Your mom don’t always get the facts right. And frankly, I ain’t sure about her loyalties.
On one occasion when Sextus and Darlene returned from all the sex prayers they said upstairs during Eddie’s visits, he picked up a few of the papers he had come across on the computer desk and tried feebly to draw Sextus into a conversation about business. Just get him talking, Michelle had said. Eddie had not quite finished replacing the toner cartridge and getting the printer back online. Eddie twirled in the room’s knockoff of an ergonomic office chair as Sextus and his mother waited for him—too quietly, it seemed. Sextus lit a cigar and sat down in an antique chair near the window by the fan.
Eddie tried to keep his tone casual. Is the farm getting bigger? he asked. He’d seen a letter that suggested the Fusiliers had bought a large parcel of land.
Oh, them papers is old. And you shouldn’t be reading em nohow. You wanna know something, son, you just ask.
The mild, nonchalant response emboldened Eddie. Okay. He waited for a while and then asked, Where do you keep all the records of the people at the farm and what you paid them and what they owe? How much does my mother owe? What about me?
Darlene had chosen a folding chair near to Eddie. She touched him on the shoulder and said his name sternly.
Sextus, watching something outside, maybe right downstairs, gradually smiled and said, You don’t ask about that. He smiled his unhappy smile. Cigar smoking had become something of a post-visit ritual for Sextus, but Eddie could tell that watching him smoke made his mother want to use; she leaned in and kept her eyes fixed in the cigar’s direction. She always beat a path to the pipe as soon as they went back to the chicken house. Sextus tried to blow smoke out the window, but it got caught in the draft from the fan and sped toward the two of them instead. Eddie tried not to cough by making his cough sound like throat clearing.
A long interval passed as the day’s soporific heat penetrated Eddie’s limbs and skull, intent on turning him into a rag doll, almost as much as it did on days when he went out with some crew to dig or weed or harvest.
Why don’t I ask about that? Eddie asked.
Though he didn’t raise his voice, a sudden rage sounded in Sextus’s tone. You don’t ask because you don’t fucking ask! Darlene, tell your whelp to shut his piehole.
The shift in Sextus’s mood startled and humiliated Eddie.
Eddie—Darlene said again, not daring to repeat the phrase. The silence returned; Sextus focused out the window again, this time on something distant—maybe a plane.
Just as suddenly as his anger had rushed in, Sextus relaxed his back into the chair and adopted the caring voice of a mentor. He turned to Eddie. You might as well know now, son. At some point I think you might could become part of the management at Delicious. I seen it from the first. You’re young and smart, you usually don’t ask no dumb questions, you’re a whiz with the equipment and such, et cetera. You got a type of authority inside you that you need to keep folks like the ones working here in line. I seen how you deal with that one who always singing, the bluesman. You’re good. What’s more, you don’t got no issue with the pipe, and that’s more than I could say for Jackie.
She’s getting worse every day, Darlene said absentmindedly. That’s true.
How’s a good worker, but he’s batshit psycho crazy. I reckon he’ll move along somewheres else. Frankly, I wish he would.
Sextus turned to face the two of them and stubbed his cigar into a nearby ashtray. Now it ain’t gonna happen tomorrow. But you keep doing good, by and by something gonna come available for you in one them upper areas. Just don’t do nothing stupid, see? He squinted as he spoke, and Eddie figured he was referring to his earlier questions.
I won’t, sir, Eddie said. The thought of Delicious becoming the rest of his life made his stomach burn. But he smiled.
Immediately on his return to the chicken house, Eddie sat down on the bottom bunk of the bed where his mother slept and unlaced one of his tattered shoes. In a matter of minutes, Michelle made her way over to him and sat on the opposite side of the bed, a little farther down, probably so that she could examine his face carefully and make sure he wasn’t lying, he thought.
So. Did you find anything out?
No, not really, Eddie muttered. I asked a couple of your questions and he told me to shut my piehole. Eddie didn’t think he should mention Sextus’s offer of advancement, but he thought of it during the whole conversation. Michelle grilled him about which questions he’d asked, the exact words Sextus had used in reply, the inflection of his replies, and his general state of mind. Eddie didn’t have much to tell. It did seem important that Sextus made decisions about who did what at Delicious, because the company didn’t exist on paper. But he couldn’t explain how he knew that.
She asked for maps again, and anything that might reveal the structure of the business. If he did have any new information, he wondered if he now had an incentive to keep it to himself. Maybe the way to get out of Delicious was to move up in the ranks under false pretenses, save himself and his mother, then come back for the others. He doubted that Michelle would see any benefit in that approach.
What kind of cigar did he smoke? she asked. Could you tell where it came from?
Eddie apologized for not having noticed and promised Michelle that he would try harder to remember all the small details next time.
The smallest details, she insisted, could be the most important to remember.