Which exactly what Sirius done. He knew the area good, and it ain’t took him too long to find TT out there filling up some propane cannons and propping up some fake hawks on sticks. Both of them techniques supposed to scare off birds but ain’t never worked at Delicious. Sirius done freaked the hell outta TT at first, ’cause Sirius gone down the row of tomatoes next to his and come up through them vines, like he finna strangle him to death or something.
He told TT that when it get dark enough, him and Jarvis and Michelle gonna go round to the workshop with they car to get Eddie and Darlene. TT and Sirius traded notes to make sure Delicious ain’t changed the program none.
They had been through all that shit and they exhausted by the time everybody get to the workshop. Tuck the first in, and he seen Eddie up there in the barn and opened the side of the door that Eddie wasn’t hanging off, and he got a good look at him and Darlene and made a expression like somebody done smashed him in the face with a drink. Like with the glass. Which woulda been the worst shit to happen to him because he’d rather have drunk the drink. Of course he already drunk on ’bout seven of them li’l Popovs since he had got back from the depot, and he knew that it ain’t no promising situation up in there, but the opportunity to book the heck outta there might not come again for some time. He thinking, Act like everything cool. He said, like, Hey, y’all. Here’s the dealio.
Eddie blew his stack and went, Nigger, get me free before you tell me the fucking dealio! I can’t feel my fingers.
Tuck stuck the last of his Popovs into his pants pocket and squatted down to take a look at the number that How had did on Eddie wrists, and yes, he stone-drunk, but still what he seen be like a plate of Chinese noodles with a bunch of nigger fingers sticking up out of em. He look at it like it’s a alien done come down out a spaceship and spoke French to him. He start tugging and turning the whole mess round in his hands, like he tryna find the end of a knot, someplace he could loosen part the cable and pull something through something else in order to free up Eddie hands, but everything so tight that he couldn’t get started. He pull in one place, it got tight in another; he follow a thread of vinyl and that somehow led to a part going through a hole in the chain. He pinched them rusty handcuffs and they ain’t budge. Meantime Eddie thinking Tuck having trouble just on account a the alcohol, and when it start taking too long, he got to yelling at the old man that he a idiot and a drunk, and that ain’t make it no easier for Tuck to do what he tryna do. Then Tuck remind him of the night they met, how Eddie done tied his hands up, said he ain’t had no kinda obligation to do what he doing, and that shut Eddie’s ass right the fuck up.
But after a minute or two, Eddie start saying, Get the shears and just cut it! Tuck gone and took to ransacking all the toolboxes over by where Eddie putting up shelves, and he couldn’t find em; meanwhile Eddie start shouting the description of what’s a pair of shears at him. Tuck could find only a pair a pliers and a flathead screwdriver and he thinking he gonna use em to pull up some the binding stuff. Eddie squirming around like a hog in a lasso and told him to get back there and look exactly where he left them shears, but when Tuck got to the precise location he seen they wasn’t there. That’s when Eddie knew that How had took em deliberately so he couldn’t get outta that spiderweb of chains and cables. Tuck said he thinking he might could find hedge clippers in another place by the chicken house, but then they heard something outside that sound like somebody coming closer. Tuck edged on out the barn, saying to Eddie that they would see him again that night with Sirius B and figure something out.
For a while, ain’t nothing happen. Which a bad kind of nothing because it meant that ain’t nobody show up with no medical supplies to deal with Darlene injuries, which was moving toward getting infected, and ain’t nobody come around with no food, not even that scalding-hot extra-salty broth everybody called water soup, the soup that, for all them chickens running around, ain’t had no kinda chicken flavor nowheres near it. Michelle used to say, Didn’t no chicken even look in the direction of this shit, meanwhile every damn morning I’m spitting out feathers. And that would crack everybody up and the joke made the soup go down easier. But Eddie and Darlene ain’t had no nourishment to speak of, no water, and plus Mama starting to come awake and jonesing hard. There be this bumpy noise somewheres in the workshop that Eddie couldn’t figure out what it was.
But then he realize that the noise he heard be coming from this one corner, and when Darlene woke up, they look over there and seen Charlie the Rat sitting in the corner, doing his li’l scratchy back-leg-behind-the-ear thing. Charlie seen em see him and looked up like, What? He ain’t go nowhere neither, like even he knew they couldn’t hardly move they own self, let alone go chasing no rat. Them palmetto bugs musta told him. He sat up on his raw back legs and point his nose into the sky like he gonna enjoy watching some shit go down. Like he had put down some his li’l rat money on the outcome.
22.
We Could Get You Free
Tuck, Sirius, Jarvis, Michelle, and TT made it to the workshop, and while Tuck, Michelle, and TT started bustling around and making noise as they argued about how to cut Eddie down from the cords and chains holding him to the door and tried to find the right tools to do so, Sirius remained utterly silent. Eddie noticed all this in his peripheral vision. For a long time Sirius stood motionless near the door, staring toward Darlene, and then, very slowly, in stark comparison with the activity around him, he made a path toward where Darlene lay, as if he were a deer hunter and she his prey. Eddie took note of Sirius’s advance on Darlene, his stunned reaction alone revealing to Eddie who Sirius was. Sirius had apparently lost the ability to close his mouth, but Darlene, despite her agony, could not prevent herself from chuckling when she saw Sirius.
Look who it is. Darlene laughed. She seemed to gather strength from his presence.