Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

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.