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?
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.