James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

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!