I feel bad for you, TT, Sirius B said.
In the minibus, Sirius telling everybody how well known he is for music in Dallas–Fort Worth—mostly Fort Worth—and that hadn’t impressed nobody, but outside Darlene could check out his tallness and saw that he had these long sexy arms on a wiry muscular body, with a ballplayer butt. Big big big Sasquatch feet. She took a step closer so she could feel the body heat between they arms and the little hairs that be brushing together there.
You in the opposite reality of everybody else, Sirius told TT. You don’t gotta be Einstein to smell that this a damn chicken coop. He laughed at how ridiculous TT be.
Darlene smirked, and she wanna put her hand up Sirius shirt between his shoulder blades so she could know firsthand ’bout how smooth his skin. So she did. And instead of jerking around violent or nothing, Sirius turnt and shown her his face like a gift he gonna let her unwrap later, but she gotta wait. But between the feel of them silky back muscles and the open face he done showed her, his eyes touching her eyes, shit got all gooey, and that put the holy terror in her. She pulled her hand out and put it behind her on her own back, like she tryna undo what she had just did. Sirius looked forward again.
Jackie asked Hammer to leave the headlights on so everybody could see better in the early light and follow her to a heavy sliding gray door a few yards up. She kept hunting around, maybe to see where the chicken had went, then unlocked the door, pulled it open with some help from Sirius, and stood next to it so everybody could get in, even though she ain’t put no lights on. The chicken-shit odor got ten times stronger, and when Darlene moved inside the building, into the nasty musty chicken air, and stood in this hallway with a bunch of straw scattered on the floor, she could hear these ting ting ching sounds coming from the left. She looked to the left and seen that one noise had came from all the chicken feet plucking at the bottom of they cages, and the other noise was the birds going what what what brock all over the place, or at least the ones of the birds that be insomniacs.
Hannibal spoke up for the first time in a while. He took his hat off his nose and mouth and ask, What we going in there for? It’s all birdy and whatnot. He clamped the hat back over his face.
Come on, y’all, Jackie whispered, like she afraid to wake up the birds. It’s people on this side, not no chickens. This the no-chicken area. She moved her hand in a half circle and went, Chicken, no-chicken. Okay? She clicked on a flashlight and walked into the no-chicken area, like everybody supposed to follow her.
The beam from Jackie light danced around and Darlene and I seen little flashes of the room. For a no-chicken area it sure had a shitload of feathers and pellets on the floor and you had to make damn sure you didn’t slip on them pellets and fall on your ass. I went, I love this place, isn’t it beautiful? But Darlene disagreed with me. See, she had went to college and everything, not on the honor rolls or nothing, but she still had some high-bougie ideas about comfortability and accommodations that I found it hard to respect. For her, everything had to look like some stupid Renaissance bed-and-breakfast.
Meanwhile, they got rows of perfectly fine bunk beds lying not very far apart going through the whole space. Aight, people of all kinda brown colors was tossing around in them beds without no sheets, looking like a box of chocolates that had fell on the floor and got smashed and then put back into the smashed box. Whatever. A bunch of them beds had striped mattresses on em with rusty springs poking through the tops, and the tops was ripped up. Them beds was close together as you could get beds without making it one big bed. The concrete floor and the walls had a ton of layers of paint all over em, and the layers had chipped away, so you could see brown and white patterns crawling up the paint and moldy-ass smears of water damage over the whole kit and caboodle. It’s some small windows up by the ceiling, but they got wooden boards over em. I was like, Fine. You take the good, you take the bad.
But Darlene stopped cold, looking down from her motherfucking high horse, and in that moment come her downfall.
These are the accommodations, she said to Jackie, trying not to put too much of a question mark at the end or give away all her disappointments, ’cause out the corner of her eye she seen her traveling companions pushing on into the room, going to the best of the beds that’s free, and Hammer helping the most whacked-out folks. Somebody climbed up to the top mattress of her bunk and the damn thing swayed like it might fall over if too big a person sleeping up there. She figured maybe Jackie playing a joke, maybe they only had to stop there for the night.
Something wrong with em? Jackie asked. That’s me down the end. She threw the beam from her flashlight over to another cinder-block wall that stuck into the middle of the room but ain’t quite met up with the ceiling, giving her the only privacy. ’Sgood enough for me, ’sgood enough for you, ’less you some kinda uppity bitch, which you shoulda said. Her eyes gone up and down Darlene body all judgmental and shit.
To be honest, Jackie, it isn’t what I expected. You said three stars! I thought we’d at least get two.
You could go at any time, but you owe us for the ride and for the accommodations of at least this night because we ain’t taking nobody back nowheres until tomorrow.
What do you mean?
It’s in the contract. You signed the contract.
How much do I owe?
Five hundred for the ride and a hundred for the first night.
Six hundred dollars? Darlene asked.
She feeling tricked, like now she had to grow a whole crop of rice outta one grain.