Past All Dishonor (2 page)

Then I caught the deck, and then we were on the rail. After I got my breath back, I began to notice what she looked like. She was around medium height, but seemed taller because she was so slim. She had on a black silk dress with white dots, but with no hoops in it, and you could see what a soft willowy shape she had. She had a pale skin, black hair, and thick red lips. She was plenty good-looking. “Well say, that was pretty nice of you. Thanks.”

“That all the sense you’ve got? Fooling around a place that any couter would know enough to keep away from?”

“I craved me a dive.”

“You got one all right. You know what’s good for you you’ll go back where you come from and quit getting yourself in a mess somebody else has to pull you out of.”

“I still crave me a dive.”

“Then you still got no sense.”

I went up to the passenger deck, then on up to the texas deck, and straightened up for my dive. But then my head began pounding and that water looked an awful way down. Then I fell against the texas, and then I was down on the passenger deck again, holding on to the rail to keep from falling into the river. On the other side of the boat they were rolling freight, and she was down there on the freight deck, at the foot of the stairs. It crossed my mind, what was she doing there, when all other passengers had gone ashore? Then she happened to look up, and came racing up to where I was. She put her arm around me, took me in the main saloon, and from there into a stateroom, and sat me down. But my teeth started to chatter, and I thought if I didn’t get warm I’d die. She got a towel and rubbed me off dry. Then a blanket was around me and she was helping me to the bed. Then I was under the covers and that was all I knew for a while.

When I woke up it was dark and a lot of talk was going on outside the door. Pretty soon I began to listen, and it seemed to be between the boat captain, a deputy, and some woman that claimed she was robbed. “It was just an ordinary black pocketbook with a strap across the back for my fingers, but it contained all my worldly goods, twenty-six double eagle pieces, four dollars in silver, two cents in copper, my wedding certificate, and a lock of my boy’s hair that went in the army.”

“Where did you miss this here pocketbook?”

“At Rio Vista.”

“Not after they pulled out from Rio Vista?”

“Mr. Deputy, can’t I read? We were tied up at Rio Vista wharf with the sign looking me right in the face. I was watching the people come aboard, and my heart almost stopped when I realized I didn’t have my pocketbook. By the look on this girl’s face I knew she took it, and right away I went to the captain.”

“But it was Rio Vista?”

“How many times have I got to tell you?”

“Then it’s a Solano County case.”

“It’s—what?”

“It has to be handled by Solano County, not Sacramento County. I take her to Rio Vista, you go with me, I turn her over to the Solano County officers, and they hold her for the grand jury. The grand jury hears you, returns an indictment if the evidence warrants it, and the ease is tried.”

“They hear
me?
”

“You’re the one that lost the pocketbook.”

“When do you take me back?”

“Now. Tonight.”

“Why can’t she be searched now and I get my pocketbook back and that’s all I want anyhow without me having to go clear on back to Rio Vista?”

“Did you explain her that, captain?”

“I’ve explained it till I’m tired. Madame, they got laws in this country and nobody gets searched on my boat till they’re under arrest and I see the papers. This company is not taking chances on a case that rests on the look somebody has got on their face. Did you ever see the look on your face?”

“I say she took it.”

“Then charge her.”

She didn’t answer, and the captain said: “Madame, will you kindly make up your mind one way or the other, so I can get out of here like I was supposed to do three hours ago? We’ve been all afternoon fooling around with you, looking up officers and neglecting everything else, and I ask you, for God’s sake, will you kindly hatch a chicken or get the hell off the nest?”

“You stop talking to me like that.”

“Then say something.”

“If I charge her do they search?”

“And haul you back.”

“I charge her.”

It was up to me to get out, because a nearly naked man in her bed wasn’t doing her any good. I opened the door on a crack and looked, but they were all over the saloon, not only the girl, the captain, the deputy, and the woman, but twenty or thirty passengers with drinks in their hands listening. I closed the door and went to the window. Nobody was out there, but it was so small I wondered if I would get stuck, like a pig under a gate. But it was my only chance, so I stuck my head out, got an arm through, and commenced to squirm. I’m six feet three, but I thought I had grown to eight yards from the skin I left on that sill and the rip I gave one leg, where it swung against a raw screw that was sticking out of one of the bedposts where the knob was missing. Finally I was out, and I wasn’t one second too soon, because when my rump hit the deck a light showed, and when I raised up to peep they were in there.

They went through her trunk and the pillows on the bed and the mattress and bedclothes, and then the deputy said: “Very well, young woman, I’ll leave you here with the maid, and deputize her to search your person.”

Then the men went out, and the maid stepped over to search. She was a big blonde girl that looked like a Swede. And the woman that lost the pocket-book stepped over to watch, her lips pulled in and her chin pushed out, and the breath whistling through her nose. But then my heart gave a bump. Because the way those black eyes were narrowed down to two little slits, and the way those thick red lips were twisted up, I knew there wasn’t going to be any searching, not by this pair. The maid knew it too, because she backed off and began to chatter something about her not being responsible in any way, she was just deputized by the officer. And the woman knew it too, when that smack hit one side of her face like a pistol shot, and the curls were jerked off the other side so hard the hat and wig came with them, and she standing there screaming, as bald as a coot. When the deputy came in with the captain and some men, he backed off from those hard eyes too. “And maybe you think you can search me?”

“Miss, I’m not required to use force, and I’ve no intention of doing it. I’m required to warn you, however, that whatever you say and do can be used against you, and if you refuse to submit to search, that fact will no doubt be most interesting to a jury. Beyond denying you the freedom of the boat, which I had intended to give you, and locking you in this stateroom, I won’t go into the matter any further.”

“You mean you can’t.”

“Have it any way you like, miss.”

“But
he
can.”

She walked over to the captain, switching her hips. “Because he’s pretty. And because I can’t have things used against me. Because I’se pretty too, and can’t have myself put in any jail.” She raised her hands above her head and looked up at him. It was the first I had seen her smile, and I hated it she was smiling at him, not me, and letting him feel all over her breasts and hips and legs, and even lifting her dresses so he could search her better. Outside, the passengers were laughing and yelling dirty stuff, and every word a stab into my heart, that had been beating so hard before because I was proud of her. At last it was done, and they were all gone, except that the captain looked her in the eye on his way out, and said he’d drop by if he had time, and she said please do. I thought I ought to say good-bye to her, and thank her for saving my life, but couldn’t make myself do it. I slunk down the stairs to the freight deck, and went over the side the way I came aboard, and swum across to the shack.

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.

“W
HAT 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.