Dixie Chicken
by Kate Simmons
Last month I took a forty-gallon tub of crawfish over to the Judge. Funny thing is, we only do chicken and sides. KJ ordered the crawfish from another takeout and when the tub arrived told me, “Just take these over to the Judge and leave them on his porch, ring the bell and be gone”. When I began to stammer something, KJ over-enunciated like you would do to a two year old, “The Judge will know who this is from.” Then he plucked one from top of the pile and threw it in the fryer. I never saw something change from green to red so fast.
KJ asks me to stay late. He takes me to a King Cake party out by Lake Pontchartrain where he shows me how to suck the head out of a crawfish. I do one and then a dozen or more. We drink tequila and pass a joint around and I eat more. “You’re so skinny, but you eat like a motherfucker,” he says.
The cake is cut. KJ’s cousin Kelly got the plastic baby in her piece and I couldn’t believe there was a plastic baby baked inside.
“Couldn’t you choke on it?” I ask.
“No, we all know one’s in there,” Kelly says. “We look out for the baby. Since I got it that just means I’ve got to throw a King Cake party next week.”
After awhile, KJ clears a space on the glass coffee table and cuts up lines with a razor, carefully measuring out two for each of us. Then we all take turns.
It’s raining and the bayou has flooded over the road and I drive across a small river on my way into work. The Renault’s brakes are slow to stop and its tires are bald, so I take more care driving in rain than not. KJ is already in a terrible mood when I arrive in the lot. Just last Saturday he bought an old Triumph Spitfire and the canvas top has leaked and its interior is soaked. He’s wrapping the car in a painter’s tarp when I pull up.
“You’re late,” he says. I am due to work a half hour before we open, to stock the shelves with take away cartons and plastic utensils from the storage room while KJ checks the traps. KJ stands drenched in just a T-shirt and jeans, while I’m sensibly covered in a hooded rain slicker. I hold down one side of the tarp and he tosses me a rope over the car top which I take down to the ground and toss back to him under the car. We do this a few times until the tarp is secure, and then KJ ties it off. He holds the door open for me to the restaurant.
Inside, I hang up my wet slicker on a knob. KJ disappears into the bathroom and returns wearing only two chef’s aprons, one on normally and the other one on backwards and tied in the front, to cover his rear. I can see a few tattoos I’ve never seen before, including one of a skull and crossbones on his kneecap. He lays his wet jeans carefully across the center oven rack and turns the knob. His decorative skin is still wet and his hair is spiky from being towel dried. He is in a criminal way sexy, but I try not to find him so. I laugh at him in his makeshift dress and he laughs with me.
“Did you ever know anyone who died?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Two people—one girl from high school, and another from college. They were both on Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland—when that bomb went off.”
“No shit. Two of them?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Nothing like that. Knew a few guys who got shot—but they had it coming to them.”
“KJ,” I say, “You know who that guy is I deliver to at the phone booth, don’t you?”
His smile vanishes. “You don’t know nothing, ok? Just keep your mouth shut on something you know nothing about.” He lights the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Stay cool now. I’ll take care of you.”
“Seven-Eleven,” KJ says just after the lunch rush when I am finally relaxing, having a smoke and eating deep fried potato skins. He hands me the envelope and says, “And don’t get it wet.”
David is waiting there for me. He gets in the Renault and we drive to the edge of the parking lot. “Want some?” He sticks his long pinky fingernail in the powder and then under my nostril and I do it. He licks the residue from under his nail.
“Do you know the definition of economics?"
"Economics?"
He puts his hand on my knee. "It’s the allocation of scarce resources to unlimited wants. And nobody gets to meet all their unlimited wants.”
KJ and I are getting close. During down times he will sometimes come up behind me and massage my shoulders. The first few times my shoulders tensed but now when it gets slow I want him to. KJ has begun to talk about David with me. “I’m voting for him,” he says. I’d like to see him obliterate welfare like he says. The whole fucking system is one giant scam. I’ve never voted before but I’ll vote for him.”
In excitement his head jerks back revealing upper teeth so buck his mouth can never fully close. There are large silver fillings in the pits of his back teeth. “I’ll just go down there and pull the lever.”
Bullshit, I think.
Delivery for Dixie becomes routine enough that I no longer need a street map. One Friday morning I drive to work and find the door locked. Strange for KJ to be late, Friday is one of our busier days. I wait around for an hour but KJ doesn’t show up. So I go to the Seven-Eleven for a coffee but when I get back the door is still locked. Just before noon I find out from another driver, Glenn, that KJ’s been arrested—that he got into a fight. Glenn tells me KJ punched a guy in the head at a bar in the French Quarter last night and the guy’s brain swelled up and now it doesn’t look good for either of them.
I go back to the Seven-Eleven parking lot. The phone booth is empty—its glass doors smeared with grime from the bottoms of shoes that had been propped against them. Someone put a sticker on the entrance that says Jesus is Lord. I sit in the Renault and chain smoke and hope David will come. David might know where to go.
Last month I took a forty-gallon tub of crawfish over to the Judge. Funny thing is, we only do chicken and sides. KJ ordered the crawfish from another takeout and when the tub arrived told me, “Just take these over to the Judge and leave them on his porch, ring the bell and be gone”. When I began to stammer something, KJ over-enunciated like you would do to a two year old, “The Judge will know who this is from.” Then he plucked one from top of the pile and threw it in the fryer. I never saw something change from green to red so fast.
I’m not surprised when KJ ducks under the pick-up counter after spotting a police car out front. The cops are only here to recover a stolen van. Still, KJ stays on rubber floor mat, rocking himself and scratching his tattooed biceps until the cops are gone. Afterwards, he skulks around muttering alternately fucking pigs and goddam fucking pigs. We give him the kitchen. He throws an entire tray of frozen drumsticks in the fryer with enough piss that a splash of oil jumps out and burns his dragon tattoo. “THOSE GODDAM MOTHER FUCKING PIGS”, he screams so loud I cover my ears.
Most of the time, work at Dixie Chicken goes smoothly. KJ cooks. One or two lines might ring in. Orders are taken. Southern fried chicken, mashers, and long beans are shoveled into Styrofoam cartons and bagged for us to deliver. We snub out our cigarettes, grab the bags, and jump in our cars with road maps unfurled. But then another strange delivery comes up. KJ hands me a small, sealed white envelope and tells me, “Honey, I need you to go over and take this to the guy waiting in the phone booth at the Seven-Eleven.”
My initial thought is, KJ, why not throw a leg into a Dixie Chicken bag and then put the envelope in there? Look idiot, ever hear of none the wiser? Then I picture my mother yelling through bars, “Who in their right mind would call for delivery to a phone booth?” But I say nothing. Seven-Eleven is just down the road. This will be over soon. And besides, I need money. I sold platelets this morning because it pays more than blood. Fifteen cash which buys me thirty in food stamps. Thighs, old mashers and beans here are gratis so I use stamps for cheese, coffee, cream and everything else. That leaves me one hundred more to make for rent and another forty for gas and cigarettes. Earlier, I sold platelets in the Lower Ninth Ward. So I am qualified to do this.
KJ on the phone says, “Expect a girl in a light blue Renault.” He gives me nothing about the man in the booth. I drive slow the six blocks to the Seven-Eleven and draw deeply on my cigarette which I am holding as a weapon. As I bring the car up alongside the booth, the man inside pulls open its door. It’s David. I immediately recognize him from the paper. He’s smeared all over the Times-Picayune—an ex-Klansman running for representative in a suburb abutting New Orleans, which, unlike, The Crescent City, is ninety percent white. He takes the envelope, carefully opens it, dips in his right pinky, and gives it a lick. Satisfied, he peels me off five twenties for KJ. Just be cool. I begin to crank the window handle. Then he gives the glass a tap before feeding a crisp new five for me through the crack.
On Friday my worst delivery is a bucket of drumsticks to an apartment complex in the center of Metairie. Finding the correct apartment proves difficult because every unit is identical. I’m relieved to eventually locate the right door, and hope that the food is still hot when I ring the bell. It’s humid, and a good-looking guy with no shirt opens up. He seems humored that his food is being delivered by a female.
“Wait here a second, honey,” he says after I hand him the bag and he gives me the money. He comes back with a dollar. “This is for you.”
Around two o’clock the phone rings and I answer, as always, “Dixie Chicken.” I grab a pen from a shortening can to take down the order.
“I need to talk to a girl there that delivers,” a woman says.
“I’m the only girl that delivers.”
“You’re the girl that delivers?”
Her voice is pinched. I can’t imagine why. KJ leans up against the counter to listen to my end of the conversation. “Yeah, why?” I say and light a cigarette in preparation for what’s coming next.
“Did you deliver out to Bellemont Terrace today?” she asks me in an increasingly agitated voice.
“Yeah, why?” And I exhale smoke into the receiver so she can hear it.
“Because I live across from number sixteen and I watched you today and after you handed my boyfriend the chicken, he went back inside and wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to you.”
“He did not,” I say. “He gave me a dollar. He went back in to get me a tip. He went back to get me a dollar.” I cannot believe this conversation, and I look over towards the kitchen at KJ and roll my eyes. KJ shrugs and goes back to the fryer. I picture her boyfriend, so attractive in his maroon shorts and nothing else. A warm smile engulfed his face when he opened the door. He didn’t seem like he was the type of guy who would go with a nutcase like the one I had on the other end of the line.
“That’s what he said,” she says, “but I saw what really happened and you better not fucking be lying to me because we just had the hugest fucking fight about it.”
“I swear it was just a tip,” I say again and she hangs up.
I tell KJ the whole story and we laugh. The phone rings again and KJ answers it for me. It’s not the nutcase again like we thought.
“No problem,” he says. “She’ll be there in twenty.”
He pulls out an envelope from inside the register, underneath the money drawer– “Take this over to the pay phone, and take care you’re not followed.”
I shake the envelope and hear a rustling sound. “Is it coke?”
“Just go,” he says and I regret asking.
I check my rear view mirror and turn onto Veterans Boulevard. Everything is unremarkable on this side of the bayou. Most of the flat space is occupied by office complexes, fast food places and strip malls. There is a huge rainbow hot air balloon suspended over a car dealership announcing their grand opening that has been there ever since I can remember. Ironically, a car passing me on the right has a political bumper sticker in support of David.
The Seven-Eleven is just ahead. I pull up to the booth, but this time a woman and a small boy are standing outside, waiting to use the phone. David is wearing mirrorshades and a baseball cap. He hangs up the receiver the minute he sees me. I pull up close, but not too close. He walks quickly over to my car, and motions for me to unlock the door. Then he gets in.
“Drive around back,” he says.
I do as he tells me. He has dyed his hair a lighter shade of blond. His teeth are too perfect not to be dentures, though I don’t think he’s much over thirty five. His skin looks salon tanned and is stretched tightly over his cheek bones. We make the exchange, envelope for money, and this time he adds ten dollars for me.
“Thanks.”
“Tax free,” he says.
“Tax free,” he says.
I nod impassively.
He directs me to a short cut through the parking lot of a strip mall just behind the Seven-Eleven. As I round the corner I see a large red white and blue poster in the storefront window. It’s his campaign headquarters.
KJ asks me to stay late. He takes me to a King Cake party out by Lake Pontchartrain where he shows me how to suck the head out of a crawfish. I do one and then a dozen or more. We drink tequila and pass a joint around and I eat more. “You’re so skinny, but you eat like a motherfucker,” he says.
The cake is cut. KJ’s cousin Kelly got the plastic baby in her piece and I couldn’t believe there was a plastic baby baked inside.
“Couldn’t you choke on it?” I ask.
“No, we all know one’s in there,” Kelly says. “We look out for the baby. Since I got it that just means I’ve got to throw a King Cake party next week.”
After awhile, KJ clears a space on the glass coffee table and cuts up lines with a razor, carefully measuring out two for each of us. Then we all take turns.
It’s raining and the bayou has flooded over the road and I drive across a small river on my way into work. The Renault’s brakes are slow to stop and its tires are bald, so I take more care driving in rain than not. KJ is already in a terrible mood when I arrive in the lot. Just last Saturday he bought an old Triumph Spitfire and the canvas top has leaked and its interior is soaked. He’s wrapping the car in a painter’s tarp when I pull up.
“You’re late,” he says. I am due to work a half hour before we open, to stock the shelves with take away cartons and plastic utensils from the storage room while KJ checks the traps. KJ stands drenched in just a T-shirt and jeans, while I’m sensibly covered in a hooded rain slicker. I hold down one side of the tarp and he tosses me a rope over the car top which I take down to the ground and toss back to him under the car. We do this a few times until the tarp is secure, and then KJ ties it off. He holds the door open for me to the restaurant.
Inside, I hang up my wet slicker on a knob. KJ disappears into the bathroom and returns wearing only two chef’s aprons, one on normally and the other one on backwards and tied in the front, to cover his rear. I can see a few tattoos I’ve never seen before, including one of a skull and crossbones on his kneecap. He lays his wet jeans carefully across the center oven rack and turns the knob. His decorative skin is still wet and his hair is spiky from being towel dried. He is in a criminal way sexy, but I try not to find him so. I laugh at him in his makeshift dress and he laughs with me.
“Did you ever know anyone who died?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Two people—one girl from high school, and another from college. They were both on Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland—when that bomb went off.”
“No shit. Two of them?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Nothing like that. Knew a few guys who got shot—but they had it coming to them.”
“KJ,” I say, “You know who that guy is I deliver to at the phone booth, don’t you?”
His smile vanishes. “You don’t know nothing, ok? Just keep your mouth shut on something you know nothing about.” He lights the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Stay cool now. I’ll take care of you.”
“Seven-Eleven,” KJ says just after the lunch rush when I am finally relaxing, having a smoke and eating deep fried potato skins. He hands me the envelope and says, “And don’t get it wet.”
David is waiting there for me. He gets in the Renault and we drive to the edge of the parking lot. “Want some?” He sticks his long pinky fingernail in the powder and then under my nostril and I do it. He licks the residue from under his nail.
“Do you know the definition of economics?"
"Economics?"
He puts his hand on my knee. "It’s the allocation of scarce resources to unlimited wants. And nobody gets to meet all their unlimited wants.”
KJ and I are getting close. During down times he will sometimes come up behind me and massage my shoulders. The first few times my shoulders tensed but now when it gets slow I want him to. KJ has begun to talk about David with me. “I’m voting for him,” he says. I’d like to see him obliterate welfare like he says. The whole fucking system is one giant scam. I’ve never voted before but I’ll vote for him.”
In excitement his head jerks back revealing upper teeth so buck his mouth can never fully close. There are large silver fillings in the pits of his back teeth. “I’ll just go down there and pull the lever.”
Bullshit, I think.
Delivery for Dixie becomes routine enough that I no longer need a street map. One Friday morning I drive to work and find the door locked. Strange for KJ to be late, Friday is one of our busier days. I wait around for an hour but KJ doesn’t show up. So I go to the Seven-Eleven for a coffee but when I get back the door is still locked. Just before noon I find out from another driver, Glenn, that KJ’s been arrested—that he got into a fight. Glenn tells me KJ punched a guy in the head at a bar in the French Quarter last night and the guy’s brain swelled up and now it doesn’t look good for either of them.
I go back to the Seven-Eleven parking lot. The phone booth is empty—its glass doors smeared with grime from the bottoms of shoes that had been propped against them. Someone put a sticker on the entrance that says Jesus is Lord. I sit in the Renault and chain smoke and hope David will come. David might know where to go.
