Queen Sugar Read online

  “I reckon.” Miss Honey dabbed her neck with her tissue again. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad y’all are here. It’s been too long. But sometimes, you go looking for adventure, all you find is disaster.”

  “What do you mean, ‘disaster’?” Micah said. “What’s going to happen?”

  “It’s just a saying,” Charley said, but for good measure she decided not to mention the pickup or how, for the rest of the drive, she pulled over every time a truck came up behind them.

  • • •

  The paved road they’d been following led to a dirt path—a generous way to describe the strip of trampled ground deeply rutted with tread marks and grass growing up between. A wooden stake with the carved letter L leaned to one side.

  Charley felt a rush of excitement, a warm tingling that spread over her arms and down her spine, causing her to feel a little light-headed. “This is it.”

  Dust billowed behind the Volvo until the path ended at a bank of trees. Woods stood tall and impassable to the left, but up ahead to the right sprawled open space. Charley’s heart raced as she imagined what was out there: fields so splendidly verdant she’d feel short of breath just looking at them. Her father left the door open and she had stepped through it.

  Charley parked. Then she, Micah, and Miss Honey made their way over the clotted ground.

  “Holy moly!” Micah cried. “It’s huge!” She took a picture with the ancient Polaroid, then hurled a stick far into the tangle of weeds and creeping vines.

  “My God,” Charley muttered. “This can’t be.” Across the field, wide and long as ten city blocks, stunted cane stalks dotted the earth, their straggly leaves a starved shade of pale green with deeply sunburned edges. Grass and weeds grew thick and matted between the rows, which were preposterously rutted with tire tracks. Even to Charley’s untrained eye, it was clear no one had been out there in months. Where were the neatly tilled rows, the lush cane plants high as a man’s shoulder? Where was the moist soil, dark and rich as ground French Roast? Under a morning sky coated with clouds gray as concrete, Charley stared out over fields that should have looked like the hundreds of lush acres she passed on the drive down, but didn’t.

  “I thought this Frasier fella was managing the place,” Miss Honey said, raising her hand to shield against the glare.

  “He was.” Charley twisted her wedding ring absentmindedly. “Last time we talked, he said something about replacing a tractor belt.”

  “Well, I’d say he’s got some explaining to do.”

  Charley consulted her watch. They were five minutes late. “You think he’s been here and left already?”

  “I couldn’t tell you what he might do,” Miss Honey said. “I don’t know this Frasier from Adam’s housecat.”

  “I know where we should put the cows,” Micah declared, peering through her camera’s viewfinder. “They can live out by those trees.”

  “This isn’t that kind of farm,” Charley said.

  “But we can’t have a farm without cows,” Micah pressed. “What about goats?”

  “No goats.”

  “Well, what then?”

  Charley glanced at her watch again, then squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Sweetheart, why don’t you walk around and take some pictures.” White clouds, thick as mashed potatoes, drifted across the sky. Something that looked like a flat-winged bee bounced between the blossoming vines as hot air rose from the dirt.

  “My feet are starting to swell,” Miss Honey said. “I’ll be in the car.”

  • • •

  It was almost ten o’clock before an old Ford F-150 with a “Jesus is my co-pilot” license plate rambled down the road ahead of a long contrail of dust. George Strait’s crooning voice wafted through the truck’s open window. A white man sat behind the wheel.

  “Thank God.” Charley waved. She had imagined Frasier as older, early sixties perhaps, and stocky as a lumberjack. She had imagined a man wearing embossed cowboy boots and a cowboy hat with a cane leaf braided around the band. But the man who climbed down from the truck looked much younger. Years of physical labor had worn any possibility of fat from his frame. His NASCAR jersey had Dale Earnhardt’s picture on the front and sun gilded his brown hair, which, at that moment, was wet. She walked over to greet him. “Mr. Frasier?”

  “Miss Bordelon,” Frasier said, in the same flat tone she recognized from the phone. “Sorry about the time. Some accident on the road.”

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Charley said, extending her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. In person, I mean.”

  “Likewise.” Frasier gave her hand a firm shake but didn’t say anything more.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this day.” Charley gestured toward the fields. “It’s good to see everything for myself. I’d have come down sooner, but I had to wait for my daughter to finish school. Now that I’m here, though, I’m ready to get down to business.” She waited for Frasier to respond, but he didn’t, so Charley, growing increasingly uneasy, plunged in deeper. “I know we talked about all the work to be done, but I have more questions. For starters, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, I was looking at the fields and I noticed . . . Well, they don’t look exactly like I thought they would.” Like they should.

  “Yeah, well.” Frasier threaded his thumbs through his belt loops. He was hard-core Nashville and Grand Ole Opry. Jim Beam straight from the bottle.

  “I don’t mean to question your work,” Charley said. “It’s just that I passed plenty of other fields on my drive into town and they were so neat, so orderly, and I—”

  “Thought yours would look better,” Frasier said.

  “Well, yes. But I don’t want you to think I’m criticizing—”

  “Actually, Miss Bordelon.” Frasier looked at Charley with a pained expression, then straightened as though he’d practiced what he was about to say. “I won’t be working for you.”

  “You won’t be what?”

  “I took another job.”

  “You what?”

  Frasier fell silent. He looked down at the ground, then out over the fields.

  “But when?” Charley said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She stared at Frasier. He had an honest face, the kind you’d want to see if you were stranded along the roadside with a flat tire late at night. “Are you working for someone else? Because if it’s money, I don’t have much, but I’m sure we can work something out.” Without thinking, she touched her wedding ring again, a platinum band that had been pounded thin in back where the jeweler made it larger. Six angled prongs framed an enormous diamond that had belonged to Davis’s mother before it became her engagement ring.

  “My brother-in-law pulled some strings,” Frasier said. “Got me a job on a rig.”

  “Rig?”

  “Oil rig,” Frasier said. “Out in the Gulf.”

  Charley twisted her ring so that the diamond pressed into her palm. “But I just talked to you two weeks ago. You didn’t say anything about another job.”

  “I know. I wanted to try it out first.”

  “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke. We’re supposed to harvest this cane in October. We only have five months.”

  Frasier batted at the closest cane plant, then ripped a withering leaf from the stalk. “I’ve been working cane since I was sixteen, Miss Bordelon. I’m shamed to admit it, but I don’t have a penny saved. If I bust a knee, what’ll I do? Couple years back, Mr. LeJeune took—”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. LeJeune. The man who owned this farm before your daddy. When he got too sick to run this place himself, his kids stepped in. But they weren’t really interested. They were off in New Orleans, riding on floats, going to balls, drinking Pimm’s Cups at the Columns Hotel.”

  “I won’t be riding on floats,” Charley said. “And I’ve never heard of a Pimm’s Cup. Mr. Frasier
, please.”

  Frasier crumpled the cane leaf in his palm. “I had to beg ’em to plant enough cane last year and they hardly took care of the cane that was here. When LeJeune died, they scraped by until they sold. Your daddy convinced me we could bring this place back. But now he’s gone too.”

  “But I’m here,” Charley said. “Give me a chance.”

  Frasier shredded another cane leaf. “If I don’t do something now, I’ll run out of money before I run out of air. I don’t want to be greeting folks at Walmart when I’m sixty-five.”

  “But I was counting on you. I’ve been paying you.”

  Frasier pulled two checks from his breast pocket, handed them to Charley, and she saw that they were the ones she’d mailed weeks ago. “I’ve asked around. Problem is, this time of year, anyone worth hiring has already signed on for a job.”

  Charley touched Frasier’s jersey as if it were the hem of his royal robe. If he wore a ring she would have kissed it. She would have knelt if he’d asked her to. “Please, Mr. Frasier. Wait one season. You’ve put me in a terrible bind.”

  Frasier looked at her with great sympathy. “Your daddy was a good man,” he said. “I never met him in person, but I could tell. And I can tell you’re a good person too.” He brushed his hands on his pants. “But two more months and I get my union card. I’ll have benefits.”

  “We both know I can’t run this place by myself. Please. I’m begging you.”

  “It only seemed right to tell you in person.”

  Charley looked out at her fields. The cane seemed to have withered even more in the hour since she arrived. Birds, whose chipper singing she hadn’t noticed until now, seemed to mock her with their chatter. “All this time and you never said a word.” A tremendous lump thickened in her throat and she turned away, willing herself not to cry. She fully expected Frasier to leave, but he waited patiently, hands wedged deep in his back pockets.

  “If you’d like to go over things,” he offered.

  Somehow, Charley managed to write down the instructions he gave her: how to start the tractor; where to buy replacement parts, diesel, and fertilizer; what tools were in the shop; directions to the Ag station. She took notes, but had no idea what to do with them.

  At last, Frasier looked openly at his watch. “I guess that does it.” He turned to leave, stepping sure-footedly over the ruts and clumps of soil. At his truck, he paused. “It’s good land. I hope you know that. Good luck to you, Miss Bordelon.”

  And then he was gone.

  • • •

  Once Frasier’s truck disappeared, Charley walked unsteadily back to the car, where Miss Honey fanned herself with an envelope.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Fabulous,” Charley said, sliding in. “He’s a gem. A real man of his word.” She held herself together long enough to slip her keys into the ignition. The engine turned over. But as she shifted into reverse, Charley thought about how much her life had slipped. Six hours ago, she felt like a girl getting ready for a dance, with lights and music and a new life stretched out before her like a red silk carpet. Now she was a girl who kept losing things: she lost her husband in a holdup he just had to resist and she almost lost her daughter. She lost her father to cancer, and now she was about to lose his strange and unexplained legacy, this sugarcane farm. She had a pad of notes she could barely read, her manager had quit, and she was out in the middle of God knew where. Charley stopped the car. She took a long, deep breath. Then she hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “When you stood there for so long, I had a feeling,” Miss Honey said. She rubbed Charley’s back.

  At the feel of Miss Honey’s touch, Charley cried harder. “I’m sorry.”

  Miss Honey pressed a damp napkin from the cooler into Charley’s hands. “That’s okay, chère. Let it out,” she said. “’Cause you got a big job ahead of you. And in a minute, you’re gonna have to pull yourself together.”

  At the far edge of the field, Micah’s yellow T-shirt and orange shorts flashed like banners against the brown earth as she started to run.

  “Who’d Ernest buy this place from?” Miss Honey asked.

  Charley wiped her eyes, watching her daughter approach. “Some family named LeJeune.”

  Miss Honey looked surprised. For a moment, it seemed as though she might say something, but she just nodded and let Charley collect herself.

  “Look at these,” Micah said, panting, as she reached the car. She handed four Polaroids through the window before she saw Charley’s face. “Mom? Why are you crying? Miss Honey, what’s wrong with my mom?”

  Miss Honey opened a bottle of water and offered it to Micah. “Quiet, chère. You mamma’s having a bad day.”

  2

  In twenty-four hours he would be a fugitive; twenty-four hours, and the Chevy Impala would appear on the Phoenix Police Department’s list of stolen vehicles. Ralph Angel considered his new identity as the car glided over the highway. He tugged at his collar, remembering the crisp white dress shirts he wore as a college student all those years ago; white shirts with natural shell buttons that cost most of his monthly allowance. But fingering his collar now, all Ralph Angel felt was the frayed cotton of his thrift-store button-down.

  Behind Ralph Angel, his son, Blue, six years old, kicked the seat. “Can we go to the plaza on Sunday?”

  “Why?”

  “I want a churro,” Blue said. “I didn’t get one last time.”

  “So?” Ralph Angel stuck his arm through the window. How many times in the last four months had he and Blue walked to the plaza on a Sunday morning? He’d scrape together enough money for four warm churros wrapped in newspaper and a six-pack of Dos Equis, and they’d sit on the shaded grass listening to the mariachis play. They stayed all day and into the evening sometimes, Ralph Angel nursing his beer, Blue nibbling the long ropes of fried dough, the two of them watching red-lipped women dance with men in cowboy hats and boots. Those trips always ended the same way: back in the rented room, Blue asleep in his street clothes, the two of them sharing the soft mattress while Ralph Angel stared at the TV, waiting for sleep that rarely came. By midnight, he’d give in to the craving, slip out for a drink at the Piccolo Club or cruise Fifty-ninth Avenue to score some junk.

  “When we get to Billings, maybe we can find a new treat,” Ralph Angel said. “Something better than churros.” But Blue was absorbed with Zach, the Power Rangers action figured he treated in mysterious and punishing ways. Ralph Angel heard Blue say, “Once a Power Ranger, always a Power Ranger,” and make exploding sounds as he smashed Zach against the door hardware.

  “Easy there, buddy,” Ralph Angel said. “Maybe we’ll get you a buffalo burger.” Cowboys and buffalos, wasn’t that what they had out there in Big Sky country? He imagined frontier towns, white men dressed in flannel and spurs. He imagined life in Billings: he’d stick out like a fleck of pepper in the salt.

  Blue unfastened his seat belt, sat forward, and walked Zach across Ralph Angel’s headrest. “Mystic source, mystic force,” he said.

  Ralph Angel heard clicking noises near his ear as Blue pressed the light on Zach’s Dino Fire; heard Blue say, “Power ax,” as he pressed the tiny weapon into Ralph Angel’s cheek.

  “Zach wants to know what else we’ll eat,” Blue said.

  Ralph Angel thought for a moment. “How about huckleberry pie?” Cowboys always ate huckleberry pie.

  Blue laughed. “Zach says we can eat huckleberry pie every day when you come home from work. We can have huckleberry pie for breakfast if we want.”

  “Sure, buddy. Whatever you say.”

  Billings, Montana, according to the article in Money magazine that Ralph Angel read in the emergency room last month when Blue jumped off a wall and sprained his ankle, was the seventh-best place in the country to live. In the accompanying photo, a man and a boy paddled a canoe. Their backs were turned, bu
t you understood from the way they leaned forward in their matching life vests, the way they raised their oars in unison, with water like chips of crystal spilling back into the lake, that they were father and son. White, of course, rugged and sturdy, but still. Staring at the picture, Ralph Angel had been overcome. He could be that father. Blue could be that boy. They just needed to get to Billings.

  But something felt wrong, which was why he was procrastinating; why it had been three days since they left Phoenix and he’d driven only as far as Flagstaff. If he turned around now, they would be back in Phoenix by midnight, no later than two. He could put Blue to bed, get Mrs. Abernathy across the hall to babysit while he returned the car. Only there was no home to go home to. Six months ago, the sheriff nailed an eviction notice on the door, set their clothes on the street. For the last four months, they had lived at the Wagon Wheel, a motel at the end of East Van Buren, where he paid for their room by the week. There was no job to wake up for, because he got fired.

  “I’m hungry,” Blue said. “What do we have to eat?”

  Ralph Angel looked at the empty passenger seat. If Gwenna were here, she’d have thought ahead, packed sandwiches, drinks, and something sweet as a surprise. That was one of the things he loved about her; she always thought ahead, always scanned the horizon for problems, like a ship’s captain stationed at the bow. “We’ll stop soon,” Ralph Angel said. “Just hold on.” He glanced at the passenger seat again and braced himself against the twist of longing. There was no Gwenna to pack sandwiches or encourage him to look for another job; no Gwenna to reassure him everything would be okay because Gwenna was dead.