Mignon (26 page)

“Hey! I’m trying to cheer you up!”

“I’m sorry. I’m off my usual.”

“I’d say she deserves to be hung, but may not be.”

“It wasn’t her, it was her father, and—”

“Calm down, take it easy.”

So the horrible night wore on, but at least I did have a ray of hope, and it wasn’t so bad as it had been. Once, we all but jumped out of our skins and thought the skiff had made it, in spite of my turning it over, when two barges went out with a noise like cannon shot, when their hawsers parted and they slammed down on the rocks two hundred feet downstream. He cursed and raved and wept, assuming it all would spill out, the depth we’d worked so hard to get. It was my turn to cheer
him
up. I assured him things were improved, that the pressure would now be eased, “so back-up and outflow will be equalized, without the whole dam going out.” He shook my hand, felt our clothes, and got us dressed. When daylight came, an ambulance pulled in, but he had it wait while he helped me out, crawling along the catwalk, to the second of the two remaining barges, so I could see the show of the boats coming out. “After all you’ve done, you’re certainly entitled to that much,” he said.

We sat on the upstream end, holding on to a cleat, and as far as you could see, on both banks of the river, was blue, because, except for men on duty, the whole army was there to see how the thing came out—no one believing in it. You could see men moving around, but as though in a dumb show; you couldn’t hear a thing from the roar of the torrent beside us, plunging down through the chute between the barge we were on and the cribs on the other side like a young Niagara. Then, along toward seven o’clock, we made out smoke on the falls. Then we could see a hull, with foam under the forefoot. That meant power, and the captain began to scream: “No,
no!
Cut those engines, man,
cut
’
em!
” Not that the pilot heard him, but once more I cheered him up. “He has to have power!” I yelled in his ear. “
He must have steering way!
” I don’t know if he even heard me, but the boat came right on, at express-train speed, her own fifteen miles an hour plus at least twelve from the current. That brought her down on us fast, and then here she was, up over our heads, coming into the chute. Then she was roaring by, so close we felt her breeze. Then she was down, and then she crashed into the nearest barge, where it hung below on the rocks. It seemed she must come apart, but then she was caroming off, then spinning around, right in front of the hotel. And then, so help me, she tooted.

The cheer that went up was deafening—I think the most inspiring thing I ever heard in my life. In spite of the strain I was under, I cheered. The captain cheered, hugged me, and—I think—kissed me. Once the joy got started, nothing could stop it, and not even a Niagara could drown it out. Another boat came down, and the men went on dancing, laughing, screaming, and patting each other on the back. And then, all of a sudden, more smoke showed, and another boat came on, low in the water this time, so it had to be the monitor. I strained my eyes, and my heart gave a thump, as something flapped on deck, and I made out a black skirt. I waved like something demented, and it seemed to me she waved back. The boat came close enough for me to make out her face, as she stood by the gun turret, taking everything in. And then suddenly the thing happened. The admiral, so I’ve heard, blamed the pilot for it, as a deliberate act of treachery, but I myself don’t believe it. A monitor’s pilothouse is just aft of the stack, and I would imagine he never saw the chute, to know what it actually looked like, until he was almost on top of it. Then, I think, he just lost his nerve and grabbed his bell-pull in panic. He cut his power just at the crucial moment, and then there the ship was in a yaw. It was swinging broadside onto the current, but that left the water picking up speed, him
not
picking up speed—in other words, it began going faster than he was. Then the stern wave rose and swept right over her deck, as the cheers turned to a yell of horror. And then, as the boat swept down all under, with everything out of control, there was my love, my life, my beautiful little Mignon, shooting by in the muddy water, gasping for breath, and staring up at me.

I grabbed the gunnel to dive, but something rapped on my neck, pulling me back in the barge. “You can’t!” the captain screamed. “You’re damned near dead already!”

“Let me go, I got to save her!” I yelled.

“Who do you think you are? Jonah?”

The boat crashed into the barge, caromed, came up, and let go with her whistle, the way the others had done, but all I could do was howl, trying to be heard above the torrent, that it should “forget your damned tooting and start looking for her.” He tried to calm me, saying, “Don’t worry, they’ll put out a boat—they’ll get her, this is the
Navy
.” But I couldn’t be calmed, and he all but had to fight me to get me ashore again, where the ambulance was, and push me in by main force. Another boat came down, but I never even saw it. I was stretched out in the ambulance bed, where I collapsed at last, so wracked with sobs it seemed I would come apart.

N
EVER MIND MY TWO DAYS AT
the courthouse, with my leg swelled twice its size and turning black and blue, while they put the wing dams in to bring down the other boats. Never mind the burning of Alexandria, the Bummers’ grand contribution, or the dreadful trip downriver. I batted from boat to boat, out of my head all the time, partly from the pain and partly from the uncertainty of not being able to find out if Mignon was living or dead. And never mind the trip in an ambulance, to some barracks below New Orleans, or the week I spent there, threshing around in a cot. When I opened my eyes once, Olsen was standing there, to get names of Maine wounded, he said, to send his papers up north. He asked me quite a few questions, but I asked him just one, to find out if he could if Mignon had been saved, and if so, where she was. He said if he found out anything he’d surely let me know, and that was the last I saw of him. And then one day a second lieutenant came, my discharge in his hand, and a St. Charles bellboy was there, helping me dress. He had with him my same old bag, the one I’d checked with the hotel before I left, and helped me into clean shirt, fresh balbriggans, and my regular dark suit. When I asked him how come, he said he didn’t know, and it made no sense at all, but I didn’t argue about it. I got in the cab with him and rode with him up to the hotel. And then there I was, back in my same old suite, with no more idea than the Man in the Moon what I was doing there or who I had to thank.

I still had some money, as in all my slamming around I’d clung to my pocketbook, but when I’d send down for my bill no bill would come up. Someone was paying for me, that much was clear, but who I didn’t know. I supposed for a time it was Dan, as he came every day for a visit—the General, by now, was back on headquarters duty, though relieved in the field. But when, in between plaguing for news of Mignon, which he said he hadn’t been able to get, I offered to square things up, he looked perfectly blank and knew no more than I did what I was talking about. Then I began to have my suspicions, but couldn’t do much about them, pending surgery on my leg. It would puff up, be lanced, and then puff up again, until the doctor said to me: “I have to lay it open if it’s ever going to heal. Trouble is, you were stabbed only halfway through, so the wound acts as a pocket to trap the corruption
in
. We have to drain it out, especially that bruised corruption that the crack in the river caused. I must open your leg from behind, to let the wound drain
down
, so gravity works for us, ’stead of being our worst enemy.”

I told him do what he had to, and he did, bringing another doctor to help, spreading oilcloth on the bed, and in all ways doing a job. The pain wasn’t so bad, but the laudanum almost finished me. It affected my lungs, somehow, so they seemed to be paralyzed, and wouldn’t draw any air. I lay for hours stifled, fighting for my breath, and when at last the paralysis went, I was completely gone. My leg, I thought, would get well, but all I could do was sleep. And then, one day when I woke up, Sandy was sitting there, in his Vicksburg blues but neatly brushed and clean. He started in, pretty nervous, talking about his transfer to headquarters duty in New Orleans: “The fighting’s pretty much over, here on Western waters.”

“What about Mignon?” I asked him.

“You mean Dan hasn’t told you?”

“He couldn’t find out anything—he said.”

“He probably wanted to spare you.”

“You mean, they never got her?”

“That’s right—we grappled all morning, not only for her, but for a seaman that was lost, boy by the name of Cassidy, who never came up after the cutter capsized when they took her down separate. No bodies were found.”

He came over, patted my shoulder, stood around, and said all the dumb things one friend says to another who’s been hit in the head with an axe. At last I said: “Well, the end of our little adventure.”

“In New Orleans, you’re talking about?”

“Yes, Sandy, of course.”

“You feel you can’t go on?”

“What do we go on with? Whiff?”

“... I’m sorry I got you into it.”

“Takes two to get into a thing like that, and I don’t blame you for it. Just the same, Sandy, I stick around New Orleans and I’m on the town. Well, I don’t want to be.” And then, as I began to shift from what was to what was going to be, I went on: “I’d like you to do something for me. I have the fare home—not much more, but enough to get me there. Not enough, however, to settle my hotel bill, doctor, and so on. They’ve been paid for me, in a somewhat mysterious way, and what I want you to do is see a woman for me; I think she is responsible.” I told him the little he needed to know about Marie and said: “What I want you to do is see her, find out how much she’s spent, and assure her I’ll remit when I get to Annapolis. I want you to talk to her nice as you can, but if she has any idea of starting up with me again, get it out of her head. That would be the last straw—she’s a sweet, wonderful person, who’d be perfectly capable of paying for me here out of the goodness of her heart. But I must mourn my dead, and my dead wouldn’t like it if I got outside help. Will you take care of it for me?”

“I’ll do my best, Bill.”

I didn’t see him for several days, and in that time I gained enough strength to sit up. I’d taken my first staggering stroll, to the sofa in the sitting room, and was reading the
Times
there when a tap came at the door. “It’s open, come in!” I called, expecting the maid. But who opened the door was Marie. She had on a white summer dress, with floppy straw hat, and carried a bouquet of flowers tied with a white ribbon. I jumped up to greet her, but she pushed me back on the sofa, then sat down, laying her flowers aside, and took me in her arms. “Guillaume,” she said, “are you better?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going to be all right—thanks to you, I think. And that’s what we’re talking about.”

“No, please,” she whispered. “First, about me.”

“Then—what about you?”

“You may
félicite
me. I am
mariée
.”

“That means—
married?
”

“Yes, Guillaume. Are you angry at me?”

“Angry? I’m so happy I want to cry.”

“
Alors. Alors. Alors
.”

She got up, as though to go to the door, but I grabbed her, pulled her down again, kissed her, and kissed her again. I said: “It’s the most wonderful news, Marie—especially to me, after the lousy way I treated you—”

“There shall be no talk of louses! You were in love, with a fine, wonderful girl, half
poupée
, half
tigre
, so where is the louse, for example? But you ask not,
petit
, who my husband is.”

“All right, who is this lucky hombre?”

She got up, went to the door and beckoned. I expected her guard to come in, or Dumont, or someone who had been in her life before she met me, but Sandy stepped through the door, a self-conscious grin on his face, his Lavadeau suit glittering like a Christmas tree. I said: “
You?
”

“That’s right, Bill. I’m the one.”

“Pardon me, I think I’m going to faint.”

He took a seat in a chair, quite pleased with himself, while she sat by me again, no longer afraid of what I might say, but friendly, cuddly, and ramping to tell me about it. She said: “Alexandre came to me, with messages of you, who I heard about of m’sieu Olsen, but it seemed discussions were required. So—we walked, in Jackson Square. We had coffee, in the French Market, perhaps—
gras
, greezee but droll.
Ainsi
, next day, more discussion appeared to devolve, so we lunched at Antoine’s, some hours. Then, it was time for dinner, and then we attended the theater. Then, we walked more in Jackson Square, and next day we resumed our discussions.
Ainsi
,
ainsi
,
ainsi
—today, we go to the City Hall, and—pardon if I draw breath.”

“You mean—there’s more?”

“Little bit, Bill,” said Sandy. “She’ll tell you.”

“Cresap
et
Gregg,” she said.

“Gregg and Cresap,” he corrected.

“
Cresap et Gregg!
” she repeated, jumping up and stamping her foot. “Who tames one river may perhaps tame another, and we know who this tamer was!”

“Then—Cresap and Gregg,
all right!
”

“What are you talking about?” I asked them.

“The twenty-five thousand bocks,” she said.

“Bill,” he told me very solemnly, “you don’t
have
to go home if you don’t want to. I didn’t bring this up, and in fact knew nothing about it, except that crack I heard that Mignon made one time—but it didn’t really connect. And
she
didn’t bring it up, until after the knot was tied in City Hall just now. But then she
did
bring it up—and that’s what brought us here. One of the things.”

“Marie,” I said, “now I
am
going to cry.”

So, in the mornings I read the papers, for the U.S. marshal’s auction sales of stuff we’re going to need, and sometimes go out to bid, having the gear delivered to a waterfront shed we rented over on the Algiers side. In the afternoons I write, on a stack of foolscap I got, of the hours I spent with her, to explain how everything was, so I’ll have it to read later on, and so perhaps it’ll ease the pain. Because at night is when my life gets bad. I turn out the light, I go to bed, I make myself sleep somehow. Then I open my eyes and she comes—through the walls, floating in, her hair
wet
, her cheek cold, her hands pressing mine, telling me how she escaped; how she swam ashore at Biossat’s, at the bridge, at the Catholic church below town, and was hidden by kind friends, so the Navy couldn’t find her; and how, if I’ll give her a little time, we’ll be together soon when the war is over at last. Then I moan and try to tell her I would have dived in to save her, but I was forcibly stopped. Then I get more and more worked up, and then she goes—through the wall, waving as she did from the monitor’s deck.