Delicious Foods

by James Hannaham

  The shortcut ended and Jarvis edged the car up onto a more navigable stretch of road, strewn with smaller, looser rocks. As they came near to what Sirius assured them was the edge of the property, a world they had not seen for years, a headlight, the first they’d encountered that night, barreled toward them from a distance. At first Eddie thought it was a motorcycle, but as the car got closer, he saw that one light had gone out. Only a series of turns and slight hills sat between their vehicle and the approaching one.

  Michelle straightened her back at the sight of the headlight and shouted, Pull over and cut your lights! Cut your lights! Pull over!

  Oh, come on, Michelle, Sirius said.

  What’s—why? Jarvis blurted.

  It’s the minibus! The minibus done lost a headlight and they too cheap to fix it. You motherfuckers.

  Minibus? Jarvis asked.

  Oh my God, she said. By then, the distance had halved, and a moment later the minibus stopped in the middle of the road, perpendicular to traffic, its blue flank blocking the way forward like a dead cypress in a swamp. As Jarvis hit the gas, prepared to make a spectacular swerve around the minibus, Michelle pushed Sirius’s seat forward, mashing him against the dashboard, and managed to swing the passenger door open and leap halfway out. TT tried to lunge over and pull her back in by the leg, but she kicked him off. The door rushed back and hit her shoulder, and then jetted out again. Jarvis stomped on the brake with his whole weight and the car halted at a diagonal twenty yards from the minibus. Sextus and How had already piled out and prepared themselves for a confrontation.

  The moment the car stopped, Michelle vaulted the rest of the way out of the car and, after running forward a few yards like somebody ready to fight, took a right turn into the rushes, churning forward with great difficulty, as though attempting to sprint through thigh-high water. Sextus and How shouted her name, begging her to come back, saying that they did not want to hurt her. But when she did not respond, Sextus removed the shotgun from under his arm and fired a warning shot into the air. Behind the steering wheel, Jarvis shrieked and a spasm visibly rippled through his body; Sirius steadied the journalist by gently placing his palm atop his sternum. Jarvis gasped. Little gems of perspiration decorated his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Darlene curled down behind him to avoid stray shots and told Eddie to do the same, so he scrunched onto his side in the hatch against the back of the backseat, using it as a barrier, behind which no one could see or shoot him, but from which he could peek out. Meanwhile, TT squeezed close next to Darlene.

  It seemed that How and Sextus—and Jackie, whose dark shadow Eddie could just make out behind a reflection in one of the minibus windows illuminated by the headlights—at first thought to follow and capture Michelle as she pushed through the vegetation, but the prospect of losing the rest of the crew for her sake maybe changed their minds and they let her run. He couldn’t see whether or not Hammer lay in wait inside the minibus.

  Sextus petted his shotgun lovingly and chuckled. It’s all gators out in that swamp, honey! Hope you know that! He said it again, yelling loud enough that she could hear, perhaps meaning for it to discourage everyone in the Subaru as well.

  They all jolted in their seats when Michelle hollered something back from far away that sounded to Eddie through the open windows of the car like, Y’all the fucking gators! You!

  Eddie rediscovered the quilt in the hatch and slowly edged it over his head with his forearms, leaving a small area open so that he could see past the seat back, through the ribbons of seat belt, and out to where Sextus and How stood expectantly. The two men adjusted themselves in ways that demonstrated their bravado, tugging their belt loops up, spreading their legs like cowboys. Sextus continued to stroke the shotgun, his index finger curling around the trigger. How touched the brim of his hat. With a phony courtesy that angered Eddie, he asked the people in the car to get out. Jarvis kept his attention focused on Sextus and How as he stepped out of the car with his hands up at his sides, treating them like the police officers they pretended to be.

  Eddie stirred under the quilt, but without turning around, Darlene whispered, Stay, almost like she was talking to herself. The car’s idling, she said. If we don’t get out then maybe you still can.

  Eddie thought he could still faintly hear Michelle’s hands and feet pushing through the brush. Darlene, Tuck, and TT emerged from the backseat on the same side, and eventually Sirius came around the passenger-side door. Eddie listened to everybody’s feet scuffling nearer to the minibus. Jackie turned on the lights inside the van. The two doors of the Subaru stood open like the wing casings of a flying palmetto bug.

  Where are y’all off to on this fine evening? Sextus asked, almost cordially.

  But when he and How saw the four of them for the first time in the peculiar light created by the Subaru’s lights bouncing off the minibus and the silvery moon, they both stepped back and their eyebrows rose. TT, Tuck, and Darlene had bloodstains all over their clothes; they must have looked like a terrifying mob.

  What the Sam Hill? Did y’all slaughter a bunch of my chickens?

  Where are these nice gentlemen taking you? How said, before anybody could respond.

  A few very uneasy moments passed while How and Sextus appeared to wait for some kind of answer from the crew, but all of them, excepting Jarvis, knew better than to give either of these men a response, truthful or sarcastic. Their silence inflated, and Eddie could imagine their eyes shifting from side to side, and the way they’d catch and throw back one another’s sidelong glances, either gathering up the courage to make a break for it like Michelle or letting the will drain out of them so that they could give up without losing face or catching a beating.

  When no one spoke, Jarvis kept starting to answer but changing his mind before a complete thought could fall out of his mouth, after which he would sigh, or say, Well, or Um.

  Then Darlene, almost like a nervous flinch, leapt at Sextus and embraced the shotgun, kicking his shins and telling him to let it go. How pulled out a Glock and raised its muzzle, but Sextus, even as he lunged back and forth, attempting to wrestle the shotgun out of Darlene’s arms, ordered him not to shoot her. Instead, How trained his gun on the others, though still trying to protect Sextus from Darlene, but in a matter of moments, the three others divided his attention enough to tackle him. TT in particular seemed to savor the thrashing they gave How. A shot reverberated through the air. Then another.

  Darlene had begun to howl a series of outlandish, frequently nonsensical accusations at Sextus—You killed my son! You tried to destroy me with your voodoo! You made Jackie control me with her pussy blood, you fucker! You tried to break me apart with your hair! You tried to keep me quiet by fucking me! Your breath put me in prison! You tried to get inside my brain and piss your name on the inside of my skull, you fucking zombie-master motherfucker! I love you! But I hate everything you’ve ever done including love me, you sonofabitch. You stole my handbag and you broke my glass crystal watermelon! Give me my rocks. Kiss me. Why won’t you kiss me with your mind! Fuck me with your gun! she begged him. I’m going to fuck you with your gun!

  While the things Darlene shouted sounded like the random curses and incomprehensible bullshit a crack addict might spew during a breakdown, they were so bizarre, more bizarre than anything Eddie had ever heard come out of her mouth, even during her worst experiences with drugs, that he soon understood what he thought she meant for him to do. She was saying the first things that came to mind in order to stall them, so that he could make a break for it.

  At the height of the brawl, Eddie looped a leg over the backseat and lay flat, then shimmied out on his elbows and knees and, using the open door to mask his movements, swung himself into the driver’s seat.

  They hoped I would do this, he thought. They want me to. He wasn’t abandoning them. He planted himself in the driver’s seat of a car for the first time, as opposed to the tractor Sextus had taught him to drive. Crouching behind the wheel, he stepped on the
brake and used his forearms to shift the car into drive. He saw Jackie see him; she sat up and immediately started banging on the inside of the minibus window with the flat of her hand to get everybody’s attention. Eddie hugged the steering wheel, turned it with his chin, and stomped down on the gas as hard as he could. The Subaru lurched forward and the passenger-side door closed from the momentum. The driver-side door banged closed against the back end of the minibus as it cleared.

  Hey! Jarvis shouted.

  Ten miles and thirty minutes later, convinced that nobody had followed him, Eddie managed to push the headlight switch forward with his mouth and turn on the brights. In front of the car, a brazen light the color of young corn exposed the night landscape, slicing through the future like a child’s eyes opening on the first morning of life.

  24.

  Scotty Is

  Surprised

  Once Darlene saw How and Sextus actually physically standing in the goddamn road, keeping her from quitting Delicious after she had let them motherfuckers chop off her son hands to get out, she admitted to herself that she been had. She felt like she falling into a sinkhole right above a landfill, down into years of liquid garbage, the putrid trash of all them misreported work hours, of spraining her ankles and breathing insecticide without no health care, of choking down undercooked and overcooked food without no nutritional value, let alone flavor, of them jacked-up prices down at the depot. For a split second Darlene left me and floated above the whole scheme like suddenly she could see what it had did to her and to everybody else it touched, and like anybody who had a second of clear thinking in the middle of a cyclone of bullshit, she lost her motherfucking mind.

  The whole time she been directing her anger and despair at herself, taking the blame for that short rope of events she done lynched herself on—them tight shoes, that headache, the asking for the Tylenol that led to the murder and the fire and addiction and the abandonment and finally Delicious. She remembered all what the book had told her, and realized the book had played her ass the same way.

  Goddamn this drug, she thought.

  That’s right. Scotty got the blame again.

  A lotta pent-up emotions and explanations for shit that had happened bubbled up into Darlene throat right then, hot and evil as a Tabasco gargle, and she gone to town on Sextus tryna get that shotgun out his hands. She had every intention of shooting his ass dead right there, and probably killing How and Jackie too, and then maybe herself. It’s true we was hanging out right before this all happened, but some of the shit that came out her mouth when she had that outburst took even me aback. I ain’t tell her to say none of that. Half of what she said just sounded crazy, but she more or less telling the truth. Then Eddie done the smart thing and hightailed it outta that hellhole, mom or no mom. We all ultimately on our own anyhow—ain’t that sad?

  It’s strange when you used to encouraging your friends to do all kinda mayhem and then all of a sudden you gotta switch gears. This time I remember shouting at Darlene, I said, Honey, you need to check yourself! Give that man back his shotgun and let’s get in the minibus and let this all blow over so we could get back to the way it used to was, with all the smoking! But D wouldn’t have it.

  Even while she tryna rip that gun outta Sextus fingers, biting his hands or licking em or kissing him, maybe thinking she gonna fool him into the idea that if he give up the weapon, she gon give up the punani. Who know what she thinking? You could be damn sure somebody gone nuts if I think they unstable.

  What did happen is that the shotgun gone off and blasted away one and a half of Sextus fingers. At that same moment, How turnt his attention away from Jarvis and Sirius and TT and fired a shot at Darlene head, but How had shitty aim and the bullet gone into one of Sextus lungs and later they found out it done shattered his spine. TT and Sirius and Jarvis jumped How at that point and Jackie took off in the van, leaving everybody in the dark, just struggling shapes outlined by the moonbeams.

  Jackie thinking she could head back to the chicken house and pretend she ain’t seened nothing. It ain’t matter to her that she left her boss out there for dead with a crazy lady tryna turn his skull into a jack-o’-lantern. Me and Jackie, we tight, I know how she think. Self-preservation come real natural to her, and in this situation a motherfucker couldn’t invent a better policy than self-preservation. I heard her say to herself that if Sextus and How died, she could just move on to a new farm, and if they made it she could tell em she flipped out and went to get help. She know how to bend reality into whatever tool could benefit her.

  Since Sextus ain’t had no use of his spine no more, he let go the shotgun like he done turnt into Raggedy Andy and fell into the dirt. All of a sudden Darlene holding a firearm right above the face of one the men she could hold directly responsible for a helluva lotta the shit that done fucked up the last six years of her life that she just had thought about. Nat had taught her how to use a shotgun back in the Ovis days, and she rusty, but she sure as hell remembered how to brace that bad boy ’gainst her shoulder for the kickback and the rest. Sirius and TT and Tuck had beat How down by that point; Jarvis done pulled off his shirt and had tore it into strips to tie the sonofabitch’s hands behind his back so they could all take his ass to justice. That plan seemed shaky to Darlene even at that moment. How you gon take a motherfucker to justice without no car?

  I can’t feel nothing. Sextus groaned up at Darlene. He having a lotta trouble breathing and foam be pushing out one corner of his mouth.

  Me neither, she said back. Her index finger wrapped itself around the trigger, and it felt good the way that shit cut into the underside of her knuckle. She touched the end of the gun barrel upside Sextus cheek, to his forehead, and then the end of his nose, like she deciding on the best place for the shot that gonna blow his whole head off. It gonna look like somebody thrown a jar of strawberry jam out their car onto the road. Strawberries her and the crew probably picked last year.

  Meanwhile Sirius, TT, Jarvis, and Tuck is tryna control How, who a big-ass dude and determined to get away. They got his arms tied behind his back, but he keep running off a li’l farther down the damn road two or three time. Finally the three of em done knocked him facedown and sat on him.

  Darlene raised the shotgun so Sextus could see, finna blast that sucker in the eyeball. She thought he laying there on account a he surrendered, that he gonna just let her shoot him.

  She go, Look. The gun’s kissing you. Kissy-kiss. At this point she just pouring on the crazy.

  Your stance is all wrong, Darlene, he grumbled. And you’ve still got the safety on, honey. You ain’t trying to kill me.

  She snapped out her insanity for a second and frowned at Sextus and went, Always have to be in control, even when you’re about to die. She undone the safety and kicked him in the side.

  I’m just telling you. I’m trying to do you a favor.

  I know what your favors are like. She kicked his leg into a awkward position, knee bent up and leg twisted backward, and it stayed that way.

  Just go ahead, he said. I can’t feel nothing from my neck down, Darlene. I want you to do it, I don’t want to be stuck like Elmunda where somebody gotta take care of me all the time, dress me and wipe my ass like a newborn. Do it!

  Darlene lowered the shotgun. If he tryna put some reverse psychology on her ass, it worked. She ain’t want to do what Sextus said no more in no kinda way, shape, or form. No, she said. I know what I want. Something in Sextus face got double handsome to her when he begging for shit. Them eyebrows be curling like a corn chip, and that li’l space between em getting all wrinkly. That dude been knowed how to get folks doing what he want on some sheer animal-magnetism shit.

  From the distance, somebody—probably Jarvis—start shouting at Darlene not to kill Sextus, like he just noticed she had put the gun in the man’s face.

  Tell me what you want, honey, Sextus said. I’ll make sure you get anything you want.

  Both of us rolled our eyes at that shit. Darlene took a
long pause and squinted at Sextus blue-white head writhing on the pavement just a foot or so from a giant pothole where his brains would spill if she pulled the trigger. Right then, TT start kicking How in the head something fierce, maybe tryna knock him out, and he be pushing Jarvis and Sirius and Tuck out the way every time they grab him and pull him off. His face got the expression of a man who want everybody to know that he believe in what he doing.

  A chilly breeze blowing up the back of Darlene shirt, and for a instant she could see what that landscape musta look like ten million years ago, underwater, when some continents was touching each other and the hills be rolling around on the seafloor and every last fish be a bizarre monster that couldn’t see nothing. Couldn’t no sunlight hardly penetrate down there. Everything around em made Darlene feel like she drownding under a mile of water.

  She come back into the moment, a li’l bit further away from me, looking down at Sextus sweet miserable expression and thinking ’bout them eyebrows. She thinking, They’re thick like Sirius’s and shaped like the hole in a violin. Some powerful shit in her be craving more time to enjoy the feeling of loving him and hating him and controlling his ass while he a invalid. She traced them eyebrows with the end of the shotgun and goes, Know what I want? I want a real job.