by Tina DeSalvo
By the time she closed the door and reached into the ashtray where she kept the keys, Beau was climbing into the cab. “I really don’t mind if we drive separately,” she said, trying again.
He pushed aside a pile of work papers and a brown wicker basket filled with pricing labels. “I hope to God I'm caught up on my tetanus shots.” He kicked aside a plastic grocery bag filled with dirty rags.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” She started the truck and drove toward the entrance gate near the kennel.
“I have no idea where I’m going,” she told him. “Since you’re here, you’ll save me the trouble of figuring it out. I can get to the main road, but after that, you’ll have to direct me.”
“Good thing I came with you.” He adjusted the air conditioner vent, but when he realized no air was flowing through it, he reached for the AC controls. “Do you mind if I get some air circulating in here?”
“I do not,” she said. “You’ll have to roll down the window to do so, though.”
He stared at her a minute. “You don’t have air conditioning in your vehicle and you’ve lived in south Louisiana your whole life? I thought it was as much a necessity for everyone who lives here as a strawberry snowball in the afternoon, an ice cold beer at sunset, and a swim in the bayou or Lake Pontchartrain when the mood struck you.”
“I used to think that too.” She frowned. “But not all of us have fancy cars with functioning cooling systems.” She rolled down her window and immediately rolled it back up when dust started swirling in from the dry road. “Some of us choose to use their funds to reinvest in their business.” And to pay for the expensive care and keeping of a dear grand-mère. “For the record, I do splurge on a strawberry snowball or cold Abita beer on occasion.”
He didn’t respond and she was glad. Enough had been said on the subject as far as she was concerned. He didn’t need to know how desperate her financial situation actually was, although she suspected he probably knew.
“You know, I could figure my way to Tante Izzy’s if you want to stay behind or drive there in your air conditioned car later.” She shrugged, hit a bump without slowing down, and negotiated a curve too fast. “I’m resourceful. I have a cell phone, Tante Izzy’s phone number, Google, GPS and a good sense of direction.” She reached the closed gate to exit the property. She looked at the gate, then Beau. “Why isn’t it opening automatically? Don’t electronic gates simply allow a vehicle to exit when they approach?
“Oh, hell.” He shook his head. “Not the ones that are designed to keep runaway dogs from escaping onto the highway or thieves from easily escaping with the valuable dogs.”
“That makes sense. A motion sensor would open when an animal approached, too. It must drive the UPS and delivery guys crazy.” She laughed. “I guess the gate can be opened from the kennel like you opened it from the house when you thought I was the pizza delivery guy, huh?”
“Yes, and with the remote or code Ben gave to those of us who come to Sugar Mill often.” As much as she hated to admit it, now she was glad Beau was with her to get her through the gates. But, wait, he wasn’t making a move to get out of the truck to open it and he was frowning. “What did you mean by, ‘Oh, hell?’ Can’t you get us through the gates?”
He rolled down the window and sucked in some warm, humid air.
“Turn the truck around and go back to my car, Jewell,” he said, his voice even, controlled. “The remote for the gate is in my car. I don’t have the code. Ben changed it last week and I didn’t put it in my phone. Hell, I didn’t even look at the paper with the code written on it or I would know it.”
She shook her head. “Why didn’t you say so right away?” She turned the truck around and headed back toward the plantation.
“You didn’t ask for my help, Boots. You said you could take care of it all yourself, remember? You’re resourceful.” He rolled up the window. “I suspect you don’t ask for help often. Not that I want you to ask me for help.”
She hated that he was right. She didn’t like to ask anyone to help her, so she didn’t. It was part of the reason she’d gotten into trouble with the law and had lost her job at the university.
She glanced out of her window, noticing tall, bright green sugarcane blades jutting from beige stalks alongside the road. “The sugarcane is pretty,” she whispered.
Beau looked out of the window. “Yes. It is. It'll be harvested soon.”
Jewell smiled. “Mimi said the same thing, but I don’t know how she would possibly know that. She’s a city girl.”
“Interesting.”
“That it is.” She drove past acres of thick, healthy stalks, lined in neat, straight rows that created the illusion of it undulating back and forth as she passed by. It reminded her of an image she’d seen too many times as a child living near Bourbon Street in the French Quarter…that of a slowly swaying dancer in silhouette behind a sheer curtain.
She shook her head to clear the image. “When does harvesting begin?”
“It actually begins in October,” he answered easily. “So, it’s underway. It continues until all of the crops are cut and brought to the sugar mill in December. The farmers try to get it all done before Christmas.”
“When I researched this area, I saw that Sugar Mill once had a mill on the property, and there are still a few around the area.”
“That’s true. The closest mill is up the bayou about fifteen miles away. There are five others around the area. I’m sure if you’ve driven on the roads around here while working for the Simoneauxs, you’ve encountered a few of the cane-hauling trucks.”
“Yeah. I've been slowed to a crawl behind many of them," Jewell told him, glad to have something—anything—to talk about that wasn't adversarial. "I love that the cane sugar industry is still as relevant today as it was hundreds of years ago. It’s so wonderful when we can have the same experiences our ancestors did. We smell the same earthy scents of the fresh cane being cut and the fields’ soil being turned by the plows, just as the people of the middle and late 1800s did.” She smiled. “I imagine once some of the plantation mills started to close, the people of the region had to negotiate their horse and buggies around carts laden with cane stalks being hauled to the other mills for grinding, like we do around the tractors and trucks hauling the cane today.”
“Cane trucks, burning fields, steam coming from the sugar mills… It’s just what we expect here in the fall,” Beau said.
“Cooler weather, football games, Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Day, festivals. That’s what we think of in the fall in New Orleans. Not cane season.”
“Those things are fall to us too.” Beau turned a little in his seat. “It feels like you’re circling around something here, Jewell. What are you really talking about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just trying to put some pieces together.” She gripped the wheel tighter again. “Mimi seems to have some real sensory memories with the earth, the crop and maybe even the processing of sugarcane.” He groaned. “Hey, I’m not making the connection with that and the double items in the chest, so don’t you go thinking I am.”
“Sure. I won’t think you're thinking I'm thinking that, Boots.” He ran his hand through his hair, clearly annoyed with her. She was surprised at how calm he sounded when he spoke again just a few seconds later.
“Sugarcane has a very distinctive smell in each of the stages,” he offered. “But it’s not something uniquely known to the people who live around here or the grinding mills.” He folded his arms over his chest. “We took tours of the sugarcane farms and processing plants as schoolchildren. You know, from the farm to the factory sort of thing. Anyway, there were always groups from New Orleans or Baton Rouge there too. School kids, Rotarians, conventioneers, others. Maybe Mignon took a tour at some point in her life.”
“Maybe before I was born or was old enough to remember her doing that.” Jewell drove up to his car.
“Park the truck and let’s take my car. I want to drive.”
She looked at him. She knew her truck didn’t take the bumps well and she suspected he wasn’t pleased with her handling of the sharp curves either. And then there was the lack of air conditioning on top of that. “Fine.” She parked the truck, put the keys in the ashtray and got out.
“That was the easiest thing we’ve agreed on,” he said, climbing into his car and closing the door with an expansive slam. “A sign of progress.”
“Progress?” She laughed, closing her door. The car smelled clean, new and expensive. “Nah. I wouldn’t go that far and call it that. I’m just cheap and your gas is free.”
“Yes, my gas is free, but more importantly, I have the remote to get us out of Sugar Mill,” Beau told Jewell with a crooked grin and eyes full of humor.
He opened his ashtray and pulled out what she knew was his car key. He waved it between them.
“So it’s not progress, but would you agree that brilliant minds think alike?” His eyes crinkled as his smile broadened. “Would you go so far as to say that?” He dropped the key back into the ashtray, pressed the starter button that only required the key to be in the general vicinity of the ignition, and drove off.
Jewell laughed and he glanced at her with his light, intelligent eyes as he turned the air conditioner on high. The wind blew the silky dark waves of Beau’s hair, mussing it up just enough to make him look sexy and ruggedly handsome, even in his neat clothes and fancy car.
“Brilliant? Hmm...Some would say we are plain ol’ dumb for putting our keys in a place where a thief could easily steal them.” She was surprised that he actually kept his keys in the ashtray. He seemed like the kind of guy who would have them carefully protected somewhere he could keep an eye on them. He didn’t seem like he’d trust his possessions where someone could steal them.
“Not in Cane.” He negotiated the curve on the dust and shell road with ease. “We don’t have much crime here, especially not car theft.”
“Well, I keep putting my keys in the ashtray and keep my insurance paid up in hopes someone will steal mine.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was the story she always told when she was questioned about her habit of putting the truck keys in such a vulnerable place.
He laughed. “My guess is that's a white lie, Boots.” He approached the front gate, lifted the remote from a slot in his door, and pressed it. He barely slowed down as the gate opened and they drove through. “I know keeping your tools at hand is important for you. I see the way you keep your tool belt organized. I think your truck is part of your tools. You need it to do your job, hauling stuff around.”
She shifted in her seat. She didn’t like that he had observed and assessed her so accurately. It felt uncomfortable. Would he use what he learned against her? If not this, something else?
“I think,” he continued, scratching his chin, “you keep the keys in the ashtray because you don’t want Mignon to have easy access to them when you aren’t around. Although I think it wouldn’t be hard for her to get them from there.”
“Not as easy as you think.” She sighed. “If she finds the keys in the house, she gets very agitated about not being allowed to drive. Mostly, she thinks they're her keys to her car. She remembers what her car looks like and will try to find it parked on the street as it had been for most of her life. We sold her car a long time ago, but she doesn’t always remember that.” She shook her head. “If she sees the keys in the truck when I get them out of the ashtray to drive, she doesn’t say a word about it. She knows it’s mine. She just accepts it.”
“Couldn’t you hide it in your purse or in your tool belt or belongings?”
“There’s no distinction between what’s mine and hers. She has a hard time telling our things apart. She’ll grab my purse just as often as hers. Labeling things mostly doesn’t help. I’ve adjusted. I have ways to keep the things I can’t have her accessing away from her.” She shrugged.
They drove a little farther in silence, each to their own thoughts. “I’m sorry, Jewell,” he said, breaking the silence. “It must be difficult having to be the 24-7 caregiver for your grand-mère.” She nodded. “What about your mother? Does she help at all?” Jewell stiffened. She rubbed her hands on her thighs. Beau looked at her and his eyebrows furrowed. “Sensitive subject?”
“Very. I don’t want to talk about my mother.”
“You know, that makes me want to know about her even more.”
“Figures.”
“I like the forbidden and off-limits stuff, me,” he said, his Cajun accent heavy. “I’m bad like that. Very, very bad.”
“A regular rebel in your starched, button-down shirt and groomed European sports car.”
“You’d be surprised what I’m really made of, Boots.” He smiled a devastating smile that made her heart knock against her chest. “Tell me about your mother.”
“No. She has nothing to do with our situation and nothing to do with Sugar Mill. Never will. Leave her out of it.” She turned to face him. “Please.”
The muscles in his jaw tightened. He leaned farther back into his seat, looking more relaxed than ever. If it wasn’t for the muscle twitching in his jaw, she would think he was unaffected by her plea. A plea she was totally embarrassed that she’d made.
He pointed to the right side of the car. “Look familiar?”
Yes. The Simoneauxs’ estate. She looked at the house and the dark, hollowed area beneath it and shivered. She was a tough woman. If she could belly crawl under that old house in foul-smelling, wet, slimy mud with snakes and raccoons and God knew what, she could deal with whatever her mother’s life and reputation dragged into hers. Only she’d prefer to crawl in that godforsaken pit and avoid the latter.
“Rumor is the Simoneauxs are still on the fence about whether or not it was worth hiring you for the estate sale.”
“I’m not surprised.” They had valued their family possessions a lot more than the rest of the world.
Jewell stared out the window at the low-hanging branches of the old oaks, heavy with gray moss and thick leaves. A white wooden swing hung from a sturdy A-frame under a majestic tree and swayed in the gentle breeze, much like the swing did under the old oak near the bayou at Sugar Mill Plantation. She pictured snuggling on it with an old worn soft quilt.
“Stop. Stop the car,” she shouted a second later. Beau slammed on his brakes.
“What the hell?” He looked around the car. “Did I hit an animal or something? I didn’t feel anything.”
“No. Back up.” She strained to look behind her. “We have time, don’t we? Tante Izzy won’t mind if we're five minutes later, right?” She didn’t wait for Beau to answer. “Oh. Just pull over here. No cars are coming. I won’t be long.” She opened the car door and got out. “You’re mostly off the road, this is good.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I need to take a look at something.” She smiled, realizing she’d said need instead of want. When it came to looking for something wonderful in a pile of junk, it felt more like a need than a want. She’d spotted an old desk at the edge of the road with a pile of branches and other cast-aside furniture. She loved this kind of treasure hunt and the feeling of being so hyper-focused that everything else in the world slipped away. More often than not, she actually forgot her real body’s needs, like food and water, overtaken by her spiritual need to rescue a part of history that was about to be destroyed.
She heard him running behind her as she reached the desk she wanted to look at. “I wish I had my tool belt.” She looked at him for a brief second.
“What the hell, Jewell?” He shook his head. “Are you kidding me? I thought we were running to an accident. I was actually reviewing how to do CPR and administer first aid to a severed limb.”
“I hope not at the same time. That can’t be good for the victim…chest compressions and a tourniquet.”
“Very funny.” He glanced at the pile of discards tossed to the side of the road. “I can’t believe this, Boots. You had me leave half the rubber
from my tires on the road when I slammed on my brakes for this pile of junk?”
She gave him a hard look. “This might look like junk to you, but to me it looks like an adventure maze with a possible treasure in the middle of it.”
“Yeah, it’s rainbows and fairy dust.” He was still shaking his head. “You're either crazy, blind, irrational, have a romantic soul or are brilliant. I don’t think going through moldy tree limbs, termite-infested logs and old furniture is so brilliant.”
She pushed aside a large branch and tugged on the desk that was half covered by it. “Are you going to just stand there and whine?”
“I’m not touching that crap. There’s poison ivy in there.”
She stopped, looked at the tree limb and kicked it away with her rubber boot. A skinny brown spider jumped from a small branch onto her boot. Jewell yipped. Beau quietly scooted it away with the tip of his leather shoes. “I got that big, ol’ bad spider for you, chère.”
Jewell immediately went back to kicking the limbs away from the desk. “Damn, Boots, you are determined.” He picked up a broken yellow broom handle at the bottom of the pile and shoved the poison ivy-infested limbs aside. Once he had pushed enough of the branches away, Jewell reached to get ahold of the battered desk. Beau grabbed her shoulder and nudged her to the side. “I’ll get it.” He blew out a breath. “I can’t believe you have me digging in other people’s garbage to get a skinny old desk with three legs.” He placed it at her feet right along the hard surface of the highway. “And a missing seat.”
“I can fix all of that.” She looked down the highway from where she was now standing partially in one of the lanes. “No one is coming. No one ever seems to be traveling on this road.” She smiled and walked around the desk. “Isn’t it beautiful! It’s an antique lyre-harp writing desk-chair combo. I knew it. I was sure I had seen the lyre shape when we passed.” She jogged in place and threw her hand in the air to Beau.