“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 alclass="underline" “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 So calm down, one and all — Burke’s tremenjous news has been superseded by Cresap’s tremenjouser news!”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.”
“It’ll stand till the fleet gets down.”
“We’ll see about that, Mr. Cresap.”
With Sandy, who was so furious he couldn’t talk, I clumped around to my own flat and flung the bag inside. When I got down to the street again, she was there talking to him, her eyes squinched up mean, her mouth twisting around. When I saw she was making spit, I fetched her a clout on the cheek that sent her staggering back to the front of the Schmidt store. Then, grabbing Sandy’s arm, I marched on down to the courthouse and turned in my pass. Then, still with him to take me through, I headed for the bridge.
Chapter 26
I drove them like animals; but driving was what they wanted, I have to say that for them all — the 29th Maine, which was hewing the trees, and the colored infantry outfits, known as the Corps D’Afrique, which were detailed as labor. I worked under a Captain Seymour whom Sandy took me to, in the woods on the Pineville side, which smelled of cut wood, where various squads were at work, chopping and sawing and hewing. But he wasn’t at all pleased, in spite of what Sandy had said, about my experience, my previous rank of lieutenant, and my willingness to help, at having a boy wonder, as he called me, “standing around in the shade, with his hands stuck in his pockets, telling me what to do.” He had a Down East way of talking that annoyed me more or less, and I said: “I wouldn’t dream of doing it — how the hell do you tell someone that sounds like a goddam quahog sucking water up with his foot and squirting it out of his eyeballs?” That kind of slowed him down, and he asked: “What’s your idea about it?”
“What do you think?” I fired back. “I figured to sign up.”
“... You mean, join? My outfit?”
“Now you got it, stupid.”
“What about that leg?”
“Leg’s been there before.”
He called to his supply sergeant: “Pair of pants for this recruit — extra longs! Blouse, if you got one!”
“Shirt’ll help,” I said.
“And a shirt!” he bellowed.
And then as we stood there, I in my balbriggans, Sandy helping me into the blues, Seymour asked in a quiet way: “All right, Cresap, what am I doing wrong?”
“Everything,” I said. “As well as everything else.”
“Hell, I know that! But what?”
“To begin with, I’d say you have compression, tension, and function all stewed in one fearful and wonderful pot, so each fouls up the other.”
“Never mind the Trautwine stuff. Say something.”
“I will, don’t worry. Those brackets you’re putting together — trying to put together — are done wrong from the start. Positioning the trees as they fall, then nailing the boards on, then hauling them down to the water, is just asking for trouble. Before it even gets wet, that set, pretty weak to start with, is so rickety from the trip through the woods that it won’t hold up in the water, can’t take the strain when you try to work it with lines — and that’s why it goes floating off. Haul your trees to the water’s edge first! Then put together your bracket! Brace it with proper struts! Saw planks into four-foot lengths, notch ’em, and shove ’em between. That’ll take care of compression. Then lash on line, and tighten with clubs used as turnbuckles! That’ll take care of tension!”
“Where the hell do we get this line?”
“Navy,” said Sandy. “We got it.”
“Go on,” the captain told me.
“Then nail on your boards. They’re function.”
“I got it now. All right, then we—”
“Goddam it, who’s supposed to be talking?”
“I’m sorry, Cresap. What else?”
“When that’s all done, when the thing’s ready to go, notch the butts of those trees and lash a shackle on. Something a hawser can bend to, so the boats can give you help. Something that’s going to hold, so you’re running the set and the set’s not running you!”