A Moment in the Sun (52 page)

“Stacked neatly,” echoes Bayani, mocking, and Diosdado shoots him a look.

“And there will be no reprisals?”

“You will be treated with the consideration due to fellow soldiers.”

The
alferez
looks uneasily to Bayani, then back to Diosdado.

“We are starving.”

Diosdado nods. He wanted to ask the men to save some of the
merienda
, but realized it would never be enough to feed the garrison.

“There is food in Malolos,” he says. “You will be taken there to join your defeated comrades.”

He has no idea if there is sufficient food for them in Malolos, only that that is where prisoners are to be sent. The
alferez
nods and offers him a salute. “I will inform my
comandante
.”

“There is no reason to make them feel ashamed,” he says to the sargento on their way back to the men.

“Of course not. We may shoot them, cut their throats, hack them to bits, but we wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

The ideal is to keep the best of the Spanish—learning, culture, a certain code of honorable behavior—and jettison all that is base and hypocritical. The friars will have to go, of course, though the Jesuits might be allowed to remain if their political inclinations can be discouraged. The native clergy will do well in the villages, but for the
ilustrado
class a more elevated approach to Heaven will be required. Sadly, there are aspects of the Filipino temperament, shortcomings, brought into sharp relief by a character like this Bayani—

The Spanish begin to come out of the plaza. They are trying to stay in ranks, but the men sent ahead to make a gap in the breastworks are weak and struggle with the spiky mass of aroma bush and a few men collapse while they are waiting. It is thirst, really, Diosdado knows, no well dug within the garrison’s fortifications and his own people tearing down the bamboo
acueducto
that fed the town from the hillside stream, and finally the
alferez
appears beside a tall, emaciated
comandante
, leading the men who can walk, maybe sixty of them, out onto the San Fernando road. Before they left for this outpost, no doubt, these soldiers knelt in their ranks before the
Arzobispo
in Manila, receiving his blessing and swearing before God that they would never surrender the sacred banner of their nation. Bayani sends two squads of the men who have rifles to quickly flank them, worried about their reaction when they discover how few of their tormentors are present. Diosdado steps up to the tall officer
,
who salutes him.

“I am Comandante Ramón Asturias y Famy,” he says. “We are at your mercy.”

“We will take you first to the stream,” Diosdado tells him. “And then on to Malolos. Are there wounded left behind?”

“Perhaps a dozen. Sick, not wounded.” The officer looks Diosdado over. He is glad that the uniform fits him well, that he has managed to keep it nearly spotless during the siege. “May I inquire about your training?” asks the
comandante
.

It seems a strange, if not presumptuous question for a prisoner of war to put forth. Diosdado wonders if he should reveal his inexperience, even to a man unlikely to resume arms against the Cause. Filipino forces will be at the outskirts of Manila soon, circling the final gem of the crown, and the troops inside the Walled City must be made to believe they are outmanned, outgunned, outgeneraled—

“I believe he is very well trained in philosophy,” Bayani interjects, an innocent look on his face, “with an interest in the Classics.”

It is cruel, yes, and Diosdado wonders how he knows. He has not spoken to anyone in the platoon of his education. Asturias y Famy is weeping.

“A university boy,” he says, tears making channels in the grime on his cheeks. The Spaniards have not bathed for a week. “I am surrendering to a fucking university boy.”

REPRIEVE

After the swim they stop at the Iolani Palace for a picnic. President Dole came aboard looking like Father Christmas with his long white beard and invited the whole sorry bunch of them from the
China—
Colorado Volunteers and the 8th Infantry and the Utah Battery and the engineers and the hospital people, everybody but the damn mascot goat—and now they’re breathing air heavy with the smell of flowers and spread out at long, long tables set on the grass under the trees with plates and utensils and cloth napkins for what they call a loo-wow. Hod still has water trapped in his ears from the surf, the bottoms of his feet scraped by coral. There were Kanakas riding the waves in on their wooden boards, men and women wearing almost nothing at all, but they disappeared quick once the beach was mobbed by the sickly-skinned, boat-dopey soldiers, peeling their uniforms off to give themselves up to the sea water. Only Big Ten chose not to go in, sitting on the shore with all his uniform still on, even his boots.

“My people will row on top of the water all day and all night,” he says, “but swimming is for fishes.”

Hod thinks it’s so the others won’t see how dark he is all over.

The food is hard to believe and just keeps coming. The local Americans, celebrating the Annexation Bill just passed in Congress, have roasted a whole herd of pigs down in holes in the ground, serving up steaming chunks from them wrapped in palm leaves, and then there are crabs and fish and chickens and yams and huge sweet potatoes and pineapples that never been in a can and bread and cocoanut milk and the best coffee Hod has ever tasted and dates and cocoanut pudding and something called alligator pears that Big Ten at first tries to eat without peeling the hide off. Inside they are light green and creamy and nutty tasting and you eat them with Worcestershire sauce. Everybody eats twice as much as they can hold, the food on the trip so far just pitiful, salthorse and sea biscuit, and no reason to think it will improve for the rest of the way. Three days into the voyage they let some carrier pigeons loose up top, supposed to fly with their messages back to San Francisco.

“I was gonna eat them birds,” said Big Ten, watching them fly. “Now we stuck with fishee ricee.”

The Chinamen and Japs who serve as the crew of the transport always have something you can buy to eat, a nickel here, a nickel there, even doughnuts if you catch them at the right time, but they won’t take Army grub in trade. The yellow men were left on board, helping the stevedores load coal into the ship, when the regiment marched away.

“Yo, Chief!” calls Corporal Grissom down the table. “Introduce me to your sister.”

There have been a lot of them telling Big Ten he looks just like the Kanakas and he takes it like a sport. He turns to the long-haired girl who is serving and speaks some of his lingo at her, but she just covers her face and giggles. There are dozens of the Kanaka girls serving in their bright shifts with flowers in their hair, and white women too, white women in clean white dresses with high collars and little straw hats moving around the long tables under the banyan trees with platters of food and urns of coffee.

“I think she’s a Princess,” says Big Ten. “They aint spose to talk with commoners.”

Corporal Grissom points to the Palace, just visible through the trees. “They say they got the Queen shut up in there. Once the Americans bumped her off the throne she hooked up with some bunch that wanted to put her back on it, so they stuck her under house arrest.”

“Tough duty. Lookit that place.”

“She should of behaved herself.”

“If this was my island,” says Big Ten, looking around, “I’d sure as hell want to get it back. In fact, I think I better volunteer to be on her guard detail, make sure she don’t bust out and cause any more ruckus.”

They all agree that duty here would be paradise, even without women serving you a feast every day. There is a kind of orchestra playing for them while they eat, natives wearing bright-colored shirts and ropes of flowers around their necks and some of the instruments Hod has never heard before. Suddenly it is their table’s turn to give back the compliment and they stand to sing
On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away
only with the words changed for their section of the country—

Oer my Colorado Rockies flies the eagle

Down the slopes flow rushing rivers clear and cool

Oftentimes my thoughts revert to scenes of childhood

Where I single-jacked for silver, Nature’s school

But one thing there is missing in the picture

Without her face it seems so incomplete

On the ship it is a whore they sing of, each verse nastier than the next, but this is polite company, with officers hovering and white ladies present—

I long to see my mother in the doorway

Of our cabin years ago, her boy to greet

Big Ten has a strong bass voice and can harmonize with anybody. Hod sings along, letting the other voices carry his, wishing he could feel a part of this like he did on the run with the Butte contingent of the Commonweal Army. But all he feels is that he’s hiding from something, that his life is not real, and being here in this dreamland, pleasant as it is, doesn’t help any. When the
China
was towed up to the wharf there were little Kanaka boys and girls swimming all around the hull who smiled and shouted and dove down under to grab for pennies the soldiers threw overboard.
That’s me
, Hod thought as he and Big Ten, throwing nothing, watched them splash and shout.
That’s my whole damn life
. Scrambling for pennies to entertain the folks up high—

Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight in Colorado

From saloons there comes the sound of men at play

Oer the glory holes the caution lights are gleaming

In my sweet Colorado, far away!

“So the Philippines is just like this, right?” says Private Neely when they have received their applause and are allowed to sit down and gorge themselves again.

There has been a lot of talk during the long, stomach-heaving days at sea as to where exactly the islands are and what the nature of the people on them is.

“They’re just like Cuba and Porto Rico,” insists Corporal Grissom, who has never been to either of those places, “only farther away.”

“It’s part of China,” says Private Falconer, “only the Papists got there before the other religions.”

“You sit under a tree,” says Sergeant LaDuke, “and take a nap, and when you wake up your lunch has dropped down into your lap.”

Runt, before they booted him out for being too small and too young, showed them the islands on a map he got hold of somewheres.

“Jesus, lookit em all,” said Neely, impressed. “We got to liberate every one of those?”

“We just wrap up the big one here,” said Runt, poking his finger onto an island called Luzon, “and the rest of em tip over like dominoes.”

Manigault strolls by them, wearing a white duck uniform and white canvas shoes like the navy officers.

“Dig in, fellows,” he says jauntily. “This will have to last you quite a while.”

“We been hearing plenty talk here, Lieutenant,” says Corporal Grissom. “There was some sailors at the wharf who see everything that comes on the wire, and their scut is that after what Dewey done to the Spanish fleet it’ll be over before we even get there.”

Manigault gives him a pitying smile, then nods toward an enormous roast pig being carried past on a litter by two barefoot Kanaka men.

“There is no feast,” he says, “without a slaughter.”

FURLOUGH

Halfway home on the
Comanche
, Royal is strong enough to climb up to the steamer’s aft deck and see the dolphins. The creatures, sometimes three, sometimes four, power along in their wake then leap again and again, sleek and glistening, to the cheers of the men. It is the best he has felt since Chickamauga.

There is a full band on one of the battleships plowing alongside the returning fleet, and several times a day the thump of bass drums is heard across the water, military airs and the new Sousa marches pounding out to cheer their passage. Royal is not stirred. He grips the aft rail tightly, still weak at the knees, and thinks of what a small thing his death would have been. His mother would have mourned him, and his brother Jubal, and his uncle Wicklow and Junior, for a while. They turned to waste so quickly, the bodies of the dead. A white man with a clipboard came through the sick tent, stopping by the cots of the ones who were thought to be dying.

“Next of kin?” he asked Royal.

“Jessie Lunceford.”

Her name came without thought, and when it was out it seemed right. To be mourned by Jessie Lunceford would mean you were someone in the world. You were not easily replaced. The Luncefords kept a horse and carriage, they lived in a house with white folks on either side of them. They were people the world looked at, wondered about, tried to be like.

“Relation?” asked the man with the clipboard.

“We’re going to be married,” Royal answered.

He is no longer delirious, or dying. But he will make it happen.

The Judge confronts him halfway into the street, brandishing a newspaper.

“Have you seen this?”

It’s hard for MacRae to make out anything on the paper with the Judge still waving it. “What is it?”

“It’s today’s
Record
, is what it is, and it is the most vicious slander.”

“I’m not in the habit of reading the colored sheet, Judge.” MacRae pulls his watch from his vest, glances at it. There’s a meeting with the fellows across the street in Bellamy’s building and he’s late already.

“Nor am I. But when it was brought to my attention—” the Judge slaps the rolled newspaper hard against his open palm. “Measures must be taken!”

“Are you mentioned by name?”

“I am not, damn it, but if he ever dare print it in this vile rag, I will—”

“Mr. Manly is not reticent with his opinions.”

“His opinions are criminal! This is part and parcel of what has become of the entire state. Our homes are no longer safe, the streets are overrun with insolent darkies who have been told they are our equals, no, that they are su
per
ior to us, men of proven value and social standing are ignored while the governor doles out state commissions to every shitheel Republican with two nickels to rub together—”