Delicious Foods

by James Hannaham

  Then the camera had went to Jarvis Arrow, and Darlene thinking, I remember that man’s face from somewhere. Sometime she be having memory problems. The dude pushed his thick black eyeglass frames up on the bridge of his nose and he shaking his damn head while he talking ’bout Delicious, or at least his version of what gone down there. Then they showed TT face, and the face start talking ’bout the chicken house, and he rolling up his T-shirt to show folks how long the scars be up his damn side and cross his back, welts that be looking like ginormous worms glued to his skin. Health care? He laughed. We didn’t get no kind of no health care. I laid up on my back with paper towels stuffed in my guts, biting a piece of a Styrofoam cooler to keep the pain down. Still can’t walk right, can’t breathe right out my nose.

  Darlene did remember that, though. She thinking how that TT had had a good sense of humor the whole time he sick, how he laughing at folks who fussed over him, and how he done told everybody he ain’t want no kinda special treatment and to treat his ass normal. But now he talking like this the worst shit that ever happened, and it sound like a outrage to Darlene, ’cause he saying it in front of the world. It felt like he telling family secrets to folks who not gonna give two shits. Darlene shouted at Jim Pommeroy to shut his goddamn mouth.

  From downstairs on the verandah Sextus snapped at her and Elmunda to shut the hell up. The men in white coats gonna take both you heifers away, he yapped. He silent for a second, then he goes, On second thought, don’t stop. That’d be the happiest day of my life.

  Then TT start talking ’bout a woman who brung her son to the farm and he start working there before he even working age. That made the shame in Darlene’s chest that been swirling around catch fire like a spark in a almost empty gas tank and she jammed down the mute button on the set, watching TT ugly lips curling around all them damn lies she could tell was lies without even hearing em. But inside, she known for a while that one these freaks gonna bring the operation to a end. She just wanna keep doing it her way, the way she already been doing it, taking it apart from the inside, and she got took aback that TT and Jarvis telling they side of it without saying shit to her beforehand. Now she thinking a whole bunch of official motherfuckers gonna drive up to the house and demand that she let em in and that she serve em; they gonna ask to sit down and want cups of coffee and tea and water and they’d be smoking up the house, but not the good stuff, and they gonna write down all the answers to all the hard questions, them questions that ain’t nobody inside the place wanna hear, let alone be talking ’bout with a camera up in they face.

  Darlene finger start inching over to the red power button on the upper left of the remote, and just when she ’bout to put it in place to press down, she seen Eddie face and shoulders show up on the screen. It’s only a picture, but the sight of him make her dizzy, and she cringing backward and lower herself into a seat in the recliner right next to Elmunda sickbed. By now the lady’s anger more like it’s a ember instead of a open flame. Elmunda had locked her arms cross her chest and had twisted her damn mouth over to one side, but she so annoyed that she couldn’t say nothing no more.

  Darlene moved her ass up to the front of the chair, then cut her eyes and unmuted the sound so she could hear TT talking again. She had to admit that what he saying ’bout the barracks and the depot and all that shit ain’t had no big-ass mistakes or untruths or whatever, but she couldn’t stand to listen to him tell his experience nohow, stuff so close to her own life, and making em sound all harsh and disgusting; she bet that Jarvis fool had told him what to say and how to put the place down so that sympathies gonna pour in and everybody gonna agree with his point of view on Delicious. If he ain’t stop, that stab wound he making into her past gonna keep slicing and getting all deep until it ripped open all the motherfucking memories she had went through during her time on the farm. They all coming back and stinging her like she done whacked a hornet nest: the good job she thought gonna erase all that shit she want me to help her forget, how she done lost her teeth, all the streetwalking with me, the stabbing, them boys with they beer cans, them yellow shoes, that goddamn piece of driftwood. Plus the way that she had put the last scrap of her faith in Delicious—all gentle, like she putting a baby chick that had fell out a nest back up in it—and once again the world had kicked her ass with a thunderstorm of bullshit and cruelty that knocked down the whole damn tree. If it had happened to some dumbass who be far away or not real, she thinking it almost be hilarious.

  She couldn’t hear nothing of the broadcast over her own thinking no more. When the news over, she got out her chair and left Elmunda almost steaming out her ears and tryna decide the next program to watch, skipping over channels and rejecting all of em with a grunt or a screech of hate. Darlene gone down that hallway with her arms all slack, looking at some shit couldn’t nobody see right ahead of her, and when she get back to her room and shut the door, she goes boom right down on the bed and done took a glass pipe off her night table. She put me into it and lit up, and I smiled at her with no face and fizzed and popped like usual, filling up the insides of the pipe with some thick-ass smoke. I opened a door inside the smoke and she done came on in and run down a unreal hallway past a whole bunch of rooms in the mansion I built for her until she found one with a fireplace going in front of a warm couch with a soft fabric that made her pussy shiver when she runned her hands over it. I put a blanket down the end. She watching the smoke float through the room for a while, then she put the blanket around her shoulders and be tugging it tighter, all the way over her head.

  Wouldn’t you know that right after we had got all comfortable together and Darlene lying in my arms of smoke, some damn phone that she ain’t seened on a stand next to the couch start ringing. Suddenly we back in the real mansion. She peek out from under the blanket and I told her not to answer no phone ’cause it ain’t a phone I had put there but she done it anyway and heard voices inside the phone, asking all kinda tough questions and demanding to speak to anybody who living in the house. She telling them voices to go the fuck away but they kept after her ass until she put the phone down. Sextus and Elmunda son, Jed, come into the room, six years old, and he talking the same as the voice, he asking what’s wrong with his folks in his li’l child-ass voice. Darlene could hang up a phone, but she couldn’t hang up no kid, and she tossed a empty plastic bottle at him.

  He dodge the bottle and come over to her. What happened, Miss Darlene? Why’s Mama shouting?

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  That’s not a answer. Did something happen? They were on the television.

  This child was a little bitch-ass detective.

  Darlene thinking ’bout telling the truth, but I said, Hell no, you not telling this child the truth! She told him, Nothing is going to happen to you or your parents, Jedidiah. She said that shit instead of Your parents fucked a whole lot of niggers over and they might could go to jail for a whole long time, so get ready. You got to protect a child, I said, and the best way I know to protect a child is to lie your motherfucking head off. She tried to tell me some shit ’bout Eddie when he round the same age, and how she feel bad for lying to him about his father, but I was like, Please. She pulled the blanket back over her head.

  While she still under the blanket, she saying, Don’t worry, Jed. Jed kept worrying and asking questions but eventually he took her advice when she went, Okay, you can worry, but go worry somewhere else.

  She blown out a sigh when the li’l boy finally disappeared. Even so, Jed had set her to thinking ’bout Eddie more and she decide for herself that it wasn’t no way she gon let Eddie talk to Jarvis or TT ’bout nothing that had went down. What they done had exposed her ass and made them weird voices come out the phone and out the boy, and she called Eddie up, ’bout to chew his ass out. For the first seven or eight times the number wasn’t the number and some angry fool started getting mean with her, like, Go away, bitch, go away, but she kept calling until the real number gone through.

  She got Eddie on the phone a
nd screamed like a train brake at him even though she ain’t want to. I thought it would get through to him and make him stop investigating with that guy on account a Darlene had everything under control and she could take care of the farm and them people who running the farm without nobody else getting involved or telling the world all what had happened there with the folks who running the company.

  Eddie tryna tell her to stay calm and that she ain’t sound stable, like that she had hung out with me too much. He said some hurtful-ass shit to her, like that she too tight with me, and he asked point-blank if she had stopped hanging out with me, and even with me there, she said yes, ’cause I often told her that whenever any motherfucker accuse you of shit you ain’t want em to be right about, you can’t just admit that they accusation be true, you gotta fight the fuck back.

  I am not an addict or a crackhead, Darlene said. I can’t smoke as much because of the way I have to operate the place, so now I smoke mainly at night if I smoke at all. Sometimes I don’t smoke for a full two days. And why is this any of your business?

  Eddie laughed behind that one. I can’t say I blame his stupid ass.

  Then Darlene told him that he think he too good to come back to Delicious and to her so what did Scotty have to do with anything? She told him she gonna figure out a way to get back at him if he cooperate with the investigation. He insulted her again, apologized, then he start pleading with her to quit me until Darlene could hear his wimpy ass start to break down and cry on the phone. Seriously. Darlene done pulled the blanket up off her head and sat up and leaned forward. We thinking we had the advantage at last.

  Both of em start screaming into the phone, and then Eddie hung up on her, so Darlene called back a few times and the angry man she called before on accident said some stupid shit ’bout a restraining order. Once Darlene got the number right, Eddie bitched me out and told his mother that she had stayed at Delicious on account of drugs and Sextus, and said some other shit ’bout what he thought she thought ’bout Sextus body, specifically his skin and the whiteness of it. There’s a lot in here that Darlene don’t remember, including a whole bunch of beefs that she howled and that Eddie screamed back at her, and then more voices on the phone, whatever.

  Couple days later, Elmunda seen a picture of Darlene on the TV and she called Darlene in the room and they heard Jim Pommeroy talking ’bout what Darlene had said, her own words going onto the screen and a scratchy recording of Darlene voice over the phone going, Nobody did anything wrong, and How dare you, and The truth will eventually come out, like it always does.

  I said to Darlene, Your own motherfucking son done recorded your ass behind your back. That’s fucked up. She froze; her jaw clamped. She couldn’t even comprehend that shit.

  Then we had to make all them strange people voices and the questions from Jed, and Eddie, and the angry-ass man stop coming through phones and televisions and faces and mouths around us, so me and Darlene just start booking down that smoky hallway I made for her fast as we could and slammed the door behind us. Darlene sat on the couch and then swung her legs up onto it, laid down lengthwise, and curled up into a ball. She wrapped the ends of the blanket round her feet like she a sapling ’bout to get planted. When she seen the phone still in the room, she sat up again and kicked the phone table so it toppled over and made a big thump sound on the floor. The phone be clattering and ringing at the same time when it hit the floor. Darlene yanked that blanket over her head again and I put my smoke arms around her, and me and her laid there till we couldn’t hear no noise no more.

  27.

  Trials

  While she putting everybody together that morning to go to the courthouse up in Oak Grove, Darlene feeling damn proud that it had took three years after them news reports for the investy-gators (as Sextus called em) to get any crimes connecting him to Delicious. Turnt out Sextus ain’t never run nothing called Delicious Foods, see, he had ran some shit called Fantasy Groves LLC that just subcontracted to Delicious and he told the law he ain’t known thing one ’bout what Delicious done to nobody. Darlene less proud that she ain’t spoke to her son much in all that time, but Eddie so fucking hardheaded, couldn’t nobody talk no kinda sense to his ass.

  It wasn’t too many folks wanting to come forward and say nothing ’bout what had went down at Delicious. Unlike some folks, they ain’t like the shame. Plus them detectives couldn’t hardly find nobody to ask nothing. Folks said after TT and Sirius and Tuck beat him half to death, How hitchhiked back to Juarez, and nobody ain’t heard nothing ’bout Jackie since she done left outta Monroe on a Greyhound bus. They got depositions outta Sirius, TT, Tuck, and Michelle, who made it off the farm after all, and that journalist, and of course outta Eddie, but Darlene wasn’t part of nothing, she ain’t even had to go to the trial at all ’cause they ain’t name her name in the suit. Most everybody else wanted to put the whole thing behind they ass. On top of that shit, the Fusiliers still had a damn good name in Appalousa Parish and far too many sonofabitches up in that area owed em too much shit, based on like Great-Great-Grandpappy Phineas Graham Sextus loaning a sack of grits and a horseshoe to some po’ white fool back in fucking 1843. Then shit kept getting mysteriously delayed and postponed, and certain folks on the prosecution side had had threatening calls made to they house and strange fires getting set in they garbage cans, and a Molotov cocktail done smashed through somebody picture window and burnt up half they house. Folks always tryna act like shit done changed, but don’t nobody even want shit to change.

  Darlene got everybody looking good to be up in that courtroom. She rubbed sweet-smelling wax in Sextus hair, stuffed that yellow handkerchief in the pocket of that dark suit she done got for him, made him look real fly, and when she lifting his legs in the cab and breaking down his chair small enough to go in the trunk, she thinking, Too bad nothing works anymore, and then she snuck a kiss under his earlobe made him grin like a fool.

  I said to her, His tongue still work, but she act like she ain’t heard that. She even polished Elmunda’s crutches and steamed out one her wrinkly-ass dresses so old it had got stylish again as vintage clothes. Then she buffed Jed’s Buster Browns or whatever. At the door, when the taxi had pulled up, Jed swiveled around to see Darlene in her Sunday best staying put on the porch, gripping the wooden support like she ain’t going nowheres even if somebody tried to pull her away and stuff her in that cab. Gaspard gonna meet you at the courthouse and unpack everybody, she said.

  Jed went, Come on, Miss Darlene, what you waiting for?

  I’m going separate, she said. Run along now!

  The taxi done a U-turn in the driveway and Darlene caught a glimpse of Elmunda looking up at the house, maybe at Darlene, her jaw all set, them eyes tight as a coin slot. Darlene let out a breath when she heard that gravel crunching under the tires switch to a loud engine noise and fade away down the hill. The intensity of the moment made it so me and her had to tiptoe upstairs for a little tête-à-tête, just to take that edge off, and by the time our taxi pulled up, we coulda sent it away and flown there ourself, we was so high.

  We got to the courthouse real late, after the trial already been started, but that ain’t bother neither of us none, since we didn’t hardly wanna go in the first place. Once they let us in the building, seem quiet as a airport at four a.m. in there, Darlene shoes was clippity-clopping down that hallway just as loud. We sparked up again in the ladies’ and lost our way to the courtroom, even though the place ain’t had so many courtrooms. Darlene hoping she gonna catch Eddie outside and not sitting in the witness box or nothing, testifying ’gainst Delicious—maybe they could have a conversation and she could convince him to drop the charges. She kept seeing brothers she would think was him from far away and then get close and be like Oh, can’t be him, he got hands. Just before we gone on in the right courtroom, she seen the security guard go inside and her heart went boom but I said, Darlene, calm the fuck down, they ain’t gon drug-test you right here.

  Darlene nerves had got stretc
hed to the extreme before going into that courthouse—partly she worried she still gon get charged as a manager of the Delicious operation, but I told her that she ain’t have to trip on that ’cause her name ain’t showed up on none of the official documents. At least we ain’t think so. She had did a smart thing and got herself paid as a caretaker, off the books, not as no partner in that ridiculous company. Couldn’t nobody prove that she had ran the business the last few years, and if they tried, it would crumble into a their-word-against-hers kinda thing. I said, You ain’t controlled nothing, you just had, I don’t know, oversight. All you done was paid the bills and the groundskeepers, ain’t let nobody buy the joint, and you done shrunk the farm down to something that kept just you and your bosses eating. They not gonna try to take you down with em. At least Sextus ain’t gonna do that.

  Besides, from day one she done changed the whole joint. The first morning back from the hospital with Sextus, she unlocked the chicken house, and at roll call she made a announcement to the whole crew that they was free to go.

  I’m making some immediate changes, she told em. A certain criminal element made it so that people didn’t feel they could leave here. I have informed Mr. Fusilier about that criminal element and we’ve taken care of it. Everybody filled in the blank that How and Jackie been responsible for the criminality, even though Darlene ain’t explained.

  To her surprise, motherfuckers ain’t just immediately broke out into a run away from that madhouse.