Queen Sugar: A Novel (13 page)

Ralph Angel picked at the foam sticking up from the couch cushions, then poked his finger in the hole, making it wider. “Why are you riding me so hard, ’Da? I told you I had to take care of some business.”

“I’m just saying,” Miss Honey said, unfazed by his tone. “It’s your own fault you missed the reunion.”

“Jesus. I can’t drop everything because you pick up the phone.”

“Well, good night,” Charley said. She took Micah’s arm.

“That does it for me, too,” Ralph Angel said. “Think we’ll turn in.” He hoisted a yawning Blue onto his shoulder.

“Ralph Angel,” Miss Honey said. “Y’all are sleeping in the back. Hollywood’s coming Friday to finish cleaning it out. Till then, y’all can sleep on the floor in here.”

“The
back
? But what about my room up front?”

“I gave it to Charley and them.”

“But that’s
my
room.” Ralph Angel sounded almost panicked.

“And seeing how she got here first, I told her she could have it. You and Blue can sleep in the back. It won’t kill you. It’s a big room and it’s private.”

“But ’Da—”

“If you got here when I called, it’d be yours to claim. But you didn’t. The front room belongs to Charley unless she agrees to trade.”

Ralph Angel offered Charley a conciliatory smile. “How about it?”

It would be a hassle for her to pack everything and haul it to the back room, Charley thought, but she could do it. Thirty minutes, an hour max, and she could give Ralph Angel his room. Charley looked at her brother, standing there with Blue slumped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She hadn’t wanted to listen to Violet when she said it wouldn’t work out, or believe Violet’s story about Miss Honey finding Ralph Angel’s drugs. Because, and Charley realized it only now, standing there in Miss Honey’s tight den with that annoying Shirley Temple singing her heart out, she’d sort of hoped she and Ralph Angel could be friends; sort of wished, secretly, ever since Miss Honey first mentioned his name, that he might protect her the way big brothers were supposed to. Because the truth was, without Ernest or Davis, or her mother, Charley was terrified. The farm, Micah, her future—the stakes felt so high. There were days, driving home from the shop, when she felt so alone she thought she might split down the middle. Oh, how she’d wanted to give Ralph Angel the benefit of the doubt! But after the way he treated Hollywood? Teased him like some schoolyard bully, even if it
was
just to impress her? She couldn’t help but think twice. She’d reserve judgment for now; hold out hope. But in the meantime, she’d stay in the front room. Because you couldn’t just roll over for someone like that, haunted or not, or he’d start thinking his behavior was acceptable. And just like Marvin Gaye, eventually, he’d spoil it for everyone.

“Actually,” Charley said. “We just got settled.”

“That’s it, then,” Miss Honey said, like a game-show host.

Charley tapped Micah’s shoulder harder. “Let’s go,” and peeled her off the recliner. She was just over the threshold when Ralph Angel called after her.

“Hey.”

Charley turned.

“Go ahead. It’s all yours.” Ralph Angel winked. “But just so you know, you owe me one, sis. I’ll have to figure out some way you can repay me.”

When Charley arrived at her farm on Monday morning, Denton was sipping from a thermos and leaning against his pickup, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a pen tucked behind his ear, an Ag bulletin poking out of his back pocket. The sight of him made the day seem suddenly brighter, and Charley kneed her door open, stepped out into the buzz of a thousand unseen insects and sultry morning air. “Good morning.”

Denton set his thermos on the dashboard and shook her hand. You could tell a lot about a person from their handshake, that’s what her father always said, and Charley could tell from Denton’s solid grip that he was the real deal—a man of integrity and honor, steady and forthright—he would not let her down, and for the first time since Frasier quit, Charley thought she might actually have a shot, not just at making the farm work; she would make Micah proud.

“So, where do we begin?” Charley said.

“Let’s have a look.” Denton headed toward the shop, but not before he whistled and his two dogs, the same ones Charley recognized from his yard, came bounding out of the fields, the larger one flinging slobber in his excitement. Now the picture was complete, Charley thought; it wouldn’t be a farm without dogs.

Charley slid the metal door back and felt along the wall for the light switch. She still breathed through her mouth for the first few minutes after she entered, but Denton didn’t seem to notice anything. In fact, he inhaled deeply, as though he were inhaling the homey aroma of fresh-baked bread. He bent to inspect an air compressor Charley could actually identify because there was one just like it, but smaller, at the gas station near her old house. Denton had barely touched the hose when the nozzle came off in his hand.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Charley said. “I told you it was bad.”

Denton wiped grease off the air compressor with an old rag. “I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen better.” He moved from one piece of equipment to the next, calling out each machine’s manufacturer, model, and function—all for Charley’s sake—followed by the list of parts he’d need to repair it, while Charley recorded everything on a yellow legal pad. The Baileigh drill press under a veil of cobwebs needed a timing belt, and they’d have to order a new output contactor for the MIG welder. They might as well pick up another workbench, Denton said, and a set of wrenches; and that bin of odd pipes under the window might come in handy. Denton moved methodically about the shop like a chef in his restaurant kitchen. He arranged tools by size. He tested the drill press for vibration and runout, uncrimped and rewound the spool of feeder wire for the welder.

“What’ll it cost to get everything working?” Charley asked. “Just ballpark?”

“Too soon to tell.” Denton had his doubts about the tractor out front; it had been awhile since he’d seen parts for a JD 6400, and he needed to take a closer look at her fields, but when he pried the lid off a metal drum and saw that it was still full, he nodded. “Least we’ve got enough NH Four to get started. Saved four hundred dollars right there.”

By noon, they had taken inventory, and Charley’s list of parts and materials was three pages long. But before they drove into town, they climbed into Charley’s car and headed off down the narrow road that led to the back quadrant, Denton riding shotgun, his dogs in the backseat, panting and thrusting their heads through the windows.

Occasionally, as they rolled down the headland, a rabbit darted across their path, or swallows, like kamikaze pilots, swooped in front of them, while a hot breeze kicked up from the south, romancing the young cane on either side of the road. Theirs turned out to be a comfortable silence, the only sound the crunch and ping of gravel under the tires. And riding along, Charley fought the urge to say again how grateful she was—partly because she kept thinking about Miss Honey’s warning:
Don’t come apart like a ball of twine
, and partly because Denton’s manner was so calm, so steady, she felt more at ease than she had in months, but also because if she’d kept going like she was going, a few more weeks and she’d have been back in Los Angeles, back in her mother’s travertine castle, listening to Lorna say,
I told you so
.

And as far as Charley could tell, Denton seemed equally at ease. He pointed out different varieties of cane as they rumbled past the fields: Louisiana 90 with its aqua-colored leaves and creamy stalks; Home Purple, which started off pale as green tea but turned to Bordeaux in the sunlight; and Denton’s favorite, Ribbon Cane, with deep-red-and- bright-green-striped barrels that reminded Charley of an all-day sucker. Each time he called out another variety, 310 or 321, Charley repeated it, hoping that saying the names out loud would help her remember, wondering if she should confess that it all looked like the same leafy green stalks to her.

“For instance,” Denton said, “you got a lot of three eighty-four out there.”

“Three eighty-four,” Charley said. “Is that bad?”

Denton nodded. “It’s what most farmers’ve been planting since ’93. But you ought to think about mixing it up some. Maybe plant some five forty or one twenty-eight. It’s only been out two years, but it’s good. More sugar in it than three eighty-four, and you won’t get as much rust.”

“Rust. Hold on.” Charley asked Denton to hand her the yellow pad.

“What for?”

“I need to write that down.”

“All you need to do is listen,” Denton said, tossing the pad on the dashboard. “This ain’t something you take notes on, Miss Bordelon. You got to live it.”

And so, as they reached the second quadrant, Denton told Charley to pull over. When she did, Denton got out, knelt down at the field’s edge, and palmed a handful of dirt. “This is what I was talking about at lunch last Friday. This here’s good, loamy soil. You can tell by how it holds together.” He pinched a bit of soil between his fingers then put it in his mouth. “Not too much clay,” he said, “but not too sandy. Now you.”

Charley knelt. She pinched a fingerful of dirt and raised it to her mouth, but then she hesitated, thinking of all the creatures that had probably crawled or slithered over that spot.

“Go on, Miss Bordelon. It ain’t gonna kill you. All that scribbling won’t do you any good if you don’t let this get inside you. It’s the only way you’re going to learn.”

Charley guessed this was what Denton meant when he warned that she’d have to do it his way. She looked at him again, expecting his face to have darkened with impatience, but he only gave her an encouraging nod. Charley put the dirt in her mouth and swallowed quickly.

“Well?” Denton said. “What did it tell you?”

“Nothing,” Charley said. “I didn’t taste anything. I don’t know what to look for.”

“Do it over. Take your time.”

Charley raised the dirt to her mouth again. She sniffed: wood smoke, grass, damp like a sidewalk after it rained. She tasted: grit, fine as ground glass, chocolate, and what? Maybe ash? She closed her eyes as soil dissolved over her tongue, and slowly, slowly, almost like a good wine, the soil began to tell its story. She tasted the muck, and the peat, and the years of composted leaves, the branches and vines that had been recently plowed under, and the faint sweetness the cane left behind. She swallowed: a moldy aftertaste she knew would stay on her tongue for the rest of the afternoon. And though she didn’t yet know the terms to describe what she had experienced, she understood a little more clearly what Denton was trying to teach her. When she looked over at Denton again, he nodded approvingly, then, without another word, brushed dirt from his knees and walked back to the car.

•   •   •

Back at the shop, Charley had just discovered another envelope of invoices Frasier apparently hadn’t bothered to pay, when Denton knocked on her office door. He held her yellow pad. “Here’s what I’ve come up with.”

Charley wheeled around from the desk she’d only partially cleared, gesturing for him to take a seat on the tattered sofa.

“Besides the replacement parts for the machinery,” Denton said, “we’ve got to buy more mother stalk.”

“Mother stalk?”

“That’s the cane you plant at the beginning,” Denton said. “You start by cutting a long piece of cane and laying it on its side in the ground. Every piece of cane has knots on it a few inches apart, sort of like eyes on a potato, and out of those knots, a new cane plant will shoot up. That first shoot, when it grows up tall like you see around here, is called your plant crop. That’s what you harvest during grinding. The next year when that cane sends up another shoot, that’s called first-year stubble. Next year after that, the shoot that comes up is second-year stubble, the next year is third-year, and by the fourth year, that original stalk you planted is pretty much worn out, so you dig it up and start again. You usually get four crops from every mother stalk.”

“So mother stalk is like sourdough starter,” Charley said. “I think I get it.”

“Sort of, I guess,” Denton said, looking puzzled. “You got a lot of third-year stubble out there that’ll need to be replaced. We also need to dig those drains I showed you and fill those ruts in the front quadrant. It’ll cost us, but we can probably find some local labor if we ask around.”

“Local labor?”

Denton looked at Charley over the top of his bifocals. “Black folks.” He flipped the page. “Now, I think I can save the John Deere out front, but you’re gonna need a combine, a chisel plow, and at least two three-row choppers.” He did some final figuring. “We’re looking at one fifty-six.”

“Excuse me?”

“One hundred fifty-six thousand. Give or take.”

Give or take what?
Charley wanted to say.
My kid?
My life?
My soul?
She felt her knees buckle even though she was sitting down.

“One fifty-fix should do it,” Denton mused, tapping the pad with his pen. “That’ll get us to October. Once grinding starts, we’ll need at least four cane wagons, that’s another twelve, but I saw one out in the yard, so we’ll worry about that later.”

Charley leaned forward, put her head between her legs. And now the ball of twine had not only hit the floor, it was coming apart fast, with little bits of fiber poking out everywhere. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Miss Bordelon?”

“Mr. Denton, I don’t have one hundred fifty-six thousand dollars.”

“How much do you have?”

Between her savings and what was left of the operating fund she had ninety-one thousand dollars—a lot of money if you owned a bakery or a bicycle repair shop, but a pittance, Charley realized now, if you were trying to run an eight-hundred-acre sugarcane farm. “Ninety-one.”

“Ninety-one?”

“Ninety-one,” Charley said again, but it may as well have been ninety-one thousand gum balls.

Denton stared at her a moment longer, then pushed his hat back on his forehead and squeezed his brows together. “What about a line of credit?”

Charley shook her head, no.

“What about cash reserves?”

“These
are
my reserves.”

“Ninety-one thousand,” Denton said, like she’d just handed him a stack of Monopoly money. “I told you this was no game.”

Charley could practically hear Denton cursing himself for coming out of retirement, kicking himself for buying in. She was on the verge of apologizing, but stopped herself, sensing that if she uttered another word, a single syllable, she’d tip the scales and Denton would walk.

“You can hardly find a decent used combine for ninety-one thousand,” Denton said. He sighed the heaviest sigh Charley had ever heard, and set the yellow pad on the floor.

On the other side of the window, a dragonfly bobbed along the glass.

“I understand if you don’t want to work with me,” Charley said. She pulled a crumpled Ag bulletin off the stack, folded the first page over, and stared at the columns of print, not reading any of it, because it was easier, less agonizing than watching the disappointment register across Denton’s face.

Denton slid forward on the threadbare couch. He rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang. He didn’t say anything for a very long time. “Well,” he said, finally, looking up, the skin around his eyes seeming to sag. “Put your thinking cap on, Miss Bordelon, and roll up your sleeves, because we’re about to get real creative.”

•   •   •

By five thirty, the air was heavy with the promise of rain, and every muscle in Charley’s back ached as she slid the shop door closed. She had spent the afternoon cleaning out boxes of yellowed files, scraping crud from the windows, hauling hoses, and lifting crates of old parts. She’d swept the floors and dragged impossibly heavy barrels of solvent out into the yard. Oil blackened the knees of her jeans. Her shirt was streaked with soot. It would take the rest of the week to clean up everything, Charley decided, and she might as well burn her clothes.

“I’ll stop by the dealer tomorrow to see if they can order that distributor cap,” Denton said, standing aside as she looped the chain through the handle, secured the lock.

Charley nodded. She was more grateful than she could say that Denton had decided to stick with her, that he hadn’t bailed out when he’d had the chance. She was even happy they’d accomplished so much on their first day. It felt good to be productive, to push herself to the point of exhaustion. But privately, Charley nursed the growing suspicion that it was all for naught because no matter how hard they worked, how much they schemed, she didn’t have the money Denton said they needed.
I’ll stop by the dealer tomorrow
, Denton had said. Two weeks ago, she would have considered the word
tomorrow
to be the loveliest she could utter, filled with possibility, and opportunity, and promise. But as far as she could tell, tomorrow only meant she’d had another chance to disappoint him.