James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Professor!” cried a voice, and Paul turned to see Colonel approaching him from the right side of the cave. “You’ve joined us at last!” Colonel was wearing his office kit — dress shirt with sleeves rolled down and cuffs buttoned, tie knotted firmly up under his dewlaps — and he joined the procession and pumped Paul’s hand firmly and warmly.

“A big night, son!” His face was flushed, whether with whisky or excitement, Paul couldn’t tell. “We’ve been preparing for your feast.”

He threw his arm around Paul’s shoulders, squeezing him tight and gesturing towards several rows of long, folding tables along the right side of the cavern. Each table was covered with a long, checkered tablecloth and lined with mismatched chairs. At regular intervals along each table stood a little skyline of salt-and-pepper shakers; rolls of brown paper towels upright on spindles; and bottles of hot sauce, jalapeños, and barbecue sauce. At the far end another table was set crosswise, where Paul recognized the landscape of classic Texas barbecue: stacks of paper plates and plastic utensils; potato salad and coleslaw in big plastic bowls; a metal bowl heaped with pickles; wedges of cheese, tomato, onion, and avocado on wide platters; loaves of white bread still in their plastic wrappers; a pair of sweating aluminum urns of iced tea; and a big Crock-Pot of beans, plugged into a fat, orange extension cord that snaked away into the recesses of the cave. At one end of the table stood a squat plastic barrel full of Dr. Pepper, Big Red, and Shiner Bock on ice.

“Yo!” cried J.J., who stood behind the farthest table in jeans and t-shirt and a baseball cap, tending to two large barbecue smokers, each an enormous black metal drum on four legs with a firebox like a low, square snout at one end. The floor of the cave was on a slight incline, tilted to the left, and the front wheels of each smoker were chocked with wedges of wood to keep them from rolling across the cave into the pool. J.J. wore an apron, not like some suburban backyard chef, but like a pro, the string wrapped around his waist and tied at the front. Black smoke puffed from the little chimney at the end of each smoker, staining the stalactites above with soot, and as Paul watched, J.J. lifted a short length of oak from a neat stack of logs.

“Hope you brought your appetite, dude!” J.J. said, and he opened the front door of the firebox of one of the smokers with a rag and fed the oak into the hot, hellish glare of the fire, shoving the log deeper with a long, iron poker. This isn’t so bad for a dream, Paul thought. As a Yankee, he wasn’t as enthusiastic about barbecue as some, but he didn’t mind a plate of smoked brisket and hot sausage now and then. The only odd thing was, all Paul detected from the smokers was the burning wood, not the warm, fatty aroma of slow-roasting meat. J.J. kicked the firebox shut and set the poker to one side with a bright clang. Whatever they were having, J.J. hadn’t even started cooking it yet.

“Now it’s time to do your bit,” said Colonel, bracing Paul around the shoulders and walking him slowly up the cave at the head of the procession. “There’s a little bit of, well, ritual involved, but nothing you can’t handle.” Bob Wier and Boy G fell in a step or two back. “It’s kind of an initiation rite.” Colonel’s avuncular tone had an edge of mischief in it, like a winking frat boy leading a pledge into a darkened room. “And, of course, it’s also our way of thanking these boys for everything they do for us.”

Colonel guided Paul towards the central, phallic formation, while from behind came the shuffle and scrape of many feet, and the steady susurrus of murmuring, all of it punctuated with the plink of water in the pool and reinforced by the swelling echo of the cave.

“It’s the price we pay, Paul,” murmured Colonel. “Mind you, it’s not their steady diet, but let’s just say they’ve developed a taste for what we can provide them.” At the edge of the pool Colonel stopped and gently but firmly propelled Paul forward. Reluctantly, Paul stepped onto the first of a series of stepping stones in the water, each a big, thick, fried egg slice of stalagmite. The water trembled with each step, and at last Paul stepped gingerly onto the slick, creamy surface at the conical base of the giant column.

“My boy!” cried a voice, and he looked up to see Stanley Tulendij stepping out from behind the column. He was wearing a frayed, faded, powder blue tuxedo with wide lapels and bell-bottom trousers. It was the sort of thing a teenaged boy might have worn to the prom twenty-five years ago, which made it simultaneously antique looking and much too young for Stanley Tulendij. Even in the garish tux he kept his spidery aspect — the trousers were too short for his long, peculiarly jointed legs, while the jacket was too big. His head wobbled on top of his long, thin neck, which didn’t even come close to filling the voluminous collar of his frilly shirt. He came to the middle of a wide ledge at the base of the column, and his flat jaw split in a wide smile. He spread his arms, his bony hands sticking out of the wide, empty cuffs of his jacket.

“We’ve been waiting for you!” he said. “You’ve been the apple of our eye.”

The murmuring of the pale men rose to a rumble, and Stanley Tulendij lifted his voice. “And now, gentlemen! Colleagues! Fellow Texans! Our lovely new queen!”

The murmuring diminished almost to silence, and just as Paul was thinking nothing else could surprise him, Olivia Haddock stepped out from behind the phallic column, wearing a faded, red velvet prom gown, with red satin gloves that ran over her elbows and a little, clear plastic tiara. The velvet was worn away in long creases down the folds of the skirt, while the bodice was a little tight on Olivia, squeezing her bosom bloodless. She wore a fraying, yellowed sash across her shoulder that read VIKING QUEEN CWNHS HOMECOMING 197—” The rest of the date was lost around the curve of her hip. She stood next to Stanley Tulendij on the ledge, one foot placed before the other, her red satin palms pressed together before her sash. In the breathless silence she scowled down the slope at Paul.

“You’re late,” she said.

With one foot on the slope of the cone, Paul goggled at the sight before him. This dream was turning uncomfortably strange. Indeed, with the unexpected appearance of Olivia, the dream seemed to be turning into a nightmare. She had disappeared only a week ago, and now she was not only alive and well, but somehow, in the foreshortened time of Paul’s dream, she had become queen of the underworld. Paul glanced back, chilled to his spine, and immediately behind him he saw bright-eyed Colonel urging him forward with a nod, while a stricken Bob Wier wrung his hands. Behind them clustered a frighteningly large crowd of pale, homeless men in white shirts, ties, and glasses, their pale scalps gleaming through their stubbled hair, their lips pulled back from their sharpened teeth as they began to murmur again, “A man like us. Say the words.”

“Come,” said Stanley Tulendij, and the old man beckoned him up the slope, slowly curling his hand. Paul could almost hear the bones clattering in those long, pale fingers. Olivia glowered at him, and Paul nearly said something inappropriate, like, “I thought you were dead.” But he didn’t, and despite the chill he felt, he started climbing the slick slope, up a series of narrow steps cut into the living rock. Near the top he looked back once more, and beyond the crowd of homeless men he saw the two smokers radiating trembling waves of heat and breathing black smoke like a pair of idling locomotives, the door of each firebox outlined by a seam of red flame. To the right he saw the cubescape under the fluorescent lights, which were suspended by a tangled web of wires from the ceiling of the cave. Under the lights Paul saw one pale man walking through the labyrinth of cubicles, and while he couldn’t be sure from this distance, Paul thought it was Boy G. Nearly lost in the glare, the figure came to a cube at the center of the labyrinth and stooped out of sight.