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 we 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.”
Behind her, the crew was crumpling up sandwich wrappers, beginning to reassemble, slipping on hats and gloves. Charley consulted her watch. “I’d better get back to it. Thanks again for the hat — and the Energy Cane.” She shook his hand, which didn’t feel like enough.
Remy climbed into his truck and started the engine. Then he paused. “Hey, California.”
Yes, California, Charley thought, that was who she was; that far-off place her father, still a boy then, dreamed of as he lugged those water buckets; the address he made up—6608 Sunset Drive — and practiced writing in the corner of his homework papers until he was seventeen and old enough to escape. California. The place her dad had asked to buried, in a plot facing the Pacific, rather than the red clay of his youth. She was all those things. Always would be. Charley turned to look at Remy, who sat in his truck with one arm on the open window.
“I know it’s planting and all,” Remy said, “but you can’t work every minute of every day.”
“Is that so?”
“Those beers you owe me.” And here he hesitated ever so slightly, a look of doubt, as though it was occurring to him that he was being hasty, too forward, swept quickly across his face, but then it passed. “There’s this zydeco place. They book some decent bands.”
“Keep talking.”
“You like to dance?”
“Will it help me lose my accent?”
“Maybe, maybe not. You’d have to give it a try.”
“Sounds tempting.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Remy smiled. “Couple of beers, some good zydeco, you’ll be talking like a Louisiana girl in no time.” He turned the key.
Charley caught the last bars of the All Things Considered theme song before the local news began. “NPR?”
“What?” Remy said, smiling. “Cane farmers can’t listen to public radio?”
• • •
On the fourth day of planting, the hurricane moved into the Gulf of Mexico, and though it wouldn’t make landfall for two days, the outer rainbank would reach Saint Josephine in twenty-four hours. Charley and her team had planted seventy-five acres, but they still had one hundred twenty-five to go. She’d given the crews the option of evacuating, but Romero and the others insisted on working until the last minute. In the morning, they managed to plant fifteen acres, but by noon, Charley was nervous. The weather was disturbingly good; the clouds white as chalk, the sky blue as a gas flame.
“Time to pack it in,” Denton ordered over the walkie-talkie. There was no mistaking the concern in his tone.
Once they were all back at the shop, Charley, Denton, and Alison gathered around the old Zenith TV in her office. The forecasters downgraded the hurricane from a category four to a category three, which meant evacuation was optional. Still, there was no way of knowing where the storm might hit, whether it would swerve up the eastern seaboard or hover in the Gulf, gaining force; and in the meantime, they had to decide what to do with Romero and his men.