Delicious Foods (31 page)

Then we had to make all them strange people voices and the questions from Jed, and Eddie, and the angry-ass man stop coming through phones and televisions and faces and mouths around us, so me and Darlene just start booking down that smoky hallway I made for her fast as we could and slammed the door behind us. Darlene sat on the couch and then swung her legs up onto it, laid down lengthwise, and curled up into a ball. She wrapped the ends of the blanket round her feet like she a sapling ’bout to get planted. When she seen the phone still in the room, she sat up again and kicked the phone table so it toppled over and made a big thump sound on the floor. The phone be clattering and ringing at the same time when it hit the floor. Darlene yanked that blanket over her head again and I put my smoke arms around her, and me and her laid there till we couldn’t hear no noise no more.

W
hile she putting everybody together that morning to go to the courthouse up in Oak Grove, Darlene feeling damn proud that it had took three years after them news reports for the investy-
gators
(as Sextus called em) to get any crimes connecting him to Delicious. Turnt out Sextus ain’t never run nothing called Delicious Foods, see, he had ran some shit called Fantasy Groves LLC that just subcontracted to Delicious and he told the law he ain’t known thing one ’bout what Delicious done to nobody. Darlene less proud that she ain’t spoke to her son much in all that time, but Eddie so fucking hardheaded, couldn’t nobody talk no kinda sense to his ass.

It wasn’t too many folks wanting to come forward and say nothing ’bout what had went down at Delicious. Unlike some folks, they ain’t like the shame. Plus them detectives couldn’t hardly find nobody to ask nothing. Folks said after TT and Sirius and Tuck beat him half to death, How hitchhiked back to Juarez, and nobody ain’t heard nothing ’bout Jackie since she done left outta Monroe on a Greyhound bus. They got depositions outta Sirius, TT, Tuck, and Michelle, who made it off the farm after all, and that journalist, and of course outta Eddie, but Darlene wasn’t part of nothing, she ain’t even had to go to the trial at all ’cause they ain’t name her name in the suit. Most everybody else wanted to put the whole thing behind they ass. On top of that shit, the Fusiliers still had a damn good name in Appalousa Parish and far too many sonofabitches up in that area owed em too much shit, based on like Great-Great-Grandpappy Phineas Graham Sextus loaning a sack of grits and a horseshoe to some po’ white fool back in fucking 1843. Then shit kept getting mysteriously delayed and postponed, and certain folks on the prosecution side had had threatening calls made to they house and strange fires getting set in they garbage cans, and a Molotov cocktail done smashed through somebody picture window and burnt up half they house. Folks always tryna act like shit done changed, but don’t nobody even
want
shit to change.

Darlene got everybody looking good to be up in that courtroom. She rubbed sweet-smelling wax in Sextus hair, stuffed that yellow handkerchief in the pocket of that dark suit she done got for him, made him look real fly, and when she lifting his legs in the cab and breaking down his chair small enough to go in the trunk, she thinking,
Too bad nothing works anymore,
and then she snuck a kiss under his earlobe made him grin like a fool.

I said to her, His tongue still work, but she act like she ain’t heard that. She even polished Elmunda’s crutches and steamed out one her wrinkly-ass dresses so old it had got stylish again as vintage clothes. Then she buffed Jed’s Buster Browns or whatever. At the door, when the taxi had pulled up, Jed swiveled around to see Darlene in her Sunday best staying put on the porch, gripping the wooden support like she ain’t going nowheres even if somebody tried to pull her away and stuff her in that cab. Gaspard gonna meet you at the courthouse and unpack everybody, she said.

Jed went, Come on, Miss Darlene, what you waiting for?

I’m going separate, she said. Run along now!

The taxi done a U-turn in the driveway and Darlene caught a glimpse of Elmunda looking up at the house, maybe at Darlene, her jaw all set, them eyes tight as a coin slot. Darlene let out a breath when she heard that gravel crunching under the tires switch to a loud engine noise and fade away down the hill. The intensity of the moment made it so me and her had to tiptoe upstairs for a little tête-à-tête, just to take that edge off, and by the time our taxi pulled up, we coulda sent it away and flown there ourself, we was so high.

We got to the courthouse real late, after the trial already been started, but that ain’t bother neither of us none, since we didn’t hardly wanna go in the first place. Once they let us in the building, seem quiet as a airport at four a.m. in there, Darlene shoes was clippity-clopping down that hallway just as loud. We sparked up again in the ladies’ and lost our way to the courtroom, even though the place ain’t had so many courtrooms. Darlene hoping she gonna catch Eddie outside and not sitting in the witness box or nothing, testifying ’gainst Delicious—maybe they could have a conversation and she could convince him to drop the charges. She kept seeing brothers she would think was him from far away and then get close and be like Oh, can’t be him, he got hands. Just before we gone on in the right courtroom, she seen the security guard go inside and her heart went boom but I said, Darlene, calm the fuck down, they ain’t gon drug-test you right here.

Darlene nerves had got stretched to the extreme before going into that courthouse—partly she worried she still gon get charged as a manager of the Delicious operation, but I told her that she ain’t have to trip on that ’cause her name ain’t showed up on none of the official documents. At least we ain’t think so. She had did a smart thing and got herself paid as a caretaker, off the books, not as no partner in that ridiculous company. Couldn’t nobody prove that she had ran the business the last few years, and if they tried, it would crumble into a their-word-against-hers kinda thing. I said, You ain’t controlled nothing, you just had, I don’t know, oversight. All you done was paid the bills and the groundskeepers, ain’t let nobody buy the joint, and you done shrunk the farm down to something that kept just you and your bosses eating. They not gonna try to take you down with em. At least Sextus ain’t gonna do that.

Besides, from day one she done changed the whole joint. The first morning back from the hospital with Sextus, she unlocked the chicken house, and at roll call she made a announcement to the whole crew that they was free to go.

I’m making some immediate changes, she told em. A certain criminal element made it so that people didn’t feel they could leave here. I have informed Mr. Fusilier about that criminal element and we’ve taken care of it. Everybody filled in the blank that How and Jackie been responsible for the criminality, even though Darlene ain’t explained.

To her surprise, motherfuckers ain’t just immediately broke out into a run away from that madhouse.

A woman name Jequita went, What about my debt? I owe $942.22.

The debt was bogus, everybody, Darlene announced. Forget the debt. Today we start with a clean slate. From now on, we’re going to pay you what
we
owe
you.
We’re going to keep careful records. Real ones. You can keep staying in the barracks if you like—we’re going to clean them up, too, and move the chickens somewhere else—but you can live wherever you want.

Darlene had em take that wheezing dog and his nasty-ass friend out the yard right then to make a show. Most everybody clapped. A couple folks done broke down weeping. But still ain’t nobody runned off. Most people standing there with they mouth open, couldn’t believe that shit. And why the fuck would they?

For real? said a man they called Taurus.

Another dude who went by the name Ripley went, Is this some kind of a trap?

For real, Darlene told em. Not a trap.

By sundown though, ’bout half them workers had packed up they shit and got on the road by they lonelies, braving that long walk to the next place in life, or back to they old haunts, without no kinda moneys. Another half be talking ’bout they didn’t know where they might could go next but they gonna figure it out the next few days, and then you know that turnt into weeks. Me, I wasn’t going nowheres, and the folks who stuck around on account a Scotty done figured that shit out but quick.

Darlene remembered her childhood experience on the farm outside Lafayette. She put that together with her business knowledge from the Mount Hope Grocery, and she start keeping good records of what folks done picked and what they was paid, which still ain’t been much but it meant the world to a lotta them motherfuckers. They would come up and praise her ass like she Nelson Mandela or some shit. But Darlene ain’t really had her heart set on turning Delicious around. She ain’t want to make the goddamn place
profitable,
she just want to make it a honest day’s work, to pay motherfuckers for what they done, to push that joint a hair closer to the thing Jackie had told her ’bout in the first place. If the farm goes broke, she thought, so be it.

When we walked into that courtroom, though, it felt like we had got to a wedding late—a bad wedding where the families be hating each other. We had the bad luck to walk in during a lull in the action, so a bunch of heads turnt 180 degrees to look at Darlene. The Fusiliers up front on the left, with they lawyer. Sextus turnt around and gave Darlene that helpless look of his, but she averted her eyes from that shit real fast. Behind them, toward the front, Hammer waving her over. He had quit the company right after Eddie done broke out and got hooked up with a different farm ’bout fifty miles away. Darlene ain’t want to sit on the Delicious side. As she raising her hand to greet Hammer and beg off sitting with him at the same time, she seen what she thought could’ve been a ghost. A woman sitting toward back right, staring and leaning forward, probably tryna absorb every word of that damn trial. She wearing a suit and her hair parted in the middle with a pigtail on either side, a style Darlene recognized immediately. Darlene slid herself into the one empty bench right behind the woman but she had to get her bearings ’cause she ain’t know for sure if I was fucking with her.

Michelle, she whispered, real loud.

My girl musta startled Michelle, ’cause she jump-turnt and put her left hand on the back of the bench. Darlene realized at the same moment that this well-dressed woman was Michelle for sure and that her right sleeve ain’t had no arm in it; she had pinned the sleeve in half and let it flop around like a damn flag announcing the no-arm.

Amazement filled up her voice. You made it, Darlene said.

Just barely. Could you believe this trial? Can you believe it took three years to nail these sons of bitches?

No, I can’t. I mean, I can, but it’s not easy. I’m so glad to see you made it out.

Darlene had the impulse to lean over and hug her but ain’t do it ’cause maybe it gonna offend a one-arm lady to hug? She had a ton of questions ’bout how Michelle had got free and had lost her arm, but the lost arm distracted her ’cause it reminded her ’bout Eddie, and she start searching the room with her eyes instead of asking. Finally she spot him up front right, sitting next to some proper-looking woman she ain’t recognized, and a child she couldn’t see too well, but from the way he touch the woman shoulder and sat the boy up next to him she got mad ’cause she figured they was a daughter-in-law and a grandchild she ain’t never seen or heard of before in her life. It staggered her ass to imagine that she coulda got so separated from Eddie that he ain’t never told her about no woman, no wedding, and no baby. I got mad myself. What the goddamn shit!

Darlene covered her eyes with the palm of her hand and get to thinking ’bout everything she ain’t never wanna be thinking ’bout. She gripping her face like she gonna pull it off to show somebody else face be under there, maybe the real face she felt she been hiding. Then she took her hand down and looked at me—I guess you could say she looked
inside herself
at me—and I done recognized a expression I dread more than anything. Them big wet eyes said
I’m sorry,
them drooping eyelids said
I’m tired,
and that flat mouth said
I’m determined.
She blaming me for everything that happened and deciding she gonna break up with me. Naturally, I heard this a thousand times before, but that meant I could tell when a motherfucker really mean it.

I freaked the fuck out. Honey, I said—bluffing—give it some time. Like fifteen minutes. You gonna be crawling back on your stomach to get a hit. Slithering for my forgiveness. Let’s watch this damn trial, okay? I ain’t really wanna watch, but anything be better than a breakup in a courthouse.

Now it did seem real odd to me that them accusations against Delicious ain’t had nothing to do with some shit the judge called Certain Irregularities Concerning the Recruitment, Treatment, and Compensation of Laborers, but that go to show how tough it was to take them Delicious motherfuckers down. The prosecution had went on a roundabout strategy instead.

So the lawyer—some motherfucker with saggy cheeks and old-school nerd glasses who be looking like a failed vice president—ain’t said nothing ’bout tricking nobody into working for no company, or no jacked-up prices at no store, or no beating the bejeezus outta TT. He talking some shit ’bout how the bad sanitation up at Delicious done polluted the water supply with human waste, saying that Sextus and Jackie and How had lied to the IRS about the company income, and, of course, blaming em for having a interesting relationship with Yours Truly—the kind where they was sometime using me to compensate they workers. Which they still was doing some of. At that point I wanted to get up and leave—behind all the corrupt shit they was perpetrating up in that joint,
I’m
gonna get the blame
again?
And my best girlfriend gonna cut me dead? No, no, Joe! Motherfuckers was about to see a illegal drug go apeshit and burst into tears.

Otherwise, I don’t remember much about the trial, I turnt off to it. Once all the rigmarole and legalese got said by the lawyers and the judges and whoever, like a lion saying grace before it eat your ass, and the prosecution side made their dumb remarks, Darlene zoned out thinking ’bout Eddie and changing her life, and I ain’t want to face her new state of mind or the character assassination happening on me up at the bench. Judging folks ain’t my bag—I guess I could understand why y’all does it, since y’all got bodies people could rape and kill, and possessions motherfuckers could jack, you got to figure out the histories and smack people with the it’s-your-faults, but I get tired of that shit real quick. Who cares what happened in the past—for real! Y’all human beings has got enslaved to time, and that’s why y’all need me, because just like Darlene y’all need time to stop rushing into the future or chaining your ass to the past. That’s why this whole legal-system thing people got going hate me, call me a controlled substance and keep me from making friends with everybody, ’cause I know how to make time go away.