Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

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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.