Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

  Wayne DeLong was eaten right in front of the Ealing Coin Wash Launderette. The only thing left of Wayne-O was his belt buckle, eyeglasses, and the Tipsy Cricket paper sack containing the twelve-pack of condoms Wayne-O would never get to use, and the bottle of El Capitan Vodka that Wayne-O would also never drink.

  “Okay, Ingrid,” I said. “Come on.”

  I stood up from my seat at the desk. Ingrid raced ahead of me and ran downstairs to the front door, wagging her tail and panting.

  “Uh. Wait, girl,” I said. I turned back. I’d forgotten the cigarettes Johnny McKeon brought for me in my bedroom.

  It was a nice night.

  I sat on the front porch in nothing but my boxers and Robby Brees’s Spam T-shirt. I put my bare feet up on the railing while Ingrid sniffed around in the yard. I lit a cigarette and considered staying home from school for a second consecutive day.

  I thought Robby was right. I would surprise my dad by cleaning up all the dog shit and mowing the lawn before my parents came back home from Germany.

  “There goes my Nobel Prize and my trip to Sweden with Robby Brees,” I said.

  I was talking to Saint Kazimierz.

  I smoked.

  Saint Kazimierz chose to maintain his virginity until his death.

  I could not comfortably wrap my head around that thought.

  Saint Kazimierz must have been a real dynamo at saying no to his penis.

  After he died a virgin boy in his twenties, Saint Kazimierz’s body was wrapped in silk. Saint Kazimierz’s corpse reportedly cured all kinds of people who were afflicted with untreatable illnesses. He even brought a dead girl back to life.

  This is all true.

  The maintenance of his virginity was more remarkable than any of that shit, as far as I was concerned.

  I couldn’t see how a Polish boy could do that.

  I wondered if, in the 1400s in Poland, being a virgin boy meant you were still technically permitted to experiment, or at least allowed to produce a little polymer from time to time. Otherwise, it had to be some kind of hoax or, perhaps, a genuine miracle.

  Saints, like Kazimierz, I decided, truly were superhuman.

  When his original tomb crumbled, the clergy decided to transport the boy’s body to a new crypt. When the priests opened his tomb, Saint Kazimierz’s body was miraculously preserved, and smelled like flowers.

  Maybe shit like that will happen to any Polish boy who can actually fight off the urge to lose his virginity.

  It was hopeless for me.

  I was destined to be a stinky Polish corpse that would never cure diseases or shit like that.

  A gray fog of headlights came sweeping like a sandstorm down the middle of our street.

  Nobody ever drove out this way in the middle of the night.

  Then Robby Brees’s old Ford Explorer pulled up and parked along the curb in front of my house.

  I was scared, but also very happy to see Robby.

  I had been a ridiculous asshole to Robby Brees over the past two days. And now, here I was: caught red-handed smoking on my porch, alone, in my underwear and Robby’s Spam shirt that he’d been wearing when we got called queers and beaten up by the Hoover Boys.

  Seeing Robby Brees get out of the car made me feel guilty and nervous. It was the same way I’d felt the day Pastor Roland Duff called me in to the headmaster’s office at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy to counsel me on the history and consequences of masturbation.

  Robby did not expect to see me sitting there on the front porch, smoking in my boxers. In fact, he did not see me at all, which is why he let out a little startled squeal when I said, “Hi, Robby. It’s really good to see you.”

  Nobody ever expects to be cheerfully greeted at midnight by a kid smoking in his underwear on a deserted street in Ealing, Iowa.

  I may just as well have been a six-foot-tall praying mantis, or shit like that.

  Robby regained his composure.

  He said, “Hey, Porcupine.”

  “Want a cigarette?” I asked.

  Robby said, “Uh.”

  He looked around, like he was trying to see if there was some kind of joke being played on him. Ingrid came up and sniffed his hand and then transformed herself into a doggy rug beneath my chair.

  I took my bare feet down from the porch rail and curled my toes in her fur.

  She sighed contentedly.

  I said, “You’re a good dog, Ingrid.”

  The sirens in the distance went silent.

  Robby said, “I didn’t mean to bother you, Austin. I just came to drop off some things on your porch. I didn’t think you’d be out here.”

  He went back to get what he’d brought from his car.

  “Watch out for dog shit,” I warned.

  “I am watching out,” he confirmed.

  It must have been the end of the world or some shit like that. Robby Brees, who never did his laundry, had been washing laundry all day, which is why he did not go to school. It was part of the reason why Robby did not go to school. Most of the reason was that his Polish-kid best friend had been acting like a complete asshole.

  He carried a neatly folded stack of half my entire non-Lutheran-Boy wardrobe in his arms.

  On top of it were two pairs of sneakers, my toothbrush, and cell phone.

  “Sorry it took so long to get all this stuff back,” Robby said. “Your sleeping bag’s in the Explorer, too.”

  I took the bundle from Robby. Our hands touched.

  Everything smelled really good.

  “This stuff smells good,” I said.

  Robby said, “Thanks. I tried.”

  Robby shrugged.

  “You actually did all your laundry today?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Robby said. “It’s not too bad. I couldn’t find one of your socks, though.”

  Socks and underwear have a way of disappearing with me.

  “Maybe it’s under your bed,” I said.

  I immediately felt the flush of embarrassment. I silently prayed to Saint Kazimierz to make me not say anything else that was as stupid as the shit I just said to Robby.

  “Your dad’s been calling,” Robby said.

  “Uh.”

  “I talked to him. He said everything is going to be okay. I hope you don’t mind that I answered your phone.” Robby said, “Austin, I’m really sorry about Eric.”

  Robby was such a good person.

  “You are such a good friend, Rob,” I said.

  I gave Robby a cigarette. Then we went to his car to get my sleeping bag. I could hardly believe my eyes: Robby Brees’s backseat was completely cleaned out. All the dirty clothes were gone. It was like there was a new Robby.

  “The new Robby,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Robby agreed.

  “Uh.” I said, “Now I feel guilty about wearing your Spam shirt. I think I might have B.O. I’ve been lying in bed all day.”

  “Austin, you do have B.O.,” Robby confirmed. “I can smell it from here. You smell like leftover pizza in a locker room.”

  Robby, who swore that Doritos smelled like a six-year-old boy’s feet, had an acute sense for smells.

  “Uh. I will do laundry tomorrow, too,” I said. “We’ll be, like, laundry buddies, or shit like that, and we can chat about how we manage to get our things to smell so fresh.”

  We sat on the porch, next to the stack of all my clean-smelling laundry that was missing at least one sock, and Ingrid, my golden retriever, who was missing her vocal cords, and smoked together.

  I tried making small talk.

  I said, “I ate a Stanpreme tonight with Shann.”

  “Oh,” Robby said.

  “It always tastes better when you’re there. I think Satan dislikes you,” I said.

  “He hates everyone who asks for ice water. What do you expect? He’s Satan,” Robby theorized.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. Robby was very smart about theology, too.

  “Look, I wanted to say something, Porcupine,” Robby began.
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  “Don’t say anything, Rob. I don’t want you to.”

  I waved my hand in the air between us like I was erasing words from an invisible blackboard.

  “Okay,” Robby said.

  THE DIVING BELL

  THE THREE OF US marched through waist-high weeds and brambles, across fields that at one time were forests of corn, out to Shann’s launch pad.

  Shann Collins found the invisible McKeon silo.

  The silo was just as Shann had described it to me: A circular pad of concrete thirty feet in diameter. Around the circumference, corroded anchor bolts that used to support the structure’s cylindrical outer wall poked up like a mummy’s rusted fingers. In the exact center was a steel hatch, tightened shut by a spoked metal wheel that looked entirely like something you’d find on top of an old diving bell.

  I was nervous.

  “We should have brought flashlights,” I said.

  And then I added, “Let’s go back and get some flashlights.”

  Robby, who was never scared of anything unless we were breaking in to Johnny McKeon’s museum of horrors in the middle of the night, said, “Let’s have a cigarette and then open this shit up, Porcupine.”

  “You boys smoke too much,” Shann said.

  So Robby and I lit cigarettes, and before he’d taken the second drag on his, Robby squatted down above the hatch wheel and began forcing it counterclockwise.

  As soon as the wheel rotated a quarter turn, we heard a low buzzing sound coming up from beneath the hatch.

  “Um,” I said. “Robby? That thing’s full of bugs or shit.”

  “It’s not full of bugs,” Robby argued.

  “If it’s full of bugs, I’m going to be mad,” Shann offered.

  “If it’s the kind of bugs I’m thinking of, you won’t be mad for too long,” I said.

  “He is thinking of butterflies that shit raspberry cupcakes on your head,” Robby said.

  That made me hungry for cupcakes.

  “No,” I said. “No, I am not thinking of butterflies that shit raspberry cupcakes, Rob.”

  Robby knew what kind of bugs I was thinking about, but Robby was not afraid.

  Finally, the wheel would turn no more. The hatch came loose, and Robby stood up and lifted it open.

  The hole was three feet across. As soon as the hatch raised up, the inside of the lower chamber illuminated in a flickering greenish fluorescent light. The buzzing noise was louder now, but it was fairly obvious that it was being produced by some kind of power generator, as opposed to six-foot-tall, man-eating praying mantises.

  I took a drag, exhaled, and said, “Roof access, Rob.”

  THE POPULAR GIRL

  AT EXACTLY THE same moment Robby Brees opened the hatch to the McKeon silo, my mother and father stood at the bedside of Eric Christopher Szerba. It was nearly midnight in Germany. My parents were trying to talk Eric into speaking with his younger brother on their cell phone. My father held his phone above Eric’s bed like it was a fragile baby bird. Eric did not want to talk to his younger brother. Eric Christopher Szerba told my father to get out of his goddamned room and leave him alone.

  At that moment, my cell phone was sitting on the coffee table in our living room beside an empty container of chicken-flavored Cup-O-Noodles.

  I often forgot to carry my phone with me.

  At that moment, Grant Wallace fell down in his bathroom while taking a piss. Grant hit his head on the rim of his toilet. It was not a Nightingale. Grant Wallace’s head broke open. It didn’t matter. Grant was hatching. The bug that came out of Grant was young and powerful. He was hungry and also very horny. He needed to eat, and he needed to find Eileen Pope. He could smell and hear Eileen Pope, even though she was four miles away from the Wallace home.

  Grant Wallace made a terrible mess in his bathroom. There was nothing that was not covered by spatters of blood after he finished eating. But Grant was still hungry, and he also wanted to fuck and make more bugs with Eileen Pope.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Grant Wallace ate his two younger brothers, his mother, and the family’s Yorkshire terrier, which was named Butterfly.

  Grant Wallace’s father, Will Wallace, was not home from his job in Waterloo yet.

  Will Wallace owned Fire at Will’s Indoor Shooting Range and Gun Shop.

  At that moment, Will Wallace was selling a 9mm Ruger over the counter to a drunk man who claimed he was going to use it to shoot his ex-wife’s cat.

  Will Wallace had a sign behind his counter. The sign displayed Will Wallace’s two favorite mottos. It looked like this:

  A GUN IS NOT A TOY

  ALL SALES FINAL

  The three Hoover Boys Grant Wallace enjoyed hanging out with hatched within minutes of one another. Like Grant, Travis Pope, and Hungry Jack, they wanted to do only two things.

  Now there were seven bugs in Ealing, Iowa: Eileen Pope and her six suitors—Hungry Jack, Travis Pope, Grant Wallace, Tyler Jacobson, Devin Stoddard, and Roger Baird. Eileen Pope was going to be very popular.

  Eileen’s dance card was full.

  At that moment, the vice president of the United States of America was performing his monthly testicular self-exam. His balls felt perfectly fine. The vice president of the United States of America named his balls Theodore and Franklin. Theodore was a little bigger than Franklin.

  And Johnny McKeon was inside his office. He watched the little two-headed baby boy inside the jar. Johnny had seen the boy move before. The two-headed boy was moving his hands now: open and closed, open and closed, open and closed.

  Johnny said, “Ain’t that a kick?”

  Johnny thought the thing inside the jar was some sort of deranged toy.

  Two-Headed Boys Are Not Toys.

  Ollie Jungfrau was lying in his bed. He lived in a bachelor apartment at the Del Vista Arms. He needed to take the day off after the stressful ordeal with Wayne DeLong in the parking lot at Grasshopper Jungle the night before. Ollie Jungfrau thought masturbating would make him feel more cheerful. He also phoned out for pizza delivery from Satan’s Pizza.

  Customers for Tipsy Cricket Liquors had to bother Johnny McKeon at the secondhand store if they needed booze, cigarettes, or condoms. Johnny didn’t mind. Johnny McKeon never minded much of anything.

  Louis, the Chinese cook at The Pancake House, whose real name was Ah Wong Sing, met Connie Brees in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.

  They went back to the Del Vista Arms together.

  At exactly the same moment the hatch on the McKeon silo came up into the Iowa sky for the first time in forty years, Connie Brees was making certain her son, Robert Brees Jr., was not at home. She went through Robby’s room, looking for a box of condoms she found on the floor of Robby’s bedroom on Tuesday afternoon when Robby was at school. Ah Wong Sing sat naked, waiting for Connie Brees in her bedroom, which was just on the other side of the little bathroom where I’d vomited and taken a shower on Tuesday morning.

  And, at exactly the moment Robby lifted open the old hatch and the subterranean chamber below our feet lit up in pale fluorescent-green light, I was thinking about having an underground threesome with Shann and Robby, and feeling myself turn red and hot with my sweating, embarrassed horniness.

  I also wanted cupcakes.

  WELCOME TO EDEN

  IF DRIVING OUT to the Tally-Ho! with Robby Brees was like traveling forward in time, then climbing down into the belly of the McKeon silo with him was like going backwards.

  First: Robby climbed down the rounded steel ladder, and Shann and I followed. As soon as Robby was halfway down to the floor, which was fifteen feet below the hatch opening, a welcoming sound chimed us into the silo.

  It was a recording of a very sterile, anesthetized-sounding woman’s voice that said:

  Welcome to Eden. Please secure the hatch upon entry.

  Welcome to Eden. Please secure the hatch upon entry.

  Welcome to Eden. Please secure the hatch upon entry.

  “Uh,” I said. The me
ssage kept repeating without any indication that it would stop. I added, “Shann, if this place ends up being full of sperm, I’m leaving.”

  The place did have sperm in it. We found it later.

  You will see.

  “It’s just like our mothers or something,” Shann said. “I bet she won’t shut up till one of us closes the front door.”

  Shann pointed up to the hatch and the disc of blue Iowa sky above our heads.

  Shann was very smart.

  I thought it was like our mothers because the voice sounded like the two Connies—Connie Brees and Connie Szerba—when they were floating along on little blue kayaks.

  Welcome to Eden. Please secure the hatch upon entry.

  Welcome to Eden. Please secure the hatch upon entry.

  “Okay,” I said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  But before I could do anything, Robby was back up the ladder, sealing shut the hatch above us.

  The welcome announcement stopped.

  Robby looked down at us from the top of the ladder.

  “Uh,” I said. “What if we can’t get out, Rob, and this chamber suddenly begins filling up with sperm or shit like that?”

  Robby said, “Eden Five needs us, Porcupine.”

  “Uh,” I repeated.

  “You worry too much,” Robby said.

  That was very true.

  Everyone knew I worried too much.

  Absentmindedly, I fiddled with the silver Saint Kazimierz bauble dangling from the chain around my neck.

  SOME KIND OF SIGN

  THE DIVING BELL turned out to be much more than a diving bell. It was a bunker fortress, a preserved glimpse, like Paleolithic cave art, at the paranoia that gripped Cold War Ealing, Iowa, and the United States of America.

  It was everything in the entire world down there.

  You will see.

  The first room below the hatch was something like a mudroom. There were benches all along its circular wall, with coat and hat hooks positioned at even distances above them. The wall was painted an industrial shade of gray with bold yellow block letters that said: