Free Queen Sugar: A Novel by Natalie Baszile

until I got here. I was in the office, I mean, the shop, sorting through stacks of papers and I found this.” She held out the pay stub.
    The woman glanced at the stub, then appraised Charley with a steely gaze. “You ain’t from around here.”
    “I’m from California.”
    “California,” the woman said, as though California were a hostile nation.
    “But I live here now, with
my
grandmother. Not too far, as a matter of fact.”
    “Excuse me, but have you ever worked cane?”
    “No.” Charley sighed. “I haven’t.”
    The woman drew herself up. “Well, I have. And let me tell you, cane work is the hardest, dirtiest, most backbreakin’, thankless, low-paying work there is. My family’s worked cane for six generations, and after all that, we ain’t got nothin’ to show for it. Just look at my grandmama’s house.” She made a sweeping gesture. “She worked cane since she was
nine
years old, and
this
is all she’s got. Has she got any money saved? Has she got a pension? Health care? Does she own anything but this trailer and the little speck of sorry-ass ground it sits on?” Drops of sweat spangled her hairline. “Those big cane farmers cut corners with her every chance they got.”
    Charley wanted to say that she was different, that she would offer medical benefits, a retirement plan, even a small life insurance policy. She wanted to look straight at the woman and ask,
How about you—can I hire you
? But she had the overwhelming sense that she’d be digging a hole for herself.
    “If it wasn’t for social security,” the woman fumed, “and the little bit us grandkids scrape together each month, my grandmother would be out on the road.” The more she spoke, the thicker her accent grew. “And here you come, pecking around like a spring chicken. Talking like someone on the TV. Asking if she’ll
work
for you?”
    “I should go.”
    “I bet you’d be even worse to work for than a white man.”
    Charley grabbed her backpack and stuffed the pay stub in the front pocket, let herself out, and hurried down the steps. At the bottom, she paused. All she wanted was to find workers and get down to business. Jacques Landry was one thing—she should have expected that. But her own people? Who did they think she was? She looked back at the woman barring the doorway. “Sorry if I offended you or your grandmother.”
    “I bet.” And with that, the woman slammed the door.

5
    Four hundred miles to go. They were almost home. East of San Antonio, Ralph Angel saw a sign for Corpus Christi and got an idea. He merged off the interstate onto Highway 37. In the passenger seat, Blue continued his low, rumbling dialogue with Zach the Power Ranger, who was still imprisoned in the glove box. “’Cause we might get arrested,” Ralph Angel heard him say. “So you have to stay inside and be very, very quiet.”
    Blue looked up and asked, “Are we there yet?”
    “What did I say about that? Just wait. I have a surprise.”
    Eventually, the woods yielded to marshland, the two-lane road cutting a straight line through an expanse of gray water peppered with reeds and tufts of low, wiry grass. Egrets, white as porcelain, took flight from their rookeries, while in the distance a house balanced on stilts, lording over its watery homestead, and seeing all this, Ralph Angel felt something within him begin to shift. Like a page being turned.
    Farther south, the road ended abruptly at the Intracoastal Waterway, the narrow channel stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Rio Grande. A short wood dock jutted out into the water. Ralph Angel could see where the road picked up on the other side—not even sixty feet; they could almost swim across.
    “What now?” Blue said.
    “We wait.”
    It wasn’t long before a ferry cruised up the channel. Cracked black buoys dangled from its rusted bow, paint curled away from the wheelhouse, but otherwise, nothing had changed; it was the same ferry as when he was a kid, and Ralph