Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

“Are you guys not in the least curious why Brizz had it in his backyard to begin with?” Benny asked.

Sure we were curious. But there was probably a simple explanation for it. Brizz himself had inherited the thing from those who sold him the house, or something along those lines.

“So why did he leave it to me in his will,” asked Benny, “if he just found it in his backyard when he bought the place? Why deliberately leave it to me?”

One night we had drinks after work at this nearby underground sports bar. We brought together several checkerboard-cloth tables and talked around pitchers of beer in various stages of consumption. We were getting buzzed on that airless bunker’s dank fumes more powerfully than on the watered-down swill they served, when Karen Woo asked if we knew what Benny was doing with his totem pole. We ran through Benny’s options for her. “No,” she insisted, “no, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if you know what he’s actually doing with it.”

We did not.

“He’s visiting it,” she said.

We asked her what she meant by that.

“He’s going down to Brizz’s,” she said, “and spending time with it.”

There were several plausible answers for why Benny would do a thing like that. It was a novelty item, and Benny got a kick out of owning a novelty item. Or he was measuring it for removal. Or he was meeting with someone to appraise it. Maybe it was worth some money.

“No, you guys don’t understand,” Karen said, “this isn’t a onetime deal. He’s been down there. . Jim,” she said, just as Jim returned to his seat after tending to some business with Mr. B. “Tell them how many times Benny’s been down there to see that totem pole.”

“I don’t know,” said Jim, shrugging his shoulders.

“You do too know, Jim — how many times?” Jim was reluctant to give up his friend. “Ten times!” cried Karen. “In a month! Isn’t that right, Jim?”

We asked Jim what Benny was doing down there.

“He’s just looking at it,” said Jim. “It’s something to look at. I got goosebumps the first time I saw it.”

“The Art Institute has things in it that’ll give you goosebumps, too,” Karen replied. “Not many people go there ten times a month, Jim.”

The following day we asked Benny if he was really going down to Brizz’s to visit the totem pole. If so, we asked, why? We said Jim Jackers mentioned he’d been down there ten times in the past month. Was that true?

“I don’t know, I don’t count,” Benny said. “What’s with the third degree?”

We asked if he was going down there to meet with someone to appraise it because maybe it was worth money. Or if he was measuring it for its eventual removal. Or if he got a kick out of owning a novelty item.

“What does it matter?” he replied. “I go down there. What’s the big deal?”

We didn’t understand, that was the big deal. Because soon we found out that he wasn’t just going down there. He was leaving direct from work. In other words, he was driving down there during rush hour. We asked him why he would brave traffic just to look at a totem pole. He mumbled something evasive and wouldn’t commit to an answer. Had he given any more thought, we asked him, to what he was going to do with it when Bizarro Brizz put Old Brizz’s house on the market? The sensible thing was to leave it for the future owners. Benny replied he didn’t think he would do that. In that case, we wondered, what were his plans for it? Somebody mentioned there might be some real Indians out there who’d like to have their totem pole back, who would know what to do with it better than he would. Benny’s response?

“Brizz gave that totem pole to me,” he said. “He didn’t give it to a real Indian.”

That was the stupidest thing we ever heard. A month earlier, there had been no totem pole. The idea of owning a totem pole would have probably seemed totally absurd to Benny. Then Brizz leaves him a totem pole, and he’s braving traffic to go visit the thing. We just wanted to know why.

“You guys need to get a life,” he said.

We asked a favor of Dan Wisdom. He lived in Brizz’s neighborhood. We asked Dan to take a few hours off one night from his fish paintings, drive by Old Brizz’s, and find out what Benny was doing — you know, how he spent his time.

“He told us how he spends his time,” said Dan. “He looks at the thing.”

Yes, but it had to be more complicated than that. Get out of the car, we told Dan, and look at it with him, and then ask him what’s going through his head.

“Who knows what’s going through his head?” said Dan. “What’s going through his head is his own business. Besides,” he added, “I don’t really live in Brizz’s neighborhood. I do live on the South Side, but the South Side, you know, it’s a big place.”

We told Marcia Dwyer that Benny had had a crush on her for a long time. Just ask to go down there with him, we urged her. Tell him you want to see it. He would be thrilled to have you join him. Then ask him why he’s become so obsessed with the thing.

“Okay, first of all,” Marcia said, “you guys are losers. And second of all, I don’t really care what he’s doing down there. Maybe he’s finding out something about himself. Maybe — and I know, this sounds crazy to you guys — but maybe he’s looking for something. A signal from Brizz. Some sort of sign.”

We had forgotten that Marcia was into Buddhism in a big, sloppy way — reincarnation, the laws of karma. Religious fancies she probably didn’t know the first authentic thing about.

“And third,” she said, “Benny Shassburger has a crush on me?”

We’re not sure what you may or may not know, we said one day when, happily, we stumbled upon Benny’s father, waiting for Benny in the main lobby. Some of us recognized him from the picture in Benny’s office, an imposing man with beard and skullcap. But about a month ago, we said to him, his son was given an odd little bequest by a guy who used to work here. Did he know what we were referring to?

“The totem pole?” his father asked.

Yes, the totem pole. And did he also know that during the past six weeks, Benny had gone to the guy’s house a dozen or more times? After work, when he had to sit in traffic, he went all the way down to 115th Street to look at the totem pole. We asked him if he was aware of that.

“I knew he went down there.” His father nodded. “I didn’t know it was that many times, but I knew he went down there, sure. I’ve been down there with him.”

He had been down there with him?

“Sure.”

And what did the two of them do while down there?

“We looked at it,” said Benny’s father.

That was it? All the two of them did was look at it?

“Well, then we put on our headdresses and prayed for corn. Is that what you’re looking for?”

No doubt we had the right man. That was a response that would have come from Benny Shassburger’s own mouth in the days before he clammed up and refused to say a word about why the totem pole had such a hold on him and drove us crazy with his secrecy. We asked Benny’s father if he was at all curious about why someone Jewish like Benny would become obsessed with a pagan artifact like a totem pole.

“If you’re asking me, does my son pray to it,” his father replied, with a change in tone, “I don’t think he prays to it. I just think he likes it.”

Yes, we said to Benny the next day, we had a conversation with his father. No, we never asked him if Benny prayed to it. We didn’t mean to offend anybody. We just want to know, we said to Benny, honestly, we just want to know why you go down there to look at the totem pole so often, and what you’re thinking about when you’re down there.