James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

But that fear didn’t prevent him from venturing into the underworld every night after her disappearance and creating a fantasy life for himself as a detective. In fact, the fantasy was nearly real. Eddie divided up an old map of Houston, already so overused that the paper rectangles had nearly separated from one another. He circled each neighborhood and, starting with his own house in the Fifth Ward, knelt on the map in the living room scrawling through the city’s landmarks, making pie shapes inside the concentric ring roads. Every few nights he’d visit the seediest corners of the pie shapes, each time making new connections, like a paper chain that might lead him to her.

When he had done with the likeliest areas of the pie shapes, he moved outside the ring road, until his nightly journey began to require more bus fare than he could manage on what he borrowed from friends and teachers without explaining his situation, and he’d had to walk home long distances after the buses stopped running. School gradually ended, and for most kids, responsibility dissolved into heat and haze, but Eddie worried that he might have to figure out how to pay the rent and the bills if his mother did not return soon.

Whenever Eddie saw their landlord, Nacho Vasquez, a tan guy about Eddie’s height who wore denim shirts and a bolo tie with a silver and turquoise brooch, Nacho always steered the conversation toward Darlene — How’s your mom? he’d ask. Is she at home? It took until August for him to tell Eddie to remind her that she was two months behind on rent. Eddie explained that she had gone on a business trip — a long one. When asked what kind of business, Eddie said that the trip was a job, she had found work somewhere else for a little while. He told Nacho that she knew about the rent and would pay him when she got back. Eddie was about to get on a bicycle he’d borrowed from a school friend and go searching for her again.

She left you here? Nacho asked.

Mrs. Vernon looks after me, Eddie said. Every day.

Did she go by herself?

Yeah. She doesn’t have a boyfriend or anything.

She doesn’t? Oh. What kind of guys does your mom like?

I don’t know. She doesn’t like tall guys. Anymore.

Nacho turned mauve. Really? Has she ever dated, you know, someone like me? I’m half French and half Mexican.

Maybe. Yeah. I’ll ask!

When does she get back?

In a couple of weeks.

Tell her to get that rent to me, okay? But maybe I’ll cut her a break if — you know? Never mind. All right? But soon!

Okay, Eddie said, and he could almost see time accruing, as if he had turned a crank and made the sun go backward and rise in the west. Nacho’s patience would eventually run out. But Eddie hoped Darlene would get back long before then.

The minibus done slowed down to a bumpity-bump. The headlights lit up a wall, and the bricks of the wall turned out as part of a farmhouse made of cinder blocks. The red-eyed driver, a brother they called Hammer, put the thing in park, let the engine idle, and went, We’re here. Hammer wasn’t his name, they called him that on account a he look like MC Hammer — he a skinny brother with his hair shaved in stripes on one side and got them same big glasses. He stretched his arms by grabbing the top of the steering wheel and said, Home sweet home, y’all, then a second later he said GET OUT in a real loud voice, like the Amityville Horror demon, to a dude name Hannibal and to TT, who twitching and talking shit and hadn’t got up yet.

Didn’t nobody in that minibus care about nothing. TT and Hannibal — a spacey man who always wearing this raggedy-ass fedora — almost got into a fistfight over if Michael Jordan was the best ever. They agreed that he played the best, but Hannibal said just playing the best ain’t make nobody the best ever, because what about sportsmanship?

So nobody seen them headlights shining on the new digs as we passing, let alone the whole farm. I coulda told em ’bout some shacks I seen next to some white propane tanks, and then some wide-ass fields with orange trees sometimes, and swampy saw grass far as the headlights could throw they beams. Looked peaceful, like a place where wouldn’t nobody get up in our business, and you know I hate when people be judging my friends for hanging out with me. Whenever I could take a vacation with em I jump at the chance.

A chicken waddled into the road in front of us. Hammer almost hit it — he had to stomp on the brake with both feet and that made the bus jerk forward like Sherman Hemsley, so much that Darlene seen the bead cushion under Hammer’s ass when he leapt up. The whole crew got jostled and took to complaining. Hannibal dropped his pipe, and it ain’t break but it did roll up under the seats, and he had to get down on his knees and crawl around to find it while it’s rolling back and forth. When he bent down, everybody could see his butt crack and that caused some serious hilarity for everybody except a lively woman name Michelle who wearing pigtails even though she thirty-something — you know that girl hopped over Hannibal ass and looked out the window with a scared face on, gripping the seat back.

Did you hit it? she asked. You didn’t hit it, did you? That’s bad luck to hit a chicken!

Especially for the chicken, Hammer said.

Down in the road, the chicken waggled them red things on its head at the new employees in the bus like it saying, Course I made it, you dumbasses. The fuck you looking at?

In all the drama of stopping, Darlene and I sat in the back looking at the scene, studying it like it’s some philosophicated hypothenesthesism and with a li’l giggle we thought to ourself, Why did the chicken cross the road? Kind of as a joke, but Darlene also said that shit out loud. Why did the chicken cross the road? Ain’t nobody act like they heard, so we start asking the question seriously — my girl wanted a answer. Why did the chicken cross the road?

Right then the chicken booked into them tall grasses off to the side of the minibus. Hammer pointed at it and said to Darlene, Look like you missed your chance for a exclusive interview. Then he jump off the driver seat and gone to unlock the door that let us all out.

Michelle told Hammer, You funny. Glad you ain’t hit it.

Jackie frowned and squinted, tryna see where the chicken had went, like maybe she gonna have to go chase it down. How did she get out? Jackie muttered under her breath. But then her expression changed into one that ain’t care no more.

We was in front of this long one-story building made of concrete that had a line of muddy windows along the top of the wall. Jackie, Michelle, TT, and Darlene slid down out they seats into a pothole filled with water and had to shake out they shoes; Hammer poked and punched Hannibal and Sirius B till they stood up and got out, all sloppy and nervous. Now that Darlene out the shitty-ass A/C in the van, the humidity put her in a chokehold. She searching for a clue to where we had gone to — was we still in Texas, or had we went far as Louisiana or Mississippi or even the Florida Panhandle? Couldn’t nobody tell, and if I was the only motherfucker paying attention, they sure had a mucho problema. How long do it take to get how far? Was that a Texas tree? Was that? The hell time it was? Was that sugarcane?

Darlene look at the building kinda suspicious, and then, right with everybody else, the good smells in her memory gone away and got replaced with a strong shit smell. Like a shit smell so bad that it reached its whole hand up inside your nose, pinched the bottom of your brain, and twisted your tear ducts like a lemon peel going into a motherfucking cocktail. The newbies all gagging and making disgusted faces and talking with vomit voices. Somebody seen feathers on the ground and pointed and said they saw feathers on the ground.