cooks tried to dress it and make a meal it had not been the smell but the color of the meat, deep purple, that made his gorge rise and sent him stumbling toward the blood-splattered latrine.

The dignity of brave men who have faced death in battle is now dragged through the filth, the best men of our generation to be lost in this pestilent wasteland. We are soldiers, and deserve the support of a grateful nation. Please spread the word to any with the ear of those in power.

Junior has a wound, infected now, a long trough cut in his arm going through barbed wire during the ascent, a wound he didn’t notice till they were marching away from the hill that first night. He flexes his hand, feels the ache. The doctors have nothing left to treat it and he worries it will swell and have to come off, like what happened to Briscoe of A Company.

“Bad enough a man go home, take his uniform off and the white fokes don’t want to know about him,” Cooper said when they got the news of the amputation. “But you take a whole arm off, you might’s well throw way the rest of the nigger.”

As for my own performance in the tumult of mortal conflict, you have nothing to be ashamed of. I acquitted myself as an American patriot, no more or less, and though I know now I will never love the military life, I am confident I can at least uphold the honor of my family and my race. My love to Mother and Jessie—

Your son,

Aaron

SURRENDER

They put the white flag out an hour after the
merienda
.

The
chino
camp followers came up from Manila, and the men paid them to prepare some
pancit canton
and
baboy
, and Bayani, the new sargento who reported to him this morning, had the idea of throwing a few of the pork ears on the fire once the breeze shifted to send the odor over the thornbush breastworks to the Spanish garrison crouching without food in Guagua. He is insolent, this Bayani, addressing Diosdado with the
tú
when he speaks Spanish, which he does ironically and with an atrocious accent, moving among them with a kind of assurance, as if already the platoon belongs to him. It was a good idea, though, a very good idea, and Diosdado shrugged in what he hoped was a manner becoming an officer and said he supposed they could give it a try. The siege has been on for over a week, the Spaniards never even stirring to snipe at their positions until nightfall, Diosdado’s men dug in all around the town and kept busy shuttling from one trench to the next to try to appear like a much larger force and gambling away their meager three-and-a-half-peso monthly pay. Almost all the people from Guagua managed to sneak out with their livestock the night his platoon arrived, and are camped in the fields behind them complaining constantly about how long it is taking to drive the Spanish away.

“If you would like to lead the charge,” said Kalaw, the private with the big nose, to one delegation, “we will be two steps behind you.”

But an hour after they are finished with all the
pancit
and the
baboy
and the fried bananas the
chinos
have brought up, the white flag appears from the belltower of the tiny church in the plaza of Guagua, the high spot from which a Spanish sniper hit Anacleto Darang in the knee, their only casualty so far.

“Come and talk to them with me,” Disodado says to Sargento Bayani, who claims he was a
cuadrillero
for the Spanish in the Moro islands and understands the thinking of their officers.

“
Con placer, hermano
,” says Bayani with his strange, insolent smile. “Let me get a flag together.”

It takes nearly a half an hour for one of the privates to run back to the
hacienda
they liberated a week ago and borrow a sheet. Sargento Bayani holds this banner of truce, tied to a long bamboo pole, high over his head as they step out and approach the Spanish breastworks.

“Our boys need practice,” says the sargento as they walk. “They’ll never get it this way.”

“The point is to regain our country, not to test ourselves in battle.”

“And when we have to fight the
yanquis
?” He has that smile on his face.

“The
yanquis
are our allies,” says Diosdado. It is ridiculous, this cynicism. If not for the Americans the Spanish would still control the harbor in Manila, would still be able to resupply themselves, be able to send fresh troops to relieve any besieged garrison. Education will be the key, as Scipio always says. Of all the ills that plague the people, this overriding cynicism, this ignorance, is the worst.

“We’re sending you into the field,” Scipio told him in Cavite. “Very soon, when we are in power, the people will want their leaders to be men who bore arms against the Spaniards, men of action.” Scipio, never a weapon in his hand, has moved up in the hierarchy, though he will never tell Diosdado his official title.

Diosdado had expected to rejoin the Supremo’s staff, Pepito Leyba at one side of their diminutive leader and himself at the other, translating, rewriting proclamations in a more confident Spanish, offering his opinion when asked. He had a detailed scenario worked out in which Ninfa Benavides, looking up at him contritely in the rags of one of her fabulous gowns, begged for his intercession to save her collaborationist father from the wrath of the Philippine Republic. She was so very grateful—

“This is because of my accent,” he said to Scipio at the time, hurt. “Because I’m not a Tagalo, much less a Caviteño.”

His friend did not deny it. “This will be good for you,” he shrugged. “Believe me. Just avoid being shot.”

Diosdado has no training, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be much to it. Setting a good example, being a model of character for the men, explaining the importance of doing one’s duty and not leaving in the middle of an engagement to deal with problems at home. The uniform—he had the foresight to have a pair made in Hongkong before he left—does half the job. When he caught the men looting the
hacienda
, Diosdado made them replace everything that was not of immediate use in the military campaign, and put Sargento Ramos in charge of making certain the goods taken were shared equally.

“We are soldiers of the Filipino Republic,” he reminds them constantly, “not a gang of
tulisanes
.”

There is only an
alferez
under a smaller, improvised white flag on the other side of the breastworks.

“My
comandante
wishes to hear your terms,” he tells them.

“You will leave your arms and ammunition stacked, neatly, in the church,” says Diosdado. “You will form ranks and march out fifty yards on the road to San Fernando and halt. There I will accept your surrender.”