the bus back from P.W.: spiced, and tired in a good way
liniment and tincture of benzoin had been handed out and liberally applied, so the warm air became complexly spiced. Everybody was tired in a good way.
Context
The team-as-organism in its afterglow: the bus "complexly spiced" with liniment and benzoin, the racks bristling with grips and strings, "Everybody was tired in a good way." This is the regimen's rare reward — the collective, medicated, depleted contentment of bodies that have spent themselves and won, the whole squad breathing one warm analgesic fug. Where 032 rendered fatigue as communal sacrament of depletion, here the same exhausted-body communion is turned toward pleasure: the ache is good, the smell is shared, the organism rests.