Authors: James Hannaham
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 extra 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.
O
n 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.
One day during the rainy spring six months after he’d arrived, Eddie happened to be on detail with Hammer and a few other workers in the garage with the mostly intact roof, as opposed to the makeshift coverings that had become permanent fixtures.
Oh Lord, Hammer griped, almost like somebody suffering in a church pew, do we have a lot to do here. Look at all this. He stepped around a leak dripping from the ceiling to survey the disorganized, musty space, and then, overwhelmed, made a gesture with his hand first toward the crew, then toward the chaos, implying that somehow the two should interact. Get to work, y’all, he told them. He scampered toward the garage doors, and after a few moments Eddie smelled cigarette smoke floating in from his general direction.
The crew milled around in confusion until Eddie suggested to Tuck and Hannibal that maybe they should start organizing the place by putting like things with like, exactly the phrase he’d heard a teacher use in grade school. In minutes, the three of them were delegating various responsibilities to the rest of the crew members; some of them piling hoes and shovels near one another, separating the useful ones from the broken ones, others taking inventory of bags of lime and concrete, a few more stacking paint cans, sweeping, and clearing out floor space. Eddie found a stash of lightbulbs and decided to replace the many broken lights on the three tractors stored in that particular garage (and later many others) and to patch up part of the paint job on one of them.
The spirit of cooperation and focus produced a nearly joyful frame of mind in the group, raising the collective mood despite the worsening weather. For the first time in weeks, Tuck broke out in song. His version of Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” perfected the song’s bittersweet quality, and some of the other guys joined in, responding either with grunts and encouragement or by trying to learn the melody and sing along as Tuck gained conviction and roared each new stanza a little bit louder and gruffer. Then he and everybody else, to the extent that they could follow, sang “Struggling Blues,” “Disgusted Blues,” and “Troubled ’Bout My Mother.” At times Tuck sang directly to Eddie, the lyrics standing in for what he could never express directly. But then Hammer came back into the garage and waved his hands disapprovingly without saying anything coherent. He adopted a pained look that gave everybody the impression that they all had to stop singing not because of any imminent punishment but because they had screwed up by finding a way to make the work bearable. Nevertheless, the crew had discovered a secret portal to escape the tyranny of their superiors, and Tuck continued to lead them in singing the blues whenever possible; someone else would lead them less effectively when Tuck wasn’t available.
One afternoon they’d journeyed out to pick carrots, a grueling, thankless task, especially since few of the vegetables had grown very large or looked particularly healthy once you shook the dirt off the plants. Eddie sometimes heard other workers complain that some of the produce ought to go to feed them, and some folks would sneak a bite of something whenever they could, despite the strict rules against it, and How’s assertion that he had once fined somebody four hundred dollars for biting a sweet potato—and not even a clean one. It sounded like bravado, but Eddie wouldn’t have put it past him.
By midafternoon, the temperature leveled off. A parade of cumulus clouds lunged across the sky, occasionally providing shade in the middle of the vast flat field. Eddie could just make out the nearest line of taller trees if he squinted into the hazy distance.
Hammer had parked the school bus in the field, its cab pointed in Eddie’s direction as he trudged toward it, his tub halfway full. He approached and walked down one flank, hearing voices reverberating inside. Only when he turned the corner to hand his harvest to someone did he notice Sextus’s well-maintained antique tractor parked behind the truck, and Sextus himself at the helm, spine erect as a porch support, gripping the wheel as one might a horse’s reins.
Eddie failed to make himself invisible.
Hey, Sixteen, Sextus called out.
Eddie froze. He looked back and forth at Sextus and at Hammer, who stood by the truck counting tubs and dumping their contents into the payload, for confirmation that he could respond without repercussions; it seemed to be the case since Hammer didn’t register any concern. But by that time, he’d taken too long to reply.
Why’s your bin half empty, Sixteen?
All these carrots are heavy, sir, he explained halfheartedly, at a low volume.
Sextus asked him to repeat it twice. It came as a surprise to Eddie, but not a relief to his wounded pride, that the boss responded with hearty laughter rather than punishment. Later he wondered whether Sextus had heard him the first time and asked him to say the phrase again just for his own entertainment.
I work fast, he said.
This set Sextus laughing harder.
Even Hammer could not deny Eddie’s ability, though. He do, he said, as if trying to jam a plug into Sextus’s laughter.
I hear you also fixed all thesyer taillights and such. You’s a good fix-it man?
I reckon.
I got some stuff up the house could use some fixin.
Maybe I can fix it.
What’s the biggest thing you ever fixed, son?
A TV.
The sound of Sextus’s laughter slapped back out over the field. A TV! Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit! That so?
Yes, sir.
How’s about I come get you tomorrow and you have a look at some of what’s broke up there. I got one of thesyer new computers and I’ll be dang if me or Elmunda or anybody up the house can get it to print. You think you can handle that, Sixteen?
Nothing beats a try but a failure, Eddie said.
What Sextus called tomorrow turned into ten days, but eventually the boss came looking for him in the chicken house—in his own vehicle, not the usual tractor. In the interim, Eddie had discussed with his mother the possibility of his going to the main house, and to his distress, she’d insisted on going with him, refusing to let him go alone.
It’s dangerous, she said. You don’t know these people. What they can do.
He felt both stymied by and grateful for this rare maternal outburst. In advance of the visit, he noticed that she began making concerted efforts to appear more presentable, especially since they didn’t know when their visits would happen; she started borrowing a comb from Michelle and bartering with Jackie for dabs of hair relaxer and conditioner here and there, despite the rise in her debt. She did her nails, moisturized her legs, and at the depot bought a somewhat tight secondhand shirt that she kept special for the visit and did not wear in the fields; in collegiate lettering across the front it said
OHIO STATE.
When Jackie ushered Eddie and Darlene out of the barracks to Sextus’s idling Ford pickup, the first thing Eddie did was confess that his mother had insisted on coming with him.
As they approached the driver’s side, Sextus exclaimed, You some kinda mama’s boy, eh?
Sextus’s mocking tone made Eddie halt in the rocky dust.
No, he replied.
Darlene smiled at the boss without opening her mouth. She slapped Eddie on the shoulder. Yes, she said.
I thought you was too old for that.
Yes, sir, but—
Sextus laughed again in that way that made Eddie feel as if everybody else was in on the same joke. Or the same lie. The big boss’s eyes traveled down to Darlene’s boots and back up; he kicked the passenger-side door open with his right foot and said, Ohio State! very loudly, with exaggerated articulation.
Eddie had never seen anything as spectacular as Summerton. The place had a grandeur that went deep beneath the surface—not a showy type of class, but an elegance so lived-in that it didn’t need to prove anything; the tarnished beauty of an important historic monument, say, like an early president’s home where they hadn’t replaced the silver since the great man was alive, but they polished it every afternoon.
It looks like the house on the nickel, Eddie said as the pickup trundled down the dirt toward the mansion.
Who gave you a nickel? Sextus asked. He seemed immediately to intuit Eddie’s fascination with the place, and after he jumped out of the truck and checked with the gardener to make sure that they wouldn’t cross paths with Elmunda, his unhealthy wife, they walked around the building and entered through the kitchen. Sextus gripped the spot between Eddie’s neck and shoulder a little too hard and leaned down to his right ear, promising at least a partial tour. The one rule is, don’t touch a goddamn thing lessen I say, he whispered. Then he raised his voice. That goes for your mama too!
Inside, the temperature dropped and the air became faintly damp, which helped give the place its historical mood. The sheer number and disorganization of the heirlooms filling the various spaces hinted at how the Fusiliers’ wealth and influence spiraled far back beyond the memory of anybody alive. In the parlor, dozens of brown photographs of groups of white men with mustaches holding shotguns shared chunky mahogany tables with portraits and cameos of immaculately dressed white Southern ladies, and mixed in with those were groups of more modern photos—a cube of Kodachromes showing white kids at a swimming hole; metal frames surrounding snapshots of Elmunda and an extravagant wedding photo taken during some outsize ball, with Sextus and Elmunda gently directing forkfuls of yellow cake into each other’s mouths. All of these artifacts sprawled haphazardly over faded tapestries and complicated wings of lace.
The library housed an uncountable number of identical dusty leather-bound volumes that looked as if no one had touched them since they arrived at the house, in 1837 or whenever, and a disintegrating old-fashioned globe on which somebody appeared to Eddie to have drawn by hand the right half of America, given up after Louisiana, and started scribbling. The bathtubs had claws on their feet; Eddie imagined them breaking into a lumbering, confused run if anybody had the audacity to scald them with hot water. Darlene hesitated in the bathroom and ran both her hands slowly across the porcelain with a look of ecstasy on her face.
Some of the fixtures didn’t seem quite as old as the others, and one room remained empty except for several large pieces of canvas spread out on the floor, a few cans, and some trays crusted with dry paint. The room had an unfinished coat of pink paint all over the walls. Sextus explained that they were in the process of
very
gradually renovating Summerton, and that they were expecting a child (both of which were reasons why Elmunda would have had a conniption if she’d heard about the tour). She ain’t well, he explained. She had a progressive intestinal disease, but she read somewhere that she could still have a child, and had insisted on doing so before she lost the ability. It’s gonna be a boy, Sextus said, and when Eddie asked how they knew, he explained that the doctor had told them, they had this new way of finding out.
It’s called
sonofa
-something, he said. They grease up your wife, point a magic wand at her belly, and then tell you where your boy’s going to college. But I already started painting the room pink because before the medical thing, Elmunda made me dangle her wedding ring over her belly and it went in a circular motion and that means a girl. She also said she had a hankering for sweets. Goes to show you! But I ain’t finna repaint nothing I done painted already. Hell, I don’t even care if pink walls make him a queer.
By that time they’d reached the den, the least historic-looking space Eddie had seen during the tour, though he hadn’t toured the master bedroom or some of the other places where the Fusiliers did most of their everyday living. The den had perhaps as many books as the library, mostly piled against its fading sea-green walls, but they were all about farming and flowers and livestock and they sat on the floor, horizontally on bookshelves, mixed in with newspapers and magazines and crumpled sheets of typing paper, as well as on top of the dirty shoes that lined the windowsill along one wall.
In the far corner on an antique desk by a fireplace sat a beige TV monitor with a floppy-disk drive, which was connected to a beige keyboard with a different floppy drive, which in turn was connected to a dot-matrix printer, a joystick, and a third drive, all of it beneath a layer of newspapers, cigarette butts, and a beer can. An oscillating fan blasted from the opposite corner of the room, but its breeze didn’t dislodge any of the loose leaves; it only made the edges of the papers shiver. Sextus apologized for the mess, almost to himself. Somebody could ransack this joint, he marveled quietly from one side of his mouth, and I’d be none the wiser.
One thing Sextus had in common with Eddie’s dad was that he didn’t have much mechanical skill. Plants love me, he said, and I’m a crackerjack at changing a tire. I can rig up the honey wagon, sorta, but these doggone new electronic gadgets is finna break down whenever they see me coming. Must be some magnetic heebie-jeebies in my body, like these folks in England I heard about who bursted into flames? They just gone
FOOM!
and it was all over. Wasn’t nothing left behind but a big spot of burnt grease in the middle of a chair. So y’all’ll have to watch out, he warned Eddie and Darlene, raising his index finger, ’cause I could be one of them folks—there ain’t no test or nothing. At any moment I could explode into a ball of hellfire. He was silent for a second. Ha. Y’all would prolly find that right entertaining, now wouldn’t you?