Delicious Foods (26 page)

Sextus watched, twitching now and again, then Sextus and How left Eddie dangling there.

I
heard it secondhand that Jarvis Arrow gone back to Sirius B, who only lived a couple towns over from him, and played that tape of Darlene talking ’bout how good they had it at the farm and how everything hunky-dory, and when Sirius heard it his eyes might as well popped out they sockets and his scalp jumped off his skull. ’Cause it been a whole bunch of years, five or six something, since he heard Darlene voice, and that gave him a big surprise, on account a he assume that anybody he know from back then had figured they own way to get the hell outta Dodge. And here come this lady he’d had feelings for, who had worked in this place that whole time, who had helped him get away hisself, and him knowing she couldn’t tell the truth to no microphone, like she a brainwashed zombie.

Meanwhile, he remembering that she had asked him to memorize the phone number and to find her kid and after all the time it had took to get off the farm—he had forgot the number and his promise too. I think he felt damn guilty about that, like he ain’t cared enough for her to risk nothing. It’s just as likely, though, that them Delicious people with they guns and whatnot scared the stuffing outta that boy. I bet fear had kept him from coming back to save folks as much as some dumbass guilty feelings.

For most of them years Sirius tried to put Delicious behind him and move on in that fashion that black folks often got to. He stopped hanging out with me, start going to them stupid meetings where they always talking ’bout higher powers and one days at a time, ’bout as ridiculous as that book Darlene read. Sirius cut me dead and I resented that shit, but we had a lotta mutual friends, and I be hearing ’bout all the li’l developments in his life. Underneath I liked him, and I woulda kicked it with him again any time he needed a little pick-me-up. I know, I say that about
everybody.
I’m so damn easy. My ass always tryna love some motherfuckers more than they love me, or more than they love they own self. I’m a mess.

Anyhow, I heard that Sirius had moved back to Houston and start making music again, some tired-ass rap jams with all kinda anti-drugs, anti-gang-violence messages in it, which I found hard to keep from taking personally, or seriously, but whatever, but I still loved that sonofabitch, just like I do all my friends.

Even with them low-quality goody-goody songs, Sirius start to make a li’l bit of a name for hisself, and this Jarvis guy got a gig interviewing him for a fanzine called
Fresh.
They talked for a long-ass time, probably ’bout social justice or some other bullshit that make people think they gotta
wear
hemp instead of smoke it, and for the first time since Delicious, Sirius got real comfortable and start talking ’bout some of what had went on there, and it blew Jarvis mind. That egged Sirius on, and he start telling Jarvis ’bout how he had escaped outta there through that drainpipe and lived in it for three weeks while he gone through the agony of being apart from me, eating lizards and stealing sweet potatoes to get by, and how he could only move at night, in the moonlight, and that it took him ’bout another month of living in a swamp to figure out where the hell he at and how to get the fuck out, until one morning, at dawn, he get up the nerve to hitchhike, but he only checking for cars he know Delicious people wouldn’t never drive, like a Subaru or a beat-up Volvo. He wait for almost a eternity, too, ’cause folks in that area don’t be driving no liberal automobiles. But eventually some black folks from outta town in a Volkswagen picked his ass up and drove him far as Shreveport. He spent six months working low-wage jobs out there before he gone back home to Houston—moving and construction, frying up pancakes at some nasty 24-hour diner, cleaning toilets for the crazies out at West Oaks Hospital. Good times!

Jarvis couldn’t believe how good Sirius story was. Meaning
good
like journalists says it—a real bad nightmare for the motherfucker it happen to, but good to write down and put in a goddamn newspaper for some idiots to gape at. At the time, though, Jarvis mostly reviewing bad rap music for
Fresh,
but he want to be more like a hard-news man. So he decide to do a exposé on Delicious for the
Houston Chronicle,
’cause it be a chance to do some good for Sirius, bring some people he felt was bad guys down, and get his own career going at the same time. But once he had actually got up there to Delicious and brung back that tape of Darlene, Sirius ain’t want to do the story no more, ’less they did a rescue up there. ’Cause it’s one thing to get the story out, right, but a whole nother story to get them people out. Jarvis told Sirius that soon as How told the management that some newspaper guy done talked to Darlene, it gon be like Lockdown City up there, so they gotta move fast, and Sirius agreed that they need to go back to do a rescue that same night.

They got up near the chicken house round 5:00, parked the car behind some bushes. Sirius had remembered that it was always this one moment for ’bout a half hour right after roll call but before lock-in when you could drive a car through kinda fast and people could jump in and take off, something Michelle had noticed first, but she ain’t never figured out how to get in touch with the outside world and work it out. She and Tuck knowed shit was maybe gonna go down ’cause Tuck done talked to the dude in the car and when How beating Darlene she talking ’bout Sirius coming back, so they’s on the alert. Right when How beating up Darlene, Tuck watching from a few rows down on that same detail and he seen Jarvis and Frankie making a getaway down the road. He figure while everybody gawking at the violence, he gon wave that Subaru down and get gone hisself. The car ain’t stop, but Jarvis slow down a li’l, stick his head out the window and then Tuck begging them to come back at roll call. Tuck told Michelle they said yes even though he ain’t heard nobody say nothing.

That evening they seen the car and they snuck they ass into the corn and then into the car real fast ’fore anybody could see. They panting and sweating like they just run a marathon. Sirius told Tuck they gonna have room for ’bout five people with a few belongings, but one rule—he said he wouldn’t take nobody nowheres ’less they brought Darlene and Eddie. Sirius said to find some other folks who want to go right then and Tuck like, You crazy? But Sirius ain’t budge on that shit and Tuck had to tiptoe back over before they closed shit up and ask folks if they wanna get free without creating no drama.

Tuck thinking he gonna have trouble keeping down the numbers of people who wanna go, but when he told just a few folks that Sirius B out there in a car right outside, the first three people went, Nah, all skeptical like they thinking he tryna trap em, and when he got all passionate and angry with em, talking ’bout how he telling the truth, and to go see for theyself, but the car be well hid behind them bushes, it made him look worse. ’Cause sometime the harder you keep saying you on the level, the less motherfuckers believe you. Lotta them had forgot that Tuck just a real bad alcoholic and ain’t hardly never dealt with Yours Truly. Or they said to theyself that his drinkahol had made him start seeing pink elephants and whatnot, like he ’bout to have a breakdown something. The brother can’t win. Hard-core addicts be judging his ass for being a alkie. Ain’t that some shit? He just hoping that nobody blab to How or Jackie. Who end up also agreeing is just TT, who by that time woulda said yes to a escape plan that relied on a combination of Jesus, Michael Jackson, and Bigfoot. Problem was, TT said he had a special stupid detail down near the depot he had to go to right that fucking minute.

Tuck run back to the car and told Sirius that they gonna have to rescue TT near the depot. They had to wait until he got drove there, and then they seen that Gaspard still be in the store doing, like, inventory or some bullshit. Sirius told Jarvis to get out the car and go pretend to interview Gaspard behind the counter, and while he doing that, Sirius gonna jump out the car and go find TT. At first Gaspard tryna shoo Jarvis away, wondering how he even found the joint, but Sirius had told Jarvis to flatter Gaspard ass, and that worked. Gaspard wouldn’t say nothing ’bout the goings-on at Delicious, and he definitely ain’t want to say nothing with no tape going, but he did like to jabber his ass off ’bout everything else in the known universe. Jarvis kept him going just to give Sirius extra time; he damn sure ain’t get no information for the piece outta Gaspard, just some bullshit ’bout college-football history, a couple random stories ’bout a deadly tornado that happened forty years ago, and a lotta advice ’bout how to catch a fish with a string rolled around a fucking twig.

While that shit be happening, Sirius start hunting round to see if TT in one them fields near the depot. It be some big grape-growing areas off to one side out there, surrounded by corn, and sometime maybe one or two people get sent out there, who they watch from a distance (but close enough to shoot), and if you be crouching down and moving real quick through the stalks, then you could maybe find somebody picking or putting on pesticides or fertilizers or what have you on them grape plants. And maybe escape the same way.

Which exactly what Sirius done. He knew the area good, and it ain’t took him too long to find TT out there filling up some propane cannons and propping up some fake hawks on sticks. Both of them techniques supposed to scare off birds but ain’t never worked at Delicious. Sirius done freaked the hell outta TT at first, ’cause Sirius gone down the row of tomatoes next to his and come up through them vines, like he finna strangle him to death or something.

He told TT that when it get dark enough, him and Jarvis and Michelle gonna go round to the workshop with they car to get Eddie and Darlene. TT and Sirius traded notes to make sure Delicious ain’t changed the program none.

They had been through all that shit and they exhausted by the time everybody get to the workshop. Tuck the first in, and he seen Eddie up there in the barn and opened the side of the door that Eddie wasn’t hanging off, and he got a good look at him and Darlene and made a expression like somebody done smashed him in the face with a drink. Like with the glass. Which woulda been the worst shit to happen to him because he’d rather have drunk the drink. Of course he already drunk on ’bout seven of them li’l Popovs since he had got back from the depot, and he knew that it ain’t no promising situation up in there, but the opportunity to book the heck outta there might not come again for some time. He thinking,
Act like everything cool.
He said, like, Hey, y’all. Here’s the dealio.

Eddie blew his stack and went, Nigger, get me free before you tell me the fucking dealio! I can’t feel my fingers.

Tuck stuck the last of his Popovs into his pants pocket and squatted down to take a look at the number that How had did on Eddie wrists, and yes, he stone-drunk, but still what he seen be like a plate of Chinese noodles with a bunch of nigger fingers sticking up out of em. He look at it like it’s a alien done come down out a spaceship and spoke French to him. He start tugging and turning the whole mess round in his hands, like he tryna find the end of a knot, someplace he could loosen part the cable and pull something through something else in order to free up Eddie hands, but everything so tight that he couldn’t get started. He pull in one place, it got tight in another; he follow a thread of vinyl and that somehow led to a part going through a hole in the chain. He pinched them rusty handcuffs and they ain’t budge. Meantime Eddie thinking Tuck having trouble just on account a the alcohol, and when it start taking too long, he got to yelling at the old man that he a idiot and a drunk, and that ain’t make it no easier for Tuck to do what he tryna do. Then Tuck remind him of the night they met, how Eddie done tied his hands up, said he ain’t had no kinda obligation to do what he doing, and that shut Eddie’s ass right the fuck up.

But after a minute or two, Eddie start saying, Get the shears and just cut it! Tuck gone and took to ransacking all the toolboxes over by where Eddie putting up shelves, and he couldn’t find em; meanwhile Eddie start shouting the description of what’s a pair of shears at him. Tuck could find only a pair a pliers and a flathead screwdriver and he thinking he gonna use em to pull up some the binding stuff. Eddie squirming around like a hog in a lasso and told him to get back there and look exactly where he left them shears, but when Tuck got to the precise location he seen they wasn’t there. That’s when Eddie knew that How had took em deliberately so he couldn’t get outta that spiderweb of chains and cables. Tuck said he thinking he might could find hedge clippers in another place by the chicken house, but then they heard something outside that sound like somebody coming closer. Tuck edged on out the barn, saying to Eddie that they would see him again that night with Sirius B and figure something out.

For a while, ain’t nothing happen. Which a bad kind of nothing because it meant that ain’t nobody show up with no medical supplies to deal with Darlene injuries, which was moving toward getting infected, and ain’t nobody come around with no food, not even that scalding-hot extra-salty broth everybody called water soup, the soup that, for all them chickens running around, ain’t had no kinda chicken flavor nowheres near it. Michelle used to say, Didn’t no chicken even look in the direction of this shit, meanwhile every damn morning I’m spitting out feathers. And that would crack everybody up and the joke made the soup go down easier. But Eddie and Darlene ain’t had no nourishment to speak of, no water, and plus Mama starting to come awake and jonesing hard. There be this bumpy noise somewheres in the workshop that Eddie couldn’t figure out what it was.

But then he realize that the noise he heard be coming from this one corner, and when Darlene woke up, they look over there and seen Charlie the Rat sitting in the corner, doing his li’l scratchy back-leg-behind-the-ear thing. Charlie seen em see him and looked up like, What? He ain’t go nowhere neither, like even he knew they couldn’t hardly move they own self, let alone go chasing no rat. Them palmetto bugs musta told him. He sat up on his raw back legs and point his nose into the sky like he gonna enjoy watching some shit go down. Like he had put down some his li’l rat money on the outcome.