Past All Dishonor Read online

  I was climbing out on my little plank landing before I felt that throb in my throat. Because there was my boat, the oars tucked under the seats, and all I had to do was jump in and I’d be alongside that steamer in a minute. I think I did it in half a minute. I threw the painter over the same rail she had used for the bucket, vaulted over to the freight deck, and ran up the stairs. Nobody noticed me that I could see. The deckhands were all in the bow, rolling freight off the pier, and the passengers were at the rail watching them, or else in the bar, having a drink. She was lying down, reading a paper, when I called, but she jumped up and came to the window. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”

  “I’ve been getting my boat. Come on. Hurry.”

  She dragged her trunk over, and I lifted it out the window. It was one of those little leather ones that fit nice in the stagecoaches. Then she got her black cape and I took it, and leaned out the window so I could pull her through. We slipped down the stairway and I helped her in the boat. As I lowered the trunk, a bell rang in the engine room. It seemed a year before I could cast off the painter, grab the oars, and dig. As I shot away, the wheel began to turn. I was headed upstream, because the current had swung me that way, but I didn’t take time to turn. I kept on going, past the steamer’s bow, and shot under the next pier. She was in the stern, but now she moved up beside me, and we sat there, and held our breath, and watched. The steamer was pointed upstream too, because they always come in against the current, and she kept on that way until she was pretty close to the bridge. Then a hawser lifted out of the water, and you could hear the deckhands grunt as they began pulling it in. She came around till we could almost have touched her, then she was pointed downriver, and the wharfmaster threw the hawser off the piling, and another bell rang in the engine room. We got some spray in our faces, and almost before you could believe it there was nothing but lights going downriver while the band played Oh! Susanna.

  We laughed. Then we laughed again, and I put my arm around her and she let me. Then she came close and kissed me and I kissed back and I knew I loved her and she had to be mine.

  2

  “WHAT DO I DO now?”

  “Your family live here?”

  “My family’s dead.”

  “Where did you figure to go from the boat?”

  “To a hotel.”

  “You can’t do that now. They’ll be looking for you.”

  “What you trembling about?”

  “I got a shack.”

  “Must be cold there, the way you shake.”

  “You could come in there.”

  “With you?”

  “It’s not much, but you’d be hidden.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Roger. Roger Duval.”

  “You from Louisiana?”

  “The name’s French, but I’m from Maryland.”

  “Morina’s my name. Morina Crockett.”

  “You talk like Louisiana.”

  “I was born in Mobile, but I lived in New Orleans.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “My little piece of live bait, with blue eyes and curly gold hair, that I pulled out of the river. Roger, when I get a little bitty shrimp, I like to hold him in my hand, just to feel him wiggle. Suppose I get to wondering how you’d feel wiggling?”

  “Then you’re coming?”

  “I’m a coon up a tree. What else can I do?”

  She moved over to the stern, and leaned back on both hands while I pulled across the river, and kept looking at me, her eyes big and black in the starlight, and just a little bit it seemed they were laughing at me. At the landing I stood up to help her out, but she kept sitting there, and then: “Roger, could I borrow your boat?”

  “...What for?”

  “Something I got to do.”

  “Well, can’t I do it for you?”

  “It’s kind of private.”

  I stood there figuring, and all of a sudden it hit me that if she could handle a boat and pull up the next landing, that would kind of take care of everything she had to worry about, specially as it was on the Yolo side and there would be no Sacramento officers to be looking for her. I must have sounded pretty sulky: “Take it, then. Will you drop me a note where you leave it? So I can come get it? It handles nice and I kind of like it. Roger Duval, care general delivery, Sacramento, Calif.”

  “I bet you wiggle nice.”

  “And watch the oarlocks. They’re loose.”

  “Aren’t you taking my trunk out? ... You’re the cutest thing I ever saw in my life, and I’m not leaving you. But I got a use for this boat.”

  Then I saw, or thought I saw, that it had something to do with the ladies’ promenade, and wanted to tell her I was pretty well fixed in that line back of the shack, but you can’t say a thing like that, so I just stooped down to pick up her trunk. She put her hand over my lips. “Wiggle your mouth.”

  I kissed the inside of her fingers, and then she kissed me all over the face and I stepped out with the trunk. She moved over to the seat and picked up the oars, and as soon as she pushed off from the landing I saw she had handled plenty of boats. I ran up to the shack and got some clothes on at last and lit a fire in the front room and some charcoal in the kitchen. But even before that I went in the bedroom, ripped the blankets off the bed, and made it up again with sheets. I had some, as well as some pillow cases, my aunt had packed when I left. A fellow in a shack, he don’t bother with them, but I was glad I had them, and that they were clean. Then I went on back and began skinning the rabbit I had bought that morning, and cleaning it, and cutting it up for the fire.

  I was peeling the potatoes before it came to me she’d been gone one hell of a time. I went out front and looked, and all you could see was the lights of the water front, and all you could hear was the banjos in the bars, and the splash of somebody diving in the river. It was the dismalest sound you ever heard, first the tinkle of the music with the whooping in between, then every few minutes this splash. I walked up and down, afraid she’d got stuck on a bar, then I went down to the next fellow’s landing, thinking maybe she’d come to the wrong place. But his boat was there and mine wasn’t. Then coming back I started to run, because something was moving on the river. And then sure enough there she was, just coming in to my landing. “Did you think I was never coming?”

  “I was afraid something had happened to you.” “I’ve been doing something crazy.” “Go on up where it’s warm. We’re ready to eat.” “I could eat a whole possum.” She ran up the path, and I paddled the boat out to the stake. I made the stern fast, but when I started for the bow something rolled under my feet. It was a little white knob, with a neck on it and three or four feet of string. I picked it up and saw it was the missing knob from that bedpost, the one that had the screw sticking out that raked my leg. And then it came to me in a flash, what until then hadn’t even entered my mind. She took the pocket-book. It was her diving for it into the river. And this thing was the marker she had to have, when she threw it overboard, that would float up a few feet when that gold sank in the mud, and show where it was if she ever had the chance to go down and get it.

  She was kneeling in front of the fireplace when I came back, the trunk open beside her, combing her hair over her face to dry it. “Guess what I did.”

  “...Fell overboard?”

  “I took me a bath.”

  “Where?”

  “In the river.”

  “I’ve got a tank and sprinkler.”

  “I wish I’d known. But I’m so dirty from traveling that I just felt awful. I knew my little shrimp was all washed up, and I couldn’t come in here unless I was as clean as he was.”

  I was behind her, and she gave my leg a pat, and I was just opening my mouth to say she wasn’t coming in here or anywhere until she handed over that money and we figured a way to send it back. But just then she lifted her head and began combing in the opposite
direction, and a big swatch of her hair hit me in the face, soft and warm and heavy, then went slipping down over my hands to the floor, and a clutch came in my throat so nothing would come out of it. “Did you say we’re going to eat?”

  “...Yes, I’ll get busy.”

  I had taken the rabbit off the fire when I went out looking for her, but I had left the potatoes half on, and they were boiling now, so I put the rabbit back, and set a pot of beans up there to heat, and she came out to keep me company, braiding her hair in one thick snaky coil that she kept throwing around my head like a lasso while I was digging into the beans with a spoon to keep them from burning. “Got a skillet?”

  “There’s one under the coffee pot.”

  “I’ll cook those beans.”

  She took up the beans with the spoon, patted them into little cakes, and fried out a little bacon grease. Then she put in the bean cakes and fried them up brown. By then the rabbit and potatoes were ready, and I got to say those beans were pretty good. Come to find out, she didn’t learn that trick in New Orleans at all, but in Caracas, where she lived the last couple of years before she came west. “What did you do there?”

  “Oh, this and that.”

  “What you doing here, Morina?”

  “Oh, these and those.”

  “Of course, it’s not really my business.”

  “I’m doing you, that’s my business.”

  She was leaning close, over the little kitchen table I had back there, biting at a leg of rabbit with her big white teeth, and getting her cheek a little greasy down near the chin, and I thought of a way to get back to the money again, by saying “the business you got before any other business is to let me send back that money or do it yourself.” But instead I said: “There’s a jug of wine in that bin there, but all we got to drink it out of is tin cups.”

  “Oh you’ve got something else, haven’t you?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “How much you want to bet?”

  “... A night’s bed and board.”

  “Bring on the wine.”

  I got out the jug, a gallon jug with a big cork in it. She threw it over one shoulder, pulled the cork out with her teeth, then rocked it a couple of times to listen how much was in it. It was about half full. Then all of a sudden she fell on one knee and give it a jerk, and the wine poured in her mouth like a hose was doing it. Her throat throbbed like a canary bird’s does, and the wine gurgled down it for three or four seconds. Then she snapped the jug up again, swallowed three or four times, gasped, and said: “Did I spill any?”

  “Not a drop.”

  “Don’t I win?”

  “I owe you a night’s bed and board.”

  We went in and sat by the fire. “Does my shrimp smoke?”

  “Not out here. The tobacco’s bad.”

  “Wait.”

  She got out a little green package of black cigarrillos, she called them, gave me one and took one herself. “You smoke?”

  “Course I smoke.”

  “That’s new to me.”

  “Maybe a lot of things are new to you.”

  She blew smoke in my eyes. I puffed my cigarrillo but I didn’t inhale it, because it was thick, white, sweet smoke I was afraid would make me sick. Mixed with the wine it just made me lazy. She kept blowing smoke in my mouth, looping her hair around my neck, and looking at me through the smoke. I put my arm around her, pulled her to me, and pushed my mouth up against hers. Then we were stretched out on the bearskin, the fire just a red glow all over the room, our faces hot, looking into each other’s eyes. I knew then I wasn’t going to say anything about the money that night, and that I wasn’t ever going to do it.

  Next morning I woke up wondering if any of it was true, but I looked over and her black braid of hair was looped all over the pillow, and the blankets went up and down with her breathing, though she was so slim you could hardly see anybody was there. I didn’t make any move, but pretty soon a hand slid over and touched my hand, and I put my arms around her and we lay there a long time with the sleepy smell all around us. “I say what let’s do today.”

  “What we going to do, live bait?”

  “Go on a picnic.”

  “Fried chicken picnic?”

  “Fried chicken picnic and catch fish.”

  “That sounds all right.”

  After we fried up some eggs and ate them for breakfast I got in the boat and crossed over to the water front and got a chicken and some more eggs and other stuff. Then I cut off the chicken’s head and we picked him and fried him and boiled up the eggs and peeled them and packed all that and some bread and butter and fruit in a basket, and started out. I put some fishing lines in and a couple of miles down I threw out the anchor and we baited up with some worms I had dug the week before and put down our lines. It was one of those days you get once in six months. Everything was biting, from cats to perch, and we must have pulled in two dozen fish before we decided it was time to quit. It’s bare country down there, with mud flats all around, and no woods or anything, but here and there is a green grove of willow trees right down to the water’s edge. We shoved in there and went ashore, and there was an old hulk of a sailboat not far off, that had some short timbers in her I could prize off with the anchor prong, and in a few minutes we had a fire going and were broiling fish and getting out our other stuff, but saving our chicken for tonight. Then we lay on the bank and talked about the war. I hinted around I was for the South, to see how she felt, and of course she was for the South too, and I told her a little of what I was doing and she thought it was wonderful. “We going to have a separate country out here with Sacramento the capital and a whole passel of admirals and generals and ambassadors and ministers sashaying all around and horses and carriages and soldiers?”

  “You got it all figured out.”

  “I been in a capital.”

  “Caracas?”

  “Well?”

  “For admirals you got to have a navy.”

  “In San Francisco Bay, isn’t there enough room?”

  “You’re way ahead of me.”

  “And you, I bet you’ll be President.”

  “Oh no, not me.”

  “You’re the prettiest, why not?”

  “You’re the prettiest. What’ll you be?”

  “... Don’t you know?”

  “Mrs. President.”

  But that didn’t seem to go down at all, and she kept asking me didn’t I know what she’d be, and seemed surprised I didn’t know, and upset. She kept staring out at the sun, where it was sinking into the river, but when I mentioned we ought to take a swim, she brightened up, and we took off our clothes and went in. It was too cold to stay very long, but we paddled around and splashed water on each other, and her breasts drew up tight so she was so slim you could hardly believe it. Then we dressed and decided to eat supper back home. All the while we were in the grove, the boats had been clunking up and down, and the fishing sloops, and just as we got our basket packed, here came a steam launch going upriver and I hailed her and offered the Chinaman at the tiller a buck to tow us up to town and he caught my painter and we sat back and took it easy. It was pretty out there with the lights shining over the water and the launch engine panting and the Chink’s face showing red every time he opened his firebox and threw in a few chunks off his woodpile. A new moon was up there, but when I said let’s make a wish she began acting funny again and curled up against my shoulder without saying anything.

  Next day she was restless and didn’t seem much interested when I said something about another picnic. We rowed upriver to the mud bar where my placer was, and she watched while I rocked out a spoonful of color, but then we rowed back and just sat around. After lunch she came back to where I was pumping up water into the shower tank and said she wanted to go out that night. “All right, if that’s how you feel about it. But I warn you right now it’s not the smartest thing you can do. They’re looking for you, and those officers, they circulate. Soon as they win five do
llars on a wheel, and lap up a couple of drinks on the house, they’re off to the next place, and if we’re circulating too, it’s a hundred to one you’ll be seen.”

  “Only one of them knows me.”

  “That deputy you vexed so? Isn’t he enough?”

  “I have a veil I can wear.”

  “You can’t veil the shape, and unfortunately you uncovered so much of it for the captain that it’s probably impressed on everybody’s mind.”

  “Well, listen at him.”

  “That’s something I don’t forget in a hurry.”

  “The shape’s on your mind too, then?”

  “Looks a little that way.”

  “Then act like it.”

  She put her arms around me and I carried her inside, and after I acted like it a couple of times we lay there and she kept curling my hair around her finger and I said: “There’s only one way it’ll be safe for you to go over to Sacramento tonight and strut those places.”

  “What way is that?”

  “If you’re not wanted any more.”

  “I am wanted, though.”

  “Not if there’s been some mistake.”

  She sat up on one elbow and looked at me a long time, her eyes with a shiny, fixed look to them like the eyes in a Chinese doll. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, you can never tell how things happen. If it was just a piece of foolishness, like you say it was, why maybe she’s found her pocketbook by now. Or the one that took it has maybe got ashamed of themself and sent it back. You never can tell about a thing like that. You could go over there. Row over and go down to the Wells, Fargo office and take one of their messengers and send him over to the Sheriff’s office with a little note or whatever you want to send—and find out.”