Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

“Remy?”

Remy looked up. He closed his book and stood. “Hello, California.”

“I thought I should return this.” She held up his hat.

“I was just missing that very hat.” He lowered himself onto the swing. Patted the space beside him. “Come sit.”

The steps creaked as Charley climbed them. The whole world seemed to be waiting.

In the yellow light, the wrinkles around Remy’s eyes were more pronounced. His eyes were darker brown than she’d noticed before and there was still that calm in his presence, like the few seconds between one breath and the next.

Charley ran her finger over the hat’s brim. “Thanks for what you did.”

“You’re welcome.”

“It took me awhile to figure out. Broussard. Your best friend Jimmy’s oldest daughter.”

“The three little ones you met yesterday are his. Ashleigh’s real daddy is white, but her mama divorced him when she was a baby. Jimmy’s raised her since she was two years old. It was just a matter of asking.”

“I can never repay you.”

“You just did.”

Charley looked down at Remy’s hands. “What are you reading?”

Remy put the book in her lap. It was about Southern gardens. “I try to plant flowers that would have grown around here when this house was built,” Remy said. “Out there at the base of all the trees — you can’t see them now, of course, since it’s dark — but a whole bunch of oxblood lilies are just coming up. Because of the hurricane and all.”

“Of course,” Charley said, because why wouldn’t something as fragile as a lily come up after a storm? “I love what you’ve done here.”

“I found this land on my twenty-fifth birthday and cleared it myself. Took me almost a year.” He looked embarrassed. “A buddy of mine told me about this old house. It was abandoned, way out in the middle of a cane field, and the mill was about to tear it down. We dragged it over in pieces. It was built in the 1830s.”

Charley shook her head in wonder.

“Would you like to see?”

“Now?”

“Why not?” Remy stood and offered his hand.

Charley closed the book and tucked it under her arm. Then Remy led her into the dimly lit central hall, where an antique clock ticked softly. He escorted her from room to room, drawing her attention to the framed landscape in the dining room, to a mahogany chifforobe from a New Orleans estate sale, to notches in the kitchen door frame where the previous owner stuck his cane knife after long days in the fields. With every step, Charley felt the outside world fall away.

“No television?”

Remy smiled. “Just a radio and a computer.”

Charley laughed. “Micah would hate it here.”

“But I just bought an iPod for my music,” Remy said. “Tell the truth, I don’t know how I lived so long without it.”

“Well, maybe there’s hope for you.”

In the front hallway again, Charley marveled at the sepia portraits. The floorboards creaked as she walked.

“I love the sound of you walking on those old cypress boards,” Remy said.

Charley tried to remember the last time she’d heard footsteps on old wood, any wood. “I didn’t know wood sounded like anything.”

“Oh sure,” Remy said. “Every wood sounds different. It’s like people; every type has a personality. But cypress sounds the best. When I built this place, I used the oldest boards I could find. Spaced them so they’d have room to talk.”

Charley shifted her weight and the boards creaked. “What are they saying now?”

“They’re saying—” Remy cocked his head. “They’re saying, ‘Don’t blow it this time, Newell. Keep your mouth shut and maybe she’ll give you a second chance.’”

“I bet she will,” Charley said.

Remy crossed the hall. When he was standing right in front of her, Charley shifted her weight again. “What about now?”

He looked at her intently. “They’re suggesting that I ask you if you’d like to see the second floor.”

• • •

By the glow of a lamp, in a bed made a hundred years earlier, Charley ran her finger along the book’s spine. “A book about gardens. Who’d have thought?”

Remy eased the book out of her hands. “That’s enough.” He turned it facedown on the floor. “I’ve read that book a hundred times. That’s not what I’m interested in now.”

“I bet you know those chapters by heart,” Charley said.

Remy smiled. “I probably do.”

“Well?”

Remy paused. He studied Charley’s face to see if she was kidding, then he ran his finger along her shoulder. “‘In the garden this season should be the climax of bloom. Rich in a beauty of its own.’” He kissed her neck. Then he stared at her.

Charley waited for him to say something about her dark skin, something predictable and disappointing. But he didn’t. He just leaned closer.

“‘After the intense heat diminishes, flowers revive.’” He unbuttoned her blouse. “‘The grass is green again.’” He kissed her collarbone. “‘Colors are deeper.’” He tongued her ear. “‘We should make more of this season than we do.’” He kissed her mouth.

“Lovely,” Charley whispered. Along the roads these last few days, she had seen crimsons and golds and coppers flare up like bursts of flame. How many names were there for red? Carmine, scarlet, rose? How long must one practice peeling back the petals of an oxblood lily? Charley put her hand on Remy’s chest, where she felt the strong and steady thunk of his heart beating.

Remy ran his hand over her breasts. All around Saint Josephine Parish, the cane was finally standing tall, the stalks wavering in the faint breeze, the leaves glistening in the sun. He unzipped her pants, eased them off her. His hands roamed over her shoulders, her legs.

Charley closed her eyes. The blue-green ocean of cane, the fields of eager stalks pushing through the dark earth, offering themselves up for harvest. How much patience and tenderness was required to loosen the roots?

Remy slid his hand across her belly, traced the satiny stretch marks beneath her navel, and for a second, Charley’s body seized, fearful that he would be repulsed.

But he was not. “Gorgeous.” He leaned closer still, put his mouth on her pelvic bone.

“Remy,” Charley said, but, overcome, couldn’t say any more. Because who wouldn’t be besotted with the quick color that flared up as suddenly as a flame? Who wouldn’t be enchanted by the rivers of cane flowing across the dark, damp ground? Who could possibly resist the subtle stirrings of new growth or the glorious climax of fall?

The mid-morning glare had turned the sky the color of weak tea, and Charley was late for mass. She was supposed to meet Denton and Alison for the Blessing of the Crops, half an hour ago, but Micah cornered her in the bathroom, blocked the door, and demanded to know where she’d spent the night.

“And don’t tell me you were at Violet’s, because I called.”

“I was at the farm,” Charley lied, taking extra time to floss so she wouldn’t have to talk.

“Hollywood came by looking for you after the dance,” Micah said. “I told him you were on a date.”

• • •

Built in the mid-1800s, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows was the fourth-oldest church in Louisiana, and the largest building in Saint Josephine except for City Hall. It rose up from the center of the town square like a gigantic salt lick; although for a Catholic church, its design was decidedly understated: just a modest, two-story structure with a clock tower like stacked shoe boxes, the whole building covered with a layer of creamy-smooth plaster like fondant on a wedding cake. Still, if one was Cajun and had a little money under one’s mattress, Our Lady was the church to belong to; the church where the daughters of all the rich cane farmers got married.