“Of course,” she yipped. “We both are!”
“I’d like to be missed, a little!”
She kissed me, right in front of him, said: “You’re going to be missed a lot — morning, noon, and night, but specially in the morning. Now come on, I’ll help you pack.”
I was sitting there with him, the packed bag beside me, my overcoat, oilskin, and hat piled on top, and she was in the kitchen putting me up some lunch, in case food was scarce on the boat, when a knock came on the door. He answered and then came back with Sandy, who was looking pretty glum, not to say seedy, and whom I hadn’t seen since that day on the falls. He shook hands, and seemed surprised when I asked if his boat was one of those stuck. “Why, yes,” he said, “in a way. She kind of got permanently stuck and we had to scuttle her.”
“Oh? When did that happen?”
“Last week.”
“And what boat are you on now?”
“We all got distributed around, pending reassignment, and I got taken on board the Neosho — monitor aground on the upper falls. I’m subject to duty as ordered, meaning at-large mud-turtle to this dam they’re trying to build.”
“Which is not going well, I hear.”
“It’s not going at all.”
She came in about that time, with her packages wrapped in newspaper, and after shaking hands, excused herself while she stuffed them into my bag. He had been eyeing it, and now asked: “You going somewhere, Bill?”
I told him about the Warner, and he said: “Well, in that case I’ll forget what I came about.” I pressed him, of course, and he said: “No, if you have a chance to get out, and especially to go to Springfield, I can’t stand in your way. That’s important — it’s the one way to get the money we’re going to need, so let’s forget the dam, which can’t be built anyhow. It’s a completely ridiculous idea.” It came out, little by little, that what he had wanted of me was to Walk across the bridge and pass out a couple of pointers to the boys on the left bank about how to do their work. “On this side,” he said, “it makes sense — not much, but a little. They’re building cribs out of logs, hauling them into the stream, and filling them with stone. How much water they hold I wouldn’t like to say, but at least they stay there, they don’t go floating off. But on the other side it’s a madhouse.” He explained about the brackets, corroborating what Mr. Landry had said, and went on: “They wash out, they break apart, and it’s not only the river. It’s the troops, a bunch of Maine woodsmen, who can cut trees down but can’t hook ’em together. I’ve tried to tell ’em, but they won’t listen to me, and besides I don’t really know. But you do, and to you I thought they might pay some attention — that’s all. But, you’d have to stay with ’em, of course, see it through to the end; so let’s forget it.”
“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?”