The season ’bout to sputter out, and Darlene starting to miss Sirius B. For so long she thought of herself as Nat’s wife, like Coretta Scott King or somebody who always gonna be married to a great dead dude. She living under the curse of his murder, always not thinking ’bout the blazing red rectangular eyes of Mount Hope on that night, and Nat behind em, hollering and melting. She ain’t hardly never stop hearing him whistle. All that grief and guilt done drove her out her mind to the point where if anybody tried to stand in the burnt-up spot in her head that she kept for Nat, it put her in mind of a eclipse. By eclipse we not talking ’bout a rare, beautiful cosmic happening—more like a freak event that done turnt a normal day dark.
When Sirius left, Darlene start getting all quiet, or grumbling shit in her head that even I couldn’t have convinced her to say. They used to joke together and make all kinda rebellious comments, the type of hogwash that How woulda docked their pay for. They had a secret habit of trading nasty lines under they breath when the other one nearby, snickering behind the ridiculous, strict rules at Delicious. For instance, Delicious ain’t let nobody have no utensils (people said ’cause of that whole spork-shank thing), but they also served some shit they called gumbo twice a week, and you had to tilt the lip of the bowl above your mouth or put your face in the bowl to eat that watery tasteless shit. And they ain’t never heat it enough. Jackie and em timed everybody damn showers to five minutes, even though the water took six before it would get partway to lukewarm. A cold shower could feel good in that climate, but not that cold.
Now Darlene had to face all that kooky bullshit on her own, same time she daydreaming ’bout the funny way Sirius use to raise a eyebrow at her whenever shit got too ridiculous. He had gorgeous eyebrows, she start remembering for the first time. Somebody mighta clipped them suckers off a mink coat and passed them to him.
’Bout a month and a half had went by since Sirius run away, and she bet he had got pretty far by that time. She ain’t find it tough to keep his secret on account a nobody could say nothing ’bout it or they gon get jumped. She bet that he had found Mrs. Vernon and that Eddie would know where his mother had got took to by now. Believing that Sirius made it out kept her calm, gave her some hope beyond the next rendezvous with Yours Truly. Not to downplay my importance or nothing, but Sirius escape proved to her that all them fears they ain’t usually said nothing about, that had to do with the work culture at Delicious, ain’t really been true. They could get out, maybe. Hope revved up inside her rib cage and she visualized herself quitting Delicious, walking out with some crispy-ass hundred-dollar bills in her hands. The watermelon harvesting had messed up her body, she all cramps and sprains and bruises. Even still, she sometime thinking ’bout a reunion with Eddie the way she think about a sunrise; the endless circle of working and paying the people who worked you for overpriced goods and no-star accommodations had kept most her thinking dark as night.
Not even How had said nothing ’bout Sirius leaving after Sirius done it. Usually How ain’t miss no kinda opportunity to put a motherfucker down if he couldn’t hack the hard work. But he ain’t chuck a single snide comment into the brother’s path. Didn’t nobody ask Darlene nothing, even though she knew that plenty of others had seen the two of em hanging by the brook, and just about everybody knew they was fucking. She thought she saw Jackie taking a real quick pause during the first roll call without Sirius, fast enough that it might not even been a true pause, but beyond that Jackie kept a total poker face about it. The silence around it be more scarier than if they had said shit. When they locked folks up every night, they took they guns and start hunting Sirius’s ass down like he a motherfucking rogue elephant headed for a nursery school. Every morning the underlings wondering if Sirius dead, if they had killed him, and if they maybe gon kill again.
A month and a half after Sirius broke out, in October, the crew gone out to them bad lemon groves, where it be some dinky li’l Meyer lemons, and Darlene going around plucking the tiny number of brownish-yellow examples out them thick leaves when she heard some shit happening a couple rows of trees away from where she standing on top her ladder, sorting through them branches for any old thing she could plop into her plastic tub. She heard a whiz in the trees, and right after that a wail so loud and psycho that it ain’t sound like no human being. A couple more cries like that and she recognize TT voice and held her breath.
With a crop so close to imaginary, any event felt like a reason to stop working a minute and find out what happened. Darlene stopped and bent down to listen and then followed the sound under the roof of leaves and stumpy tree trunks. The ruckus of other people feet going whiff whiff through the brush over to the noise let her know that she could get with the curious group, and she stepped down and walked over, going diagonal zigzag through the trees, moving faster the more curious she getting.
She found a bunch of Delicious people kneeling and standing here and there around TT, who wriggling in the weeds between the rows, howling and grabbing his own head like it’s a Sugar Baby he ’bout to toss in the truck. A whole lotta blood had came through his fingers. The crowd made a circle around him, watching with they mouths hanging open but not doing much of nothing. Without thinking, Darlene tore off her shirt and ran over to him in her bra. She forced the dirty tee around his hands to sop up the redness. He took the shirt and mopped it all over his head but he ain’t stopped screaming. She called him by his real name, Titus, the way his mama mighta did to get his attention and calm his ass down, but for a long time ain’t nothing change.