James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

While she still under the blanket, she saying, Don’t worry, Jed. Jed kept worrying and asking questions but eventually he took her advice when she went, Okay, you can worry, but go worry somewhere else.

She blown out a sigh when the li’l boy finally disappeared. Even so, Jed had set her to thinking ’bout Eddie more and she decide for herself that it wasn’t no way she gon let Eddie talk to Jarvis or TT ’bout nothing that had went down. What they done had exposed her ass and made them weird voices come out the phone and out the boy, and she called Eddie up, ’bout to chew his ass out. For the first seven or eight times the number wasn’t the number and some angry fool started getting mean with her, like, Go away, bitch, go away, but she kept calling until the real number gone through.

She got Eddie on the phone and screamed like a train brake at him even though she ain’t want to. I thought it would get through to him and make him stop investigating with that guy on account a Darlene had everything under control and she could take care of the farm and them people who running the farm without nobody else getting involved or telling the world all what had happened there with the folks who running the company.

Eddie tryna tell her to stay calm and that she ain’t sound stable, like that she had hung out with me too much. He said some hurtful-ass shit to her, like that she too tight with me, and he asked point-blank if she had stopped hanging out with me, and even with me there, she said yes, ’cause I often told her that whenever any motherfucker accuse you of shit you ain’t want em to be right about, you can’t just admit that they accusation be true, you gotta fight the fuck back.

I am not an addict or a crackhead, Darlene said. I can’t smoke as much because of the way I have to operate the place, so now I smoke mainly at night if I smoke at all. Sometimes I don’t smoke for a full two days. And why is this any of your business?

Eddie laughed behind that one. I can’t say I blame his stupid ass.

Then Darlene told him that he think he too good to come back to Delicious and to her so what did Scotty have to do with anything? She told him she gonna figure out a way to get back at him if he cooperate with the investigation. He insulted her again, apologized, then he start pleading with her to quit me until Darlene could hear his wimpy ass start to break down and cry on the phone. Seriously. Darlene done pulled the blanket up off her head and sat up and leaned forward. We thinking we had the advantage at last.

Both of em start screaming into the phone, and then Eddie hung up on her, so Darlene called back a few times and the angry man she called before on accident said some stupid shit ’bout a restraining order. Once Darlene got the number right, Eddie bitched me out and told his mother that she had stayed at Delicious on account of drugs and Sextus, and said some other shit ’bout what he thought she thought ’bout Sextus body, specifically his skin and the whiteness of it. There’s a lot in here that Darlene don’t remember, including a whole bunch of beefs that she howled and that Eddie screamed back at her, and then more voices on the phone, whatever.

Couple days later, Elmunda seen a picture of Darlene on the TV and she called Darlene in the room and they heard Jim Pommeroy talking ’bout what Darlene had said, her own words going onto the screen and a scratchy recording of Darlene voice over the phone going, Nobody did anything wrong, and How dare you, and The truth will eventually come out, like it always does.

I said to Darlene, Your own motherfucking son done recorded your ass behind your back. That’s fucked up. She froze; her jaw clamped. She couldn’t even comprehend that shit.

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.

While 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?