A Moment in the Sun (43 page)

“You don’t hold that pickaninny still,” he calls, “Imonna plonk him for sure.”

The man fires again and then the street seems to brighten under the gas lamps, colors flaring as Royal steps toward the one with the Colt, Junior dragging on him and the woman screaming “God damn you! God damn you to hell!”

But before Royal can reach him the Vol with the Colt grunts and collapses on one knee, a dark stain blooming on the man’s light blue trousers just below the hip. He looks around, stupid with drink, sees Royal and raises his pistol but his balance is all gone and he pitches sideways to the street. More shooting then and there are others, Coop is one of them, running out from a raw-pine building across from the arcade, many of them firing and it’s then Royal realizes he left his pistol in camp. Junior said it would be best, but Junior is now shouting and waving to get off the street, dammit, and a blue shock cracking behind his ear and the pavement comes up fast to thump him hard. There are night-pass boots in his face, stomping, he can smell the wet polish, and then he’s rolled under falling bodies.

Junior pulls him up out of the writhing pile and he sees the weeping woman holding her child, the child still shrieking and the street filling up with white men.

“This is no good,” says Junior, seeming to have a clearer idea of what is happening. “We got to run!”

How do they know what it’s about so quickly? These white men, a few of them soldiers but mostly shopkeepers and corner sports and family men in white skimmers with their shotguns and pistols already, their bats and pool cues—how do they know the moment they step into the heat of the gas-lit street that it’s get the niggers and not some other disaster, some other entertainment, here on a block full of drunken men and a dozen clashing musics and gunfire commonplace since the encampment began? Some instant signal, some electric connection has hurled them out here and every white man is searching for a black one to shoot, to beat, but now suddenly there is a counterrush of black and blue out from Miss Sadie’s on the north end of the street, Miss Sadie’s Lovely Ladies where Little Earl has been spending his pay, a wave of black men wearing bits and pieces of their uniforms and several of them firing pistols and the ground is sparkling, sparkling with broken glass as Junior pulls him back into the arcade.

Royal is coming and going now, dizzy, hurting sharp behind his right eye and missing some pictures in between like the Mutoscope he was viewing before when you crank it too fast and each time he comes back the Orchestrion is still playing
Goodbye, Nellie Gray
, pumping the piano and drums and cymbal and tambourine but the shots outside not in time with it and then he’s gone for a moment, the pictures blurring together till they slow and he reels, caroming off the bagatelle table they were playing at then stopped hard at the hips and doubled over, vomiting on the surface of the beanbag toss, looking up woozily into the goggle eyes of the target, a monstrous laughing jigaboo head, its open mouth the hole you have to aim for.

“You get outd of heer!”

The proprietor, a big German with pop-eyes, comes at him from a tilted angle, raising an ax handle in his boiled-ham fists.

“I break you in the hedt!” he cries, voice surprisingly high. “You get oudt
now
!”

And where, in a penny arcade, did he find a brand-new ax handle?

“We’re just going,” calls Junior, ever the gentleman, as he lifts Royal by the shoulders and steers him away. “We don’t want any trouble.”

Royal sees they are the only customers left and the Orchestrion switches to
Bill Bailey
as he is hustled out the back entrance, stumbling over a drunken soldier sleeping curled on his side.

“I’ve been hit,” says Royal, the fact dawning on him with another wave of nausea. “Somebody hit my head and I’m sick.”

There is too much water in the air to breathe right and there is more shooting, shooting and shouted curses from the other side of the building. A small soldier hurries down the alley toward them, looking back over his shoulder and he is almost on them before they see it is Little Earl, his eyes shining with more excitement than fear.

“I been saved,” he says. “I’m prepared to meet my Maker.” And then, as if an afterthought, “Why everybody shooting?”

Tampa is a fever dream bubbling acid to the brain. Old hatreds are resolved in a flash, strangers try to murder one another, property is destroyed, storefronts violated.

A fire wagon races down the street, horses wide-eyed and prick-eared, thick-armed men ready to shoulder through doorways, but nothing is burning yet. Tampa is unhinged, thoughtless, thrashing in its own worst nightmare.

Coop has one round left in the chamber and they’re running. Not running away but running wild, running to spread it as fast and as far as possible, to do what is needed till it can’t be done anymore.

Too Tall trots with a sack of cans, beans and tomatoes and succotash they pulled from the grocery where the clerk spat at his shoes, and whenever one of the boys says There, they wouldn’t serve me there, they all reach in and grab a can and let fly at the glass. Coop wonders what the Army name for the formation they are running in is, a wide V with a few pedaling backward behind to cover the rear. Willie Mills has a new Winchester and a pocketful of shells he took from the hardware and hasn’t got to use yet. Now and again some white head will look out from a doorway or window, take one look and disappear before he can get a shot off.

“They sposed to pop up again,” Willie complains. “Give a man a chance.”

Coop is feeling good, feeling free and bold and keeping that one ace back in the chamber in case he needs it. The first one he knows he hit cause the man fell out, aimed at the balls and cut him under the hip, and two more must have hit somebody cause it was such a crowd of them coming all together he fired into. The Krag, what he would give to have the Krag in his hands right now and a belt packed with ammunition. Put these rednecks to school.

“It’s there on the left,” says Rufus Briscoe and they see the girls, most all of them white, looking down from the second-floor balcony. The V swings right and again Coop is sure the Army has a name for it, Too Tall shattering the door with the heel of his boot and the rest squeezing shoulder to shoulder to push it through.

A thick-necked black man sits on the parlor stairs, shotgun leveled and his face glistening with nervous sweat.

“You go upstairs,” he says, “they gone kill me for sho.”

“You put that shotgun up.” Too Tall spreads his arms out wide, drops the sack with the last few cans in it. Men still outside are shouting, wanting to know what the hold-up is.

“Don’t you make me do this.”

Coop drifts off to the side, toward the parlor. He has the pistol loose in his hand.

Too Tall takes a small step forward, arms still spread.

“We gonna get what we come for. These gals anything to you?”

“This my job.”

“It worth dyin for?”

“Ax you the same thing. White-woman pussy worth dying for?”

Too Tall laughs. “You all right. What’s your name?”

“Jawge.”

“There’s at least seven, eight of us here, Jawge. Aint no white man gonna blame you, overwhelm eight-to-one.”

Coop watches the man’s trigger finger. He’s seen a man taken apart by a shotgun this close once, in Raleigh. Saw backbone come out white behind and the man lifted clear off his feet.

“And this aint just no common layabouts, Jawge,” says Too Tall, easing his hands down. “You got professional soldiers here, out on a rampage. If you think your white man blame you for that, give us his name and we go get him.”

The man on the stairs ponders this for a moment, not happy, then looks over to Coop.

“Lay your shotgun back,” says Coop, smiling, “and step out the way.”

Coop eases back closer to Too Tall, not taking his eyes off the weapon. George stands, then swings the gun around and unloads both barrels into the parlor, shattering a mirror and blowing stuffing from a pink divan. Screams from upstairs.

“You done lost me this job,” he says accusingly. “But you tell them gals I peppered some hides down here, maybe Mist’ Carlyle won’t come after me.”

He steps aside and the men charge up the stairs, cheering.

“Aint a thing up there that’s worth it,” he says to Willie, left behind with his rifle to watch the street.

Coop is the first in the room. A blond woman with a face round as a pie plate, dressed in red silk, stands in front of the others with her hands on her hips.

“We don’t fuck no niggers here,” she announces.

“Aint nothing to it, darling,” says Coop. “And how things is, tonight you got no choice.”

The blond woman eyes the roll of money as he pulls it from his shirt pocket.

“You gone pay?”

“Yeah, darling, we gone pay,” says Coop, laying his winnings on the bureau and smiling. “One way or the other.”

Tampa is a fever dream, lingering through the night, a nightmare that won’t end.

“Who goes there?”

There are five of them, sharp-eyed boys from the 2nd Georgia. The boldest has the barrel of his rifle jammed against the center of Junior’s chest. There is enough light to see color now.

“What we got?” calls another as he steps around the side of a scrapwood shanty.

“Got a bunch of plantation monkeys all dressed up like sojers.” A scrawny dog is sniffing loudly at Royal’s leg and growling, its tail rigid. There is a distant popcorn-rattling of gunfire from back in Tampa City but here the black folks have barred their doors, or what they have that will pass for a door, praying the fight won’t blow their way.

“What you doing out here, Rastus?”

“Private Aaron Lunceford,” says Junior as calmly as he can. “25th Infantry, Company L.”

“Not what I asked you, is it?”

They cut through the Scrub hoping somebody might hide them till daybreak. Little Earl knows a house with two women who host card parties but nobody was in there and then they got turned around because the streets are just sand paths with no signs anywhere.

“We were just visiting here,” says Royal, feeling sick again, “and then heading back to the Heights.”

The leader looks down to the fyce, growling louder now and staring tense at Royal’s leg, ready to snap if he makes a twitch. “Dog botherin you, boy?”

“No.” Royal realizes it should have been “No sir” but the Army training has taken hold and this boy has only got one thin stripe on his arm.

“Bothers me,” says the leader.

Royal feels the force of the bullet passing close by his leg. Just a single startled yelp, the kind they do when they’re sleeping and you step on their tail, and it flops to the sand. He can smell the blood, and something else, urine. He shifts his leg slowly and is relieved to find it’s not his own.

“Oh Lord,” says Little Earl.

Another one comes close to peer hard in their faces, a boy with light green eyes, cat eyes, and a lump in his cheek. He spits tobacco next to the body of the dog. “Our regiment been delegated to get you darkies in line,” he says. He nods at the leader. “Lester here was fast asleep and yall put him outta bed. He fit to kill, he is.”

“If you’ll deliver us to the provost tent, I’m sure they’ll—”

The leader, Lester, jerks the barrel of his Springfield up to crack Junior under the chin. “You open your mouth again, nig, I’ll knock them pearly whites out.” He points. “Yall prisoners now, you march where you’re told and shut the hell up. Now hop to it.”

Lester winks to the others and waves his rifle. They start to walk, one of the Georgia boys on each side and two behind, with the cat-eyed soldier leading the way.

“Just follow Jimbo,” says the leader, “and keep your hands where we can see em.”

They aren’t walking toward the camp. Lost as he is Royal can tell that much but can’t bring himself to raise the question. You raise the question you have to live with the answer. The pain behind his eye has dulled somewhat, the dizziness gone. He could bolt away before they’re clear of the houses, maybe outrun them. The ones behind have their rifles shouldered, strolling casually. He could bolt away but that would leave Junior and Little Earl to the volunteers with their blood up. They step out onto a foot trail through a tangle of palmettos and Jimbo begins to sing—

Oh Ireland has her harp and shamrock

England floats her lion bold—

He has a beautiful voice, a sweet tenor—

Even China has a dragon

Germany an eagle gold

Bonny Scotland loves a thistle

Turkey has her crescent moon—

He turns and walks backward, green eyes smirking, dropping to an exaggerated bass like a minstrel darky—

An what won’t de yankees do

Fo they red, white, an blue?

Every race got a flag but de coon!

Jimbo finishes, the Georgia boys sniggering, then turns and leads them deeper into the palmetto thicket. Royal sees tiny spots of orange dotting the horizon to the left, campfires on the Heights maybe a mile away.

“Where they taking us?” whispers Little Earl.

“Don’t know,” Royal whispers back, his knees going to water for an instant.

“Don’t say nothing.”

“You know any?” Jimbo turns again and backpedals slowly. “Any of the old-time songs?”

“Christ, Jimbo,” moans Lester. “Let’s just get this done.”

“They all of em can sing. Aint that right? Let’s hear something.”

Royal’s mind is only pain and sickness. He looks to Junior, who is walking stiffly, eyes fixed forward, as if being judged on his carriage.

“I know you,” says Little Earl.

Jimbo stops, brings his rifle up. They all have to stop not to walk over him.

“What’s that?”

“I seen you,” says Little Earl. “Tonight at the Moody revival. You was singing and I looked over and there you was, giving note for note with Mr. Sankey.”

Lester looks from Little Earl to his comrade. “That’s what you do with a pass?”

“It’s a hell of a show, Les,” says the cat-eyed soldier, shaking his head in wonder. “Ought to try it sometime.”