Queen Sugar: A Novel (36 page)

“Easy there, killer,” Denton said, raising his hands. “Calm down.”

“I am calm. But I can’t fire his ass without my grandmother throwing me out.”

“I broke up a couple of fights while you were gone. I was going to suggest you talk to him, but maybe I should be the one.”

If only getting rid of her brother were as easy as handing him off to Denton. “That’s all right. I’ll handle it.”

•   •   •

To Charley’s relief, Romero and his men were hard at work across the field, pulling cane from a freshly loaded wagon. Charley scanned the field for Ralph Angel and saw him camped out in a small patch of weeds and low shrubs. His sweat jacket was off, draped between the branches to form a crude shelter.

“What’s the problem?” Charley stood over him, her shadow canted out to one side.

Ralph Angel squinted up at her. “Where do I start?”

“I need you to do your job, Ralph Angel. That’s all I ask.”

“Job? Don’t you mean slave labor?”

“I’m on a deadline here.”

“You pay them twice as much as me.” Ralph Angel broke a cane stalk in half, then turned his gaze out toward the fields. Romero’s men were approaching the end of a nearby row. He cupped his hands and yelled, “Speak English!
Comprende?
”

Thank God the tractor was so loud his voice didn’t carry. “I pay for experience,” Charley said. “You’ve got two hours of it counting the fights you started. They’ve got years.”

“Yeah, but I’m an—”

“Engineering major. I know.”

Ralph Angel looked at up Charley and she was surprised to see a wounded expression soften his face. He glanced down at his hands and stared. “Come on, sis. It might not seem like it, but I’m trying. This isn’t easy for me, you know? I’m not young like those other guys. I’m struggling just to keep up.” He cleared his throat. “If I can’t do this—” Then he looked away, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I’m dying out there.”

Charley felt an ache of guilt deep in her chest as she looked down at her brother, who seemed older than she’d ever noticed before. Another place, another time, she could afford to handle the situation differently. But when she looked across the field, she saw that the tractor had made the turn and was starting down a new row. The clock was ticking. The cane would not wait. She turned back to Ralph Angel. “I’m sorry. And I hear you. But right now, the only thing that counts is how fast you plant.”

Ralph Angel leaned back stiffly. “Well, listen to you, Miss ACLU, Miss Equal Opportunity.”

“Are you going to work or are you going home? You call it, Ralph Angel.”

Ralph Angel glared at Charley, and she thought he’d say he was quitting. Instead he rose and crammed his arms through his jacket sleeves, hobbled off toward Romero’s crew.

But Charley took Ralph Angel off the planting crew just to be safe. She radioed Alison—a bad idea, she knew, but she couldn’t think of anywhere else to put him—and pulled Denton’s truck up to Alison’s combine in the middle of the field. Unlike the combine Charley drove, Alison operated an old-fashioned soldier harvester, which looked like a garbage can on rollers. No metal scrolls or vacuum chutes to suck, cut up, and spit out neat billets. Instead, the soldier harvester moved through the field like a pair of cutting shears, clipping stalks at ground level and laying them side by side across the row.

Charley handed Ralph Angel a cane knife. “All you have to do is follow behind the harvester and cut the cane he misses.” Scrapping cane was the most menial, most mind-numbing of all jobs; it required no skill. In the old days, it was the job reserved for women and children.

“Jesus, Charley. A man has his pride.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ralph Angel said darkly, and slammed the truck door.

But pairing Alison and Ralph Angel was like throwing water on a grease fire. In less than an hour, Charley’s walkie-talkie crackled again.

“What the hell were you
thinking
?” Alison’s voice was a lightning strike, and by the time Charley made it to the front where she’d dropped off Ralph Angel, Alison had called her twice more.

“Sorry, Miss Bordelon, but I can’t work like this,” Alison said, stomping over freshly cut cane. “He’s impossible. I told him to swing the cane knife closer to the ground, but he won’t listen.”

“Me?”
said Ralph Angel. “All I was trying to say was that maybe if you adjusted the blade, you’d cut more cane to begin with.”

“All right, that’s enough!” Charley yelled. “Ralph Angel, you’re out of line.” They started up again and she stepped between them. “Hey!” she shouted. “Cut it out. Alison, please, go to lunch.” She dragged Ralph Angel away from the combine. “Are you
trying
to cause trouble? Is that your plan?”

“It wasn’t me,” Ralph Angel said. “That guy’s a whack job.”

“Because I’m warning you. This is strike four by my count.”

“It wasn’t my—”

Charley raised her hand. “After lunch, you’re going back to the office. You’ll sweep the floors or shovel dog shit for all I care. I swear to God, Ralph Angel, this is your last chance.”

•   •   •

Six thirty p.m. now, and night crept forward along the sky’s hem. A mother-of-pearl crescent moon hovered above the tree line, and out on the road, the steady flicker of headlights confirmed tractors were still hauling cane to the mills. In her combine, Charley touched the knots on her necklace.
Thank you, Lord.
She had survived the first day of grinding.

Ralph Angel had, miraculously, swept the floor and stacked Denton’s tools along the ledge when Charley returned to the shop. He looked up when she entered, seeming to search her face for approval.

“The others are on their way back,” Charley said, tossing her gloves down. “You should clock out. Denton and I need to go over tomorrow’s schedule, then we’ll head home.”

Ralph Angel nodded, but was quiet otherwise, and Charley figured maybe the time alone had done him some good.

From out in the yard came the sound of truck tires rolling to a stop and, over its idling engine, the faint echo of zydeco music. A man’s voice, then Ralph Angel’s saying, “Straight through that door.” Charley poked her head out of her office. That weathered face; those eyes that looked at her as though she were the only woman in town. “Remy.” She would never get tired of saying it.

“Hey there, California.” Remy took off his baseball cap then leaned forward to kiss her. He ran his hand down her arm, lightly squeezing her biceps, and said, “Those pretty arms,” then took her hand. He smelled of motor oil and grass and sweat, and underneath, citrus. “Thought I’d swing by, see how you did today.”

“A few setbacks,” Charley said, “but overall, good. And even better now.”

Remy was about to kiss her again, but over his shoulder Charley saw Ralph Angel hovering just inside the shop door. The thought of him witnessing so private a moment made her pull away. She motioned, reluctantly, for Ralph Angel to come over. She introduced him to Remy. “This is my brother.”

“Hey, man. How you doing?” Remy said, warmly, extending his hand.

Ralph Angel responded with a halfhearted shake. He looked Remy over, openly sizing him up. “So, how do you know my sister?”

“We met at an auction,” Charley said. “Remy’s a farmer.”

“Oh yeah? No kidding. How many acres?” Ralph Angel said.

“Twenty-two hundred, give or take,” Remy said. “Mostly over in Saint Abbey.”

“Twenty-two hundred. I’m impressed.”

“Plenty of farmers a lot bigger than me.” Remy smiled and gave a modest shrug. “So, you’re Charley’s brother.” He sounded relieved to be asking the questions now. “You driving a combine or something?”

Ralph Angel slid his hands in his pockets. “Actually, my sister’s got me scrapping cane.”

Remy laughed. “Get out of here.”

“Why would I joke?” Ralph Angel said.

Charley winced. His tone had darkened, reminding her of the way he sounded the day John brought the plywood for the windows.

Remy looked from Ralph Angel, who stood by with a sour but satisfied look on his face, to Charley, and Charley was tempted to offer an explanation. She hated that Remy was looking at her with a confused expression, as though he were wondering who she was, really, way deep down; wondering if she might be some kind of monster to make her brother do such lowly work.

“Mr. Denton should be pulling up any minute,” Charley said. “We can wait out front.”

“That’s okay,” Remy said. The confused expression vanished. “You’re the one I came to see. I thought maybe we’d have a drink to celebrate. A quick one, since we both need to be up early.”

Nine o’clock at Paul’s Café. Just one drink. Charley would drop Ralph Angel off at home first.

In the car, Charley was about to turn on the radio when Ralph Angel reached for the book she’d wedged between the seats. This time, he practically tore the pages as he turned them. “This belongs to that guy you introduced me to back there?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Ralph Angel closed the book. “Sort of sleeping with the enemy, don’t you think?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, fucking a white guy. A Southern white guy at that.”

“It’s none of your business.” Charley’s heart was racing.

“I mean, there must be at least
one
black man down here who’s good enough for you. There must be a doctor or a lawyer in one of these towns who meets your high standards.”

“You’ll be plugging drains tomorrow,” Charley said.

“Just tell me this: what makes Mr. Twenty-two hundred acres so special?”

“There’s a five-acre stretch over in Micah’s Corner that had some water on it. Mr. Denton will show you what to do. Don’t forget your gloves.”

“I mean, what makes you think he sees anything in you but a piece of black ass? That’s the way they do it down here, you know? They always have a little dish of chocolate on the side.”

Charley’s whole body went rigid. “You should plan on driving yourself from now on.”

“You humiliated me out there today. I have my pride.”

“We don’t have time for pride. You brought this on yourself.”

“Making me walk behind that cracker’s harvester was bad enough, but then to make me pick up dog shit around the shop?”

“It was the only job left. If you don’t like it, talk to Miss Honey since she forced me to hire you.”

“And then to be fucking a
white
boy? I wonder what Micah will say when she finds out what white men in Louisiana have done to black women for centuries. Hell, why limit it to Louisiana? All over the South. I mean, what kind of role model are you?”

It was as though Ralph Angel had dipped a long stick into the dark pit of her private concerns and stirred up all the muck. And now, all the questions Charley had asked herself about how she and Remy could ever possibly work given the South’s complicated history; given her worries about what people would say—white people but also black people—considering both sides’ sensitivities and prejudices; what her own father would say given all he’d suffered—all of those anxieties rose to the top. This wasn’t the 1950s. She was free to love whomever she wanted. Still, Charley felt as though she was breaking some cardinal rule. She knew Ralph Angel understood her fears, the obligation and the burden she felt. She knew her brother was hurting, that he was desperate, and would likely apologize later, but she hated Ralph Angel for saying what he said just to get back at her. Charley pulled the car over to the shoulder. “Get out.”

“You could have put me in the office from the start. Let me file papers or something.”

“I said get out.”

Ralph Angel stared at Charley for a long moment, then opened his door. “Tell ’Da I missed my ride.”

“Tell her yourself.”

Ralph Angel stepped back from the car, but he didn’t close the door. “See you at work tomorrow, sis.”

“I don’t think so,” Charley said, leaning over to pull the door closed. “You’re fired.”

In the back room, Ralph Angel stared through the darkness, his body aching after the day’s labor and the long walk home, his mind cycling through memories of all that had happened—Ernest, Miss Honey, Johnny at the bakery, the German, Charley—and the more he thought, the more his stomach churned with the fresh waves of bright, cold fury. It might take a while to find what he needed. The punks he met in Tee Coteau, the ones he bought from after that mess with the German, were better than nothing, but they were small-time operators. He might have to leave town to find guys who could hook him up for real, sell him what he needed to stop the darkness he felt within him from spreading. He slid out of bed.

“Pop?” Blue raised his head and reached for Ralph Angel’s arm.

“Go back to sleep.” Ralph Angel dragged the clock radio to the edge of the nightstand. Midnight. He turned it toward Blue. “Don’t move from this bed till you hear the man on the radio say it’s seven o’clock. I mean it.”

’Da’s purse was on top of the refrigerator. Ralph Angel took it down, then cleared a place on the table, his heart bucking as he pulled at the tarnished zipper. Inside: old tubes of lipstick, a packet of tissues, an envelope stuffed with store coupons. Everything smelled like her, the sweet, powdery fragrance he’d known since he was a boy. He twisted the clasp on her pink wallet and it yawned open, but there were only two crumpled bills and a handful of coins.

“Think,” Ralph Angel said to himself and paced the floor. Next door, Miss Marti’s rooster crowed. In a few hours, steel-blue and orange light would bleed through the kitchen window to fill the shallow sink and spill over the lip of the counter.

The Kerns jar was shoved all the way to the back of the cabinet. Ralph Angel untwisted the rubber band, straightened the stack of small bills, and counted them with a bank teller’s speed. One hundred sixty-five dollars. He closed the lid and slid the empty jar back into its place before jamming the roll in his pocket. One hundred sixty-five dollars wasn’t much but it was good for a seven-day run.

On the way out, Ralph Angel paused. Charley’s door was open but the light was off. Holding his breath, he moved closer and saw, through the doorway, Micah asleep on the air mattress. Charley’s bed was empty.

In her room, he swept his hand across the dresser, feeling for any coins or bills Charley had left behind, until his fingers grazed the cool base, the square feet. Ralph Angel paused, considered his next move, then eased
The Cane Cutter
toward him, mindful of its weight. Charley shouldn’t have embarrassed him the way she had. She always had it so easy. Everything given to her while he’d struggled for the crumbs.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall
—the passage came to mind before he could stop it.

On the air mattress, Micah mumbled in her sleep. Ralph Angel froze. He waited. And when all was still again, he slid
The Cane Cutter
off the dresser and backed out of the room.

Beyond the porch, the street was alive with shadows. On the porch, the Bible passage came to him.
Grace in the eyes of the Lord
. Ralph Angel paused. Some people believed they were worthy of God’s grace and some people didn’t. Then he stepped into the darkness, stepped back across the line.