Delicious Foods: A Novel

by James Hannaham

  In the late afternoon of their reunion, three men had followed Darlene up the path asking where she had gone. She responded by introducing Eddie as her son, and their attitude switched to a more jovial, relaxed one; pretty soon they sheathed their weapons and shook his hand. But the mood didn’t last long, and they hustled him and Darlene back to the sleeping quarters, where he got his first look at how her life had changed. Though he had clamored for them to bring Tuck as well, they kept the old guy quarantined.

  Not even the chicken smell or the concrete of the barracks or the locking in at night bothered Eddie enough to make a fuss after finding Darlene. She’d introduced him to everybody at the place before he noticed anything untoward about the atmosphere. The novelty of a kid among the workers made everybody there curious and excited. People now wanted to play the incomplete, broken set of Connect 4 that had gathered mildew in the corner—you couldn’t use the last row because the chips fell through; they usually played it as Connect 3. TT gave a tour, pretending to show off a luxury suite; Hannibal taught Eddie an elaborate soul handshake. A child had arrived, and you had to show a happy time to a child, regardless of the circumstances.

  By supper, the room calmed down, as everybody dispersed and tugged the matted plastic wrap off their green cardboard trays before munching privately. Darlene sat at the edge of her bunk, its metal bar creating an impression across the backs of her thighs. When she talked to Eddie about the place, her voice grew lower, softer, more urgent. Habitually, she scratched the bug bites on the back of her neck, the small of her back, and her legs.

  Sirius got in touch with Mrs. Vernon? she asked. Is that how you found me?

  Serious? Who? No…

  Darlene’s face didn’t move for a few moments. You can’t stay here, Eddie. Don’t let them make you stay.

  But aren’t you glad to see me?

  Yes! You know I am. But it’s just—I wanted to get out of all this first.

  It seems okay to me.

  Darlene laughed uncontrollably, then slower, until she started to cough. Eddie slapped her on the back, and she twisted her torso out of reach. She lit a cigarette.

  You need to go to school.

  No, I don’t. I’m smart enough.

  We’re not going to have an argument about that, she said. You’re going.

  Under other circumstances, Eddie would have fought her, but it struck him that Darlene had made a motherly gesture, and that caused a wave of happiness and relief to whip through his body like wind through a bedsheet on a clothesline. In his mind, he flashed to a moment in the future when she would act like a real mother all the time; he ached for it.

  Is there a school? he asked. Is it far, the school?

  No. It’s around here somewhere, Darlene said, as if she’d misplaced it. She threw her pointing finger in a vague direction behind her and to her right. Cigarette smoke swirled around her hand. Out there, she said.

  When he asked about the color of the schoolhouse and the character of the teachers and the other kids, Darlene frowned and stopped giving complete answers and then excused herself to go to the bathroom, stubbing her cigarette out on the bottom of the bed frame. Eddie occupied himself by playing with the rusty bedsprings as if they were a musical instrument.

  After about twenty minutes Darlene returned, having turned jittery and unresponsive. For a while Eddie tried to continue the conversation. He repeatedly attempted to find out whether she was okay, but the exchange became one-sided, her answers less and less like answers until eventually they resembled the growling of dogs or the cries of birds. He’d seen her in a condition like this before, though not as severe, and he knew to find something else to do as he nursed his plummeting optimism. He helped his mother lie down, his shaky hand supporting her underarm.

  Eddie started working the next day. The night before, when Darlene told Jackie he was her son, Jackie had seemed interested in his hands. She put them up against hers and marveled at their large size compared to her own grown-up hands. That morning, How sent Eddie out with Darlene and a few other women on a weeding detail, to a wide field of young sunflowers. The topography of the field and the low height of the plants allowed Eddie to work at some distance from his mother without losing sight of her. Initially he enjoyed himself, running up and down the rows and depositing tiny clover-like plants and saplings into a cardboard box, but it didn’t take long for How to find fault with his work and ruin any pleasure he’d found in the job.

  At first there weren’t enough weeds in the box for How, and he claimed that Eddie hadn’t done any work at all. Later, when How stomped out into the rows to check the kid’s progress and still found it unsatisfactory, he grabbed Eddie by the face and shoved hard enough to knock him down against a pile of rocks, where he wailed. Michelle, the mouthy one with the pigtails, protested just as loudly and pledged, to the tacit agreement of the other women, to make a report. To somebody. Somewhere. At some point. Then she tried to run, and How cursed and lunged at her, but instead of pistol-whipping her once he’d grabbed her wrists, he pulled her thrashing body back to the group.

  If anybody made a report, nothing came of it. Although Eddie had only just turned twelve, there were a couple of grown workers from Mexico about his same height, and How would assign Eddie to work with them on projects that kept everybody low to the ground—weeding, laying down fertilizer, or transferring shoots from the plastic-covered greenhouses to the outdoors. At first, the other workers wondered occasionally about Eddie’s age and muttered confused sentences about why the company would allow someone so young to do the same work as older people. They clicked their teeth and said, Shame, declaring that somebody ought to do something, yet never volunteering themselves. Somebody better tell Sextus, they’d say. This could put him out of business, they’d muse, perhaps uncertain whether that would be bad in the long run. But the more Eddie began to resemble his dirty, rough-handed, tough-skinned coworkers, the less frequently the comments came, and as Eddie blended in, eventually they dwindled away entirely. Soon enough he’d grow into the job, and his age wouldn’t matter anymore. At Delicious, what you couldn’t see didn’t count.

  In her more sober moments, Darlene never stopped urging Eddie to leave, to get back in school, but she mingled her urgent instructions with deeds that kept him nearby, bound him with tight hugs and tears, slept spoons with him.

  You favor your father, she told him. In so many ways. Headstrong. Hardheaded man. You talk like him. Good-looking. So good-looking. She held his chin and studied his face. It’s like I’m looking at him when I look at you.

  Don’t you want to leave? Eddie asked.

  I owe them a lot of money. And with you working now too, we can pay off the debt faster and eventually start to make a profit. You can work here, but not out there.

  Why not? Don’t kids have rights?

  Darlene’s face opened. She touched Eddie’s fingertips against her own. Don’t worry, she said. The Lord will see us through. You have to think positive to get positive things into your life. She told him about the book.

  Eddie accepted her burden as his own, partially because of his attachment to her, which grew stronger when he saw her need for him and felt his own for her, and partially because neither of them had any ideas about where else to go or how to get there. They might as well have been standing at the edge of an ocean, dreaming of a raft. Every so often he remembered his mission to bring her back from hell, but he couldn’t remember how that story went. Something about an apple?

  Eventually they released Tuck from his quarantine, and when he joined the rest of the workers in the chicken house, he made sure, when he could, that the kid got the proper amount of rest and he argued for his pay, and checked that he had a method of saving up, though Eddie loaned so much to his mother that it never did add up, something he never admitted to Tuck. Like the rest, Tuck grumbled that Delicious had put Eddie to work too young, but Tuck’s meek protests produced either answers that weren’t answers or violence.

  H
e’s capable of doing the work, How explained, so he can work.

  Tuck’s protectiveness inspired Eddie to arrange for Tuck to pay some attention to his mother, but after a while it became clear that something he couldn’t understand kept them apart. Still, in his mind, he thought of them as his parents and invented an elaborate home life the three of them would share after they left the farm, a fantasy he tried to keep to himself but sometimes referred to accidentally.

  On Halloween, as a thundershower blasted across the sweet potato field, warm droplets poking and slicking all the leaves and drenching everybody, since they had to continue working, the man the management had identified as Sextus Fusilier himself finally drove his red tractor through on an inspection. Supposedly these took place every month, but no one could remember one for the last six. They happened as randomly as possible, because, the crew said, Sexy enjoyed the element of surprise.

  Why he chose to drive the grinding old tractor was the subject of frequent debate. Some said that despite its slowness, Sextus could use it to get to anywhere on the vast grounds via a system of shortcuts from his house that no one else knew about. He could get around faster than you could by taking the roads, all of which were unpaved and full of potholes the size of salad bowls. Others called it a purely sentimental attachment, claiming that Sextus still craved a connection to the land he had grown up tilling and which had enriched him to the point where he didn’t need it anymore. The vehicle had become quaint and unnecessary, but its symbolic value to Sextus grew with the years. A legend circulated that his father had used what little he made from his beet farm to take out a loan for it and died the day after he finished paying it off.

  You could hear the tractor coming long before it arrived, first a faint buzz and then a growl almost as loud as a helicopter descending on a dusty field; you’d see a cloud gather at the horizon and soon a hatted figure in overalls bouncing in the tractor seat, then he’d be on you. He always seemed to have a grin on his face. At first it looked like delayed amusement at a joke he’d heard earlier, but in his presence you got the sense that the joke was you, and your life, and the fact that everything in it depended on his mood.

  Why wouldn’t a man with that kind of power be happy all the time? TT had said. I know I’d be happy all the time.

  Happy? asked Hannibal. Man, I don’t get it. He smiling all the damn time but the motherfucker ain’t never happy.

  This time Sextus came in rain gear, a bright yellow triangle atop the red tractor, with his craggy face sticking out of the top, the drawstring of the hood pulled tight against it. If Sextus hadn’t created an atmosphere among the workers and the supervisors of fear mixed with admiration, Eddie would have laughed, the man looked that comical. But as soon as How heard the engine in the distance, he immediately gathered everybody for the 5:00 p.m. roll call, at 4:50, probably to make himself look efficient, maybe to gain the workers’ cooperation, their gratitude.

  Sextus swung his leg off the tractor and took his place beside How and the group of wet black and Latino men and women. They wore torn cutoffs and dirty T-shirts that had darkened with sweat and rain, and most of them fidgeted tightly, chafing against the requirement that they stand still. The rain surged, sending gray streaks through the air and muddying the dirt.

  Sextus, after consulting with How, turned his attention to the roll call and surveyed the group of workers. They might or might not have met his approval; his perpetual smile made it difficult to tell. Usually the only indication they received would come later, from How, who would describe Sextus’s dissatisfaction and threats without being able to prove that orders had come directly from him.

  As the crew, including Eddie, called out their names, Sextus’s expression modulated to a more neutral smile, down from a beam to a blank grin. He took several steps toward the group and his attention settled on Eddie, who stood in the second row next to Darlene. He grabbed rain off his forehead and threw it aside, then stepped back to face How and Jackie.

  How, how old is that young fellow in the second row?

  Chuckling, How looked down. Oh, Eddie. He don’t look sixteen, does he?

  No, he don’t.

  Don’t worry. It’s cool.

  It’s cool?

  It’s cool, How insisted. He’s a good worker.

  Eddie had never heard How say anything so complimentary; he planted his feet and stood a little more proudly.

  The brighter smile returned to Sextus’s face, and he slogged through the mud in a rectangle around the group, as if this cursory glance could tell him very important things about them. As he closed the rectangle, he returned to the same spot in front of the group and examined Eddie more carefully. Eddie looked away, and then peeked, looked away again, then raised his head but didn’t face Sextus, the way an infantryman might stand in front of a general. Sextus untied and pushed back his yellow hood, revealing a head of silver-streaked, thinning hair.

  Sixteen? Sextus pondered yet again, almost to himself, but with the suggestion that Eddie might want to say the word himself to confirm. Eddie turned his head so that he could figure out what his mother thought. She hugged herself against the rain, which had begun to let up, except that it had brought a post-thundershower breeze and a chill along with it. She stared at Eddie vacantly, then her irises disappeared under her lids, and with a faraway sigh, fluffy with surrender, she looked away.

  Sixteen, How said again, this time more definitively.

  After a rudimentary inspection of the grounds, the yellow triangle returned to the tractor and started off through the mud. Then it got stuck and everybody had to do unpaid overtime to help unstick it.

  Tuck said, Damn, kid, you just lost four years off your life in one minute.

  15.

  Inertia

  Naturally some sonofabitches always looking for a way to get out. Like Sirius B, and who knew where the hell he ended up? Eddie done had enough after they pushed him down by the face on day one, but he tryna rescue his mama, so he couldn’t go yet. Darlene could see the point of other folks leaving, but what she gonna find out there? Probably a worse life. A life full of Unknowns, Don’t-Know-If-I-Cans, and Sure-As-Hell-Can’ts. Could she quit me, could she get on her feet, get jobs? What jobs she gonna get anyhow? Looking that type of change in the face could terrify the shit outta people who ain’t had them problems. And now Eddie done showed up at Delicious—safe, thank the Lord—so she ain’t even had no reason to run. Working for Delicious, you couldn’t call it luxurious, you couldn’t even call it nice, but it be steady, honest work for a li’l bit of pay, and nobody judging you ’bout no drugs, and that made a difference in Darlene life, allowed her some dribs and drabs of pride now and again. How always saying, Work be the salvation of man, and Work gonna set you free. He only said that shit to make fun of you, but he kept saying it and you heard them words in your head. And at certain times on certain days, you believed them words.

  Darlene kept on tryna weigh the crazy danger of running against the safe misery of staying. Trouble was, they weighed the same, so without deciding not to decide or nothing, she ain’t made no decision at all. Inertia came in and kept her doing what she did. Now Michelle, she want to get the fuck out every damn night. Whenever Darlene talking to her, she be pointing out flaws in the system that she or everybody could use to they advantage and escape. Michelle had a great big forehead and talked a lot a lot. When my girl got going, she’d correct herself ten times before she could finish a damn sentence—she had a jumbo-size brain up in there, thinking and scheming 27-9.

  If Michelle stood next to Darlene during roll call, she always say something like, Lookit—it’s only three of them. Then she move her eyes over to How, Jackie, and Hammer. And Jackie’s so out of it all the time, Michelle said, she like a half a one. It’s twenty of us. When they take roll inside one of these days, she’d say through her teeth—look at that window up in the corner. They don’t never put the padlock on that at night. When they go out and drink and smoke on the weeken
d nights, somebody could lift somebody up and push them out and they could run. You could hoist me up, Darlene. You’re strong.

  Darlene would go, I’m not that strong.

  So you saying I’m too big? That I’m fat? Is that what you saying?

  No, you’re not fat! You need to stop that. I’m saying I’m not that strong. But once you get hoisted, who is going to hoist me?

  The week after New Year’s, Darlene and Michelle had a opportunity to talk down at the depot ’bout what they plans for the coming year. Hammer and How had just gone inside to buy they own beer, and left the crew on that souped-up school bus.

  Michelle ain’t waste no time, she bounced out her seat and down the rubber rug in the aisle to the back, where Darlene had hunched down into a seat, just pinching that glass tube between her fingers and sucking up my thick smoke.

  Michelle goes, You know what’s my resolution? My resolution is to get out this hellhole—dead or alive. Truth be told, we oughta do it. Tonight. Just run. They can’t keep us here.

  But what’s the plan after Let’s Run, Michelle! Darlene said. Do you have a plan for They’ve Got Guns? Do you know where we’re at so we can figure out where we’ll go? No. We don’t have a compass or anything. We could run all day and night and maybe we’d run in circles, or run the wrong way and end up deeper inside the farm than before. What then?