Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

Grinding season ended on New Year’s Day. After the freezing rains of January and February, the weather was warming, fields were drying, and across Charley’s land, cane was already twelve inches high. She, Denton, and Alison were back at work. They’d spent all of March off-barring, and in another week, it would be time for laying-by.

But today, Charley lounged in a beach chair on the highest point of the dam, Remy’s goofy hat shielding her face from the sun, the Igloo cooler open for anyone who wanted a soda, and the hibachi hissing and crackling each time a link of andouille or crawfish boudin dripped on the coals. A few feet away, at the dam’s edge, Remy helped Micah and Blue tie turkey necks to their crab nets, and showed them how to drop the nets over the side, where they sank in the ocher-colored water.

Micah wiped her hands on her shorts. “How long before we catch something?” She was two inches taller than this time last year, Charley guessed, appraising her daughter’s long legs and feet she’d have to grow into. It wouldn’t be long before Micah was tall as her.

“We’ll check in fifteen minutes,” Remy said. “Got to give the crabs time to find the bait and get comfortable.” He took off his watch and handed it to Blue. “Okay, buddy. You’re our official timekeeper. Come back when the long hand gets to the twelve. Think you can handle that?”

Blue nodded and stuffed the watch in his pocket.

“Y’all can go across to the other side if you want,” Remy said, “but stay out of the water. Alligators like to lay out in the sun when it’s warm like this.”

While the kids explored the opposite bank, Remy took his cast net to the water’s edge and, in one fluid motion, hurled it underhand. Charley watched it spiral, like a big silvery white web, out over the water. As it landed, the net made the most beautiful sound Charley had ever heard; like the gentle patter of rain. For a few seconds the net floated on the surface, drifted with the current. And just as it disappeared under the water, Remy pulled it in, his arm muscles lean and sinewy as he reached, hand over hand. The whole thing was like a poem.

“How’d you do?” Charley asked when Remy came over to her chair. A stream of water trailed from his net, and the front of his shirt was damp and dark where he held it against his chest.

He shook the net and a dozen translucent shrimp, big as Charley’s palm, fell into the galvanized bucket. “Finish what you were saying. What else did the doctor tell you?”

Charley looked across the sandbar to where Micah and Blue were chucking oyster shells into the water. “There’s not much more we can do.” She looked at Blue, who, as far as the doctors could decipher, woke up after the trooper pulled Ralph Angel over and heard everything, and saw everything, and had hardly spoken since that night. Now Charley was in the process of adopting him. “There’s nothing physically wrong with him,” she said. “He just needs time. And love. And patience.” Charley looked at Blue and felt responsible. She thought of Ralph Angel and felt responsible. She suspected she would be an old woman before the knot in her gut loosened and she forgave herself for the part she played, large and small, in what happened to her brother.

According to the police report, the trooper saw the gun on Ralph Angel’s seat and believed he was reaching for it, so he shot Ralph Angel first. “Justified use of deadly force,” the police report said. Charley had her doubts. For everything that Ralph Angel ever did, for all the problems he caused, she couldn’t imagine him threatening a police officer. From birth until the last day of his life, he’d been caught up in the world of injustice. That Ralph Angel died on the side of the road before the ambulance arrived seemed like the latest injustice in a life full of it.

During the investigation, the detectives found The Cane Cutter in the trunk. After they closed the case, they returned it to Charley, and Charley had given The Cane Cutter to Blue with the promise that she would hold it for him until he grew up. But she knew that even if it tripled in value, which it probably would, it would never be enough.

• • •

Two hours later, the andouille and crawfish boudin were gone. The children had caught their limit and the galvanized bucket overflowed with ten dozen blue crab, a handful of mullets that got caught in the net, and four pounds of Remy’s ghostly shrimp.

“That’s one nice thing about crabbing and shrimping,” Remy said. He loaded the bucket onto the boat. “Kids get tired, you pack up and go home.”

On the ride back to shore, Micah and Blue hung their legs over the bow, which dipped and bucked and splashed spray so that they were all soaked. And a hundred yards from shore, Remy killed the engine and they glided.

“Who wants to go swimming?” Remy asked.

Charley sat on the deck as Remy and the kids leaped off the side. The cups of yellow sunlight on the water were ridiculously lovely. The smell of the bay, the gentle glup, glup, glup of the water licking the side of Remy’s boat — for a moment, Charley couldn’t believe her good fortune. She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face. This was her life now.

“We’d better get a move on,” she called at last.

Micah and Blue dog-paddled to the side of the boat.

Remy hoisted each kid onto the deck then climbed up. Charley tossed each person a towel.

“We’d better get started if we’re gonna get these kids fed,” Charley said. “What time does the show start again?” Jimmy Broussard was playing at Paul’s Café. The show started at nine.

Remy dried himself off, then leaned down close to her face. He kissed her. “Don’t worry, California. We’ve got plenty of time.”