Mignon

Chapter 15

Alexandria was just like the pictures except for the rain drizzling down, the invasion fleet of steamers tied up at the bank, and the hoodoo on top of the courthouse — which I hadn’t believed in before, but now was beginning to, on account of something that happened on the boat coming up. We’d left from the foot of Canal Street, twelve noon two days before, on a sidewheeler called the Black Hawk. We carried on the boiler deck General, staff, headquarters noncoms, and headquarters orderlies; on the main deck horses, Louisiana volunteers, newspapermen, and traders; wherever they could fit waiters, hostlers, and hangers-on. It was kind of a tight squeeze, but I made out all right since I’d brought what the trip called for. After kissing Marie good night with the Judas taste on my mouth, I’d spent the small hours packing, and divided my stuff in two bags. One I checked with the hotel, the other I filled with field stuff, including sandwiches I had the hotel put up and my gun. I wore my corduroys, and with the blankets I’d bought for the sea voyage plus a canteen at my belt I figured to do all right, and did.

I bunked in, or wedged in, with the traders, aft of the shaft, in the passage leading back to the fantail. They were a strange bunch, half of them sharpshooter businessmen, the rest politicians, all full of windy guff, like the pair holding Lincoln passes, those two slips of paper that muxed everything up, causing headquarters, as it did, to accept them as a tip-off of what Washington really wanted — unlimited trade in cotton as a matter of public policy. Some had brought bagging, rope, and gear on board the boat, and piled it up so there was hardly room to step; they were so hungry for cotton they expected to bale the loose stuff on plantations after the regular stock in storage had all been bought up. But nobody made complaint, and we all shook down very friendly, standing around in the afternoon, pitching banana skins in the wake, watching the swamps go by, or crossing to the other side of the engine room to visit the newspapermen. But as dark was settling down and the crew was lighting lamps, Dan showed up to ask me how things were going. By then, bottles were being passed and jokes were being cracked, so he took a look and beckoned me forward. We ducked under the shaft and went up into the bow, where the horses were, and the hostlers had rigged a tarp to shield them from the breeze. We stood by the rail, and after Dan had done his manners with me, he stared at the shore, very gloomy. When I asked what the trouble was, he answered: “Nothing, Bill — and everything. This damned invasion, mainly.”

“Did something go wrong? I thought it was on.”

“It is on — it started two weeks ago. By now the advance must be in Alexandria. But Bill, it’s a queer; it keeps me awake at night.”

“In what way, a queer?”

“Look, it’s in three prongs, as I guess you know — Army, Navy, and Bummers. Sherman’s lending us ten thousand men, but those bastards always mean trouble. Besides, there’s no real chain of command.”

“But isn’t the General in charge?”

“Well, is he? Or isn’t he? And if so, how?”

“Dan, I don’t have answers for you.”

“If he’s in charge, he’s in charge too many ways. No man can hold an election, dance the polka, inaugurate Hahn, dabble in cotton, and command a campaign all at the same time. They’re asking too much of him! And he should have been there! At Alexandria, for the rendezvous. It was set for March seventeenth, when the three prongs should meet, but how could he be there, with these other things to do?”

“But has something gone wrong?”

“Not actually — at least not that I know of.”

“Has there been any fighting so far?”

“Little. The Bummers took a fort.”

“Well Dan? If they took it—”

“Bill, this bunch you’re with is no help.”

“They’re what’s really griping you, aren’t they?”

“The cotton is. It’s what really scares me.”

“But why, if this hoodoo is all you have to go on? Or some theoretical attainder — that can’t amount to much, if Lincoln’s given his blessing.”

“Lincoln’s not here.”

“But you’ve nothing definite to go on?”

“No — I’m scared and don’t know why.”

“It’s a funny way to be scared.”

“It’s the worst way there is.”

He found out why soon enough, before we even got to Alexandria. We stopped next day at Port Hudson, which is a levee, a bluff, and some houses, where the General reviewed some troops — colored men who’d distinguished themselves at the siege the previous year. Everyone went ashore, including me, but not caring to climb the bluff I passed up the review, went back on board, and stood in the bow chatting with a mate. Then everyone came back — the General, the staff, the enlisted men, the correspondents, and last of all the traders. But their faces, previously wreathed in grins from the money they hoped to make, now black with scowls, told me something was wrong; at once I started to follow them back to their part of the boat to find out what it was. But I had to stand aside while the deckhands pulled in the hawser after the boat cast off. While I was waiting Dan came down the stairs from the main saloon. He beckoned me to the same spot by the rail we’d stood at the night before and went on, almost as though there’d been no break. “Well,” he said, “the hoodoo’s on.”

“Yes?” I said. “How?”

“The Navy’s got the cotton.”

“You mean, they made the confiscation?”

“Not quite. They made the capture.”

“I don’t quite get the distinction.”

“Navy doesn’t operate under the Confiscation Act, but under the Law of Prize — they keep all the money, they divide it between themselves, but a prize has to be captured. And you don’t give receipts to a capture. So no claim can be made for that cotton; it can’t be litigated.” As I nodded, getting the point, he went on: “Kind of funny, at that, how they worked it. They were telling us here at Port Hudson, some boys who got shipped downriver, on account of their time being up. The rendezvous, as I told you, was set for the seventeenth, but the Navy beat the gun. They got there the fifteenth, and the town — to be helpful — sent the mayor out in a boat to make the surrender. Boy, he didn’t even get his painter taken on board — they fended him off like smallpox, for fear of what it would mean if they even heard the word surrender. Next morning, a detachment from the Eastport — your friend Sandy’s boat — marched up to the warehouse and smashed in the door with rifle butts. The owner was right there, waving the keys in their face — but they had to use force to make it stick as a capture.”

“Well, we live and we learn.”

“From the Navy, we all learn plenty.”

“But at least, you’re out from under.”

“You mean this Army? Bill, I’m not so sure.”

“But if the Navy has the cotton?”

“Listen, Bill, the handshake was passed — and the Rebs left us the cotton when they pulled out of the town. Then the Navy stole it off us. All right, so that leaves these traders holding the bag. But the Rebs don’t get paid, and it was our handshake.”

“What are you leading to, Dan?”

“How do I know? But I smell still more trouble.”

“Well, at worst we’ll have to fight.”

“Yes, Bill, but can we?”

He said what a poor army it was, a lot of the boys having enlisted as settlers in Texas, the rest of them soft from an idle winter, from laying up with colored girls, and from foraging for rum. He repeated: “And there’s no proper chain of command.” And then, turning to look at me: “Bill, you don’t seem much upset.”

“... Why should I be?”

“That twenty-five thousand dollars. Losing it must be tough.”

“I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“Then you were lying, weren’t you?”

“Well? I had to get me to Alexandria.”

“At least, you’re still an honest man — but I’ve known that all along, or I wouldn’t be down here talking with you. And she is a damned nice girl.”

“If she is, she is.”

“Meaning, Bill?”

“It’s what I’m on my way to find out.”

“In other words, whether she’s sleeping with Burke?”

I recoiled as though I’d been hit, and knew that was how he intended it. He watched my face, drilling me with his eyes, and then went on: “Bill, don’t you go shooting that Irishman, for her. I’m telling you, don’t you do it! Right now, he’s a case of smallpox, with everyone afraid to give him a kind word for fear of being mixed up in some of his schemes. But dead, so nothing more can be proved, he’ll have a thousand friends — and that town’s under martial law. We’ll try the case, and we have jurisdiction over murder. I’m trying to tell you you’ll hang.”

“I must play the hand as it’s dealt.”

“It’s what I’m asking of you.”

“Suppose she is sleeping with Burke?”

“She’s still a nice girl, damn it — she wouldn’t be the first to do just exactly that! But isn’t it enough for you to give her the big hee-haw, for getting the little end of the stick? And Burke the big hee-haw? And Landry the big hee-haw — specially him, because if he’d renounced the tin, she wouldn’t be up there now. Isn’t laughing cheaper than lead?”

“Is it better than lead is the question.”

“It’s better than rope, goddam it.”

When I argued no more about it, he studied me and then left, perhaps detecting I’d weakened, because the truth was that once the full meaning of what the Navy had done had soaked in I’d begun to have twitches of hope along the lines he’d spoken of — I would picture myself laughing, and then picture her turning to me, now the scheme had blown up, and asking my forgiveness, and pictured myself taking her in my arms and telling her our love was all that mattered. And so the long afternoon wore on. We spoke the station ship, a walking-beam boat of the kind we have back home. We ran past her, came about, then ran down into Lower Old River. After six or eight miles of that, racing with the current, we nosed into the Red. Night began settling down, and in the morning it started to rain. After miles of desolate country blighted by the war, suddenly here came the cotton, thousands of bales on a barge, under the arm of a Navy steamer. It passed so close we could almost touch it, and the traders watched it and cursed. Ahead was Alexandria, all brick, green, iron lace, and drizzle. Then we were swinging into Alexandria’s upper wharf and crashing into the Navy’s flag boat, a big three-decker called the Black Hawk. No, I didn’t make a mistake. Their flag was on the Black Hawk and our headquarters on the Black Hawk — two boats with the same name, lying side by side, spreading nothing but mux. It was that kind of invasion.