Mignon

  “... Why not?” asked Hager, caught off balance.

  “The bad blood between ’em,” said Burke.

  “Bad blood? Between Powell? And—this man?”

  “I don’t care for that remark,” roared Burke, with a snarl. “It seems to imply, Captain, that as between a fine gentleman such as Powell and a midge such as Pierre, bad blood couldn’t exist, as the officer wouldn’t deign and the varlet wouldn’t dare. Know then, the gentleman did deign, in a vulgar, ungentlemanly way, and the varlet did dare, in a way even you might respect. He had his pride, he was a man.”

  “And when was all this, Burke?”

  “Last summer. Last June.”

  “And where?”

  “Bagdad, Mexico.”

  Hager, whose reaction to surprise had been to rip at Burke, was now set back on his heels even worse than before, and to cover up, pretended disgust. Returning to his place on the settee, he said in a lofty way: “Let’s get back to Cresap.”

  “Let’s not,” said Burke.

  Then he got up and went over, so he could stare down at Hager. “At the Hotel DeGlobe in Bagdad,” he rumbled slowly, “Pierre had got’m a job, after his discharge from the Berthollet, serving drinks in the bar. And there every night came Powell. He was on the Itasca then, the steam schooner on blockade duty, and would come ashore at night, to inquire about cotton shipments—and to drink. To swill booze, carouse, and quarrel with Pierre in the bar, holding the boy up to ridicule, taunting’m, plaguing’m, mocking’m. It got to the point where to head off something dreadful, I took a hand with Pierre, and brought’m to Matamoros by diligencia one day. And then, in me growing affection for’m, I hired’m on as boy, as valet, as gippo.” His voice had risen a little, and he turned suddenly on Ball. “Am I right, Lieutenant?” he asked. “Isn’t it true? Every word that I’ve said?”

  “I’ve never been to Mexico.”

  “You’ve been to the Ice House Hotel—you followed Powell on that duty, right here in Alexandria. How did he conduct himself in that bar?”

  “In exemplary fashion, sir.”

  “Then he reformed himself, I may say.”

  How much of it was true, I didn’t of course know, though some of it had to be, especially the Itasca part, or Ball would have contradicted. But true or false, it was a mile away from himself and any motive he might have had for ordering Powell killed, and though I hated myself for it, I had to be on his side, as I had sicked him on. He smelled advantage, and in a reasonable tone resumed: “Or in other words, Captain—”

  “Never mind the other words,” snapped Hager. “Let’s get back to you. Why, in the light of all that, didn’t you once open your mouth when Lieutenant Powell was killed?”

  “I? Inform on me own gippo?”

  “If you knew he’d committed a crime?”

  “Captain! I didn’t know it!”

  “Don’t quibble! You knew about the grudge!”

  “I knew of twenty thousand grudges.”

  “... What do you mean by that?”

  “Your own among the rest!”

  “My grudge, Burke? My grudge?”

  “Aye—you bore’m a grudge, you bear’m a grudge as you sit there, as this whole Army does, against the Mississippi Squadron of the United States Navy, for the rape of the cotton last week—you hate the Navy’s guts, so don’t single me out for failing to open me mouth on a matter that could have involved every man in this town—except the boys afloat! Who didn’t bear’m a grudge? Tell me who didn’t, and I’ll tell him, not you, why I didn’t speak up!”

  Clammy silence settled down, and it was some moments before Hager asked: “Why would this man try to kill Cresap?”

  “I don’t know, he didn’t discuss’t with me.”

  “What would be your conjecture?”

  “Why don’t you ask Cresap?”

  “We did. He didn’t know. I’m asking you.”

  “Why wouldn’t he try to kill Cresap? A man who blackened his character, did infamous things to him, only last month in New Orleans? Who attempted to make it appear the boy deserted his post in my rooms at the City Hotel, so a pretended search could be made and evidence discovered which ’twas said that I manufactured against a friend and mentor and partner, who sits here in front of your eyes, Adolphe Landry, no other, and who can throw the lie in me teeth, if I wander one inch from the truth! When all the time ’twas himself, this same clever Cresap, who forged the documents up, in the hope of discrediting me, and in that way enriching himself!” He came over and smiled in my face, so I knew what to expect, if the forged receipt came out—by hook, crook, or trick, it would be hung on me. He turned to Hager again and went on, very pious: “Pierre was plain, rude, and ignorant, and no doubt given to violence, as such boys usually are. But false to a duty he was not—he never deserted a post! And perhaps he brooded a bit at me own troubled spirit, when I returned to the house last night.”

  “What troubled your spirit, if any?”

  Hager was quite sarcastic, but didn’t ask about New Orleans, which told me he knew what had happened there, and if it told me it told Burke, he not being dumb on such things. “His rapacious demands,” he answered.

  “Cresap’s, you mean?”

  “For’s fee.”

  “What fee?”

  “That I promised’m, two hundred and fifty dollars. To free Adolphe.”

  “Well? He freed him, didn’t he?”

  “Aye, but look what he did to me! Got me accused, unjustly, so I spent a night confined, as a common thug, in a cell! I refused to pay’m a cent, and last night he renewed his demands—Lieutenant Ball will bear witness for me, how he called me aside in the hotel, wanting payment, and your guard will corroborate that he ordered me, on the street, to report here today, else bear the consequence—he made threats against me.”

  “What threats?”

  “He questioned me passes, Captain.”

  It all matched up, it didn’t sound collusive, and it concealed real motive. It was a masterly job of lying, and I had to get in step. When Hager turned to me, I said: “I doubted, and still doubt, if this man has proper permission to be here—he came when the Reb Army was here, and a Reb permit isn’t valid, it means nothing to a Union marshal. However, that’s not for me to decide. As to what he says in general, allowing for distortion, self-pity, and overpraise of the gentle Pierre, I would say he’s pretty well covered the ground. Now that I know who I killed, I admit he had grounds to dislike me.”

  “The passes, Burke? Let’s see them.”

  Burke got them out, from the same old stuffed-up wallet—letters, from prominent Rebs in New Orleans, that he’d used on the trip up the Teche to enter the Confederate lines; stuff concerning Pierre, including his French discharge; and a U.S. custom-house permit for the importation of cotton, covering, Burke said, “right of access to me property”—meaning, his presence in Alexandria. While Hager was reading them over, small things happened. Ball, who had snickered at “the gentle Pierre,” looked over and threw me a wink. Sandy leaned close and whispered: “This Mignon package—you like her?”

  “Yes, I guess so,” I whispered back.

  “I was hoping to lift her skirt.”

  “I hope to make her my wife.”

  “Ouch—I didn’t say it; you misunderstood me!” And then, for a real fast switch: “Bill, did you notice Ball? How friendly he’s acting toward you? You’re still hot!”

  “So? What then?”

  “You can still get that receipt!”

  “For what?”

  “For cotton, stupid!”

  “I don’t have any cotton!”

  “Goddam it, get some!”

  Next off, Hager, Ball, and Dan had their heads together, and just once Dan shrugged. Then Hager reached out and handed Burke back his papers. It was over, with the officers marching out after saluting Mignon and thanking Mr. Landry for his kindness in asking them in. Then there we were, Mr. Landry, Burke, Mignon, and I, drawing trembling breaths. And
then: “Frank,” said Mr. Landry, “I couldn’t ever forget what you did just now, in the way of what could be called, I suppose, convenient prevarication. And I hope I never forget the horrible reason for it.”

  “The horrible reason,” I told him, “was that knowing a skunk for a skunk, you still partnered with him—for the money. So if you don’t like how he smells, you may smell the same way, yourself.”

  “Willie,” she snapped, “don’t be ornery.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “orneriness clears the air.”

  “And well the air needs’t,” Burke flung at me with a sneer. “As the author of the idea, you smell a bit yourself.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “No doubt.”

  “But in a wholesome, mephitic way!”

  “Damn it, I owned up to it, didn’t I?”

  I sounded hysterical, and slammed out of there.

  Chapter 22

  IN MY FLAT, I HAD A bad reaction and lay down for a while to think. It was going on noon, and I’d decided to visit the hotel for lunch when a tap came on the door, and I got up to let her in. She had a platter of ham, cornbread, and lentils, all warmed up very nice and covered with a napkin, and a pail of hot coffee. She served us in the dining room, using Schmidt dishes, and as we ate she talked, mainly about Burke and how he’d leave soon, as soon as his head didn’t hurt, for the Sabine to buy in the cotton. She said she’d written a letter for him, addressed to people out there, giving him a “character,” and that her father had written him one, addressed to Kirby Smith, the Reb commander in chief, “as of course that whole country is still in the Secesh lines.” She talked of various things, as though nothing had happened at all, and I found myself wondering if anything really had. She made me eat up every speck, so she could wash the things in cold water, and then when she’d put them away, led on up the hall. But instead of turning off to go out, she kept on to the sitting room and, though I took a seat, kept on marching around, restless. I said again how pretty she looked in the gingham, and she said: “I like red—and it likes me, I think. It’s my color, kind of.”

  And then: “What was Sandy saying to you?”

  “Why,” I said, “he wanted to know if I liked you. He let drop he’d been hoping to lift your skirt.”

  “Well he tried! Did he let drop about that?”

  “No, and you didn’t either.”

  “Well? In one of the fitting rooms, there at Lavadeau’s, he commenced messing around. It didn’t amount to much.”

  “Just practically nothing at all?”

  “... What else did he have to say?”

  “Nothing. Just this, that, and the other.”

  “He was nagging at you about something. What?”

  “... I don’t just now recollect.”

  “It was the cotton, wasn’t it? What he spoke about before, this morning there in the hall. And how you could get a receipt, after killing Powell’s murderer. That’s what it was, isn’t it?”

  “All right, but I don’t have any cotton.”

  “Yes, but we have.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Father and I, Willie.”

  “Did Mr. Landry send you to me?”

  “No, certainly not—he’s over at Frank’s, packing him up to leave, trying to get him started, he wants him out of the way. And Frank’s going—he thinks, now that that forgery didn’t work, those titles he had are worthless, so the cotton on the Sabine is all that’s left for him. He doesn’t know what we know, that you can get a receipt, that the Navy will give you one. So all we have to do is tear up the papers in his name and copy new ones off, in the name of Willie Cresap. And then, lo and behold, it’s a hundred and twenty thousand dollars!”

  “Mignon, I’m sick of this cotton.”

  “Well, wasn’t I? Didn’t I say I was?”

  “Then what makes you change?”

  “You, that’s what. So long as Frank was in it, I was scared to death. I learned to fear him as I’d never feared anyone. But you, Willie, are honest.”

  “Dan says this cotton is hoodooed.”

  “Hoodoo wasn’t the trouble. Crookedness was.”

  “Whatever it was, I’m still sick of it.”

  “What about the twenty-five thousand dollars?”

  “... It’s what Sandy’s worrying about.”

  “You still have to get it, Willie.”

  “I don’t care to get it that way.”

  “But you do care to get it from her?”

  She had nestled into my lap, but now got up and faced me, and when I just sat there and stared, caught utterly by surprise, she charged back into the dining room, then came up the hall with her platter in one hand and her little tin pail in the other. When I barred her way at the crosshall, she banged me with the pail, so it flew out of her hands and clattered to the floor. To keep it from getting broken, I took the platter away from her, then took her by the wrist and dragged her into the bedroom. When I’d flung her on the bed, I said: “Calm down for a change, why don’t you? What’s the idea, flying off the handle this way?”

  “You can get other things from her, too!”

  “Well, I never did, but—”

  “You never did! Well, you’ve been missing something, that’s all I have to say. Because she’s willing, that I promise you!”

  “So happens, was the other way around.”

  “You asked and she said no?”

  “That was it, exactly.”

  “Why? What made her act so noble?”

  “Whiff of Russian Leather.”

  Some things have the ring of truth, and I saw from the flick of her eye that she knew this was one of them. She stared up at the ceiling, and her mouth began to twist. I’m sure that of all the things that happened to her that day, none meant to her quite what those four little words had said. Some little time went by as she lay there, trying not to cry, her dress rumpled, her white petticoat flared out, her pantalettes hiked up, her beautiful legs showing as far as the garters. I put the platter down, set the pail beside it, and went over to her. I undid tapes and buttons, and she didn’t seem to help, but didn’t stop me either, and pretty soon there she was, without a stitch on. Only then did she whisper: “My favorite costume, it seems.”

  “And very becoming, too.”

  “Willie, stop trying to switch.”

  “I’m not. I guess Burke called it on me—I am in, whether I like it or not, and might as well make it pay. How long will this write-up take?”

  “Couple of days, no more.”

  “The Eastport could be gone by then with the rest of the invasion—headed for Shreveport. Upriver.”

  “No, Willie. Great big boat like her can’t get up the falls in a hurry—she has to be drug. They learned their lesson from another one, the Woodford, that they got careless with. She’s sitting on bottom right now up at the head of the falls, a hole punched in her hull. This boat will take some days, and in that time we’ll do our writing—I’ll help with it. What takes the time is the bale markings. Cotton’s not like corn, which is so many bushels and one bushel’s just like another. With cotton, it must be this particular bale, and every one has to be listed, by mark, number, and weight. And that list goes on all papers. We’ll write the deed up first, the bill of sale from Father, conveying the cotton to you, which is the proof you give the Navy that the cotton belongs to you, a loyal godpappy. That should be ready tomorrow, for recording down in the courthouse. Then the receipt itself, which you can take to the Navy on Sunday, I would expect. Then the partnership articles, they can be written up last, as there’s no hurry about them. You really mean to, Willie?”

  “If your father’s agreeable, I am.”

  “Kiss me then, nice.”

  Not that Mr. Landry, when she told him in their sitting room later that afternoon, exactly jumped up and cracked his heels. He was bitter against me for telling him that he stank, and full of justification for the relations he’d had with Burke. “I deny it was my fault!” he speechified at me,
walking up and down. “I deny it was anyone’s fault, except the Union’s fault, and the fault of this hell-on-earth they’ve put on us! War’s over in Louisiana—but do they give us peace? No! They keep tramping us down with this half-war, half-peace they bring with them, worse than that life-in-death of the Ancient Mariner, neither one thing nor the other! And if I did what I had to, to give, to help others live, I don’t apologize, and I won’t have it I stink! All right, Frank’s a skunk—I was the first to say it, and I tried to kill him for it! But I used him, he didn’t use me! And I had my decent reasons! It was the only way open to me to get back at this bluebelly bunch, to get a chunk of their tin, to make them pay through the nose for what they’ve done to me, and what they’ve done to mine! Because, at least I meant to share a little, if any profits accrued, with these people here, my people, the ones who’ve suffered the most!”

  “This I find most astonishing.”

  “I’ve already shared with these people—I bought them shoes, and you defended me for it. Didn’t you?”

  “... Yes. I retract.”

  I’d been hoping, I guess, that by plaguing him, even though I owed him my life, I’d force him to reject me as a partner and I’d be out from under. But when I said: “If you don’t want this deal, just say so,” he wheeled on me quick and answered: “I didn’t say that, Mr. Cresap. I would assume, however, that first before anything else, you’d want to be assured you’re not hooking up with a skunk.”

  “Then, you’re not a skunk,” I said.

  “You two could shake hands,” she told us.

  Down in the store was an office partitioned off in one corner, with a high bookkeeper’s desk, a safe, and shelves piled up with ledgers. Landry worked there the rest of the day, and by candlelight into the night, getting the bill of sale up, making it correspond with the markings on the papers I’d stuffed in the piano. Next day he signed it over and took me down with it to the courthouse, where we went past Hager’s desk to the Clerk of Court’s office and had it recorded. Then, with Mignon right beside him calling the data off, he wrote up the Navy receipt, and next day I took it to Sandy. I found him on his boat, which was celebrating Easter Sunday by battling her way up the falls. The falls was really a rapid a mile or so long above town, and no place for boats at all, let alone a tub like the Eastport. She was there at the lower end, tugs behind her pushing, tugs ahead of her hauling, and tugs alongside lifting. From a tree dead ahead a hawser ran to her capstan, and on command the steam would hit it, and it would turn with a clank while the paddles churned the water. Then everything would stall, and on command, stop. It wasn’t a pretty show, as the boat was plated with iron which was rusty and scaly and dented, with stuff rubbing off on the men. But, at least to a hard-rock man, it was interesting, and I watched it a while before waving my paper at Sandy, in charge of things on shore at the tree. He waved back, but it was some time before a whistle blew, they all sat down for a rest, and he was able to join me. He took the receipt and read while a cook went around with a pot and ladled coffee into mess cups. Pretty soon he asked: “Landry? Isn’t that the man I met? Mrs. Fournet’s father, who asked us in to question Burke?”