[FICTION][12/16/25]Hickey Groves Agonistes
by Chris Dungey
I recognized Hickey by his voice first and then by the fact that he was in a heated confrontation with someone. He was a well-known, not to say notorious, street person in Lapeer but had aged considerably since I’d last seen him. His Bob Dylan mop of unevenly gelled hair was pretty much gray. The raging acne from which he’d derived the nickname seemed to have finally aged out. I turned from the bottle deposit machine I was using. Hickey’s loud dispute was with the overlord of the Recycle Center, another developmentally disabled citizen, over the legality of removing aluminum cans from the five trash bins.
“It’s for your own safety, Hickey,” the attendant shouted, for the third time.
“So yer sayin I ain’t bright enough to not cut my damn self?!” Groves shouted. “All this shit’s headed for the landfill with aluminum worth $.60 to a pound! Don’t you never lookit the news?”
“I don’t know nothin about that. I got my instructions. See, it’s posted, too, right on the door!”
“Oh, I seen it, Scooper! You can take n use that when you walk that yappin mongrel you got. Clean up his shit after im like the cops told you. Yer gonna have to guard this twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five. I’ll tell yer manager to his face, too!”
“Then I’m right behind you, Hickey so you can’t lie alla time! Oh! I’m sorry, sir!”
The czar of Recycle brushed past me, pursuing Hickey out through the glass seeing-eye door. Hickey walked backwards toward the store lobby nearby. I heard them shouting invectives until the door whooshed shut. It sounded like there must be some history between the two. But the soaring scrap price was an interesting revelation. I should have been aware of that myself.
It had been quite awhile since I’d sold aluminum. That was back during the good old dark times of oil embargoes and the series of energy crises when I would periodically get laid off from the auto plant. I still wasn’t above picking up the random empty while out on my bike. If I couldn’t get a dime for some of the obscure cans, I stomped them on the asphalt shoulder then dropped them into my backpack. Some were already conveniently run over. It didn’t amount to much. The commodity didn’t accumulate very fast that way.
These times, now, didn’t seem so different. There was a gathering trepidation in the air: An imminent global climate disaster, the economy tanking in the middle of a tariff war, an erratic new American government, all served to be driving up scrap prices. How could I doubt no less an authority than Hickey Groves?
I eyed the bins. Did I want to go diving myself? Elbows deep into that wet, sticky mess? Take cash out of Hickey’s livelihood? He wasn’t really likely to come back in here anytime soon, was he? The shopping cart kids, the sidewalk sweepers, and Scooper, who emptied the compactors, were going to be extra vigilant. For awhile. The big containers of rejects, garbage bags, and empty beer cartons hadn’t been dumped yet. They were full and my own bag was empty now, a receipt slip tucked into my spring jacket. There was a small sink with hand sanitizer provided for customer use. What the hell. I took the plunge.
I mentioned that Hickey Groves was well known. If you were a regular shopper or had other business (legal matters at the historic County Courthouse) before hardware, clothing, shoe, and other establishments began to go under, then you were probably aware of him. Hickey talked to himself, arguing with himself as he examined the litter receptacles up and down Nepessing Street. If he caught you staring at his salvage activities, he’d growl and curse at you.
Mostly though, he hurled his invectives at the fellow group home and SSI disability citizens of his circle—his competition. Then, during Lapeer Fest, the streets closed off for craft vendors, political candidates and second level rock bands on three stages, Hickey and his adversaries trailed their black garbage bags through the crowds. You’d better not turn away from your half-empty soda and you’d better finish it before making a trip to one of the phalanxes of Porta Potties. That can could be swept away with the suddenness of a raptor attack. Elsewhere, you might witness strolling police officers mediating a loud dispute between Hickey and other scavengers over the valuable refuse brimming from most trash barrels. But I had come to know Hickey better than those August glimpses. It was a familiarity that was up close, if not personal.
My wife Cheryl did some waitressing, locally, for a year between print shop jobs as a proofreader/compositor. The first time I stopped at Sunrise Diner & Coney out on Hwy. 24 (Lapeer’s new, big box main drag) for late evening coffee and pie, there was Hickey Groves. He darted and spazzed in and out of the kitchen with steaming racks of clean dishes, muttering unintelligibly to himself.
“Does he ever interact with the rest of staff?” I asked Cheryl. She was hustling around to do all the spray-and-wipe hygiene stuff before closing.
“Not much. “Yes and no” with his shift manager, maybe.” She plunked the guest check down in front of me. “He swears but not directly at anyone. Sometimes we have to yell, if we’re short on Coney plates, big spoons, whatever. He goes back by the Bosch and curses into the steam.”
I had always assumed that Hickey Groves’s antics—the continuous monologues, the all-inclusive abrasiveness, were those of a schizophrenic. I should have researched on the internet. If I had it right, it would be fair to say that his meds, if any, were ineffective. On the other hand, I’d never heard of him assaulting or hurting anyone. Some Health/Welfare entities must surely be monitoring his housing, meds, and employment. Was anyone aware of his free-range lifestyle?
“Listen. I’ve always been curious. What, exactly is the guy’s main malfunction? See if you can find out.”
Cheryl made change. She took my plate and fork. “And how am I supposed to do that discretely?”
I eased off the stool and shrugged into my spring jacket. “Well, just keep your ears open. Or ask somebody. I doubt if you’ll get in trouble with HR in this place.”
The franchise owner (there were two other Sunrise & Coney stores) kept himself mostly in absentia. Two days later, Cheryl reported: “My manager says she doesn’t know. He was on-boarded in the morning, she thinks. She came in and he was just there in an apron. No introduction, just a note by the cash register. First and last name. Which was Grady, by the way. It will have to remain a mystery, Hector.”
When my stepson, Richard, hired on as a busboy, he too was unable to fill in the blanks. “He’s just weird. He swears at the washer a lot, the Bosch machine. He only ever yells three words at me: “Spoons are out!” or “Plates are out!””
When Cheryl hired in at a print shop in Lake Orion, Rich quit to take a job bussing at the Big Boy, a closer walk from Lapeer High School.
I flattened the aluminum I’d grabbed the day Hickey first became persona non grata in the Recycle Center. But, I decided that the risk of having my own confrontation wasn’t worth the mess. Yet. Make no mistake, I still accumulated $.10 empties. After another month of cycling exercise along our crummy roads, it was time to cash in again. What were the odds of running into another hairball between Hickey and the Kroger authorities? He had threatened to come back every day. Maybe he’d cooled off, or Kroger had dropped their guard.
I attended my usual coffee klatch at Starbucks where everyone made an effort to remain cool and avoid political discourse. The crazy, irregular imposition of tariffs, I had to note, continued to drive up scrap metal prices.
“Won’t make any difference when you try to buy a new laptop,” Ken said. His progressive views were the least likely to be kept buried. “New car prices are gonna be whup-ass,” he added. “The workers’ll pay the price, as usual.”
“And he promised to freeze prescription drug prices,” Ned added. “I’ve got one that’s $3000 a month if I had to pay it out of pocket. It’s keeping me alive, pretty much, and now Medicare doesn’t want to pay for it.”
“There’s some kinda shit going down across the street,” building contractor Rob announced as he entered. “Three kinds of cop car.”
Everyone, including elderly Fredrick, the retired auto engineer, evacuated the table with a scraping of chairs. The cops’ flashers strobed across the broad glass as we made our way out the front entrance. “The gang’s sure all there, I’ll tell ya,” Fredrick said.
Yep. The patrol cars were lit up in earnest. Morning traffic on McCormick Ave. was loud enough so that we couldn’t hear the argument between Hickey and the officers—even when it turned physical. Reason must have failed so there was a brief struggle to put him in the back seat of the Lapeer City cruiser. That was probably a lucky break for Hickey. The local cops knew him. They’d let him cool off then release him to a case worker. Or his own dubious recognizance. The action took place a good seventy-five yards away but I’m pretty sure that the officer guiding Hickey’s head through the door frame was wearing an electric green nitrile glove.
He must have chilled out before his untimely demise a month later. I had occasion to visit the Recycle Center about once a week, but I came into Kroger nearly every morning anyway after coffee. I loved to find reduced price items before the place got busy. Hickey Groves had been killed before I ever saw him again.
Alcohol was definitely a contributing factor according to the coroner. There was some gossip that he had committed suicide—by train, as it happened. How else had his legs come to be draped over the rails of that siding, about twenty-five cars of auto chassis backing over them in the dark. I side with the faction who believe he’d simply blacked out while taking a shortcut to his subsidized apartment behind the Goodwill/Big Lots strip mall. .24% of blood alcohol could do that, I knew from experience. But suicide? I didn’t buy it.
At the scene of the tragedy, besides a flashlight as dead as he was, lay a doubled plastic bag anchored by two rusted railroad spikes. Aww, Hickey. Well, you were an enterprising soul, no question; quick to adapt to the shifting economic forces, to find new income streams. But then I wondered, wouldn’t the Grand Trunk workers be gathering up their used spikes these days? Nevertheless, I intended to check out the going rate for scrap iron the next time I opened my laptop. Hickey Groves may have been onto something.
CHRIS DUNGEY is a retired auto worker in Michigan. He rides mountain bike and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC and Flint City Bucks FC with religious fervor. More than 90 of his stories have found publication in lit mags and online. His new novel from Amazon KDP is called Evacuation Route. His most recent story collection from Amazon KDP is called We Won’t Be Kissing.