Then there were three more of them glaring from the dock and Sweeney bolted for his Honda. But the bikers vaulted the rail and were on top of him before he cleared the line of Harleys. The fat one threw a body check and Sweeney went down to the gravel, protected his head but felt his palms shred. They pulled him up into a crouch and the skinny one, still holding his chicken bone, planted a knee in Sweeney’s groin. He collapsed and lost his air but they didn’t let him hit the ground. He closed his eyes and waited for the next blow, but found himself, instead, being hauled across the lot, half carried, half dragged, up a few stairs, across the dock, and inside the mill.
They deposited him in a chair. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. Music was playing, some old Santo and Johnny, but it got shut off as soon as he recognized the tune.
There was a small platoon of them, fanned out in a semicircle, most of the arms folded over the chests and everything bulging. The place smelled like Colonel Sanders and skunk beer and wet towels. Sweeney put his hands over his balls.
“You think you can fuck with other people’s property?”
He focused in on the voice and saw Buzz Cote, the guy from the lunch counter at the Mart.
Sweeney stayed silent and Buzz stepped out from the semicircle, put a boot on the lip of Sweeney’s chair and tipped him back until his head met the wall. He stayed that way, on the edge of falling. Buzz leaned over his own leg, brought a hand down to his boot, and then there was a Buck knife out in the air and Sweeney pulled in a breath and said, “Please don’t do this.”
Buzz said, “I asked you a question, shithead,” and Sweeney answered, “Please, I’ve got a kid.”
From someplace deep in the room, Nadia Rey yelled, “C’mon, boys, play nice.”
Behind Buzz, one of the bikers let a laugh fly. And then everything was happening quickly. The knife was back in the boot and the chair was upright and Buzz was pulling Sweeney to standing and bear-hugging him like a lost brother and clapping his back hard enough to clear his lungs. And then the circle was disbanding with war whoops and whistles and cans of beer were being tossed hand to hand and popped open. The music started up again and the room seemed to brighten and Buzz had turned and pulled Sweeney to his side, arm wrapped around Sweeney’s shoulder, and was walking him through a maze of bodies and around an engine that was leaking onto a floral bedsheet spread out in the middle of the floor.
Nadia was seated at a long metal table at the far end of what appeared to be an antique cafeteria. The room was lit by dozens of votive candles melting over every gritty surface. Buzz eased Sweeney down next to Nadia on an aluminum bench. Sweeney stared at the woman but couldn’t say anything. Buzz sat next to Sweeney, sandwiching him in.
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.