Delicious Foods

by James Hannaham

  Darlene, doubled over on the floor, kept screaming long after the men had run off. In the confusion, some customers dashed out of the store to watch the chase; others gave up on making purchases, and somebody stole herself a handful of 100 Grand candy bars. Carla knelt down beside Darlene on the rubber honeycomb, trying to wipe her face and clothes dry with the tail of her company shirt and console her at the same time. Darlene had pulled in her arms to defend herself and kept them stiff in front her chest.

  Lord have mercy, Carla said. I seen it on the news! Was that them boys that—I mean, they probably done it, but can’t nobody say. And you! I didn’t even put it together. Oh my stars.

  Darlene’s terror faded a little bit and she cried normally.

  Carla sat back on her knees. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, honey. Come in tomorrow, or even take a couple of days, make a fresh start. I’ll let Spar know what happened. She put her hands on her hips, then let them drop to her sides, and said, Lord, I hate this town.

  9.

  An Improvement

  Unless work gone late—which it done a lot—Delicious supposed to paid the crew every day in the afternoon, round 5:00 roll call or a li’l later. People looked forward to that shit like they ’bout to start a weekend, but most everybody worked the same amount every day except Sunday so it ain’t matter much. The company ain’t paid on the books. Instead they tallied up your productivity they own self without no paycheck company or nothing. Some folks got paid by the tub, some by the hour or by the egg if they was in the coop with the laying hens. The sad motherfuckers who scooped up birdshit for fertilizer got paid by the bucket. Ain’t nobody wanted that job, and asides it made you a outcast of the crew. Sirius B always seem to look for the worst jobs to do, acting like he Jesus. He went after that one like he thinking everybody else want it, and ain’t nobody tell him no different.

  They lined your ass up outside the sleeping area and told you how much you had worked and what pay you got and then hand you the pay right into your palm. Most folks ain’t get more than ten dollars a day, so for real they hardly giving out nothing except more debt. But some days, some folks could make thirty and forty, and everybody be striving for that, like the company running some kinda numbers game. Meanwhile, Delicious took out for everything—the meals, the boots, the tubs and sacks they loaned you for the picking, the alcohol, and me especially. They be giving you drinks and drugs like it’s your birthday party and then laying it all on your credit.

  They left How in charge, and that sonofabitch did his whole job quick as a auctioneer and made your pay sheet sound like a science, so if you ain’t get what you expect, you would have to walk off slow, probably confused, shoving your li’l three or four dollars down in your pocket so couldn’t nobody see how much or steal nothing from you. Some folks tried damn hard at this shit—like Hannibal kept a piece of paper under his hat and had wrote down damn near every debt he got and every vegetable he done picked, but when he went to How, he got argued down into the same amounts of nothing as everybody else.

  Sometimes it ain’t make no sense that How’s version of your salary would come so much lower than the one you calculated in your head as you working all day. Darlene got the idea from Hannibal to count on a piece of paper so she could give evidence to How if he told her she ain’t worked the amount she said. But whenever she called How on it, he would tell her that she made it up, or that he done docked her pay on account of a sarcastic comment she had made ’bout the company.

  That guy How could remember every bad thing you done or said without letting you know he noticed, and then he’d remind you right when you needed a hit, or cash, or a boost. Even if you only said what you said to let off steam. You couldn’t bad-mouth the company or complain ’bout none of the busted tubs without no handles, the broken equipment that had took off somebody finger once and usually opened up a thigh every couple weeks, or point out that there wasn’t no masks or no clean place to wash your hands even with so much pesticides clouding up the joint. You especially couldn’t bitch about nothing on company time. He had people spying on each other, too, and he would dock you and reward motherfuckers for information he got secondhand about your ass. Sometimes How would even dock you for questioning his calculation of your debt. That shit fucked motherfuckers up.

  But if you complained, How would go, You think a big diversified grower that has contracts with Birds Eye and Chiquita and Del Monte needs to skim five bucks off the paycheck of a little piddling serf like you? And you would shut your trap, ’cause on balance you needed the money more than that tiny moment of self-respect. Except that them tiny moments would start glomming together like little oil droplets in a contaminated stream.

  So Darlene might make a few more bucks a day if she could chuck a couple extra melons, handle all them eggs, or shovel some chicken shit with Sirius. Every Tuesday and Friday, almost soon as How gave the crew the vapors they called pay, him and Hammer would drive everybody out to the depot, six or seven miles down the road to a place they said called Richland, but everybody call it the depot. Motherfuckers had most likely spent everything and borrowed forward on the rest, so what you got that day ain’t even count as pay, or it look like negative pay.

  Richland ain’t look much like a town. Hardly nothing grew there—stunted bushes and dry grass out to the edge of your eyeballs, a gas station, a depot, a broken-down brick building, a tin-roof shack with a painted sign that said GENERAL STORE in red. The place too tiny to get on a map. Some the crew thought Delicious had actually made up the town. Other people told them people they was paranoid on account of me, but Sirius B said, It’s not no paranoia when it’s happening up in your face.

  At night, between craving and using, the group got into one the many debates that always be going through the chicken house like a virus. This one had to do with whether the farm be in Louisiana at all, or if they maybe driven everybody far as Florida in that van. Darlene and Sirius was usually arguing on the same side about where they at, on account a she growed up near Lafayette. One time, a few weeks after she got there, the whole crew had kept arguing ’bout where they at until after lights-out. Darlene stayed quiet a long time, simmering like a li’l pot on a blue flame, then her voice busted out in the dark, saying that great-tailed grackles always hanging around there, which you don’t get nowheres but in Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, and which she seen all the time growing up near Lafayette, but ain’t nobody seen not one flamingo, which everybody know they got all over the place in Florida but not Louisiana, so how you could explain that? The whole no-chicken area gone totally silent while people be thinking on that one, then TT goes, That don’t prove nothing, ’cause birds don’t gotta stop at no borders. They don’t know the difference for when it’s one state and when it’s another.

  Darlene shouts, Oh, shut up! and fold her arms, then she announce that she had to go to sleep behind that one, ’cause the whole thing done got too boring. She close her eyes, but she ain’t had one eye closed for more than a few seconds yet when she feel something touching her elbow. At first she take in a deep breath ’cause she think a giant roach or a poison spider done crawled up onto her bed ’bout to bite her, or that TT gonna strangle her ass ’cause she proved him wrong, but the same instant she figure out that it somebody hand, she realize it ain’t touching her with a palm—somebody dragging they knuckles all the way up and down her arm in a slow, calm, stroking way.

  Seem like them knuckles be touching each one of them superfine hairs on her arm, making em stand up and sit down at they command. The touch make her remember ’bout meeting with Nat at the diner. Darlene know who belong to the hand on account a which side the bed it come from and how long it is, but to make sure, she reach her right hand over and hook her finger inside the curled-up hand as it passing down her left forearm, knowing it belong to Sirius just from the feel of them rough-ass calluses right under the fingers and the veins popping out right past his wrists. She keep moving her finger over the palm and once
her hand be totally inside his, she feel his pulse there at the bottom of the hand, thumping against her fingertip.

  That go on for a while, the hand-fucking, but it start to seem kinda stupid if it ain’t gon lead to actual sex sex. The problem with fucking in the barracks wasn’t that nobody gon see—in fact, couldn’t nobody see they own hand in front of they own face up in the chicken house at night. The problem be keeping everything quiet, ’cause them beds be creaky as all get-out, and you could say something really whispery to somebody in that concrete-ass room and motherfuckers on the other side the room not just gonna hear what you said, they gonna answer your ass.

  Sirius had to get up real slow, and Darlene listening for every last creak his bed make as it start letting him rise up off it, she imagining that man body coming for her slower than a check from the government, she ain’t letting the touching hand go neither, like if she let it go he gon fall sideways into the darkness away from her. Finally the moment come where the bed ain’t make no more noise and she could feel Sirius breath and lips near her face and she raise her head up a tiny bit and use her lips to find his. It hurts a little ’cause of the burns and sores near her mouth, but she put that out her mind on account of the hotness of them lips.

  He whisper real soft, almost so that she can’t hear it, that they could go in the bathroom and get it on, ’cause don’t nobody know the difference at night between one black-ass fool and two in the bathroom, since you couldn’t hear what going on in there well as you could out in the main room. Darlene ain’t thinking too hard ’bout nothing, and she definitely wanting to continue what they started, maybe not to the point that she think he thinking, but at least in the bathroom they ain’t had to be so cautious. She rise on up out the bed in the same delicate way as he just done, and they tongues be poking all inside each other mouth and whatnot, and they breathing so heavy they know they got to get out that main room.

  She grab ahold his belt loop and he feel his way through the dark to the bathroom, and even though it stink, at least they could squeeze in the stall without no door and get a small amount of privacy for a microsecond. He sitting on the toilet and she sitting on him, and she can’t see nothing in there neither so it’s like she fucking nothing, or the night sky, like he a star and she the blackness that be holding him up.

  Pretty soon he get done and after a longer time she do too, and she fall over onto his shoulders like she gon fall asleep there.

  I seen a whole bunch of those birds too, he whispered. The grackles? I knew we was in Louisiana.

  Then somebody banged on the stall wall and the hot mood went right down the drain.

  Where they at wasn’t the only thing folks be talking ’bout by a long shot. People talked a lot about they next job and how they gonna get it. When I get outta Delicious, I’ma go into construction, I’ma start my own landscaping business, I’ma drive a ice cream truck—didn’t none of it had no basis in reality. They be arguing ’bout sports even more, after watching parts of the games on Jackie’s portable TV that had a blue-ass nine-inch screen. Everybody talking ’bout Carl Lewis and Flo Jo all summer long.

  After the five-hundred-dollar ride and the hundred-dollar first night, folks had to rent they beds and pay utilities on the water and electric, so the total came to twenty dollars a night. Sirius be like, I’m making ten a day and paying twenty a night? That shit don’t make sense. Everybody told him to just work harder, ’cause sometime you could get over that hump. It wasn’t no A/C, and it be so hot all the time that folks starts taking a shower in they clothes tryna keep cool while the clothes drying. Couldn’t hardly nobody sleep in that heat. They only collected the living expenses once a week, so if you ain’t want no more debt you had to be smart enough to squirrel away them greenbacks somewheres wouldn’t nobody find em. You even had to make sure didn’t nobody stole your stuff while you showering, so a lot of folks got Ziploc baggies and jammed they little moneys and whatever else in em—gold fillings, photos of they kids—so they could take they not-that-valuables with em into the shower, keep a eye on that munty, like TT called it.

  But it never was much in them baggies, ’cause down in Richland, Gaspard Fusilier marked up everything so much that it gobbled your whole dollar amount. They charged $4.99 for a minibottle of Popov, $12.00 for a six-pack of Tecate in a can. Darlene and em would think, Bullshit—sometimes they even said Bullshit, but never too loud—they knew they ain’t had no choice but to pay the outrageous price, usually on credit. And since everybody addicted to drugs or alcohol or both, or denied it until they copped, folks would buy bottles and rocks and gear from a outside dude who marked his stuff way up, too, ’cause they all knew that the operation worked out in the hinterlands of God knows where, way out in Louisiflorida, and you couldn’t do no goddamn comparison shopping.

  If Darlene got her groceries (that’s what they called their purchases) early, she would wait by the bus for everybody else, smoking boulders in the space between the minibus and the trees. She called that having afternoon tea. They got the workers to go faster and be more productive by keeping me away from em between lunch and dinner. That made em insane, but management promised em all kinda rewards in the form of extra rocks. People freaked out in them fields—twitching and yammering and shit—but you’d be surprised how fast a crackhead could pick a strawberry vine when it’s a lighter and a loaded pipe on the other side.

  Out in the field one day, a potbellied brother name of Moseley who nobody knew how long he been with Delicious told everybody ’bout how a dude with a beef against a guy he claimed had stole his muffuletta sandwich out there had made a shank by melting the wrong end of one them sporks they sometimes gave out with the lunches and sporked his enemy in the kidney enough to put him in the hospital and never come back. Didn’t nobody know what happened after, Moseley said, if he died or what have you. Somebody said it might be worth trying that to get outta Delicious and somebody else said they gon tell How.

  There’s a rock out by some trees that had that Spanish moss hanging on it, ’bout thirty yards away from the depot, but still you could see it from where Hammer usually parked. Darlene like to sit on that rock, squishing a lousy bread-and-cheese sandwich between her fingers before pigging out on it and drowning it with a Popov or two or three on good days, and when she sat there, she could hear a little brook trickling, fondling the other rocks before it go into this concrete tube that’s under the road real close by. She watching a group of crows edge over and pick apart a dead opossum in the road. Somebody once told her that crows could remember your face forever, so if you do mean shit to a crow and come back twenty years later tryna act all nice, it’ll squawk at you and go, Look, it’s that same sonofabitch! Let’s peck his brain out, y’all.

  Once, after ’bout two and a half months of working for Delicious, Sirius B came to sit with Darlene. Something wasn’t right about him, even more than the drugs, but it musta been kinda mental, ’cause aside from a faraway glaze in his eyes that look almost like a rapture, his problem wasn’t nothing you could put your finger on unless you counted the shit he talking ’bout. Sirius ain’t did no small talk; he would find the most painful thing on your mind or the most cosmic idea and act like chitchat could just start there, at the most intense part. When you start talking with Sirius B it’s like he tryna stab you with a conversation.

  He sitting down near Darlene on the rock and smoking, and when he done sucked up his first hit, he held his lungs tight and start wheezing and talking at the same time he passed her the pipe, and then she sparked it to get the rest, burning the end first and then moving up the pipe to my sparkling chunks of stone inside.

  He said, You missing your boy, Darlene? You call him yet?

  She shook her head, put me down, and start flattening that damn sandwich again. She went, It isn’t easy using the phones, as you know. Darlene thought Eddie wouldn’t want to see her that way anyhow, that nobody oughta see her that way—hair undone, lips burned, ripped seams all over them thirdhand T-shirts she
wore; sweaty, dirty, itchy, and scabby, doing the monkey the minute I got too far away to beam her up. She say to herself, Eddie’s smart like Nat, he’ll find somebody to give him what he needs. She figured her sister gonna step in.

  So Sirius asked her, Did you get in touch with anybody?

  I left a message for Eddie that I’m okay and don’t worry, she lied, but I couldn’t say where to look for me because where are we? She threw her eyes around at the shrubs and trees, and farther out to the gray mist way the fuck out by the horizon. That sonofabitch How keeps saying he’s going to tell me the name of the place and the address of where we are but I don’t think he knows himself!

  Delicious phone ain’t work for nobody, they both knew that shit. But Sirius too much of a gentleman to call her out.

  That ain’t right, you shouldn’t let them keep you away from your son.

  She thought he’s talking down to her, and got upset. I’m not letting anybody keep me away from anything, she said. She gnawed the crust off the sandwich and start chomping on the mashed bread and yellow cheese inside. Her throat dry and she ain’t had nothing to wash the sandwich down with ’cause she had the Popovs first that day and the heat of late August already done dehydrated her ass. She staring at the brook, thinking maybe she could get water from there, but judging by the smell and them crushed cans and cigarette boxes sloshing around in the water and the weird-ass way that the foam foaming up in the water didn’t never disappear off them rocks, she figure that shit’s polluted.

  Sometimes I get a feeling about all this, Sirius said.

  All what?

  The day after the hand sex that led to the bathroom sex, Sirius had said to Darlene that it wasn’t no thang, and said it again the couple of times it happened since, and that phrase kept repeating in her mind—Ain’t no thang. It got her confused and frustrated that her stuff ain’t floored Sirius or, if it had, that he pretending it hadn’t.