It had been a tough day at school.
I did not know what to say to Robby. I tried all day to come up with some coherent story to tell Shann. The story would have been an abbreviation, naturally, but I would have to go back to the moment Robby and I left her alone in the backseat of his Ford Explorer on Friday night in Grasshopper Jungle.
I would not tell her about experiments or what was, and was not, normal for teenage boys to do, according to the popular psychologist who, although a middle-aged female with cosmetic lip surgery, was a foremost authority on teenage boys. I thought about how I would describe the things Robby and I saw inside her stepfather’s office, and I could only hope Shann would not ask me why I’d taken Robby down there in the first place.
Because I was not sure why Robby and I did go down there. All I knew was that I liked doing things with Robby that we were not supposed to do, normal or not.
I curled my bare toes in Ingrid’s fur.
She let out a big, contented breath, like she was exhaling a billowing puff of soothing cigarette smoke.
“What am I going to say to Shann, Ingrid?”
Robby phoned after that. He asked if I was mad at him, and I told him of course not. That was a dumb thing for him to ask.
Then he said, “Okay, Porcupine. I was just scared about it since you wouldn’t talk to me at school. Can you skate down to Grasshopper Jungle? I need to show you something.”
I needed a cigarette, too.
So I said, “Okay, Rob. Give me fifteen minutes.”
I kicked around through my scattered wardrobe.
I was running out of non-Lutheran-boy clothes.
I slipped on my basketball shorts. I closed my eyes and imagined a prayer to Saint Kazimierz to protect me against getting hit in the balls or having an erection in front of anyone. I pulled on a black Shins T-shirt, found some socks under my bed, got my skate shoes and board, and went out into the hallway.
I said to Ingrid, “Don’t toast any brownies till Dad lets you out.”
Ingrid made a dog sigh and put her chin down between her paws.
BUGS DO TWO THINGS
AND ON THAT Monday night, Robby Brees and I were going to get drunk together for the first time in our lives.
We had already planned it out. I had obtained permission from my mother and father to spend the night at the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments and go to school with Robby in the morning.
It was not like I could back out now.
I had spent the night at the Del Vista Arms before. My father trusted Robby. Robby was never late to class at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy. Robby never caused school-wide controversies by doing such things as reading books about Catholic boys who masturbate. Also, there was no reason for anybody to ever not trust Robby Brees.
I trusted Robby enough to stay at the Del Vista Arms.
Two of the people who lived on Robby’s floor smoked meth.
The night before, on Sunday, Robby and I stood in a young cornfield and watched Hungry Jack’s body split apart. We saw a bug the size of a small bear climb out of him.
The other six victims of Contained MI Plague Strain 412E had not hatched yet.
Bugs do two things.
They eat and they fuck.
Bugs are soldiers, machines, just like Hungry Jack was.
Bug One—the bug that hatched from Hungry Jack—wanted to eat and fuck. It ate most of what was left of Hungry Jack. It wanted to find Eileen Pope, Travis Pope’s wife. It wanted to make more bugs with her.
Ealing, Iowa, was just like Eden Five for a new planet of horny soldiers.
Robby was already in the alley when I got to Grasshopper Jungle. He waited for me behind Tipsy Cricket Liquors. When I skated up to him, he held an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
Robby always waited for me. It made smoking better.
Louis, the cook from The Pancake House whose real name was Ah Wong Sing, had just thrown a cardboard box full of potato peelings, empty milk cartons, and eggshells into the dumpster. He spilled some peelings onto the sleeper sofa. He brushed them away with his hands.
“I wonder if he knows what pubic lice are,” Robby said.
“I have seen Louis take a nap on that couch before,” I said.
Louis smiled and nodded at us as he walked across the alleyway.
Louis did not speak English very well, so when Robby asked me if I wanted a fag, Louis got embarrassed. He made it obvious that he was trying not to listen to us, which made it obvious that he was listening to us.
“Hello, Louis,” I said.
Robby struck a match for me and I got my cigarette going.
Louis said, “Hello, Dynamo.”
Ah Wong Sing believed that Dynamo was my real name.
Louis hung out with Ollie Jungfrau. They played online alien hunter games and looked at porn together. I thought maybe if I did more shit like that with Robby it might make me feel normal and not so confused.
Louis kept smiling nervously and disappeared through the back door to The Pancake House’s kitchen.
We smoked.
“You’re still coming over to get drunk with me, right?” Robby said.
“I don’t know about getting drunk, Rob. It’s been a weird couple days. Maybe I’ll just watch you do it. You know, like keep you safe and shit.” I said, “Like in the sixties, guys used to do that for their buddies when they dropped acid.”
“I’m not dropping acid, and I’m not going to get drunk if you don’t,” Robby said.
I felt guilty about my attempt to back down.
We skated through the alley without saying anything.
When we were down by the dumpster, I stopped and asked Robby what it was he wanted to show me. He carried the rolled-up front section of the Waterloo News and Gazette in his back pocket. When he unrolled it, I already had a premonition that there would be something about the accident outside Waterloo, about what had happened to Hungry Jack.
“Look at this,” Robby said.
There was a photograph of Hungry Jack’s dirty and laceless shoes lying beside the highway. In the grainy background, I saw the Tally-Ho! and Fire at Will’s Indoor Shooting Range and Gun Shop. The photograph was like staring through a portal in time.
The short article said that a transient had been struck and killed by a motorist and there were no witnesses.
Transient is a nice way of saying homeless. Homeless makes people think of despair. It makes you think that the United States of America doesn’t care about people.
Transient sounds like you have a case of wanderlust.
Wanderlust is part of the American Spirit.
The transient in the article had been carrying a military I.D. card that gave his name as Charles R. Hoofard.
Hungry Jack’s real name was Charles R. Hoofard.
He was born in Indianapolis in 1950.
In 1950, Harry S. Truman was president of the United States.
Harry Truman, as far as I can tell, also never took a shit in his life.
In 1950, the same year that a boy named Charles R. Hoofard was born in Indianapolis, President Harry S. Truman sent military assistance to the French. They were trying to maintain their French Catholic colony in Vietnam. That military aid would grow and blossom to the point that a boy with wanderlust from Indiana named Charles R. Hoofard ultimately took time out from fucking whatever he wanted to fuck to participate in the killing of an entire village of women, elderly people, and children.
History is full of shit like that.
All roads intersect on pages on my desk.
All roads spring up along trails worn down by boys on bikes.
All roads lead past shooting ranges, liquor stores, and gay bars.
Wanderlust is part of the American Spirit.
The article went on to say that Charles R. Hoof
ard’s body had been brutalized by coyotes before being discovered by a farmer Monday morning.
It asked for anyone with information to phone the Iowa State Patrol.
“Uh,” I said.
I rolled the newspaper up and handed it back to Robby.
We never called anyone about what happened to Hungry Jack.
We had been uncharacteristically silent back inside Robby’s Explorer in the lot outside the Tally-Ho!
Robby sped all the way home to Ealing.
We smoked and smoked.
I think Robby was crying, too.
Robby and I were in shock.
That is a poor excuse for someone who feels obligated to record history, but that’s what happened.
It was our day, and you do know what I mean.
“We did see the same thing, Rob. People would think we were dropping acid,” I said.
“Shit like that isn’t supposed to happen,” Robby said.
“But it did,” I said. “Maybe we should get drunk.”
Then Robby said, “That bug. It was the same thing we saw inside Johnny’s office.”
“Like I said. We saw the same thing, Robby.”
It was getting on to evening. We decided to take Robby’s car and pick up my school clothes and sleeping bag.
I always slept on the floor at Robby’s apartment. If I put my ear to the floor, I sometimes could hear the meth smokers down the hall fighting with each other.
But as we were skating back through the alley, just when we came to the spot where Grant Wallace and the Hoover Boys had beaten us up three days earlier, Robby and I noticed something on the piss-covered blacktop of the alley:
GRANT WA
It was the message Robby started spelling out in the blood that dripped from his nose.
The letters gave off a pale blue glow in the dimming light of evening.
“Um,” Robby said.
I said, “Yes. I see that, too, Robby.”
A GIFT FROM JOHNNY MCKEON
JOHNNY MCKEON WAS just locking up the front door of From Attic to Seller Consignment Store when Robby and I skated past.
He frowned at me, shook his head, and made a two-fingered gesture to his lips as a kind of sign language reproach about Robby and me skating around in front of his place of business with cigarettes in our mouths.
I was embarrassed.
“Sorry, Johnny,” I said. I dropped my cigarette onto the blacktop.
Robby did, too.
Johnny said it was a great coincidence that I happened by, because he’d gotten something that afternoon that he meant to bring home for me. I felt guilty and scared because Johnny McKeon had never given me anything more than a paycheck and a couple free packs of cigarettes in the past. I’d never asked for anything more from Johnny McKeon, either.
“Wait up,” Johnny said, and he went back inside his store.
Robby and I waited.
“I found this today in a jewelry box,” Johnny said when he came back. He locked the door to the secondhand store and held out his hand to me. His hand was cupped closed, the way a kid might hold on to a bug or something.
“I thought you might get a kick out of this, Austin,” Johnny said.
Robby was curious. He leaned in closer to see what Johnny McKeon was offering me. When Johnny unfolded his tentacle fingers, I saw a coiled silver chain with an oval medallion strung on its links. In the center of the pendant was the image of a man with a halo, his chin turned downward in an attitude of something that looked like modesty. The bauble was worn, but the man held what looked like a tree branch in his hand. Around the rim of the outside, in raised letters, was the inscription: SAINT KAZIMIERZ
And Johnny McKeon said, “Isn’t that a kick? You were just telling me about that guy, and I never heard of him before. Ever. Isn’t that a kick?”
“That’s a kick, Johnny,” I said.
“Anyway,” Johnny said, “it’s for you, Austin. What would I want with something like that, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Thank you, Johnny.”
Robby watched me slip the chain around my neck.
“This is the nicest thing in the world,” I said.
I meant it, too.
“You’re welcome,” Johnny said.
It felt cool and powerful against my skin. The thought of wearing the medal under my Lutheran Boy clothes, against my naked body at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy made me feel wicked and daring. It also made me very horny to think about breaking such a long list of theoretically unbreakable and ancient Lutheran Boy rules.
I decided I would never take it off.
“Thank you so much, Johnny,” I said again. “What a kick.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Johnny said. “It’s a real kick, ain’t it?”
Johnny McKeon was in a generous mood. He offered to drive Robby and me to my house so I could pick up the clothes and things I needed to spend the night at the Del Vista Arms.
He and Robby even waited in Johnny’s car while I let Ingrid out to take a shit.
I kept playing with the medallion inside my T-shirt. I pressed it against my bare chest. I took it out at least a dozen times to look at Saint Kazimierz.
It made me feel magic.
SHANN CALLS
I IMAGINED A SILVER chain washing up on the cold shoreline in Massachusetts or Maine. Somehow the thing had slipped away from Andrzej Szczerba’s body, and had been carried slowly for a century until being discovered in a tangled mass of seaweed and fishing line.
It had to come to Ealing.
It had to end up around Austin Andrzej Szerba’s neck.
I sat in the front seat and Johnny McKeon drove us to the Del Vista Arms from my house. Shann called when we were about halfway there.
“I found something out,” Shann said.
“What?” I wondered.
There were an awful lot of things I thought Shann might be talking about, but none of them was correct.
“I found the silo,” she said.
“Uh,” I said.
There were also an awful lot of silos in Iowa. I did not know what Shann was talking about.
“You know,” she went on, “the message from the machine in the wall? Well, today after school I went down to City Hall and looked up the Ealing Registry of Historical Homes.”
“You did? They actually have that?” I asked.
Now there was a book that could have absolutely everything about its subject fully contained within its bindings.
“I saw photos of my house. Old ones. There used to be a silo on the property. I found the silo,” she said.
But there was no silo on the property now.
I pointed that out to Shann.
Shann said, “We have to go look, Austin.”
“But it’s dark and shit,” I said. “Do you think someone is hiding the McKeon silo?”
You can’t hide a silo in Iowa.
The best you could do is maybe disguise it to look like someone else’s silo, or maybe something like a penis.
People in Iowa were generally too reserved for such antics.
“No,” Shann chided. “I don’t think someone’s hiding our silo. But there was one here at one time.”
“Uh,” I said.
“Tomorrow. After school. You, Robby, and me. We’ll go see if there’s anything left of it. I have a copy of the picture.”
“Uh,” I said again. I glanced back at Robby.
Shann knew we were going to get drunk. We told her. She didn’t approve of it. What can you do?
Somewhere, there was a middle-aged, nice-looking woman psychologist with voluptuous, artificially induced lips who, as a foremost expert on teenage boys, could serenely explain to Shann that boys sometimes need to be boys and do dumb things that
can get boys in lots and lots of trouble and shit like that.
But Shann did not watch much television.
“Okay, Shann,” I said. “I think we can do that. Maybe there is something there, after all.”
“I just know we’re going to find some other weird stuff that Grady McKeon was doing here,” Shann said.
I agreed, and said, “There’s probably more than anyone will ever know.”
Then Shann said, “I love you, Austin.”
I looked at Robby in the backseat, then at Johnny behind the wheel, and I said, “Um. Me too, Shann.”
In my defense, and with plenty of history to back me up, it was a perfectly acceptable response considering the environmental realities I had to contend with.
Shann certainly understood the translation: I am sitting next to your stepfather and my best friend.
You know what I mean.
MY MOM’S LITTLE BLUE KAYAKS
I HAD TWO of my mother’s little blue kayaks.
They were hidden inside a matching pair of clean gray Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy regular boys’ socks I brought with me to Robby’s apartment for school the next day.
Robby did not know I had them.
I unrolled my sleeping bag on the floor in Robby’s room and left my stack of Lutheran Boy clothes on top of his dresser. Robby brought in a bottle of wine he’d hidden in the back of his refrigerator.
His mother never knew anything about it.
The bottle was so cold the glass fogged and dripped.
Then I showed Robby the Xanax pills I’d stolen. He was not happy about what I did.
Robby said, “I’d never take one of those, Porcupine.”
“Uh,” I said. “Why not? Everyone else does.”
History lesson for the early evening: When a teenage boy says everyone else does, he’s usually not being mathematically precise. Robby knew that. We spoke the same language.
Robby said, “I just don’t want to ever do shit like that.”
I came to my own defense, rationalizing, “I always thought they’d make me feel better.”
“Better than what?” Robby asked.