A Moment in the Sun (75 page)

“Aye, Franciscans, and iv the acquisitive variety.”

“Now, Franciscans aren’t the worst of the orders. They’ll go easy with the rod, is my experience. But yer Christian Brothers—”

“Sakes, set them byes on ’im and there wouldn’t be a Fillypeeny left standin.”

The copper ponders for a moment. “So—we kape the flag flutterin above, injuice thim to buy our chape suits, and in the course of time innerjuice the finer concepts iv patronage and quid pro quo.”

“Tis the very thing Senator Hanna advises.”

“A sound course of action.”

“Ah, but there’s a sorpint in the Garden.”

“Wherivver ye’ve got pallum trays there’s sure to be sorpints crawlin about.”

“This wan’s name is Aggynaldo.”

“An Eyetalian in the Fillypeens! And is he an arnychist as well?”

“He’s only a Fillypeeny insurrictionalist, is all. Wan iv their ginrals that was on our side agin the Spaniard, and now perhaps he isn’t innymore.”

“That quick, is it?”

“Imagine, if ye will, what the poor monkeys are thinkin—here they’ve bin fightin agin the Spaniard since shortly after the Flood, and in stames Admiral Dooley to knock the tar out iv the Dago’s flotilla—”

“Our byes to the rescue, jist like at the San Wan Hill—”

“Ah, but there the Cubing insurrictos had their own flag at the ready—”

“Many’s the time I’ve seen it, hung outside the hoonta office on New Street.”

“And the Fillypeenys might’ve had some sort of a banner waiting, fer all I know, but the race goes to the swift, or in this case to thim what’s got the Great White Flate floatin in the harbor set to bombard Manila with dinnymite. So there’s a bit iv a dustup around the fort—Murphy, the policy banker from Twelfth Street, says it was in the bag before a shot was fired, and he ought to know—and poor Aggynaldo and his stalwarth companions look up to see the Star-Spangled Banner itself wavin high over the walls.”

“Ye say the battle was not on the up-and-up?”

“D’ye know Finnegan that works on the gas lines?”

“He’s felt the hard ind iv me stick more than wonst.”

“And d’ye remimber last August when his missus set out afther him with a lead sash-weight in her hand—”

“And Finnegan run into the station hollerin bloody murther—”

“And him no great friend of the byes in blue—”

“He’d curse us to Hell as soon as look at us.”

“Aye, but at the moment he was in mortal peril from a far more turrible inimy. Can ye imagine fallin into the hands iv Big Annie Finnegan in all her fury?”

“A fate worst thin Death itself.”

“Well, thim Spanish Dons trapped in the fort in Manila was thinkin the same thoughts as Finnegan. Better their kaysters thrown on a quick boat back to auld Madrid than their noggins on a pike in Manila.”

“Which manes this Aggynaldo is in Big Annie’s boots.”

“He takes a smaller size,” corrects Gilhooley, “but the principle is the same. He goes to Admiral Dooley, does Aggy, and he says—in Spanish now, fer that’s what the eddycated wans spake, none of yer googoo lingo fer thim—he says, ‘Thanks fer yer help in the matter,’ he says, ‘and whin exactly will ye be pullin anchor?’ And the Admiral strokes those great white chop-warmers he wears and he says, ‘Ye’ll be informed whin inny consinsus has bin arrived at.’ Bein a polite way iv tellin the little monkey to bugger off. So it’s our byes with their kit and rifle versus the salvages with their bolo knives, waitin fer the other brogan to fall.”

“And will they lift a man’s tonsure, the Fillypeenys?”

“Worst than that—they’ve got torters and depprydations to make a red Injin blush fer shame.”

“There’s bows and arras involved?”

“Spears even, like your African headhunters use. Oh, it’s a primitive type of conflict they’ll be wagerin on thim islands, what the Royal British who’s fightin the Boors in Praetoria are callin gorilla war.”

“Gorillas, too! A turrible thing.” O’Malley ponders. “What exactly is a Boor, then? I’ve hoord iv the thing, but I don’t have me finger on it—”

“It’s a type of Dutchman,” says Gilhooley, “that’s gone wild on the African felt.”

“That’s a soberin thought, that is—a salvage Dutchman. The worst iv two wurrulds.”

“Spakin iv red Injins,” says Gilhooley, “me own opinion is that what’s needed over there is Ginral Miles, late iv the gggreat victhry of Sandago Cuba, him that injuiced Geronnymo and his haythen band to come back on the riservation. He’s the bye fer the job.”

“Aye,” the policeman nods, “he’d make short work iv this Aggy fella.” He taps his stick absently against the wheel of Gilhooley’s wagon, thinking. “So—whin the Fillypeenys have bin subjude, d’ye think we’ll have another star on the flag?”

“Not on yer life. The Fillypeeny himself is somethin between a Hottentot and a Chinaman—with none of the positive attrybutes iv ayther race, whatsoivver as those might be. Them islands is more likely to become a Turritory, like this Porta Reeky or Oklahoma. As such they injoy some of the bennyfits iv citizenship, but kape their noses out of trouble come Illiction Day.”

“It seems like a great deal iv bother to go to,” opines the lawman, “to sell a few chape suits.”

“Tis the white man’s burthen,” replies Gilhooley, bending once again to his task. “And we’ll all need to buck up and carry our portion iv it.”

COCKFIGHT

There are roosters at the front. It has been quiet along the line all day, even with the Americans setting up their artillery on the heights across the river, quiet enough for General Ricarte and Colonel San Miguel to join Aguinaldo and the rest of the general staff in Malolos for a ball to celebrate the new Constitution.

“Keep a third at the outposts,” the colonel called down to Diosdado from his rented barouche. “But there’s no reason the rest of the boys can’t have some fun.” And then was gone.

So there are roosters in the long pit dug just behind the sentry posts, at least three sets of birds preparing to tear each other apart, and torches stuck below ground level to light their battles. Diosdado’s men crowd around, betting coins and cigarettes, using old lottery tickets as promissory notes, bantering about the relative merits of Cubans versus Jolos, feathery birds versus sinewy, orange versus black. Gambling has been outlawed by General Aguinaldo, of course, but like many of his orders this one seems to be understood in principle and ignored in practice. The boys at the outposts turn to call back their observations to those in the pit, feeling persecuted to have drawn sentry duty on this night of celebration, the war over and Manila beckoning from behind the American lines on the other side of the San Juan River.

“I’m holding the Death of all Chickens in my hands,” sings out the one they call Kalaw because of his big nose. “You bet against him, you bet against fate.” Kalaw holds his champion, a squirming bundle of rage, within inches of the beak of the other combatant still pegged to the trench floor while his friend, Joselito, yanks the bird’s tailfeathers to anger it even more.

Nicanor from Cavite squats behind the pegged gamecock. “My Butcher will cut him up,” he states calmly. “Anybody who doesn’t think so can show me their money,
ba
?”

Locsin, the
chino
from Botolan, is serving as the
sentensyador
, mentally recording bets shouted out by the soldiers crammed down in the pit or kneeling just above it. Kalaw’s bird, hackles up, whips its snakelike neck forward, beak snapping just short of Nicanor’s stocky half-breed. Nicanor pulls the cock back into his lap and his second, Corporal Pelaez, straps the razor-edged gaffs, still in their leather sheaths, onto its feet. Joselito is waving a cookpot from the mess at them.

“This is where your
kawawa
Butcher is going,” he taunts, “after we tenderize him a little!”

Diosdado pulls himself away from the fight and walks along the outposts, fully exposed to the other side. Providing an easy target and pretending not to care is part of being an officer. They had started a full hundred yards back from the river, like the Americans on the other side, but after San Miguel took over Third Zone both parties began to creep up, and now each is dug in at the foot of the bridge itself, more convenient for shouting drunken insults at each other. Diosdado has been pulled in to translate, standing with San Miguel at the center of the bridge to parley with the American officers, a volunteer general from the mountains of Colorado and a Colonel Stotsenberg.

“Encroachments,” the volunteer general stated in the direct, seemingly affectless American way, “will not be tolerated.”

Diosdado pauses to kick one of the boys who has fallen asleep face-down on his rifle.

“Wa—?”

“This isn’t a dream, soldier. What if the Americans decide to attack right now?”

The soldier looks over the lazy San Juan, the bridge paralleled by the water pipeline from El Depósito, as if the possibility has never occurred to him. Diosdado can smell that the soldier has already celebrated the Constitution.

“Then they will be very stupid.”

It is probably good, this confidence, this cockiness. Spirited. When Luna suggested digging trenches, one of the Caviteño generals retorted, in Spanish, that “true men fight with open breast.” Only Sargento Bayani seems to doubt that the Americans, most of them volunteers and soft from inactivity, will be no match if it comes to open hostilities.

“And what if General Luna were to appear and find you sleeping at your post?”

The private sobers visibly. “You speak the truth, Teniente. I will try to stay awake.”

Luna is the boogeyman, the
aswang
who all the officers use to frighten the troops when they don’t want to risk their own popularity. Luna has already sentenced two poor Manila boys to be executed for sneaking home while on sentry duty, has screamed at and slapped men of every rank below colonel. He is regarded as an Ilocano phantom, likely to materialize in three different places at once, implacable in his mania for discipline, fingers eagerly caressing his pearl-handled pistol. He is known as El Furioso, El Martillo de Dios, El Loco—

“Did you know,” the men whisper to each other as Luna struts past them, eyes searching for the next junior officer to be humiliated, “that his brother, the painter, murdered his own wife and mother-in-law? And got away with it?” The whole family are
locos
, go the stories,
locos Ilocanos
, and all you can do is hope that when he explodes you are somewhere else.

But Luna is the one who knew they should have taken Manila before the
yanquis
strolled in, no matter what the cost in lives.

Sargento Bayani sits on the slope of the riverbank at the end of the outposts, smoking, smiling his private smile. Diosdado stops by him to gaze across the water.

“You’re not interested in the
sabong
?”

Bayani shrugs. “I’ll have some stew tomorrow.” He jerks his head toward the American lines. “They had a busy day.”

Diosdado watched it all through his binoculars, reporting constantly on their progress till Capitán Grey y Formentos told him to leave him alone and put it in writing. Artillery positions dug and leveled and sandbagged, the pieces rolled into place, painstakingly sighted on the San Juan del Monte hill. If it starts in earnest it will be there—the Americans will try to capture the old Spanish blockhouses and push on to take El Depósito where Bonifacio’s uprising floundered not so many years ago. The powder magazine and the waterworks will be their objectives, and to take them they must pass straight over Diosdado’s celebrating patriots. It has been a week of incidents, escalating each day, insults called back and forth, rumors of American sentries taking liberties with Filipino women passing through their lines, stories of the Spanish garrison back in the Walled City acting more like conquerors on leave than prisoners, stray bullets winging in one direction or the other with greater frequency each night. But orders, from Aguinaldo himself, are to avoid engagement, to accommodate their “allies” wherever possible. To wait.

“The Americans are going to vote,” Diosdado tells the sargento. “Back in their own congress. About what to do with us.”

“What to do with us,” Bayani repeats. He addresses Diosdado in Zambal, as always now, as if it is their private language. Diosdado has not garnered the nerve to order the sargento to speak Tagalog like the others.

“The bird that loses, the
talunan
,” says Bayani, “goes to the owner of the one that wins.”

“We’re not the losers—the Spanish are.”

“Is that right?” Bayani stares across the bridge, shakes his head. It is too dark to see any movement but there is a harmonica playing, laughter every now and then, shouted challenges and passwords from the river’s edge.

“The generals know more than we do.”

Diosdado hopes it is true as he says it. There has already been too much dissent above him, the Caviteños resenting Luna, the veterans of ’96 discounting the newcomers, each general a warlord threatening to pick up with his regional clan and march home if he isn’t deferred to, flattered, given his proper share of glory. And this only in Luzon. Hard to imagine controlling what develops in Negros, Cebu, Samar, controlling the crazy
moros
on the southern islands.

“Of course,” says Bayani. “The
ilustrados
always know what is best for us.”

He says the word in Spanish, with the slightest touch of contempt.

“It’s what I heard up in Malolos,” shrugs Diosdado, angry to be made to feel guilty about his education. “The American congress is meeting. Important men are said to support our cause.”

Bayani cocks his head and studies Diosdado’s face, making him feel as if he is being judged for something long past repair. “If you were a
yanqui
,” asks the sargento finally, “and you wanted your government to vote to take our country away from us—what would you want to happen here?”

Diosdado looks down along the outposts, looks to the men lit by the glow from the torches in the cockpit behind them. Most of the sentries have their backs to the river, talking softly with each other or calling to see how the cockfights are progressing.