A Moment in the Sun (121 page)

They walk up and down a series of hills through a forest of hemp, the towering plants seeming to provide no shade. The white fiber is hung out on long lines to dry, making a kind of fence, and if there are any workers meant to be out here they have all gone and hid.

The land flattens out then and Royal keeps his eyes fixed on Corporal Ponder’s back and puts one foot in front of the other, all of them wary of straggling now after Junior. It feels like his head is cooking under his hat but he knows he can’t take it off. The worst was last night with the fever dreams again and Jessie in them, calling to him from across a swift river too loud in its rushing to hear her voice. It feels like he couldn’t lift his arms if his life depended on it, that marching is possible only if he leans enough to fall forward and then manages to keep his feet in front of him. Hardaway alongside has something wrong with his stomach and is the wrong color. Sergeant Jacks drops back every now and again to look over the sick men and Gamble, who was hit in the arm in the attack, and tell them with his eyes that they need to keep up.

Maybe they were in with the rebels, some of them, the people in Las Ciegas, or maybe they weren’t. Just got wind of it and they didn’t want to be there when whatever happened started up.

“Make yourself scarce,” they always said at home, like when he was little and a colored man had cut a white man down on Dock Street. Make yourself scarce tonight, cause anyone colored and out on the street was an insult, was temptation for the rope and the torch, and even the tough sports at the Manhattan Dance Hall kept the lights low and didn’t play their music. You almost didn’t need words, just get a feel on the street and hurry to get behind a door somewhere. This is their country, the Filipinos, and they have that kind of feeling for it. They know where to go and wait till it is safe to come back again.

The lieutenant said to leave the church alone. No sense in being disrespectful.

They veer off the road and march through a section of what they called
chaparral
at Huachuca, Gamble moaning a bit now and holding his shattered arm tight to his side. Royal has Junior’s Krag still, the artificer having taken his own to use it for parts. With the marching orders there was no way to send the body back, but the boys pitched in and dug a good deep hole and borrowed a cross from the church. There is no chaplain with either H or L, so they stood uncovered around the hole and the lieutenant said some words and told Royal he would write to the Luncefords in New York and then they filled it in. Royal would write, too, only they might blame him for it. It doesn’t seem possible that anything, much less one little piece of paper, could start from this hot island in the middle of the sea and find its way to some colored people lost in a great city in the north of America.

Royal moves ahead with the column, all his joints aching now with the fever, flushed with a liquid heat that seems to flow up across the back of his neck to his cheeks and to his temples and everything so bright it is hard to tell what is near and what is far as they reach the river, the same one, he thinks, but a different spot, and the column bends alongside it for nearly a mile before the lieutenant says it is a place they can ford.

The banks look high here but when it is Royal’s turn he sees there is a section that has caved in and the head of the column has already reached the far side, men holding their rifles over their heads and wading up to their chests, moving slowly on what looks like slippery footing, the double line bent in the middle by the current. The water is cold and feels good on his legs, tugging. It is all a jumble of rocks below and the Krag seems to weigh as much as a man when he lifts it overhead, Hardaway making little noises in front of him, afraid of his snakes like always in the water and the current is even stronger than it looks, making you brace yourself and push one leg forward and get a foothold before you dare swing ahead. There are no shoals but the sound of the water rushing between the soldiers is insistent, deafening, and it is Too Tall just next to him upstream who falls and knocks him loose, off his feet in the water and swept away and the bottom is gone, can’t find it, his head under once, hat gone, men’s shouting voices growing distant so quickly and he thrashes his free hand and his feet searching for something, anything and then finally thinks
let it go
and lets Junior’s Krag slip from his hands so he can try to swim. But the banks are so high here, the river deeper, swifter, and his arms are so weary, the fever taking all the starch out of him and Royal gulps air and puts his head in the cold water and just lets it take him away. Away. Make himself scarce. He is getting scarcer and scarcer, the cold passing into him, and it is an annoyance that he has to raise his head to take a breath.

There is a tree downed partway across the river ahead and if he had the strength he might paddle around it and let the river keep him. A branch cuts his cheek as he is driven into it by the current and his legs are swept under and then he is struggling with the tree, wrestling branches and ducking under and then there are rocks, some of them sharp on his hands, and he pulls himself half out of the water like a mudpuppy, legs still tugged by the current behind, and lies on his face with nothing left to spend. He doesn’t think they’ll bother to send anybody after him.

The heat is gone out of him and the chills come, running up the backs of his legs and out his arms like ripples before a fast wind. The rushing river sounds hollow and far away, all sound dull till the snap of the rifle bolt above.

Royal manages to roll onto his side. A boy stands on the thick trunk of the upended tree, bare toes dug into the bark, his skinny arms leveling a battle-scarred Model 93 Mauser at Royal’s head. He looks scared or excited or both. He says something and jerks the barrel of the rifle up and down.

Royal closes his eyes and lays an arm over his face.

Kalaw whistles the warning and Diosdado slows, raises his arms over his head so they can see that it is him. The sentry waves him on gravely, no question as to whether his mission in Taugtod was successful or not. When he approaches the camp he sees them all gathered around somebody, men barely glancing at him as he steps to the center to find out what has happened.

It is little Fulanito with a big, black American. The American looks more exhausted than scared. Bayani comes up the hill then and tells them to break camp, that one
yanqui
in the river means more are near, then goes to explain to the refugees who have joined them what may happen next.

“Sit down here,” Diosdado says to the American, who he can see is surprised to be addressed in his own language. The man, who is big but not so big as some of them, has to support himself with one arm to stay upright, even sitting.

“You are of the 25th Infantry.”

The man nods.

“And you have burned Las Ciegas.”

When Colonel San Miguel ordered the attack on the garrison, Diosdado told Bayani to stall enough getting there that they were not part of it. Since Aguinaldo’s capture the Republic has ceased to exist as such, only groups of independent raiders left, striking when they have the advantage. Why attack the enemy where he is dug in with an ample supply of ammunition?

“The people are all gone there,” says the American.

“Yes. Some have come to us.” He points to the dozen they have met on the way, sitting anxiously with the things they have carried piled around them. “And where is your column going?”

The man hesitates. “They don’t tell us the names till after we took it over.”

Subig will be next. The column must have crossed some distance upriver. Nothing to be done, and he needs to get his people to San Marcelino before the
yanquis
arrive.

“What is your name?”

“Royal Scott,” says the
americano negro
. “Private.”

Diosdado looks the man in the eye and sees only someone waiting, resigned, for what happens next. This close, their faces are only human, not like the stories from Manila or the cartoons in the newspapers. But he finds himself speaking very slowly, as if to a child.

“I must tell you, Private Scott, that you have only two courses open. Either you will come with us in silence as a prisoner and a
cargador
—a carrier of things—or we must shoot you now.”

Fulanito stands with his rifle aimed, unwavering, waiting for the Amer-ican’s response.

The rebels hang their heaviest supplies on a pole they lift onto the American’s shoulders. Most of the Pampanganos want to return to the burned village and rebuild, but Nilda lifts her own burden and begins to walk. The American, Roy, gives her only a quick glance and does not smile at her. The rebels are going north to Zambales, they say, and that is where she wants to be. He looks like he is wounded or sick, Roy, staggering under the load, struggling to keep up with the swiftly moving band. She walks behind, and once when he seems about to topple she puts a hand to his back and gently pushes forward. She asks the Virgin, in the familiar but respectful way that Padre Praxides taught her in Candelaria, to intercede.

Mother of God
, she prays,
do not let them shoot this man
.

TEMPLE OF MUSIC

The Temple of Music belongs on the head of a Byzantine despot. Its sides, anchored by statues of bards and Bacchae, are a deep Chinese red with trimmings in gold and yellow, the panels of its massive dome an aquatic blue-green, facing its slightly less gaudy sister, the Ethnology Building, across the Esplanade. Today it is even hotter inside the Temple than out, many of the patient citizens dabbing the sweat from their faces with handkerchiefs as they wait to greet the President. The line begins outside, where a pretty girl strolls along it selling samples of cool Lithia Water from a tray, then hooks into the southeast entrance. Inside there are soldiers and Exposition police forming a chute between their human chain and the curving row of seats, to guide the well-wishers in single file toward their destination. A soloist is playing Bach’s
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
on the immense organ that takes up much of the eastern wall of the structure. There is a slight blue-green cast to everything touched by the afternoon sun slanting through the dome panels. The President is flanked by his secretary, Cortelyou, and the Exposition director, who introduces any prominent Buffalonians as the line comes from the left. A pair of Secret Service men stand across from them, watching the crowd.

The Assassin has his handkerchief wrapped around his right hand, as if it has been injured, the pistol wet and hot in his palm beneath it. There is a very large colored man behind him. He realizes he should have eaten, but the stabbing he witnessed the night before has driven all thoughts of food from his mind. “Keep moving,” says a policeman, though it is clear everybody in the line is eager to get to the President.

He is a bland pudge of a man, thinks the Assassin on seeing him so closely, a willing tool of the Monopolists and money-riggers, a smug prattler of Christian bromides. The President smiles and shakes hands in the line ahead. “A pleasure to meet you,” the Assassin hears him say. A bland pudge of a man with a massive, self-satisfied belly who scratches a pen on paper and men lose their farms or are thrown out of work or sent to foreign jungles to kill and die. I will do this thing, thinks the Assassin—there is no turning back. Easy as standing in front of a train. Two more people.

“I spent a long, sleepless night,” he hears the President explain to the man who lingers in front of him, “but in the morning I found that the Lord had spoken. We could not abandon the Philippines to paganism and anarchy.”

The Assassin is the pebble under the iron heel of the Rulers. He is the Voice drowned out by their machinery. He is invisible. He sees the eyes of the bodyguard shift from him, uninterested, to the negro giant next in line. The Assassin is No Man. In ’93 when they cut wages at the rolling mill he went out with the others, walked the picket line, was fired and put on their blacklist. Nieman, he said after the strike had failed and they were rehiring and the new foreman asked his name, Fred Nieman. No Man. The foreman did not speak German, did not see the smirks of the other workers as banished Leon Czolgosz strolled back onto the factory floor. He had been cool-headed on that day, had waited in line for his interview, had done what was necessary. He steps past the Exposition man. The President holds his hand out. The Assassin pushes it away.

The soloist pauses then, or perhaps the piece is over, the last great organ note echoing in the Temple.

The Assassin stares into the great, self-satisfied belly of the man and squeezes the trigger.

Harry is helping to set up for the Parade when the shots and the shouting begin. The Temple is behind them. He helps Paley reposition the apparatus, helps him up onto the apple boxes they have nailed together to make a shooting platform. They asked to be inside but the Exposition organizers said no, even the still photographer would have to step out before the greeting process began. The word of the deed crackles around them like static electricity, the line of well-wishers dissolving into an ever-growing mob. The President has been shot, that much is for certain, and the assailant has been made captive. Exposition police have rushed out of the Temple and from other parts of the fair to guard the four entrances, enraged citizens pushing at them, men who have come to stroll the grounds with their loved ones now red-faced and hysterical.

“Lynch him! Lynch him!” they shout.

“Bring the son of a bitch out here and burn him!”

Harry takes his hat off and mops his brow with his handkerchief.

“That’s just talk, kid,” Daddy Paley calls down to him. “We don’t usually go for the rope up here.”

“What should we do?”

“Shoot,” says the cameraman, trying to crank steadily despite his excitement. “Shoot till we run out of film.”

“It’s just a crowd. The backs of people’s heads.”

“The backs of people’s heads trying to get into the building where their President has just been shot. And we’re the only camera outfit on the grounds.” With that he begins to slowly pan the apparatus left to right on the swivel-joint Harry has been trying to perfect.