Nat been gone ’bout a year and a half before Darlene finally got herself a job, a job aside from the unpaid work she tried to avoid, which was dealing—or not dealing—with the charred remnants of Mount Hope Grocery. She heard ’bout the gig through this white boy named Spar said he met Nat once. The insurance money for Nat and for the store be running out, and even though it had helped a whole lot, using it still reminded Darlene’s ass of all she done blamed herself for. Her new job was at a different store, a nationwide chain with fluorescent lights and linoleum instead of wood beams and peat-moss smells, so it ain’t set off no unpleasant memories for her. But unpleasant memories you know to avoid; its the goddamn pleasant ones be causing all the pain on account a they sneak up on your ass.
On one them evening shifts, with Harriet from down the road looking after Eddie, Darlene start thinking ’bout going back to all the places she and Nat once shared, and when she get home late that night, she start going through a whole bunch of Nat’s coats, his bomber jacket that still be smelling like his Old Spice, and his pictures of the Centenary Gents, and the songs he used to whistle start clogging up her mind. Darlene knowed she gotta drown out them memories and get the fuck outta Louisiana. That’s right when she started thinking ’bout moving to Houston. Bethella could guard her son. Eddie like being with Bethella probably more than being with her, Darlene told herself. Eddie ain’t need to soak up all the weird, negative messages she be giving off all the time. Plus, she hoping that she could find better work in Houston.
Of course, moving to Houston don’t never solve nobody problems, and Miss D sure couldn’t solve the big issue that be obvious to any fool who seen the family together in the happy days, which was that Eddie took after his pop so goddamn much—not just physically, with them whiskey-brown eyes and them eyelashes and that big-ass mouth, but he had somehow picked up a truckload of his daddy’s ways. It got tough for Darlene to stay in the room with him and drain out all the unhappiness that start swelling inside her feet, ’cause her son be a living reminder of her dead husband. That gon be the same whether she in Ovis or Houston or the east side of Hades.
Around that same time, a few month after she start her job at that Hartman’s Pharmacy, me and Darlene got together and had our first li’l tête-à-tête. So it could be I’m partly to blame for why it done took another year and a half for her to get her and Eddie ass to Houston for real. Meanwhile, in them May evenings after work, she feeling that restlessness coming on right before she gone home, like a checkpoint had sprung up between work and home where the happiness cops gonna pull her over and test her to make sure she got a positive mood. She be standing around outside the store after her shifts, watching customers stroll in and out, counting how many trucks gone past, letting the sun bake her face while it’s dropping off behind the trees in the neighborhood cross the street. Sometime she sat on a crate, smoking alone ’cause the store discount done got her started on tobacco again, or she with her other so-called associates on break, everybody parking theyself at a wobbly old picnic table with all kinda graffiti gouged into the wood.
One afternoon she sitting there watching one them freaky sunsets where every type of cloud done mixed with airplane exhaust and space dust or some shit and the sky be turning all blue and orange and it look the way a brass band sound while it’s tuning up. This sky had so much drama going on up there that a few customers was gathered on the walkway in front of the store gaping at it like they waiting for the space shuttle to launch. Off to one side, a gigantic storm cloud be blending the darkness with the coming night, but on the other side, the sun had burnt a hole in a bunch of puffy globs of meringue and its beams was shooting through. Above that, some the meringue done gone bright purple.
Spar, her manager, walked out onto the sidewalk and stared, then he turnt his head to Darlene.
It’s a stunner, huh?
What is? Darlene said. She seen the whole spectacle, plus the onlookers, without noticing nothing at all; everything she experienced feeling humdrum, like it’s a washed-out photograph in a motherfucking View-Master.
You, honey. He grinned.
Spar flirted with every woman who crossed the threshold at that damn store, but with Darlene he ain’t never stop, and that made her nervous that he meant it for real. It disturbed her ’cause he said he met Nat once—you don’t be hitting on the new widow of no acquaintance before the tag’s off his damn toe. Spar a skinny white guy, shorter and younger than Darlene, who slick his hair back and can’t grow enough face hair for a goatee but try anyhow. Not nobody she felt she could take seriously, almost not even as a boss. How seriously you could take a guy named after Spartacus, that dumbass gladiator from them old movies? She had wanted to work there ’cause that branch was way far away from Ovis—other side of Monroe, almost to Ruston—and she ain’t always feeling the eyes of motherfuckers who knew ’bout the murder and the trial and Mount Hope. Only Spar knew about her connection to all them tragic events, and she ain’t think he had said nothing to the others; also, most of em ain’t read the papers too careful, ’cause they sure ain’t sell too much of em at the store. Darlene liked that she ain’t had no identity or no history at her job; being anonymous meant she could relax for a while and hide in the stream of shoppers that was high on buying shit.
Spar pointed his chin up at the sky. The sunset, Darlene, darlin’. It’s almost as pretty as yourself.