Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

“My dad waited years for the farm to come up for sale.” Charley told Denton. “It had to be these acres. When it finally came up, he sold all his properties for the down payment.”

But that’s impossible , she’d told the lawyer. Her father was still living in the Long Beach condo, had lived there ever since he and her mother divorced. Gently, the lawyer explained that her father had rented it back from the new owners.

Charley connected the beads of condensation that had formed on the outside of her glass. She told Denton about Frasier quitting and returning her money. She described her fields. “Until ten months ago, I thought sugar grew on the baking aisle at the supermarket. Right below the chocolate chips and the sprinkles.” As Charley spoke, she searched Denton’s face, waited for him to do something — nod in agreement, shake his head in disgust, sigh with exasperation — but he just sat there, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. “According to Frasier,” Charley said, “all the best managers are taken. He says I’ll have trouble finding help so late in the season.”

Denton sat back. “Frasier’s right. You’re already three months behind. Even if you find someone, they might sell you a lot of promises. Might say all you need to do is get out there with a cultivator, clean up the rows. They’ll spray some Roundup on them weeds, charge you twenty thousand dollars, then disappear.”

“Oh my God,” Charley said, and saw a corresponding flicker on Denton’s face.

“If Frasier ain’t been doing his job, getting ready for grinding is gonna be like licking honey off a blackberry vine.” He rubbed his hand over his bald head. “Back when I was running Simoneaux’s plantation, I’d see LeJeune’s wagons at the mill. His fields were yielding one, maybe two hundred tons an acre. You don’t get that kind of tonnage without working that land right, working it all the time.”

Keep talking, Charley prayed. The more he talked, the more he might care. “Please go on.”

“Frasier ain’t been working your fields, you probably down to twenty, thirty tons. Maybe less. You might be lucky to get five tons an acre. That’s hardly worth your time.” Denton paused. “Shame those LeJeune kids didn’t do better by their daddy’s land.”

“So where do I start? How can I catch up?”

Denton ticked off the tasks. His nails were clean and short, except his pinkie nails, which were half an inch long and filed to points, as though he used them to scoop things or pick locks. “First you got to test your soil, run your drains,” he said. “You needed to start off-barring way back in March, and the time for laying-by has almost passed. If I remember right, LeJeune’s got a lot of three eighty-four out there, which tends to lodge. He might even have some five forty, which is like candy to them borers.”

“Off-barring? Laying-by? Borers?” With every word Denton spoke, Charley felt herself pulled farther out to sea.

“What kind of equipment you got?”

“Frasier said something about a new belt for a tractor,” Charley managed, “but I’m not sure what he meant.”

Denton frowned deeply. “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“He went over the list, but everything sounded the same.” Charley exhaled. “Maybe I can just buy what I need.”

“I don’t know what kind of money you got, Miss, but a new tractor’s a hundred thousand. Combine’ll set you back two fifty.”

“Two fifty what?” Charley could only stare at him. “Two hundred and fifty thousand ?”

“That’s for last year’s model.” Denton scratched the tuft of hair below his lip. “I’m not trying to frighten you, but you’re an easy mark. You’re young, you’re not from around here, you’ve never worked cane, and frankly, you being a woman’s gonna work against you.”

“What difference does my being a woman make?”

“And colored on top of it?” Denton clasped his hands together as if in prayer, and rested his head against them. He was silent for a long moment. “You got to know what you’re getting into here, Miss Bordelon. This ain’t no game.” He pushed away from the table and stood at the counter. “Tell you a quick story. Few years ago, a farm went up for sale. There was a black farmer, Malcom Duplechain, thought he’d put in a bid. He already owned three hundred acres out near Bienville. Real good land. His daddy owned it and maybe his daddy’s daddy before that, but he wanted to grow his operation, wanted to get real big like some of these white farmers you see around. Duplechain and another colored fella decided to go in together. Property went up for sale, Duplechain put in his bid. Now, the bids were supposed to be sealed.” Denton wadded his paper towel and tossed it on the table. “I’ll give you one guess what happened.”

“I don’t know,” Charley said. “They got outbid?”

“Yeah,” Denton said, as if that much was obvious. “But by how much?”

Charley shrugged. “Ten thousand? Fifty thousand?”

Denton shook his head mournfully. “A hundred dollars, Miss Bordelon. Pocket change. Now, how do you think that happened?”

“I get it.”

But Denton shook his head again. “I’m not sure you do. This down here makes inside baseball look like a cakewalk. You can’t come down here thinking the field’s wide open. You gotta know this thing. You got to live it. I’ve been in this business all my life.” He sat down again. “Now, I can’t sit here and say every white farmer’s the same. That’d be like me saying all us black folks was the same. I know some whites that are real decent people.

“One grinding, I had thirty-two rows left to cut when my combine went out on me. Mill was closing up the next day and all that cane would’ve been lost. Know who cut those rows for me? A white farmer. My neighbor, Wilson Lapine. But it’s hard enough when you’re born into this game. What you’re trying to do?” Denton let his head drop and rubbed his temples. “Your cane’s gotta be thirteen notches high come the end of August if you want to be ready for grinding, and from what you’re telling me, I don’t see how that’s gonna happen.”

Charley closed her eyes and struggled to hold herself steady. She breathed deeply, fighting back the tears that burned her eyes and the tightening in her throat. She exhaled, and a weight, as though someone had laid a sack of cement on her breast, settled across her chest. She thought of Miss Honey— Can’t fall apart like a ball of twine —and opened her eyes. “Mr. Denton, I know this is a lot to ask. You’ve already been so generous.” Charley touched her ring, pressed her fingertip against one of the prongs. If she sold it, she could pay Denton whatever he demanded — maybe not forever, but for as long as it took to learn what she needed to know. “I wonder if you’d work with me, for pay, of course. I could use your help.”

She waited.

Denton rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “I’m flattered Miss Honey sent you out here to talk to me, Miss Bordelon. Your grandmother’s no fool. She knows her onions. And I hope some of what I’ve said makes sense.”

“It does,” Charley said. “All of it.”

Denton stared through the kitchen window. “I turned seventy-one back in April. This is the first time in sixty years I haven’t had to get up before dawn to go to work. I got a little garden out there I like to mess around in. And when I’m not doing that, I like to go fishing.” He turned to look at Charley, the expression on his face more open than she’d seen, as if he were searching for something. “You like to fish, Miss Bordelon?”

“My dad liked to fish,” Charley said. “On weekends sometimes, he’d go down the beach near his house and catch abalone. Or he’d take his fishing pole and climb out to a rock way out in the surf.” She could still see him standing there, a lone figure perched on top of the huge boulder, the ocean churning and crashing all around him while she played in the sand. They’d have fried fish and corn for dinner. “But me? I never tried it.”