Mignon (19 page)

“
Pleasant?
A trip to her mother’s grave? And who gave you leave, Frank, to mess into it?” Burke’s gall in daring to use this sacred thing seemed to infuriate him more than all the rest put together, and I had to remind him it had nothing to do with the case. He hardly seemed to hear me, but he did get off the subject. “And you had Pierre kill Powell, didn’t you,” he went on in his merciless driving at Burke.

“But Adolphe, how could you think such a thing?”

“The Navy saw him, that’s how!”

“They saw—Pierre?”

Mr. Landry wheeled, said “Tell him, Mr. Cresap, what the boys said in your flat!” I repeated about the red pompon, but Burke, even when hit with the truth, would keep on screaming “Lie!”—and that’s what he did now. However, we’d got to the meat of the matter, and time was going on. I said: “Burke, put your keys on the table.”

“I have a key,” said Mr. Landry. “To his back door.”

“He may have a lockbox or something.”

And to Burke again: “
Put
’
em out!
”

He obeyed, pretty quick, pitching a ring on the table, with quite a few keys on it, of assorted sizes. I reached out to pull it toward me, still holding the gun, hooking it with my little finger to pull it to me. By then, my stick was second nature, and I hardly thought about it as my other hand held it, supporting my weight. But the sneaky Irishman did. He twitched it with his feet, just a little, but that was enough. He shot it out from under me, and as I lost balance and fell, he smashed one hand at my gun, the other at her face, so she fell and his gun flew out of her hand. He grabbed it and leveled both guns. “Stay where you are,” he commanded, “and listen to me, the three of you!” Then he started in, as Landry stood where he was and she and I lay on the floor, pouring out what he felt. It quickly became clear that we weren’t the only ones with pent-up ugly feelings. It was shocking, the language he used, not only to her and her father, but most of all, to me. He swore he was going to kill me, and I had a horrible feeling he meant it. But pretty soon Mr. Landry broke in: “Quit it, Frank,
quit it!
”

“I repeat every word I’ve said!”

“You want to hang? Because that’s what you’ll do, that’s what we all will do, unless I get that receipt before the Navy gets it.”

He held up his hand at Burke, slipped his hands under Mignon’s arms, lifted her to her feet and kissed her. Then he started for me, to help me up. But, as though doing first things first, he turned to hand me the stick that still lay on the floor. The rest was all one motion. He picked it up by the small end and swung it—in an arc as a batter swings a bat, so hard it whined through the air. The crack was sharp, and Burke fell like a pole-axed steer, toppling from his chair. I grabbed the guns as they fell, shoving the Moore & Pond into the holster, handing the other to Mr. Landry. He took it but without paying attention, as he was staring down at Burke with a wild, venomous look. She was staring too, but at
him
, as though he was something holy. I guess I stared too, and maybe mumbled my thanks for the quick-witted thing he had done. Then at last he looked up, patted the Colt, and took the keys. He said: “I want him—left where he is, till I dispose of him later. While I’m searching that house—get this meat cut up—put it down, out of sight. If somebody comes—let them in—act natural—talk. If they’re looking for him—all you know is—he was due to leave—for Shreveport. Tell them nothing—above all, don’t bring them back here.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Right,” I agreed.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He went, down through the store, through the gates in the fences, and in through Burke’s back door.

S
HE SCRAMBLED DOWN AND
spread newspapers out on the floor at the foot of the stairs, directly below the trapdoor. Then she came back, standing by as I hacked at the meat, taking each piece as I got it off and dropping it down on the paper. It was a new kind of job to me and made me pretty sick, though whether it was the bloody meat that got me or the sight of Burke on the floor, I can’t rightly say—maybe a little of both. But before very long I was done, and as soon as I wiped off the table and washed up the tools and myself, I went down with her to the locked-up store, with its empty shelves, musty smell, and cobwebs. The meat had to go in a tub, which was already down in the old cistern, but to reach it boards had to be moved; these she pried up with tire iron. The cistern was dry enough, but the bottom was covered with duckboards, and the tub sat on them. It was half full of other meat, including a picked chicken she said we would have for dinner. I handed it up and she passed the venison down. I put it in with the other meat, replaced all the boards, and followed her upstairs.

She was a few seconds ahead of me, and when I got to the kitchen, she was standing face to the wall, her head on her arms. When I asked what the trouble was, she pointed to Burke and said: “Willie, I was glad at him being dead—I was proud of Father for hitting him. But he’s not dead! He’s breathing!”

I listened, and he certainly was, with a rattle in his throat, his face a purplish red. I said: “He won’t be for long, I imagine.”

“Willie! I’m not glad any more! I’m scared!”

“So what do I do? Shoot him?”

“No!” Then: “He’s getting a knot on his head!”

“Well he was cracked on the conk, you know.”

“But it shows! It proves how long we left him lay!”

“... I guess that’s not so good.”

“It knocks in the head any story we tell—about its being self-defense, or anything of that kind. Willie, if he dies or he doesn’t die, there’s that knot to prove that what we say is not true! Because if it was self-defense, why didn’t we give one yelp for help when we needed help? Why did we let all that time go by while that knot was swelling up? And if it was not self-defense, what was it?”

“Take it easy. Let’s figure on it.”

To tell the truth, I was beginning to be just as scared as she was, now I was seeing things as they were, not as I thought they were going to be. While we were cutting the meat to get it out of the way and have the place shipshape, I’d been putting first things first and postponing everything else until Mr. Landry’s return, when I supposed he’d take the lead—it was his responsibility, he had swung the stick. But that was on the assumption he would only be a few minutes, and once the papers were burned we could decide what to say, with our corpse still not cold. But here it was almost an hour, and instead of a corpse there was Burke on the floor, not even really alive. What to do about him I was too panicked to think. I may as well own up I was tempted to settle his hash, give him a tap with the peen of a hatchet that was on top of the woodbox. But I didn’t quite have the nerve.

All of a sudden she pointed, and there was Mr. Landry, coming through the gates, stuffing papers into his coat pocket. But instead of entering the store, he raced to the Schmidt place, and then from under my flat we heard metal banging. Then there he was back in the yard, carrying a tremendous can, one I’d seen through the window, in among the sugar-mill stuff. He opened the door below, and we heard the can banging, down at the foot of the stairs. Then he was climbing up through the trapdoor, his face white, his eyes bright the way hers were sometimes, with a wild, fanatical shine. He said: “Sorry, Mignon; sorry, Bill, to be so long, but I was forever finding that tin box he had to keep his papers in. It was inside the square piano! However, it may have been just as well, as it gave me time to think what to do with him. He’s going in a can I borrowed from Friedrich Schmidt—we wire the top on, load it on the dolly, roll it across Front Street, and dump it into Red River—right in front of their eyes, now, in broad daylight!”

“We’re not!” she said. “No such!”

“Daughter, we dare not report this death.”

“He’s not dead!”

“...
What?
”

“All right, go look for yourself!”

He looked, listened to Burke’s breathing, and sat down at the table. “This complicates things,” he said. His eyes lost their shine, and I could see him doing what I did: lose his nerve and fall apart at the change from high excitement to dull, stupid danger that wasn’t the less dangerous from being halfway under the gate, and stuck there. He licked his lips, and then pretty soon looked up. “At least,” he said, “I’ve brought the can in—it’s down there, in the store. When it happens, we’ll have it ready.” To that nobody said anything, but it was plain, from the silent treatment she gave it, that she didn’t enthuse at all to that
we
he’d got off so glibly. After some minutes, he pulled himself together a little, took the papers out of his pocket—some on legal-cap, tied at the top with tape that had wax seals on the knots, some on printed forms with
RACHAL
’
S
at the top, some just plain foolscap with columns of letters and numbers. He said: “At least, we can get these out of the way, so we can breathe safely,” and started for the stove, where some embers were still glowing. I watched him lift the lid, then suddenly bellowed: “
Hold it!
”

I stumped over, snatched the papers from his hand.

“Mr. Cresap,” he said, very peevishly “you were the one who insisted this stuff must be burned! Here it is, just as you said, the forged Navy receipt, with the signature traced on, identical with the one signed to the pass, that thing he got for Mignon. I even found his tracing outfit, the stand, the glass, the mirror for reflecting light—the thing is completely damning. What’s the matter now? Why did you grab those papers? Why shouldn’t they be destroyed?”

“Suppose it
doesn
’
t
happen?”

“You mean, suppose he doesn’t
die?
”

“Yes—for the hell of it,
just
suppose.”

“Well all the more reason, I’d think—”

“Think again, Mr. Landry. Found by a party searching Burke’s house, that stuff could hang you—and probably hang Mignon—as accessories to Powell’s murder; they’d tie you in, close enough. But found, by
you
, and duly presented to them, it would be your exoneration—not only of any connection with Powell,
but for this fracas today
,
as well!
When I came in just now, with news of last night’s shooting and with what I’d been told by Ball up at the hotel earlier, you began to have your suspicions, and when Burke came, you asked some sharp questions. He didn’t answer, but tried to shoot you, and when he pulled his gun, you smashed him with the stick. Then you took his keys, went over, and made your search.
You
think it clears everything up—and they’ll have to think so too. It’ll take care of what worries Mignon, why we let time go by, without even calling a doctor. To you, I think you can say, it seemed more important to check this evidence over, though it might take a while, than to worry too much about a skunk who wasn’t worth saving
anyhow
.”

“Thank God!” she said. “Willie has the answer!”

“... Bill, you could be right.”

We went over it two or three times, to have it clear and straight, especially about Pierre and how we’d bring
him
in. Because it was all right the night before for
me
not to recognize him, as no one could rightly say whether I knew him or not, but now for Mr. Landry not to have a suspicion when I told of the shooting would have a fishy look. We decided suspicion was really the key, that for him it was one more thing he wanted Burke to explain, but not something he was sure of to the extent he’d have to report what he thought. That way he wouldn’t look dumb, and at the same time he’d be in the position a sensible man would take, of hesitating quite a while before shooting off his mouth with charges he couldn’t prove. All that seemed rock-ribbed enough, especially since Burke could not contradict—we’d assumed, for some reason, that he was due to die, if not there in the kitchen with us, then later somewhere, in custody. So with things pretty well settled, I put the papers away in the grand piano, there in the sitting room, taking a tip from Burke. When I went back to the kitchen, it was all in the soup, every last thing we’d cooked up.

Burke had started to groan.

The three of us looked at each other, then looked away in consternation. “He’s coming to,” said Mignon.

“... What now?” her father groaned.

“By me,” I said. “I’m stumped.”

However, I wasn’t too stumped to give Burke a kick, a hard one, right in the rump, and he let out a muffled yell. Then he sat up. Then, dragging himself to a spot near the wall, where he could lean his head against it, he touched his knot with one hand, while he leaned on the other and cussed. He called me scut, crud, and dirty son of a bitch. He called Mr. Landry a Judas. He called her whore, drab, queen of the swampland strumpets. He called on the Holy Mother of God to be his witness what a fine hombre he was, and told all the good he’d done, from Nicaragua to Mexico and back, as well as special good deeds in Limerick. He kept it up for some time, until I began wondering why any of us had to listen. I went over and gave him another kick. He shut up and lay there panting. And then suddenly, from over on Second Street somewhere, I heard: “Column,
halt!
”

I looked, and in front of Burke’s house the whole bunch had halted—Hager, Dan, Sandy, Ball, four or five Navy ensigns, some seamen, and a detail from the Provost Guard. I heard my mouth say to Burke: “Skunk, they’ve identified their corpse, and they’re looking for you at your house. They’ll be here, and listen what I’m telling you: We have all that cotton stuff, including the forged receipt. Mr. Landry found it, in your square piano. It can hang you, do you hear?”

“What are you getting at, scut?”

“We can show them that receipt. We don’t mind.”

“Then show’t, and be damned to you!”

“We prefer not. We’d enjoy seeing you hang, but the thing could ramify against these two wonderful people that you’ve got into this mess—especially if you dragged them in, trying to save yourself. So we’re
not
showing it to them! At least, not
yet
. To get the curtain down, to close the case, to hush up the real truth, we’re giving you your chance to tell it your own way. So when they come, see that you talk right.”