Grasshopper Jungle

  Andrzej means man in Polish boy names.

  One night in June, Andrzej Szczerba and Phoebe Hildebrandt went for a walk. Andrzej forced himself sexually onto Phoebe. Phoebe Hildebrandt did not resist his advances.

  Phoebe cried. Sexual intercourse was painful. She lay on her back in the dirt, wondering how long it would take for him to finish. But she also allowed Andrzej Szczerba to insert his erect penis into her vagina. The act hurt Phoebe Hildebrandt, who was a virgin.

  Andrzej Szczerba wanted to find something out about himself, which he did. He found out he thought only about Herman Weinbach while he engaged in sexual intercourse with Phoebe Hildebrandt.

  Afterward, Andrzej Szczerba was disgusted in himself, and he was disgusted by Phoebe and her uninteresting personality, too.

  But Andrzej Szczerba’s semen found its way deep into Phoebe Hildebrandt’s body from that unloving sexual act in June of 1934 outside a place called Iowa City, Iowa.

  Phoebe Hildebrandt was my great-grandmother.

  In 1935, a boy named Felek Szczerba was born. This happened only two months after Andrzej and Phoebe were married.

  Andrzej Szczerba never put his penis inside Phoebe Hildebrandt again after that first time beside a dirt road in Iowa City.

  And that was our day. You know what I mean.

  Andrzej loved Felek, his son, as much as he had ever loved anything, but Andrzej Szczerba was very unhappy.

  Felek means lucky in Polish boy names.

  Felek Szczerba’s American name was Felix Szerba.

  Felix Szerba was my grandfather.

  MOVIE NIGHT IN EDEN

  THE THEATER IN Eden had half as many seats as the Cinezaar in Waterloo.

  It was comfortable and clean. Like everything in Eden, the theater sat unused, brand-new, and at the same time it had been preserved like some kind of fossil.

  This was where we learned the most about the history of McKeon Industries, and about the things that started happening up above us in Ealing after the unfortunate coincidence of Tyler Jacobson dropping the globe of Contained MI Plague Strain 412E directly onto Robby Brees’s blood.

  The screen of the Edenzaar was a bit smaller than the screen in Waterloo. The projector sat on a stand, atop a raised platform behind the rows of crushed velvet seats. But all things considered, it was one of the nicer movie venues in this part of Iowa.

  Growing up, Robby Brees had always been projector monitor in our classes at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy. He knew everything about how to operate a 16 mm film projector. It took no effort to get him to volunteer to see what had been left behind in Eden for our viewing pleasure.

  As he searched through the cabinets behind us, Shann and I took seats in the back row. I slid my hand into the warm spot between Shann’s thighs.

  I said, “Eden Five needs you.”

  Shann said, “Eden Five has to wait until Eden Five grows up.”

  Robby held up a big steel canister of film and told us the movie inside was called Five Easy Pieces.

  I thought it was a funny name, especially since I was Eden 5. I was waiting, too. I thought I was grown up. I wished Shann would ask me to go back to one of the dorm rooms with her while Robby experimented with the projector.

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  “It’s from 1970. And it’s probably the greatest movie ever made,” Robby answered.

  Robby missed being born at the right time by four decades.

  My father, Eric Andrew Szerba, was ten years old in 1970.

  Eric Andrew Szerba’s Polish name would be Arek Andrzej Szczerba.

  His father, Felek, who everyone called Felix, was thirty-five when Five Easy Pieces was made.

  “You should have been alive in the seventies, Rob,” I said.

  “Hell yes,” Robby affirmed.

  We did not watch Five Easy Pieces that night. Robby found another stack of canisters that were labeled Eden Orientation Series. It felt like we were being indoctrinated into an army or some shit like that. And I hoped it was an army for repopulating the planet, so it made me very horny to think about my mission down here in Eden with Shann and Robby.

  “Duty calls,” I said.

  Shann said, “Huh?”

  I told Robby it was our duty to get oriented.

  “We owe it to the world, and to history, to watch Eden Orientation Series, Robby,” I pointed out.

  There were three film reels in all. Robby and I noticed they were numbered One of Five, Two of Five, and Three of Five.

  Two canisters of the five films were missing.

  Robby also found reels of a film called A Clockwork Orange, but Reels Four and Five of Eden Orientation Series were nowhere in the theater.

  That was because those particular reels were up on the roof at Grasshopper Jungle. They were there when we found a plastic flamingo with a steel spike coming out of its ass, a grimacing lemur mask that makes your face stink, and two bottles of wine, one of which Robby and I drank on Monday night in his bedroom at the Del Vista Arms.

  It took me and Robby a while to figure that part out.

  Not too long, though. We were probably a little more intelligent than most cave people.

  You know what I mean.

  Robby Brees fed the leader of Reel One into the projector, and a grainy numbered countdown squiggled and danced on the screen in front of us.

  Robby hopped over the seats and sat beside me.

  I was in the middle of Shann and Robby. I was always in the middle of them. It made me feel horny and awkward, too.

  Most boys would have sat next to Shann.

  Boys from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy would never sit without an empty seat between them at a movie theater. That’s what Lutheran boys do. They project their fear of being thought of as homosexual, so they do uncomfortable things like sit with empty seats between them, and then end up wondering if they or their friend on the other side of their sexual buffer zone might be curious about being gay. The uptight straight-kid Lutheran Boy Code of Conduct mandates the maintenance of THE EMPTY SEAT between boys in a movie theater, so you don’t get any funny ideas about your friend, and nobody looking at you will think you’re queer, either.

  Lutheran Boys in Iowa know those rules and follow them like lemmings on a springtime jog.

  But not Robby Brees. He sat so close to me, our knees rubbed against each other.

  Shann knew Robby was in love with me.

  How could she not know it?

  She probably knew I loved Robby, too. I said it when we danced, after all. And I meant it. Shann definitely knew I was in love with her, too.

  What was I going to do?

  I felt nervous and guilty when Shann held my hand and Robby’s knee pressed so comfortably against mine.

  “I wonder if they have any popcorn in the cafeteria,” Shann said.

  “Or ice cream,” Robby added. He touched my hand with his fingers. It electrified me.

  “Call the roller of big cigars,” I said.

  That was the first line from my favorite poem, The Emperor of Ice-Cream.

  The line sounded so sexually suggestive. It was like something Herman Weinbach might have said to his lover, Andrzej Szczerba. I felt myself turning a brilliant, heated red.

  The film’s sound came on just then.

  And there was the face of Dr. Grady McKeon.

  THE GOOD DOCTOR ACCOUNTS FOR HISTORY

  DR. GRADY MCKEON looked like an old movie star.

  Well, he looked like an old movie star with a slight twitch in his right eye, which was magnified through the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses. Dr. Grady McKeon looked like an old movie star with a psychopath’s twitch in his eye. He looked calm and reassuring, how you might imagine a serial killer to look at you while he was sharpening his knives and discussing which parts of your bod
y produce the best-tasting sausage meat.

  Dr. Grady McKeon also had a very small L-shaped scar between his eyebrows. When he was twelve years old, Grady McKeon was struck in the head by an unoccupied wooden swing. The swing was unoccupied because he had just pushed his younger sister, whose name was Arlene, onto her face.

  Grady McKeon did not want his sister to be on the swing.

  Arlene was not very talented when it came to sitting on things like bench seats on swings. In 1974, she fell from a ski lift in Jackson Hole and died.

  Jackson Hole is in Wyoming.

  Arlene was a real dynamo on snow skis. Not so much on ski lifts.

  Dr. Grady McKeon was comfortable narrating the filmed history of his life’s accomplishments. Grady McKeon’s hair was perfect. He carried a strong resemblance to Shann’s stepfather, Johnny McKeon, who was Grady McKeon’s decades-younger and immensely less talented brother. Also, Grady McKeon had never physically abused Johnny the way he had inflicted harm on their sister, Arlene.

  Arlene McKeon was also Miss Iowa in 1969.

  Iowans love shapely young women with names that have lots of long rhyming vowels, even if their brothers are psychopaths.

  The film was in black and white, but I feel safe making the claim that Dr. Grady McKeon’s hair was the color of Smith Brothers licorice cough drops, and his skin was the same color as French vanilla non-dairy creamer.

  Dr. Grady McKeon wore a blue-and-white Eden jumpsuit, too.

  His jumpsuit was monogrammed, the same way a doctor’s smock at a hospital would be. The monogram said:

  DR. GRADY

  EDEN

  1

  Reel One opened with Dr. Grady McKeon’s personal message to the audience. It was a frighteningly sober introduction, despite the fact that Dr. Grady McKeon maintained a comforting butcher’s smile while he spoke.

  Dr. Grady McKeon looked like he was floating on a fistful of little blue kayaks. He could have easily been sitting across from us at a desk, selling us his top-of-the-line casket for our departed loved ones. Whoever that might be.

  After his introduction, the film went through a history of McKeon Industries from its founding in 1957 through 1971, which was the year the Eden Orientation Series films were produced.

  In 1971, a film called The French Connection won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Voting members of the Academy probably did not get a chance to see Eden Orientation Series.

  This is exactly what Dr. Grady McKeon said at the beginning of his film:

  Welcome to the Eden Project, my friends.

  Welcome, welcome.

  If there are any McKeon family members in the audience, would you please stand and make your presence known?

  This is where Dr. Grady McKeon smiled and nodded and panned his head from one side of the screen to the other, as though he could somehow look out at us from his black-and-white celluloid universe.

  “Stand up, Shann,” I said.

  “Stand up,” Robby urged.

  “This is so dumb,” Shann said.

  Shann stood up. Robby and I clapped for her.

  Shann said, “Shut up.”

  Then Dr. Grady McKeon nodded and continued:

  Thank you.

  Each of you is fortunate to be part of the Eden Project. You are fortunate to have survived, but you also bear a tremendous responsibility to mankind.

  You must breed, my friends. You must breed.

  “You heard the man,” I blurted out.

  Shann said, “Shhh—”

  Dr. Grady McKeon seemed to pause, anticipating the instructions he delivered might cause nervous comments among his audience.

  Robby said, “Uh.”

  And Grady McKeon continued:

  The event that brought you here today was one of two things.

  First, if there has been nuclear fallout detected in the atmosphere, you would have been directed into the showers upon arrival. The world above is no longer habitable. You will be alerted as to when it will be appropriate to return to the surface. Until that time, this is the New World, my friends, and you all are the New Men and Women. The men and women of the future.

  You have a responsibility to breed.

  Do not despair.

  I was not despairing.

  Here, Dr. Grady McKeon looked very serious and clinical. The camera zoomed in so Dr. Grady McKeon’s face occupied the entire screen. Grady McKeon’s twitching right eyeball was as big as an Ozark watermelon. Dr. Grady McKeon stared directly out from the screen with the same expression a doctor performing a physical gets just as he grabs your balls and tells you to cough.

  When a doctor grabs your balls, how can you think about coughing?

  Coughing when someone is grabbing your balls requires as much concentration as riding a unicycle while carrying an Ozark watermelon.

  History shows that when your balls are being grabbed, you can only think about your balls and nothing else.

  “See? I told you that’s why we’re here,” I said. “Eden Five needs us.”

  Shann pointed out that there was no nuclear war taking place at the moment.

  “Nobody’s dropped any bombs,” Shann said.

  It was something of a disappointment to me.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Robby said, “Um.”

  Then Dr. Grady McKeon went on:

  Second, in the event of a 412E alert, the world aboveground will unfortunately become an interspecies battlefield, tremendously dangerous for human beings. You must pay close attention to all the training films we have prepared. Your survival—and the future of humanity—depend on this.

  Pay attention and breed, my friends.

  Breed.

  If the flamingo at the entry chamber did not activate a warning signal upon your arrival, then you are all safe and free from 412E contamination.

  Make note: If the 412E event is more than twenty-four hours into its cycle, you must not return to the surface unless you have prepared the appropriate tools.

  You will be instructed, my friends.

  This is your new world, and you are the new race.

  You are Unstoppable.

  Please, do not despair my friends. I think you will enjoy living in this most remarkable world.

  Live in love. Live in love.

  Eden is love, my friends.

  In Eden, a new human race will begin. It is your duty to do this. You will find the Eden Project Compound to have sufficient resources for years, perhaps decades. You must prepare to recapture the world from the mantid armies above. If you have arrived within the window of infestation, then you may be able to halt what will invariably be the end of the world.

  But you must act.

  Pay careful attention, my friends.

  Pay careful attention and breed.

  Then Dr. Grady McKeon smiled a very creepy smile, like he was imagining pornos from Eden. I happened to be imagining pornos from Eden, too, and they involved the three of us: me, Shann, and Robby.

  The introduction shot lap-dissolved into old newsreel clips that took us through the history of Ealing, Iowa, and its most notorious scientist, Dr. Grady McKeon, founder of McKeon Industries.

  Robby said, “What a fucking psycho.”

  Robby and I never dropped f-bombs.

  Obviously, he was as impacted by Dr. Grady McKeon as I was, even if I did appreciate the frequent directive to have sex down there in our new world.

  Shann squirmed in her seat. She said, “Uh. Am I wrong about something, or do you two boys actually know something more than I do about what he’s talking about?”

  I said, “Uh.”

  Robby said, “Uh.”

  UNSTOPPABLE CORN! UNSTOPPABLE CORN!

  ALL ROADS INTERSECTED at our feet.

  We w
atched the first three reels of Eden Orientation Series.

  This is what we learned:

  Dr. Grady McKeon’s original business venture, which he founded in Ealing, Iowa, in 1957, which was the same year that his little baby brother, Johnny, came into the world, initially developed fertilizers aimed at increasing corn yields. At that time, McKeon Industries had a workforce of three scientists, one secretary, and a man who drove packages in his pickup truck and swept the floors of the old service station Grady McKeon had taken out on lease. The fertilizer produced was a tremendous hit throughout the Corn Belt, and McKeon Industries expanded rapidly.

  In 1961, which was the year after my father, Eric Andrew Szerba, was born, McKeon Industries moved into its main plant, the one that recently shut down in Ealing. At the new facility, Dr. Grady McKeon unveiled the redesigned company symbol.

  The Great Seal of McKeon Industries looked like something you might find in an Ayn Rand novel.

  Ayn Rand was an author who had no books at all on the shelves of Dr. Grady McKeon’s library in Eden.

  The new symbol for McKeon Industries depicted a gigantic woman, sitting calmly with her legs folded beneath her, apparently gazing out from her two-hundred-foot-high face upon the beautiful and fruitful fields of Iowa. She had an expression like she had just swallowed some blue kayaks.

  They would have naturally been full-sized kayaks, since the woman was as tall as an oil derrick.

  Arranged before her bare knees (she was wearing a modestly styled dress that adequately covered her perfect thighs), like a child’s toys at Christmas, were hand-sized factories with smokestacks, a gleaming and modern steel locomotive, and, for whatever reason, a trio of bare-chested men in overalls working behind what looked like yoked teams of oxen.

  Ahead of the unnaturally enormous woman, perfect rows of sequoia-sized cornstalks grew, stretching off forever into the Iowa horizon. And inscribed around the curving edge at the bottom of the McKeon Seal were the words:

  INFINITA FRUMENTA! INFINITA FRUMENTA!

  Infinita frumenta! is Latin for Unstoppable Corn! or some shit like that.

  You could pretty much put anything you wanted to in Latin at the bottom of a picture and people in Iowa would either beat you up, or think you were a messenger from God.