The Cutting Season

by Attica Locke

  But Inés was no longer a nameless figure to Caren.

  She felt oddly protective of her, even in death, keeping her secret from Raymond, the fact that Inés had been living on his family’s land before she died. She didn’t trust how he might spin the information, painting the woman as a criminal, a girl who was asking for trouble.

  Raymond was rocking back on his heels.

  “This is just a minor setback,” he said. “This deal is going through either way, Gray.”

  “You’re just going to let them tear it all down?”

  He bristled openly at the suggestion that he was being careless with a legacy. “This was Daddy’s deal, not mine. I did what I could with the place. I think you know I’ve tried my best to preserve every little bit of the history. But hell if I want to be tied to this thing for the rest of my life. I don’t know what people expect from me.” He wanted so badly not to be seen as a villain in this; he seemed to so resent the power he held that Caren actually wondered about his fitness to hold political office.

  “You know, we have the Whitman wedding next week,” she said, because signed contracts were something she thought Clancy would understand. There was the staff to consider too. “They deserve some kind of notice, a chance to find other work.”

  They deserved something better, she thought.

  “The Whitman deal, sure,” he said. “We’ll go out with a bang.” He was smiling now, picturing it. “It’ll be one to remember. You can tell Lorraine to go all out, on me.”

  He was trying too hard, she thought.

  “Aw, hell, Gray,” he said sheepishly. “I know I should have said something. I should have been up-front with you. But all the ink on this deal wasn’t dry, and I didn’t want to get out ahead of myself. You understand, don’t you?”

  She didn’t, not really.

  “When are you going to tell the staff?”

  Raymond’s posture sank, making him look like a sulky, difficult teenager. He picked up a pencil and tapped it against the desktop. “Actually . . . I was thinking you ought to be the one to tell them.”

  “Me?”

  “The truth is, they don’t know me from Adam, Caren, not really. I’m hardly ever out here. I just think it would go over better if they heard the news from someone they work with every day, someone they actually like.” He dropped the pencil on the desktop and shoved both hands into the pockets of his wool slacks. He turned slightly, looking out the window at the grounds of Belle Vie: the rose garden and the old schoolhouse and the rows of sugarcane in the distance. Something in his posture told her it was already done, all of it. This had all been decided a long, long time ago.

  “So you’re really going to do it, then, make a run for Senate?”

  Clancy raised up a finger, very nearly wagging it in her face, coming just short of a scold. “Now, wait a minute, Gray, just wait,” he said. “There’s nothing set, not a thing decided. Don’t you go breathing a word of it, hear? Larry Becht’s got a way he wants this done, a proper announcement and all that.” He stopped here, catching himself. “I mean, that’s if, Gray, if I’m even running. There’s nothing set,” he said again, trying to appear a good deal more relaxed than he was. He lowered his pointing finger and shoved his hands again into his pockets. “I’m just considering it right now, just trying to think of what’s best for Louisiana.” He turned and glanced once more out the window at the sugar-rich land, the lush landscape. “I mean, the truth is . . . Katrina was a wake-up call,” he said, playing with his words, the pace and cadence of his voice, as if he were writing a stump speech off the top of his head. “We can’t ask the coast to carry the whole state anymore, not economically. Folks don’t like to say it out loud, but that oil and gas thing ain’t gon’ last forever. The coast can’t take it. And anyone who tells you any different is just selling snake oil. It’s a way of life that’s on its way out, no doubt about it. I mean, we’re losing land mass down there at an ungodly pace. Another ten, twenty years and those wetlands, the whole coast, will be gone. But sugar, that’s here to stay. Agriculture is good business, Gray, always has been. Cane, cotton . . . they built this state in the nineteenth century . . . hell, maybe they can save it in this one.”

  He paused, so caught up in his reverie and his ideas about how all this might play to a crowd that Caren thought he actually heard the applause in his head before he remembered it was just the two of them in this room. He took a long, deep breath. “It’s just that we’ve got to broaden our thinking about what’s possible for Louisiana. This deal is just a start. There’s no telling what a company like that can do for the state’s economy. And that’s a hell of a lot more important than keeping another tourist trap open.”

  “What does your father say, about the sale?”

  Raymond glanced over his shoulder at her, but never directly answered the question. It was the first time she saw any hint of regret.

  “He’ll come around,” he said.

  “Bobby, too?” Caren said, remembering his snooping around the place, his sudden interest in his brother’s business dealings. “Did he sign off on this, too?”

  Raymond waved away the thought.

  “This doesn’t concern Bobby,” he said. “And I wouldn’t let him influence any decision I make, anyway. He doesn’t understand business, doesn’t think about the future, what’s best for everybody. Leave it to Bobby and he’d still be sleeping in his old bedroom, right down the hall,” he said, pointing to the suite of bedrooms on the other side of her office door. “Bobby would put his feet up and live off Daddy’s money for the rest of his life.” Something seemed to occur to him then, and he swung around suddenly, startling Caren, and asking, “Why? Did he say something to you?” Caren stared at Raymond, wondering why the mention of his brother had got him so heated.

  “You’d do well to watch yourself around Bobby,” he said.

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you.”

  Raymond rolled his eyes.

  Caren again tried to appeal to his sense of loyalty, saying, “Lorraine, Pearl, Ennis Mabry . . . some on the staff have worked here a lot longer than I have. Luis was handpicked by your father years and years ago. Are you sure you don’t want to speak to them on behalf of the Clancy family, to let them know their service has been appreciated?” Raymond had his back to her again, his gaze cast on the manicured grounds outside. “I just think they’ll take it better coming from you,” he said flatly.

  And then she understood.

  Raymond Clancy wanted a shill, a race-neutral messenger.

  He wanted her, the black woman, to deliver the news to the plantation’s staff.

  “I think you owe me this much,” he said. Back here again, she thought, twice in one week. “My family’s been good to you, Gray. I gave you a job when you needed one, gave you a place to stay, and you and I both know the Clancys took care of your family in more ways than one. Now, I’ve never cashed in on any of it, made your mama a promise that I never would. But I figure you can do me at least this much.”

  Fine, she told him.

  “It’s not going to go down easy,” she warned. “We’re under a lot of stress out here. The staff is worried about Donovan. His arrest caught all of us by surprise.”

  “It’s a goddamned mess, I know.”

  “It’s a mistake is what it is.”

  Raymond shot her a curious look. He appeared confused at first, and then troubled, or else irritated by the fact that there might be any loose ends to this story.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Donovan told the police he was here Wednesday night—”

  “The report I got indicated he stole a master key.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I swear it’s not what it looks like. Donovan had been sneaking onto the grounds for weeks, but only so he could work on a school project.”

  “What kind of a ‘school project
’?”

  Here, she paused.

  She knew how this would sound.

  “A movie.”

  “A movie?”

  “A film,” she said, thinking that sounded better.

  Clancy was growing frustrated. “Gray, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s a story about this place, about the history, that he wants told.”

  Raymond made a face, and Caren added, “Look, he’s not a bad kid,” feeling as surprised as Donovan might have been to hear those words coming out of her mouth. “He’s got a few misguided ideas about what to make of Belle Vie and what it means, but surely you can understand that, for a lot of people, this place is . . . complicated.”

  “What in the world does this have to do with the dead woman, Gray?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The cops are making a big mistake.”

  “Well, I don’t have a goddamned thing to do with that. I don’t have any say over how the sheriff runs his department. I don’t know what all you think I can do about it. The kid admitted to breaking and entering, for heaven’s sake,” he said. Then, wagging a finger again, he added, “And you ought to stay out of it, too, Gray. Don’t involve yourself any further. Those detectives already have their eye on you as it is.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Lang was asking about you, how well I know you and all that,” he said. “Don’t you go doing something stupid trying to protect this kid, hear? He’s not your problem. Take it from me, Gray, sometimes the only way to get ahead yourself is to cut your losses where you can. Don’t let a kid like that drag you down. He’s not family. You come from better people than that.” He came around from behind her desk, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder, as if he’d just paid her a great compliment. She shook off his hand. He took no offense by it, was already reaching for his overcoat.

  “Let me ask you something,” she said.

  Raymond nodded absently, slipping his arms through the sleeves.

  “Your family ever find out what happened to Jason?”

  At this Raymond looked up. “Jason?” he said, repeating a name with which she knew he was familiar. Of all the Belle Vie Clancys, he was the least enamored of its history, taking as an affront even the suggestion that the beautiful land on which he’d been raised had served any purpose other than a pretty backdrop for weddings and fancy parties. It was the elder Clancy who made preservation a priority, and Raymond publicly fell in line behind the family’s deeply felt duty to the past, all the while holding his nose closed.

  “He worked for your great-great-grandfather, William Tynan,” Caren reminded him. “He cut cane as a slave and then worked the fields for Tynan after the war.”

  “For a wage, I’m told.” He wanted that made clear.

  Caren nodded. “That’s right. He worked the farm after Tynan became the legal owner of the plantation. That is . . . until he disappeared sometime in the year 1872.”

  “What’s this all about, Gray?”

  “Did you know there had been an investigation into his disappearance?” she said. “There was a newly elected black sheriff digging into it, sure he’d met foul play.”

  “No, I never heard anything like that.”

  “Yeah,” Caren said. “I hadn’t either.”

  “Well, that was a long time ago.”

  “That’s the story, anyway,” she said. “The one Donovan is trying to tell.”

  Raymond sighed. “Look, I’ll have a talk with Lang, make sure they’re coming at this from all angles. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  He started for the door.

  “One more thing, though,” he said. “When the Groveland brass comes through here, I want you to arrange a special VIP tour for some of their folks, let ’em see the plantation up close, see all the history and all that. I just want the execs to get a good look before they make any final decisions, one last pitch to see if they’ll consider preserving at least part of the plantation—the main house, or the library. Daddy would want that.” He buttoned his wool coat. “And you’ll talk to the staff?”

  She nodded.

  Raymond looked deeply relieved.

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” he said. “I know you appreciate what all the Clancys have done for you and yours.” He touched her shoulder again on the way out. She watched him go, grateful for the stillness that came in his wake. She stood alone in the office, hers for as long as Belle Vie stood. For one lonely moment, she tried to picture it all gone, the house and the garden, the kitchen and the cottages, the library and the schoolhouse and the hundred-year-old oaks, all of it razed to nothing. The quarters, too, all of it flattened into a grid of cane, stretching as far as the Mississippi River, with only the wind remaining. She wasn’t sure what she was going to tell the staff, or when. One thing she did know: Leland Clancy would never delegate a good-bye.

  There was one person she needed to tell first.

  The Rose Hill Cemetery lay across the river, on the border between Ascension and Livingston parish. Helen always said she didn’t want to be buried in a crypt. She wanted to rest on high ground, up north where her people lay. There was a place for Caren, too, she’d said, a spot beneath a line of pines, an open space to the right of her mother’s granite headstone, which Caren had bought with her first paycheck from Belle Vie, replacing the one made of polished concrete that had been set up in her absence.

  It’s done, Mother.

  They’re shutting down Belle Vie for good, she said.

  She didn’t sit, didn’t want to linger, afraid that if she got down on the ground she might never get up. So she stood over the gravestone, clearing pine needles, brushing dirt with her open palm. She told her what she came to say, what brought her out here at least a few times a year. She came to say, once again, that she was sorry.

  She tried to picture Helen listening to all this.

  She tried to picture her long, slim legs, the bony knees poking out from beneath her apron, the way she pressed her fingers into the small of her back when she was thinking about something, stretching the time between cigarettes. Caren would have given anything to hear a last laugh.

  But almost always what came to her was their last fight, the last day they spoke. Helen was still in the kitchen, working for the Clancys. Caren was in her first year at Tulane, in law school, on her mother’s dime, or so she thought. That’s the way Helen sold it, of course, telling Caren that she had worked as hard as she had, spent a lifetime on the plantation, saving everything so that one day she could pay for Caren to go to school. She wanted her daughter to have that law degree, liked the idea of her flesh and blood being on the right side of things, putting the world back in its rightful order. She couldn’t think of anything more important for black folks, she said, than to have somebody in the family who could navigate the pricks and thorns of a bunch of rules they’d had no hand in creating. “That’s how they cheat you.”

  Every family needed a lawyer, she said.

  And that “One day you’ll understand why I did it this way.”

  “You lied to me,” Caren said on their last day.

  It wasn’t Helen’s money, she’d just found out. It never had been.

  It was Leland Clancy’s . . . and Caren was just another charity case.

  Raymond, on a visit home, had finally let it slip. For years her mother had pressed Leland to pay for her daughter’s school, making clear that he was the one who owed her . . . something Caren never understood. “You lied to me,” she said again, standing next to Helen in the kitchen.

  “Oh, girl,” her mother said, waving off the very idea. She was standing over the table, a vinyl-top card table where Lorraine, to this day, cut vegetables and chopped onions. It was foolish, what Caren was saying,
a splitting of hairs and wholly beside the point. “You’re going to finish law school, Caren, and that’s the end of it.”

  But Caren wouldn’t have it.

  The whole thing made her sick with shame, made her feel as small and worthless as the days when Bobby had stopped playing with her, had stopped seeing her as an equal, or the many times she’d not been allowed in the big house. She didn’t want the Clancys’ money, the benefactions of a plantation owner. It was no way to start what she considered a new life, one freed from the burdens of a legacy she never asked for, freed from the confines of a world that always put people like the Clancys on top.

  “Listen to me, ’Cakes,” her mother said. “Belle Vie is yours. It’s yours, too.”

  Caren stared at her, not understanding.

  “Them people ain’t got no more real claim to this place than anybody in our family, and don’t think Leland Clancy don’t know it, either. He’s not stupid, Mr. Clancy, and he knows good and well he came into this place on someone else’s back, that it was a way that was paved for him to sit in that big house that had nothing to do with his labors. Now you go on and let him put back a little of what he took.”

  Caren shook her head.

  She could make it on her own, she said. It was the blustery protestation of a young woman for whom it would take years to understand the true pull of family, and the impossibility of escaping our bonds, or ever truly forgetting where we came from.