Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

“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.”

“What’s the rest of it, sir?”

“... In Springfield, everything’s marking time.”

“Springfield? I thought we were talking of Shreveport.”

“Both are important to us — to you, to me, to Mignon. Nothing can litigate until the Navy gets out of this river and brings its witnesses into court. So if you don’t get there right away, nothing’s lost, is there? You’ll still have time for Shreveport.”

“Yes. Shreveport?”

“The Army takes it, doesn’t it?”

“So you say, Mr. Landry. What then?”

“And the Navy doesn’t take it?”

“Well the Navy’s prevented, sort of.”

He said the Navy was prevented, not only by being stuck, but by being blocked off, from a hulk sunk in the river, the New Falls City , “at the mouth of Loggy Bayou, which is why they turned back in the first place, not from hearing the Army was whipped, as they’ve been giving out. They can’t get out of the mud, and even if they could, they can’t get past the hulk. That means Shreveport’s an Army thing — doesn’t it?”

“All right, what then?”

“These people have confidence in the Army.”

“What people, sir?”

“In Shreveport. No cotton’s going to be burned.”

“... More about cotton, and I’m going to upchuck.”

“For a million dollars you’d upchuck?”

“ Did you upchuck with her?”

She’d been sitting with me on the sofa, he facing us in a chair, his eyes roving the river. Now she blazed her eyes at me, then got up and went over to him. In her red-checked gingham dress she kneeled beside him, took his hand in hers, and said: “Go on, lambie — explain us, how do we get the million dollars — oh my, that would be heaven on this earth.”

“So?” I said. “The cotton’s not burned, and—”

“I acquire it. I have friends in Shreveport.”

“You mean, you buy it?”

“I mean I take title, on shares. Once they know it’s the Army, once I assure them of that, those people will trust me, I know. But two things I have to have.”

“All right. What are they?”

“The first is time.”

“I thought we had plenty of time.”

“You have time — I haven’t. I have to know where I stand, so I can get on the spot and write papers — bills of sale, partnership articles with the different people involved, receipts for the Army to sign. With all the thousands of bales waiting for me up there, I can’t do it in an hour; I have to get there ahead of time, I must be there ready and waiting whenever the Army comes.”

“Quite a trudge you’ve picked out for yourself.”

“Trudge? I’ll go by boat.”

“Boat? What boat, Mr. Landry?”

“Reb boats are running again — Doubloon, Grand Duke , all kinds of different ones. When the Union pulled out, traffic resumed as usual. I can be in Shreveport tomorrow — call it day after.”

“... What else must you have?”

“Godpappy, Mr. Cresap.”

“I thought that was it. Meaning me?”

“You’ll have it all to yourself — a monopoly! ”

He said that now the other traders had all been sent back to New Orleans I’d be the only one, “and they’ll have to deal with you.” Then he started in again on the mess being made of the dam. “The idea,” he said, “is to set out the trees in pairs — brackets they’re called, I believe — with boards nailed to the trunks. When they’re hauled into the stream, the current’s supposed to help, by pressing down on the boards and holding them tight to the bottom — and it did, so long as the work was close to the bank, where the water’s shallow. But now that they’re moving out where it’s deep, the current’s no help any more. It lifts those trees like Hallowe’en apples and sends them spinning downriver, past the bridge and out. The whole thing’s just pitiful.”

I said: “You know how you sound to me?”

“... All right, Mr. Cresap — tell me.”

“Like a man working three sides of the street — Reb side, Union side, and Cotton side, all at the same time.”

“I’m not running this war. What I propose is lawful.”

“And you realize I must report what you’ve said.”

She started, but he smiled, waited, and said: “I would expect you to; in fact I want you to, and realize that until you do you’ll not cooperate. So please — you go to your friend Captain Dorsey, tell him what I’ve told you — everything I ’ ve said, especially about Kirby Smith . When you come back, I think you’ll be ready to talk.”

She came over to me, not blazing her eyes any more, but mumbling her mouth to mine and whispering: “You’re going to, aren’t you? See Captain Dorsey? Hear what he has to say? And then line it up? So we make the million dollars? And have our house? And our carriage? And—”

“At any rate, I’ll see him.”

The Black Hawk , the headquarters Black Hawk that is, was tied up at Biossat’s again, all battered from shelling upriver, and the guard on her plank called Dan. I’d seen him since he got back, but only to say hello, and we spent a minute or two on the usual dumb questions, getting caught up with each other. Then he started to take me upstairs, but I suggested some place where we’d be alone, and he led on back to the fantail, where we had it with our elbows on the rail. He listened, and then filled me in on the fighting the Army had seen, and how it bore on what Mr. Landry had told me. “The thing to keep straight,” he said, “is that two battles were fought — one up in the woods, at what’s known as Sabine Crossroads, just this side of Mansfield. That battle we lost — I was there, and it was a shambles, with everything going wrong that possibly could go wrong. You’d think, after Caesar wrote up the folly of trying to fight with wagons up in your van, that we’d have heard about it, two thousand years later. But no — there the wagons were when the Rebs came piling at us, with the horses screaming and breaking, and the wagoners no great help. And there were the girls too, the colored ones that were brought by the boys to do their washing — whipping their mules to the rear and yelling: ‘Run! Run! Here come Old Massa — he gwine massacree everyone!’ Don’t let anyone tell you different, it was a rout! You know what they’re singing, don’t you?”