The minibus done slowed down to a bumpity-bump. The headlights lit up a wall, and the bricks of the wall turned out as part of a farmhouse made of cinder blocks. The red-eyed driver, a brother they called Hammer, put the thing in park, let the engine idle, and went, We’re here. Hammer wasn’t his name, they called him that on account a he look like MC Hammer—he a skinny brother with his hair shaved in stripes on one side and got them same big glasses. He stretched his arms by grabbing the top of the steering wheel and said, Home sweet home, y’all, then a second later he said GET OUT in a real loud voice, like the Amityville Horror demon, to a dude name Hannibal and to TT, who twitching and talking shit and hadn’t got up yet.
Didn’t nobody in that minibus care about nothing. TT and Hannibal—a spacey man who always wearing this raggedy-ass fedora—almost got into a fistfight over if Michael Jordan was the best ever. They agreed that he played the best, but Hannibal said just playing the best ain’t make nobody the best ever, because what about sportsmanship?
So nobody seen them headlights shining on the new digs as we passing, let alone the whole farm. I coulda told em ’bout some shacks I seen next to some white propane tanks, and then some wide-ass fields with orange trees sometimes, and swampy saw grass far as the headlights could throw they beams. Looked peaceful, like a place where wouldn’t nobody get up in our business, and you know I hate when people be judging my friends for hanging out with me. Whenever I could take a vacation with em I jump at the chance.
A chicken waddled into the road in front of us. Hammer almost hit it—he had to stomp on the brake with both feet and that made the bus jerk forward like Sherman Hemsley, so much that Darlene seen the bead cushion under Hammer’s ass when he leapt up. The whole crew got jostled and took to complaining. Hannibal dropped his pipe, and it ain’t break but it did roll up under the seats, and he had to get down on his knees and crawl around to find it while it’s rolling back and forth. When he bent down, everybody could see his butt crack and that caused some serious hilarity for everybody except a lively woman name Michelle who wearing pigtails even though she thirty-something—you know that girl hopped over Hannibal ass and looked out the window with a scared face on, gripping the seat back.
Did you hit it? she asked. You didn’t hit it, did you? That’s bad luck to hit a chicken!
Especially for the chicken, Hammer said.
Down in the road, the chicken waggled them red things on its head at the new employees in the bus like it saying, Course I made it, you dumbasses. The fuck you looking at?
In all the drama of stopping, Darlene and I sat in the back looking at the scene, studying it like it’s some philosophicated hypothenesthesism and with a li’l giggle we thought to ourself, Why did the chicken cross the road? Kind of as a joke, but Darlene also said that shit out loud. Why did the chicken cross the road? Ain’t nobody act like they heard, so we start asking the question seriously—my girl wanted a answer. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Right then the chicken booked into them tall grasses off to the side of the minibus. Hammer pointed at it and said to Darlene, Look like you missed your chance for a exclusive interview. Then he jump off the driver seat and gone to unlock the door that let us all out.
Michelle told Hammer, You funny. Glad you ain’t hit it.
Jackie frowned and squinted, tryna see where the chicken had went, like maybe she gonna have to go chase it down. How did she get out? Jackie muttered under her breath. But then her expression changed into one that ain’t care no more.
We was in front of this long one-story building made of concrete that had a line of muddy windows along the top of the wall. Jackie, Michelle, TT, and Darlene slid down out they seats into a pothole filled with water and had to shake out they shoes; Hammer poked and punched Hannibal and Sirius B till they stood up and got out, all sloppy and nervous. Now that Darlene out the shitty-ass A/C in the van, the humidity put her in a chokehold. She searching for a clue to where we had gone to—was we still in Texas, or had we went far as Louisiana or Mississippi or even the Florida Panhandle? Couldn’t nobody tell, and if I was the only motherfucker paying attention, they sure had a mucho problema. How long do it take to get how far? Was that a Texas tree? Was that? The hell time it was? Was that sugarcane?
Darlene look at the building kinda suspicious, and then, right with everybody else, the good smells in her memory gone away and got replaced with a strong shit smell. Like a shit smell so bad that it reached its whole hand up inside your nose, pinched the bottom of your brain, and twisted your tear ducts like a lemon peel going into a motherfucking cocktail. The newbies all gagging and making disgusted faces and talking with vomit voices. Somebody seen feathers on the ground and pointed and said they saw feathers on the ground.
This is a chicken coop, Darlene said, like she just discovered America. Why did we stop here?
No, no, this ain’t no chicken coop! TT said. How it’s a chicken coop when we just seen a chicken running around outside?
Basehead, she muttered.
Bitch, I heard that, TT started, but Sirius B took a step to stand between em.
Darlene screwed up her face at TT and then turnt around, sighing to herself, ’cause TT always be saying the negative of whatever you said. She knew to ignore his ass.
I feel bad for you, TT, Sirius B said.
In the minibus, Sirius telling everybody how well known he is for music in Dallas–Fort Worth—mostly Fort Worth—and that hadn’t impressed nobody, but outside Darlene could check out his tallness and saw that he had these long sexy arms on a wiry muscular body, with a ballplayer butt. Big big big Sasquatch feet. She took a step closer so she could feel the body heat between they arms and the little hairs that be brushing together there.
You in the opposite reality of everybody else, Sirius told TT. You don’t gotta be Einstein to smell that this a damn chicken coop. He laughed at how ridiculous TT be.
Darlene smirked, and she wanna put her hand up Sirius shirt between his shoulder blades so she could know firsthand ’bout how smooth his skin. So she did. And instead of jerking around violent or nothing, Sirius turnt and shown her his face like a gift he gonna let her unwrap later, but she gotta wait. But between the feel of them silky back muscles and the open face he done showed her, his eyes touching her eyes, shit got all gooey, and that put the holy terror in her. She pulled her hand out and put it behind her on her own back, like she tryna undo what she had just did. Sirius looked forward again.
Jackie asked Hammer to leave the headlights on so everybody could see better in the early light and follow her to a heavy sliding gray door a few yards up. She kept hunting around, maybe to see where the chicken had went, then unlocked the door, pulled it open with some help from Sirius, and stood next to it so everybody could get in, even though she ain’t put no lights on. The chicken-shit odor got ten times stronger, and when Darlene moved inside the building, into the nasty musty chicken air, and stood in this hallway with a bunch of straw scattered on the floor, she could hear these ting ting ching sounds coming from the left. She looked to the left and seen that one noise had came from all the chicken feet plucking at the bottom of they cages, and the other noise was the birds going what what what brock all over the place, or at least the ones of the birds that be insomniacs.
Hannibal spoke up for the first time in a while. He took his hat off his nose and mouth and ask, What we going in there for? It’s all birdy and whatnot. He clamped the hat back over his face.
Come on, y’all, Jackie whispered, like she afraid to wake up the birds. It’s people on this side, not no chickens. This the no-chicken area. She moved her hand in a half circle and went, Chicken, no-chicken. Okay? She clicked on a flashlight and walked into the no-chicken area, like everybody supposed to follow her.
The beam from Jackie light danced around and Darlene and I seen little flashes of the room. For a no-chicken area it sure had a shitload of feathers and pellets on the floor and you had to make damn sure you didn’t slip on them pellets and fall on your ass. I went, I love this place, isn’t it beautiful? But Darlene disagreed with me. See, she had went to college and everything, not on the honor rolls or nothing, but she still had some high-bougie ideas about comfortability and accommodations that I found it hard to respect. For her, everything had to look like some stupid Renaissance bed-and-breakfast.
Meanwhile, they got rows of perfectly fine bunk beds lying not very far apart going through the whole space. Aight, people of all kinda brown colors was tossing around in them beds without no sheets, looking like a box of chocolates that had fell on the floor and got smashed and then put back into the smashed box. Whatever. A bunch of them beds had striped mattresses on em with rusty springs poking through the tops, and the tops was ripped up. Them beds was close together as you could get beds without making it one big bed. The concrete floor and the walls had a ton of layers of paint all over em, and the layers had chipped away, so you could see brown and white patterns crawling up the paint and moldy-ass smears of water damage over the whole kit and caboodle. It’s some small windows up by the ceiling, but they got wooden boards over em. I was like, Fine. You take the good, you take the bad.
But Darlene stopped cold, looking down from her motherfucking high horse, and in that moment come her downfall.
These are the accommodations, she said to Jackie, trying not to put too much of a question mark at the end or give away all her disappointments, ’cause out the corner of her eye she seen her traveling companions pushing on into the room, going to the best of the beds that’s free, and Hammer helping the most whacked-out folks. Somebody climbed up to the top mattress of her bunk and the damn thing swayed like it might fall over if too big a person sleeping up there. She figured maybe Jackie playing a joke, maybe they only had to stop there for the night.
Something wrong with em? Jackie asked. That’s me down the end. She threw the beam from her flashlight over to another cinder-block wall that stuck into the middle of the room but ain’t quite met up with the ceiling, giving her the only privacy. ’Sgood enough for me, ’sgood enough for you, ’less you some kinda uppity bitch, which you shoulda said. Her eyes gone up and down Darlene body all judgmental and shit.
To be honest, Jackie, it isn’t what I expected. You said three stars! I thought we’d at least get two.
You could go at any time, but you owe us for the ride and for the accommodations of at least this night because we ain’t taking nobody back nowheres until tomorrow.
What do you mean?
It’s in the contract. You signed the contract.
How much do I owe?
Five hundred for the ride and a hundred for the first night.
Six hundred dollars? Darlene asked.
She feeling tricked, like now she had to grow a whole crop of rice outta one grain.
You’ll pay it back working, Jackie said.
The others in the minibus had understood the situation lickety-split without getting snotty and had gone and got into they space, and right behind that, Darlene found her sorry ass at the foot of the least wanted, most disintegrated mattress. She done a li’l circle around the bunk real quick, looking for some other clean bed that maybe nobody else seen. The last bits of her pride was breaking up into nothingness when she laid her pocketbook down and parked on the most bedlike part of the bed. Her heart start beating crazy like a freaked-out little moth under a juice glass.
For me it was a big reunion, a party. I could give two shits ’bout how many stars. I was like, Stars schmars.
So Jackie goes, I don’t know about you, Darlene, but I’m exhausted. She stretching her mouth out to yawn, then shuffling back to the master bedroom. Once her new superior had disappeared into her space, Darlene start staring like a cat at the jerky light moving around behind Jackie wall. Then the light blinked out and a blackness thick as oil be pouring into her eyes and filling em up. She could make out maybe a couple of them folks on the beds. She put her hand in front her face and couldn’t see nothing but the pinks of her nails if she squinted. Outside it started getting light, but in there, couldn’t nobody see nothing. Sirius had took the bottom bed next to hers, which ain’t seemed as filthy to her. Darlene stared at his back, hoping he gonna suddenly sit upright and switch with her out the protection he shown to her before, but no, he grabbed his knees and made some wheezy gurgle noises and that meant that he had fell asleep.
They ain’t let her get in touch with Eddie yet, and even though it’s late, she know she ought to tell him where she gone and that she safe. Since she think the company done cut off the phone, she figure she gonna call a neighbor who could check on him. She ain’t know how Jackie gonna react, but knowing the bitch already gone to bed, Darlene start thinking ’bout if she ought to remind her now or wait until morning. But then she got all up in her motherhood, start groping her way past the sleeping folks squirming on the cots until she found the special wall, and whispered.
Jackie.
She ain’t heard nothing back.
Jackie?
Yeah, honey? You need a hit?
I really need to call my son. Where can I call my son from?
Oh, Darlene, sweetie, I am so sorry. I forgot. It’s too late now, it’s almost morning, I can’t take you out there at this hour.
Darlene start wondering ’bout what she gonna say next and the silence ate up her thoughts until Jackie open her mouth again.
How old your son? He not gon be up this late, is he? Even though Jackie folded that question into a sweet tone, it sound like she daring Darlene to admit that she not a good mother.
No, of course not. She figured he coulda stayed up waiting for her to get back—sometimes he did—but Jackie had this logical tone that bulldozed right the hell over Darlene feeling that she gotta do it right then, and all of a sudden asking for a phone seem ridiculous. Still, she kept on thinking ’bout Eddie Eddie Eddie, so I started to ignore her ass—I had a lot of other friends in the room, I ain’t need her—and of course I knew that was gon make her cranky. Then I said, Darlene, look how much positivity you brought to yourself, chile. Stop worrying about that stupid kid and come party with me.
Jackie said, Good night, but Darlene’s ass stayed right there, didn’t know what gonna happen if she snuck on out to find that phone. She kept listening to Jackie clothing rustle while she tryna find a comfortable position to sleep in. She figured Jackie couldn’t see her loitering, on account a she couldn’t see Jackie neither, with both of em black and invisible in that damn dark room, and she hung out there, leaning ’gainst the wall, digging her nails in that rough concrete.
It’s four miles away, Jackie’s voice said, all breathy and not listening. Six miles, I mean. We’ll go in the morning, she added with a little more feeling.
Darlene felt like Jackie had listened in on her thoughts and decided to give a warning not to make no trouble, and whether that was a coincidence or a dead-on guess, it still gave her a jolt. She stood straight up, peeled herself off that wall, and stumbled back to her bed. Had to figure out how to pass what be left of sleepytime on that stained, lumpy box spring that look like it might poke out her damn eyeball if she turnt over in her sleep, not to mention all them strangers around.
Then she thought about using her pocketbook as a pillow to keep it safe from anybody fingers reaching in there and walking off with her stuff. She thought she left it on the mattress. No? Maybe she put it under the bed? Could she left it in the minibus? She touched the places on the mattress where she might had put the bag, but that method, though popular, don’t never make nothing reappear. She got on her knees to hunt underneath the cot but she couldn’t see nothing in the shadows down there, so she probing that hard cement with her fingers. When she pulled away, her hands was covered in dust and hair; she had little feathers, twigs, mouse pellets, and chicken feed sticking to her palms. A sneeze danced up her nose but she held it in and her face spasmed, like gnaufg! She brushed the crap off her hands onto her thighs and said, Shit shit shit, real quiet a bunch of times, like that be the name of every moment. I went to hang out with TT and we tried not to laugh at her. Rule Number One is keep your hands on your bags.
The stress made her want to reach out to me, even though me and TT chuckling at her pathetic ass. She punched herself in the heart and went, Stupid stupid stupid, through her teeth. The minibus still idling outside and she thinking ’bout a tiny chance that she had left the bag out there on the seat. But first she visited every restless black shape in that long-ass room, forty-six in all.
None of you are asleep! she burst out. You just smoked up Crack Mountain and now you’re pretending to be asleep? I don’t think so. Who has my bag?
Darlene! Jackie yelled, and then her voice rang outside the wall. Calm the fuck down.
One of these—has got my bag, and I am going to find out who.
Go to bed, honey, we’ll deal with this once we’ve had some sleep, okay? What you had in there that you need so bad?
Darlene silently had to admit her possessions wasn’t worth much. I was the most valuable thing in that purse—a half-empty glass vial and a rock in a plastic bag from the trip—and surely somebody gonna oblige with a hit anyhow when she start getting boogie fever. But Miss Darlene had issues with the principle—you know how violated you feel when somebody jack your belongings.
After a while, Jackie voice ringing through the room, like Darlene mind be talking, like Jackie cutting in on our braindancing. Jackie go, You still want that hit? It’s yours if you want a hit.
I smiled at Darlene inside her brain. I knew what she gon do. Not to be egotistical or nothing, but I am irresistible.
A totally unnecessary moment went by and then Darlene said, Okay, and gone in Jackie room. Jackie took a hit first, and that shit surprised Darlene for a second, but the radio static sound of them rocks fizzling got louder when Jackie sucked on the pipe and sent Darlene eyes into a rapture like she a motherfucking saint. The flame from the lighter be giving they face a red-brown glow, and the hot glass tube almost singed her lips and fingers again. Darlene knew I was not in the best mood—somebody mixed my ass with levamisole, I hate that shit—but then again, good shit wouldna let her sleep.
Then Jackie goes, It’s ten, okay, but don’t worry, I’ll just add it to your bill.
Levamisole good for deworming a dog, but it ain’t pacified Darlene one goddamn bit once she got me inside her. When she groped her way out the bedroom area, Darlene kept tryna figure out who robbed her, without the use of her eyes. When that shit ain’t work, she fumbled over to the door they’d come through, a industrial slab kinda thing, and she thought she could maybe quietly raise that latch and go out to investigate. The bar felt cool when she touched it—weird for a place that’s mostly hot, where she and the others had started using the bottom of they shirts to wipe away the sweat that be trickling down they brows and turning everything they looking at salty. The rusty iron bar went up a little bit when she lifted it, but she found a giant padlock holding that bad boy shut, a lock she couldn’t believe she ain’t noticed snapping shut behind the group. Who locked the lock? Hammer? What if a fire broke out?
Darlene stuck her hands in the little cranny where the door come to the frame, tryna cut a deal with the steel bulk and the pulley system that slid the whole motherfucker open. The crag ripped one her nails so bad she had to tear it off.
Ah, she thought, that’s good. Nobody could’ve left this place with my purse. She decide to squat right at the opening of the door till sunrise so that couldn’t nobody pass and in the morning she gonna do a inventory and find the handbag. Her eyeballs tryna drink in all the light they could, but it ain’t much. The whole time her open eyes be feeling like closed eyes, and blinking didn’t hardly change the view none. She keep worrying ’bout what she had got herself into with this place. She closed her eyes for real and say to herself that maybe everything gonna turn okay in the morning. She thinking ’bout the book and visualizing somebody giving back the bag.
She laid her head back and hit it against the concrete too hard, had to clamp down her jaw to keep from shouting, then start rubbing the sore spot where she thought a knot might pop up. After the pain got tingly and then got boring, I let go her arms and legs to make em relax and she accepted that she gonna have to take a wait-and-see attitude. She visualized that damn purse and getting the purse back until she done fell asleep.
All the same, the purse ain’t never turnt up. Not only did it not materialize, but the harder Darlene tried to reckon out who done lifted it or where it gone, the more some the crew start wondering—to her face—if a crime had took place at all.
Michelle started going, Did you even have a bag? I don’t ’member you having no bag when you was in the van.
Sirius remembered the bag and described it pretty good, but Michelle was not convinced beyond a doubt. Didn’t nobody trust TT or Hannibal, including TT and Hannibal, and Hammer wasn’t nowhere to be seen. Not one motherfucker confessed to the possible theft of the probable bag, and the whole episode made Darlene look bad and wacko ’cause she had accused everybody before hardly meeting em.
Just ’bout two hours after they got there, sleepytime got done and everybody had to get the hell up and start the damn day, even if they ain’t had no rest. For these folks, rise and shine meant get a hit off a dirty pipe, but Darlene ain’t had me or her bag no more, so she had to mooch. After breakfast—aka a hard-boiled egg, a gritty, no-name yogurt, and a half-pint of ’bout-to-go-sour nonfat milk—Jackie unlocked the door to go out and smoke, but she wouldn’t let Darlene search nobody for the pocketbook. When Darlene checked the road, the minibus gone, probably left during the hour or two when she’d drifted off. Hammer must have drove it somewheres. Had he been inside or outside? Had Jackie had the key all this time? Did Jackie snatch the bag?
Darlene snuck a short, angry walk away from the chicken house to breathe some fresh air. She figured out that the building was one of three look-alike connected buildings near the top of a ridge with a dusty road cutting through it all like the part in some old white man’s hair. Once she had scampered up to a higher place, jumping over them potholes, and she could see over the ridge, she turnt to get a look at the farm.
For 360 degrees, the view stayed ’bout the same. Bunch of shiny-ass, frilly leaves of corn be fluttering out to the horizon, like the invisible hand of God ruffling em, and they get small in the distance and morph into a emerald glop. Beyond that was some teeny-tiny gray trees and a long chain of them electrical Godzilla towers in the far far distance where the world start to curve, a crazy distance couldn’t nobody imagine running away to. No wonder they let her walk around during the day.
Darlene gave a nervous look to the chicken house, like she wanna skip out, but then a man she ain’t never seen before come out the nearest building and called her back by name. The way he said her name made her feel like she had did something wrong by wandering off—the second syllable came louder than the first, exactly the way her daddy used to say it when she got him pissed. The sound of the voice alone tugged her back over to the coop and she picked up speed as she went.
Darlene feet going chuff-chuff and stopped in the rocky dirt and the dude pointed at the chicken-house door. In his other hand he had a gun—still in a holster but he got his damn hand on it—and that made her wonder what’s wrong and is he gonna shoot her if she don’t come back?
He told her, They’re gonna dock your pay ten dollars for missing roll call.
Ten dollars ain’t seem like much compared to what she need to make, or her expected salary, so she didn’t hardly notice what he said.
The man was a ethnic type with a round-ass tan body and a face too small for his head that be held in by some elephant earlobes sticking out at almost ninety degrees. He petting his mustache like a kitty cat. He ain’t introduce hisself at that time, but he did take his hand off the gun right as she gone back inside.
Darlene heard the last couple names of the other workers as she going in the sleeping quarters. Jackie had everybody lined up in two rows, one of twenty-three, one of twenty-two, so the new girl seen where to put herself. She filled the empty place and wait for her name but Jackie ain’t never called it. She told the men to divide themselves from the women and that they had a special assignment. While the women waiting, Jackie had herself a private chat with the mustache man who had called Darlene inside. Darlene stepped out the group of women and waited right behind Jackie to ask her a question.
Darlene words come out strange, on account a me, and that she ain’t had much sleep. Jackie, did anybody who…called my bag? I mean, my son. Did anybody find my bag, and can I call my son?
Jackie let out a breath. Nobody got your bag. I don’t think you had a bag. Did you show me your ID? We need to keep your ID on file.
That’s it, the ID was in my bag! And how about my son?
When we’re on detail we can stop at the depot and you can call. She threw her attention over Darlene to the rest of the group. Men to the right, ladies left, please.
What, Darlene said, it’s different work?
Darlene, if you want to get with the men, you could certainly try it. Jackie had this high, edgy note in her voice, tryna sound all businessy.
It’s more money, isn’t it? I owe you six hundred twenty already, I need more money.
It’s only more depending how much work you do, Jackie said. You not willing to work hard, are you? She raised her eyebrows and turnt to count the men as they went together.
Darlene frowned, she shifting her weight, and this grumpy feeling kicked her ass. She cocked her head and walked over to join the menfolk, saying, Of course I’m willing to work hard! At first she stood behind the backs of the tallest dudes, then she got up on tippy-toe to hear Jackie instructions. When the big echoey space swallowed Jackie voice, Darlene decide not to ask her to repeat herself. When she done wore out the patience of the shortest, furthest-back man by begging him to tell her what Jackie said, she decided to mimic the guys as they stiffened they bodies and pulled they holey T-shirts and muddy work pants into place. Those that been there and got theyself the regulation canvas gloves (fifteen dollars at the depot) be tugging em over they rough fingers. Most the men made they way to the door, Darlene marching in with em, getting set for tough labor, hopefully justified by high money. She ain’t had no appropriate shoes, so Jackie found a pair somebody had left behind.
She goes, These boots belonged to Kippy.
It sound like Kippy somebody important. Darlene put the boots on, and she notice that the laces be all stiff with some dark, rusty-colored dust, and it be on the shoes too.
Kippy ran away. Tried to. But he didn’t make it.
Darlene wiggled her toes inside the toe of one boot, and they fit her tight as a rabbit inside a grain silo. Them shoes was too huge, and now she thinking that that rusty dust be Kippy blood.
They caught him. So…Jackie shook her body like she tryna say, Don’t try this at home, kids.
Shortly, ten of em riding in a souped-up school bus. Most the seats had got ripped out, so everybody had to stand up, and the windows of the bus, the kind schoolchildren woulda jacked down and thrown paper planes outta, they been removed, and both sides opened into the air. The front windshield had broke in a spiderweb shape, by somebody the foreman called a crackhead. The guys who worked there longest knew to sit down and hold on to the few seats there was, ’cause when the bus started up and shook in them potholes, you might lose your balance and fall out the open side. A bunch of big-ass light green plastic tubs took up part of the inside the school bus.
Darlene sat near Sirius, but he acting all uncomfortable, what with all the man-talk that done broke out as soon as the guys separated from the women. He leant away from her and he ain’t look back. A guy would sometimes make a rude comment and glance over to check what she doing, but Darlene only half listening to they coarse jokes and swagger. She had came down fast since them dirty hits this morning, and the drumbeat done started up in her head again. I heard her thinking, I need you, Scotty. I want to be with you. I told her that I loved her too and that I always gonna need her forever. I’ll always be with you, I said. I started singing her wedding song: You’re the best thing that ever happened to me…Just look up. She turnt her chin to the sky and saw some chunky little clouds with straight edges at the bottoms, rocking a smooth butter color on account a the early-morning light. To us the scene above look like a giant blue table in the middle of a ballroom, scattered with some crack rocks. We felt like she could reach up and pull them ginormous rocks down like they lemons off a tree.
Darlene raised her hands to where the window woulda been, but the bus went in a pothole and wobbled big and she flinched and grabbed the side and the seat in front of her to keep from falling out. One her legs gone over. Sirius gaping at her for a second and hold out his hand, but by then she ain’t need to grab it. Her temples throbbing with blood, and drips of sweat sliding down her armpits to her waist; they tickled and made her itch. One the guys had a voice like Nat, and soon she could hear her dead husband whistling “You Are My Starship” along with them drumbeats, and her eyes teared up like she crying but she ain’t know why the tears ’cause she only felt numb, like she suddenly a metal spigot that somebody had opened.
Another dude who ain’t introduced hisself interrupted her sad little trance to say, You better have some strong arms. He raised his arms and flexed em to show her what strong arms looked like.
She stared at his deformed nose, tryna make him feel as small as he had made her feel.
He went, You know it’s watermelons, don’tcha?
What’s watermelons?
What we picking.
Oh yeah, right, right. Mm-hmm. Watermelons. It’s more money though.
Nah, not that much more than anything else.
Darlene thought ’bout what it gonna look like to carry a fruit the size of a big-ass dog across her forearms. I know, she said. Between the ginormous job and that sticky heat, already hot enough that the sweatier men had took off they shirt and was using it as towels, she might drop dead by afternoon. I wanted to give her more strength, but I could feel my power fading, till I was only a li’l tingle bouncing up and down her nerve endings, like a pair of shoes stuck on a telephone wire.
It ain’t the real biggies, the guy said, not no Carolina Crosses—whoo. Thank God it’s still early. Reckon they’ll be like thisyer. He cupped his hands around the air to show something the size of a basketball. Maybe li’l bigger. They call it a Sugar Baby.
Darlene remembered her melon-fucking Cajun john. If he could make it out here, I said to her, he’d be in heaven, and she could make a lot of money and spend it on a lot of drugs. Plenty of shame out here for that sonofabitch to like. I lived for the upward curl of Darlene’s wet lips, I wanted to see em around a pipe again, letting me in and down her throat so I could gently caress them li’l sponges inside her lungs and give her back her beautiful self-confidence.
Look like you gonna enjoy it, the guy said.
No, she said, I’m thinking about something else. I’m sorry.
I laugh like that too sometime, he said, tryna see some shit beyond the flat fields. I was friends with that guy too—we spent a lot of time together laughing about shit neither of us could remember now.
Darlene did not enjoy harvesting no watermelons. Not even them Sugar Babies that only weighed ten pounds. But she had to do it for at least another month, because she had chose the job and they wouldn’t let her switch, plus she had something to prove. The foreman, that mustache guy, who also the driver, chose the spots with the most ripe melons. He said you could tell the ripeness by how yellow the grass underneath, and he giving all kinda li’l notes ’bout when a melon ain’t ripe and warned the group not to be touching none of the ones he ain’t cut off the vine, ’cause if you ripped the stem you could ruin the ripening process and that would be bad for what he be calling consumer demand.
Then he’d go up and down the rows with a li’l hook blade shaped like a comma, cutting the vines and freeing them green globes. His second in command had a butter knife and did the same thing, but he had a helluva lot more trouble. After the cut, they’d turn the melon out so the pickers could see if they’d cut it off the vine or not. Next the bus would drive slowly down a row, and half the group would form a human chain on either side. They’d pick up them Sugar Babies and toss the ripe ones down the chain till somebody threw em to one the catchers riding inside, a brother on each side the school bus. The catchers had to drop em in the bins without bruising none of em. There was miles and miles of this shit to do.
The foreman—Darlene eventually heard him answer to the name How, probably short for Howard—maybe ’cause he seened her almost run off that first morning, ain’t wanna put her on none the easier jobs. He ain’t let her hide inside that shady bus and arrange them melons into no neat pile—his buddies, the dudes he joked with about pussy, got them jobs. He put her in the middle of the human chain, where she had to catch the Sugar Babies with her gut. Once or twice they knocked the wind outta her. She breathed deep, pretended she ain’t hurt, and hurled the next melon to the next catcher, who handed it up to the guy on the bus.
This supervisor How seem to enjoy putting Darlene down, always reminding her that she had wanted to come out and harvest watermelons with the men. He’d pretend that she on a baseball team and do a play-by-play of her throws or her catches and snicker when she fucked up. But she ain’t never broke none, she kept saying to herself. She never dropped a single one. Her forearms bruised up, she jammed her finger, broken nails scraped melon skins sometimes, but she ain’t never dropped a single one.
The season went on, and the melons changed type till they turnt into some humongous, child-size, lead-heavy boulders. Darlene always thinking that they weigh what Eddie used to weigh when he smaller, and that made her ask could she call home, but then it’d get too complicated or pricey and she’d hang with me instead. She got near the pay phone, but she ain’t never had no money. She dialed a number and it said some crazy shit she ain’t never heard a pay phone say. It’d go, Please deposit five dollars for the next five minutes. And she be like, That’s twenty quarters!
Once when she picking melons she stopped and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist and stood there all sporty-like, waiting for the next one, and How giving her a hard time ’bout it.
He go, Bet you wanna cut one of them Charleston Grays open and sit down on that rock over there, eh?
It wasn’t the first time he talked trash about picking watermelons that sounded like he tryna get the black folks’ goat. How called himself one hundred percent Mexican and talked a lot of shit on how Texas and California really belonged to Mexico and the gringos stole everything, and he teased the black crew members ’bout the Civil War and said that they belonged to him. He told the few Mexicans on the crew that he be a Aztec and they his POWs.
At first, in that roasting heat and that motherfucking unbreathable humidity, Darlene did dream ’bout stopping work and tearing open a Sangria melon with her bare hands, biting the red part off real slow and letting the juice drip down her cheeks and onto her neck and chest, sticking her face in and wetting it just to get cool. But on account a How’s comments she ain’t want him to know, ’cause it seem racist against herself to want so bad to stop work and eat a watermelon. This man How wouldn’t never cut that shit out, though.
You know you want that, right? How told her. He mocked her with a exaggerated grin. All you people want is some watermelon.
Fuck it, How, she spat. It’s one hundred degrees out here and we’re slinging around these twenty-pound fruits all dainty like they already belong to some white lady in the Garden District? If I want to stop and eat one myself, who cares if people call me a nigger just for wanting what anybody in their right mind would want? If eating and resting and surviving makes you a nigger, then sign me up!
The guy behind her on the chain goes, I hear that, and grunted and lobbed a Carolina Cross her way. Word.
It socked her in the gut and made her stumble backward a couple steps and then drop to one knee, but she held fast, like letting go even one a them suckers would splatter the last of her willpower all over the dirt. As she got up the strength to heave that damn monster up to the guy in the school bus, she feeling a intense need to hang with me again, so she could smoke and smoke and smoke until I filled up her empty insides with smoke, and we could do a spiral dance together up into that heavenly ballroom full of drugs way above the planet Earth.