I am not a—Darlene said, before How shoved her into the trunk of a tree.
A branch done scratched her arm and face and drawn some dotted lines of blood and she knocked her head upside the tree. How pull her up again by the back of her elbows. When she get standing again, he reach behind him and pull his Magnum out his pants. He put his fingers like he gonna grab the barrel and smash the butt of the gun against the side of Darlene face but when he twisted his torso tryna get some momentum going, Darlene covered her mouth to keep in a laugh. The eye contact that happened made me and Darlene bust out into total hysteria, and I bet that’s why How kept at it, shoving her and bashing her in the head and face, talking shit ’bout how he gonna give her something to laugh about.
Darlene kept tryna say she ain’t told the guy nothing, that she told him how great she had it at Delicious, but that ain’t done no good and she stopped talking. Obviously, the content of what she said ain’t matter as much to How as the fact that Darlene had went down there and start talking with folks from outside. He screaming ’bout that she knew it’s ’gainst the rules to be walking away from them limes in the first place and then you couldn’t talk to no random people who drive up in a car ’cause what if they offer you work somewheres else, or what if they take you to one of them other farms where they treat you badly. He asked her how long she had worked at Delicious, as if they ain’t both known how long.
Just like with TT, people start coming down out the trees to see the goings-on, ’cause they heard somebody screeching and getting beat up. Darlene heard it too, and for a second she wondered where all the screams coming from. She said to herself, Somebody oughta shut that screamer up, but then she figured out that the screams be coming out her own mouth.
While the punching and kicking happening from How, and the bruises that’s forming on her back and breasts and legs, and her eyes swelling shut and her mouth bleeding, Darlene made sure to think positive. She thinking ’bout what a blessing it was that she already got a few missing teeth and hadn’t got no new ones yet. I feel blessed, she told herself. Her luck made her giggle more, even though that put a bunch of dirt on her tongue and she had to cough and spit it out with her blood. So blessed.
The reason she had started giggling was ’cause she remembered that she do know a Melvin. Melvin Jenkins. That Sirius real name—and that meant the sonofabitch done made it out. That plus me kept the beating she getting from How from feeling as bad as he want it to; for all them injuries he putting on her right then, she now had it confirmed that Sirius done escaped out of Delicious and got back to the real world. He could send folks who could figure out how to save anybody who ain’t belong, with a chance to do something different to they life, like Eddie. But why he ain’t came yet?
I figure Jarvis caught Darlene voice on tape that day, and that even though he ain’t get nothing in terms of a story, he gone home and played the tape for Sirius like that night. Not so he could hear Darlene, but so he could hear How. But Sirius woulda flipped the fuck out when he heard Darlene ’cause he had took for granted that after six motherfucking years Darlene and em woulda figured out how to quit Delicious.
But he ain’t hear just that she still picking nothing in the citrus grove for no pay and high prices, it sound like her son had joined her there too and that he doing the same never-ending chain of working and spending everything and debt climbing. And Sirius knowed that if you got sick, like the dude they used to talk about who got bit by a alligator, you ain’t gone to no hospital, you just had to figure out the fastest way to get back to work with a big chunk missing out your leg, or they brung you out somewheres and told everybody else you gone to the hospital, but didn’t nobody know for sure. Could be they just dumped you somewheres and you dehydrated to death, or the alligator came back for the rest of you. Delicious woulda shot the alligator and sold it to a handbag company. They’da sold your leathery skin too, if the alligator done left enough on the bone.
20.
Doing Nothing
Eddie sat inside at Summerton, contemplating the strange workings of the place as he concentrated on repairing the operating system on Sextus’s PC. Or perhaps just plugging it back in. After that he was supposed to fix the door to the microwave and install some shelves he had built and stained that would soon go into his own workspace.
He had just unscrewed the back of Sextus’s PC and placed the screws into a bottle cap on the desk, then edged out the interior components about halfway, blowing dust off the circuitry with a can of compressed air, when word came that How had an important mission for him. Eddie hardly needed to wonder anymore why How couldn’t ask somebody else; everyone knew that he stockpiled the worst jobs and set them aside in order to spring them randomly on Eddie whenever he got the chance.
Apparently How needed to see him in the barn he insisted on calling called the workshop, not your workshop. He stood outside the barn when Eddie arrived, arms folded across his smudgy tee as if Eddie had taken two hours rather than fifteen minutes to get there. Even though he didn’t have a watch, he poked his wrist when Eddie walked up, signaling his annoyance that the kid hadn’t arrived quickly enough for his taste. He had a lit cigarette wedged between his fingers.
Eddie said, Sorry, unconvincingly.
Sorry what? He sucked on the cigarette and disdainfully blew the smoke toward Eddie.
Sorry, sir.