Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

“Violet!”

“What?”

“What kind of woman do you think I am?”

“Girl, you’ve got to loosen up. This isn’t the 1850s. Women ask men out on dates all the time. It doesn’t even have to be a date. You could meet him for lunch or a cup of coffee.”

“Since when did you start working as a matchmaker?” Charley asked.

“Since when did you become such a stick in the mud?”

On Thursday morning, Miss Honey asked Ralph Angel to put gas in her car. “I have a prayer meeting tonight and I won’t have time to stop,” she said, handing him forty dollars. And since he had nothing better to do, Ralph Angel obliged. Rather than drive straight home after filling up (thirty in the tank, ten in his pocket), though, Ralph Angel drove in the opposite direction, followed the Old Spanish Trail all the way out to where he believed the turnoff led to Charley’s farm. He didn’t set out to do it. He just wanted to take a drive, get out of the house for a while, which he’d been reluctant to do in his own car since the trooper pulled him over. But out on the open road, curiosity tugged at him, the need to see with his own eyes what he’d been missing, what he’d been cut out of, like a cupped hand nudging him forward. He didn’t know exactly what to look for, and had guessed, by piecing together little bits of conversation he’d overheard, where Charley’s farm might be. He was about to give up when he spotted her car.

Ralph Angel parked. Far enough down the road that Charley wouldn’t notice Miss Honey’s old blue sedan if she happened to look up, but close enough that he could watch as she and two men in overalls stood talking, a large sheet of paper the size of a road map held between them. Ralph Angel watched as Charley studied the paper, then pointed across the road to the wall of sugarcane; watched, a few minutes later, as a biplane dropped out of the sky and swooped low over the fields, gray mist streaming out from beneath its wings; and twenty minutes after that, he rolled down the window to let a little air in and watched, with a growing sense of indignation, as the black man, probably Denton, worked a raggedy tractor, while Charley and the other man— who could that be? — schlepped back and forth between the yard and the shop, loading boxes into the back of a pickup. Ralph Angel watched and thought, Fuck her . Fuck Charley and her talk of needing time to figure out how best to bring him in, she couldn’t afford him, there wasn’t enough work for another man. It certainly looked like she had enough work. Ralph Angel peeled off his sweat jacket, leaned back. He didn’t know how, but he’d show her he was good for something — he was practically an engineer, after all — and when he figured out a plan, his sister would realize what she had missed out on and come begging. Ralph Angel watched for a long time. And when Charley and the two men finally disappeared inside the corrugated metal building, he went back down the road the way he came.

On his way back to Miss Honey’s, Ralph Angel drove through Jeanerette, past LeBlanc’s bakery, where the red light signaling that fresh French bread was ready for sale glowed like a flare. He turned down the short gravel driveway that ran alongside the brick building. Folks used to say that Jeanerette had everything you could want, you never needed to leave town, and thinking back, Ralph Angel supposed that was true. As a boy, when he came to Jeanerette with Miss Honey, he bought candy from the two Sicilian sisters who owned Machioni’s Fruit Stand. Vee’s five-and-dime sold everything from school supplies to china to aquarium fish, and at Gomez’s Army Surplus, clerks scaled tall wooden ladders to reach merchandise stacked to the ceiling. There’d been three movie theaters once, though he could remember the name of only one; the National Mercantile Company, where, when he visited, his dad always took him to buy blue jeans; Grisiaffi’s Grocery, a little mom-and-pop operation where you could buy a slushy for thirty cents; Rose Culotta’s liquor store across the street; and down on the corner, the Fitch Family Hotel and Restaurant, where you picked up to-go orders at the side window. All that was in the past, though. These days, Jeanerette was closer to a ghost town than a boom town, the bakery practically the only business still open on Main Street.

Ralph Angel slammed his car door, and even before he reached the entrance, the sweet aroma of French bread wafted out to greet him. Just inside, a man in baggy shorts and a faded gray T-shirt stood at the cash register.

“Morning,” the man said.

“How you doing?” Ralph Angel said, “How much is a loaf?” and saw that from his face to his sneakers, the man was covered in a fine dusting of flour.

“Three dollars,” the man said and sniffed. “Ginger cakes are a dollar fifty.”

Ralph Angel pulled out his wallet. There was nothing better than a loaf of LeBlanc’s French bread hot out of the oven, maybe with a little butter, though you didn’t need it. “Give me two loaves,” Ralph Angel said. He’d buy one to eat in the car, all by himself, and one to take home. Blue would like that.

The man disappeared through the swinging doors, and when he emerged, he held two plump golden loaves, which he laid on the long wood counter. He wrapped each loaf in a sheet of crisp white paper, swaddling it like a baby.

“Plastic or no plastic?” the man said.

Ralph Angel looked at him, confused, then remembered that each loaf came with a plastic storage bag to keep it fresh if you weren’t going to eat it right away. “One with plastic,” Ralph Angel said. “And give me one of those ginger cakes.”

The man tucked the loaves and a ginger cake into a paper bag. Ralph Angel held out the ten left over from Miss Honey’s gas money, waited for his change.

But as the man put the bills in his hand, he frowned. “Don’t I know you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You from around here? ’Cause I swear your face is familiar.”

“Grew up in Saint Josephine,” Ralph Angel said. “Went to Ascension High School, then my grandmother had me transferred to General Taylor.”

“That’s it!” The man snapped his fingers. “I went to General Taylor too. Man, I knew I knew you. Name’s Ralph Angel, right? Man, it’s me, Johnny. Johnny Fontenot.”

Ralph Angel looked more closely at the man, tried to think back. The name registered vaguely; he’d gone to school with a whole bunch of Fontenots, but he couldn’t place the man’s face, especially not with all that flour on it. But the man was looking at him with such naked delight that Ralph Angel said, “Oh yeah, of course I remember you, man. What’s up?”

They shook hands and Johnny Fontenot slapped Ralph Angel’s arm playfully. “Man, it’s been what — twenty-five, twenty-six years?” As he spoke, his Cajun accent thickened. “You ain’t changed one lick. I’d know you anywhere. Where you livin’ now?”

“Been out west,” Ralph Angel said. “California first, then Arizona. Phoenix.”

“California, man, that’s a loooong way from here, I’m telling you. You like it out there?”

“Yeah. It’s nice.”

“I got out there once. Too big. It was pretty, though.” Johnny ran his hand over his dusted hair and wiped it, absentmindedly, on his shorts. “So, you back home for good or just visitin’?”

“Haven’t decided.” Ralph Angel thought about Charley out there at her farm, how she’d stood with those two men, all three of them looking so satisfied as the plane flew over. “What about you? How’ve you been? How long you been working here?”

Johnny shrugged. “Since I got out of college. It’ll be twenty-three years next week.”