The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (33 page)
Read The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man Online
Authors: Denis Johnson
“Anyway, they’re considered yours.”
“Oh.”
“On the day you get out, they’ll give them back to you.”
“That’ll be awhile,” he estimated.
“Will we ever meet again?”
“We’ll meet again in seven million years,” he said. “I’ll be standing in a cemetery parking lot and I’ll look up and you’ll be driving a school bus past or something. And that’ll be it.”
“We’ll fall in love again.”
“I’ll see you go by. You won’t see me.”
“Poor Lenny. They’re going to put you away for a long time.”
“Not so long. Less than seven million years.”
Leanna’s visit made English late for lunch. He didn’t like that. He didn’t feel he was getting enough to eat in the first place.
“So, did she ask you to marry her?” Jimmy said.
“Is she gonna break us out?” Fred said.
“God, I would love to do that!” Jimmy said. “I would love to break out. That’d rattle their little gonads, huh?”
It was overly warm in the cafeteria. Huge pipes wrapped in insulation ran through the room just under the ceiling. English kept imagining they’d burst, magnificently destroying everybody’s troubles.
“I wouldn’t break out,” English said. “I like it here.”
English felt hungry every minute. Baloney sandwiches on Wonder Bread with Campbell’s soup for lunch. Cereal and reconstituted milk for breakfast, one piece of white toast. Potatoes and ground-beef gravy for supper, Wonder Bread on the side. “This is the stuff,” English said, shaking his piece of bread at the man across from him. It flopped back and forth like a pancake. “I really like this stuff,” he said. And he did. He liked being hungry and in prison.
Cindy Lee Johnson
D
ENIS
J
OHNSON
is the author of seven novels, three collections of poetry, and one book of reportage. His novel
Tree of Smoke
was the 2007 winner of the National Book Award.
ALSO BY DENIS JOHNSON
FICTION
Train Dreams
Nobody Move
Tree of Smoke
The Name of the World
Already Dead: A California Gothic
Jesus’ Son
The Stars at Noon
Fiskadoro
Angels
NONFICTION
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond
POETRY
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General
Assembly: Poems, Collected and New
The Veil
The Incognito Lounge
PLAYS
Shoppers: Two Plays
Copyright © 1991 by Denis Johnson
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollins
CanadaLtd
CanadaLtd
It is a pleasure to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
and the Mrs. Giles R. Whiting Foundation for support
that made this writing possible.
and the Mrs. Giles R. Whiting Foundation for support
that made this writing possible.
eISBN 9781466807051
First eBook Edition : December 2011
First edition, 1991
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Denis.
Resuscitation of a hanged man : a novel / Denis Johnson.—1st ed.
I. Title.
PS3560.03745R47 1990 813’.54—dc20 90-46283
Johnson, Denis.
Resuscitation of a hanged man : a novel / Denis Johnson.—1st ed.
I. Title.
PS3560.03745R47 1990 813’.54—dc20 90-46283
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