The Resurrectionist

22

Sweeney hugged the lantern to his side and held onto the Sheep with his free arm as the Abomination opened up the hog. The speed might have alarmed Sweeney if the rush of cold air hadn’t felt so good. As if it were washing away all the grit from the cave.

They came upon the Harmony from the rear, pulling into the ruins of the old crematorium where the Abominations had played King of the Hill atop the dilapidated hearse. The Sheep killed the engine and climbed off the bike. Sweeney followed him to the antique funeral car where the Sheep reached through the passenger window, popped the glove box open, and extracted a pack of cigarettes.

The Sheep moved back around to the front of the hearse, eased himself onto its hood, and lit up a smoke. Sweeney joined him and they sat silently and rested for a few minutes, staring out at the prosthetics mill as if mulling a night on the late shift.

After a few minutes of this, Sweeney said, “Why are we stopping? You’re almost home.”

“I got to prepare myself,” the Sheep said, “before I can jump back into the crowd. It’s not that easy a transition for me. To go from the solitude back to the noise of the tribe. I can’t rush right back in.”

Sweeney looked out at the monstrosity they called Gehenna. In the distance, he could see a couple of Abominations sitting on the loading dock and someone was working on his bike down in the gravel lot.

“We had some good times in this city,” the Sheep said. “Personally, I’m gonna hate leavin’ here.”

Sweeney turned toward him.

“You’re leaving?”

The Sheep nodded.

“If things work out,” he said. “We’ll be movin’ on next week.”

“Where to?” Sweeney asked.

The Sheep grimaced as if this were a painful subject.

“Not sure yet,” he said. “Buzz has one idea. Nadia has another. But it’ll get worked out. We’ll know when we need to know. Buzz says we shouldn’t try to think ahead so much. You kill all the spontaneity in life.”

“Can I ask,” Sweeney said, “how you met Buzz?”

“Sure you can ask,” the Sheep said and then threw an elbow to show he was just kidding. “No, it’s all right. It’s a good story. They found me in Phoenix. And let me tell you, I was not in the best of shape, okay? I was not doing very well. I’d burned through all my money and I’d fallen in with some bad people. These were not good people. But, you know, it’s just like that song—When the sinner is ready, the savior comes along.”

He saw the blank look on Sweeney’s face and said, “You’re not a big gospel fan, are you?”

Sweeney shook his head and the Sheep said, “Well I hope you don’t mind, cuz I listen to gospel while I work.”

“Speaking of work,” Sweeney said, and before he could go on, the Sheep had both hands in the air, revival style.

“I know, I know,” he said, “that’s the million-dollar question. How did a chemistry Ph.D. from Stanford end up riding with the Abominations? I get the curiosity, I do. Sometimes I say to Nadia, my life’d be a hell of a movie. But I don’t say it to Buzz. You don’t even kid about stuff like that with Buzz.”

“So how’d it happen?”

“How’s anything happen?” the Sheep said, going all weary and mystical in an instant. “You make a couple of mistakes and, bang, you find out you’re not who you thought you were. You find out the world isn’t what you thought it was. You find out you don’t want any of the shit everyone’s been telling you to want since the day you were born.

“What happened with me,” confidential now, “was I had a full-blown textbook breakdown. I mean I was fuckin’ catatonic for months. Now I’m healed enough, at this point, to face the facts and take the responsibility. But the truth is — and I don’t mean this as any kind of excuse — I had a real asshole for an old man. One of these you-just-can’t-please-’em sons a bitches. And I tried to sort of follow in his footsteps and I couldn’t do it. And the pressure got so bad, my brain just shut the fuck down one day. And I ended up in the psych ward at Ford-Masterson out there. And I’ll tell you somethin’ right now. Wasn’t for Buzz and the boys, I’d still be there. Eatin’ poached eggs and starin’ at The Price Is Right all day.”

“How’d Buzz get you out?” Sweeney asked.

The Sheep gave him a look that said even Sweeney should know better.

“There’s something Buzz wants, Buzz finds a way to get it.”

“I guess what I’m asking,” said Sweeney, “is how he found out about you. I mean, you’re institutionalized at this point. How did he know about you? What was the connection?”

The Sheep squinted at him and Sweeney sensed some real disappointment.

“The connection,” said the Sheep, in a slowed down voice, as if he were speaking to a child, “is your new girlfriend.”

“Nadia?”

“Of course Nadia,” the Sheep said. “It’s always Nadia. I mean, c’mon, Sweeney, huh? She’s a sweetheart. And she’s got a body that’d make Jesus weep. But she’s a born pimp.”

“I’m sorry,” Sweeney said. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Nadia,” the Sheep said, “is a procurer. I mean Buzz might be Moses, but your girl Nadia, she’s the burning bush. Hey, I like that. Burning bush. That works, doesn’t it?”

He saw the confused look on Sweeney’s face and took pity.

“Look, if you’re asking me how it all started, I can’t help you. I came in late. But at some point Buzz met Nadia. Or Nadia met Buzz. And that’s where the thing really begins. You look at us now, okay, and you can say what you want. We don’t much care, you know? We’re nomads. We’re a tribe in the desert. That’s how we see ourselves. You want to say we’re vampires, we’re parasites, well, those’re just words. We know the truth. We’re as much family as those scumbags that run the Clinic. We’re as much family as you and your boy. That’s the truth. And the truth sets you free, every time. You’ll find that out real soon, Sweeney.”

Sweeney tried to pull him back.

“You called Nadia a pimp,” he said.

The Sheep crushed out his cigarette on the fender of the hearse.

“It’s a metaphor,” he said. “Jesus Christ. You know what a metaphor is? I’m not insulting her. In fact — and I think the rest’d tell you the same thing if they had the balls — we’re a matriarchy. That’s what we really are. She lets Buzz think he’s the big bad dad. But the truth is we follow where Nadia leads. All the way to the last clinic. She’s got the plans. She’s the one who’s brought us to this point. And I’ll tell you, she’s gonna bring us across the border. Whether Buzz likes it or not.”

He paused, looked down at his boots and said, “But don’t tell him I said that.”

Sweeney was suddenly thinking too hard to stop and reassure the Sheep.

“Nadia was your nurse,” he said. “In Phoenix.”

The Sheep looked up and smiled and said, “Who says you’re slow?”

“And she knew the family needed a new chemist?”

“The guy before me, the Gerbil, he put his bike down in Oakland. Got run over by a Camaro.”

“So you move from clinic to clinic.”

“You got to go where the work is.”

“And what?” Sweeney said, trying to talk over the anxiety that was rising in his throat. “You do something to the coma patients? What do you do to the patients?”

“We do nothing but help them,” the Sheep said. “This is a total win-win situation here. And if you let us, we can help Danny too.”

“I’m not going to let you near Danny.”

The Sheep gave him a patronizing smile.

“What?” he said. “You’re going to kill us all? You? The pharmacist? Don’t be an idiot all your life, Sweeney. It isn’t necessary. You could turn everything around here if you’d just let go of the fear and let in the truth. I know. Because I did it.”

The stoner voice was slipping a little and Sweeney recognized something behind it.

“You don’t have to be alone,” the Sheep said. “You’re not supposed to be alone. None of us are. Buzz and Nadia and all of us accept you for what you are. You need some family, Sweeney. And we want you. Nadia wants you, I can tell you that. You got to make the leap. That’s all. You think it will kill you, but it’s the only thing that’ll save you at this stage. I don’t think you know how far gone you are. But you can turn the whole thing around tonight.”

“You’re not going to touch my son,” Sweeney said. But there was more panic than resolve in his voice.

“Someone,” the Sheep said, “already touched your son. And it wasn’t us. We didn’t put the boy in the coma, did we? Somebody else did that to him. Somebody else took him away from you. And all those fuckin’ doctors with their fuckin’ promises, they can’t do squat to bring him back.”

Sweeney stared at him.

The Sheep ran a hand over his skull. His head fell back and he closed his eyes for a while before he continued.

“I can help you and I can help Danny. I know I can. I can arrange for a reunion. You want to be with your son again, Sweeney?”

Sweeney sucked on his lips for an answer.

“You got to make the leap,” the Sheep said. “No one can do it for you. You got to be strong and you got to have some faith. I’m not sayin’ it isn’t hard. But you can’t go weak in the middle. This is going to be difficult. I won’t lie to you like those assholes back at the Clinic. It’s going to be frightening. Maybe terrifying. This is dangerous shit. And, yeah, it’s addictive as it gets. You’ve never known real want till you’ve come back from Limbo. But you keep the faith and you’ll make it. Out and back. You trust in Nadia and she’ll take you to the last clinic. That’s the real deal. And you better believe it.”

The Sheep did a little stretch, then he gave Sweeney a quick shoulder hug, stood up, and walked back to his bike.

“You’re not going to be alone anymore,” he said. “After tonight, you’ll be part of the whole thing. Just trust me.”

FROM THAT POINT ON, Sweeney was numb. Wordlessly, he climbed on the back of the Sheep’s bike. They bounced over rocks and bricks as they rolled slowly toward the Harmony, but the passenger felt nothing. Holding on was only a reflex. And so he had no understanding that this was the state toward which he’d been striving for the last year. That place beyond fear and rage. Beyond desire. At last, detachment had found him.

When the Sheep parked, Sweeney sat loose and limp and not quite there. His sensory equipment was working — he saw the Abominations tinkering with a bike, heard their calls from the dock. He smelled oil and beer. Could still feel the shift in weight as the Sheep dismounted. These sensations were registering but without any significance. Their meaning, the ability of their input to shape his reality, had been lost in the moment of the Sheep’s embrace.

Sweeney sat on the back of the bike and waited for nothing in particular, knowing that he could wait until his bones turned to ash.

And it was as if the Abominations sensed this, because after a moment of the usual celebratory uproar upon the Sheep’s arrival, they fell quiet and uneasy. Sweeney heard saliva being gulped over the hump in someone’s throat. He heard boots shuffle on gravel and slow flies circling someone’s beard.

Then Buzz appeared out on the loading apron and looked down on the Sheep and on Sweeney.

“Knew you’d come,” he said.

Sweeney shrugged and said, “Did I have a choice?”

Buzz shook his head.

When Sweeney didn’t get off the bike, Buzz gestured to the Fluke and the Elephant, who lifted him by the arms and dragged him across the yard and up the stairs to the dock. They propped him up in front of Buzz, who looked disappointed.

“You gonna be a dick about this?” he asked.

“I’m not going to be anything at all,” Sweeney said.

Buzz took a deep breath. Sweeney watched the chest fill.

“Shit, son,” Buzz said, “don’t make me bring the bad Buzz out again. Can’t you just believe I’m here to help you?”

“I can’t believe,” Sweeney said, “anything at all.”

The Sheep joined them. Buzz kept his eyes on Sweeney but spoke to the chemist.

“How about you?” he asked. “How’d things go in the cave?”

“I got what I needed,” the Sheep said.

But the comment didn’t seem to bring Buzz much pleasure. He nodded for a few seconds, then said, “So how long you figure this should take?”

The Sheep looked at the two men, then down to his boots.

“If Sweeney helps me—” he began and Buzz said, “Sweeney’ll help.”

“Then we’ll be ready before you know it.”

Another nod, then Buzz said, “You go ahead. I’ll send him up in a minute.”

The Sheep hesitated, but only for a second. He moved to go inside the factory, stopped, turned back to say something, then changed his mind again, and went through the loading bay.

“Nadia misses you,” Buzz said.

Sweeney asked, “Is Danny inside?”

“Danny’s back at the Clinic,” Buzz said. “Safe and sound. Under warm blankets.”

Buzz expected an expression of relief or at least confusion. But the druggist looked as if he’d been spiked with an assful of Thorazine. Maybe given a little electroshock for good measure. The face was slack. Boredlooking. The body was loose, as if a knee to the groin would bring nothing but a dull, slow slump. The guy looked as if he could be deposited on a free bed at the Peck and no one would notice for a week. What the fuck had the Sheep said to him?

“You hear me?” Buzz said, a little louder and faster than he’d intended. “I said your kid was okay.”

“I heard you fine,” Sweeney said.

Buzz leaned into him, dropped his voice. “What the fuck’s the matter with you? You want some food or something?”

“I don’t want anything,” Sweeney said.

Buzz turned to the Fluke and said, “Get him a drink. Then take him up to the Sheep.”

“I don’t want a drink,” Sweeney said, but Buzz had already turned away.

The Fluke took Sweeney by the arm and led him inside the mill. There were a couple of Abominations lounging in the lunchroom, drinking and reading back issues of Limbo. They looked over to see the Fluke throw a thumb over his shoulder, then they grabbed their bottles and left the building.

“You don’t want a beer or nothin’?” the Fluke asked and Sweeney shook his head. They exited the cafeteria, found their way to a wide, steep stairwell and climbed to an upper floor. There was only emergency lighting at that level, and it reminded Sweeney of the basement of the Peck. The Fluke led the way down a corridor and came to a stop at a door that featured some fading words stenciled on its opaque glass window — RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT.

Sweeney followed the biker inside and found what looked like a large high school laboratory from the middle of the last century. The room was lit by dozens of candles and a handful of lanterns, which created a competition of shadows. Everything seemed covered in layers of grainy brick dust. In the corner, a portion of the plaster ceiling hung down like a great gray tongue streaked with fat veins of brown water stain.

The center of the room was lined with long, slablike tables, some fitted with marble tops, others with an odd green laminate. The tables were covered with lab equipment — test tubes and vials, beakers and graduated cylinders, Bunsen burners and a centrifuge, and a coffee mug that held various syringes and thermometers. A lot of nontraditional equipment was also scattered around — a Waring blender, a car battery, and some jumper cables. Lots of coiled wire, a wooden toolbox overflowing with pliers and screwdrivers. Wire coat hangers, plastic milk cartons, smoked glass jugs that Sweeney recognized from the pharmacy. An acetylene torch and a hot plate and several barbecue tongs and a white plastic egg timer. Underneath the tables were dozens of empty beer cases and an orange crate or two. It looked like a yard sale for chem majors.

Sweeney heard a toilet flush and the Sheep came out of an adjacent room, wearing plastic goggles and buckling his belt as he walked. A rolled-up comic book protruded from the back pocket of his jeans. Sweeney looked away before he could read the title. The Fluke shook his head and said, “Have fun, ladies,” laughing as he left the room.

The Sheep moved to the tables, squatted and rummaged through boxes until he found two vinyl bib aprons. He threw one to Sweeney and slipped the other over his head.

“You have any coffee recently?” he asked.

Sweeney shook his head.

“Well,” said the Sheep, “we’ll call down for some later. I can’t give you any speed, sorry to say. But you’ll be needin’ some caffeine.”

He pulled some latex gloves from beneath a spool of copper wire and began to work his hands into them.

“I think there’s another pair down there,” he said but Sweeney didn’t move.

The Sheep didn’t seem too upset by this.

“It’s your skin,” he said and began to clear some space on the table before him. “Could you at least find us some decent music?”

There was an old Grundig on the floor.

“I’d love some Ethel Waters, but put on whatever you want,” the Sheep said. “No one’s allowed inside the mill while I’m working. And Buzz backs me up on that.”

Sweeney walked around the tables, got down on one knee, switched on the radio, and began to spin the tuner. He slid through static and talk and came to a stop at “Shame on the World.”

“Now that,” the Sheep said, “surprises me. I woulda figured you for an arena rock kind of guy. Real meat and potatoes, you know?”

Sweeney sat down on a metal stool and watched the Sheep prepare his workspace. There was a methodical ease to the guy, a comfort level among the equipment and the solutions that he’d never find with people. It was that lab rat sensibility, that chronic desire to live in the midst of a process. In the heart of something quantifiable and repeatable.

The Sheep felt himself being watched, but didn’t seem to mind. He’d run a garden hose out of the bathroom tap and was filling a couple of beakers.

Sweeney surprised himself by saying, “That’s some quality control.”

The Sheep didn’t flinch.

“Don’t need any quality control,” he said. “That’s one of the things I learned in the cave.”

He held a test tube out in the air and, without thinking, Sweeney got to his feet and took it from him. Now the Sheep was firing on all cylinders, using one hand to swirl the tap water in the beaker, another to hold a small brown envelope to his mouth that he tore open with his teeth. He spit the flap to the floor, brought the envelope to his nose, and sniffed. Then he held it out to Sweeney, who declined the scent.

“You got a steady hand?” the Sheep asked.

Sweeney took the question as rhetorical and held out the tube. The Sheep poured the crystalline contents of the envelope without spilling a grain. Then he threw the envelope to the floor and took the tube from Sweeney, who remained by his side.

“Some people,” the Sheep said, “need to go into the desert for revelation. But I can’t stand wide-open spaces. All that sky, it’s terrible.” He talked as he worked, pouring colored liquids from soup cans and beer bottles that looked as if they’d never been washed, let alone sterilized. “Maybe I’m agoraphobic. That’s the word, isn’t it? But if so, they never mentioned it. I heard paranoid and I heard delusional and a lot of other not-so-nice things. But to the best of my knowledge nobody ever said agoraphobic.”

He produced more envelopes and plastic baggies, making them appear out of seemingly nowhere. At points, he reminded Sweeney of a particularly intense teppanyaki chef that he and Kerry had liked at the Tokyo Gardens back in Cleveland.

“But my point is, for some people, they got to go out under that big sky, with no boundaries, in order to get the truth. Now I’m just the opposite. I need to go inward, you see. I need to burrow in. Caves are perfect for me. I’m like a mole, you know? The deeper and the darker, the better. If the answer’s gonna come, it’s gonna come in the caves.”

The radio played “Take These Chains.” Sweeney found himself assisting. The Sheep’s instructions were never explicit, but Sweeney had no trouble determining what he wanted.

“And I gotta say, I think that’s appropriate. Cuz I don’t know how much Buzz might’ve told you, but we’re headed inside, right? When all’s said and done, that’s where the real cosmos is, you know?”

Sweeney answered in grunts. The radio played “She’s a Winner” and “Reap What You Sow.” At some point, the Fluke came up to the loft carrying two mugs of coffee. The Sheep downed his in a single gulp. Sweeney washed out beakers, ran the centrifuge, boiled down liquids. On occasion, he caught himself identifying aromas, taking note of colors.

It was pleasant work, and the Sheep was good company. A little spacey, tripped-out for a lab rat, but warm and smart and funny. Eventually the focus of all their labor became a tin saucepan that simmered on low atop the hot plate. The Sheep stirred the contents with a wooden spoon, his face tilted down over the mouth of the pan and engulfed in its vapors. Sweeney joined him, looked down and saw a thin purple broth.

“Is it soup yet?” he asked.

“That’s funny,” the Sheep said. “That’s what Buzz calls it. But personally, I like to think of it more like chili.”

He tapped the spoon on the lip of the pan, then set it down in the dust of the worktable. “This,” he said, “is just the beans. We’re still waitin’ on the meat, you might say. The meat’s the most important part. I tried a dozen recipes, okay, and some were better’n others. But it wasn’t till this last trip to the caves that I got everything worked out just right. The soup was always too thick or too thin. Like in Goldilocks, you know? Too little meat and everything’s just pale and bland. And too much meat and you’ll put the boys in their own fuckin’ coma. That’s the thing to remember. It’s all about the meat.”

“The meat,” said Nadia, from the doorway, “has arrived.”

She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, all cotton, white on white. Her hair was still pulled back, and Sweeney found it strange to see her Clinic persona playing here in Gehenna. She stared at the Sheep and ignored Sweeney.

Nadia reached into her pocket and withdrew a vial. It was small and plastic, capped with a green stopper and filled with a pink liquid. She handed it to the Sheep, who held it up to the light and closed one eye to look at it.

“You said it was okay if I got some blood with the fluid.”

Nadia sounded brittle, a little defensive. But Sweeney could see that the Sheep was thrilled.

“A little blood,” he said, “might be just the thing.”

He moved to the hot plate, pulled the stopper with his teeth, and poured the pink liquid into the soup. Then he grabbed the wooden spoon and began to stir. Nadia looked from the Sheep to Sweeney and said, “The kid says hello.”

Sweeney came around the tables toward her, and the Sheep, without taking his eye off the saucepan, said, “Don’t fuckin’ touch her.”

Nadia couldn’t stop the smile. She put a hand on her hip, gave an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “You chivalrous bastard,” she said but Sweeney couldn’t tell to whom she was talking.

“What was in the vial?” he said to Nadia.

“So much for the afterglow,” she said but the Sheep answered the question.

“It’s Danny’s brain fluid,” he said. “They check the pressure in his skull cavity and if they need to, they drain the fluid. You know that, Sweeney.”

Sweeney couldn’t stop staring at Nadia.

The Sheep went on.

“Don’t make a big thing out of this. Normally, they’d throw the drainage in toxic waste and it’d be burned in the morning. We’re taking something he doesn’t need, Sweeney. Something that’s poisonous to him.”

“We’re helping Danny out,” Nadia said. “And if you can control yourself, we’re going to help you out too.”

He wanted to slap her. Knock her to the ground. Break an arm or a leg. But everything they were saying was true. They did have to drain Danny’s shunt once or twice a week. They’d done it back at St. Joe’s. It relieved the pressure on the brain. A simple procedure. And the fluid was nothing but waste product. He’d watched Mrs. Heller throw a hundred vials into the toxic box. He’d never given them another thought.

He turned to the Sheep and said, “You’re going to drink this shit?”

Nadia laughed and the Sheep said, “Actually, we’re gonna take it intravenously.” He put down the wooden spoon again and turned to Nadia.

“Call the boys in,” he said. “And tell Buzz soup’s on.”