James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

Darlene herself known something like this gon happen sooner or later, but then her life had schooled her to believe that things she knew was gonna happen wasn’t gonna happen. So she shocked that it happened right then, but deep down it ain’t surprised her. It turnt out the TV news had picked up on a story out the Houston Chronicle, a five-part investigation piece based on the testimony of a man who call hisself Titus Wayne Tyler who had worked for Delicious Foods, a company that Jim Pommeroy said Tyler had made some startling accusations against.

Then the camera had went to Jarvis Arrow, and Darlene thinking, I remember that man’s face from somewhere. Sometime she be having memory problems. The dude pushed his thick black eyeglass frames up on the bridge of his nose and he shaking his damn head while he talking ’bout Delicious, or at least his version of what gone down there. Then they showed TT face, and the face start talking ’bout the chicken house, and he rolling up his T-shirt to show folks how long the scars be up his damn side and cross his back, welts that be looking like ginormous worms glued to his skin. Health care? He laughed. We didn’t get no kind of no health care. I laid up on my back with paper towels stuffed in my guts, biting a piece of a Styrofoam cooler to keep the pain down. Still can’t walk right, can’t breathe right out my nose.

Darlene did remember that, though. She thinking how that TT had had a good sense of humor the whole time he sick, how he laughing at folks who fussed over him, and how he done told everybody he ain’t want no kinda special treatment and to treat his ass normal. But now he talking like this the worst shit that ever happened, and it sound like a outrage to Darlene, ’cause he saying it in front of the world. It felt like he telling family secrets to folks who not gonna give two shits. Darlene shouted at Jim Pommeroy to shut his goddamn mouth.

From downstairs on the verandah Sextus snapped at her and Elmunda to shut the hell up. The men in white coats gonna take both you heifers away, he yapped. He silent for a second, then he goes, On second thought, don’t stop. That’d be the happiest day of my life.

Then TT start talking ’bout a woman who brung her son to the farm and he start working there before he even working age. That made the shame in Darlene’s chest that been swirling around catch fire like a spark in a almost empty gas tank and she jammed down the mute button on the set, watching TT ugly lips curling around all them damn lies she could tell was lies without even hearing em. But inside, she known for a while that one these freaks gonna bring the operation to a end. She just wanna keep doing it her way, the way she already been doing it, taking it apart from the inside, and she got took aback that TT and Jarvis telling they side of it without saying shit to her beforehand. Now she thinking a whole bunch of official motherfuckers gonna drive up to the house and demand that she let em in and that she serve em; they gonna ask to sit down and want cups of coffee and tea and water and they’d be smoking up the house, but not the good stuff, and they gonna write down all the answers to all the hard questions, them questions that ain’t nobody inside the place wanna hear, let alone be talking ’bout with a camera up in they face.

Darlene finger start inching over to the red power button on the upper left of the remote, and just when she ’bout to put it in place to press down, she seen Eddie face and shoulders show up on the screen. It’s only a picture, but the sight of him make her dizzy, and she cringing backward and lower herself into a seat in the recliner right next to Elmunda sickbed. By now the lady’s anger more like it’s a ember instead of a open flame. Elmunda had locked her arms cross her chest and had twisted her damn mouth over to one side, but she so annoyed that she couldn’t say nothing no more.

Darlene moved her ass up to the front of the chair, then cut her eyes and unmuted the sound so she could hear TT talking again. She had to admit that what he saying ’bout the barracks and the depot and all that shit ain’t had no big-ass mistakes or untruths or whatever, but she couldn’t stand to listen to him tell his experience nohow, stuff so close to her own life, and making em sound all harsh and disgusting; she bet that Jarvis fool had told him what to say and how to put the place down so that sympathies gonna pour in and everybody gonna agree with his point of view on Delicious. If he ain’t stop, that stab wound he making into her past gonna keep slicing and getting all deep until it ripped open all the motherfucking memories she had went through during her time on the farm. They all coming back and stinging her like she done whacked a hornet nest: the good job she thought gonna erase all that shit she want me to help her forget, how she done lost her teeth, all the streetwalking with me, the stabbing, them boys with they beer cans, them yellow shoes, that goddamn piece of driftwood. Plus the way that she had put the last scrap of her faith in Delicious — all gentle, like she putting a baby chick that had fell out a nest back up in it — and once again the world had kicked her ass with a thunderstorm of bullshit and cruelty that knocked down the whole damn tree. If it had happened to some dumbass who be far away or not real, she thinking it almost be hilarious.

She couldn’t hear nothing of the broadcast over her own thinking no more. When the news over, she got out her chair and left Elmunda almost steaming out her ears and tryna decide the next program to watch, skipping over channels and rejecting all of em with a grunt or a screech of hate. Darlene gone down that hallway with her arms all slack, looking at some shit couldn’t nobody see right ahead of her, and when she get back to her room and shut the door, she goes boom right down on the bed and done took a glass pipe off her night table. She put me into it and lit up, and I smiled at her with no face and fizzed and popped like usual, filling up the insides of the pipe with some thick-ass smoke. I opened a door inside the smoke and she done came on in and run down a unreal hallway past a whole bunch of rooms in the mansion I built for her until she found one with a fireplace going in front of a warm couch with a soft fabric that made her pussy shiver when she runned her hands over it. I put a blanket down the end. She watching the smoke float through the room for a while, then she put the blanket around her shoulders and be tugging it tighter, all the way over her head.

Wouldn’t you know that right after we had got all comfortable together and Darlene lying in my arms of smoke, some damn phone that she ain’t seened on a stand next to the couch start ringing. Suddenly we back in the real mansion. She peek out from under the blanket and I told her not to answer no phone ’cause it ain’t a phone I had put there but she done it anyway and heard voices inside the phone, asking all kinda tough questions and demanding to speak to anybody who living in the house. She telling them voices to go the fuck away but they kept after her ass until she put the phone down. Sextus and Elmunda son, Jed, come into the room, six years old, and he talking the same as the voice, he asking what’s wrong with his folks in his li’l child-ass voice. Darlene could hang up a phone, but she couldn’t hang up no kid, and she tossed a empty plastic bottle at him.

He dodge the bottle and come over to her. What happened, Miss Darlene? Why’s Mama shouting?

Don’t be ridiculous.

That’s not a answer. Did something happen? They were on the television.

This child was a little bitch-ass detective.

Darlene thinking ’bout telling the truth, but I said, Hell no, you not telling this child the truth! She told him, Nothing is going to happen to you or your parents, Jedidiah. She said that shit instead of Your parents fucked a whole lot of niggers over and they might could go to jail for a whole long time, so get ready. You got to protect a child, I said, and the best way I know to protect a child is to lie your motherfucking head off. She tried to tell me some shit ’bout Eddie when he round the same age, and how she feel bad for lying to him about his father, but I was like, Please. She pulled the blanket back over her head.