Mignon (14 page)

“And
if
you tell me no lies.”

“But—what lies have I been telling?”

“That you’re taking this trip to make money.”

“Well, what other reason could I have?”

“That girl.
She
left for Red River last week.”

“But listen: I need twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I know you do, Bill—I know all about it.”

“Then where does the lie come in?”

“Bill, ever hear of a man named Dumont?”

“... The banker? I know him, yes.”

“He was in, asking about you—said Miss Tremaine, the lady you brought to the ball, was fixing to marry you, then sell her business out and back you in another with the money you needed. He was for it, if you were an honest man—but if you already have the twenty-five thousand promised it proves you’re lying, doesn’t it?”

“What did you say about me?”

“Nice stuff—he went away quite happy.”

“Could be I’d rather make that tin myself.”

“And could be you’d rather have Mrs. Fournet.”

But I clung to my story, and when he interrupted to know how I could make
any
tin, knowing nothing about cotton at all, I said: “What’s to know, Dan? I go on your boat as a trader, I pile off at Alexandria along with the other traders, I buy stock off a Reb, which I still have money to do, I write up my receipt, listing bales by mark, number, and weight, I present it to the Q.M. officer making the seizure for him to sign. The rest is up to the lawyers. Is any of that beyond my comprehension?”

“Bill, I’ve told you that cotton is hooded.”

“Hoodooed? This is not Hallowe’en.”

“I’m not talking about Hallowe’en, or anything superstitious. All right, call it attaindered. But I’m telling you, it’ll ruin whoever touches it, including you, including Burke, including Landry, including Mrs. Fournet—who’s a damned pretty girl mixed up in a damned ugly business. Bill, we’re trying—the Union is trying, this Army is trying—to
buy
a piece of this war to pay for our invasion by taking traders along, by letting them put out tin for the cotton the Rebs have in storage. I’m telling you, it can’t be done! There’s one piece of land that’s never yet been up for sale, and that’s the half-acre you need to plant a flagpole on.
That
you have to
take!
It’s a people’s maidenhead—it won’t give in by itself, and its price is blood. It’s what we’re forgetting, but we’ll pay the price,
that
price, or I’m badly mistaken. Oh, our motives are good—why the hell wouldn’t they be, what motive’s not better than war? The idea, Washington thinks, is to kill three birds with one stone: Block the Reb government from shipping the cotton abroad and buying guns with it, give some individual Rebs a lick at the sugar pot and win them back to their allegiance, get the Northern mills some stock to make shirts with for our soldiers. All right, but the only time
I
ever let go at three birds on a limb, I broke the dining-room window, cut my grandfather’s head, and landed a rock in my mother’s soup. But this will be worse: it’s treason. Why? It takes two to make a sale, and in a war that means dealing with the enemy. The Reb army, if they let that cotton lay, if they fail to burn it when they evacuate Alexandria, have already heard the word as it’s been passed up the line. And we, if we pass the wink to the owners, those Rebs licking up sugar as we make the confiscation—we’re dealing with the enemy too. But, you say, not much—just a little bit. But I say, remember that maidenhead: there’s no such thing as one that’s been slightly took. And there’s going to be trouble, I promise you. ... Do you understand now why I say that cotton is hooded? Do I have to say more?”

“I thought you were my friend, Dan.”

“I’m talking
as
your friend.”

“You don’t sound much like it.”

“I’ll prove it. My orders are to pass you.”

“Pass me? You mean to go on that boat?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“Bill, do you know what impressed Mr. Dumont? Not your Annapolis life—which I didn’t know too much about, if I have to tell you the truth. But what you did right here,
that
brought him out of his chair.”

“For Landry, are you talking about?”

“That’s right—and it impressed us, too.”

“Who is
us?
”

“This whole headquarters. They hated it, of course, but they respected you for it. And they feared you, as the one man who could and unfortunately might, blow this whole ship out of water. So the word came to me, pass this man in if he wants.”

“Well? If I’m supposed to be rewarded——”

“I didn’t say
rewarded
.”

“Well what’s the point of it, then?”

“As a way of shutting you up.”

I saw at last what he was driving at, and some time went by without either of us speaking. Then he said: “Bill, I’ve hacked at you, and—fact of the matter—you made me sore. Just the same, I knew an honest man was in town. Now, though, if you make a grab for that cotton, I have to let you on the boat—but I won’t feel the same.
Bill
,
don
’
t make me change!
”

After a long time I said: “I want on.”

“So be it.”

I took Marie everywhere—to dinner, to church the following Sunday, to drive in the park with the smell of spring in the air. I helped address the wedding announcements, as soon as they came from the engraver. When my pass for the boat came to the hotel one day, I told myself it meant nothing, that I had no intention of using it, that I’d just been blowing off steam. But the following Monday night we went to see
Richard III
at the St. Charles Theatre. The actor was John Wilkes Booth. He’s from Maryland too, and maybe he’s kind to dogs, and drops coins in the blind man’s cup. But in that play he has death in his eyes, and watching him I knew I meant to go, and knew what I meant to do. I had death in my heart—that was the real answer. Whose death I didn’t yet know, but the following day, March 22, 1864, for the second time I ran out on a woman who loved me.

A
LEXANDRIA WAS JUST LIKE THE PICTURES
except for the rain drizzling down, the invasion fleet of steamers tied up at the bank, and the hoodoo on top of the courthouse—which I hadn’t believed in before, but now was beginning to, on account of something that happened on the boat coming up. We’d left from the foot of Canal Street, twelve noon two days before, on a sidewheeler called the
Black Hawk
. We carried on the boiler deck General, staff, headquarters noncoms, and headquarters orderlies; on the main deck horses, Louisiana volunteers, newspapermen, and traders; wherever they could fit waiters, hostlers, and hangers-on. It was kind of a tight squeeze, but I made out all right since I’d brought what the trip called for. After kissing Marie good night with the Judas taste on my mouth, I’d spent the small hours packing, and divided my stuff in two bags. One I checked with the hotel, the other I filled with field stuff, including sandwiches I had the hotel put up and my gun. I wore my corduroys, and with the blankets I’d bought for the sea voyage plus a canteen at my belt I figured to do all right, and did.

I bunked in, or wedged in, with the traders, aft of the shaft, in the passage leading back to the fantail. They were a strange bunch, half of them sharpshooter businessmen, the rest politicians, all full of windy guff, like the pair holding Lincoln passes, those two slips of paper that muxed everything up, causing headquarters, as it did, to accept them as a tip-off of what Washington really wanted—unlimited trade in cotton as a matter of public policy. Some had brought bagging, rope, and gear on board the boat, and piled it up so there was hardly room to step; they were so hungry for cotton they expected to bale the loose stuff on plantations after the regular stock in storage had all been bought up. But nobody made complaint, and we all shook down very friendly, standing around in the afternoon, pitching banana skins in the wake, watching the swamps go by, or crossing to the other side of the engine room to visit the newspapermen. But as dark was settling down and the crew was lighting lamps, Dan showed up to ask me how things were going. By then, bottles were being passed and jokes were being cracked, so he took a look and beckoned me forward. We ducked under the shaft and went up into the bow, where the horses were, and the hostlers had rigged a tarp to shield them from the breeze. We stood by the rail, and after Dan had done his manners with me, he stared at the shore, very gloomy. When I asked what the trouble was, he answered: “Nothing, Bill—and everything. This damned invasion, mainly.”

“Did something go wrong? I thought it was on.”

“It
is
on—it started two weeks ago. By now the advance must be in Alexandria. But Bill, it’s a queer; it keeps me awake at night.”

“In what way, a queer?”

“Look, it’s in three prongs, as I guess you know—Army, Navy, and Bummers. Sherman’s lending us ten thousand men, but those bastards always mean trouble. Besides, there’s no real chain of command.”

“But isn’t the General in charge?”

“Well, is he? Or isn’t he? And if so,
how?
”

“Dan, I don’t have answers for you.”

“
If
he’s in charge, he’s in charge too many ways. No man can hold an election, dance the polka, inaugurate Hahn, dabble in cotton, and command a campaign all at the same time. They’re asking too much of him! And he should have been there! At Alexandria, for the rendezvous. It was set for March seventeenth, when the three prongs should meet, but how could he be there, with these other things to do?”

“But has something gone wrong?”

“Not actually—at least not that I know of.”

“Has there been any fighting so far?”

“Little. The Bummers took a fort.”

“Well Dan? If they took it—”

“Bill, this bunch you’re with is no help.”

“They’re what’s really griping you, aren’t they?”

“The cotton is. It’s what really scares me.”

“But why, if this hoodoo is all you have to go on? Or some theoretical attainder—that can’t amount to much, if Lincoln’s given his blessing.”

“Lincoln’s not here.”

“But you’ve nothing definite to go on?”

“No—I’m scared and don’t know why.”

“It’s a funny way to be scared.”

“It’s the worst way there is.”

He found out why soon enough, before we even got to Alexandria. We stopped next day at Port Hudson, which is a levee, a bluff, and some houses, where the General reviewed some troops—colored men who’d distinguished themselves at the siege the previous year. Everyone went ashore, including me, but not caring to climb the bluff I passed up the review, went back on board, and stood in the bow chatting with a mate. Then everyone came back—the General, the staff, the enlisted men, the correspondents, and last of all the traders. But
their
faces, previously wreathed in grins from the money they hoped to make, now black with scowls, told me something was wrong; at once I started to follow them back to their part of the boat to find out what it was. But I had to stand aside while the deckhands pulled in the hawser after the boat cast off. While I was waiting Dan came down the stairs from the main saloon. He beckoned me to the same spot by the rail we’d stood at the night before and went on, almost as though there’d been no break. “Well,” he said, “the hoodoo’s on.”

“Yes?” I said. “How?”

“The Navy’s got the cotton.”

“You mean,
they
made the confiscation?”

“Not quite.
They
made the
capture
.”

“I don’t quite get the distinction.”

“Navy doesn’t operate under the Confiscation Act, but under the Law of Prize—they keep all the money, they divide it between themselves, but a prize has to be captured. And you don’t give receipts to a capture. So no claim can be made for that cotton; it can’t be litigated.” As I nodded, getting the point, he went on: “Kind of funny, at that, how they worked it. They were telling us here at Port Hudson, some boys who got shipped downriver, on account of their time being up. The rendezvous, as I told you, was set for the seventeenth, but the Navy beat the gun. They got there the fifteenth, and the town—to be helpful—sent the mayor out in a boat to make the surrender. Boy, he didn’t even get his painter taken on board—they fended him off like smallpox, for fear of what it would mean if they even heard the word
surrender
. Next morning, a detachment from the
Eastport
—your friend Sandy’s boat—marched up to the warehouse and smashed in the door with rifle butts. The owner was right there, waving the keys in their face—but they had to use force to make it stick as a capture.”

“Well, we live and we learn.”

“From the Navy, we all learn plenty.”

“But at least,
you
’
re
out from under.”

“You mean this Army? Bill, I’m not so sure.”

“But if the Navy has the cotton?”

“Listen, Bill, the handshake was passed—and the Rebs left us the cotton when they pulled out of the town. Then the Navy stole it off us. All right, so that leaves these traders holding the bag. But the Rebs don’t get paid, and it was
our
handshake.”

“What are you leading to, Dan?”

“How do I know? But I smell still more trouble.”

“Well, at worst we’ll have to fight.”

“Yes, Bill, but
can
we?”

He said what a poor army it was, a lot of the boys having enlisted as settlers in Texas, the rest of them soft from an idle winter, from laying up with colored girls, and from foraging for rum. He repeated: “And there’s no proper chain of command.” And then, turning to look at me: “Bill, you don’t seem much upset.”

“... Why should I be?”

“That twenty-five thousand dollars. Losing it must be tough.”

“I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“Then you
were
lying, weren’t you?”

“Well? I had to get me to Alexandria.”

“At least, you’re still an honest man—but I’ve known that all along, or I wouldn’t be down here talking with you. And she
is
a damned nice girl.”

“
If
she is, she is.”