The Brickeaters

by The Residents

  “Sometimes I can’t get it out of my head. I’ll be at home having dinner and I’m raising a spoonful of soup to my mouth and all of a sudden this dead mouse pops into my mind… this dead mouse, stuck to bottom of a hiking boot… and you can see how the mouse is all deformed… it’s been squashed up in and around the knobby bumps on the sole of the shoe… and the photo was shot really close up so you can see every single mouse hair and its yellow rodent teeth and…”

  “Lots of dead stuff, I’ll bet… pictures of dead animals… and dead people… do you see a lot of pictures of dead people, Ted?”

  “I see them all the time… all the time… too many dead people… dead people are all around me.” Hendricks looked out the window as if he was thinking about something specific. “Sometimes I dream about them…”

  The disturbed Internet screener was slipping further and further out. It seemed like this was the time to hit him with a high hard one and see how he reacted, so I went for it. “I recently heard about a dead guy that was found all alone, just laying on the side of a road not far here… it was over near Clinton. Did you hear about him, Ted?”

  “Huh, what… what are you talking about?”

  Hendricks’ face quickly turned the same color as a baby’s butt left in the sun all summer. He tried to soothe himself by taking a sip of coffee, but his hands were shaking so badly, he had to place the cup back onto the table.

  “Wilmer Graves… I think that’s what the guy’s name was… Wilmer Graves. Did you hear about him, Ted?”

  “What! Willy?…” Hendricks’ eyes slowly rose from his coffee cup and met mine with an intense stare. He was catching on. With the wheels furiously turning in Ted Hendricks’ brain, he paused briefly, then blurted out, “Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you asking me about poor Willy? It’s Beasley… it’s Beasley you should be looking for!”

  Suddenly realizing that he had said too much, Hendricks abruptly stood, bumping the table and knocking over his cup of coffee as he rose. Biting on his words, the Internet screener said, “I can’t talk any more. I’ve got to back to work.”

  “But, Ted, wait…” I watched as Hendricks’ exceedingly long legs quickly devoured the space between our table and the entrance, but this time he misjudged—or blindly ignored—the height of the doorway, banging his head into the metal as he crossed the threshold. Wiping blood away from his forehead, Ted Hendricks disappeared into the traffic.

  I needed to get back to Clinton, but still wanted to see what I could dig up on the Hendricks kid. A little earlier I spotted the entrance to the Pendergast Building’s parking garage and figured if I hung around, there was a good chance I could catch him leaving; it was worth taking some time to follow the kid home and see where he lived. Hendricks would no doubt freak if he knew I was following him, but the techie was so worked up, I’d probably have to set his face on fire before he noticed.

  Sure enough, about an hour and a half later, a ten-year-old Honda appeared at the parking garage exit; the Honda was a perfect ID for the one hole-in-the-throat Hazel saw in the café parking lot back in Adrian. Practically sitting in the back seat, a familiar baby-faced driver sat behind the wheel, his head nervously darting back and forth, before pulling out into traffic.

  Maintaining a discreet distance, I followed Hendricks for about a half an hour until he finally pulled into the driveway of a nondescript suburban house in Blue Springs. I drove past, then stopped about a block away. Getting out of my car, I casually walked back toward the kid’s house, being careful not to attract any attention. It was starting to get dark so I figured I was pretty safe, but didn’t want to take any chances that Hendricks might spot me.

  Graves’ accomplice had pulled the Honda up under an open carport, grabbed a backpack from the back seat and disappeared into the house. I waited a couple of minutes to let him settle in, then casually strolled up the driveway, ducking into the shadows under the carport. Curious as to what I might find in his car, I pulled out a small flashlight and peeked through the windows. Looking at the front seat, I was startled at the large accumulation of empty coffee cups, candy wrappers, potato chip bags and other assorted trash littering the car. There was even an old pair of sneakers on the floor of the shotgun seat.

  I then turned my attention to the back which was just as messy, maybe worse. Clothes, a small suitcase, books, magazines, a pillow, fast food wrappers and more coffee cups turned the back seat into a pint-sized garbage dump. Ted Hendricks either kept an insanely chaotic car or something had been going on here and he hadn’t slowed down long enough to clean up the mess.

  I had seen enough to get the general picture and was about to move on when something odd caught my eye. It was a box, partially covered by magazines and old newspapers, with a bold and lurid message screaming from its only visible surface. Shining my light directly on the box, I read the words “eSPY - NO SECRET IS SAFE!”

  Quietly opening the car door, I reached in and shoved the clutter aside, revealing the cheesy packaging of a decidedly third-rate surveillance kit. In tacky Day-Glo lettering the box proclaimed “eSPY - HI-TECH SPYING MADE EASY!,” “eSPY - NO MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS - NOW YOU KNOW!,” “eSPY - TRAVEL A LOT? - KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE GONE!,” and “CONTAINS 4 NIGHT VISION CAMERAS!!! - A 500-MEGABYTE GENUINE DIGITAL HARD DRIVE!!! - A HIGH RESOLUTION B&W MONITOR!!!” What a hunk of junk. Why would someone like Hendricks be carrying a piece of crap like that around in the back seat of his car? There was a lot of shit going on that didn’t seem to add up.

  At that moment, just as I got out of the car, I heard a hand on the doorknob leading from the house into the carport. Watching as it slowly opened, I froze in panic, then quickly ducked down behind the car. I was about to bolt into the darkness when Hendricks appeared, immediately followed by the incessant yipping of a tiny Chihuahua. Realizing it was too late to run, I fell to the ground and rolled under the car. Standing in the doorway, the kid’s back was turned so he couldn’t see me, but the fucking dog did. The barking rat ran straight at me, stopping two inches from my face. A cross between a giant insect and shrunken drill sergeant, the Chihuahua was utterly relentless. I was trapped! Not only was the little shit’s shrill and incessant barking piercing my brain like a screaming spike, but he apparently had just eaten dinner so his breath smelled like rancid chicken liver. It was torture, but I didn’t have any choice except to gut it out.

  The kid was having an animated conversation with someone. I figured it was either a girlfriend or a roommate, but I couldn’t hear anything over the runt dog shrieking at my face, so I concentrated, trying to follow the one-sided dialogue as best I could. The kid was still upset. He yelled, “I know it’s almost dinner time, but you said you wanted me to take Archie for a walk!”

  The dog was straining on the end of a leash. As Hendricks paused to listen to whoever was in the house, he stepped down from the doorway into the carport allowing just enough slack for my tormentor to lunge forward, biting me on the nose. Jerking my head back, I gritted my teeth and stifled a scream as my left nostril began squirting blood like a skewered chicken.

  Still standing at the door, Hendricks yelled back into the house, “What did you say? I’m sorry, but Archie’s barking so much I can hardly hear you.” The kid paused again as I eyeballed the ferocious Archie preparing to hurl his taut body at my naked nose with renewed passion. Watching the blood as it flowed from my wounded nostril out onto the carport floor, I cringed in anticipation. The hairless rat was having the time of his life.

  Hendricks yelled again, “SHUT UP, ARCHIE,” and jerked on the leash, delaying the latest onslaught if only for a few seconds. Nevertheless, still squalling like a baby leaf blower, Archie was not about to let his guard down. “ARCHIE! DAMMIT! WHY ARE YOU BARKING SO MUCH? Is there something under there?” These were not the words I wanted to hear.

  As I strained to look through the blood now seeping into my eyes, I saw Hendricks’ shadowy silhouette moving downward as he squatted near the front of t
he car. It was not a good sign—as my jaw tightened, panic made its way from my stomach to the base of my throat. Hendricks was now on his hands and knees, allowing me to see the outline of his head as the dog’s owner peeked under the car, searching the area near the end of the leash. “Margo, I think there’s something under there! It might be a raccoon! Quick, bring the mace!”

  MACE! SHIT FIRE! We were well past the point of discretion here. I had to get the fuck out… and fast. Scooting out from under the car, I sprung to my feet. It was dark in the carport. I ran hurdles in high school and still had a little speed, so I figured if I could catch him by surprise and get out fast enough, maybe the kid wouldn’t recognize me. It was the only chance I had, so I grabbed it; quickly springing into action, I headed for the carport doorway and the open night air. With blood stinging my eyes and all but gluing them shut, I was one step from an all-out sprint when I crashed into a trash can, then tripped on a rake. A distinct “pop” echoed through space as my face connected with one of the brick pillars supporting the front of small house. Groaning in pain, my head then bounced off the concrete driveway as I rolled over on my back, reeling with the feeling that life is complicated. Oh yeah, my nose was broken, too.

  Groggy with pain and shock, I struggled to get back to my feet, took a step or two, then stumbled and fell again. Laying in the middle of the driveway, I could hear Hendricks shouting through my mental haze, “Margo! Margo! I think it’s a burglar! Call the cops! CALL THE COPS! … uh, no, wait. Don’t call the cops… uh, I think he may be hurt… stay back… STAY BACK! Let me look.”

  The jig was up. Not much to do now but face the music. Dazed, I looked back toward the house as a flashlight slowly creeped down the driveway, until… WHAM! The beam hit me in the face. His voice shrill with disbelief, Ted Hendricks stared and shouted, “MISTER BLOOD-JET! IS THAT YOU? What… what were you doing under my car?”

  I was sitting at the table in the breakfast nook of Ted Hendricks’ kitchen. Seeing my blood-covered face and coat, and sensing the pain numbing my eyes, the Internet screener graciously took pity, but this was not a joyous reunion. With his body language screaming PISSED OFF, Hendricks left and immediately returned with a washcloth, a roll of toilet paper and some tape. Closely observing the scene was Ted’s girlfriend, Margo, who scowled, brought me a cup a coffee, then retreated a safe distance.

  Ignoring his rage, Hendricks cleaned my bruised and battered face. After gingerly wiping most of the blood away, he unrolled several feet of toilet paper and taped a huge wad of it across the center of my face. Stepping back to admire his handiwork, the kid shrugged his shoulders, then looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Okay, so what’s this all about? I want to know what are you doing here, Mr. Blood-Jet, if that’s actually your name?”

  My consciousness was slowly returning, but unfortunately, that only made the pain worse. It appeared that, while my nose was indeed broken, I didn’t have a concussion. I guess some people would call that lucky. Personally, I call it careless and fucking stupid, but I suppose it could have been worse—Hendricks might have had a pet weasel that ripped my face off, but that only happens in the movies. Regardless, it was time to do some fast talking.

  “It’s Blodgett, Ted. Franklin Blodgett… please call me Frank. I am a writer but no, I don’t work for the Wall Street Journal. I’m sorry I had to lie to you, but I’m trying to do a story on Wilmer Graves and I think you are somehow involved… and the more I find out, the stranger the story becomes…”

  “Look, I can’t tell you anything about Willy, okay? I probably said too much already, but that’s it… understand?”

  Margo, sizing everything up from across the room, was also upset, but her concerns were a little different than the kid’s. Confused, she said, “What’s this all about, Ted? Who’s Wilmer Graves and what’s he got to do with you?”

  “I can’t talk about it now, Margo. It… it’s personal…”

  “Personal! Ted, you disappear for nearly a week, show up with no explanation and I’m supposed to act like it’s okay! Then you find this guy hiding under your car… what’s he doing there? It’s not okay, Ted… yeah, it’s personal all right… it’s personal for me if I can’t trust the man I’m engaged to! Do you understand that?”

  “Okay… okay… but let’s talk about this later. It’s not a good time for…”

  “It’s never a good time, Ted! You’ve been back from wherever the fuck you went for five days now and haven’t said a thing! I can’t deal with this… I’m sorry, but I’m going home!” With that she left, slamming the door behind her.

  “Margo! Margo! Wait! Wait!”

  The chick was not waiting, a fact confirmed by the sound of a car door, followed by an engine starting and driving away. In the silence that followed, Hendricks’ mood was dull and dark, covering the kid like a concrete cloud. After a long and tense moment, he turned back to me—it was just the two of us, Ted Hendricks with his heavily bandaged forehead and me with half a roll of toilet paper taped to my nose. We looked like some kind of wounded war twins, except of course Hendricks was three feet taller than me. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. Leaning down from somewhere up above, Hendricks stuck his face in front of me and screamed, “Look what you’ve done!”

  “Hey, yo, Ted… Okay, I shouldn’t have been snooping around your car and I’m sorry I lied about the Wall Street Journal, but if you disappeared on your girlfriend while you were out sticking up gas stations and formal wear joints with Wilmer Graves, it’s not my fault, dude. Meanwhile, your car looks like a rolling garbage can and you’ve got a junior G-Man spy kit in the back seat. So what the fuck is going on here?”

  At that point the highly strung Hendricks finally reached the end of his rope, a rope that had somehow become twisted around the core of his being, gradually growing tighter and tighter over a period of weeks. His defenses shattered, the kid collapsed like a discarded rag doll, flopping his gangly form into a chair and sobbing like a baby.

  “Look, kid, I realize you’re pretty fucked up over all this. Maybe it would help if you talked it out.”

  Shaking and unable to speak beyond a babble of random blubbering, the kid was still able to violently shake his head back and forth. Finally, after a torturously long minute, he gained enough composure to stammer out, “N-N-N-NO! N-N-N-NO! I… I C-CAN’T T-T-TALK ABOUT IT! I CAN’T TALK ABOUT IT!”

  “Okay, it’s up to you… but whatever happened is probably gonna come out sooner or later.”

  Hendricks shook his head again. “N-NO! N-NO!”

  Another tense silence, broken only by Ted Hendricks’ erratic sobs, slowly filled the room. I didn’t know what to do. I obviously needed to get to a doctor, but I hated to leave Hendricks alone in this condition. Through all of this insanity, two things were becoming fairly clear to me: there was little doubt about the kid having been Graves’ accomplice, but it was equally obvious that Ted Hendricks was not a criminal. It just didn’t make any sense.

  Finally appearing to regain his composure, Hendricks raised his head and stared across the room. Suddenly snapping back to reality, the techie called out, “Margo’s inhaler! She forgot her inhaler!” Jumping up from his chair, he crossed the room in two giant steps, reached over and grabbed the inhaler then turned back to me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Blood-Jet, but you have to go now. Margo left without her asthma inhaler. If she has an attack without it, I’ll never forgive myself. You have to go.” And with that, the kid put on his heavy coat, opened the back door, practically pushing me out of the house.

  Standing in the driveway, oscillating back and forth between my throbbing nose and the freezing bite of a northern Missouri winter, I watched Ted Hendricks squeal out of his driveway and roar off into the night. Oh yeah, one more thing. Even though I only saw her for a few minutes, totally immersed in the murky fog of pain, Ted Hendricks’ girlfriend Margo made an indelible imprint on my mind. She was absolutely the most stunning woman I had ever seen. Radiating a clean and un
cluttered sexuality with every breath, every move, every iota of her being, the lovely Margo also left me with one clear and nagging question: what the fuck was she doing with a doofus like Ted Hendricks?

  Despite the incessant pain pounding in my broken nose, the return trip to Clinton gave me more time and headspace to think. Hendricks’ involvement with Wilmer Graves was obviously no longer in doubt. The kid’s reaction to the mention of Graves’ name, along with the suggestion of his involvement in the convict’s crime spree, had caused him to completely lose it. Also, as I thought back to our earlier encounter in the coffee shop, I remembered something else he said: “Beasley.” It was something like, “You should really be looking for Beasley.” So who the fuck was Beasley and how did he fit into this strange and oddly expanding puzzle?

  As the blurry outlines of a gloomy landscape floated past the windows of my rental car, I glanced out at the pitch-black sky. Not unlike the drive to Kansas City, the return trip to Clinton not only gave me time to consider the story slowly unfolding around me, but it also opened the space for more personal reflection, a door into a deep well of self-doubt and recrimination that always seemed to echo with a longing for Louise. But by now the well had become a little more crowded—not only was I in there, along with my nagging what-ifs and woulda-shouldas, but there, alongside Louise, were two more recent attachments: the perky and genuine Patty and the more than memorable Margo. And of course, the insanity of even vaguely considering Margo as an “attachment” was hardly lost on me. The tricks of the mind are unbounded, and no matter how much I played a mental game of Whack-A-Mole with images of Louise, Patty and Margo popping out of an endless series of black holes, another one always came bouncing back. WHACK! No more Louise! WHACK! No more Patty! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!… no more Margo! WHACK! WHACK!… until finally only one was left… only one that I couldn’t shake… only one that kept tapping me on the shoulder with one hand and grabbing my balls with the other, while looking, staring, searching into the depths of my soul.