Delicious Foods (16 page)

You gonna make my ass late for the presidential cotillion, the man said. ’Cause that’s where I’m planning to take the forties you bringing me.

Eddie walked away backward with the bike, watching carefully to make sure the man couldn’t escape, and he hid behind a sedan at one point to be certain the guy could not get away. Then he leapt on the bike and pedaled frantically until he reached the liquor-store parking lot.

After a few tries, he found a Houstonite by the local convenience store who seemed outwardly immoral. He told his story and offered up an inadequate five-dollar subsidy. The young guy bought him a pair of warhead-shaped bottles of piss-colored liquid in two paper bags inside a third plastic bag with handles, which Eddie slipped over one handlebar and rushed back to the lot to deliver.

He found the man kneeling by the trailer, in position for prayer but cursing, snarling, biting like an animal at the crazy knot. He claimed to know voodoo, boasted he was a high priest, threatened to lay a curse on Eddie to rival the one laid on Ham.

By Papa Legba, nigger, you’ll be a nigger forever, the man spat, and your whole kin gon be niggers. Black dark evil muddy-ass niggers, too dumb to know they own name and so black you can’t see em in the
daytime.
Lips so thick they gotta eat through a straw, nose so flat they can’t breathe, hair so bushy housecats’ll get lost in it.

Eddie set down the bags with the bottles in them and stood next to the man, attacking the bizarre tangle of twine, digging into its tight knots with his fingernails, tugging and severing it when nothing else would work. Once the man found himself free of the handcuffs, he fell on one of the paper bags and tore down the side to reveal the forty, which he did not waste time admiring but twisted open and guzzled three-quarters of before he settled down enough to acknowledge Eddie’s presence again.

With his eyes on the second, he slowed his sipping of the first and regarded his captor with a certain resentment, a resentment Eddie suddenly understood that he might never reverse, even if he managed to sweet-talk information out of the guy.

Yo’ mama got in the Death Van, the bum said, punching the word
Death,
almost laughing.

Death Van? Fuck you, you lying s—

They come around with this here van, okay, and I seen a mess of folks get in thisyer van, but don’t none of em come back. Now they asked me to go, and I heard them saying they take folks off to do some wonderful job somewheres, but I said to myself,
What kinda job it is you don’t come back from?
He nodded as if Eddie had already offered the correct answer. Death, that’s the only job a nigger don’t never come home from. They prolly out there making some nigger-flesh dog food. Maybe I’m paranoid, or it’s a exaggeration, but something’s going on.

Eddie had heard or read the story about the man who goes to hell to get his wife back and eventually does bring her home, and even though he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it—school probably—or the details of the story, he believed that you could go to hell and bring people back safely.

Where do they come get people?

Just up the road a piece. Northwood Manor, near the Clayton’s supermarket.

Take me there.

The beggar refused, and as soon as he refused, Eddie snatched the undrunk bottle of yellow liquor away from him and moved backward, holding it above his head as if he might dash it against the concrete. This aroused a fit of shouting and cursing and then coughing from the older man, who looked wildly at the bottle as if it were his child. He rose to a standing position and lumbered toward the bottle with an arm outstretched as Eddie played a vicious game of keep-away around his intoxicated body. When they seemed to become aware of the game’s endlessness, the fact that Eddie would never give him the bottle and he could never capture it, the ridiculousness of the standoff became apparent, and neither of them could hold his laughter. Even though Eddie hated him and figured the feeling was mutual, the man then agreed to take Eddie to the last location where he’d seen the Death Van.

I reckon it ain’t that far, the bum said. It took a while, but Eddie managed to thumb a ride for them from a pickup, throwing the bike into the bed of the truck.

They called him Tuckahoe Joe, the bum explained to Eddie and the driver, or just Tuckahoe, or Tuck, because he had grown up in a place called Tuckahoe and because his real name was a girl’s name that a lot of men in his family had cursed each other with, so he went by the nickname instead.

I started using it when I played out, he said. Music, that is. I used to play blues music. You know what that is?

Eddie nodded, though he felt the stab at his intelligence.

Now I just live the fucking blues, Tuck muttered. Played bass guitar for a very popular fella called Willie “Mad Dog” Walker. For years. You heard a him? He’s T-Bone Walker Jr.’s second grandnephew. Or that’s what he used to say, anyway. “Only Got Myself to Blame”—you know that song? That’s him, anyway, his one big hit.

Tuckahoe sang a little but Eddie didn’t recognize the tune. Old folks’ music, he thought. Dead folks’ music. Tuckahoe told them that the band had toured the East Coast and then come to Houston by public transportation alone. They would take the bus or the train from one city to the next and then walk or hitchhike when there wasn’t enough of a connection. As if to verify his tale, he listed every city he had passed through on the way and how to hook up from one system to the next.

When you get to Houston, though, he said, you can go to Dallas or Austin or San Antonio, but between them and El Paso it’s all desert, so the band had to stop. Originally we stopped in Austin. Austin’s like a pitcher plant. Well, it was for me. You know what that is? A pitcher plant? It’s a plant that eat flies, like a Venus flytrap, but it catches them by having a sweet sweet pool of sugariness inside, down at the bottom, and slippery walls, so that when the fly land on the damn thing, he slip on down in there and drown in happiness. Come to think of it, New Orleans even more like that, but it’ll kill you faster. Anyhow, he said, tipping the first bottle vertically above his head to get the last taste of nectar, I’m still drowning in happiness.

The driver made a horrified face as Tuck drank, but said nothing.

Tuck looked at the label before placing the bottle between his feet and uncapping the second.

The driver took a deep breath.

The closer they got to their destination, the more Tuck’s monologue sagged and melted. He also had a hard time remembering exactly where he’d seen the Death Van. Facts contradicted one another; Tuckahoe was in Virginia at first, then in New York, names ballooned with improbability—We opened for the Rolling Stones in Memphis the night MLK got shot, he said—until finally the narrative exploded and the plastic masks fell off his accomplishments. Eddie tried to believe his stories out of sympathy, as he could sense the extremity of Tuck’s abandonment, but at the same time Tuck had become gradually more repulsive to Eddie during the ride and had widened the gap between himself and Eddie, not to mention the driver, in what was perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness. Eddie worried that he’d arrived at another dead end, with another disoriented person whose addiction made his mind too foggy to recall anything.

But only a few minutes later, Tuck got a flash of insight and suddenly demanded that their ride let them out a few yards away from the parking lot of a Party Fool, closed but still brightly lit. With the chain store’s harlequin mascot looming above on the roof, governing their every move with his scepter, they disembarked. The driver helped Eddie lift the bike out of the truck. Tuck removed the second, half-empty forty from its paper bag, chugging as he advised Eddie about how the drivers of the Death Van operated.

They’re picking on the people that’s the most out of it, he said. That’s what it seem to me. I don’t know how you going to get them interested as just a little boy. They only after the worst of the hookers, the junkies, and the alkies, y’see, people rocked out they mind. Hey, maybe they selling Negro skeletons to Baylor for research. After that Tuskegee shit, anything could happen.

They waited for an hour and fifteen minutes, until a navy blue minibus slowed to a stop twenty yards ahead of them with the smoothness of a panther, then everything went silent for a moment, until the next car passed a couple of minutes later.

For the first time in some time, Tuck became silent, contemplative, almost reverent. He took a sip of malt liquor and leveled his rheumy eyes at Eddie. You lucky tonight, kid, he eventually murmured. He coughed and spat. Or, not lucky.

An otherwise skinny woman with a round butt, wearing a thrift-store blouse, backed out of the minibus and hurried toward the two of them. Approaching with her hand thrust out, she introduced herself as Jacqueline Faire-LePont, planted her pumps in the gravelly asphalt in front of them, and asked Tuck if he needed steady work. Before he answered, she announced that she had it to offer, and spoke continuously about a wonderful place where he could flourish professionally. She briefly stopped speaking and smiled down at Eddie.

Yes, we need work, he said. But have you seen my mother? Her name is Darlene Hardison.

Jackie brightened immediately. Darlene? Oh yes! She’s your mom? Oh, I know your mother
very
well.

Tuck put a hand on the back of Eddie’s neck and whispered, Don’t be too sure.

Eddie lurched forward, about to run over to the minibus and leap in. Tuck grabbed his shirt to stop him. I think this the same people, he warned Eddie, but this here lady gon tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Then Tuck attempted to walk him in the opposite direction. They got far enough to be out of Jackie’s earshot, but then Eddie hooked his fingers into the older man’s pocket, putting in extra effort to keep him stationary, and succeeded in slowing Tuck down and kicking up enough roadside dust to cake their shoes and pant legs.

We have to go! Eddie insisted. You have to come with me.

Hell no, Tuck grumbled. He pulled Eddie’s hand off his pants. You go yourself. Your moms might be out there after all.

I have to go! Eddie searched his mind for a trump card. But what if she’s not there? And what if they do things to little boys?

The comment made Tuck freeze as if Eddie had slapped him. Eddie pulled on his pocket again, but Tuck didn’t move. After a few moments, Eddie looked up to see wet streams running under both of Tuck’s eyes. The ploy had worked almost too effectively; Eddie was shocked.

Tuck wiped his face with his fingertips. Oh, okay, for God’s sake, he said. I don’t want that on my conscience again. He told a sad story about his late brother.

Of course your son can come along too, Jackie said, once they got nearer to the minibus. We’ll get him in school. Are you Darlene’s husband? Great to meet you. What’s your name, sir? They all introduced themselves and Jackie continued her pitch. Now, the agricultural cooperative for which you’ll be working is one of the best in the country, she said. It’s called Delicious Foods. She opened a brochure to a picture of a courtyard with a kidney-shaped pool, then stopped and looked at Eddie.

You can’t bring the bike, though. Why don’t you lock it up over there? she said, pointing vaguely toward the Party Fool.

It’s not mine, Eddie said.

Jackie smiled. You’ll be back soon enough, she said. Eddie walked over to the entrance of the Party Fool, wrapped the bike’s chain lock around one of the posts of the shopping-cart corral, and returned to climb into the minibus, whose door had remained open the whole time. By then Tuck was inside, slumped against the window, already starting to fall asleep.

F
all kicking in. Nights was dipping into the sixties, and that made them Delicious people more comfortable in the evenings. Helped em rest easier, and damn sure kept them odors down in the dorm. Sometime Darlene took off one her gloves and put her fingers up on the sticky watermelon skins. She deliberately leaving fingerprints, hoping somebody gonna dust that damn melon for evidence and let her son know where she at. Way far away, folks from America and Canada and even farther be dropping them Sugar Babies and Golden Crowns on they Italian marble counters; blond children be biting down on that juicy red flesh, letting the sweetness ooze and dribble over they tongue and out the corner of they mouth. They wasn’t looking for no fingerprints on no damn melon. They just a-laughing and chasing each other cross a hundred acres of fresh green motherfucking garden full of yellow roses, flashing they bright brown and blue and green eyes, tryna spit seeds into each other hair. Them ginormous melons, the Parkers and the Sangrias, the Sunny’s Prides and the Crimson Sweets, they found homes too. The superiors said that some them Delicious watermelons made it all the way to Japan.

When the first harvest drawing to a close, the foremen start dropping hints ’bout pumpkins and squash and gourds, and the late-fall plantings of wheat and corn. They talking loud ’bout which ones of the feeble incompetents they gonna most enjoy letting go, like leaving gonna make them that much worse off. Crazy, but How could get a whole lotta workers in a tizzy ’bout that they gonna get fired. Of course that increased production ’cause everybody thought they gonna have to brave the streets on the holidays, dead broke and jonesing, going to beg mercy of they family when don’t nobody talk to em no more.

The season ’bout to sputter out, and Darlene starting to miss Sirius B. For so long she thought of herself as Nat’s wife, like Coretta Scott King or somebody who always gonna be married to a great dead dude. She living under the curse of his murder, always not thinking ’bout the blazing red rectangular eyes of Mount Hope on that night, and Nat behind em, hollering and melting. She ain’t hardly never stop hearing him whistle. All that grief and guilt done drove her out her mind to the point where if anybody tried to stand in the burnt-up spot in her head that she kept for Nat, it put her in mind of a eclipse. By eclipse we not talking ’bout a rare, beautiful cosmic happening—more like a freak event that done turnt a normal day dark.

When Sirius left, Darlene start getting all quiet, or grumbling shit in her head that even I couldn’t have convinced her to say. They used to joke together and make all kinda rebellious comments, the type of hogwash that How woulda docked their pay for. They had a secret habit of trading nasty lines under they breath when the other one nearby, snickering behind the ridiculous, strict rules at Delicious. For instance, Delicious ain’t let nobody have no utensils (people said ’cause of that whole spork-shank thing), but they also served some shit they called gumbo twice a week, and you had to tilt the lip of the bowl above your mouth or put your face in the bowl to eat that watery tasteless shit. And they ain’t never heat it enough. Jackie and em timed everybody damn showers to five minutes, even though the water took six before it would get partway to lukewarm. A cold shower could feel good in that climate, but not
that
cold.

Now Darlene had to face all that kooky bullshit on her own, same time she daydreaming ’bout the funny way Sirius use to raise a eyebrow at her whenever shit got too ridiculous. He had gorgeous eyebrows, she start remembering for the first time. Somebody mighta clipped them suckers off a mink coat and passed them to him.

’Bout a month and a half had went by since Sirius run away, and she bet he had got pretty far by that time. She ain’t find it tough to keep his secret on account a nobody could say nothing ’bout it or they gon get jumped. She bet that he had found Mrs. Vernon and that Eddie would know where his mother had got took to by now. Believing that Sirius made it out kept her calm, gave her some hope beyond the next rendezvous with Yours Truly. Not to downplay my importance or nothing, but Sirius escape proved to her that all them fears they ain’t usually said nothing about, that had to do with the work culture at Delicious, ain’t really been true. They could get out, maybe. Hope revved up inside her rib cage and she visualized herself quitting Delicious, walking out with some crispy-ass hundred-dollar bills in her hands. The watermelon harvesting had messed up her body, she all cramps and sprains and bruises. Even still, she sometime thinking ’bout a reunion with Eddie the way she think about a sunrise; the endless circle of working and paying the people who worked you for overpriced goods and no-star accommodations had kept most her thinking dark as night.

Not even How had said nothing ’bout Sirius leaving after Sirius done it. Usually How ain’t miss no kinda opportunity to put a motherfucker down if he couldn’t hack the hard work. But he ain’t chuck a single snide comment into the brother’s path. Didn’t nobody ask Darlene nothing, even though she knew that plenty of others had seen the two of em hanging by the brook, and just about everybody knew they was fucking. She thought she saw Jackie taking a real quick pause during the first roll call without Sirius, fast enough that it might not even been a true pause, but beyond that Jackie kept a total poker face about it. The silence around it be more scarier than if they had said shit. When they locked folks up every night, they took they guns and start hunting Sirius’s ass down like he a motherfucking rogue elephant headed for a nursery school. Every morning the underlings wondering if Sirius dead, if they had killed him, and if they maybe gon kill again.

A month and a half after Sirius broke out, in October, the crew gone out to them bad lemon groves, where it be some dinky li’l Meyer lemons, and Darlene going around plucking the tiny number of brownish-yellow examples out them thick leaves when she heard some shit happening a couple rows of trees away from where she standing on top her ladder, sorting through them branches for any old thing she could plop into her plastic tub. She heard a whiz in the trees, and right after that a wail so loud and psycho that it ain’t sound like no human being. A couple more cries like that and she recognize TT voice and held her breath.

With a crop so close to imaginary, any event felt like a reason to stop working a minute and find out what happened. Darlene stopped and bent down to listen and then followed the sound under the roof of leaves and stumpy tree trunks. The ruckus of other people feet going
whiff whiff
through the brush over to the noise let her know that she could get with the curious group, and she stepped down and walked over, going diagonal zigzag through the trees, moving faster the more curious she getting.

She found a bunch of Delicious people kneeling and standing here and there around TT, who wriggling in the weeds between the rows, howling and grabbing his own head like it’s a Sugar Baby he ’bout to toss in the truck. A whole lotta blood had came through his fingers. The crowd made a circle around him, watching with they mouths hanging open but not doing much of nothing. Without thinking, Darlene tore off her shirt and ran over to him in her bra. She forced the dirty tee around his hands to sop up the redness. He took the shirt and mopped it all over his head but he ain’t stopped screaming. She called him by his real name, Titus, the way his mama mighta did to get his attention and calm his ass down, but for a long time ain’t nothing change.

Then How voice, low in the back of the group, say that work need to start up again, like work could get back to work by itself, but she managed to ignore him till she got TT in a stable place. Since he okay with staying on the ground on account a his shock and dizziness, she gone back to hunting down them not-there lemons. After a while, the sun went down and a chill came up into the air like water filling a glass. TT got up and start tryna work again, but he real hurt. At the end of the day, Darlene seen that his tub ain’t had but four brownish lemons in it, and that meant he gonna be asking everybody else to share they food and they drugs.

Later, right before lights-out, she convince TT to explain what had went down, and even then he would only whisper. It wasn’t no conversation, he said. I asked How a question and next thing I knew he took a fat-ass log and opened my head up like a damn watermelon.

What did you ask?

I asked if anybody knew where Sirius gone and what happened to him, just casual-like, and that was the answer. You was tight with Sirius, Darlene. Don’t know why I didn’t ask you first. What happen to that nigger? Did he get loose?

I haven’t the foggiest, TT, she said, shaking her head. I wish I did know. I hope.

You do too know. You can’t play me.

Why is it important to you?

It ain’t! That’s why I thought it wasn’t no big deal to ask! I just wanna know. Did he get out?

I couldn’t tell you.

That means you know. You prolly going with him next.

You go ahead and believe whatever you want. Get some rest.

But she kept hanging out with TT—and I joined them, of course. She tryna drown the troubles out her mind, her not looking at him, him not looking at her. I tried to get em to a higher plane, but it ain’t gone much of nowhere; I was weak right then, mostly fucking talcum powder that they had sold on markup down at the depot. Jackie made the usual announcements to wrap up the day and send everybody to bed, and soon, what with all the activity, Darlene and TT become shadows to each other, like they be trees and shrubs spaced out on a hill in the damn twilight.

Once it got dark enough, though, TT start blabbing in a whisper with Darlene about the exact number of his debt as he calculated it on his own versus what they said he owed, and how in general couldn’t nobody make no sense of the hiring policy at Delicious. Jackie and How had picked up a alcoholic bum with a swollen leg with gangrene on it, he said, and the guy’s son, and the man had caught the terrible flu that going around and he up in the bed, and the boy wouldn’t never leave his daddy. TT had only heard secondhand, though. Them two supposed to have got put in a barn that’s further off, in a broke-down infirmary, to keep from spreading the disease. TT ain’t had no idea what they want with people in such bad shape.

They like a motherfuckin’ Hoover now, he joked. Sucking up old niggers and babies off the street. What a child and a invalid gonna do on a farm and winter season almost here?

They’re crazy, Darlene whispered.

What happened to Sirius? Did they kill him?

I don’t know, TT.

She said that shit to get him off her back, but saying the words made her think for the first time that she actually
didn’t
know. She start thinking maybe Sirius had got captured and killed without nobody on the crew finding out ’cause wouldn’t nobody say nothing. The idea cut real close to what had happened with Nat and bored a hole in all them optimistic thoughts she had stacked up in her head and now a ton of evil-ass doubts was pouring through that hole. After all the joking she and Sirius done ’bout Delicious, it had never crossed her mind for real that they might actually kill folks to protect theyself. She thought that ain’t nothing much matter to Delicious beyond the take for a given day, week, or month and whether you had shaped a twig into a shank and hid it in your sock so they could dock your pay.

Sometime when I be hanging out with folks and they start getting all into conspiracies and plots, I like to encourage em to get creative and keep thinking on it and believing in theyself. Everybody say you gotta believe in yourself. Your parents says it, and the TV say it, and all the damn movies. Of course Darlene li’l book say it too. So before I got done hanging with her that night, her paranoia done hatched five hundred little chicks and they had all took to peeping around in her head, more chickens than it be in the next room. She couldn’t sleep behind that, what with her mind tryna raise up all the possible chickens and figure out the truth without letting the powers above know what she knew, or even what she suspected. When you working hard, she thinking, you don’t really be getting paid, and you can’t go nowheres, everybody know the name for that. Everybody on the farm always comparing what they done to the olden days, but they just exaggerating ’cause they angry—didn’t nobody get paid back then. Ain’t that the definition of slavery? You don’t get paid? And if you had signed a fucking contract and agreed to the debt they kept piling on—well, everybody be quietly arguing on the definition of that shit all the time.

Darlene thinking ’bout dropping hints to How or Jackie, or ’bout finding the mansion where the owner of the farm lived. They said his name Sextus Fusilier, that he Gaspard cousin, and he be living way out yonder in the southeast part of the farmland. He sometime did a random inspection on groups, but he ain’t come to none the details she been on yet. Darlene figure she gon question that dude, or maybe she try to find some relative or friend of Sirius. She tried to remember the names of the people he’d mentioned in…was it Dallas? She thought of doing prayer, threats, voodoo,
eavesdropping. She had a idea ’bout getting the entire crew to listen in on any conversation between the high muck-a-mucks, but she let that idea go when she realized that some these sons of bitches would probably rat.

She grinding her teeth and flinching all night, kept her eyes closed while them imaginary chickens and them real ones next door clucked and flew around and every bump she heard made her sit up and try to figure out where it had came from. When she heard Jackie making noise out there, she froze up and listened like she gonna pick up some crucial information. After a time, a creaking come from behind Jackie wall partition, and a clip light snapped on behind it, lighting up the whole space a little bit. Darlene wondered if Jackie also doing the monkey while she coming off her high, and maybe she had decided to take a pill to calm her nerves. She want a pill herself. But when she listened closer, she heard Jackie getting dressed, like she on her way somewheres.

Even with her nerves, Darlene manage to get up from the mattress without making no springs creak, and with her itchy torn sheet around her shoulders, she gone down the far wall of the building, where the shadows be the deepest. She moving real quiet and crossing Jackie wall till she could curve her neck around and see what the supervisor doing. She open her mouth to ask something, but what she seen almost made her gasp. Under that clip light, Jackie had laid out a row of fluffy tubes on a low plastic end table. At first Darlene thought Jackie had killed a bunch of mice, ’cause them fluffy tubes also had tails, and it be a deep red-brown stain on most of they grayish-white bodies that look like a pattern on fur.