A Moment in the Sun (81 page)

Harry can hear several women in the audience begin to weep as the Bosch is replaced by a moving view. Three crosses, three crucified men, low hills in the background, a tall palm to the right, the centurions crouched below, throwing dice upon the ground and laughing. The shadows of the crosses are visible on the backdrop sky, of course, and no breeze stirs the painted palm fronds, but there are gasps and outcries in the hall when one of the Romans thrusts his spear into Christ’s ribs, and then a sigh of wonder as He lifts His eyes one last time to Heaven before letting His head drop in death. A golden nimbus, some sort of dye-process, no doubt, spreads from His body and suddenly a choir, previously unseen, is lit on the other side of the screen, a dozen angelic voices singing
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
and it is then that Harry has his revelation. What drives the picture forward, the vital armature, could at the same time drive some phonographic device
in synchrony
with the celluloid. Not only could this holy music be joined to the film strip, but His dying words, “Lord, hath Thou forsaken me?,” audibly delivered by the actor portraying Christ
as if he were in the room
.

Or is this sacrilege?

The man who stands beside him has joined in the singing, a rich, full basso—

His dying crimson, like a robe

Spreads o’er His body on the tree

Then I am dead to all the globe

And all the globe is dead to me!

The moving view gives way to a lantern-slide of Rembrandt’s moody
Descent from the Cross
, Joseph of Arimathea hugging the Body as he descends the ladder, Mary swooning into sympathetic arms in her own golden patch of light. The choir finishes the song, softening their voices into mournful oohs and aahs as the professor intones once more.

“There is, of course, a simple human side to our story,” he says. “That of a mother’s love for her Son.”

The Rembrandt gives way to the final moving view, the
Pietà
staged before the same backdrop. The thieves still hang on either side, the Roman soldiers gone now, replaced by nascent Christians who watch in sorrow as Mary clutches His thorn-crowned head to her breast. Harry can’t help wishing they had moved the camera closer so that the Virgin’s face could be seen, wishes he could walk into the view to comfort her.

“A mother’s grief knows no bounds,” says the lecturer. “But we can take comfort, we can find solace, in this story. For the Lord God on high loved us so much,” and here the projectionist, for it must be his hand, causes the image on the screen to begin to glow and then brighten further to a blinding whiteness as the voices of the choir climb to an almost unbearable crescendo, “that He gave His only begotten Son that we might be saved!”

The electric house lights flash on then and there is stunned, then uproarious applause.

“What did you think?”

It is the man beside him, dark-haired, with an intense, hawklike face.

“Very powerful,” says Harry. “But it can’t be Oberammergau.”

The man smiles. “A ruse to deflect the protestations of clergymen,” he says, offering his hand. “Such as myself. Reverend Thomas Dixon.”

“Harold Manigault.” Harry shakes the preacher’s hand. “You had no objection?”

“On the contrary. I’ve hosted a similar production at my church down the street, though I must admit our moving views were not as—as
sump
tuous as these.”

“I wonder, though, if the spectacle does not overwhelm—”

“We are poised to enter a century of
light
, my friend.” He grips Harry’s arm and looks deep into his eyes. “This—” nodding toward the screen, “—this in the proper hands will move men’s souls. I detect that you are of my home section.”

“Wilmington.”

“Goldsboro, in the Piedmont,” smiles the reverend. “And I pastored in Raleigh for a year.” He leans close, lowering his voice conspiratorially as his eyes move over the departing audience. “Some rather propitious events have taken place in your lovely city.”

Harry looks around—the room is nearly empty of spectators but it feels close. “Un
fo
rtunate events—”

“I am something of a novelist, in addition to my efforts from the pulpit, and your Wilmington situation strikes me as one of those instances in which history does not need to be greatly modified to instruct us. There is a great lesson to be learned.”

“And what might that be?” Harry asks.

Dixon regards him with a hot gleam in his eye. “That corruption unaddressed will fester,” he says. “And that the leopard, no matter how one paints him, does not change his spots.”

Harry tries to approximate the carefree grin that Niles would use. “What a pity—I’ve been hoping to change my own.”

Dixon pats Harry’s arm as he would to comfort a child, and starts away with an indulgent smile on his lips. “Breeding will out, I’m afraid.” He pauses in the doorway and spreads his arms as if to indicate all of New York. “Where better to bring our struggle than to the belly of the beast?”

Harry is sitting alone when Teethadore, face raw from scrubbing, comes to join him.

“Did you get here for Salome’s dance?”

“I’m afraid I missed it.”

“Charming girl. Travels with a sister act, the Singing Simpsons, but she’s the only one who hasn’t had her knees glued together. Did you see me?”

“In this?” Harry finds it unsettling to think of the diminutive variety artist rubbing elbows with the Savior.

“Herod’s minion, Elder of Zion, St. Matthew, Pilate’s clerk, bad Samar-itan—I’m all over the thing. The days we spent on that rooftop—”

“And Christ—?”

“Splendid fellow. Long-suffering. He and those thieves were strung up there for hours, waiting for the clouds to open. I suppose you’ll want to examine the device?”

“Do you think that would be possible?”

Teethadore gives him the smile and a wink. “The operator is an old friend.”

A youngish man named Porter is blowing air from a bellows into the workings of the cinematograph as they enter.

“The hero of Santiago,” he observes.

“Merely his theatrical counterpart,” grins Teethadore. “I bring you a worshipper at the altar of celluloid.”

Harry nods but can barely take his eyes off the machine. It is even smaller than he imagined.

“This is the French model?”

“Greatly modified,” says Porter. “This can’t double as a camera.”

“The image was so smooth.”

“Thank you.” Porter gives the crank a whirl. “Two revolutions per second.”

Harry looks out through the small window toward the screen. “You watch the view as it’s projected—”

“Only the edge of the screen, I’m afraid. We’ve improved the pull-down claws quite a bit but she’ll still jump around on you. Nothing like that mess Biograph uses.”

“I witnessed some this morning.” Harry puts his hand on his stomach. “Still queasy.”

“Did you notice the odor?”

“There’s an odor?”

Porter pokes at Teethadore. “From this fellow’s acting. For whom, I believe, the term
rank amateur
was coined.”

“
Touché.
Mr. Porter is a photographer as well. We have toiled together in the wilds of New Jersey.”

“Gramps Gets Hosed
. You can catch it on the Bowery.”

The apparatus is dark metal and glossy wood, mounted on a sturdy tripod. Harry fights the urge to put his hands on it. This is closer to the thing, to the intricate, holy apparatus, than he has hoped to come—

“Mr. Porter,” he ventures, “if you were ever to hear of a place, of an opening within the—”

“Edison’s always looking for new lackeys,” says the projectionist, rewinding a strip of celluloid onto a spool. “I can give you a name.”

Harry holds the folded slip of paper with the name written on it in his hand, thrust safely into his jacket pocket, as he crosses back through the maze of waxen statuary. He pulls up short at the French Revolution, a young cleaning woman on her knees scrubbing what looks like vomitus from the floor.

“Oh my,” says Harry, stepping back from the spreading puddle of wash water. “Someone’s been ill.”

“We get one or two every day when the Missus loses her head,” says the girl. She is Irish, and when she glances up she has the brightest, clearest green eyes Harry has ever seen.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s none of yer fault, is it?”

“I meant—that you have to deal with it.”

She looks up at him again, cocking her head, then she indicates the bloodstain painted on the guillotine block and the floor around it.

“And wasn’t it a poor girl like meself had to mop up that mess after the killin was done?”

“You work here?”

“At the moment, yes.” She goes back to scrubbing.

“Have you seen the attraction in the Hall?”

“The death of Christ? No, I haven’t, as a fact. But I know the story well.”

Of course she would. Harry resists the impulse to hand her a dime, not knowing how the gesture would be received. “Have you ever seen a moving view?”

The young woman sits up on her knees. She has a breathtaking smile. “Ah, I love the fillums, I do, but I rarely have the money nor the time. They take my breath away.”

He feels a little dizzy and wonders if the hamburger was a miscalculation. “Do you think,” he asks, once she has turned her head back to her task, “you might like to attend a show with me some time?”

The eyes grow sharp. “Yer foolin with me.”

“I assure you I’m not.” He lifts his skimmer off. “My name is Harry Manigault. I’m very new in this city—”

“Brigid,” she says, still suspicious. “It’s another name in Irish but here they call me Brigid.”

“May I call for you?”

“Fer that ye’d need to know where I’m situated. Number and street.”

Harry flushes, in deep now and not sure how to get out of it. “I suppose I would.”

“And what would ye think of a girl who told that to a man who’d just stumbled upon her workin?”

He hadn’t thought of that, with her on her knees in bucket water, an immigrant. A scrubwoman. He wonders if he could ever capture those eyes, not the color of course, but the brightness, the life of them, in a photograph.

“Quite right.”

What would Niles say? Even if he didn’t mean it, he would have something.

“Perhaps I could return at closing time and escort you—”

“My work is just beginnin then. It’s only me and the wax heroes, havin a grand time together.”

“Ah.”

She watches him for a moment with her green eyes. “Sunday afternoons,” she says finally, “I’ve been known to pop into the Hippodrome on Houston Street. A persistent gentleman might find me there. By accident, ye might say.”

“A most happy accident.” He puts his lid back on, then tips it to her. “A pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Brigid.”

“And where do ye come from, Mr. Mannygalt?”

“North Carolina.”

“Right,” she nods sagely. “I had ye spotted fer a foreigner. Twas a pleasure makin yer acquaintance as well,” she says, raising her scrub brush, “considerin the circumstances.”

Harry tries to walk as steadily as he can around the wet spot, not using the cane till he reaches the stairs outside. The cold hits him like a fist, still a surprise. It is night now, the streetlights glowing. He stands on the walk in front of the Eden Musee, the folded paper forgotten in his pocket, slightly dizzy. His heart is racing again, and he hasn’t even started across 23rd Street.

REGULARS

The armbands are supposed to make it all right, but you never know in El Paso. Royal is holding the reins, Junior never much with a wagon team, as they roll along Second, white folks’ brick houses to the left and Mexican baked adobe to the right. They are both wearing the armbands and strapped with pistols, usually forbidden, but this is a provost detail. Royal keeps his eyes straight ahead, glad it’s noon and most everybody is inside.

“We’ll be back in the thick of it in no time,” says Junior beside him, rubbernecking around like a tourist. “The Philippines, China—”

“You don’t know that.”

Junior has been on him all week to reenlist, their hitch officially over tomorrow and lots of the boys who come in with them at Missoula saying they’re going to hang it up.

“It stands to reason.” Junior holds tight to the seat as Royal turns the team left on Campbell. “We’re experienced, disciplined—”

“Don’t want to shoot them people any more than I wanted to shoot a Spanish.”

“We don’t get to choose our enemies, Royal.”

“If you’re not in the damn Army you do.”

“It will be more like police work by the time we get there. Maintaining order—”

“Don’t care for that neither.”

Junior scowls. “Suppose you were to accept discharge. What would you do?”

Royal has been trying not to think of this. He shrugs. “Go back to Wilmington.”

It is a sore point between them, Junior bragging after every letter he gets about how good his people are making it up in New York, like they never lost a step, while Royal, who gets no mail at all, doesn’t call out the lie. If he even says the
name
Wilmington, Junior gets all tight and says that’s over, that the colored man’s future all up North now.

Or in the regulars.

“What I’ve heard,” says Junior, turning his head away, “is they even told Mr. Sprunt he can’t hire colored anymore.”

All Royal knows, from the other Wilmington men in the unit, is that his mother wasn’t hurt and Jubal took off and hasn’t been back. It was Junior who told him Dorsey Love is dead and Jessie gone up to a better life in New York.

“Set me there with one dozen of these wildass colored regulars,” said Coop when he heard, Coop who used to be Clarence Rice at home and didn’t come back from leave last night, “and they be a mess of redneck crackers floating in that Cape Fear River.”

Royal pulls the wagon off the street, hitching the pair in the shade of the alleyway next to the jail. He and Junior straighten their uniforms out, set their hats, and step inside.

The deputy leans back in a swivel chair behind a scarred-up desk, chewing tobacco and spitting the juice into a coffee cup in his hand while an electric fan blows air on his face. Another man, an Easterner by his dress, sits across from him writing in a notebook.