“Yes,” I said. “I’m all right.”
“Kiss me. Kiss me!”
“... Kind of public for that, don’t you think?”
“Willie! They’re fixing to do something to me, for what we tried with that boat! You may not see me again! Kiss me, tell me you love me!”
“You know I do, don’t you?”
Then we both kissed, sweet, long, and holy.
All during that, the captain held the lantern; he was soaking wet, so I knew who had got me out. When the seamen had put her in the cutter and shoved off for the other side, he half-carried me back to the bivouac and began bellowing for an ambulance to take me to the courthouse, “where you’ll be under a surgeon, who’ll put you in for discharge, unless I miss my guess, as I seriously doubt if you’ll be fit for duty any more.” But no ambulance came, and he stripped off my clothes, did the same for his own, and hung all our things on a line that he stretched between trees, where they’d get the heat of the fire. Then he wrapped me in a blanket, pulled one over himself, and sat there a while thinking. Then: “That girl,” he said, “what is she to you?”
“In all but name, my wife.”
“She’s in damned serious trouble.”
“She damned well knows it.”
“... Or she would be, except for you.”
“What have I got to do with it?”
“You destroyed the evidence against her.”
“Oh — you mean the skiff?”
“And powder and wiring and outrigger.”
“Well, what did you want me to do — let it go sailing downstream to blow the dam up so they’d have a case to hang her? What’s more important to the Navy, their boats or one poor girl’s neck?”
“Hey! I’m trying to cheer you up!”
“I’m sorry. I’m off my usual.”
“I’d say she deserves to be hung, but may not be.”
“It wasn’t her, it was her father, and—”
“Calm down, take it easy.”
So the horrible night wore on, but at least I did have a ray of hope, and it wasn’t so bad as it had been. Once, we all but jumped out of our skins and thought the skiff had made it, in spite of my turning it over, when two barges went out with a noise like cannon shot, when their hawsers parted and they slammed down on the rocks two hundred feet downstream. He cursed and raved and wept, assuming it all would spill out, the depth we’d worked so hard to get. It was my turn to cheer him up. I assured him things were improved, that the pressure would now be eased, “so back-up and outflow will be equalized, without the whole dam going out.” He shook my hand, felt our clothes, and got us dressed. When daylight came, an ambulance pulled in, but he had it wait while he helped me out, crawling along the catwalk, to the second of the two remaining barges, so I could see the show of the boats coming out. “After all you’ve done, you’re certainly entitled to that much,” he said.
We sat on the upstream end, holding on to a cleat, and as far as you could see, on both banks of the river, was blue, because, except for men on duty, the whole army was there to see how the thing came out — no one believing in it. You could see men moving around, but as though in a dumb show; you couldn’t hear a thing from the roar of the torrent beside us, plunging down through the chute between the barge we were on and the cribs on the other side like a young Niagara. Then, along toward seven o’clock, we made out smoke on the falls. Then we could see a hull, with foam under the forefoot. That meant power, and the captain began to scream: “No, no! Cut those engines, man, cut ’em!” Not that the pilot heard him, but once more I cheered him up. “He has to have power!” I yelled in his ear. “He must have steering way!” I don’t know if he even heard me, but the boat came right on, at express-train speed, her own fifteen miles an hour plus at least twelve from the current. That brought her down on us fast, and then here she was, up over our heads, coming into the chute. Then she was roaring by, so close we felt her breeze. Then she was down, and then she crashed into the nearest barge, where it hung below on the rocks. It seemed she must come apart, but then she was caroming off, then spinning around, right in front of the hotel. And then, so help me, she tooted.
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.
Chapter 28
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.