Braineater Jones

NOVEMBER 1, 1934-3

“Wait, hold on. Stop, you pus-burning, flag-growing handy cats,” the leader said.

Believe it or not, the two kickers took a break. I thought to myself that maybe those guys should go out for the all-bums international soccer team, if such a thing exists.

The leader didn’t show pity. He grabbed his old bindle, which was sharpened up like a pencil, and jabbed it into my leg. I grunted, but honestly, it didn’t hurt any more than the kicking. It seemed to help get my leg moving, in fact. At least enough for me to kick out.

I forced myself to sit up, and let me tell you, it was a hell of an effort. All my muscles and bones were tightening up like one big sprain. I clutched the sharpened bindle stick and wrenched it out of my leg. I stood, hoping against hope I would tower like a giant over those street people, but they dwarfed me.

“You can have this,” I said, throwing the stick at the boss man, “but I want the paper.” I snatched the little newspaper hat off his head.

His eyes grew so wide he looked like one of those kids in a velvet painting. “You’re a leaf-drawn chariot. You’re an unwanted little orphan of the radio tower universe. Avast! Avast!”

That didn’t answer a whole lot. The two who hadn’t seemed fit for the loony bin had called me “braineater,” though.

It’s a funny term for whatever I am, and I don’t know if I like it, but it was the first real description I’d heard. What did they mean? I haven’t felt hungry all day, or if I have, it’s just been a dull ache like every other emotion and feeling in my body. If I was hungry, would I want a brain? And why would that be different than normal hunger when I feel like I want a pie or...

What do I like to eat?

No, that’s not a numbered question. I don’t need to get to the bottom of that. Just kind of an idle thing to wonder about.

Since they were so desperate to have me gone, I left the bums to gibber and bite one another’s thumbs or whatever street loonies do. I regretted it though, because they really seemed to know more about what I was than I did. Then again, it could’ve all been crazy talk. I can’t pretend they made a whole lot of sense even when they were talking to me instead of their invisible pink elephants.

Braineater. That’s what the lucid ones called me.

Huh.

I elected at that point not to go to sleep again. Or at least, if I did, to do it somewhere nice and quiet and secluded so I could take as long as I needed getting up. I had kind of a tingling terror in the hairs on the back of my neck that no matter what kind of seclusion I went into, I’d never be able to get up if I went to sleep again. I’d be locked in, like a lobsterman in a diving bell.

Could you imagine? I went to sleep for a few minutes, and my body became numb and unresponsive. What would happen after a few hours? I might never move again. I might sit there, unalive, and who would be able to tell? Unless I left my eyes open, I’d be unable to see anything but still be aware. Terrifyingly aware.

Maybe that’s what it’s like for everybody once they’re dead. Who knows? I probably never gave it much thought. Despite having been over to the other side, past the Pearly Gates or whatever they call it, I have disturbingly few answers. And even fewer impressions. I’m just another soul, lost and damned.

I guess the bums gave me a kick in the ass that I needed, along with all the kicks in the ribcage I sure as s**t didn’t. I got to thinking about all these questions swirling around in my head and how I needed to gather my thoughts, and how I probably needed more than a charcoal note on a newspaper to get anything done.

Then I remembered the billfold. Well, there was only eight bucks in there, and it was stolen, but I figured it was a start.

There was a five and dime not far from the bridge. The great thing—if you can call it that—about the Mat was that I wasn’t even the weirdest looking one in there. I snagged a fountain pen and a notebook—this notebook, come to think of it—and somehow got fewer weird looks from the clerk than the shirtless, tattooed street prophet trying to buy a telephone slug.

So all that was left to find was a clean, well-lighted place. Why did that phrase stick out in my mind? It seemed important. Clean and well-lighted. Not a dank bridge to hang out under and get accosted by Herbert Hoover’s bastard children.

The flophouse I found had a neon sign on the roof that was missing a couple of letters, and the word “VACANCY” ran vertically down the side of the building. It also boasted hourly rates. That made me scratch my head.

What’s it even actually called? I don’t know if I ever looked. Maybe it’s just called “VACANCY.”

The swarthy front desk clerk with the Greek accent looked at me as if I had a tree branch growing out of my forehead when I said I wanted a room for the night.

“How long?” he asked.

“The night.”

“How much of the night?”

His English was fine. It was, you know, the idea of actually staying overnight that had him confused. Actually sleeping with all the bedbugs and cockroaches and maybe half-smoked cigars that other patrons had left there in place of pillow mints. It was just kind of baffling to him, I guess.

“All night.”

The clerk looked me up and down. “This the Welcome Mat. Nobody stay all night. I stop even charging for that. You wanna stay all night, maybe you go find the Ritz-Carlton in the Altstadt, huh?”

I stuck my hands in my pockets and shook my head. “Fine.” I turned toward the door.

“Hey, wait!”

I didn’t turn back, but I halted mid-stride.

“You got money?” he asked, and his skeptical tone made it clear he wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said.

I pulled out the billfold and showed it to him.

He shrugged. “Two dollars a night.”

I knew he was trying to chizz me, but I didn’t know if I could do any better anywhere else.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

He had one of those guest books where all the names were the same. Smith, Smith, Smith, Smith. I guess I paused too long, because he prompted me.

“Smith?” he asked. “Is usually Smith. Or Johnson. Sometimes Jones.” He didn’t seem to care. I guess a guy in his position can’t be made to care too much.

“Yeah,” I said, “Jones.” That struck a chord for some reason.

“Okay, Mr. ‘Jones,’” he said. “You in Room 217.”

He handed me the key. Something struck me as odd. The arithmetic just didn’t add up.

“You got two hundred seventeen rooms in this joint?” I asked.

“You stupid? Forty rooms. Two floors, twenty each.”

“Oh.” The old stiffening I felt when the bums were kicking me was coming back like a prizefighter on the ropes. I stretched and felt as if my muscles were snapping apart. I knew one thing I would kill for. “Hey, you know where I can get a drink around here?”

It might’ve knocked my flophouse money down to two nights instead of three, but it would’ve been worth every penny.

“You a cop?” the clerk asked.

“No?” I guessed.

“You get out of here,” the clerk said. “Nothing illegal go on here. No prostitute, no alcohol. You get out of here.” I had a white flash like a migraine of me drinking a bottle of Yuengling, not that Mexican crap that had gotten us through Prohibition. Prohibition... but surely that was over if I was drinking American-made? Ganesh could just be a dry town. Or county. Either way amounted to the same thing for me: a dusty throat.

So here I am. That’s about all I know so far. That, and I think I’ll die—or double dog die—if I don’t get a drink in me. Luckily, Luckies aren’t outlawed, so I’m toasting through my bullet hole right now. Time to wrap this up. Time to get some sleep, although I’m terrified this journal entry may end up being my suicide note.

If you find me here, looking dead, don’t bury me until you jerk my eyes open and check if they’re still moving. I’m leaving this out so you can read it. Please read it. Please find it.

Here’s hoping I see you tomorrow.

KNOCK CAME AT THE DOOR late last night.

“Who is it?” I moaned. I wanted to leap out of bed, but I couldn’t. I could barely move.

“I heard you talking at the front desk,” a voice barked. “I think I can help. Can you let me in?”

I struggled. I felt as if I was covered by a mound of dirt. No, better not to think about that image. “I can’t!”

“Oh, yes,” the voice said. “I suspect you can barely move.” He sounded smart. Too smart for his own good.

The door flew open, and the chain went flying in a hundred pieces. A shadowy figure stood in the doorway with a brown paper bag in his hand. He shuffled in and swiftly closed the door.

“Sorry about the damage,” he said, kneeling next to me. “I had to kick it in.”

I was splayed out. I could rock back and forth, but that was about it. I got my first good look at the Roman-nosed Valentino in vest and shirtsleeves. He looked as though he should’ve been in pictures instead of a lice trap like this. He stared at me like a hyena on the prowl.

“Who are you?” I grunted.

“No names,” he warned. “According to the registry, you’re Jones. Yeah, sure. Braineater Jones.”

That was the second time somebody had called me that.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” the stranger said. “You can call me Mr. Lazar. That’s not my real name. I’m like you.”

9. Are there others like me? Yes.

10. Who is Lazar? What is his real name?

“No kidding,” I said into the mattress.

“Boy, you really are newly turned,” he said. “I thought I might sell you a bottle for the night, but you might be an unlifelong customer. I don’t normally take to childrearing, but a friend in need, you know.”

“Get bent,” I said.

“No, that’s what we’re going to do with you.”

Lazar, or whatever his real name is, flipped me onto my back. He pulled a bottle of Old Crow out of the bag and poured a little into the ashtray.

I guess there wasn’t a glass. I hope it wasn’t full of ashes. I couldn’t taste a drop.

“Here, have a little tipple of this.” He poured the ashtrayful down my throat.

I should’ve choked, lying on my back like that, but of course, someone like me doesn’t breathe. Rushing down my throat, it reminded me more of the liquid in my ear popping after a summer cold than taking a drink by choice.

I tried to keep an eye on him, but I wasn’t entirely sure why he was ripping the lamp’s power cord in half. Son of a b***h. If there were a deposit on my room, I would’ve lost every dime of it between the door and the lamp.

“Feel better?” he asked. “A little clearer?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Booze keeps the brain pickled,” he said. “It keeps people like you and me alive. Unalive. Whatever you want to call it.”

“What are we?” I moaned.

“Oh, that’s a big question,” Lazar said. “And not one for your unbirthday. You’re just a baby. We’ll get to all that, but hopefully after you’ve got a job and can start paying me for the sipping whiskey. The booze will keep your mind tip-top, but I’m sorry to say the body is another story. It’s a good thing our kind doesn’t feel pain, but, ah, this is still going to be a bit uncomfortable.”

He carefully peeled back the rubber from the severed end of the cord to reveal an inch of naked copper. He stuck the plug back in the outlet and started zapping me with juice through the wire. In, out, in, out. “Electrical stimulation” he called it, same as they did down in old Sinclair’s Jungle. It tickled. Anyway, old Lazar zapped the statue stiffness right out of me.

When he was done, he sat down on the edge of the bed. I offered him a Lucky, but he waved it away.

“Cigarettes will kill you.”

“Too late now,” I said.

“Filthy habit, anyway. Listen, the rigor—that’s what it was, by the way, rigor mortis—won’t come back as bad ever again. Keep drinking to keep your brain right. You may have to shock yourself now and then if it creeps back in, but I’ve shown you how to do it now. The important thing is, I’ll be around whenever you need some bootleg.”

I pointed at the open bottle. “How much for that?”

“That?” He scratched the back of his neck. “Consider that an unbirthday gift. But trust me, it’ll be your last free lunch in the Welcome Mat.” He stood and strode toward the door.

“How can I find you?” I asked.

“There’s a fence on Keene Avenue. There’s a little something extra in the back. You can find me there.”

Well, thank Jesus, Murphy, and Joe Hooker for that fellow Lazar. He might’ve seen me as an easy mark, but I’d be dead if not for him. Double dog dead. You know what I mean.