Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

“How long is this thing going to take?”

“It’s win or lose in a week.”

“You mean, win or starve in a week?”

“Yes, that’s just what I mean!”

“There’s talk going around that in the event the dam doesn’t hold the march will be resumed up the river to Shreveport.”

“Not by the Navy. It doesn’t have the water.”

“I’m talking about the Army.”

“I can’t speak for them.”

I thought over what he had said, and told him: “You catch me by surprise, as I hadn’t known until now there was anything I could do — an army does not, as a rule, need help to run. So I don’t know what answer to give you.”

“Answer? You haven’t been asked, yet.”

“Thing like this, I shouldn’t wait to be asked.”

“You mean, you’d even go? ”

That was Mignon, and when I said yes, she exploded in my face. “Well, all I can say, Willie Cresap,” she blazed, switching her skirt around, “is I wish you’d make up your mind. First you come up here, to condole with me, so you said — if that be something to do. Then, with my help and Father’s help and Sandy’s help, you turn around and decide to trade in cotton — and we sign the papers for you. Now you think you may build a dam! What next, pray tell — if you know? Picking daisies, maybe, and starting a flower shop? Or buying a sword-cane and rake and going in business with her , running a gambling dive? Is that what it’s been all along? Is that what you’re up to, is that what you really want?”

“She talks like a wife,” said Sandy, “and she might even be right. Wife, I’ve noticed, generally is.”

“I wonder,” I said. “Maybe.”

Mr. Landry got in it then, repeating Sandy’s arguments, and not repeating hers, but adding some stuff of his own. And on top of everything else was my own feeling about it, that the dam was just plain silly. And what I might have decided I can’t exactly say, but while we were arguing about it there came a knock down the hall. Mr. Landry answered, but came back with word that no one was there. Mignon glanced at him sharply, and I thought he looked very strange. Then the knock was repeated, and he gave her a long stare. That’s when I woke up. I scooted down the hall, but didn’t turn into the crosshall that led to the outside entrance. I kept on to the trapdoor in the pantry. I flung it up, drawing my gun, and calling: “Come up, whoever you are — you’re covered, so keep your hands high!” Then a ragged, filthy, bony thing clambered out, wearing a thick gray beard and squinting with watery eyes. I had slapped it up for guns and taken the Navy Colt before the jackboots told me who it was that I had.

It was Burke.

“I think you know everybody,” I told him very coolly, as I marched him into the sitting room. “Don’t stand on ceremony. Have a chair, take the load off your feet. Make yourself at home.”

“It’s my home,” snapped Mr. Landry, furiously.

“Then you invite him, why don’t you?”

“Frank,” he said, “is that you? I hardly know you.”

“Aye,” Burke groaned in a hollow voice, “ ’tis I — but the ghost of the man you knew. I never reached the Sabine at all. I was taken direct to Shreveport as soon as I crossed their lines, and escaped by the barest chance — I’d hate to say what it cost me in bright, yellow gold.” He said he’d arrived in the night, but not wanting to be seen, had come in the back way, using his key as before, as soon as he’d had some sleep. Then: “What brought me, Adolphe, is the news I picked up in Shreveport — ’tis tremenjous.”

“Later, Frank — it’ll keep.”

“Just now, I could use a bit of food.”

“I’ll get you some,” she chirped.

“Not so fast,” I said, blocking her from the door.

They’d been playing it as though they hadn’t seen Burke before, but there’d been that exchange of looks, and I took it for an act. If that seems slightly unbalanced, there were things setting me off, like the prickles I felt all over me at her friendly concern for his hunger, and what it was going to be like with me out of the way and him under foot all the time. I stood there waving the gun, trying to calm myself down, but feeling my gorge rising. I said, licking my lips, swallowing now and then, and spacing my words kind of queerly: “Mr. Landry — it’s all quite clear to me now — why nobody seemed to mind — that I was shoving off. With someone to take my place — with another godpappy to claim the Shreveport cotton — to pick up that million bucks — why should anyone mind?”

“You talking about me?” she asked. “Well I don’t!”

“I’m not talking — about any particular one.”

“Then who are you talking about?”

“All,” I said. “Everyone.”

“Not me,” said Burke. “Do I care what you do?”

“Oh yes, you,” I told him, feeling for some reason humorous. “Take it easy. Stick around — I’ll explain where you come in.”

“And certainly not me?”

That was Sandy. I said: “Especially you.”

Then to Burke, pushing the gun at him: “What’s your tremenjous news?” And when he didn’t answer: “Come on, talk, spit it out! ”

“The Rebs—” he began.

“Now we’re coming,” I said. “The Rebs?”

“Have overplayed it! They’re trying to bag two armies, instead of going for one! They’ve divided their forces, they’ve left their fortress unguarded!.. ’Tis all I know, me boy! I thought Adolphe might like to hear it!”

“Why should he like it?”

“Well — he lives here, after all!”

“You’ve heard the Union’s going to march up there?”

“Aye, if this dam goes out they’ll have to!”

“And then there’ll be the cotton?”

“ ’ Twas the whole reason for this fiasco! ”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

I waited, no doubt with a grin on my face such as Samson may have had before he pulled down the temple. I said, mainly to Burke, but including them all: “There’ll be no march on Shreveport, no million made by claiming the Shreveport cotton. That dam is going to be built! It can’t be done, but I’ll build it! So calm down, one and all — Burke’s tremenjous news has been superseded by Cresap’s tremenjouser news!”

“But Bill,” said Sandy, “ you ’ re leaving! ”

“Oh no I’m not,” I said. “Nobody’s leaving! And so no one is tempted to, so there’s not any reason to leave, we’re doing away with this cotton, this devil’s bait we all sold our souls to grab — we’re burning it, right now!”

“No!” she screamed. “ No! ”

“Not me own cotton?” wailed Burke.

“The same old stuff!” I said. “ Surprise! ”

“Bill, you can’t!” yelled Sandy.

“Oh yes I can — hand me my bag,”

Nobody handed it to me, but I grabbed it up and piled on back to the kitchen. They were all on top of me, but a maniac waving a pistol doesn’t get interfered with. It was a chorus of despair as I opened the bag and dug into it, coming up with the same swatch of papers, done up in the same Navy oilskin, I had tucked away there six long weeks before. I lifted the lid on the stove, jammed everything in, and poked it down with the gunpoint while Sandy yelled warnings. I banged the lid on again, and waited while the flames licked up. In five minutes I opened the stove up, and nothing was there but red, black, and gray fluff, curling around. I holstered the gun, picked up the bag, told Sandy, “Come on, let’s go.” But I didn’t get out of there before Mr. Landry told me, a venomous look in his eye: “Maybe you build that dam, but it’s not going to stand, I promise you.”