Delicious Foods: A Novel

by James Hannaham

  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?

  In the den, Eddie’s mother dashed over to the fan and raised her arms, following its beam of air with her torso. She and Eddie had cleaned themselves up to the best of their ability considering how few changes of clothes they had and how frequently they’d had to wear them in the sun and dirt and vegetation, but Darlene had begun to sweat the moment they got out of the truck and her forehead was now jeweled with perspiration. She did a shimmy dance in front of the fan like some kind of old-time performer, singing loudly and groaning her pleasure as the fan cooled off her underarms. Embarrassed, Eddie pushed his way around a table and moved some stuff off a chair, with Sextus’s blessing, so that he could get a better look at what Sextus called the Patient. The Patient was flickering, he said, and had stopped printing entirely. Eddie set about moving all the papers and felt around the sides and back of the monitor and the printer to find the on switch.

  Fixing a television had sounded easy to Eddie, but the computer completely flummoxed him. He hadn’t owned one before; he hardly knew what they were supposed to do. To him the Tandy 1000 looked like the mutant child of a TV and a cash register, with its drab tan skin and green screen, blank as a snake’s eye. The one thing he knew machines had in common was that you had to open them in order to fix them, and he went about figuring out the best way to dismantle it and get into its guts.

  From the mess behind the chair, Sextus produced a metal toolbox—streaked with paint and containing a crazy jumble of spackle tubes and screwdrivers—and an almost pristine plastic box of ratchet wrenches.

  I got all this stuff out and then I remembered that I’m a idiot, he said.

  Eddie frowned at the blinking green box on the screen. I don’t know, he muttered.

  C’mon, Sixteen! Give it your best shot.

  Eddie flinched slightly at hearing the nickname, then began to poke at the keyboard a little bit. Almost immediately the letters and malfunctioning zaps of miniature lightning appearing on the screen fascinated him. He typed some nonsense in order to test out the printer; he didn’t want to open up the computer or the printer if the problem wasn’t particularly severe and he didn’t have to. As he focused on striking the keys, the entire screen skewed and compressed into a single green line for a second, then returned to normal. Even though the problems were exactly as Sextus had said, the sudden flickering jarred him. He felt inept at this type of repair work and wondered if maybe he should give the job up and ask Sextus to find a professional computer repairman. But he found it difficult to admit failure to someone who seemed to have faith in him, especially an inordinate amount of faith. He continued playing with the machine and testing it out shyly, hoping the problem would miraculously fix itself while under his care and keep his reputation intact.

  He tested each of the keys in alphabetical and numerical order, then tr
ied them with the shift key and examined all of those characters for a hint at the problem. Once he had exhausted all of the possibilities on the outside, he resigned himself to the idea that he was going to have to open up the computer or the printer or both. The realization that he had a lot more work ahead of him than he might have if he had found some way to deal with the computer on the outside made him growl to himself and sigh. He sat down.

  He took a deep breath and puffed his face up like Louis Armstrong, then blew the air despondently and forcefully through his pursed lips and leaned back in the black lacquered chair. He thought about turning to face Sextus and shrugging his shoulders, and his faith in himself sank as he imagined how creases of disappointment would pinch between the older man’s eyebrows. He didn’t know enough about the way Delicious worked to resent such a charming, funny man who told so many jokes on himself, and for a fatherless twelve-year-old, even the worst dad will do.

  Then he noticed he was alone in the room.

  He couldn’t remember the exact moment when he’d become so absorbed in figuring out the computer problem that Sextus and Darlene could have slipped out of the room unnoticed. Had they disappeared at the same time? He turned away from the desk and listened for signs but could hear only the fan humming, the papers rustling, and, through the open window, the breeze shimmying in the trees. Birds and crickets chirped. Every so often a chorus of cicadas chittered loudly and then quieted down. A rooster crowed and in the distance a car sped across the countryside. He wished he knew the exact location of the car and of the road. Maybe they had left together? The car sounded too far away.

  Eddie stood up, flexed his knees, and walked to the doorjamb. Almost afraid to put his feet outside the room, remembering Sextus’s warning, he leaned against the molding and stuck his head into the hallway. Since he’d arrived at Delicious and found Darlene, he’d developed a fear of losing her, even losing sight of her, and his mind immediately shifted to a fear that the worst had happened—Papa Legba had lured them out of the room behind Eddie’s back and taken them to the other side. He used his shirt to dab sweat off his neck.