The Brickeaters

by The Residents

  And who was it?… Patty, of course. Oh, don’t ask me why… these things have no rhyme or reason. They are what they are, as they say, and making sense is not what they’re all about. I tried to Whack-A-Mole her away… she was too young… she lived in Clinton-buttfuck-Missouri… I reminded her of HER FATHER… she might even be a virgin, for chrissake! But nothing worked. I couldn’t get her out of my head.

  It was midnight when I finally pulled into the parking lot of the Roadside Inn where I was staying in Clinton. Totally exhausted, I dragged myself up the stairs, opened the door and collapsed on the bed. And of course the last thing I thought of before instantly drifting into the infinite, fuzzy and familiar shroud of sleep was Patty, and how badly I longed to see her smiling face across the table sipping a hot cup of coffee in the morning. It was crazy.

  I woke up the next day feeling refreshed. A good night’s sleep had done wonders for my mind, body and overall outlook on life. The Patty thing was still there, but I managed to mentally push it into a cave back behind some big rocks. It was silly… why would she be interested in me? And of course she was far too young for an experienced man of the world. It was absurd.

  Feeling brave, I looked in the mirror and even that wasn’t so bad. Okay, my face was a mess, but the nose could have been worse. A little swollen, but still straight—well, almost straight. And a Google search told me that there’s nothing they can do about a broken nose; eventually it heals and it’s good as new. And yeah, I probably needed a stitch or two where Ted’s Tiny Terror sunk his razor-like canines into my tender flesh, but what the hell… a scar or two merely adds character to a real man’s face.

  So, that was it, enough brooding about that dumbfuck Louise, because that’s all this craziness was. Pining about lost love… who needs it? There was nothing going on with Patty… no Margo… what a joke! Let Louise have the goddam insurance salesman. Now it was SHOWTIME! Eat some breakfast, drink some coffee and crank it up!

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in Terry’s Café staring at a plateful of fried eggs, bacon and hash browns. You know, some things just make the world right and this was it—a genuine greasy-spoon breakfast. Life doesn’t get any better. Okay, I’ll admit I did scan the café for Patty and felt a slight, only minor, twinge when I realized she wasn’t there, but it was okay. It was okay.

  As I sipped my coffee, my mind flashed back a couple of days to just before I left Clinton. The episode with Farmer Brown and the story about the explosion spooking him and his pig came rushing back, and with it came the idea of Res-Map and the ability to view real-time satellite imagery. If a big explosion did occur, I should be able to find evidence of it on ResMap. It might take a while, but it should be there. As soon as I finished breakfast, I rushed back to my room and booted up my computer. My Dell Inspiron wasn’t the fastest or hippest laptop around but I figured it would get the job done. I went to the ResWeb.com website and downloaded the software that would allow me to view live satellite images directly in Explorer. It took a few minutes to install the browser plug-in, but after a couple of minutes I was up and running.

  The farmland and forest surrounding Clinton covered a huge area, but since I had seen the farmer and his broken-down pickup on Highway 18 a few miles west of Clinton, that seemed like a good place to start. It was also not far from the spot where Graves’ body was found. Okay, the old farmer was out there—maybe the explosion only happened in his head. And if it was real, maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Hendricks and Graves, but I had a feeling… a strong feeling.

  I spent the whole morning on my laptop starting back at Adrian, MO, and slowly working my way back toward Clinton, searching every square mile of land around Highway 18. I was getting really tired of staring at a computer monitor and was just about to go out for lunch when BINGO!… there it was! A small circular, dirt-colored area that strongly suggested the presence of a crater. It wasn’t a big crater, at least by Siberian or Crater Lake standards. I guess it was only about sixty to seventy-five feet in diameter, but big enough to indicate some serious damage. The dirt bowl was in a heavily forested area not far from where Graves’ body was found and only a few hundred yards off the highway. A dirt road led from the main highway into the thicket, but the area was so secluded that you’d never find it accidentally.

  Something had happened in that clump of woods. I had no idea what I was going to find when I got there, but I had to check it out.

  Twenty minutes later I was on the outskirts of Clinton speeding down Highway 18. It wasn’t far; I would be there in forty-five minutes, maybe less, but I couldn’t keep from wondering what I would find. Nothing up to this point gave the slightest indication that either Graves or Hendricks would have the inclination, much less the knowledge, to create an explosive with this kind of power. But if not Willy Graves or his baby-faced sidekick, then who—and more importantly, why?

  It was early afternoon and the road was completely deserted. As I cruised through the countryside, it occurred to me that there are certain details of driving down an open highway that are always the same: the telephone poles speeding along the side of the road, the birds perched upon the wires, the scenery moving slower and slower as it recedes into the distance, but this time it was different. No doubt the details were similar enough, but that’s not where the difference originated. It was me. I had created a sense of anticipation completely unlike any I’ve ever known before. Sure, expectations are the core of any trip. You’re going somewhere and something will happen when you get there. Maybe it’s a family trip and there’s a feeling of familiarity that accompanies the journey. Maybe it’s a vacation and a sense of impending discovery defines and informs the sensation of moving from one place to another. But none of these feelings were valid for me at this particular moment, a moment that was brand new, unfolding in real time… and I embraced it.

  As I approached the one-lane dirt road leading south off the main highway, I felt a sense of eerie foreboding. To begin with, I was looking out the car window at a life-sized landscape that only a couple of hours before had appeared in a God’s-eye view on my computer screen. The juxtaposition of distance versus immediacy was unnerving, not unlike those moments when you’re sitting in a Burger King biting into a Whopper and all-of-a-sudden-out-of-nowhere you think, “OMG! There’s probably ten million people all around the world doing this exact same thing RIGHT NOW!” Of course, turning onto a dirt road in rural Missouri is not the same as sitting in a Burger King, but that’s not the point. The idea is that reality is so much larger, deeper and more complicated than we pitiful humans can comprehend that when we do get tiny glimpses of it, we are immediately compelled to back away, bite into our burger, and go on about our business. So here I was experiencing an all but instantaneous transformation from being God to being an ant, an ant driving a car up a dirt road in Missouri. It was weird.

  But not nearly as weird as what I found upon entering the area I had pinpointed on ResMap. Stopping the car, I got out and gaped at a scene of destruction and immediate mutation from one reality to another unlike anything else I had witnessed. Okay, I had seen pictures of tornado wreckage, images of rubble remaining after an earthquake, the ruins of bombed-out villages in news photos, but those were only pictures, facsimiles of life. This was real, and standing in the middle of nothing but dirt, rocks and a few fragments of grass all splayed out in a series of irregular concentric circles was more than weird—it was mind-boggling.

  The center of the crater was about four or five feet below the surrounding area. The explosion had obviously taken everything that had previously existed at ground zero and dispersed it over a large circular area, with the remaining fragments growing larger and larger as they retreated from the center. Starting with dust and small splinters of rock at the center and ending with trees leaning back away from the crater, the scene was a huge and highly organized mandala of destruction. As I walked outward, I searched the ground for anything that might give me a clue as to what had happened. No one
had created an explosion like this to blow up a few rocks and trees. Something had been here before the big bang and there had to be pieces of it laying around.

  As I reached a point twenty-five or thirty feet from the center of the crater, something shiny caught my eye. I bent down and picked up a piece of metal about the size of a matchbook; one side of it was coated with a yellowish metallic paint while the other side was plain. Moving a little further away, I discovered another, slightly larger piece, and a few minutes later I found two more. Okay, I admit I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but somewhere in the shadowy recesses of my mind, an alarm was going off. My “Spidey-Sense” was going AAAUUUUGAAAAH! AAAUUUUGAAAAH! And then it hit me! THE CADILLAC! The gold Escalade that Graves and Hendricks had driven out of the café parking lot a couple of weeks earlier in Adrian. Someone had blown up the Cadillac not long after they drove away in it. But who? Once again it didn’t seem likely that Willy and Ted would have driven a brand new car from the café parking lot out here to the middle of the woods and blasted the hell out of it. But then nothing about this whole deal made any sense.

  Then WHAM!!! It hit me again! A car bomb! Somebody had tried to kill them. That had to be it. A bomb, a massive explosive device was hidden in the Cadillac and somehow Wilmer Graves and Ted Hendricks escaped the explosion. Graves’ body was found not far from here; he must have died shortly after the two of them got away. After Willy died, Hendricks would have walked back to the café, got in his Honda and driven home. No wonder he wouldn’t talk about it. Ted Hendricks knows that somebody out there tried to waste him and they might be coming back to finish the job.

  WOW! My head was spinning like an ice skater on acid. It was going to take a little while to sort all this out, but one thing was clear. I had to report this to the cops and if Ted Hendricks thought he was in trouble before, he was about to find his mojo mired mondo deep in doo-doo.

  I needed a plan of action and it seemed like the best place to start was Patty. First of all, she was the only person I knew in this crummy town and secondly, well, actually, there wasn’t any other reason, so it was Patty. Regardless, unless I was planning on bailing on the whole cockeyed business and going back to an empty apartment in L.A.—DUH!—I had to bring the cops in, but as soon as I showed my face to the lesbo bitch from Bumpkinville, she’d be busting my balls with the L.A. Times crap again. I needed someone on the inside and that was Patty… end of story.

  Of course, as usual there was a problem. I didn’t have her phone number and didn’t know where she lived. The only places I could expect to find Patty were her work, and I wasn’t quite ready for the den of Deputy Dawg, and the hospital, where she went to visit her mom every day. So the hospital it was.

  Meanwhile, I hadn’t eaten any lunch yet and I was starving. I was getting kind of tired of the limited offerings at Terry’s, where I’d been having breakfast every morning and decided to try something different. I’d spotted a little place on the edge of town; it was really just a small trailer with a sign proclaiming KATIE’S KATFISH SHACK. We do have food trucks in West Hollywood with Korean tacos, Indian crepes, Irish burgers, etc., but we don’t exactly have “Katfish Shacks” so I opted for some local color. Katie’s was really a take-out joint—seating was a couple of picnic tables—but the weather had gotten a little better so I decided to go for it.

  The Katfish Shack was a one-person operation and it was a guy, probably in his early thirties. I swear to God his name tag said Bubba. It’s not just reality TV shows about junk dealers and frog farmers. There actually ARE people back in the South and the Midwest named Bubba. Anyway, the place was deserted except for him and me, so I stepped up to the window to order.

  Bubba was apparently texting on his cell phone, which he put aside. Turning to the window, he took a quick look at me, raised his eyebrows and said, “What does the other guy look like?”

  “Huh? Oh… yeah.” I had forgotten that it looked like someone had worked me over with a tire tool. “Uh, I had a little accident… bumped into something…”

  “Yeah, I’d say so. What did he use, a piece of pipe, a blackjack, a weed-eater?” I noticed that Bubba had a slight twitch in his left eye.

  “Funny… So how’s the catfish in this place?”

  “Mister, this is absolutely the best catfish you will ever eat.” Bubba emphasized the word “eat” by slapping his open palm on the counter. “This catfish is guaran-fucking-teed or your money back.” It wasn’t a big deal, but the guy had an edgy quality that made me a little uncomfortable. What the hell… I was still curious about the catfish.

  “Sold. Hit me with your best shot, Bubba. How about three pieces of fish, some fries and a beer?”

  “You got it, mister.”

  Seemingly happy to have a customer, Bubba went to work, carefully coating the catfish fillets with cornmeal and slicing real potatoes, then dipping wire baskets containing the fish and fries into small basins filled with obscenely hot oil; meanwhile, I checked the place out. While Katie’s was something less than a landmark structure, it was incredibly clean. As I looked around, I amused myself with the idea of a Katfish Shack showroom, a massive warehouse displaying different models—a chrome Katfish Shack with a fiber-optic Internet connection, one with marble counters and gold fixtures, another with a DJ station, lights and a small stage for a pole dancer… and right in the center of the building would be Katie’s, the perfect example of the ideal Katfish Shack. Every pot and pan, every utensil, every spice jar, knife and cutting board were neatly distributed and arranged around the small, spotless interior. Nothing was out of place, no crumbs on the floor, not even a speck of dirt or grease on the immaculate white walls.

  And overlooking this compact and pristine scene were half a dozen photographs of a middle-aged woman. One picture showed her face grinning next to the head of a Labrador retriever, another found her beaming over a plate full of hot catfish, in another she was standing at the top of a ski run, poised to dash downhill. I could only assume it was Katie and wondered where she was. Maybe it was her day off.

  Finally, the catfish was ready. Obviously pleased with himself, Bubba plopped a styrofoam take-out carton in front of me along with a bottle of Bud. I grabbed a plastic fork, sat down at the nearest table, and dived into a generous serving of still steaming, golden fried catfish. It was incredible. Okay, I like fish. I eat a lot of salmon, halibut, tuna, trout, and I eat it grilled, smoked, roasted, blackened, broiled, but no fish ever tasted like this. I added just a touch of lemon and salt—OMG! It was magic in my mouth. I paused for just a moment and looked around. Stunned, I desperately needed some kind of reassurance but the truth was undeniable: I was feasting on an incredible culinary delight cooked in a fucking trailer in Clinton, Missouri. SHIT! Why weren’t there thousands of people lined up behind me?

  I had to compliment the chef. “Bubba, my God, this is fantastic. I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  Delighted, he slapped the counter again. “Yeah, cool, man. Glad you like it, but I really can’t take any credit. It’s Katie’s special cornmeal coating and frying technique that does it. I just follow her instructions.” Bubba’s eye was twitching like crazy.

  “Where is Katie? I’d love to compliment her—this is totally amazing!”

  The fry cook was cleaning up the counter, restoring the Katfish Shack to its previously gleaming and flawless condition. He paused, looked down and replied without ever directly addressing me. When he finally spoke, the words were slow and deliberate. “Katie’s gone, mister. She… she passed away last year.”

  “Oh… I’m really sorry to hear that, Bubba. Were you close?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.

  Once again, Bubba was slow to respond. “Katie… she… she was my mom. Well, actually my stepmother, but she raised me like her own son. She was a great… great lady.” Overcome by melancholy, the fry cook stared at an invisible spot on the floor.

  At this point I was a little uncertain how to proceed. I had opened a can of w
orms and down in the dark interior, something ugly was peeking out. Regardless, I had gone this far… “So, uh, what happened, Bubba? You know… you really don’t have to tell me if it makes you too uncomfortable.” And I sure as shit hoped it did. I mean, he was a nice guy and all, but I really just wanted to finish my catfish and move on, but it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  Lost in his own twitchy world, Bubba continued, “Katie was a real outdoors type. She loved camping, fishing, hiking—anything that got her outside. After she broke up with my dad, Katie started spending a lot of time out hiking by herself. God knows everybody warned her, told her find a partner, but she wouldn’t listen. As soon as the weather was nice for a couple of days, Katie would just shut down the Shack and take off. She had a spot that she loved in the Ozarks, just below the state line in Arkansas. She went there all the time. One day she was alone hiking and she must’ve fallen and broke her leg… no one was there so we had to kind of figure all this out later. Anyway, when she tripped or whatever, she fell on a fire ant mound… do you know anything about fire ants, Mister… do you… DO YOU!?!”

  “Uh…” I was more than a little uncomfortable. Still not addressing me directly, Bubba was getting worked up.

  “Fire ants! FIRE ANTS! I HATE THE LITTLE FUCKERS! They’re aggressive as hell and as soon as one stings, they send out these weird kind of chemicals that make all of them want to sting at once! THE FUCKERS…” As Bubba paused to compose himself, I ate a little faster. This was not going to end well. “Katie… Katie… they said when she fell on the mound the ants all came charging out and started stinging her. Her fucking leg was broken… she couldn’t get away… but they said it probably wouldn’t have mattered. They think she was allergic to the fire ant venom and went into a kind of shock. I mean nobody knew she was allergic, not even Katie… she’d never been stung by one, but the allergy… the allergy made her throat swell up so much she couldn’t breathe. They said she died of suffocation. On top of that, when we found her the next day her whole body was covered with blisters from the fucking fire ants. The fuckers! THE FUCKERS! I HATE THEM!!!! It… it was ugly, mister… ugly… ugly.” At that point Bubba turned and looked at me. Tears were in his eyes. “And you know what else? YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE, MISTER?”