Delicious Foods: A Novel

by James Hannaham

  They got up near the chicken house round 5:00, parked the car behind some bushes. Sirius had remembered that it was always this one moment for ’bout a half hour right after roll call but before lock-in when you could drive a car through kinda fast and people could jump in and take off, something Michelle had noticed first, but she ain’t never figured out how to get in touch with the outside world and work it out. She and Tuck knowed shit was maybe gonna go down ’cause Tuck done talked to the dude in the car and when How beating Darlene she talking ’bout Sirius coming back, so they’s on the alert. Right when How beating up Darlene, Tuck watching from a few rows down on that same detail and he seen Jarvis and Frankie making a getaway down the road. He figure while everybody gawking at the violence, he gon wave that Subaru down and get gone hisself. The car ain’t stop, but Jarvis slow down a li’l, stick his head out the window and then Tuck begging them to come back at roll call. Tuck told Michelle they said yes even though he ain’t heard nobody say nothing.

  That evening they seen the car and they snuck they ass into the corn and then into the car real fast ’fore anybody could see. They panting and sweating like they just run a marathon. Sirius told Tuck they gonna have room for ’bout five people with a few belongings, but one rule—he said he wouldn’t take nobody nowheres ’less they brought Darlene and Eddie. Sirius said to find some other folks who want to go right then and Tuck like, You crazy? But Sirius ain’t budge on that shit and Tuck had to tiptoe back over before they closed shit up and ask folks if they wanna get free without creating no drama.

  Tuck thinking he gonna have trouble keeping down the numbers of people who wanna go, but when he told just a few folks that Sirius B out there in a car right outside, the first three people went, Nah, all skeptical like they thinking he tryna trap em, and when he got all passionate and angry with em, talking ’bout how he telling the truth, and to go see for theyself, but the car be well hid behind them bushes, it made him look worse. ’Cause sometime the harder you keep saying you on the level, the less motherfuckers believe you. Lotta them had forgot that Tuck just a real bad alcoholic and ain’t hardly never dealt with Yours Truly. Or they said to theyself that his drinkahol had made him start seeing pink elephants and whatnot, like he ’bout to have a breakdown something. The brother can’t win. Hard-core addicts be judging his ass for being a alkie. Ain’t that some shit? He just hoping that nobody blab to How or Jackie. Who end up also agreeing is just TT, who by that time woulda said yes to a escape plan that relied on a combination of Jesus, Michael Jackson, and Bigfoot. Problem was, TT said he had a special stupid detail down near the depot he had to go to right that fucking minute.

  Tuck run back to the car and told Sirius that they gonna have to rescue TT near the depot. They had to wait until he got drove there, and then they seen that Gaspard still be in the store doing, like, inventory or some bullshit. Sirius told Jarvis to get out the car and go pretend to interview Gaspard behind the counter, and while he doing that, Sirius gonna jump out the car and go find TT. At first Gaspard tryna shoo Jarvis away, wondering how he even found the joint, but Sirius had told Jarvis to flatter Gaspard ass, and that worked. Gaspard wouldn’t say nothing ’bout the goings-on at Delicious, and he definitely ain’t want to say nothing with no tape going, but he did like to jabber his ass off ’bout everything else in the known universe. Jarvis kept him going just to give Sirius extra time; he damn sure ain’t get no information for the piece outta Gaspard, just some bullshit ’bout college-football history, a couple random stories ’bout a deadly tornado that happened forty years ago, and a lotta advice ’bout how to catch a fish with a string rolled around a fucking twig.

  While that shit be happening, Sirius start hunting round to see if TT in one them fields near the depot. It be some big grape-growing areas off to one side out there, surrounded by corn, and sometime maybe one or two people get sent out there, who they watch from a distance (but close enough to shoot), and if you be crouching down and moving real quick through the stalks, then you could maybe find somebody picking or putting on pesticides or fertilizers or what have you on them grape plants. And maybe escape the same way.

  Which exactly what Sirius done. He knew the area good, and it ain’t took him too long to find TT out there filling up some propane cannons and propping up some fake hawks on sticks. Both of them techniques supposed to scare off birds but ain’t never worked at Delicious. Sirius done freaked the hell outta TT at first, ’cause Sirius gone down the row of tomatoes next to his and come up through them vines, like he finna strangle him to death or something.

  He told TT that when it get dark enough, him and Jarvis and Michelle gonna go round to the workshop with they car to get Eddie and Darlene. TT and Sirius traded notes to make sure Delicious ain’t changed the program none.

  They had been through all that shit and they exhausted by the time everybody get to the workshop. Tuck the first in, and he seen Eddie up there in the barn and opened the side of the door that Eddie wasn’t hanging off, and he got a good look at him and Darlene and made a expression like somebody done smashed him in the face with a drink. Like with the glass. Which woulda been the worst shit to happen to him because he’d rather have drunk the drink. Of course he already drunk on ’bout seven of them li’l Popovs since he had got back from the depot, and he knew that it ain’t no promising situation up in there, but the opportunity to book the heck outta there might not come again for some time. He thinking, Act like everything cool. He said, like, Hey, y’all. Here’s the dealio.

  Eddie blew his stack and went, Nigger, get me free before you tell me the fucking dealio! I can’t feel my fingers.

  Tuck stuck the last of his Popovs into his pants pocket and squatted down to take a look at the number that How had did on Eddie wrists, and yes, he stone-drunk, but still what he seen be like a plate of Chinese noodles with a bunch of nigger fingers sticking up out of em. He look at it like it’s a alien done come down out a spaceship and spoke French to him. He start tugging and turning the whole mess round in his hands, like he tryna find the end of a knot, someplace he could loosen part the cable and pull something through something else in order to free up Eddie hands, but everything so tight that he couldn’t get started. He pull in one place, it got tight in another; he follow a thread of vinyl and that somehow led to a part going through a hole in the chain. He pinched them rusty handcuffs and they ain’t budge. Meantime Eddie thinking Tuck having trouble just on account a the alcohol, and when it start taking too long, he got to yelling at the old man that he a idiot and a drunk, and that ain’t make it no easier for Tuck to do what he tryna do. Then Tuck remind him of the night they met, how Eddie done tied his hands up, said he ain’t had no kinda obligation to do what he doing, and that shut Eddie’s ass right the fuck up.

  But after a minute or two, Eddie start saying, Get the shears and just cut it! Tuck gone and took to ransacking all the toolboxes over by where Eddie putting up shelves, and he couldn’t find em; meanwhile Eddie start shouting the description of what’s a pair of shears at him. Tuck could find only a pair a pliers and a flathead screwdriver and he thinking he gonna use em to pull up some the binding stuff. Eddie squirming around like a hog in a lasso and told him to get back there and look exactly where he left them shears, but when Tuck got to the precise location he seen they wasn’t there. That’s when Eddie knew that How had took em deliberately so he couldn’t get outta that spiderweb of chains and cables. Tuck said he thinking he might could find hedge clippers in another place by the chicken house, but then they heard something outside that sound like somebody coming closer. Tuck edged on out the barn, saying to Eddie that they would see him again that night with Sirius B and figure something out.

  For a while, ain’t nothing happen. Which a bad kind of nothing because it meant that ain’t nobody show up with no medical supplies to deal with Darlene injuries, which was moving toward getting infected, and ain’t nobody come around with no food, not even that scalding-hot extra-salty broth everybody called water so
up, the soup that, for all them chickens running around, ain’t had no kinda chicken flavor nowheres near it. Michelle used to say, Didn’t no chicken even look in the direction of this shit, meanwhile every damn morning I’m spitting out feathers. And that would crack everybody up and the joke made the soup go down easier. But Eddie and Darlene ain’t had no nourishment to speak of, no water, and plus Mama starting to come awake and jonesing hard. There be this bumpy noise somewheres in the workshop that Eddie couldn’t figure out what it was.

  But then he realize that the noise he heard be coming from this one corner, and when Darlene woke up, they look over there and seen Charlie the Rat sitting in the corner, doing his li’l scratchy back-leg-behind-the-ear thing. Charlie seen em see him and looked up like, What? He ain’t go nowhere neither, like even he knew they couldn’t hardly move they own self, let alone go chasing no rat. Them palmetto bugs musta told him. He sat up on his raw back legs and point his nose into the sky like he gonna enjoy watching some shit go down. Like he had put down some his li’l rat money on the outcome.

  22.

  We Could Get You Free

  Tuck, Sirius, Jarvis, Michelle, and TT made it to the workshop, and while Tuck, Michelle, and TT started bustling around and making noise as they argued about how to cut Eddie down from the cords and chains holding him to the door and tried to find the right tools to do so, Sirius remained utterly silent. Eddie noticed all this in his peripheral vision. For a long time Sirius stood motionless near the door, staring toward Darlene, and then, very slowly, in stark comparison with the activity around him, he made a path toward where Darlene lay, as if he were a deer hunter and she his prey. Eddie took note of Sirius’s advance on Darlene, his stunned reaction alone revealing to Eddie who Sirius was. Sirius had apparently lost the ability to close his mouth, but Darlene, despite her agony, could not prevent herself from chuckling when she saw Sirius.

  Look who it is. Darlene laughed. She seemed to gather strength from his presence.

  I guess I finally made it, Sirius said, his voice catching with self-consciousness and what sounded like despair.

  You didn’t have to wait so long, Darlene said, like somebody about to kiss somebody. At this point Sirius knelt down to whisper to her, and Eddie could no longer hear their conversation.

  Still, from his vantage point tied to the door, Eddie could almost feel the tenderness radiating from Sirius. Sirius had eyes nearly the size of strawberries, and almost as red, and when he looked at you, it felt like he pitied you, and maybe loved you like a relative. Anybody might have wanted to save Eddie, considering where he’d wound up, but Sirius was obviously ill-equipped for the job; a man of deep thoughts, spiritual sayings, and compassion—Eddie had heard from the crew that in his music, Sirius preached nonviolence, mercy, tolerance, and cosmic deliverance, like the second coming of Dr. King or somebody. Eddie thought he might like to know that sort of brother in his day-to-day life, to go to for advice and such. Darlene had frequently told him his father had some of those qualities—she went for that type. But when you’ve got to do some urgent work of the sort they were about to do right then, Eddie thought he’d rather have a no-nonsense fellow in his corner, somebody who wouldn’t overthink it.

  But somehow in the confusion that dominated the scene, TT placed a pair of bolt cutters in Sirius’s palms and gestured for him to make an attempt at freeing Eddie’s hands. Sirius rose from his conversation with Darlene and moved toward Eddie, delicately testing the tool. After a few moments of paralysis, he worked the cutters into a bunch of different areas but couldn’t do more than snip little wounds into the sides of the chain and expose some of the sheathing on the cable. Then he tried using the bolt cutters to free Eddie from the hole in the door, but there was a long rusty metal guard running the length of it, which prevented him from making even a tiny slice.

  Take the damn door off the hinges, Darlene wheezed.

  But Michelle thought that would only saddle him with a gigantic piece of equipment and keep him grounded even more than if they hadn’t done a thing.

  In a silent, creeping way, it became obvious to Eddie, though nobody breathed the words, that the easiest way to get him free—something that the others had probably started thinking about a long time before he understood it—would be for him to leave his hands behind.

  Tuck kept saying, Now we could get you free, we could get you free. But for the first few times he said it, Eddie thought Tuck meant to encourage himself; it didn’t dawn on Eddie that perhaps Tuck wanted it to seem like Eddie had come up with the idea first. And when he realized what Tuck meant, and why he wouldn’t be more specific, Eddie’s head filled with a rage hotter than the blue flame at the end of a blowtorch.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time as the others milled around, discussing options. Instead he tried to explain the complexity of the situation to himself in his head, and then by looking back and forth in a certain way between Tuck and Sirius B. Never at Darlene. Tuck and Sirius semicircled his dangling body anxiously, not so much keeping their distance as seeming to fear the next step; apparently neither of them could muster the energy required to move forward. A sympathetic tingle passed through Eddie’s nerves and veins, and he felt sharply that he shouldn’t take his fury out on them, as they were victims too, nearly to the same degree.

  With the time we have, I don’t see an alternative, Sirius fretted.

  Doctors can put em back nowadays, Tuck said. He had found the circular saw. He held it, unplugged, in his right hand, almost casually, as if he planned to use the blade to scratch an itch on his forearm. We’ll save em, he said, and then repeated the phrase.

  Eddie’s anger rose even higher. More than anything else, he wanted, ridiculously, to show Tuck that he wasn’t holding the saw properly. Idiot, he thought. Sirius busied himself by gathering up a few of the longer pieces of the sheathed cable; Eddie tried to catch his mother’s eye, but she appeared to be having an intense discussion with Scotty—she wouldn’t look at Eddie or come close to him in a way that somebody might later connect with what was about to happen.

  We’ll put em on ice, my man, Tuck said. Eddie listened to his voice for any undercurrent of payback. The songs of Willie “Mad Dog” Walker played loudly in his head.

  Tuck plugged the saw into a plastic adapter that screwed into a light socket. He tested the distance between the end of its slack and Eddie’s position at the door, then tugged on the cord attached to the lightbulb and moved the whole operation when he found that it wasn’t quite close enough to do the job accurately.

  I can’t do it, he said.

  Do you mean you can’t reach, or you can’t do it? Eddie asked.

  Can’t do it. Just can’t. Can’t even look at the doing of it. It’s too…He took a long frowning pause.

  After all that, you’re going to go soft?

  Go soft? I am soft, bruh, he said. When it come to something like this.

  Sirius decided that the group should quickly make some rules about the procedure. He suggested that Eddie close his eyes so that he wouldn’t know who had done the job. But that didn’t pan out when Michelle said it would be obvious once he opened them again, and everybody else would know and give it away, so he’d find out immediately no matter what.

  You should all come in close, Eddie said. Then it won’t be so obvious.

  Nobody liked that idea.

  At last Tuck found a way to loop the power cord from the circular saw over a nail sticking out of the door above Eddie. The saw swung there like a pendulum, like the border between Eddie’s life before and who knew what. Eddie would need only to raise his wrists toward the blades if somebody stuck the plug in and the power went on.

  Darlene spoke up, voicing her hopes. Maybe the saw will cut through the chain and the chain will fall off? she said. But that went against what everybody else could see would happen, and what Michelle and Tuck had braced themselves to deal with. Their brows knotted together.

  I hope so, Mama, Eddie said hopelessl
y, as his anger crested, like a fever breaking, and fear took its place. He stared toward his mother. Darlene took a very quick glance at him and their eyes met for an instant.

  Looking back later, from the distance of St. Cloud, Eddie would say that he reckoned he’d done well. Best thing that ever happened to me! he’d say. How could I have become the Handyman Without Hands if I had hands? I wouldn’t give up that experience for anything in the world. It’s unique, it set me apart from any other Negro stranger, especially up in St. Cloud. I do believe that God called me to be the Handyman Without Hands. People who have everything and everything works, those folks don’t even notice that they have it. But set an obstacle in a man’s way and he can see his whole life differently—not that everybody in my position could’ve done what I did. But if you’re stubborn like me, and you have to struggle to do what other people seem to do without trying—hell, without even thinking about trying—it changes your thoughts and your behavior. People who get the special treats of life think it’s easy, think anybody can do what they’ve done. I’ve seen some rich folks focus so hard on everybody they think is above them and who gets more than they do that they actually think they’re on the bottom. I tell you, the bottom is crackheads like TT and Michelle and Hannibal and my mom, out in that boiling heat, hunting for a brown lime on a barren tree. No, there’s worse than that. But it’s so much worse that if you saw it, you’d quit the human race.

  Sirius apologized, then began to sing a slow ballad that Eddie didn’t recognize—badly—until Tuck asked him to shut up.

  Eddie closed his eyes, stiffened his wrists, and imagined what was to come. Immediately he forced himself to think of something else—his backyard in Ovis, a rare memory of his father watching him play in the sun on a breezy Saturday.

  The solution everyone agreed upon, to protect the identity of the cutter and to reduce Eddie’s terror, was that he would wear a blindfold. Darlene knelt behind him, wrapping a sweatshirt over his face. I can’t stay, Eddie heard his mother whisper to him. I’m going to walk as far away from this barn as I can so I don’t have to hear anything, I’ll cover my ears and I’ll wait right outside with these rags once I get the all-clear. It’s too much.