“Do we really need all these men?” Charley asked. “Isn’t there some machine we can rent that plants cane? Because my labor costs are going to shoot through the roof.”
“There’s no cane planting machine that I know of,” Denton said. “And if there was, we couldn’t afford it. You gotta trust me. Planting by hand is the way to go. Has been for the last two hundred years.”
Since cane grew from cuttings rather than seed, they had to cut some of Charley’s premium cane in the second quadrant that would ordinarily have been harvested—“mother stalk” Denton called it—and replant it in the freshly cultivated fields.
Yesterday, they had cut the mother stalk and loaded it into the cane wagons. Now, as soon as Denton gave the signal, each tractor would pull a wagon through the fields slowly enough for the crews following behind to yank the mother stalks off the back and lay them in the open rows. Later, another tractor would come along and cover each row with dirt.
Between now and early September, Charley needed to clear and cultivate 25 percent of her land—rid it of the oldest cane stalks, which were no longer producing, and replant the same ground with mother stalk. In a few weeks, delicate shoots known as first-year stubble would sprout from knobs along the recently buried stalks, and twelve months from now, if all went well, she’d have a decent stand of new cane to harvest for the next four years. That’s how it went: 25 percent new cane, 75 percent existing. It was a constant cycle, one made even more unforgiving by the brutal August heat. Planting season was fleeting; and between the thunderstorms and the equipment breakdowns, Charley couldn’t stop for a minute if she wanted next year’s crop in the ground on schedule.
• • •
By six o’clock, it was light enough to start. The last tractor was hitched, the crews assigned. They were about to head toward the back section, now known as Micah’s Corner, when Romero, the most experienced of the Mexican laborers, told Charley one of his men was sick.
“Sick how?” Charley said, eyeing the thermometer she’d nailed to the shop door so she could warn the men when it got too hot to work. Last week she rushed a man with a core temperature of one hundred six to the clinic. Two more degrees, the doctor warned, he would have died.
“Fever,” Romero said. The brim of his hat flared wide as a whirling dervish’s skirt. “It’s no good, I know. But if he works today, he will maybe make the others sick too.”
“Shit,” Charley said, but Romero was right, of course. After all the trouble she’d gone through to get the men up here—the H-2 visas and the bus tickets from Guanajuato, the expense of fixing up the workers’ house behind the shop so they’d have a decent place to sleep—the last thing she could afford was for them all to get sick. “I’ll drive him to the clinic.” Charley dug in her pocket for her keys. She pulled a black man who went by Huey Boy off the crew and told him to drive the tractor, then radioed Denton and Alison, already on their way to Micah’s Corner, that she’d return soon as she could.
• • •
It was after eight by the time Charley got back from town. In halting high school Spanish and with a series of hand gestures, she explained the prescriptions to the sick worker, set a bottle of water by his bed, then headed for Micah’s Corner. When she’d first arrived in Saint Josephine, this quadrant was the worst section of her land—blackjack land, Denton had said, ominously—overgrown with weeds, johnsongrass, and useless fourth-year stubble, the rows crooked as witch’s fingers and so deeply rutted they were almost beyond repair. But since they’d cleared everything out and started over, the rows were straight and evenly spaced. Every time Denton pulled the cultivator through, he’d climbed down from his tractor, shaking his head in wonder, saying, “If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t believe it. Cutter goes through there like a wind song.”
Now, standing at the edge of those fields, under a sky that had already faded from blue to white in the rising heat, it was obvious what the morning’s delay had cost her crew. The goal was to plant five rows at a time with each man responsible for a row. But with four men, not five, behind the wagon, they hadn’t made much progress. The crew moved slowly, pulling cane stalks from the wagon with extra care to ensure each row was filled, but Charley saw gaps where there was still simply no cane at all. Those spaces would be empty once the cane grew, which meant a lower yield next year.
Without another thought, Charley ran out to the field. Huey Boy was doing a good job of driving, so instead of replacing him, she joined the crew, pulling armloads of cane stalks off the back of the wagon. The men looked at her as though she’d lost her mind, whispered in Spanish, but there was no time to explain. Piled ten feet high in the wagon, the cane was still heavy with dew. Leaves and dirt were mixed in with the stalks, as if an enormous hand had ripped a ton of cane from the earth and dropped it into the wagon. Which was pretty much the way it had happened: after Denton cut the cane yesterday, Alison had used the derrick, which looked to Charley like a gigantic claw, to scoop the cane off the ground and dump it into the wagon until it was close to overflowing.
Positioning herself behind the wagon, Charley was surprised to discover that the tractor bumped along at a steady clip, and it was all she could do to pull a few stalks off and lay them end to end before the tractor was out of reach and she had to run to keep up. As she worked, she thought of the rats, snakes, rabbits, even wild pigs that might, at that very moment, be buried in each scoop. Chances were they’d outrun the combine when it went through, or were sliced up as it passed, but who knew for sure? She’d heard stories of rats leaping out of the wagon, of men being bitten by snakes coiled among the stalks. Then there was the broken glass and the cane leaves with their razor-sharp edges. That was only the beginning. After just a few minutes, dirt had caked her arms, her watch, and the front of her jeans and had even sifted into her pockets, and she wondered if she’d ever be clean again.
Every few minutes, the men whistled to Huey Boy, who flipped a switch causing the hydraulic arm to shove cane from the front of the wagon to the back, closer to where Charley and the crew were pulling stalks. It felt to her that a tsunami of cane was coming at her. But there was no stopping. Each time the cane got low, the men whistled and more stalks got pushed back. At the end of the row, the tractor lumbered onto the headlands, moved five rows over, and the work began again. It was simple, mindless labor, but grueling and treacherous all the same. As the workers grabbed armloads of cane, the long stalks knocked Charley in the head before she learned she needed to duck. When the men dropped the cane in the rows, it landed on her feet and she stumbled. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought they were doing it on purpose. But there was no time to wonder. The cane wagon kept moving. Men kept whistling. The hydraulic arm kept shoving the cane to the back edge of the wagon, and Charley kept working.
The sun rose higher, the temperature leaped by ten degrees in the time it took to reach the side of the field where they’d started, and Charley’s clothes were drenched. One of the men stooped beneath the wagon, grabbed a metal cup from the hook, and held it beneath the watercooler strapped to the axle. When it was full, he offered it to Charley and she gulped it down, not caring that she’d heard members of the crew hack and cough and spit before drinking from that very cup. The water was sweet and cold and trickled down the front of her shirt.
Every few rows, Huey Boy shifted the tractor into neutral, climbed out of the cab, and scaled the plant wagon to check on their progress, his expression, as he looked down at Charley, a mixture of amusement and admiration. Charley imagined what he’d tell his buddies when he met them for a beer after work: that he was working for a crazy black woman from California who not only owned the land, but got behind the wagon and planted cane herself. Then Huey Boy climbed back inside the cab and Charley heard the faint beat of hip-hop over the engine’s rumble.
Finally, the wagon was empty. The men fell back. And as the tractor lurched away, the men gathered
handfuls of leaves into small nests and sat down right in the middle of the field, cowboy hats shielding their faces from the sun, and Charley sat too, glad to watch the tractor roll down the headland and out of sight, grateful for the few minutes to rest. One man smoked, but the others took the opportunity to eat, ripping the outer husks off the cane stalks, gnawing at the sweet fibers, sucking and chewing, and finally spitting the pulpy wads in the dirt.
“You work hard,” Romero said, offering Charley a length of cane.
Charley sucked the juice greedily and spat. “Where will you go after this?” The money Romero would make during these next four months was good, Charley thought, but it wouldn’t last all year.
“Arkansas to pick apples,” Romero said, “then home to my village. I have a small farm.”
Charley thought of all the men like Romero—Native Americans and indentured servants from Ireland and Germany, Chinese, West Indians, and former black slaves—who, through the centuries, had left their families and their homelands behind, sometimes voluntarily but sometimes not, to work sugarcane. “I hope you’ll come back next year.”
It wasn’t long before Huey Boy, pulling an empty wagon, appeared and made his way along the furrows. Groaning as they rose, Charley and the rest of the crew didn’t bother to dust off their jeans as they fell in line and the work began again.
• • •
By lunchtime, it was hotter than the Congo Basin, the air heavy with humidity, the few clouds flat against the sky, the trees at the edge of the field blurry through the heat rising from the field. Denton and Alison brought Charley’s lunch from the shop, and the three of them camped out in the tractor’s meager shade.
“I’m impressed,” Denton said. “I thought you’d quit after the first row.”
“My hat goes off to these guys,” Charley said. Normally, the heat lessened her appetite, but the hours of work had left her ravenous and slightly dizzy. “I don’t know how they do it.” She thought about the sick worker she’d driven to the clinic. Whatever he had, she hoped it only lasted twenty-four hours because she doubted she could keep up this pace much longer. Still, as Charley looked at the progress they’d made that morning, there was no denying the thrill of it, no ignoring the simple delicious fact that she had reached this stage in the game.
“Looks like your plan worked, Denton,” Alison said. Indeed, word of their pay package had spread. In addition to the men Denton had hired earlier in the summer, twenty-five more had stopped by the shop in the last week, interested in hiring on, and they’d had the rare luxury of handpicking the crews. “Keep up this pace, we’ll have the back quadrant planted in ten days. Even the locals are putting out a hundred percent.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charley said, though she knew exactly what Alison was saying. She’d stopped counting the number of times she’d heard people refer to black folks as “locals,” and was weary of their suggestion, sometimes their outright declaration that black folks would rather sit home and collect welfare than put in an honest day’s work.
“Nothing personal,” Alison said.
“I get so tired—” Charley began, and thought, at least call them pioches, which was the term the eighteenth-century planters used in referring to their black slaves and more honestly captured the feeling of disdain, but Denton interrupted.
“Just heard on the radio they’re talking about a hurricane.”
Alison pushed his cigarette into the dirt. “Jesus, Denton. Why you want to go and jinx us?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard. Right now, it’s a tropical storm off Haiti, but it’s getting stronger. Next forty-eight hours it’s supposed to hit between here and Port Arthur.”
“That’s almost a hundred and fifty miles,” Alison said. “May as well say between here and the moon.”
“Maybe,” Denton said. “But it means we’re east of it.”
“What difference does that make?” Charley said, trying to imagine what a hurricane might be like. Earthquakes she knew; but with the exception of the one or two truly devastating ones that had occurred in her lifetime, she didn’t think much of them, they were more of a nuisance, really, and she always laughed to herself when she talked to someone from the East Coast or Midwest who spoke of their unpredictability with what seemed to her an almost irrational fear.
“Winds are always stronger east of a storm,” Denton said, “and there’s usually more water. Has to do with how the storm turns.” He looked out to the horizon and frowned. “I’m telling you now, that storm makes landfall, we’re in big trouble.”
• • •
Just after two o’clock, Huey Boy climbed down from the tractor and announced that the hydraulic light had come on. While the crews took a break, he tinkered with the control panel, and it was while she waited that Charley spotted Remy’s pickup coming toward her over the headland. He pulled up in a cloud of dust. With their reflective lenses, his sunglasses gave his otherwise boyish face a menacing steeliness, but it was his dopey legionnaire-style sun hat with its mesh side panels and protective neck drape that made her laugh.
Remy slammed the truck door, took off his sunglasses. “What’s so funny?”
“Nice hat.”
He touched the brim as though he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “I know it makes me look stupid. But it keeps the sun off my ears.”
For a second they stood awkwardly, and Charley didn’t know whether to hug him or shake hands. “I actually need a hat like that,” she said, touching the bill of her baseball cap. “This glare is killing me.”
Remy took off his hat and put it on Charley’s head, put her cap on his. “How’s that?”
“Better. Much better.” But when she moved to return it, Remy waved her off.
“Keep it. It looks better on you.”
Two weeks had passed since Remy gave her the shrimp, and in that time, with all the work, Charley had thought of him less frequently. She’d forgotten how tanned he was, how gently weathered his skin, how carefully he watched her when she spoke. She adjusted the hat and caught the faint smell of him—musk and citrus and the faint fragrance of the Gulf coast; it was a clean smell, strong and good.
“How about if I borrow it for a day or two, till I get my own?” Charley said.
“Suit yourself.” He gave a little shrug and put his hands in his pockets. “How’s planting going?”
“Mr. Denton says there may be a hurricane.”
“Yeah, I heard.” The look on Remy’s face made Charley more worried. “In the meantime, I brought you a little something.” He led her around to his tailgate and Charley saw that the bed of his truck was filled with cane stalks.
“What’s all this?”
“Ag station released a new variety this morning,” Remy said, and lifted out a long, husky stalk. “They’re calling it ‘Energy Cane,’ and it’s supposed to be more resistant to rust and borers, plus it’s got a higher sugar content. I thought you might want to try some.”
“Mother stalk is three hundred dollars a ton at least,” Charley said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Consider it a gift. One farmer to another.” And when Charley protested, he offered a compromise. “Give it a try. If it works out, you can buy me a beer.”
“Two beers,” Charley said. “One for the cane and one for the shrimp.”
Remy seemed surprised she remembered. He smiled. “Two beers, then.”
And for a moment, he looked at her so intently, Charley worried that she had something on her face or in her hair. She almost reached up to wipe her cheek and then felt a rush of embarrassment that she would even care. This was crazy, she thought. She barely knew him. “Well, thanks again.”
“You bet,” Remy said, glancing up at the clouds. “And good luck this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” She looked over at Huey Boy, who’d lifted the tractor’s engine panel. “If w
e can just get the hydraulics on that old clunker to work.”
“Let’s have a look.” Remy climbed up onto the tractor’s wheel. “Can’t fix it,” he said after a minute, “but I can patch it. Should hold till you get back to the shop and Denton can have a go.”
“Make that three beers,” Charley said.
Before Remy climbed down, he surveyed this side of Micah’s Corner. “Looks good, Miss Bordelon.”
“Please, I’ve been trying to get Mr. Denton to call me by my first name since we started working together, but he refuses. I understand why he does it, but it’s so formal. I don’t think I can take hearing it from someone else. Just call me Charley.”
Remy nodded. “Okay.”
“And thanks again. For everything.” Charley shook Remy’s hand. “So. How about you? How’s it going?”
Remy smiled and looked at the ground.
“What? What did I say?” Charley worried that she’d offended him.
“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it. Your accent. Like you’re on a TV commercial or something. Next thing you’ll be telling me you grew up playing beach volleyball.”
Charley hesitated. The last time she told someone how she spent her summers as a kid, the conversation had ended badly. “Surfing, not volleyball,” she said, cautiously. “If you have anything you need to get off your chest about that, you should say it now and get it over with.” But there was just that long, meditative look again.
“I can’t figure you out,” Remy said, finally. He shook his head. “First it’s farming, then it’s surfing.” He laughed. “Are they all like you out in California?”
They? Charley’s heart sank. What did he mean, they? Did he mean all left-handed people? All women? All African-Americans? But when she looked at Remy, whose eyes, she thought now, were actually on the small side, and whose sideburns were grayer than she’d noticed before, she didn’t detect an ounce of malice or irony in his question, nor cynicism in his tone. “No, not all.”
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