15

Every day since the auction, Charley made a point to arrive at the shop before Denton, and every day she followed his instructions and recommendations to the letter. When he observed that they were low on Pennzoil and 2, 4-D, she was on the phone with the hardware store; when he suggested they tear out the third-year stubble along the highway, she had the three-row chopper hitched and the tractor refueled before he finished reading the day’s farm bulletin. And when he announced, during lunch, they’d soon need lubricant for the drill press, Charley was off to Cyd’s Tractor and Repair in Franklin before he finished his sandwich.

Now, with two gallons of lubricant in a box on the floor, Charley rounded the corner expecting to see Denton’s truck but instead saw an old tractor, not too different from the one she owned, idling in front of the shop. Smoke belched from the exhaust pipe. Music leaked from the cab. As she pulled up, the tractor’s engine sputtered and died, the door swung wide, and a man—muddy overalls hanging from his skeletal frame, clumps of strawberry blond hair sticking out of his baseball cap—climbed down the ladder like a spider at the end of its thread.

Charley couldn’t help but think of Landry’s visit as she stepped from her car. “Can I help you?”

“Where’s Denton?” The man pushed his cap back and gave his forehead a furious scratch, then took one last drag on the cigarette that hung from his lips before grinding the butt into the dirt. “What time is it?”

“Two thirty,” Charley said.

“Well, I sure as hell hope Denton shows up soon ’cause I got to pick up my boys at four,” he said. “Damn day care dings you two dollars every fifteen minutes you’re late. Tell you, I can’t wait till September and I can put those two rascals in kindergarten. Don’t care if they’re five or not. Public school, you hear me? Only thing still free in this freaking country.” He lit another cigarette, then squinted out over the cane through eyes the color of frozen pond water. “What time is it now?”

“Two thirty-two,” Charley said.

“Come on, Denton, where are you?”

“I’m sorry,” Charley said. “Exactly who are you?”

The man looked startled. “Alison Delcambre. Denton didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll give him till three but then I got to go.”

“Is there something I can help you with?” Charley said. Just then, she heard the low grumble of Denton’s engine and there he was, coming down the road. He parked and ambled over, the same oily cloth from the auction dangling from his back pocket.

“Good to see you, Alison.”

“You’re late, Denton.”

“Sorry. My wife needed a new filter for her car.” He took a small square of fabric, from his front pocket this time, and cleaned his glasses, wiping each lens purposefully.

“Well, I’m delighted to hear you’re such a devoted husband, but I got to be over at the freaking Magic Rainbow by four.”

“How are those boys?”

“They’re fine if you like raising wolf pups.”

Denton slipped his glasses back on and looked at Charley over the rims. “Alison’s wife passed last year and he’s raising their two grandkids. One’s three and one’s four.”

“Their parents are dopeheads,” Alison said. “Well, one’s a dopehead. The other one’s a plain fuckup.”

Charley was surprised to hear Alison speak so harshly, she would never talk about Micah that way, at least not to a stranger, but then she saw Denton suppress a smile and guessed Alison’s rants were a frequent occurrence; heard him say “So, I guess you met Miss Bordelon,” as though Alison had just commented on the weather.

Alison removed his baseball cap. “Not formally, no.”

“Me and Alison worked together over at Saint John back in ’79,” Denton said. “Till Alison quit and started farming for himself. Eleven hundred acres over in Saint Petersville. I asked him to come by.”

“You mean, I used to have eleven hundred acres,” Alison interrupted. “You forgot to mention I’m being forced out of business.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Denton said.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s one way to put it’?” Alison said, flailing his arms. “That’s the only way to put it. Go on, Denton, you might as well get used to saying it. I’ve sure had to.”

“Alison’s losing his farm,” Denton said, soberly. “They canceled his contract after thirty-some years.”

“I’m sorry,” Charley said.

“He’s one of the best farmers around,” Denton said. He looked weary all of a sudden, like an army captain who’d lost too many men. “Knows everything there is to know about sugarcane and then some. Which reminds me. Guess who I saw up at Groveland’s?”

“Don’t tell me,” Alison said, waving a hand. “I don’t even want to know.”

“Baron and Landry.”

“Those sons of bitches? Jesus, Denton. Now you’ve ruined my whole day.”

Denton winked at Charley. “Yeah, but we got ’em, didn’t we?”

She smiled back, still embarrassed about the way she’d behaved at the auction, but he’d clearly forgiven her. Twice yesterday, he had shown her how to attach the spray rig to the tractor, and twice she’d backed the tractor into the fertilizer tanks. But he hadn’t lost his temper, hadn’t even raised his voice. Charley watched Alison pace an invisible cage. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re losing your farm?”

“’Cause I can’t ever get out of debt.” Alison shook another cigarette from the pack. “Hey, look. When I first got into this business you had thirty-eight-cent diesel and cane was twenty cents a pound. Now diesel’s over five dollars and cane sells for nineteen cents.” Years ago, Alison went on to explain, a farmer could make twenty-five thousand dollars a year. “I didn’t get rich but I made a living. Then they started messing with things.”

“They?”

“The mills,” Denton said. “They built warehouses.”

“Sugar warehouses.” Alison leaned against Denton’s truck and gazed at some point in the distance. “Here’s the way we work in this business. Say you’re a roofer, and I hire you to reroof that barn over there. I say, ‘I’ll give you five thousand dollars.’ So you say okay.”

Denton broke in. “But then I say, ‘I won’t give you five thousand straight up. I’ll pay half now and half next year.’”

“‘Unless I have a bad year,’” Alison added, “‘in which case, I’ll only give you fifteen hundred now—that okay with you?’ Meanwhile, you have all the cost of reroofing my barn. And you’re paying interest at a percent and a half a month to stay alive.”

“You see, Miss Bordelon,” Denton explained, “these days, a farmer gets paid over a twelve-month period rather than all at once. The crop you’re trying to get ready for grinding in the fall? The mill won’t finish paying you for that until next September. It used to be the mill paid you within a month of delivery. By January, you had all your money. You’d pay everybody off—the bank, your suppliers—your cost went down. Now they’ve taken that money they owe you and stretched it out.”

“They?” Charley said.

“The mills,” Denton and Alison said in unison. “Guys like Landry and Baron.”

Alison pulled his cap down over his eyes. “Freaking capitalist system. That’s why I’m becoming a socialist a little more each day.”

Denton had explained some of this before. It had made sense, but in an abstract way, as if he were explaining how electricity or the Internet worked, which was sort of unbelievable if you really thought about it. But now, hearing Alison’s story, Charley was beginning to understand. “So the mills expect us to carry all the costs?”

“Exactly,” Alison said. “Excuse me, Miss Bordelon, but it sucks.” He turned away and stared out over the fields, as if looking back through the years. “This used to be a good business. You got your money up front. But forget it now. And that dimwit we had in the White House? Jesus. Between the price of sugar and whatever happened with CAFTA—” Alison shook his head. “Let’s hope this new fella’s got more sense.”

“I asked Alison to come over,” Denton said. “We’re in good shape from the auction, but I got to thinking about what we still need. Thought Alison might be interested in striking a deal. And just so you know, he’s hearing this for the first time, same as you.”

“What kind of deal?” Charley and Denton had agreed on a sixty-forty split, assuming they brought in enough cane to make a profit. She wasn’t sure they could afford another partner.

“The way I see it,” Denton said, “we can help each other. Alison’s got two combines, three tractors in pretty good shape, and a handful of cane wagons. That’s equipment you won’t have to buy, Miss Bordelon. We each give up seven and a half percent, Alison lets us use his equipment and comes to work here.”

“Give me a minute to digest this.” Charley walked over to the Volvo and put her hands on the warm hood. She let her head hang as she puzzled through Denton’s scheme. On one hand, she’d be getting the full benefit of Alison’s experience, and heavens knew, she needed his equipment. And why shouldn’t she trust Denton? Didn’t his decisions at the auction prove his judgment was sound? If he said Alison was an excellent farmer, then she had no reason to doubt him. A few yards away, Charley saw Alison light another cigarette. On the other hand, she’d be working with someone she didn’t know, and there was no denying Alison was, well—eccentric.

Charley rejoined the men. “What do you say, Mr. Delcambre?”

“I can’t wait to stick it to those sons of bitches over at the mill,” Alison said. “Believe me, Miss Bordelon, it’ll do me good to see those boys get licked. And just wait till they find out they got beat by a black woman. That’ll raise a breeze.”

Charley’s heart skipped. If the situation were different, if Alison weren’t having his land yanked out from under him, if he were wearing loafers and khakis instead of those filthy overalls and work boots, would he give her the time of day?

Charley tried to imagine what her father would say. It’s your land now. She wished she could ask him, “By any means necessary?” but she knew she had to pull the answer from the ground herself. She turned back to the men and offered her hand. “If you’re in, I’m in.”

“Excellent.” Alison took one last drag on his cigarette and looked Charley square in the eye. “Where do I sign?”

Holiday Hills, the subdivision where Violet lived in the next town over, had a golf course in the middle, with a small, man-made lake filled with water dyed a troubling shade of aquamarine, and a ribbon of walking path that wound past the empty guard booth and out to the patch of woods that stood between the development and the surrounding sugarcane fields. And since Violet still refused to come over to Miss Honey’s, Charley swung by Tortilla Flats, the Mexican restaurant in the casino, and showed up on Violet’s doorstep with shredded taco salad to share and two frozen margaritas.

It was after dinner now, and Charley sat in Violet’s family room admiring her shadow-box coffee table. Violet had arranged an assortment of seashells and plastic crustaceans—lobster and crabs—and brightly framed sunglasses on a bed of sand underneath the glass top.

“First lady of the church and an interior decorator,” Charley said, accepting the piece of lemon icebox cake Violet offered her.

“I love flipping through all those home magazines when I get my hair done,” Violet said. “I always find good decorating tips. Then I run over to the Dollar Store to see what I can throw together.”

Charley nodded. Violet’s house wasn’t large; in fact, it seemed to be the smallest home in the neighborhood of Acadian-style brick houses, but it was twice the size of Miss Honey’s: a kitchen filled with shiny appliances overlooking the family room, and a decent-size patio with space for the Rev’s barbecue grill and Violet’s potted tomato plants.

“Mother was angry with me when we moved out here,” Violet offered. “She wanted me to buy Mr. Delrose’s house down the street from her. But I told her, I want to be exposed to new things, meet new people, get some fresh information.”

“This certainly isn’t the Quarters,” Charley said. It was refreshing to sit in a room where every surface wasn’t cluttered and where the air was breathable.

“May as well be the far side of the moon as far as Mother’s concerned. But I like it out here. People are friendly. A group of us neighbors get together every week to watch that TV show where celebrities dress up in skimpy costumes and dance with the pros; you know the one. And the Rev is thinking about taking golf lessons if you can believe it. But enough about me, let’s talk about you.”

Charley had already told Violet about spraying her crops to kill the borers, about making a fool of herself at the auction, and agreeing to take Alison on as a partner, which was working out fine so far, as long as she didn’t take his daily rants too seriously.

“You said something before about Hollywood asking you out on a date?”

“He did,” Charley said. “Well, sort of. But Ralph Angel came home and started teasing him. It was terrible.”

“Poor Hollywood,” Violet said. “He’s so sweet. A little slow, but a real sweetheart; always has been.”

“He is,” Charley said. “I’m surprised how much I enjoy his company.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Mother adores him. Treats him like he’s one of her own. If you ask me, I think Ralph Angel is jealous.”

“Or maybe he thinks he’s being helpful,” Charley said. “Tough love or something. It’s the strangest thing.”

Outside, beyond Violet’s low picket fence, a golf cart rolled past and the driver, an older white man in a white polo shirt and baseball cap, waved. Violet waved back. She ran her spoon across her plate and licked at the last bit of icebox cake. “If Hollywood asks you out again, what will you say?”

Charley sighed. Hollywood had looked so nervous sitting there with his hair perfectly combed and his shirt ironed—like a schoolboy on picture day—and she’d been tempted to say yes, she’d go out with him, just to put him at ease. But that would have been a mistake. He’d have gotten the wrong impression and then what? The last thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings, but she’d been relieved, actually, when Ralph Angel walked in and interrupted. If only he hadn’t started in with the teasing. Why did he always take it too far? “If I had the money, I’d pay someone to break the news that I just think of him as a friend.” Charley said.