Queen Sugar: A Novel (10 page)

“Dad? You okay?” He was on his second round of chemo by then. Leiomyosarcoma.
Leios
from the Greek word for “smooth.”
Sarx
, Greek for “flesh.” Cancer of the soft connective tissue: bone, cartilage, muscle.

When she sat, he patted her hand and she saw that the treatment had turned his nail beds the color of walnut shells. But she was not going to talk about his nails. She was not going to ask him if he’d slept; he hated that.

“I love the way he stands,” she said, tilting her head. Because it was easier to look at
The Cane Cutter
with his broad back and tapered waist and biceps all intact than it was to acknowledge how the muscles in her father’s arms and legs had withered away; he’d lost so much weight, the hollows beneath his collarbones were cups of shadow. Because it was easier to appreciate how the track lights brought out the warm tones in the bronze—the rich rusts and golds—than to admit her father’s complexion had turned the color of bile.

“What else?” her father had asked.

She’d reached for the words. “A quiet confidence.” He seemed to approve. She went on. “And a defiance.”

“Yes,” her father said, nodding. “Exactly.”

Now Charley stepped over the butcher paper and bubble wrap heaped on the floor. She slid
The Cane Cutter
onto the dresser, where she could always see it.

Micah popped a row of bubble wrap. “Did it cost a lot of money?”

“Sort of.” No sense in telling Micah how much.

“Gross,” Micah said, making a face. “It looks like a mud monster. Put it back in the closet.”

Pop, pop.
Like a cap gun.

“He’s staying right here.”

Micah draped her dirty T-shirt over
The Cane Cutter
’s shoulders, pulled it up over his face, went back to her bubble wrap.

“Don’t touch,” Charley said, pulling the T-shirt off. She needed to see him. “I’m not kidding.”
And stop that fucking popping.

Four months in the hospital and a year of physical therapy before the doctors said Micah would recover. Charley still put on the blue robe at night. It was her fault Micah wore only long sleeves to school, even when the weather called for flimsy summer clothes. It was her fault Micah didn’t want to swim anymore or go to the beach. Charley cried in the dark, until one day, she came home to the little Spanish bungalow to find
The Cane Cutter
on
her
mantle. No sign of her father anywhere, not even a note. But she didn’t need one. The message was clear. He was telling her,
Get up
. He was telling her,
Fight for your life
. He was telling her,
We are the same, you’ll find your way, I won’t let you fall
. She carried the blue robe out to the patio, dropped it on the poured concrete, and doused it with lighter fluid. Then she lit a match.

•   •   •

Micah dropped the bubble wrap and stepped over the air mattress. At the door, she paused. “Mom? This morning you said we were gonna lose every goddamned—”

“Hey,” Charley said. “listen to me.” She took Micah by the shoulders. “Don’t worry.”

“But you said—”

Charley stole a glance at
The Cane Cutter.
Years from now, long after her body had turned to dust, the elegantly sculpted chunk of wire and molded metal would still be here; it would pass from Micah to Micah’s children. The sculpture made her aware of what she had to do. That farm would get going again, no matter what stood in its path. For her daughter, for her father. Charley smoothed Micah’s hair. “Forget what I said,” she said. “Your job is to have fun. Let me worry about the rest.”

A buckled sandwich board advertised the Blue Bowl’s daily specials: seafood salad, Cajun pasta, shrimp étouffée on top of fried catfish on top of French toast, white-chocolate bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and homemade caramel sauce for dessert. Charley crossed the bridge that spanned the bayou and crunched into the gravel lot filled with monster pickups, pulled alongside a Chevy one-ton with a cracked windshield.

All week, Charley had been consumed with finding a manager. On Monday, she placed an ad in the
Louisiana Sugar Bulletin
offering a three-thousand-dollar signing bonus. On Tuesday, she posted flyers at the market and plastered them on every telephone pole in town. On Wednesday, she spent so many hours at the Ag station that Gladys, the receptionist, knew how much cream she took in her coffee and had a cup waiting at the front desk when she came back on Thursday.

“Try the Blue Bowl,” Miss Honey had said when Charley said she’d run out of ideas for places to find a manager.

Friday now, and Charley brushed past artificial flowers woven into the lattice by the entrance as she entered, and tried to imagine coming here every morning for coffee. Maybe she would. The place had a certain charm if you didn’t mind the late-seventies Country Kitchen décor: yellow curtains with white eyelet fringe that looked hand sewn, framed pictures of farmers in their fields dating all the way back to the twenties, miniature model tractors that cluttered the shelf running around the room’s perimeter.

“Table for one, please,” Charley said, and followed the hostess past the salad bar. In the main dining room, groups of white men, some dressed in khakis and starched button-downs, others in overalls and work boots, crowded around tables. To a man their posture—meaty arms folded over barrel chests, legs apart like they were sitting around a campfire—conveyed an easy comfort. And whether they sipped mugs of coffee or stabbed at plates of pork chops and rice, they all looked like they belonged there. This was the college football crowd, Charley thought, LSU, Alabama, and Ole Miss; tailgates in the stadium parking lot six hours before kickoff. Except for the three waitresses flitting from table to table, Charley was the only woman. Except for the cooks, whose faces she saw through the cutout in the swinging door, she was the only black person.

“I can put you by the window,” the hostess offered, then launched into the maze of tables and chairs.

Charley tried not to bump against any chairs as she followed. Still, men glanced up, eyed her curiously as she passed. What made her think she could waltz in here and take up with this crowd like one of the gang?

From her seat by the window, she had a clear view—the bayou’s far bank, dark with trees and lily pads, and beyond it, a wall of green cane leaves drinking up the afternoon light. Above, a turquoise sky.

Charley eavesdropped on a group of farmers at a nearby table. She caught words, snatches of phrases, something about a new strain of cane the Ag Department had just released, then talk of mill pricing. But it was a foreign language. The men’s conversations only raised new questions.
Which
mills? What
were
the newest cane varieties? The longer Charley listened, the louder she heard Lorna’s voice, then Denton’s, then Landry’s, telling her she was out of her league.

Charley couldn’t imagine eating, but she ordered anyway, and ten minutes later she confronted a platter the size of a manhole cover heaping with barbecued shrimp just off the grill, shells a deep, rosy pink, doused with lemon and chili powder.

“Mind if I join you?” Prosper Denton ran the brim of his straw cowboy hat through his fingers.

“Mr. Denton.” Charley pushed her chair away from the table and tried to stand. “No—I don’t mind. Please, have a seat.”

“Don’t get up.” Denton laid his hat on the windowsill.

They sat across from each other for a full minute, neither, it seemed, knowing quite how to begin.

“I didn’t expect to ever see you again,” Charley said, thinking she sounded more defiant than she intended.

“I see you ordered the shrimp.”

Charley pushed the untouched plate across the table and told Denton to help himself. He held up his hand.

“I’m trying to watch my cholesterol. Doctor put me on a strict diet.” In his thick accent, cholesterol sounded like cholester
oil
. When the waitress appeared, Denton ordered a green salad, oil and vinegar on the side, and a cup of seafood gumbo.

“So,” Charley began. “How’s retirement?”

“I stopped by Miss Honey’s looking for you.” Denton’s house was far out in the country, way on the other side of Saint Josephine. A drive to the Quarters easily took forty minutes. “She said try your farm, so I drove out there. I was on my way home when I decided to stop for lunch. Surprised when I saw you sitting here by yourself.”

Denton ran his tongue over his lips in what was not quite a smile, but Charley couldn’t help but think he was amused by the situation. “Yeah, well,” she said, thinking how ridiculous she must look sitting there. More like a tourist who’d lost her way than a farmer.

Denton plucked a package of saltines from the basket and opened it slowly. “A man can only do so much fishing,” he said, more to himself than to her. He broke a cracker in half, brushed crumbs off the table. “I was in the cane business sixty years, and I can tell you, every man in this dining room has seen his share of troubles.” He popped the cracker in his mouth and chewed slowly. “But I’ve seen the way these white fellas look out for each other, and it’s no accident they are where they are.”

Charley remembered the hard, dusty floorboards beneath her bare knees that morning she prayed. She remembered exploding at Micah and Miss Honey
: Every day I get this much closer to losing the whole goddamned thing.

Denton swallowed. He tossed the wadded wrapper in the basket. “Then here you come. Smart young woman with enough land to actually do something.”

The waitress appeared with Denton’s salad and gumbo. “Here you go, sugar. And this is from Agnes.” She set down a plate of smoked boudin.

“Please tell her I said thank you.”

So courtly, Charley thought, as Denton bowed his head over his food, and so decent.

When he looked up, it was to offer her a link of boudin. “Like I was saying, Miss Bordelon, I thought you were crazy the day you showed up at my door, but something about your situation appealed to me.”

Charley was like a puppy in dog obedience school. She saw the treat in her trainer’s pocket and could barely sit still for all the anticipation, but her gaze never wavered. She watched Denton slip a piece of boudin in his mouth, watched him wipe his fingers on his napkin, watched him spear a chunk of iceberg lettuce and dip the corner of it into the little ramekin of dressing. She held her breath and waited. The boudin must have been delicious, because he took another piece.

Charley couldn’t stand it any longer. “Mr. Denton, are you saying you’ll work with me?”

“That’s the wrong question.” Denton chewed the boudin and swallowed, casing and all. “Question is, can you work with me? If you want this, Miss Bordelon, you got to trust my judgment all the way. Some folks find that hard to do. There’ll be things that won’t make sense to you. There’ll be times you think I should do the exact opposite.”

“I can live with that.”

“You think that now,” Denton said, “but can you really? Because I want to be up front, put it all on the table. I’ve found it’s better that way.”

“I like up front. Up front is good.” Charley thrust her hand toward him, knowing it was the only contract the man needed.

Denton reached across the table to shake, then leaned back in his chair, smiling the first smile Charley had seen since she met him. But it didn’t last long. “Now, I drove around your place a bit.” He took a pen from his breast pocket and sketched a rough square on an extra napkin. “You’ve got a pretty good spread. Good, loamy soil, decent drainage. But you got a lot of work to do. You got cane out there that’s been suckering since early May; that’s not good. You got a pretty good stand of first- and second-year stubble—looks like Frasier planted some three ten and a little three forty-five—but that back quadrant is in pretty bad shape. Blackjack land. That three eighty-four you got out there tends to lodge. Most of it’s third-year stubble so it’ll be coming out soon anyway. Good thing is, all that land you own, you can use some of it for shadow plow.”

“Shadow
what
?” Charley was drowning again.

Denton held up a silencing hand. “We’ll worry about that come August. Right now, we need to lay new mother stalk, and long as it doesn’t get boggy, you might be okay.” He looked ruefully at his clean boudin plate. “Four months between now and grinding, Miss Bordelon. That’s not much time. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

All of a sudden, Charley was starving. She peeled a shrimp, and then one more. “Trust me. I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Denton watched her, then picked up his salad fork again. “Good. ’Cause you’re in for a whole mess of it. Like my daddy used to say: ‘If hard work had killed me, I’d have been dead.’”

Charley peeled the aluminum foil from the five-gallon pot where the gumbo had been simmering for hours. Chunks of chicken and coins of sausage, lumps of crab and shrimp floated in brown broth thick as a witch’s brew. She took a bowl from the cabinet.

“Better not let Mother catch you digging in her pots,” Violet said, breezing into the kitchen. Juggling three grocery bags in one arm, her purse and a large ceramic bowl in the other, Violet was all motion and sound—the slap of her strapless sandals as she crossed the linoleum floor, the rattle of her keys, the gospel hymn she hummed to herself.

“I can’t help it,” Charley said.

Violet set her load on the table. “Mother’s got a sixth sense about food. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Consider yourself officially off the hook.” Charley hadn’t seen Violet or even phoned all week, and she was about to apologize when Micah sauntered into the kitchen wearing a green sundress and metallic flats.

“Well, look at you,” Violet said, taking Micah by the shoulders. “All dressed up like a country bride. Here, let your aunt Violet help you.” She unknotted the bow at the back of Micah’s dress and retied it, propping and smoothing, as though arranging a bouquet, while Charley stood by, not minding that Violet was undoing the bow she’d tied herself just a few minutes ago.

At the counter, Micah and Violet peeled eggs for potato salad, while at the table, Charley had arranged carrot and cucumber slices, delicate florets of raw broccoli and cauliflower on a platter, and was making the garlic hummus for dipping when Miss Honey walked into the kitchen wearing a new dress the color of blood oranges and the snappy wedge sandals with T-straps Charley bought for her at Walmart.

“Let me just say, you’re burning a river today, girl,” Violet said, warmly. “You look good.”

Miss Honey gave a little businesslike nod, but Charley could see, from the way her eyes shone, that Miss Honey was pleased with the way the outfit had turned out. She strolled over to Charley’s work station. “Why are you cutting up vegetables?”

“I’m making crudités,” Charley said.

“Crude-a-what?”

“It means raw vegetables, Mother,” Violet said. “It’s healthy.”

“Try some.” Charley smeared hummus on a piece of broccoli and offered it to Miss Honey who just stared.

“Vegetables are supposed to be cooked,” Miss Honey said, backing away. “When you need a burner, you can push the gumbo back.” She drifted over to Violet. “Are you adding enough mayonnaise to that potato salad? Because you know I can’t stand potato salad when it’s dry.”

Violet looked at Charley and rolled her eyes. “Here we go.” She gouged out a heaping spoonful of Blue Plate mayonnaise and flicked it into the bowl. “Is
this
enough mayonnaise for you, Mother, or would you like me to add more?”

“And why aren’t you using the cut-glass bowl? You know that’s what I always use. Where’d this other one come from?”

Violet sighed heavily, then said, in a syrupy tone, “Is that what you’d
like
, Mother? Would you like me to use the other bowl? Charley—”

Charley held up her hands. “I’m out of it.” One week ago, observing the storms that raged between them, she’d been unnerved. Now she understood it was just the way they expressed their love. They would never change. “You two want to kill each other before this reunion even gets started, it’s fine by me.” She set her knife down and went outside.

In the front yard, folding chairs circled tables covered with red-and-white-checkered cloths like an East Village pizzeria. Charlie pulled one out and sat down; looked across the street where Miss Goldie’s German shepherd paced back and forth in its big chain-link cage as Miss Goldie and her husband came out of their house. They waved to Charley as they slid into their car and backed into the street. Charley waved back, watched them pull away, and was thinking how nice it would be to have one day, just
one
day, when she wasn’t worried about her farm, when she could just go for a drive, when, from somewhere down the street, she heard the screech and howl of gospel preaching. A Ford Bronco came to a skidding halt behind her Volvo. The engine stopped, the radio went silent, and the passenger door swung open.

“Hey there, niece!”

Uncle Brother—the graveled voice, the round belly he seemed to carry proudly, like something cultivated on the finest Creole cooking—who else could it be? He trekked across the grass, then pulled Charley into his bear of an embrace. “You’re looking good.” In that cowboy hat, those cardboard-creased jeans and black alligator boots, he could be a regular on a country music TV dance show.

“You, too.” Charley kissed his cheek, struck by how much he looked like her father.

“It’s about time,” Violet scolded, sounding like Miss Honey as she marched down the porch steps. “Give me those.” She held the gate open with her hip as Uncle Brother hauled covered dishes and aluminum serving trays from the backseat. He handed them to a young man who came around from the driver’s side. “Hey there, John,” Violet said as he bent to kiss her. “How you doing, sweetheart? Take those salads in the house and put them on ice.”

“I’m Charley.” Charley shifted a tray to extend a free hand.

“For heaven’s sake,” Violet said. “I’ve got too much on my mind. John, this is your cousin. I’m trying to think if you were even born the last time she was down here.”

“Hey, cuz.” John towered over her. He smiled warmly. His grip was firm and he held Charley’s hand a beat longer than she expected. His close-shaven hair, his thick neck and broad shoulders, his solid chest muscles pressing against his ironed polo shirt suggested a military tour.

“John’s a guard over at Huntsville,” Violet said, proudly. “No, let me say it right—a ‘correctional officer.’”

“Guard’ll do fine,” John said, beaming, and smoothed an already-smooth shirt.

“I know you just got here”—Uncle Brother put his arms around Charley’s shoulder and leaned in close—“but when things get too slow for you in this little fish pond, make Violet bring you across the border. Texas. Now, that’s the big time.”

Violet snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, John. Charley has a little girl, Micah. She’s running around here somewhere; a regular little woman. I was thinking you ought to take Micah fishing.”

“If it’s not any trouble,” Charley added. “If you’re not too busy. She’s never fished.”

“No problem, cousin. I go all the time. I’ll take her out to Cousin Bozo’s fish camp.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea.” Violet turned to Charley. “It’s real nice. Right on the bayou. Big old cypress trees, Spanish moss hanging down; like something out of the movies.”

“A fish camp.” Charley marveled again at how different life was down here.

“We’ll catch some bass,” John said. “Some bluegill, a little white perch. You fish, cousin? Maybe you’d like to come along.”

The way John said
cousin
, the way he smiled that smile, made Charley think of fireflies flickering at dusk, water bugs skating across the pond, warm nights on a screened porch. She thought of what Prosper Denton had said.
Nothing but you, that fish, and your thoughts.

Uncle Brother clapped his hands then rubbed them together. “So, where is the old girl?
El Capitan?
”

“Inside,” Violet said. “But watch yourself. I don’t know why, but she’s got a chicken to pluck with everybody this morning. She turned her nose up at Charley’s crudités and got on me about some of the mayonnaise I used. John, you’d better get those salads in the house. I know your mama didn’t work as long as she did to have them spoil. Brother, you fire up the grill.”

Charley turned toward the house, but Uncle Brother called her back.

“Hold up. I got a surprise for you, niece.” He opened the Bronco’s back hatch. There was a lot of grunting and swearing, and he had to try three times, but he finally lifted out the enormous turtle, which, to Charley’s immense relief, was already dead. Its head was the size of a football, and you could fit a whole honeydew melon in the gaping mouth. Its tongue was as big as a cow’s and its shell was the diameter of Miss Honey’s coffee table. Its tail, covered in what could easily be vinyl flooring, was as long as a Labrador’s and four times as thick. Uncle Brother leaned backward as he struggled to balance the turtle on his knees. He grinned broadly at Charley and said, “Thought I’d make my special turtle soup in your honor. Welcome home.”

It was eleven o’clock. It was noon. Relatives arrived in steady waves like a river’s rising tide—Great Aunt Rose from Opelousas with her high cheekbones and Charley’s same smile; Uncle Oliver and Aunt Madeline, with the same red tint in their complexions; cousins Screw Neck and Joe Black, Buzzard Gravy and Maraine, who, as a young woman, moved all the way to San Francisco, where she worked as a maid at the Mark Hopkins Hotel and saved enough money to buy the real fur coat that she was wearing in a photograph that showed her waiting on the corner for a trolley. People two-stepped to blues and zydeco humming through Uncle Brother’s rigged sound system. In one corner of the yard, folks slapped dominoes on the rented tables, while in another, men gathered at the barbecue grill as smoke drifted into the woods. And Charley, struck by the wonder of it all, let herself be drawn in. She listened to Uncle Arthur’s story about growing up in a sharecropping family on Old Man Hebert’s farm, of shopping at Hebert’s store, where a nickel bought a bottle of Hadacol or Woodbury After Shave Powder, and a dance wasn’t a dance without a little Rose of Sharon hair tonic to make a fella’s hair look fine. And just before they ate, Charley joined in the moment of silence when the entire family paused to hold hands and say a prayer for Ernest, funeraled and laid to rest way out in California, may his soul rest in peace.
These blessings we say in Jesus’s name. Praise the Lord. Amen.

The afternoon stretched away. People gathered around Charley, between rounds of bid whist and second helpings of potato salad, to tell her how proud they were of her and to ask about the farm. How
had
Ernest made enough money to buy so much land? It felt wonderful, like being tucked in at night, to know people were interested in her story, to hear them express their concern and wish her well.

Charley had just helped Miss Honey rearrange a table loaded with lemon cakes and sugar cookies and popcorn balls made with real molasses, when a man who looked to be in his early forties, wearing a pith helmet and shabby army fatigues, pushed a lawn mower into the yard and parked it along the fence.

“There you are, Hollywood,” Miss Honey said, her face brightening. “Didn’t know if your mama would let you come.”

“Hey there, Miss Honey.
Comment ça va?
” He took off his helmet and clutched it to his chest as he kissed her cheek. “You know I wouldn’t let nothing keep me away.”

“This is my great-grandbaby, Micah, all the way from Los Angeles of California,” Miss Honey said, waving Micah over. “And this is my granddaughter, Charley. The one I was telling you about.”

Hollywood bowed to Micah and kissed her hand. “
Enchanté.
I see Miss Honey gave you the camera. I found it in her back room when I was cleaning.”

His accent—part French, part Southern, and something else too—reminded Charley of NeNee Desonier and her granddaughter. Only, Hollywood’s skin was pale, his eyes blue, his coarse graying hair brushed back in gentle waves. He didn’t
look
black, but she was sure he wasn’t white either. “Nice to meet you.” She extended her hand, ready to shake, but Hollywood saluted her instead. She looked for stripes on his sleeve, bars on his collar, then to Miss Honey for an explanation. But Miss Honey only took out her handkerchief and dabbed her forehead.

They stood awkwardly for a few seconds, then Charley pointed to the fence. “Nice mower.” Someone had soldered banana bicycle handlebars where the regular lawnmower handle should have been.

“Hollywood has a nice business cutting lawns for people in the Quarters,” Miss Honey said.

Hollywood glanced at Charley and blushed deeply. “Just a little something to keep me busy.” He brushed grass clippings off his pants and turned to Miss Honey. “I just finished Miss Ivy’s and came to tell you I’ma run home real quick, clean up, but I’ll be back.” He turned to Charley. “So you’re Ralph Angel’s baby sister.”

Charley’s breath caught. She was accustomed to being referred to as Lorna and Ernest’s daughter, as Micah’s mother, as Davis’s widow. Since she’d been in Saint Josephine, she’d started to think of herself as Miss Honey’s granddaughter. But she still wasn’t accustomed to being called Ralph Angel’s sister.

“Hollywood and Ralph Angel grew up together,” Miss Honey said.

“We been knowing each other more than thirty years,” Hollywood said.

“They were like brothers from the beginning. Ain’t that right?”

Hollywood fingered his helmet and looked off toward the street. “I guess.”

“Lord knows you’ve eaten enough meals at my kitchen table,” Miss Honey said. “Which reminds me. When are you coming over to finish cleaning the back room?”

“Friday afternoon if that’s okay. Right after I cut Miss Maggie’s grass.” Hollywood put on his helmet, preparing to go.