Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

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.

Never 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?”