When Darlene asked about calling her son, Jackie got activated again. Course you could call your son, she said. We’ll let you use the phone when we get there. Free of charge!
Jackie be showing off the open door of the minibus with her hand like she on The Price Is Right, and Darlene thinking she could hear the sucking of pipes and the popping of rocks in there. The darkness and the tinted windows had kept her from seeing much, and in them days, she always hearing rocks in the background of everything anyhow.
I said to Darlene, I know these folks. I approve. Honey, get the fuck in before the people out in them bushes behind the Party Fool who be listening to everything we say find out ’bout this terrific opportunity and try to come with us. Darlene said yes and jumped over to the minibus without no reservations whatsoever. And when she done that, she noticed a plush carpet on the minibus floor, a carpet laid out in front of us on the road to prosperity.
Darlene hesitated on account a she ain’t know if she could get up into the van. Her eyes rolled into her head and she swooned, almost ’bout to fall. She gripped the footrest to get a balance and flopped onto the floor of the van, next to the center seat. Her hand went swoosh over the beige shag and she remembered being a child and petting a sheep her father had named Luther.
At the wheel, with just the front-seat overhead light on, a red-eyed brother be sucking the last from a juice box, making a racket. When he got done, he pushed the box through the slit in the window out to the road, and a breeze blew it into the center lane and a passing semi done crushed that shit flat.
Jackie laughed, and the driver looked around and gave a broad smile without opening his mouth. Four others sitting in the rest of them seats, all of em hunched-over shadows made by the headlights coming from the opposite side the road. Red Eye turnt the ignition, the door closed, and they was on they way.
Darlene found herself a seat and look at Jackie. I grew up on a farm, Darlene said.
Did you now? That’s sure gonna come in handy.
What time is it? I need to call my son, okay?
Okeydokey.
How far is it from Houston?
Just up the road here, an hour or so.
That close? Okay! Darlene seen a bunch of dark shapes, three in the very backseat and one in the seat in front of that, passing round a little red light. The one in front took it in his palm, and she bugged out when she saw that pipe. The man put it up to his face, and the light be getting brighter as he sucked it in and the pipe start fizzing that fizz that gave Darlene a orgasm of hope. She love the sound of my voice.
You feel like lighting up, go on ahead now. This ain’t company time! Jackie said, and giggled.
Darlene nearly had a conniption. You don’t mind? she asked.
Jackie talked all calm and businessy. This company really takes care of their workers! We don’t judge.
Seriously? she asked Jackie. Seemed to Darlene someone should nominate them for Best Employer the World Has Ever Known.
Seriously, Jackie said.
Word, said one the brothers in the back.
What’s the hitch? Darlene asked.
The hitch is that there ain’t no hitch.
Jackpot! One the brothers passed the pipe up front and Darlene sucked it like it’s a pacifier. She thinking how we could spend time together, but she also gonna have real, honest-to-God work at a place where they understand our relationship and ain’t try to stop it or make her stay away from me. Too good.
This is an incredible opportunity, Darlene gushed. She felt like Miss America taking her first walk with that motherfucking tiara on, carrying them roses in her arms and waving and crying.
I rushed into the few doubting and unbelieving parts left in Darlene’s mind and I shouted, Babygirl, surrender to yes! Say yes to good feelings! Say yes to pleasure! Fuck pain. All that damn pain? Leave it behind you. Ain’t that what the book say to do?
Good thing I ain’t run into no resistance up in her mind, ’cause I wanted to go to that farm just as bad…Now, I get that when somebody walk up to your house and offer you heaven on earth, the delivery truck don’t usually be idling at the curb. That goes extra-specially in Texas. But we couldn’t think on that. Darlene already had way too much shit not to be thinking ’bout.
Once the minibus got moving, Jackie passed the recruits a clipboard and a pen, like when you getting a job job, and she goes, This the contract.
Somebody already done folded that sucker over to the last page and put a bright yellow tag in the place where you supposed to sign. A beefy brother with giant teeth and idiot eyes name of TT squinted at the page and scribbled on the signature line. Sirius B, who a intense, silent type sitting cross the aisle, took the contract out from under the clip, fold it to the first page, and held it like he wanna read that shit in the streetlamp light that they whizzing through.
Jackie leant into his personal space and said, Don’t sweat it, bruh, you just sign.
Before she seen what anybody else done, Darlene slipped that pen out that clip and joyfully wrote Darlene Hardison right on the line. A screen rolled down over her world that showed a sparkling future of joy, just like the book told her she gonna get by asking and believing that she gonna receive.