Authors: James Hannaham
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.
N
aturally 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 weekend 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?
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.