Mignon

by James M. Cain

  “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.”

  Chapter 23

  SO 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.

  And while we talked and talked, and sipped our nightly grog, the invasion rolled upriver, all the Army and most of the Navy, until nothing was left in town but freight boats, the Guard, and the Q.M. Things had quieted down, and you felt they would soon be normal. Bees buzzed, flowers bloomed, perfume filled the air, and townspeople ventured out—the few who were still left and hadn’t skedaddled upriver before the invasion came in. When the Empire Parish went down, I ventured out too, to resume asking for my pass. Captain Hager shook hands, said it was “just a matter of days, with regular river schedules, as soon as we get to Shreveport.” I reported the news, and we celebrated a bit with an extra grog that night.

  And then one day, as we raced up the stairs with my breakfast dishes, the door opened in front of us and her father was there in the hall, a solemn look on his face. I supposed her visits to me were the reason and braced myself to argue, to say she was grown up now, that we meant to be married, that if she wanted to come it was none of his business. But that didn’t seem to be it. He led to the sitting room, and there on the floor were a rucksack, blanket roll, overcoat, and hat, all in a neat pile. She stared, then asked: “Are you going away—or what?” And then: “Oh! Our passes have come? Is that it?”

  “Sit down, Daughter, Mr. Cresap.”

  He was very quiet, but also dramatic, and when we had sat he went on: “I’m going to join up. Turns out Taylor wasn’t the idiot. I was.”

  “All right,” she said, “but what’s he done?”

  “He’s whipped, that’s what!”

  “Whipped? Whipped who?”

  “The Union! War’s not over in Louisiana!”

  “Well you don’t have to snap my head off, do you?”

  “Daughter! It’s not over. For me, or for you.”

  “Me? I don’t even yet know what happened!”

  “He smashed ’em! In the woods, just this side of Mansfield, he cut ’em to pieces, this whole Army of the Gulf! It was a shambles, a slaughter, a rout! Two of his scouts got through; they’re up at the hotel now. They never saw anything like it! It couldn’t happen, and it did! But that’s just the beginning. They’re in a race now, he and the Union Army, for this place, for Alexandria. They’re in full flight to get out, and he doesn’t mean to let
’em. He’s shutting ’em up, he’s out to capture every man—and that’s where I come in! I’m late, God forgive me; I thought it was all over, but better late than never, the eleventh hour in the vineyard, and there’s things I can do! I’m on my way to report!”

  He began to talk, then, reviling himself for giving up too soon, and then went back to her. “Daughter,” he told her very solemnly, “don’t forget, when I’m gone, that you must do something too. As a Reb, as a loyal Confederate, you have to! You—”

  She cut in: “I’ll do what I can, of course!”

  “Daughter, that’s not enough.”

  “How does anyone do more than they can?”

  “It has to be something, not just good intentions!”

  “Listen, you speak for your own self!”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  He slung the rucksack over his shoulder, then held his hand out to me with a friendly, elegant smile, and saying something about “my regret we now have to be enemies.” But I said, not seeing his hand: “Sit down, Mr. Landry. We haven’t quite finished our talk—you haven’t included me, so far, but I’m in anyway, you may be surprised to learn.”

  “I don’t understand you, sir.”

  “What about our cotton?”

  “... I assume you’re an honorable man.”

  “You mean, Mr. Landry, you assume you can go traipsing off to jump on Taylor’s bandwagon, now it’s no longer a sinking ship, and that I won’t mind at all, but will cut you in just the same for your full share of what I make at Springfield? Haven’t you forgotten that as a Reb, in arms against your country, you’ll have no standing in court? You’re putting yourself once more in the spot you found yourself in when Burke informed on you in New Orleans.”

  “That seems to say you’d euchre me, too.”

  “Not quite. You’ve forgotten other things, too.”

  “What are you getting at now?”

  “Your Union allegiance, Mr. Landry.”

  “It was coerced from me. I never took any oath.”

  “You took your freedom, though.”

  “I was born free!”

  “You were set free when I proclaimed you loyal. Then loyal you’re going to be! Take off your bag, Mr. Landry. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going. And I warn you I’m armed.”

  “I know you’re armed—I can see the bulge in your pocket. I didn’t myself think necessary to strap on my Moore and Pond. But you start out of this place, I’m following you down to the street, I’m hailing the guard at Biossat’s, I’m having you taken in, and I’m charging you as a spy!”

  “Then, my departure must wait on yours.”

  “Meaning, I’m to leave your house?”

  “I hope you don’t make me say it.”

  “I don’t go till I have your parole.”

  “Parole? Parole?”

  “Your word to me you’re going to stay put!”

  “Mr. Cresap, I think you forget yourself.”

  “Mr. Landry, I must have your promise.”

  “Sir, I will not accept dictation—”

  “Goddam it, Mr. Landry, do you think I’m playing games? Speak, and speak now, or I will! I’ll not let you up easy, and they will break your neck!”

  “... Sir, you leave me no choice.”

  “Say it.”

  “I pledge myself not to join—”

  “—the enemies of my country—”

  “—the Confederate States of America.”

  “I’ll accept that.”

  “Then, sir?”

  “Leaving now, Mr. Landry.”

  I turned on my heel, walked out of there, and returned to my own flat. I went to the front room, peered out on the street, and everything looked the same. I wondered if it was true, the news that Landry had heard. I tried to think what it would mean to me. I was still trying when the knock came on the door. I let her in and followed her into the sitting room, but got kind of annoyed when all she did was stare. “What’s the matter?” I growled. “Something on me?”

  “Willie, I don’t know you any more.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s me, the same old one.”

  “But how could you talk to him like that?”

  “You don’t see the reason?”

  “I certainly don’t.”

  “Then maybe you need talking to, too.”

  She started to rake me over for how ungrateful I was, “after the way he’s treated you, almost as a son, asking you in all the time, letting me give you your meals, putting you in on the cotton ...”

  “I’m sick of that damned cotton!”

  “Well, it’s his, you know!”

  “Listen, I don’t know what’s his, what’s mine, or what’s the Navy’s any more, but I know this: He’s been deceiving himself, with all this talk of his about the half-war-half-peace we’ve got, the life-in-death that was inflicted on the Ancient Mariner. Don’t you know what that life-in-death was? That albatross on his neck? Don’t you know what he meant, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the man who wrote that poem?”

  “... What are you talking about?”

  “He was an opium-eater!”

  “What’s that got to do with Father?”

  “The cotton’s his opium, that’s what. He thinks, in this half-war-half-peace he imagines, that it’s every man for himself, anything goes, devil take the hindmost. That’s not true. It’s not half-war-half-peace; it’s war, as Dan Dorsey’s been trying to say, and it’s not any the less war that your father doesn’t like it and it doesn’t like him! All of a sudden, with the guilty conscience he’s got, he makes a break to help Taylor, and that’s wonderful, isn’t it? But the cotton’s there all the time, it’s the main thing he thinks about, as it has been from the start, and though he was hot to join Taylor, he was dead sure that I, as an honorable man, would cut him in on the tin that we would make when I auctioned to Union buyers after a Union court awarded me! Well, he can guess again; he can’t have it both ways! I’ll cut him in, now that I have his parole, but I’d never have cut in a Reb who was out there shooting at me—and even that much I don’t pretend to like! I told him once, and I tell you again, the cotton stinks—and I only live to see the day when I’ll be shut of it forever!”

  “But taking it off her doesn’t stink?”

  “Her? ... Her?”

  “You know who I’m talking about!”

  “Is she all that you’ve got on your mind?”

  “Until that cotton is sold, yes.”

  “There’s a war going on that concerns you.”

  “What do I care about war?”

  “All right. Now we know.”

  We were atremble, and from the beautiful time we’d had, after breakfast that morning, it was cold, bitter, and ugly.

  Chapter 24

  IT WAS TRUE, ALL RIGHT; WE’D had the stuffing kicked out of us and skedasis was complete. We were on our way out and overnight, from being a quiet riverside town, with flowers perfuming the air, Alexandria was a hellhole on earth, with wounded men limping in, horses dying in the streets, splintered boats crashing down the falls, and in place of the perfume a smell of death, rot, and war. Hanging over it all was danger, because maybe we wanted out, but Taylor had different ideas and meant to bag us all. He surrounded the town and kept tightening the noose, his fires out in the woods creeping closer and closer, his skirmishers giving no peace. He cut the river below so no supplies could come up, and suddenly rations were short. Also water was short; with thirty thousand men and five thousand horses penned up in place built for four thousand, with no wells and cisterns not refilled since the rain Taylor arrived in, the supply ran out fast. That left Red River water, but it was so foul with corpses, swill, and filth that the boys got desperately sick, and their filth was added to the original filth.

  Worst of all was the drought in Texas, which made the river low, so it didn’t take a rise as it generally did in spring. It fell, and the Navy got stuck in the mud, ten of its best boats,
up above the falls. That’s what hung things, because instead of continuing its march the Army had to halt, dig in, and try to get them out. And what it decided to do was put in a dam of sticks and stones and trees just above the town, to bulge the water up for enough depth to float the boats. It was such a weird idea that I hadn’t the heart to look. The Red River current, which I’d already clocked with my eye by watching snags float by, was at least nine miles an hour, and trying to hold it with a makeshift pile of brush struck me as pathetic, like trying to hold an elephant by tying him with knitting yarn. Just the same, they started in to do it. Colored troops put in a pontoon bridge from a ramp in front of the courthouse to a spot on the left bank, which they finished in one day, and construction crews streamed over, so work could go forward from both sides of the river at once. Every day boats would go up through the swing draw out in the middle, with barges of stone and rubble, and axes would speak all the time, upriver from Alexandria and from the woods above Pineville.

  And all during that we sat, she, Mr. Landry, and I, in their sitting room, for an even queerer three weeks than the other three weeks had been. He made it up with me, coming over after she left the same day as our brawl, to thank me “for the information, which Mignon has just mentioned to me, about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I hadn’t known it before, but just verified it in the Britannica, and am truly grateful for it.” I said you couldn’t prove it by me, but I did hear it in college, and he repeated that such things to him were important and he counted himself in my debt. Then he asked me to supper, and I resumed taking my meals with them—a good thing, since the hotel ran out of food and otherwise I’d have been out of luck. We didn’t eat well but we ate, dried stuff from the store, prunes and apples and apricots, beans and peas and rice, stocked in barrels and sacks and kegs. He wouldn’t allow me below to help bring anything up, and once when I glimpsed the kegs I suspected they were the reason, and wondered what was in them. Every day he’d go out for a stroll, to pick up such news as he could, and I’d go down to the courthouse, which had been converted into a hospital and stank of wounded men, to pester for my pass. In between, the three of us would talk.