Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

“Close enough. Name’s Remy.” His hand was damp and warm. “Remy Newell.”

“Remy. Right. I’m Charley—”

“Bordelon,” Remy said. His voice had an internal luster, as deep and rich as cherrywood. “I remember.”

Charley waited for Remy to make a crack about the auction: how foolish she’d acted going up against the rainmaker; how silly she looked crying when Denton surprised her with the equipment, but he didn’t. He just stood there. Dripping. She fetched a roll of paper towels from the bathroom. “Thanks again for loaning us your trailer. And for delivering all our new toys.”

Remy dried his face and arms, which were pale under his T-shirt where his farmer’s tan ended, then stooped to wipe the puddle on the floor. “Y’all cleaned up. That tractor you snagged only has eight thousand hours on it.”

To her surprise, Charley could grapple with sugarcane math. Eight hours a day, one thousand days. Grinding season lasted three months, which was roughly one hundred days. If her calculation was correct, the tractor had been running for eight years. Not bad as tractors went.

She gestured toward the papers on the desk. “I couldn’t do any of this without Mr. Denton.”

“I’ve known Mr. D. since I was sixteen,” Remy said, nodding. “I used to work cane every summer. Dug ditches and filled ruts till I worked my way up to driving a combine. Still don’t know why he did it, but Mr. D. always looked out for me. Made sure I didn’t lose a hand in the scrolls. Some of the old-timers don’t want to admit it, but Mr. D.’s one of the smartest men around.” He paused. “If I know half as much about cane when I’m his age, I’ll have done all right.”

“His mind is quick,” Charley said. “I’m blown away by the ideas he comes up with. The other day our partner, Alison, said he was a genius. I think that’s true.”

“And he’s got a good heart.” Remy’s voice went quiet. He looked at Charley as though there was a story he wanted to tell her. “I owe him a lot.”

Outside, the storm had passed. For a few minutes they sat quietly, listening to the rain on the metal roof downshift into the softer syncopation of water dripping off the eaves.

“So—”

Remy snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot. I brought y’all a surprise.” He invited Charley to his truck.

It had been a scorcher of a day with temperatures in the low hundreds, humidity close to 90 percent, but now that it had rained, the temperature had dropped, at least for a bit, and the air was breathable again. Insects resumed their chatter. The ground fizzed audibly where moisture evaporated, and the cane leaves were glossy and dazzling in the late-afternoon sun.

“Buddy of mine caught these earlier,” Remy said, “but it’s way more than I can eat.” He opened the passenger door, and Charley saw that other than a cracked windshield, the cab was neat, with an empty ashtray and a gleaming cup holder. Three large sacks of shrimp sat on the front seat. “One for each of you.”

Charley wished she had something to give Remy in return. “Thank you.” She had seen the Vietnamese and Cambodian fishing boats docked at Dago’s fish market near the Point. “I don’t think I could get shrimp any fresher.”

“I know you city folks think nothing happens in a place like this, but I tell you, it’s a pretty good life.”

Remy heaved the sacks over his shoulder, refusing Charley’s offer to help, insisting the briny water dribbling from the corners would stain in her clothes. Then he lingered, though whether to wait for Denton or to talk to her, she couldn’t tell.

Charley listened for Denton’s truck but heard only the fizz of the ground drying.

“So, you getting the hang of this cane farming?” Remy cleared a place on the couch.

“It took awhile, but I finally learned to keep the tractor in the row,” Charley said. She told him how they were slowly transforming the back quadrant, about the twenty-two-pound possum they trapped last week, and how Alison insisted on carrying a rifle in his tractor so he could shoot rabbits and other wild animals that ran out of the cane. Then suddenly, Charley paused. Remy was just being polite, she thought, making small talk and listening patiently until Denton arrived. “This is way more than you wanted to hear, I’m sure.”

But when she glanced at him over the stack of receipts and catalogs, she saw Remy looking back at her with open, unfiltered interest.

He smiled. “Keep talking. I’m hanging on every word.”

“I’ve talked enough. Tell me about your farm.”

“You don’t want to know about that. It’s nothing special.”

But Charley insisted that she did.

“I lease three fronts,” Remy said. “Colette, over in Saint Abbey, is six hundred and fifty acres, and Emilie, out near the bay, is four hundred. The biggest, Genevieve, out near Four Corners, is almost a thousand, with the rest in bits and pieces sprinkled around the parish. All in all, it’s about twenty-one hundred acres.”

“Twenty-one hundred acres. That’s enormous.”

Remy smiled modestly. “It’s respectable. Just wish I owned it.”

Charley had grown accustomed to Alison, who yelled, and to Denton, who, while her partner, also projected a quiet authority that required a certain respect. But Remy’s manner put her at ease. He talked to her farmer-to-farmer, in a way she found she liked.

“Colette, Emilie, Genevieve,” Charley said. “Sounds like you’re talking about your children.”

“Not mine,” said Remy. “Back in the eighteen hundreds, farmers always named their fields after their daughters.”

And right then, Charley decided to name her biggest parcel Micah’s Corner.

Where did the time go? Six thirty, and the sky was a sultry cobalt with clouds like wisps of orange sherbet. Everything tinted to gold — the shop’s tin roof, the tangle of wildflowers that clung to fence posts, even the dirt.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Charley said as she walked Remy to his truck. “I mean it.” She was thinking that Remy wasn’t quite like anyone else she’d met. Not just his voice (though she could listen to it all night), or that he was thoughtful enough to bring them a whole truckload of shrimp. He had an up-from-the-bootstraps scrappiness she found interesting. And there was something else. Remy seemed to have come up through the land, seemed connected to it in a way other farmers weren’t. Like when he described how the land changed with each phase of the growing season: “In January, there’s just dirt,” he said, “then by April, the new cane sprouts, and by July, you’re surrounded by green fields. Come December, all the cane is cut again and, suddenly, you can see for miles. It’s always changing,” he said, “a new view every four months,” and she wondered who else paid such close attention. “I would rather be out there in my fields than anywhere else,” he said.

Remy started his engine. “Tell Mr. D. I’ll catch him next time.” He squared his baseball cap.

“He’ll be sorry he missed you.” In twenty years, Charley thought, he’d look like all the old farmers who gathered every morning around the back tables at the Blue Bowl, swapping stories and solving the world’s problems. She waved as he pulled away, then stood in the middle of the road. He was probably married with a house full of kids, Charley thought. And besides, she had too much to do on the farm.

• • •

“Well, well,” Violet said, when Charley called her that evening. “The plot thickens.”

“It was only a sack of shrimp,” Charley said. “And he didn’t just bring one for me. Besides, he really came to see Mr. Denton.”

“I bet,” Violet said. “Let me fill you in on a Southern man. There are only three things he’ll sit still for: football, duck hunting, and a woman who’s caught his eye. Remy Newell may have stopped by to see Mr. Denton but he stuck around to talk to you. So, are you going to ask him out?”