Mignon (22 page)

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.

I
T 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.

“You’ve no faith in the dam?” he asked me one day.

“Who wants to know?” I said. “A loyal Reb?”

“No, Mr. Cresap,” he assured me, very solemn, “a loyal Union man. And since you bring it up, I may say that things have changed since we had our last discussion. War was
not
over in Louisiana—for a few days, at least. Now, I’m sorry to say, it is—finally, and for keeps. I said it, didn’t I? That I was the fool, not Taylor, but they’ve drawn Taylor’s teeth and clipped his claws. He’s now a tiger made of paper, with just a token force of no more than five thousand men, banging away with artillery, lighting fires at night, and cutting off forage parties—ever since Kirby Smith, the military genius at Shreveport, took the bulk of his army away, to meet another ‘invasion,’ coming down from the north—if it’s coming,
if
. So instead of the bird in hand, this Union army in Alexandria, we’re chasing a will-o’-the-wisp, and my allegiance is settled, in heart as well as mouth. Taylor’s doing a wonderful job, but it still remains true
there
’
s not one Reb soldier between this place and Shreveport
.”

“What’s that got to do with the dam?”

“Mr. Cresap, suppose it fails?”

“... Well? We lose ten boats, I suppose.”

“You just walk off and leave them?”

“Not I—this army. What else can we do?”

“I may be crazy, but as a loyal Union man I say—and don’t contradict me—no Union army dare pull out of this place and leave ten boats sitting. It would not obey the order;
the men would mutiny first!
The one thing it can do is march on up to Shreveport—and that’ll cook Taylor, Kirby Smith, the will-o’-the-wisp chasers, and everything Reb in this section! Because what Richmond is to the East, Shreveport is to the West—a base, a source of food, of munitions, of what’s needed to fight. That’s what this army can do, and that’s what it’s
going
to do, once the river tears that dam apart.”