Delicious Foods: A Novel

by James Hannaham

  Michelle leant her head back far as it would go and roared, shaking her fists in front of her. Have you got a plan for We’re Gonna Die Up in This Joint? Do you want your son to grow up working for these people?

  They’ve got guns. We don’t. We’re miles from civilization. Don’t you owe them fifteen hundred dollars?

  It’s $1,749.35. But that’s a goddamn joke compared to what they owe me. Michelle folded her arms and cocked her head and cut her eyes at Darlene. At a certain point, she said, it’s not like I care anymore. Between being in this shithole, working seven days a week from seven a.m. sometimes to nine p.m. or later, and getting ripped off by these freakazoids for shit I don’t even know I did, not to mention shit I didn’t do? I will take getting shot over that—probably in the thigh, because you know they can’t aim worth a damn, right?

  They’ve got better aim than that. They might get lucky on your skull. You could die, Michelle.

  We’re all gonna die someday, Darlene. But I don’t want my damn body to get thrown on How’s trash heap when I go. They said your son was sixteen when everybody knows he twelve. You remember when How shoved him by his face that day we went out weeding? If they pistol-whip Eddie, or beat the crap out of him like they done to TT, he won’t survive that. People have disappeared, Darlene. Know how they always joking ’bout dumping folks in the swamp? What if it’s not a joke? Michelle pulled out a cigarette and start striking a match a bunch of times, then she finally got it lit. She sucked hard and blew a long blast of smoke above Darlene head. Darlene reached out to bum a cigarette, and Michelle gave her one and went, Honestly, I don’t know why I bother telling you. You’re probably just gonna tell them. Get a break on your debt.

  Okay, let’s figure something out! Darlene shouted, mostly to save her ass from feeling insulted by Michelle but also surprised how easily Michelle had made her mad what with accusing her ass of being a bad mother and a traitor. She couldn’t find that spark in her heart to be thinking ’bout no plan just yet, though. She all worried ’bout how she gonna do that and stay with me.

  Hammer and How came halfway up the steps of the bus just in time to hear what Darlene shouted.

  Figure out? What you got to figure out, Darlene? How asked her, like a cop. You know where your next high’s coming from, don’t you?

  Michelle stood and swayed back up the aisle, still smoking, then she twisted her neck in How direction. We’re talking woman things, she said with a nasty edge, tryna cut him out the conversation. You know what a woman is? You ever been with one?

  That’s a ten-dollar demerit right there. Better watch that mouth of yours, bitch.

  Better than watching that face of yours.

  That’s ten more.

  Now she owes $1,769.35, Darlene marveled to herself.

  How climb the rest the stairs, snapped to attention, and done drawn his gun. He point the barrel at Michelle, panting like he a unruly German shepherd, and goes, Fucking shut the fuck up. I’m docking you for insubordination. And put that cigarette out.

  Michelle giggled and covered her face. Then she flicked the cigarette out the window.

  A few nights later, Jackie, How, and Hammer locked the chicken house after lights-out and gone drinking somewheres, or maybe to get new people. Hands had got short even for winter. It still be a lotta work—they be harvesting cabbages, curing sweet potatoes, planting onions and chives, and tilling the bejeezus out the soil in January. But Sirius gone, and also a lady named Yolanda, and a dude who went by Billy Bongo flew the coop. A Nicaraguan dude they called Flaco had got real sick off the pesticides and then vanished. This brother nicknamed Too Tall had probably died, maybe of heatstroke. When they found him in the morning, Hammer said, He still breathing, and said he gonna take this man to the hospital—even though there probably wasn’t no hospital within a hundred miles—so he and TT and Hannibal stuck Too Tall in the passenger side of a pickup truck even though Too Tall not staying upright, and Hammer drove away. TT said that as they moving him, when Too Tall head and arm fell out the open window against the side mirror, didn’t no breath cloud show up on the mirror. Folks said that that ain’t prove nothing, but still and all, didn’t nobody never see Too Tall no more. And didn’t nobody bring up the name of Too Tall neither. Never.

  The workers ain’t know how far Jackie, How, and Hammer going when they went to pick folks up this time, but you bet everybody up in that chicken house heard the minibus noise and listened for it to fade out, putting they head sideways, raising they eyebrows up. Folks was relieved not to have to see no supervisors no more, and a few of em moving together to talk and smoke. Every so often Darlene would hear a li’l outbreak of laughter or a shout when one the rats done skittered through the bathroom—maybe somebody seen Charlie, this one nasty rat that got bald patches in his side from where he scratched hisself till he bled. Everybody said that seeing Charlie meant at least a week of bad luck.

  In the cover of the laid-back atmosphere, Michelle and TT snuck over to the mattress where Darlene and Eddie already gone to sleep. Michelle shook them awake. They decided that once everybody else went to sleep, TT gon lift everybody up to the window and out. They pretend to have a conversation, which turnt to a real conversation even though Darlene couldn’t think ’bout nothing except were they gonna go through with the plan and would they fail and die or fail and get the shit kicked out of em. Success ain’t even occur to her ass.

  When the group finally got quiet, and all they could hear was the clucking and rustling feathers from the hundreds next door, Michelle and TT stood up and made they move. Darlene adrenaline went schwoop. The dark be too dark; they looking like shadows of shadows up next to that wall. Didn’t none of em had matches right then, or God forbid a candle—they ain’t even sell no candles at the depot.

  Michelle be like, How y’all could be smoking so much and nobody got a light?

  Darlene grabbed Eddie hand and still had to grope her way around—you ain’t want to touch them walls, what with the black mold and them palmetto bugs and whatnot.

  Them palmetto bugs seemed to know shit, too. When somebody ain’t slept in a mattress for a day, a bunch of em would go to that mattress and hang out. They was the giant flying type, too. Then they got bold—sometime they run cross your toes or your face in the night or climb up your pant leg and you jump up and shout and do a crazy dance to shake em out and try to find em in the dark to kill them, but you couldn’t. Tuck said, I bet it’s like entertainment for em, even they know you can’t do nothing. I told Darlene that I knew for certain that them shady-ass bugs was informing on the workers, telling the management who had bad-mouthed the company in the off-hours. Some of em was robot bugs designed to listen in. Darlene warned everybody ’bout that, but they wouldn’t take her seriously. Their loss.

  Eventually Eddie helped Darlene get to the wall with the high window. But then, when they got over there, they had to move one the bunk beds against the concrete real quiet-like on account a the other workers who ain’t gone might give em away outta jealousy, or want to join up with em, and that would get too dangerous.

  Once they done set up the bed and TT standing on the top bunk and putting his hands into a stirrup shape for the first person to step up and out the window, he got cold feet and went, I got to get high before we go through with thisyer plan. He climb down and groped his way back to his bed and found a lighter, then he come back to take a hit under the window. By then everybody hanging out on the top bunk of the escape bed.

  In the light of the lighter you could see all the anxious black sweaty faces ringing TT, urging his damn ass to hurry up and get high so they ain’t get caught before they could leave on out the room and get the hell outta Delicious. Michelle and Darlene stopped cold, ’cause they also felt that taking a hit gon raise everybody level of nerve.

  TT said, Scotty always make me fearless.

  Eddie reach out for the pipe too, as they passing it round, but Darlene thumped him hard on the arm and said, No! Are you crazy? Not for
children.

  In the relaxing moment of sucking sounds and the milk-on-cereal noise that be effervescing off my wonderful burning rocks, it seem for a second like the whole damn thing wasn’t even gonna happen, that it gonna turn into three Negroes smoking in the dark on top a bunk bed while a child sit there watching. And that mighta been fine by Darlene, who getting—not physically tired exactly, but exhausted.

  I gave TT something he called smoky courage, and in a couple minutes he had took the pipe back, tried to cool it off with his breath, and shoved it down in his pants. He balanced hisself on the edge of the bed and got in the stirrup position. Michelle used the lighter to make sure everybody knew where each other was and how to get to the wall, flicking it every couple minutes like a bad movie projector so they would get the idea, but she wouldn’t distract nobody who wasn’t already in on the breakout.

  Since Eddie the smallest, TT waved for him to climb up onto the cot and put his foot into the hand-stirrup first. But when it’s two people up there, the frame start shaking and coming away from the wall and Eddie fell and yelled with his mouth closed. His mama went over and made sure he ain’t hurt bad and told him, Be brave, but them li’l doubts ’bout the whole mission come back. If Eddie gets severely injured, she thought, this escape thing isn’t worth it. The bed had also made a loud jangly sound and the four of em had to stop doing any activity for a minute while the light sleepers in the rest the room be waking up and stirring and tryna figure out where the noise had came from and if it meant the roof finally ’bout to cave in.

  TT yelled a apology, said he moving his and Hannibal bed and it had fell. That shit actually worked.

  Everybody laid back down, which took a real long time ’cause they waited for this big brother name Kamal to start snoring again, since they know he ain’t sleep ’less they heard some shit that sound like a garbage truck. This time Eddie refused to go first, so Darlene climbed up on TT hands, more bold this time, ’cause Michelle and Eddie had grabbed the frame of the cot and was holding it ’gainst the wall. Darlene couldn’t get her hands to reach this one spot just underneath the window ’less she climbed onto TT shoulders.

  The window be one them frosted safety-glass windows with wire running through it in a diamond pattern, had a metal latch underneath with a ring that you had to pull to open it. Some the same type windows was up near the ceiling, but Delicious had cinder-blocked em or nailed a board over em. Maybe the board had fell off this one, or somebody done pried it off already. It done clouded over like a eye with a dirty cataract. Hadn’t nobody cleaned up there in a long time, and when Darlene up there feeling around the sill, she stuck her fingers in a whole lotta gunk she figured was greasy dust and dead bugs and spiderwebs and chicken feathers and all kinda animal droppings that’s sticking to the ledge and to the glass.

  With all the nastiness, it seem less like a window to the outside than a caked-up oven door, like if they’da opened it and gone through they just be crawling into another cage to get they ass burnt to a crisp. If Darlene hadna spent the last half a year washing her face in a toilet bowl after the sink done broke, and going without showers for days on end till she could get to the front of the line before work started at least one morning, and if she hadna just had a few very long sweet drags on a pipe, she mighta turnt her head away from that window and spit up her dinner on the nape of TT neck.

  Still and all, she ain’t feel too hot probing around up there in the pitch-dark. She could only imagine the disgustingness she touching.

  The ring to open the window ain’t budge and Darlene got sick off thinking ’bout what might be on her hands, so they decided that TT need to give it a try. For that to happen, Darlene and Michelle leant the bed up against the wall and was holding it there while he climbed up ’cause he not that tall. By that time, seeing how long it had already took, everybody getting paranoid, so they put Eddie on lookout even though he keep saying he couldn’t see nothing.

  TT tugged real hard and almost fell off balance, and they found out the window be screwed shut, but they made a screwdriver out a piece of scrap metal and he got the window open. Darlene looking at the size of the window opening and the size of TT and she ain’t seen how TT gon squeeze through without his fat butt getting stuck and then nobody else would get through. But soon’s he put his head through the window and start tryna hoist hisself out, a bright white light gone on outside and he said he seen a dog down there barking. More like he tryna bark, though, ’cause this dog had laryngitis so bad that his barking sound like when you squeeze a broken toy, a whole lot of air with a li’l squeak on top. TT got down and Darlene got up and had herself a look.

  She shook her head, thinking, These people couldn’t even get us a guard dog that works right.

  She climbed down from the bed frame and she and TT told Michelle and Eddie ’bout the dog. They could hardly hear that dog, so each of them gone up on the cot and took a peek. The dog kept wheezing, and the sound struck em so funny and sad that they thinking ’bout going on ahead and jumping down anyways. That dog so old! TT said. What he gonna do, gum us to death?

  Michelle said, Fuck it. Life and death, y’all. She climb up on the cot by her damn self and shimmy up through the window to the outside, and right after her leg disappear through the window they heard her ass fall and start howling ’bout that she twist her ankle and here come the dog. Darlene get up to the window to look, and she seen Michelle tryna dodge the dog, ’cause he keep coming for her, same time as she climbing up over the fence, but that fence be ’bout nine feet high and got a double row of razor wire at the top, so she can’t go nowheres. At one point, she get halfway up the fence, but the dog chomp down her ankle and she had to kick his ass away while she still tryna climb.

  Darlene’s like, Just come back through the window, Michelle! But she ain’t listen. She so hardheaded that she still hanging on the fence just out the dog reach when the minibus come back, and I ain’t never seen nobody laugh and bust on nobody so hard as them three when they found Michelle out there, hanging on the fence and kicking her leg out at that dog face. They demerited the shit outta her and sealed up the window with new cement blocks the next day.

  In the end, the rest of em decided to wait. To get to know the dog. Darlene wondered how they coulda put a dog out there for such a long time without nobody knowing ’bout it—maybe the wheezing bark kept him secret—but a month later, when TT start making a new getaway plan, Michelle goes, The dog must have just got there. Probably that night, knowing our luck, and TT chimed in, They found the most quietest dog going. But vicious. I think they trained his ass to want human blood.

  Maybe ’cause the whole thing had happened in almost total darkness, or maybe ’cause didn’t nobody on the crew want to blow they cover, Darlene and TT and Eddie got away with not getting away that night. Michelle ain’t give them up or nothing. Nobody knew Delicious policy on leaving without terminating your contract ’cause they ain’t never said nothing after people tryna bust out. Seem they wouldn’t never admit that any motherfucker with half a brain would want to get away from that place. When you heard them sonofabitches talking ’bout Delicious, it was the place they told you about when they picked you up, the three-star hotel that got a Olympic swimming pool and a tennis court with gourmet meals, crazy as that shit sound. How act like the grind at Delicious be like he in charge of catering at the motherfucking White House.

  So if somebody disappeared and ain’t never tried to come back, which to them nobody in they right mind would, meaning that Sirius B was out his mind, which was not hard to imagine, you never found out for sure if they made it. They showed you Kippy’s boots. And if you tried to leave the premises and failed, them Delicious people ain’t want nobody to know you even tried, so they ain’t punished nobody but Michelle specifically for that, ’cause the whole crew done seen her fail. They came down extra-hard on Michelle behind that, but you couldn’t tell if that meant nothing, ’cause they came down extra-hard all the damn time, so what the hell could ex
tra extra-hard even mean?

  Even if a worker done tried to bail in a obvious kind of way, like booking down the road during the town run, How and them ain’t never accuse nobody of attempting to escape. Hannibal tried that and they just grabbed his ass and threw him in the van, and there was this blood smear on the back window for a long time from what they did to him after, plus a scar on his neck and a big bloodstain on his hat that he couldn’t never totally wash out. But they ain’t said nothing about no rules. They knew that wondering what rule you had broke gon make you worry more, make the whole joint a totally scary question mark. They wanted to keep your sorry ass running in place, weeding fields, picking fruit that ain’t there, and, most of all, partying with me.

  16.

  Summerton

  On rainy days, work didn’t always slow down, but it sometimes changed focus; the routine might include fewer outdoor activities related to harvesting, more indoor tasks, and maintenance. For the most part, the equipment at Delicious either did not work very well, or did not work at all. Most of the cultipackers had numerous missing teeth, and some of the crossbars holding them together had snapped from rust damage, come apart at the bolts and no one had ever repaired them, or the machines had received some nearly laughable stopgap patch. As for the other farm equipment, someone had wrapped the broken axle of a wheelbarrow back together with a large quantity of twine, while someone else had reattached the ends of several rakes with duct tape.

  To till the land, the farm still used a large number of moldboard plows, possibly from the 1960s, whose coulters had chipped, hung loose from their beams, disappeared, or, in some cases, become so corroded that their height regulators had fused to their beams. It appeared that management had appointed Hammer chief of maintenance, but only his proprietary exclamations of sorrow and guilt over the atmosphere of disrepair gave that role away, since nobody ever saw him do anything to actually take care of the machines.