Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Nadia put what looked like a pie tin in front of Sweeney and began reaching for the bowls that crowded the table. She heaped the tin full of fried chicken, chili, and scrambled eggs, then tore a heel from a fat rye loaf.

She said, “You can’t live on peanut butter crackers.”

Someone threw Buzz a can of Hunthurst and he popped the top and set it in front of Sweeney, clapped his back again and said, “Sorry about the shot to the jewels. I told the Elephant to take it easy, but the shithead’s dumber than a sack of bones. Drink up, you’ll feel better.”

Sweeney lifted his hand, felt how his bloody palm had gone tacky on his crotch. He wrapped the hand around the iced can and left it there. Buzz grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from somewhere under the table and guzzled. Sweeney looked past him and surveyed the room. It was a drab, gray dining hall, with one wall lined with hulking coffee and soda machines that looked like museum pieces. On the opposite wall were framed industrial safety posters, one of which read

ALL THAT SEPARATES YOU FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS IS YOUR CONCENTRATION.

Above the posters, up near the ceiling, in huge black letters, halfprinted and half-cursive, someone had spray-painted

GEHENNA.

“Try the eggs,” Nadia said. “It’s my own recipe.”

“The girl,” Buzz said, offering the bottle to Sweeney, “can fuckin’ cook.”

It was clear that Buzz wanted to see some eating. Sweeney picked up a fork and shoveled up some chili and eggs and put it in his mouth. The food was steaming and he grabbed the Hunthurst and took a pull. The beer cooled his tongue enough for his taste buds to go to work and his mouth was at once awash with flavor. There was something sweet and acrid, sharp and buttery. He got some pepper and some sugar and something on the edge of sour. With his second forkful, he came to realize how hungry he was. And then he was eating like a glutton, like a prisoner, and he was breaking a sweat and his eyes were watering.

When the tin was cleared, Sweeney let himself take a breath and then drained his beer. Nadia began to scoop seconds onto the pie plate, ladling the chili right over the eggs this time and squeezing a chicken breast up against the mix. She was cheered on by Buzz, who raised up slightly off his ass to hover over the table and say, “That’s right, let’s not shortchange this boy. There’s plenty for everyone.”

Then he turned to the rest of the clan, which was milling out at the far end of the lunchroom, and he yelled, “All right, now, come and get it, you savages.”

They raced like children, bumping up against one another, jostling for position, shaking the table as they climbed onto the benches. They started to grab for forks and spoons but Buzz lifted the bottle of bourbon in a toast and they froze as if someone had blown a whistle.

“I want to welcome a special guest to Gehenna,” he said. “And I want to thank Nadia for bringing him here.”

He smiled in a way that was not entirely benign and turned to look on the nurse. “She gets some insane fucking notions from time to time,” he said. “But don’t she come through in the end? Here’s to our girl.”

Buzz brought the bottle to his lips and gurgled it and his crew erupted, cheering and pounding the table with fists. Then the noise stopped as everyone followed suit and began swilling from cans and bottles. From there, it turned into a kind of farcical cartoon. They went into a seated dance, eating as they grabbed, mouths open, the sound of belches filling the air. These were inhuman sounds, the kind of gnawing and slurping cacophony heard only around the seediest zoos.

At one point Nadia got up and collected empty bowls and Sweeney watched her move through a swinging door into what must have been a kitchen because she returned with more food. This time it was some sort of jambalaya that featured shrimp and sausage but it looked unlikely that any of Buzz’s boys cared about or maybe even noticed the new selection. They simply continued shoveling it in as fast as their lungs and their gullets would allow.

Later, long after Sweeney had dropped his fork into his pie tin and pushed it away, the meal turned into a test of wills, a kind of contest. A few of the men started to look sick in a hungover fashion, a bit green and breathless and disoriented. They did a little stumble away from the table and waddled out of the cafeteria. The ones who were left kept their eyes on Buzz, but furtively. As for Buzz, he was consistent, machinelike. Every few spoonfuls, he’d close his eyes and dip his head and savor, then he’d clear his palate with a pull of beer or bourbon and turn back to the job. He never spoke but he would nod to Nadia or bump shoulders with Sweeney.

Toward the end, Nadia retreated to the kitchen once again with an armful of empty bowls, but this time she returned with only two mugs of coffee. She held onto one and put the other in front of Sweeney while she kept her eye on Buzz. Sweeney took a sip. It was black and oversugared.

“Why don’t you two settle out in back,” Nadia said. “I’ll be right out.”

Buzz nodded and started to rise from the table. He seemed to be in a fine mood, suffering no ill effects from the meal. “Take your coffee,” he said to Sweeney and led the way to the loading dock where two wooden rocking chairs had been set at the edge of the apron.

The lot behind the Harmony looked like the face of a meteor. It was a deep canyon of rocks and broken bricks and, here and there, random pieces of black metal and piles of obsolete machinery. In its day, this acreage had housed one of the region’s first industrial parks. But every mill except the Harmony had been more or less knocked down.

“That,” Buzz said, gesturing to the remains of what had once been an enormous, phallic stack, “is what’s left of the county crematorium. I always get kind of a kick out of the fact that they were neighbors, you know? The Harmony trying to piece folks back together. And the incinerator next door trying to burn ’em down to nothing.”

Sweeney stayed quiet and watched the bikers running wild over the ruins, working off their feast by playing some variant on King of the Hill. This version of the game allowed bricks and stones to be hurled like grenades at the enemy. Most of the players were stripped to the waist and were howling at each other like rabid coyotes as they tried to charge up onto the roof of what looked like an abandoned hearse.

“It’s a ’67 Miller-Meteor,” Buzz explained. “A beautiful vehicle. If you have to go with four wheels.”

He eased down into one of the rockers, tapped the arm of its companion and said, “Boys’ll be boys, huh?”

Sweeney sat down with both hands around his coffee mug.

“Most boys anyway,” Buzz said, then changed the tone of his voice. “Now listen, Sweeney, I don’t want you being pissed off at Nadia. None of this is her fault. You want to be pissed at someone, you be pissed at Buzz. You understand?”

“I’m not angry with—”

“’Course you’re angry,” Buzz said. “You’re fucking furious. Be something wrong with you if you weren’t. Someone you barely know drives you out to who knows where, you get ambushed by a bunch of fucking animals? Shit, yes, you’re angry. You start off scared, but underneath,” and here he arced a spitwad off the dock, “you’re goddamn enraged.”

“I’m not enraged,” Sweeney said.

Buzz nodded and held his cigarette so that the smoke clustered in front of his face.

“Two things, son,” he said, though he was probably younger than Sweeney. “First off, you’re either lying to me or yourself. And believe me, we should both be hoping it’s yourself. And second, I’m sitting here telling you it’s all right. You got a right to be angry. People fear the unknown more than anything else. And you, son, are in the middle of the fucking unknown.”