18
On Thursday morning, Miss Honey asked Ralph Angel to put gas in her car. “I have a prayer meeting tonight and I won’t have time to stop,” she said, handing him forty dollars. And since he had nothing better to do, Ralph Angel obliged. Rather than drive straight home after filling up (thirty in the tank, ten in his pocket), though, Ralph Angel drove in the opposite direction, followed the Old Spanish Trail all the way out to where he believed the turnoff led to Charley’s farm. He didn’t set out to do it. He just wanted to take a drive, get out of the house for a while, which he’d been reluctant to do in his own car since the trooper pulled him over. But out on the open road, curiosity tugged at him, the need to see with his own eyes what he’d been missing, what he’d been cut out of, like a cupped hand nudging him forward. He didn’t know exactly what to look for, and had guessed, by piecing together little bits of conversation he’d overheard, where Charley’s farm might be. He was about to give up when he spotted her car.
Ralph Angel parked. Far enough down the road that Charley wouldn’t notice Miss Honey’s old blue sedan if she happened to look up, but close enough that he could watch as she and two men in overalls stood talking, a large sheet of paper the size of a road map held between them. Ralph Angel watched as Charley studied the paper, then pointed across the road to the wall of sugarcane; watched, a few minutes later, as a biplane dropped out of the sky and swooped low over the fields, gray mist streaming out from beneath its wings; and twenty minutes after that, he rolled down the window to let a little air in and watched, with a growing sense of indignation, as the black man, probably Denton, worked a raggedy tractor, while Charley and the other man—who could that be?—schlepped back and forth between the yard and the shop, loading boxes into the back of a pickup. Ralph Angel watched and thought, Fuck her. Fuck Charley and her talk of needing time to figure out how best to bring him in, she couldn’t afford him, there wasn’t enough work for another man. It certainly looked like she had enough work. Ralph Angel peeled off his sweat jacket, leaned back. He didn’t know how, but he’d show her he was good for something—he was practically an engineer, after all—and when he figured out a plan, his sister would realize what she had missed out on and come begging. Ralph Angel watched for a long time. And when Charley and the two men finally disappeared inside the corrugated metal building, he went back down the road the way he came.
On his way back to Miss Honey’s, Ralph Angel drove through Jeanerette, past LeBlanc’s bakery, where the red light signaling that fresh French bread was ready for sale glowed like a flare. He turned down the short gravel driveway that ran alongside the brick building. Folks used to say that Jeanerette had everything you could want, you never needed to leave town, and thinking back, Ralph Angel supposed that was true. As a boy, when he came to Jeanerette with Miss Honey, he bought candy from the two Sicilian sisters who owned Machioni’s Fruit Stand. Vee’s five-and-dime sold everything from school supplies to china to aquarium fish, and at Gomez’s Army Surplus, clerks scaled tall wooden ladders to reach merchandise stacked to the ceiling. There’d been three movie theaters once, though he could remember the name of only one; the National Mercantile Company, where, when he visited, his dad always took him to buy blue jeans; Grisiaffi’s Grocery, a little mom-and-pop operation where you could buy a slushy for thirty cents; Rose Culotta’s liquor store across the street; and down on the corner, the Fitch Family Hotel and Restaurant, where you picked up to-go orders at the side window. All that was in the past, though. These days, Jeanerette was closer to a ghost town than a boom town, the bakery practically the only business still open on Main Street.
Ralph Angel slammed his car door, and even before he reached the entrance, the sweet aroma of French bread wafted out to greet him. Just inside, a man in baggy shorts and a faded gray T-shirt stood at the cash register.
“Morning,” the man said.
“How you doing?” Ralph Angel said, “How much is a loaf?” and saw that from his face to his sneakers, the man was covered in a fine dusting of flour.
“Three dollars,” the man said and sniffed. “Ginger cakes are a dollar fifty.”
Ralph Angel pulled out his wallet. There was nothing better than a loaf of LeBlanc’s French bread hot out of the oven, maybe with a little butter, though you didn’t need it. “Give me two loaves,” Ralph Angel said. He’d buy one to eat in the car, all by himself, and one to take home. Blue would like that.
The man disappeared through the swinging doors, and when he emerged, he held two plump golden loaves, which he laid on the long wood counter. He wrapped each loaf in a sheet of crisp white paper, swaddling it like a baby.
“Plastic or no plastic?” the man said.
Ralph Angel looked at him, confused, then remembered that each loaf came with a plastic storage bag to keep it fresh if you weren’t going to eat it right away. “One with plastic,” Ralph Angel said. “And give me one of those ginger cakes.”
The man tucked the loaves and a ginger cake into a paper bag. Ralph Angel held out the ten left over from Miss Honey’s gas money, waited for his change.
But as the man put the bills in his hand, he frowned. “Don’t I know you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You from around here? ’Cause I swear your face is familiar.”
“Grew up in Saint Josephine,” Ralph Angel said. “Went to Ascension High School, then my grandmother had me transferred to General Taylor.”
“That’s it!” The man snapped his fingers. “I went to General Taylor too. Man, I knew I knew you. Name’s Ralph Angel, right? Man, it’s me, Johnny. Johnny Fontenot.”
Ralph Angel looked more closely at the man, tried to think back. The name registered vaguely; he’d gone to school with a whole bunch of Fontenots, but he couldn’t place the man’s face, especially not with all that flour on it. But the man was looking at him with such naked delight that Ralph Angel said, “Oh yeah, of course I remember you, man. What’s up?”
They shook hands and Johnny Fontenot slapped Ralph Angel’s arm playfully. “Man, it’s been what—twenty-five, twenty-six years?” As he spoke, his Cajun accent thickened. “You ain’t changed one lick. I’d know you anywhere. Where you livin’ now?”
“Been out west,” Ralph Angel said. “California first, then Arizona. Phoenix.”
“California, man, that’s a loooong way from here, I’m telling you. You like it out there?”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“I got out there once. Too big. It was pretty, though.” Johnny ran his hand over his dusted hair and wiped it, absentmindedly, on his shorts. “So, you back home for good or just visitin’?”
“Haven’t decided.” Ralph Angel thought about Charley out there at her farm, how she’d stood with those two men, all three of them looking so satisfied as the plane flew over. “What about you? How’ve you been? How long you been working here?”
Johnny shrugged. “Since I got out of college. It’ll be twenty-three years next week.”
“No shit,” Ralph Angel said. “You must really like baking bread.”
“Ain’t had a choice,” Johnny said. “Daddy was ready to retire, my older brother joined the service, so it was up to me. Either that or let some of my coon-ass cousins run it.”
“You own this place? But I thought your last name was Fontenot.”
“Bakery is on my mama’s side. Her people came from France, then down through Nova Scotia before they settled here. Been in the family since 1884, right here in this building. Five generations.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ralph Angel said, and studied the framed black-and-white photos on the wall above the register. It was like looking back through time. “So how’s business?”
Johnny shook his head wearily. “Pretty good till this morning. My best guy quit; said he’s moving to Mississippi. I’m down to two guys, which would be okay, but we got to fill a huge order for that zydeco trail ride over at the old Fruit of the Loom factory tomorrow. Two hundred loaves on top of our regular orders. I’m usually up front in the office, not back here on the floor, but we got to get them loaves out of here.”
Ralph Angel looked at Johnny, then through the entrance, out at the gravel lot, and felt another page turn. “If you’re shorthanded, maybe I could help you out.”
Johnny looked at the ground. He ran his sneaker across the floor, which was itself covered in a quarter inch of flour dust. “Naw, I couldn’t ask you to do that, man. But thank you.”
“What’s the problem?” Ralph Angel felt a sudden urgency bloom in his chest. “I got the time and I’m good with numbers. Was an engineering major in college. You need the help.”
“You serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
Johnny thought for a moment. “Okay, then,” he said. “You got a deal. And of course, I’ll pay you.” He shook Ralph Angel’s hand, then hugged him. “Man, I sure appreciate this. You don’t even know. I was sweatin’ bullets trying to figure out how I was gonna get all this work done.”
“What are friends for?”
“You’re really saving my ass,” said Johnny. He went to the register, counted out seven dollars and fifty cents. “Take your money. Those loaves are on the house.”
• • •
Twelve thirty a.m., and Ralph Angel, back in Miss Honey’s blue sedan, drove the twelve-mile stretch between Saint Josephine and Jeanerette, appreciating, for the first time really, how quiet the country could be on a summer night. He crossed the high bridge that spanned the widest section of the bayou and looked out over the dark cane fields and the mill lights twinkling in the distance. He’d heard a story once, about a man who was crossing the bridge on his bike when a truck came along and knocked him over the guardrail. The man fell thirty feet into the water, but managed to swim to the bank even though his right arm, his right leg, and three ribs were broken. Some people were just born survivors.
After his conversation with Johnny that morning, Ralph Angel had stopped off at Goodwill. He bought a nice white dress shirt and tie—navy with red stripes—stylish but not too flashy with the $7.50 Johnny gave back to him. He hadn’t mentioned the job to Miss Honey, though he’d wanted to, and he certainly hadn’t said anything to Charley when she got home. Thought he’d stay quiet till she started griping about how hard she was working and asked him to join her, then he’d spring the news on her. He couldn’t wait to see the look of surprise on her face.
Everyone arrived at the bakery at 1:00 a.m., Johnny had said, which Ralph Angel thought was early to be starting office work, but he’d agreed. Now he pulled into the gravel parking lot again, past the two white delivery trucks he hadn’t noticed earlier, and parked in the last spot near the fence. It wasn’t one o’clock yet, but the lights inside the bakery were already on, and through the open windows, Ralph Angel heard men’s voices and the clatter of machinery over the radio.
“Hey, good buddy,” Johnny called as Ralph Angel stepped over the threshold. “Right on time.” Johnny had showered and shaved, changed into a new pair of shorts, but wore the same gray T-shirt and sneakers, and looked surprisingly alert, Ralph Angel thought, considering the early hour. He gave Ralph Angel a puzzled look. “What’s with the shirt and tie?”
Ralph Angel looked down at his shirt, then up at Johnny. “Can’t go around the office looking like vagrant.”
“The office?”
“Yeah,” Ralph Angel said. “You said I’d be doing office work, right?”
Johnny’s brow furled. “No.”
“But this morning—you mentioned working up front. Said your best man quit.”
“That’s ’cause I work up front,” said Johnny. “I was talking about my head baker quitting; a guy named Leroy.”
“Oh.”
“I moved Joe up to Leroy’s position and got Billy to take over for Joe, but now I need someone to take over for Billy.”
Ralph Angel stuffed his hands in his pockets. “What does Billy do?”
“He’s on the mixer. Mixes up all the batter.”
“I see.”
“Hey, look, man, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I should have been clearer.” Johnny put his hands on his waist and let his head drop. “I understand if you don’t want to do this. A guy like you—a professional and everything—I can see how this would be beneath you. Actually, that’s what I was thinkin’ this morning when you offered.”
Disappointment settled down around Ralph Angel like a shroud. He’d been so excited at the prospect of working at the bakery; had imagined himself up front, in an office right next to Johnny’s (though smaller, of course), his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, the knot of his tie loosened after a full day of taking phone orders, jotting names and numbers on a small pad, entering figures into a computer. He’d looked forward to taking coffee breaks and maybe, after he earned his stripes, long lunches down at the café. Ralph Angel sighed. He thought of Charley, the expression on her face—determined, purposeful, focused—as she carried those boxes from the shop, her shop, to the truck, then he tried to picture himself dumping big sacks of flour into an industrial mixer. Not exactly what he’d signed up for. But it was still work; it was still a job. “No sweat,” Ralph Angel said. “I’ll do it. A deal’s a deal.” He unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves.
• • •
Beyond the swinging door, the bakery floor stood large and boxy, with white tiled walls around three sides and two enormous ovens built into the far wall. The other men were already at work, stacking long rectangular wood boxes on top of one another and sliding big metal trays into tall racks. Everything—from the radio to the portable phone and the long wooden table in the middle of the room, to the men themselves—was covered with a fine layer of flour so that it looked as though an early-winter snowstorm had just blown through. Johnny introduced Ralph Angel to the guys, then led him over to the mixer in the corner. It was almost as tall as Ralph Angel, with a large stainless steel bowl and a huge paddle inside that looked big enough to row a boat with.
“People don’t realize, but baking is an art,” Johnny said. “Which is why I usually start new guys making loaves. I learned the hard way it takes a new guy three months before he knows how to form a decent loaf. But since it’s crunch time, and I can’t stop to train you, I’m gonna have you jump ahead and work the mixer first. Once you get the hang of it, made enough dough, we’ll see what needs doin’.” Johnny gestured for Ralph Angel to follow him behind the mixer where six large plastic garbage cans, each labeled with a different ingredient, stood against the wall. On the floor in front of the garbage cans, twenty fifty-pound bags of flour sagged like overgrown sandbags.
“I’ll do the first batch, then I’ll let you run with it.”
Ralph Angel watched as Johnny dumped a sack of flour into the big metal mixing bowl, then peeled the lid off the first garbage can, labeled MALT, and dipped a ladle into the dark syrupy liquid. He used a big scooper to measure out the salt and yeast, then poured in a pitcher of warm water and flipped the switch.
“It looks simple, and it is, as long as you get exactly the right amount of each ingredient. Screw up the proportions and that’s eighty dollars’ worth of product down the drain. After you put everything in, run the mixer for fifteen minutes, then take the dough over to the table. Billy will take it from there. Questions?”
“I got it.”
Ralph Angel stood silently by the mixer while the paddle turned a figure 8 in the big stainless steel bowl, and the radio played, and the guy named Joe lined the long wood boxes with canvas while Johnny fired up the ovens. As they worked, the men teased each other like brothers, lobbing curses and light insults across the bakery floor, and it struck Ralph Angel, standing alone, that he’d never had that; had never worked with people he liked and who liked him enough to joke around. Gwenna had been the only person, but she was gone. He’d thought he might be able to have that with Hollywood—they used to joke around all the time when they were kids—but Hollywood didn’t seem interested lately. Was always saying he had to work. It would be nice, for once, to be in a place where everyone was friends.
• • •
Three hours of mixing. Through the windows, the darkness seemed less dense. There was a hint of sunrise. Ralph Angel hauled the last batch of dough over to Billy, who reached his tattooed arms—Ralph Angel could see the designs and dark outlines under the layer of flour—into the metal mixing bowl and, with his bare hands, scraped the tacky glob onto the wooden table. He watched as Billy pulled off softball-size chunks of dough, ran them through the breaker to squeeze out the air bubbles, shaped each chunk of dough into a circle, then went back and formed the circles into perfect oblong loaves and laid them side by side in the long wooden boxes. Johnny was right. It was an art.
“How many loaves do you get from a batch?” Ralph Angel said, in a friendly tone. He leaned against the table.
“’Bout fifty.” Billy didn’t look up; his hands never stopped moving. “But they gotta rise for two hours in the proof boxes before we can bake ’em.” He nodded to the wood boxes stacked ten high under the window. “The second batch over there is about ready.”
Across the floor by the ovens, Johnny was baking the last of the first batch. Inside the oven, the rotisserie shelves revolved like seats on a Ferris wheel, and Johnny had just enough time to lift raw loaves out of the proof boxes and arrange them on each shelf before it was out of reach. By the time the shelf circled around and appeared again, the loaves had baked to the gold of dark honey, and Johnny lifted them out and slid them onto the cooling racks.
“What can I do?” Ralph Angel said, thinking he could do what Johnny was doing.
“Take those boxes over to the ovens.” Johnny pointed to the stack of wooden proof boxes. “But be careful, they’re heavier than they look.”
“I’m on it.”
It was hot in the bakery now with the ovens going full blast. Ralph Angel had already loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, but sweat still trailed down his face. At the window, he stood on his toes to reach the top proof box. He lifted it from the stack, but stumbled backward. The box was awkward to carry at nearly six feet long, tall as a man, and heavier than it looked, loaded from end to end with balls of dough. Worn smooth as river stones from years of use, the sides of the box were hard to hold, and as Ralph Angel struggled to get his grip, the box fell forward and the front end crashed on the floor. Everything seemed to move in slow motion then. Ralph Angel felt himself reaching for the loaves as they slid on the strip of canvas, tumbled out of the box, and lay on the floor in a soft, doughy heap. He felt the box slip out of his grasp completely, and watched it knock against others. He saw the tower of proof boxes waver, then topple like Fiddlesticks.
“Whoa!” Johnny yelled, rushing over. “Lord Almighty,” he said, grabbing his hair in his fists. “My orders!”
But it was too late. Nearly a hundred loaves lay scattered and smashed across the floor.
• • •
The red light over the bakery door wasn’t on yet and Main Street was quiet and still as Ralph Angel drove back to Miss Honey’s. Three little girls waved from the bed of an old pickup as Ralph Angel passed; an old man dressed in a brown striped suit and freshly shined shoes moseyed down the empty sidewalk. Ralph Angel had offered to stay till they made fresh batches to replace the ones he’d destroyed, but Johnny had declined his offer. They’d have to work double-time to get all the orders out, Johnny said; Ralph Angel would just be in the way. Johnny offered to pay him for the hours he worked, but as much as he needed it, Ralph Angel couldn’t accept the money. Even though it wasn’t the kind of work he’d wanted, the hours he’d spent in the bakery had reminded Ralph Angel how good it felt to be needed, to be productive. Everyone needed to feel that their days had purpose, that they were moving forward.
There wasn’t room for a car to stop on the high bridge, but since it was still early and no cars were coming, Ralph Angel stopped anyway. He stood at the guardrail and looked out over the cane fields, stretched out like a soft green carpet in the morning light, and the bayou sliding beneath him. It was a long way down. He thought again about how that man on the bike must have felt, falling through the air, then hitting the water. Was he surprised to discover he was alive or had he always known he would survive? Ralph Angel thought back to that terrible moment when Blue fell into the barge slip. He’d thought he would die and he’d felt—he’d felt relief that it would all finally be over. Almost wished it could be so. But then he’d thought of Blue, all alone in the world, and it had been enough to make him keep going. He had to keep going. Somehow.
Ralph Angel pulled his tie from around his neck, took off his shirt. For a long time, he stood there on the bridge in his undershirt, feeling the morning air against his skin. He held his new clothes over the rail until the breeze came up from underneath and then he stood there watching as they drifted down to the bayou.