Mignon (21 page)

“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?”

“That’s right,” I said. “He didn’t make himself known, as the cotton-owner, that is, until I happened to mention what you said to me—matter of fact, she saw you whispering and asked what it meant. He had supposed his cotton lost when the Navy took it over, and hadn’t wanted to embarrass me by bringing the subject up. But, when he learned I could get a receipt, or at least had a chance of getting one, he came up with this quick.”

I flashed half of my fifty-dollar bill, then took out the other half and fitted the pieces together. He blinked, then said: “Bill, I own up three hundred twenty-seven bales is more than I bargained for. I thought you might be able to swing—well, say a hundred bales—but this——”

“I’m in it with him, share-and-share alike.”

“You mean later? Right now, he didn’t ask cash?”

“That’s it. That’s how I’m able to do it.”

“... I’ll have to get Lieutenant Ball.”

He hailed the ship, and Ball showed at a gun port in undershirt, dungarees, and straw hat, and had himself rowed ashore in a gig that dangled alongside. He too whistled when he saw the number of bales, then whistled again. “Listen at this,” he told Sandy: “... ‘327 bales, bearing the following marks
and no other marks
.’ That makes this valid in court, as it nullifies that CSA stencil! Did that hombre know his cotton, the one who drew this up!”

“Still,” said Sandy, “the hombre who killed Legrand—”

“That doesn’t figure!” barked Ball, “in any way, shape, or form! Our orders are all that concern us, and our orders were receipt for loyal cotton. So far, we haven’t found any. But if you know Cresap is loyal—”

“I have my Army discharge,” I said.

“And if the cotton’s lawfully acquired—”

“I have a bill of sale covering that.”

I got out discharge, bill of sale stamped by the Clerk of the Court, torn bill, and I don’t know what else, and let him look them over. He asked to borrow them briefly, and went out to the ship. Then a belted seaman came ashore, carrying an oilskin package, and I took him for a courier on his way with my stuff for the flag boat. He legged it down through the woods, and I waited at least an hour, while work on the falls resumed. Then here he came back and boarded the ship again. Then Ball came back in the gig, the package in his hand. He handed it over, saying: “All right, Cresap, here you are, everything signed up. It’s an awful lot of prize for the Navy to give up, but orders are orders, even when they hurt.”

“I thank the Navy,” I told him. “I thank you.”

“It’s money in the bank.”

“Good luck with it, Bill,” whispered Sandy, leaning close as he shook hands, trying to hide from Ball how excited he was.

That night, by candlelight, we celebrated our luck, Mignon, Mr. Landry, and I, with three rum toddies. She was quiet, her eyes dreamy, but he wanted to talk and, as he said, make a clean, fresh start. He kept insisting: “I’d like to make clear, it’s more than the money, sir. It’s also you, what you mean to Mignon, and if you’ll allow me to say so, what you mean to me. I’ve been very concerned about you—I mean, what Frank might try to do in his vicious, vindictive way. But, with him going west, and you bound for Springfield, I would say the danger is past, so I can sleep nights.”

“When does he leave?” I asked him.

“He has left. He went today—on foot. Sometimes it can be the quickest way. I gave him back his gun, as he’s carrying lots of cash, and—he took himself off.”

“Can’t we forget about him?” she wanted to know.

“We
can
forget him; that’s all I’m trying to say.”

“Then
let
’
s
.”

S
O BEGAN THE QUEER THREE WEEKS
of sitting around all the time, waiting for a boat to go out on. At first I’d go down each day to see Hager at the courthouse; he’d promised a pass for the three of us when navigation resumed. But then she began going alone, because Dan paid me a call to warn me off the streets. The traders, he said, were being rounded up for shipment back to New Orleans on the
Empire Parish
, under arrest. If I got caught out, I’d be shipped back, too. It seemed a strange reward for saviors of their country, as they’d been assured they were, but that’s how the thing was handled, now that they weren’t saviors any more but nuisances. So that’s how it came about that I stayed indoors all the time, waiting, waiting, and waiting. She’d come in the morning, bringing my breakfast over, and when I’d finished she’d help me dress, which always took some time and seemed to involve kisses. Then we’d take the tray back together, ducking across the back yards, and she’d make some lunch. Then the three of us would sit, under the books in the sitting room, through the afternoon and evening.

I would crack jokes, if, as, and when I remembered some. She would spend the money, all kinds of different ways: on a house in New Orleans; on mahogany, silver, and cut glass for our dining room; on a carriage with matched grays—but not often on clothes, for some reason. He would go around, touching the backs of books and talking about literature, especially Casanova, who he said was the greatest literary figure of the eighteenth century, “the father of many more fiction characters than of illegitimate children—of D’Artagnan, Jean Valjean, a whole endless gallery.” Then he’d make her play
Don Giovanni
, who he said was Casanova in disguise, “as the librettist knew him well—and it all corresponds to
him
, not with Don Juan of Seville.” I got curious about it, and took down the memoirs one time, Volume I, to have a peep. But it was in French, and I could hardly understand a word. It all surprised me; I’d heard of Casanova as lover but didn’t know he wrote anything. I can’t say I quite got the point, as I hadn’t read enough, but I felt it was educational, and was always glad to listen.