Delicious Foods (3 page)

Wearing the contraption felt as grand to him as putting on an expensive new suit. Eddie stretched his arms and elbows, testing out the potential for movement, for subtle inflections in each pincer, for a lifelike bend in the wrist. The prosthesis seemed to wipe out the past and stretch the future into infinity. Eddie began to hope ferociously. Perhaps he would go back south after all and get Darlene to leave Delicious whether she wanted to or not.

He spent eight months or so gaining dexterity. Mornings and late nights, he’d practice picking up grains of rice, turning doorknobs, spigots, and pages, holding utensils, raising glasses. As he grew more confident, he tried juggling two eggs, but after covering his kitchen table in goo, he switched to small rocks.

The range and subtlety of motion Eddie’s invention offered him expanded his abilities well beyond what he’d hoped. Pouring concrete and tarring roofs no longer made up his entire work schedule. After being in St. Cloud for a year and a half, he returned to doing electrical wiring and repairing appliances, as he had done at the farm, though it took longer to overhaul a radio than before. He had trouble managing the tiny screwdrivers, the intricate circuitry. But soon.

To the clients he started attracting, Eddie became something of a curiosity. They would come in to watch him work in his garage, behind a house he now rented, and he would sit intently on his high wobbly stool, lit by a bright fluorescent desk lamp, amid oily file cabinets and plastic drawers full of washers, lug nuts, screws, nails, and grommets. They would stay sometimes until it seemed rude—fascinated, he assumed, by the fact that a physically disabled man could make a profession of such precise work, by the added hardship brought on by his color, and eventually by the minute detail he could accomplish using only the curved wooden hooks of his prosthetic hands.

Eddie knew that they viewed him as a novelty, but he didn’t have the luxury of begrudging them their reactions. Instead he sought to translate the amazement in their faces into a stable income. If he could’ve pulled coins directly out of their mouths, he would have. He’d meet the men’s sheepish gawking with technical conversation: These here wires—This darn microchip—Did you ever see a circuit board this—Your screen has blown out. Or if they showed no interest in the gadgets or home repairs he hunched over, he’d start with the weather. You could nearly always complain about the cold in Minnesota, and if you couldn’t, you could marvel that for once it wasn’t cold, or about the strange summer heat. You could then graduate to the Twins or the Vikings. Somebody who brought a child or a dog into his garage hardly had a choice about whether to become a regular customer; when the pressure to seem compassionate and good in Eddie’s presence intersected with the cuteness of animals and children, the resulting atmosphere could probably have made a bedridden hermit throw a dance party. Only the kids ever asked about his condition, though, and, provided the adults didn’t hush them, he’d speak frankly and jovially.

One day a red-haired girl asked, Hey, mister, how come you have claws?

I had an accident, he told her calmly, though at the same time he remembered every second—the blindfold made with a sweatshirt, the tension in his clenched teeth, the moment when he blacked out from the pain.

Her father stroked the nape of her neck. Don’t bother the handyman when he’s busy, Viv.

He’s a handyman without hands, Viv observed.

Her father let out a loud, anxious laugh, Viv giggled, and Eddie turned away from his work for a moment to share their laughter. As the father laughed, Eddie wondered if the man would hold the comment against his child. But the tension ebbed, and Eddie leaned down until some flyaway strands of her hair tickled his nose.

You know, that’s exactly right, Miss Wilson. I never thought of it in that way.

Her father made an apologetic mouth. She’s darn plucky, my Vivian. I’m sorry, Mr. Hardison.

No need, Eddie said. That’s a great saying. I’m gonna put that on my business card. He turned to the girl. How would you like that?

I guess that would be fine, Vivian said demurely.

Be careful, her father warned him. This one will want royalties down the line.

The following week, Eddie visited the printer and offset a run of small stiff cards emblazoned with his name and contact information, carrying the girl’s description above it in red, curved like a rainbow over a landscape, with a river zigzagging through the center.

When he thought of the phrase, Eddie didn’t mind that it reduced his troubles to a friendly, manageable quirk. The funny, contradictory label covered up all the loss and the pain and made it so that customers could approach him with a feeling of comfort and friendliness. People didn’t recoil or start anymore when their eyes traveled to the ends of his wrists. He’s the Handyman Without Hands, they’d say. How cool is that?

The
St. Cloud Times
wrote an article about him and his business; in the photo, he grinned, holding his prostheses up, a hammer balanced in the right one. The headline described him as a local John Henry—as if you could find that many John Henrys in Minnesota, he snickered to himself. Eddie saved twenty-five copies of the article, and though he gave most of them away, he hung one above his workspace inside a plastic sheath.

Soon a flood of customers sought out Eddie’s services, people who had seen the article or the card or heard about him through friends and relatives. He welcomed the mild amusement spread across their creamy complexions, the nervous questions pumping through their blue veins. He preferred curiosity to derision, so he controlled his impatience because the discomfort came with a bag of gold attached. Some of the white folks brought items to him that they wouldn’t otherwise have bothered to get fixed, just to meet Eddie Hardison, the Handyman Without Hands.

The superior quality of his work, however, brought a large percentage of the gawkers back with more serious issues—prewar homes begging for rewiring, bathtub reglazing, wood-paneling installation or removal, patio design and reconstruction. He saved for and bought a more up-to-date prosthesis—stainless steel this time—but he preferred the comfort and facility of the earlier model, wearing the newer one mostly for public appearances: socials at the Nu Way Missionary Baptist Church, business meetings, visits with friends.

Two and a half years after arriving in St. Cloud, Eddie opened a bona fide shop downtown, Hardison’s, selling hardware, fixing appliances, organizing home repairs. When the florist next door went out of business, he expanded into that space. The shop thrived, and the novelty of the Handyman Without Hands wore off, but Eddie never removed the phrase from his business card.

Eddie didn’t let his disability get in the way of an active life, and that attitude paid off in many ways. On an ice-skating outing to St. Paul, he met a paralegal named Ruth, four years his senior. Ruth was the only woman he’d met in Minnesota who remained unfazed by his missing hands, though she did prefer to remove or warm up his metal prosthesis with her cardigan before lovemaking. After eight months of dating, which Bethella considered too short a time, Ruth moved in with him and became his fiancée. They had a son out of wedlock whom they named Nathaniel. The boy seemed to inherit his father’s tenacity and his grandfather’s charisma.

Eddie presumed that by drafting and adhering to such an average blueprint for a life, he could overcome his misfortunes and shake off all the agonizing memories of Delicious Foods, but they never left him, nor did the urge to return to Louisiana and set things right disappear completely. Sometimes he snapped awake in the earliest-morning hours, convinced that he was back at the farm. Shrouded in pitch-black, the memories would return, alighting on his bed like dark birds poised to attack him. Inevitably, they seemed to say, someone will reveal everything that happened on that farm, and you will have to go back.

L
azy?
That fool done zipped off in his black sedan and the taillights getting all mixed up with the traffic signs, and Darlene thought hard ’bout that word. Out all the stuff a motherfucker could say, not realizing he had spoke to somebody who gone to college. You could use other words for her activity at that moment, maybe some of em not so nice, but
lazy?
She had to laugh behind that, hard as she out there working for a couple ducats. The nerve of this man! He ain’t know her life. She had a son to feed, eleven years old, had to get out there walking in some bad shoes, humidity frizzing the heck outta her perm. This whole damn June, sun been beating down so hot the roads be looking blurry up ahead, all kinda mirages happening up the highway. Look like a truckload of mercury done had a accident.

Seem to Darlene that everything she strove for turned out as a hot mirage. Probably folks oughta blame that on the dude in the sedan or that dumbass self-help book she read; can’t nobody pin what happened to Darlene on me. Can’t nobody make you love em, make you look for em all the time. Maybe I attract a certain kinda person. Folks always saying that I do. Doctors talking now ’bout how people brain chemistry make some of em fall in love harder with codependent types. But I feel a obligation to Darlene. Out all my friends—and, baby, I got
millions
—she make me wonder the most if I done right by her. Sometimes I think to myself that maybe she shouldna met me. But then again, can’t nobody else tell her side of things but Yours Truly, Scotty. I’m the only one who stuck by her the whole time.

Nine months out on the street and she still had a meek little attitude ’bout doin’ the do, you know? She ain’t had the look down at all. My girl had on flats and a skirt that went below the knee—no lie! Instead of going down to the edge of the road to look in them cars, she be hanging back, almost in the hedges or whatever, hoping some car gonna slow down and stop. She reckoned she get in and get cool in the vehicle. Solve two problem at one time.

Across that double yellow line over at Hinman’s Aquatic World, it was some giant Plexiglas pools resting on they sides, looking like God’s bedpans. The owners had just turnt on them plastic palm trees with the lights all in em. Pickup trucks parked at steak houses, broken neon trim blinking on the wall of the porno store. Forlorn-ass Mexican folks be chilling at the bus stop.

Texas was stupid, I’m sorry. Fat sunburned gluttons and tacky mansions everyplace, glitzy cars that be the size of a pachyderm, a thrift store and a pawnshop for every five motherfuckers. Fucking limestone! Whole state and everything up in that bitch made of limestone. Damn strip malls look like they done come right up out the ground.
Upon this rock, I shall build my strip mall.
It’s like they ain’t heard of no other rock. Granite salesmen getting jealous. In summer, Texas too hot for 99 percent of life-forms; in the two-month winter, ain’t none of them houses insulated, so you gotta rub your legs together under your blanket like you a grasshopper, rub so hard you about to set your own ass on fire.

Then some crew-cut ofay she hoping gonna be a trick—so she could score and we could hang out—he just slowed down and stuck his neck out the passenger side and went, Lazy.

Lazy! Darlene took a few steps back—the flats made me feel for her since the first time I met her. (She said from the get-go she couldn’t wear a certain kind of pumps but wouldn’t say why, and it wasn’t till I penetrated the inner sanctum of her brain later on that I found out the truth.) She made a note to remember that guy and his li’l rabbit face. ’Cause when they said
lazy
they also meant
nigger.
Hardy-fucking-har-har. And lazy working on who behalf? Hustling this hard at the Peckerwood National Savings Bank, she’d be the damn manager.
Hell,
Darlene thought,
I’d be the CEO. It’d be an easier job too. In that air-conditioning? I have put this paper in this folder. Now I will return that pen to its holder. Done. I am leaving for the day. Hey, Mrs. Secretary! Where did you put my golf clubs?

A pothole by the white line tripped her, and my girl be wobbling. She twisted a tendon and almost dropped her handbag. My sweetheart thought bending over would be vulgar, even though she had on that long-ass skirt. She still ain’t knowed thing one about marketing herself. She squatted, and she saw that highway marker sparkling down there, and that took her mind off the rabbit-face man and sent it rushing back to her usual thoughts, thoughts about how to spend more time with me.

I wanna rock with you,
she sang without thinking ’bout it. The day start going dark orange, and some shadows starts to cut through the trees like they broken bottles. The past kept dogging her, like she could always hear its clunky old motor idling outside whatever else be in her thoughts. The sound of her dead husband whistling would get super-loud up in her head, and if
I
couldn’t stand that noise, you know it made her stone crazy. Darlene would double the fuck over—this time she bent down and put her hands over her ears like the sound coming from outside her head.

Once that particular bad feeling passed, she got up and turnt to face traffic, thinking ’bout a happy person. The book said that to get good experiences and money in your life, you had to think positive thoughts and visualize shit. So she imagined some dude thumbing a fan of twenties into her hand. Held out her palm to take some imaginary cash—I almost busted out laughing. But instead of fat-money johns down this road, it’s only some soccer moms going by and frowning behind the wheel of they minivans. They kids heads be swiveling with they mouths open and closing, pointing they little chocolaty fingers at her like, Mommy, what she doing?

Next thing you know the Isley Brothers singing
Who’s that lady?
in her head.
Real fine lady.
At that time, Darlene truly was fine—that girl coulda stopped more traffic than just some tawdry johns if she’d a wore some tight miniskirts and high heels. I kept telling her that shit all the time.

Now where in the hell she had walked to? Halfway to Beaumont, seemed. Nobody else out there hooking, else they had better luck. Crickets getting louder, dog barks be coming from way the hell and gone, headlights whizzing by all silver and black, like low-flying spaceships—could be anybody in there. Aliens. ET and shit. Chewbacca smoking dope with ALF.

Darlene start shuffling backward, staring into them headlights, till she got near to the end of the commercial strip of whatever the hell city she in. Out there, wasn’t no more traffic lights—edge of the world. After that, just flat dark. Brushy dirt, short trees, and squinty little stars—wait—was that the fucked-up carcass of a crow? Nope, just a busted tire tread in the damn emergency lane. The sun finally gave up and turnt its back on the dusk. Fuck you, went the sun. Fuck all y’all, you skanky freaks don’t deserve no sunlight. Find another star.

Outside the parking lot of a closed-down BBQ restaurant, somebody headlights drove up like glowing monster eyeballs, blasting in Darlene face and—
hallelujah!
—the car slowed down. Old cheapo car, VW Rabbit something. Darlene couldn’t see in, but somebody could see out, so the car slow to a halt in the gravel. In there, it’s some round-faced man, ’bout fifty, leaning cross a lap, cranking down that window. Light brother with a short ’fro, wine-tinted Coke-bottle glasses, rough skin. Had a cigarette stuck in his left hand, his round-ass belly up against the steering wheel. The lap in the passenger seat belong to a skinny teenage boy in a short-sleeve shirt. Kid had skin light as the man’s, pretty lips, ears out to here, the picture of a scared-ass virgin. Even a rookie could figure out that setup.

Tobacco smoke poofed out in Darlene face so she pulled back like somebody done threw a snake at her, even though she a hard-core smoker herself. I thought Darlene coulda made a living as a singer; she moved like a dainty princess, like one of them bougie Marilyn McCoo, Lola Falana types. On the AM radio in the car, she heard DeBarge doing “Rhythm of the Night.” So she’s like,
Good, they’re middle class, they have some money.

The man leant across the boy and went, What you doing out here all alone, honey?

Get cool, get paid, get some rocks, go home.
Darlene heard them phrases in her head, and I thought they had a nice rhythm to em, so I asked her to say em out loud and she did.

The father went, Say what? Go home? Aw right, then. He spun the window roller once but Darlene stuck her fingers on the top of the glass, so he stopped. The shit we do for love. The love we do for drugs.

The boy went, She meant
her,
Dad. I think.

We noticed a car key chain made of braided plastic swinging off the steering column, and the shadows of the braids was forming a pattern like a swastika. That got us both to thinking about what the book had said.

What about the Jews?
Darlene thought, and also said. What about the Jews? They couldn’t have brought the Holocaust on themselves, right?

The kid went, Excuse me?

The Jews! You know. She pointed at the key chain. Chosen People?

Jews? the kid says.

Yes, because if you’re an antenna—

The kid went, Ma’am, you okay?

With your good thoughts, I mean—

The father shut the engine, took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, put the glasses back on. He scratched his ’fro and went, How much it’s gonna be?

The grid on the kid’s shirt made Darlene remember a tablecloth from her childhood. People who know me well always be making interesting leaps and turns inside they head. I call it braindancing. Me and Darlene was doing the hustle right about then. You could hear the flutes from that Van McCoy jam going
doot-doot-doot…do the hustle!

She poked the boy chest and he bent his torso away like the curve on a banana. Let’s put the basket of fried chicken right here, Darlene said, figuring a li’l joke might break the ice. They ain’t get it, so she poked him again, closer to his belly button. And the potato salad goes here, she said. I busted out laughing and so did Darlene, but she scratched up her lungs and that made her cough and spit.

Dad—

The afro father twisted his face, getting uptight, squirming in his seat. He tugged a chunky wallet out his pants and peeled off two twenties, so Darlene says to me, See, the book is right. I thought a good thought, and here go the twenties I dreamed up.

Nice trick, I said.

The man went, Okay, here go my fried chicken. That’s my fried chicken right there. What you do for forty?

Her eyebrows rose.

Dad. She’s—

The father yelling and muttering at the same time. You can just shut the fuck up. You gon prove to me you not like that. To-night. Punk cousin done turned you.

The son closed his eyes and twisted away from the father. No, Dad. It wasn’t what you—The son gulped down a sigh and stroked the car-door handle like he probably do his dick in private, then punched it in a half-assed kinda way. His Adam’s apple shot down his neck and then right back up.

The father chucked them bills in the kid lap, but the kid ain’t budged, so in the pause, my girl picked up the Jackson twins, all gentle, like they was babies. She folded em together, thinking,
My ticket to the morning light.
Now we both got excited. Forty clams not much, but it did mean we was gonna be spending a whole bunch of time together in the very near future. We was like,
Love, soft as an easy chair, love, fresh as the morning air.
Darlene wondered if we could just book right then so she wouldna had to do nothing else; she had too much pride in her heart for this line of work, and I kept telling her, Yeah, fine, do what you want. I don’t judge nobody.

The father broke the silence and went, Get out the car, go in them bushes, get laid. He stuck out his lower lip. Bitch got my money now!

The kid put his hand on the door and went, You mean your fried chicken.

Darlene smiled more than her usual amount, ’cause she still thinking ’bout the forty dollars and had forgot that they could see her.

The son kept staring and his face gone all tight. Dad, this isn’t Christian, Dad. I want my first time to be special. You said you wanted me to wait for marriage!

The father ashed in the tray, said, Don’t give me that first-time bullshit. You done some damn unholy shit already. You think I don’t know? You think I’m stupid something?

The kid turnt his shoulders and leant into the father space, tryna keep his words private. Ugh, he growled. She’s
really
out of it. What was that crazy stuff she said about the Holocaust?

Darlene shoved the Jackson twins deep in her bag to hide them shits from robbers, under a change purse she found on a barroom floor, a scratched pair of sunglasses, and a bunch of open lipsticks—she ain’t know, but one of em had got extended and be smearing her possessions with all kind of red smudges. I knew ’cause my ass was in the damn purse, a couple tiny rocks in a glass vial that she thought she had lost.

Two months ago, on Easter Sunday, some guy who called hisself a coon-ass car salesman paid her to watch him fuck a watermelon. No lie. Set that melon on his card table, knifed hisself a round hole in it, and made her egg him on while he sliding his dick in and out that little globe.

He says to her, It turn me on to got somebody watching. I like the shame.

She couldn’t think what to say. Screw that round thing! Mmh! Juice it, boy!

The fruit start weeping pink water out the hole. His hairy butt went
umph
and he came inside that melon.

When he pulled out, he grinned and said, Hope it don’t get knocked up, ’cause I don’t want no green chirren!

Even remembering that shit, we couldn’t stop laughing. Don’t want no green chirren! Like they gon be little watermelons with legs. I tell you, though, Mr. Melonfucker had him some green money. Darlene spent most of it on me in a day.

Somebody as inside herself as Darlene right then, without no natural talent for hooking, could watch some melonfuckers on the regular, though. Not bad, not like some of them other johns. Melons had it all over cigarette burns, getting stabbed, leather belts across the back, and a curtain rod up the ass, all of which she had either had or come close to having. For a while, Darlene had this gentle, fresh attitude that made motherfuckers want to kick her in the tits, like a girl in one them Z movies.