“Let’s hope Micah’s Corner didn’t get the worst of it,” Denton said. “If there’s water hung up out there—” His voice trailed off.
“Just say it.” Charley sucked on the cigarette, coughed and choked.
Denton shook his head. “Let’s wait and see.”
“Hell, I’ll say it,” Alison said. “Close as that quadrant is to the bay, it’s bound to have some water on it. You heard about the tidal surge, didn’t you? Everything south of Patterson is underwater. And don’t get me started about the damage out at the Point.”
Denton punched Alison’s shoulder. “Shut up, Alison.”
“Why you barking at me, Denton? Hell, I didn’t do it. I’m just telling her what she’s in for.” Alison turned to Charley. “Brace yourself.”
But there was no bracing herself for the way the tidal surge, the great wall of rushing water blown in from the Gulf, had had its way with Micah’s Corner. Half the quadrant was under hip-deep water. Where it had receded, a thick layer of sludge and grit coated the fields, as though someone had dredged the Mississippi and smeared its sediment across her land. For a long time, the three of them could only stare.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Alison said, a match trembling in his hand. “I thought this was a category two.”
“It wasn’t the wind,” Denton said. “It was the water. Storms are getting wetter every year.”
Neither man, normally strong-willed and confident in his own way, had the courage to look at Charley. And standing between her two partners, a peculiar coolness settled over her, a sensation similar to the calm she figured most people experienced just before they died. “I don’t see any point in kidding myself,” Charley said. She looked out over her fields and thought how her mother always accused her of being a dreamer. Well, she wasn’t a dreamer anymore. “It’s over. I’m ruined.”
• • •
Yet, back at the shop, Denton insisted it wasn’t over. While Charley wondered how she’d tell the crews she couldn’t afford to keep them on, Denton retreated to her office.
“An extra twenty-eight thousand,” Denton announced an hour later, tossing the yellow pad on the desk. They’d need pumps to drain the water, money for extra diesel and overtime, and a petty cash fund for spare parts since they’d be running equipment twice as hard. “We’ll have to cut more premium cane to replant Micah’s Corner, so that’s less we’ll have to sell come grinding. You’ll have to include those lost dollars in your costs.”
Charley looked at him blankly. “You know I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Got anything you can sell?”
For one criminal instant, Charley saw The Cane Cutter’s broad back and steady gaze. If she sold him, she’d be selling her father’s memory; she’d have sold everything he cared about. “I’ve got nothing,” she said. “I’m telling you, it’s over.” Denton pushed the yellow pad toward her. Without looking at it, Charley tore off the top sheet where he’d made his calculations and jammed it in her back pocket, saying, “I’ll take care of it.” She waited till Denton left the office, then she walked calmly behind the shop where no one could see, planted her hand on the side of the building, and vomited on her boots.
Tapped out. Finished. Done. That was what Charley thought as she slid into the Volvo and drove away from her farm without another word to Denton or Alison. In minutes, she was out on the road still littered with branches and debris. But for the devastation, it was a beautiful day with the blue sky wide open, the big yolky sun overhead, the dark trees lengthening along on the horizon. Charley increased her speed and felt the wind’s moist breath on her face. She could drive out to San Francisco or New York, assume a new identity and start over. But what about Micah? How would she explain that they were leaving again, and not just leaving but running away? How could she look Micah in the eye and tell her she’d given up because cane farming was too hard; because she was exhausted and afraid and out of ideas; because the life she’d dreamed of wasn’t turning out as she expected?
• • •
The gently rolling hills and golden pastures dotted with hay bales and the wide dry riverbeds of the East Felicianas looked nothing like the south Louisiana Charley had come to know, and as she crossed into the parish, northeast of Saint Josephine and an hour’s drive from Baton Rouge, her eyes drank up the scenery. She followed the country road through Slaughter, where the ragtime legend Buddy Bolden lived before he moved to New Orleans and lost his mind, and less than an hour from the Mississippi state line, she stopped at the gas station in Clinton and bought a Coke, then sat in her car for a long time, watching people come and go from the courthouse in the tidy town square. The courthouse, made in the Greek Revival style and painted a crisp, gleaming white, matched the row of lawyers’ offices across the street, their columns looking like matchsticks, the way they lined up so perfectly. The whole town looked like a picture postcard, Charley thought, so serene and unblemished, having never been touched by the storm; nothing at all like the wreckage she’d left behind in Saint Josephine. Why was it that some places had escaped nature’s wrath while her small corner of the world seemed constantly tormented by misfortune? It didn’t seem fair.
When Charley finished her Coke, she checked her watch — almost three o’clock, which meant it was almost one o’clock in Los Angeles. She took out her cell phone and dialed her mother’s number.
Lorna answered on the first ring. “Charlotte?”
Charley heard glasses clinking in the background, silverware tapping delicately against bone china plates, the echoey voice of a woman speaking into a microphone followed by applause, and guessed that her mother was at a fund-raising luncheon for one of her charities. Until that moment, Charley had decided, stubbornly, not to call, reminding herself every time she was tempted that her mother had mocked her decision to move to the South. But Lorna’s voice was like warm milk, and hearing it now, all of Charley’s defenses and justifications fell away and all the rawness she’d worked so hard to ignore came right to the surface. Her eyes filled immediately with tears, her chest tingled with a silvery tightness, and just like that, she was five years old again, aching to be held and comforted.
Charley took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you? Where’s Micah? I’ve been watching the news. Please tell me you’re okay.”
“We’re all fine,” Charley said, thinking nothing could be less true, and heard Lorna sigh with relief. “John boarded up Miss Honey’s windows, which I think made all the difference.” She went on for a few minutes, but at some point it seemed pointless trying to describe what the hurricane had been like. It wasn’t something you could sum up with words. It was like Mr. Denton said, you had to live it.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Lorna said. “I was worried. People here have been asking and I didn’t know what to tell them,” which Charley understood was Lorna’s way of chiding her for not calling.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “I should have called before now. It’s just I’ve been so busy since we got here. There’s so much to do. But you can tell everyone we’re fine. A little shaken and there’s a lot to clean up, but I think we were lucky.”
“That’s very good,” Lorna said. “I’m so relieved, because from here the news reports looked so frightening — all that rain, and the flooding, goodness. I really can’t imagine.”