An Ocean in Iowa

by Peter Hedges

  “What was that?”

  Scotty shouted again, “You said you…!”

  Mrs. Crow walked up behind Andrew and said, “Andrew, invite your little friend inside.”

  Little, Scotty thought. I’m not little. I’m seven.

  Andrew didn’t want company. But Scotty knew that when Andrew realized what Scotty had brought him, they’d be best friends.

  Andrew reluctantly let him step into the vestibule. The house smelled of freshly fried bacon.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Andrew said back. “Scotty won’t be staying long.” Then in a whisper, “What do you want?”

  “You said you wanted to meet girls?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, suddenly interested.

  “Well, pick a hand.”

  Andrew said, “Get lost, Scotty.”

  “Pick a hand.”

  Andrew wanted no part of it. “Good-bye.”

  Scotty brought his Bonanza lunch pail from behind his back.

  Andrew smirked. “I’m not hungry.”

  Scotty smiled because he had fooled Andrew Crow. He wanted to shout, “There isn’t food in my lunch pail!”

  “Don’t want you boys making a mess,” Mrs. Crow said as she passed by on her way up the stairs.

  “Okay, Mom!” an exasperated Andrew called after her. Then he squeezed his face into a pursed expression and said in a high-pitched nagging way, “Don’t want you making a mess.”

  Scotty laughed.

  Andrew grabbed the Bonanza lunch pail and headed toward the basement stairs, calling back, “You got to take off your shoes.” Scotty’s socks pulled half way off as he struggled to get out of his shoes. Then he ran after Andrew.

  Downstairs, Scotty found Andrew had already opened the Bonanza lunch pail. Two Barbies were stuffed inside, along with a Skipper and a Francie.

  Scotty couldn’t help but smile.

  Staring at the mangle of plastic bodies below him, Andrew kept his same blank expression. He reached down, picked up each doll by her hair, and let them dangle from one hand as if they were carrots.

  Scotty wanted to protest, “Don’t pull their hair,” but before he could even speak, Andrew let them drop onto the shag carpet.

  “Real girls, stupid—I want real girls.”

  Andrew stripped the first Barbie of her metallic blouse. He ran his finger over Barbie’s bare chest. “See,” Andrew said, “there should be nipples here.”

  “Oh,” Scotty said.

  Andrew pulled off Barbie’s plastic go-go boots and then yanked off her Leatherette skirt. He pointed to the space between her legs and said, “Real girls have a hole here. Real girls have a patch of hair.”

  Scotty looked surprised.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  Before Scotty could say he believed, Andrew said, “Your sister has got to have hair there. Your sister with the boobs.”

  Scotty knew Andrew meant Claire. Scotty at least knew that much.

  “Have you seen it?”

  “What?”

  “Her patch of hair?”

  Scotty said, “Yeah.”

  “Bull,” Andrew Crow said. Then he disappeared into the back corner of the basement. Following, Scotty entered the dark room. Andrew moved his arms about searching for the dangling string. Finding it, he pulled hard and the naked bulb snapped on, causing Scotty to squint.

  Andrew moved to his tool bench and yanked open a drawer that was full of different-size nails. He pulled out another that held nuts and bolts. “Where is it?” he said to himself, opening and closing other drawers, frantically searching for something.

  Scotty knew to keep his distance when Andrew was mad. He wandered over to the train set. He noticed all the new construction the town had undergone in the days since he’d last seen it. The Styrofoam mountain had been painted green; more miniature people had been placed about the train track area; and plastic trees, bushes, and other shrubbery had been planted.

  Soon Andrew Crow would have his own little town. He would no longer be God’s gift, as Claire called him. He’d be God.

  But, at the moment, Andrew was an unhappy God, dumping out drawers, slamming tools on the tool bench.

  Scotty moved back into the main basement room to check on Barbie. Lying naked and mangled in the shag carpet, her legs splayed and her arms out of whack, Scotty thought, She must be cold. He was contemplating what to use as a makeshift blanket when Andrew said, “Bingo!”

  Scotty turned to see what Andrew had found, expecting it to be unusual, something he’d never seen before, for Andrew always seemed to have some toy or object no other kid had.

  But Andrew held out a corkscrew.

  Scotty knew about the corkscrew. It was exactly the kind Joan had had at her studio, perfect for opening bottles of wine.

  “Wah-lah,” Andrew said, pushing past Scotty and heading toward Barbie. He knelt down and bent Barbie’s rubber legs like a wishbone.

  “Hold her down,” Andrew said.

  Scotty pressed on Barbie’s arms, which stretched above her head. Barbie had real eyelashes and rooted hair, bendable legs. “She was part real,” Scotty wanted to say.

  Andrew jabbed the tip of the corkscrew between Barbie’s legs, leaving a divot. Then he began to slowly turn the corkscrew, twisting up shards of Barbie’s pink plastic flesh.

  Scotty imagined Barbie shrieking.

  Andrew twisted and twisted until he’d dug out a hole. “There,” he said. “That’s more like it.”

  Andrew stripped the other Barbie. He drilled an identical hole. Francie and Skipper were punctured, too, even though Skipper was harder to penetrate, for she was smaller and had the twist-and-turn waist.

  When he was finished, Andrew stretched out on the carpet and stared at the corkboard ceiling. Andrew was bored with the Barbies—he didn’t even bother to dress them. He stood up, stretched, and returned to the back room, saying, “I’m going to pump some iron.”

  Scotty dressed the dolls and stuffed them back into his lunch pail. Later he would have to find a way to sneak back into Maggie’s room and put them back in their proper place.

  From the basement as he heard the grunts of Andrew Crow bench-pressing, Scotty sat waiting, hoping Andrew would talk with him. Say something. Say something about anything. Scotty didn’t care what.

  (8)

  “After the year we’ve had, I’ve decided it’s what we deserve.” The Judge had gathered his children around the dining room table. They stared speechless at pictures of the various shapes: rectangular, circular, kidney shaped.

  “It’s a present for the whole family….”

  “A swimming pool?” Scotty said in disbelief.

  “Yes,” the Judge said.

  Claire and Maggie were excited, too. Images of the summer began to form in everyone’s mind. Maggie pictured boys and more boys; Claire imagined swimming at night; Scotty dreamt of buying the submarine advertised in the back of DC Comics, a submarine that cost all of $9.95. He ran to his room and studied the ad. A periscope. Two people can fit in it. Amazing. He would live underwater, only surfacing for lunches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  Word spread.

  During recess Cindy McCameron, whose family had a pool, asked, “You getting a slide and a diving board or just a diving board?”

  Scotty shrugged because the specific decisions hadn’t yet been made.

  “We got both,” Cindy reminded Scotty.

  “I know,” Scotty said. Other kids asked questions. Scotty felt his popularity about to increase. Was he crazy, or were more kids sitting with him at lunch, was he getting chosen earlier when sides were picked for kickball and other team games?

  Even Andrew Crow was talking to him again.

  “Hey, Ocean, I hear you’re getting a pool.”

  “Yep,” Scotty replied to Andrew as they each stood in their respective backyards. Scotty had been standing outside trying to imagine how it would look, the pool, and where all the dug-up grass and dirt would go.

&n
bsp; “Do you even know how to swim?” Andrew asked.

  “Yeah,” Scotty said.

  “Your sisters gonna go skinny-dipping?”

  “Yeah.” Scotty thought, What is skinny-dipping?

  “You gonna let me go swimming?”

  ***

  Scotty answered the phone.

  “Hey, little love.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Picking out a pool.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Picking out a pool. Dad’s buying us a pool.”

  “Really.”

  “Yep. With a diving board, everything. Big tractor’s gonna dig a hole in our backyard. Go swimming whenever we want. Building it for summer.”

  Joan paused to regroup. She realized what the Judge was doing, but she continued with the reason for her call anyway. “Your dad and I had a talk. Did he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “I was thinking you could come to Iowa City with me for the summer. My apartment is small, but it’s roomy enough for two.”

  “The summer?”

  “Yes. Your dad said that it would be up to you.”

  Scotty paused. “I don’t know.”

  “You think about it. We could have fun.”

  “Mom, the pool could be lots of shapes. There are so many shapes.”

  “You think about it.”

  Nothing was said as Scotty switched the receiver to his other ear.

  “I changed ears.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wanna talk to somebody else?”

  (9)

  As Scotty Ocean and Tom Conway walked home, the sky above them was dark with rain clouds.

  Minutes earlier, just before the bell rang, Mrs. Boyden had presented each student with May baskets—little paper drinking cups with jelly beans and candy corn. It was the first day of May. Scotty hadn’t touched any of his candy. He was too busy listening to Tom retell something he’d heard his father, the sergeant, say.

  “They would… uhm… tape it, the grenade… on the hands of the gook kids… and send them back to their people… and when the parents untaped the hands… boom… blown to bits.”

  “Ow,” said Scotty.

  “What do you mean, ‘ow’?”

  “It would hurt, ow.”

  “It’s the way we’re gonna win the war. They are the enemy, dummy. Don’t you get it?”

  Scotty didn’t understand. He imagined hands taped with activated grenades. He wondered, What if you got an itch? In that situation, how does a kid scratch himself?

  At the top of the Ashworth Road, Tom heard the yelling first. Scotty was deep in thought. But when he saw Tom sprint ahead, he knew he better do the same. Glancing back, he saw that Bob Fowler and other fourth graders were speeding toward them on their bikes. They ran together for a time, but when Tom Conway headed toward the construction site, Scotty split off. He hid behind the Lallys’ air conditioner where he attempted to emulate the stillness of a rabbit, and for a moment he was Mingo, the Indian from the Daniel Boone show. He realized he would be found eventually. So he dropped into the basement window well, even though it was full of dead leaves and cobwebs. A snake could be sleeping under all the muck, he thought. Or a nasty spider. But better a snake or spider than Bob Fowler and his friends. Scotty burrowed under the leaves. He heard the boys’ feet on the grass; he heard them calling to each other; he heard them getting closer. So he took off, climbing a chain-link fence, running past the Grodts’ plaster birdbath. As nearly as he could tell, no one was following.

  Two boys saw Scotty as he ran between the Keith’s house and the Hoyts’ and they took off after him. But Scotty turned onto his street, crouched by the side of the Lattimers’ house, and sprinted for the bushes, crawling deep into them where he found his spot, safe again.

  ***

  Tom Conway rang the doorbell at the Ocean house while the Oceans ate dinner.

  Tom said, “Is Scotty home?”

  Maggie answered the door, said, “We’re eating, Tom,” and went back inside.

  Tom waited on the curb for Scotty, who came out as soon as he’d cleaned his plate.

  “What?” said Scotty, standing on the front porch.

  “Come here.”

  Scotty crossed his yard to Tom, who stood in the shadows of the sycamore tree.

  “It’s gone,” Tom said.

  “What?”

  “It fell out of my lunch box when they were chasing me.”

  ***

  The following day after school, they retraced Tom’s steps. They looked all over for the grenade. At the construction site, Tom sighed. “My dad’ll kill me. My dad’ll kill me.”

  It seemed to Scotty that Tom had shrunk overnight—he’d been deflated.

  They were both so busy with their search, neither saw that Bob Fowler and the other fourth graders had appeared and were straddling their bikes, waiting to be noticed.

  Scotty saw them first. “Tom,” he said. Tom turned to look and saw they were surrounded.

  Bob Fowler got off his bike and let it crash to the ground.

  Oh boy, Scotty thought.

  The other boys dropped their bikes in a similar manner. Tom Conway started to cry, for there was no escape.

  Bob Fowler made a fist and prepared to hit Tom Conway when Andrew Crow came riding up on his bike.

  “What’s going on?” Andrew asked.

  “This is between us and them,” Bob Fowler said.

  “Maybe. But maybe we can make a deal.”

  Fowler had the toughest fourth graders with him. He didn’t need to negotiate. “No thanks,” he said. “Quit your crying,” he said in a snap to Tom Conway.

  Scotty bit his lip.

  “You can have the other kid,” Andrew Crow said. “But Scotty Ocean’s mine.”

  Bob Fowler looked at Tom and Scotty; he looked at his friends; he looked at Andrew Crow, who stood a head taller and who rode a Schwinn five-speed with butterfly handlebars and a black-knobbed gearshift.

  “It’s a deal,” Bob Fowler said.

  Andrew gestured for Scotty to climb on the back of his bike. Scotty hesitated, then did as Andrew wanted.

  At the construction site, the fourth grade boys took turns kicking Tom Conway. Meanwhile, coasting away in the distance, heading toward home, with a sweet spring breeze blowing, Andrew Crow, feeling Scotty’s unspoken gratitude, said to the boy he had saved, “Scotty, you owe me.”

  (10)

  When Andrew opened the Crows’ front door and saw Maggie Ocean standing in her pink overall shorts and her white, crinkly go-go boots, he looked disappointed. But he held open the screen door anyway. Maggie said, “Hi,” as she walked past, leaving a whiff of her Love’s Lemon Mist perfume in the air. Scotty followed, forcing a smile at Andrew, as if expecting a “Thank you.”

  Andrew whispered to Scotty, “Where’s the other one?”

  “She won’t come.”

  ***

  In the basement, Scotty could tell Maggie was impressed with Andrew Crow’s secret world. And by bringing her over, he reexperienced the excitement of his initial visit. He saw the stacks of board games, the excellent shag carpeting, and Andrew’s hi-fi stereo all through her eyes. He wanted to say to her, “See, I told you,” but he said nothing and watched her stare, her mouth half open as if stunned, frozen, and he listened as she kept repeating, “Wow.”

  Andrew seemed bored by his toys, and disappointed that Scotty couldn’t coax Claire into coming over. He gave the obligatory tour of the back room, turning on the train so Maggie could see that it worked. She said, “It looks like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Scotty was pointing out his favorite parts of the miniature town—the illuminated streetlamps, the smoke that poured out of the steam-type locomotive train engine, the tunnel carved through the Styrofoam mountain—when Andrew abruptly turned off the naked
bulb above them.

  In the carpeted room, he showed his record collection and pulled back the closet doors revealing the stacks of board games.

  “He has every game,” Scotty said.

  “Every good game,” Andrew clarified.

  Maggie said she wanted to play something.

  “What?” Andrew said, suppressing a yawn.

  “Something, I don’t know, anything.”

  Andrew disappeared into the closet and moved boxes around, searching for a game to play. Then Andrew emerged holding Twister.

  “How about this?”

  Scotty yelled, “Yes!” He’d only played at Tom Conway’s, and the two times he’d been in Andrew Crow’s basement, he’d wanted more than anything to play a game, any game. Twister, the game that tied you up in knots—Scotty could sing the Twister song. A million times each Saturday Scotty watched the commercial between cartoons.

  I love Twister, Scotty thought.

  Before they could play, Andrew insisted Maggie remove her go-go boots. “Stocking feet or bare feet,” he said, “I don’t care which.”

  Maggie hesitated.

  Andrew explained, “Don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

  Maggie unzipped her boots, which clung tight to her ankles. They were eggshell-white and Maggie had been wearing them nonstop since she got them in February.

  Andrew was busy removing his penny loafers, so he didn’t see the first glimpse of Maggie’s ankles, the light pink of the bottoms of her feet.

  But Scotty did. He watched as she stretched and pointed her feet, then wiggled her toes.

  When Scotty sat down to yank at his shoelaces, Andrew moved toward him, towering over him. He handed Scotty the Twister spinner board. “Later we’ll trade off, but for now, Scotty, you do the spinning.”

  ***

  “Left foot blue,” Scotty called out. “Right hand red.”

  The amazing thing was that Andrew and Maggie were doing what Scotty said. He began to spin faster. He barked out directions.

  “Left foot green. Left hand blue.”

  In his periphery he could see them moving, hear them giggling; This was fun!

  “Get off me,” Maggie snapped.

  Andrew rolled off Maggie but didn’t apologize.