Thread by @JuliusGoat

CHAPEL—3

The Sunday barbecue’s a tradition at the Neon: Brothers Brock and Jack light the two massive cookers and bring the meat out of the deep freeze.

One barrel they crowd with weenies and patties, the other they load with ribs and beef tips and brisket.

The residents of Checkertown gather to smell the meat cooking: kids first—some of them urchins damp with filth, others well-scrubbed and accompanied by parents—and then other dwellers from Domino City ...

... : workers from Slanty’s or scavengers from the blasted factories, cloaked in the sweat and the stench of the day’s work, a pimp or two along the margin, strutting with his girls, girls without their pimps, even the gangsters or the occasional shiny-suit boss ...

... they come, the ever-hungry and the always-fed, the heavily armed and the defenseless, strong or weak they come, lured by the smell of cooking meat marinating in a sweet sauce whose secret composition Brother Jack swears never to reveal ...

... they come lured still more by promise of company within a safe space … for those who come armed have learned to keep their heaters tucked, or face the humiliation of a showdown with the fearless priest of the Neon Chapel.

They congregate on the large grassy empty lot upon which the Neon Chapel has been built, paper plates floppy with meat juice, stomachs full.

Somebody drives a vehicle onto the grass, blasting music. There’s dancing, the spectacle of the young posturing for the young, the squeals of children chasing each other across the grass. A bottle is passed, knots of conversation begin and continue and melt into each other.

Some congregate for hours, resting in the sacred temporal ether of a good meal, tarrying long after Julius and the other brothers and sisters have retired within or gone off to other errands ...

... , while Brock and Jack scrub the steamers clean and store them dry and gleaming, ready for their meaty work the following Sunday.

Donk never shows. His presence wouldn’t match the narrative he’s built about himself. Still, the barbecue’s allowed to exist because of Donk, who managed, at what Julius assumes involved some significant level of personal risk, to get Ralph Mayor on the right side of it.

It hadn’t been a sure thing. Offering free food is an act of civil disobedience on Loony Island, after all, where Ralph provides.

In the end, Donk sold the event to Ralph as a sort of team-building event for the gangs, with overall stability and brand management as side benefits.

Other concessions to Ralph regarding food delivery and trash pickup had been made to smooth the road, concessions that Julius doesn’t like to think about, much less talk about, but the priest had balked at calling it “The Mayor’s Dinner,” Ralph’s original request.

How the hell Donk convinced Ralph to back off that point of contention, Julius has no idea. Knowing what he now knows, the priest sometimes experiences the gripping feeling you get in the guts when you remember a near-miss, thinking of ...

... the confidence with which he ‘negotiated’ with Donk about the barbecue, completely unaware of how little leverage he held, how narrow the road upon which he walked, how far the drop, and just how much Donk had done to keep him from tipping over into it.

Julius walks barefoot though the crowd, greeting friends he recognizes and many others who recognize him, and, as he takes his place in line for a plate, he notices, scattered around the usual throng, a noticeable quantity of terrycloth.

The loonies are meant to return to the Wales at night—they’ve been given strict instruction to return during this trial balloon, or so the newspapers report—but some have found the weekly meal instead.

And, once again, winding through the crowd, immune to hostile glance, a man in red, his wood sword swinging, swinging …

Brother Jack raises his eyebrows. “Done early, ain’t you,” he mutters.

Jack’s understated as always; really, the priest’s shockingly early for a man who holds such precise a schedule.

Unsure even how to begin explaining, Julius simply nods. “Seen Nettles?”

Brother Jack points the thongs. “Expect you’d find her inside.”

It’s welcome news. Most nights Julius would relish mixing with the crowd, but after everything he’s seen today, he needs common sense and calm; he needs Nettles.

The Neon’s early joiner, Nettles, the calm at the center of their storms, the brick holding down the rest of their unsecured lids; Nettles will have some ideas about the flickering man, and even if she doesn’t, she’ll be able to lend some perspective.

Balancing his plate one-handed, Julius slips back inside.

Nettles lives in the ground level cell on the right, furthest from the entrance, and she’s home as expected; Julius sees the light glowing from within on the sides of her curtain.

He makes for this haven, but before he can reach it, he’s interrupted by a voice coming up from behind:

“*There* you are, Captain! Eye eye eye eye eye…”

Julius stops, closes his eyes—*Oh shit.*

Turning, he can see that yes, sure enough, it’s the stuttering loony from this morning, glasses slightly askew on his face, grinning like a long dog who just got some meat—which, Julius reflects, is probably what he just got, since he’s holding an empty, but greasy, plate.

“I found the place, just like you said I would!”

“Glad you did,” Julius says, as graciously as he can manage, given this frustration of his intentions. “You’re welcome here.”

Look at him. He's a spectacle in spectacles: a stork-like figure in tatty bathrobe and greasy hair, a single bird from a flock set loose upon a far harsher world than any of them should have been expected to deal with.

The loony, having achieved his objective—contact with a familiar face—now seems unfurnished with any further plan or recourse.

He stands.

He sways.

It’s getting awkward.

It’s enough to make a street priest wish he were anywhere else; even in some board meeting with his proxy and his multi-tabbed spreadsheets and a bunch of conservative haircuts perched atop a series of very serious business suits.

“Listen… Sterling. It’s certainly nice to make your acquaintance—”

“Whoa, now. Who gave you my *name?*” The loony takes a step backward.

Julius points to the HELLO MY NAME IS sticker, still visible on the musty shirt secreted beneath the city-issue bathrobe; he’s wearing it unbelted and open.

The skinny loon looks down, sees his name, and closes the robe, hands clutched to his chest, in a gawky pantomime of virginal modesty.

“Don’t call me Sterling Shirker, Captain—call me what the rest of them call me. Call me Tennessee,” he says. “Just Tennessee. Just Tennessee. Just Tennessee.

To ream ream remind me I'm not ever going back there never going back never going back there. There’s bad folks in Pigeon Forge, and I don’t want anything more to do with them or their boxes or their fountain.”

“No problem … Tennessee,” Julius says, walking to the nearest chair in the choir—an overstuffed armchair with a floral chinz pattern the color of mustard. “But you’re not wearing your last name on your clothes, you know, so telling it to me was an unnecessary goddamn giveaway.”

He says it kindly, but with what he hopes is finality, kneels for a brief blessing, then sits with his plate, figuring—If you’ve got to listen to this guy, at least make yourself comfortable while you do it, and eat your grub before it gets ice cold….

Tennessee, following behind, seems not to have heard. “I understand this is a place that hell, that hell, that hell hell helps people out,” he says.

He sits in the nearest chair—a leather loveseat with broken springs. His ass sinks halfway to the floor, putting his skinny knees up near his ears, making him resemble a bespectacled grasshopper. “A say say safe place.”

“That's right,” Julius says, cautiously. “Pretty sure you got that understanding from me.”

“OK, then, that's good,” Tennessee exhales dramatically. “I need a safe play play place. I’ve got trouble after me.”

-A.R. Moxon, THE REVISIONARIES bookshop.org/books/the-revi…

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