Maybe behind that doubt, and the sense that the intimate moment gonna end soon, Sirius suddenly start talking ’bout his past. He told her he always had a interest in science, specially the sky and the stars, that he wanted to go to school to become a astronomer or a meteorologist, but his brothers couldn’t tell him how you got them jobs, and his mama said you need a telescope and you need to be smart, and he thought that meant (a) they couldn’t afford no telescope, and (b) she ain’t think he smart. His father told him you couldn’t make no money looking at no stars nohow, so he should get a job that paid real money, a job that people need all the time, like building houses or stitching up dead bodies.
His third-grade teacher couldn’t tell him none the steps to be a astronomer neither, except she said you had to be real good at math. He had just failed a math test ’cause he ain’t knowed it was coming and hadn’t studied. Later, he went to a bad high school and he dropped out and started a hip-hop group, but they wasn’t signing nobody from noplace but New York or LA, and meanwhile he stuck in Fort Worth, couldn’t get his crew to move—they was like, Too far! Too goddamn expensive!
But I keep reading the science pages in the paper, he said. Hell, that’s all I read. I don’t follow politics, but science is real interesting to me. A smile spread over his face. He goes, Darlene, did you know there’s a star in the sky that’s a diamond? It’s called BPM 37093. I memorized that, ’cause the minute you can go there, I’m getting on a spaceship. It’s a star that collapsed. A star caves in when it dies. That’s what happened to BPM 37093. And all the carbon in it got crushed up into a diamond. A diamond that’s a billion trillion trillion carats. Can you believe that? A diamond that’s bigger than the sun? Now when I get there, I’m not gonna be greedy or nothing. I’ma cut off a couple of pieces that’s maybe only the size of my hand and bring those back. I’ll be a mega-bazillionaire, and I won’t have no worries no more.
You’re the biggest bullshitter, Darlene told him, flirting with her voice. There’s no such number as a billion trillion trillion.
Swear to God! Actually that shit is actually true. Then, like he tryna prove that he had told the truth all the time, he admitted to her that he called hisself Sirius B partially ’cause his real name was Melvin—Please don’t tell none of these niggers, he said—and the other part ’cause it’s also the name of the closest star to the solar system. He spelt it for her, explaining that everybody who heard the name mistook it for the word serious, but all his inspiration done come out the sky. His pupils get wide and he start telling her ’bout the Dogon people of Mali in Africa, said they got ancient rituals that had came from astronomical information that white folks only just discovered, like the fact of the star he named hisself after. You need a telescope to see Sirius B, he said. Now, how the Dogon people known about it so long ago? He also said that the Dogons was amphibious.
Darlene thinking she gotta draw the line at a motherfucker who believe in amphibious Negroes from ancient times who knew shit about outer space, right?
Then Sirius stood up and scrambled down into the brook, knocking rocks over and splashing. He goes, Don’t say you saw me, Darlene. I think I could trust you. Then the sonofabitch ducked into the culvert.
Sirius? What are you doing, Sirius? she called out.
It’s a experiment, he called back. His voice be echoing from inside the tube, like the earth itself talking.
What about the contract? Didn’t you sign the contract? You owe them money.
I’ll come back, he said. Splashing sounds coming through the pipe for a little while. I just want to see what happens.
What happens is you get your ass kicked. Hammer or How will find you and kick your ass. Or you die in that hole there. Or they find you and kill you. She sat back and showed him her feet. These used to be Kippy’s boots!
Don’t say you saw me. Please, just don’t say you saw me. Or say I went a different way.
Darlene wanted to stand up and go with him, but out the corner of her eye she seen How getting the group together to go back to the chicken house, and even though How had his wide lumpy back turned, just looking at that muscular neck made her afraid he gon turn around and raise his eyebrow at any moment once he realize she tryna slip off. He’d run over and pull his gun out to keep her from flying the coop, and that would give Sirius up too. If one of em had a chance, maybe she shouldn’t push their luck.
Sirius! I need you to do something?
The cylinder said, What.
When you get far enough, call this number and tell them where you are, and when they find you, tell them how to get to me. She recited the number for Mrs. Vernon’s bakery several times. Remember it, she begged. Please. Remember it? And call.
Sirius promised.
On breaks, and in moments when she panicked or got frustrated, Darlene be daydreaming ’bout busting out the contract and running too. During her afternoon, if she raise her head or get a two-minute rest from pitching Sugar Babies to TT or Hannibal, she could squint out cross that infinity cornfield with all them bushes or groves of maples or live oaks here and there that went along the many li’l streams that be zigzagging through the property, so many that couldn’t nobody memorize em, and she pretend she could leave and go back to the calm life she ain’t never had.
One afternoon, they had driven out to the lemon grove Delicious kept in one corner of the joint. The Fusiliers, who running the place, had wanted to specialize in citrus at one time—at least that’s what How said—but this li’l bunch of acres, maybe six or seven, was the only part left of that experiment, which they said used to spread out something like two hundred or three hundred acres but had also failed. But now it had only some twisty lemon and lime trees, and the crew found out it ain’t had too much fruit. After climbing through a whole bunch of rows, the twenty of em had only picked enough fruit to cover the bottom of one tub, and even them lemons was covered with all kinda brown spots and holes.