“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.”