• • •
Half past seven, and the kitchen thermometer already read eighty-six degrees. Charley wandered into the den, which was even warmer because Miss Honey insisted on running the space heater for her arthritis. Miss Honey and Micah sat riveted by The Littlest Colonel. Shirley Temple, in bows and lace, stomped into the stable, demanding Bojangles teach her to dance. “I got no time for dancing,” Bojangles said, in an apologetic drawl.
Micah, her breakfast on a TV tray cluttered with saucers — grits on one, scrambled eggs on another, sausage on a third — said, “She looks like Bo Peep.”
Charley scoffed. “She looks like a poodle.” Bojangles’s docile, childlike manner, the way he grinned — it sickened her, and after a few seconds, she said, “Isn’t there something else you could watch? Something educational?”
“Like that police show you had on last night?” Miss Honey took a swig of her Coke. “I don’t see what’s educational about some man chopping a woman into a hundred pieces and stuffing her in a garbage bag. I don’t see Shirley Temple running around with a hatchet.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Micah said. “Nice job of setting a good example.”
Charley winced. First the ring, then the garden, and now this. Coming down here was supposed to bring them closer, but they only seemed to be growing farther apart. “You know what I mean,” Charley said, wearily. The farm and her daughter — she worried constantly about both, was trying every trick she knew, and yet neither was improving. “All I came to say is I’m driving out to the farm after church. Micah, we’ll stop by the nursery so you can pick the seeds you want for your garden.”
“We’re not going to church,” Miss Honey said, as though the headline had been plastered all over town and only Charley had missed it. “We got a lot of errands to run for the reunion. So go in there and fix your plate.”
Between the heat, the ridiculous movie, and this last announcement, all at once, the sight of Miss Honey nursing her morning Coke and Stanback was more than Charley could bear. “Isn’t it a little early for that stuff?” She heard the edge in her voice and didn’t care. “I mean, is it even safe to drink?”
Miss Honey held the Coke up to the light, swirled it like fine wine, and took a long, deliberate sip. “I’ve been drinking Coke and Stanback every morning for fifty-some years and it hasn’t killed me yet. Now hurry up. We’re going to Sugar Town.”
On television, a pickaninny whipped out her harmonica and played “Oh! Susanna.” Bojangles couldn’t resist and started to dance, his eyes growing bulbous as he performed a noodle-legged jig and finally scurried out of the stable. Micah and Miss Honey looked at each other and laughed.
“That’s it,” Charley said. “You’ve got to turn that off. It’s lowering your IQ.” She marched over to the TV, punched the power button. “I’m sorry, Miss Honey, I won’t — First, it’s driving around without a map, then the reunion, now it’s — I can’t keep saying yes all the time. If I don’t find someone right away—” Charley felt her mouth moving, heard her voice, saw Miss Honey and Micah staring at her, their expressions a mix of focused attention and concern. It was the same expression hospital orderlies had, Charley thought, right before they wrestled the crazy lady into a straitjacket. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go without me.”
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“You know what?” Charley said. The realization had dawned upon her and she surrendered to it. “I’m not okay. I can’t breathe, because it’s hotter than the Amazon rain forest in here, and my kid is taking social cues from a tap dancing minstrel. I can’t find a manager to run my farm, and I’ve got some corporate thug threatening to run me out of business. All the black workers around here think I’m out to cheat them, I’ve got a stack of bills I can barely pay, and each day that passes, I’m this much closer to losing the whole goddamned thing.” The absurdity of it all. She almost laughed; probably would have, if it hadn’t been so serious.
After a long silence, Miss Honey said, “Well, good heavens. Why didn’t you say that before?”
• • •
Alone on the porch, Charley stirred salt and butter into her grits as a delivery truck pulled up along the gully. Violet sat behind the wheel.
“I thought I’d seen the last of you,” Charley said, jogging out to greet her.
Violet climbed down, brushed the back of her shorts. “Mother didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“After yesterday? She threw you out, remember?”
Violet raked her fingers through her hair. She had replaced her ringlet hairpiece with a long, straight ponytail. “If I took every mean thing Mother said to heart, I’d never speak to her.” She threaded her arm through Charley’s. “Mother wants to have this reunion, I say let her have it. The quicker she throws it, the quicker you can get back to business with your farm. I brought the van so we could get everything at once.”
It was actually more of a truck than a van, with “Frito Lay” stenciled on the side above a faded potato chip bag, TRUE VINE BAPTIST CHURCH arching over everything in bright red letters.
“Rev bought it at an auction in Baton Rouge.” Violet slid open the driver’s door and invited Charley to look inside. “He welded the bus seats.”
“Impressive,” Charley said, stepping down. “But I can’t go. The farm. It’s dying.” Stunted cane overrun with weeds, rusting equipment, broken tools scattered on the shop floor, paperwork she couldn’t begin to make sense of.
“It’s Sunday,” Violet said. “Everything’s closed. All you’ll do is wring your hands and make yourself crazy.” She took Charley by the shoulders and shook her gently, as if trying to rouse her from a bad dream. “Come on, girl. Let your mind air out a little.” Violet shook Charley’s shoulder again and looked at her expectantly. “Just for a few hours. It’ll do you some good.”
Charley looked out over the yard, past the camellia bush with its explosion of juicy red blossoms, past the towering live oak whose branches filtered the morning’s sunlight. “All right,” she said. “Especially if it’ll drag your mother and my daughter away from The Littlest Colonel.”
Violet scowled. “Good Lord, I hate that movie.” She crossed the yard, climbed the porch steps, then called through the screen door, “Mother, come out of there,” as though she and Miss Honey had never argued.
“Girl, don’t rush me.” Miss Honey, with Micah close at her heels, stepped onto the porch wearing a purple dress and white sandals that looked good enough for church. Her face was freshly powered. She struck a pose.
Violet laughed. “Mother, you kill me.” She took Miss Honey’s face in her hands, using her thumb to gently blend the rouge on her mother’s cheek. It was a gesture of such familiarity and closeness, it took Charley by surprise.
• • •
They rumbled out of town at a steady clip, the sky electric blue, the cane fields almost unnaturally green, and Charley felt her spirits lift for the first time in days. First stop, Mr. Nguyen, who sat on a milk crate beside his battered pickup parked along the road. He rose as the van approached, and flashed a cracked smile. Earlier, Miss Honey had referred to him as the Chinaman, but Charley thought she heard Vietnamese as he chattered with his wife, who pushed back the lids of Igloo coolers packed with fresh seafood on beds of ice — three types of shrimp, oysters, and crabs. Live red snapper thrashed and gasped in a five-gallon bucket. Miss Honey bought shrimp, her manner cordial but firm.