But every time Darlene gone to the depot, she would make a special visit to that li’l stream with the culvert Sirius had disappeared into, thinking ’bout what happened to him and how he coulda survived what mighta happened, but now she kinda sure he ain’t survived. She gone down to the opening of the culvert sometime and be looking in there and talking to it. That circle of concrete be low enough that it wasn’t no way to enter ’less you hunch your ass over, and it wasn’t no kinda underpass drain. This one turnt into a tunnel that got dark damn quick and ain’t let on where the hell it gone to. She knew Sirius done vanished into there, and she guessing that if he come back and rescue everybody, he gonna come back through that same tube. He had told her ’bout wormholes in space, where you could go through that shit and come out way the hell far away from where you started, and sometime, specially when me and her was hanging out, she be wondering if Sirius had did some crazy physics magic and teleported to New York City through that bitch.
The culvert turnt into a shrine where Darlene and I had some top-quality meetings and contemplated the meaning of life and all that, but life ain’t mean much of nothing to Darlene outside of me. She want Sirius to come back mainly ’cause she need a ally, not ’cause she think he some kinda savior. Sometime Eddie would come with us, but he getting old and angry and he ain’t want to spend as much time with the two of us. Teens, they get like that. I suppose me and her could close people out a li’l bit too, what with all our inside jokes and braindancing and what have you. I told her that she should stop keeping me and Eddie from getting to know each other, but she refused to budge on that point. I got mad behind that. On a certain level I found that shit offensive. I wanted to know why she got to judge her best friend so harsh that she ain’t want her son to know me? If somebody like me, I’ma like em back twice as much. I get off on the attention. Darlene pitched a bitch when Eddie start smoking cigarettes at fifteen—at least she started to say some shit, but Eddie shut her ass down by looking at her like she a palmetto bug, ’cause she ain’t had no right to tell nobody what not to smoke.
With the culvert, I told her that when motherfuckers spend they life looking in one direction for a specific thing, some other shit always come from another direction. So one day Darlene and em end up on detail at the citrus grove. It always seem like that citrus-grove detail what they put motherfuckers on when it wasn’t nothing else to do with them, or they too crazy on drugs. They was down in the part with the limes that day. Hannibal, who had worked on big farms before Delicious, thought they maybe planted the wrong kinda lime. He said, See these thorns? Thesyer’s key limes, and key limes don’t bear no fruit too far outside Florida. So maybe we not in Florida? Plus it’s April. I don’t get these folks at all.
That morning, Darlene thinking that her stash of me be down to the last, so she borrowed some off TT, but then when she stuck her hands in her pockets she found a nice-size rock there and smoked that too. You could say that me and her started up a braindancing tango right then.
When she got up on her five-step ladder, she ain’t found nothing in them lime trees, not a single hint of a lime, but everybody know that if you got supervisors expecting to see work happening, you best make it look like you working. Me and her decide to dance, so that them branches would shake, maybe shake out a lime, but mostly we wanna prove somebody up in that tree tryna get some produce going. And Darlene could see out over the green of them trees across the grove and down the far distant part of that particular road to where How had parked the minibus. He had stationed hisself in a different grove some distance away. Darlene kept shaking them branches, not finding no limes, getting stuck with thorns. In her head, we start getting down to that jam “In the Bush” from the disco days. Damn we was high—you know you high when you hanging out with Scotty and Scotty high as you is. She start singing, Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Do you like it? Do you like it like this?
Then Darlene thought she seen a white car she ain’t recognize going down a dirt road she ain’t known about. She thinking she could run down there without nobody seeing her and get there just in time to flag it down that car. Mostly she thinking that she bored and that she want contact with outside folks, not that she herself want to go nowhere with em. And after, she could tell Eddie that she done tried to bolt but that it ain’t worked out and maybe that would shut his ass up. Or if the driver be a good person and not a serial killer or a Fusilier, she could put Eddie in the car and he could drive away with em and leave Delicious like he want to so bad now that he think he a grown man. She wave her hands, tryna flag down the sedan, and then she come down that ladder. Darlene ain’t really wanna leave Delicious, she just wanna be able to leave, and that notion plus the idea that she could report to Eddie ’bout it had the power to get her running.
When Darlene got to the side of the road, she still seen that car coming. Wasn’t no mirage. She tried not to make no noise ’cause she knew that How gon hear and come to get her, but quiet as she could, she raise her arms in the air back and forth and kinda bounce on her knees. For a second she thinking ’bout leaping out into the road to make sure the car ain’t pass by, but then she seen it slowing down. She hopped over to it through some short dry grass by the side the road, thinking ’bout how she gonna explain to the white folks inside what she want from em.
The car pulled off onto the same grass where she standing and the window roll down on the driver side, and that remind her of turning a trick. She looked for the car type on the car and broke into a smile when she seen a bunch of li’l stars and the word Subaru. She remembered the star Sirius done talked about, the star that was a diamond. She’s like, Maybe it really does exist.
When she get up to that car window, she seen a white dude with a couple days’ beard and thick black glasses sitting in the driver seat, and a heavyset guy with a electronic box and a microphone in his lap in the passenger seat.