Grasshopper Jungle

  Unlike his adoptive father, Daniel Barton, Felek Szczerba did not have any problems at all with his sperm.

  In 1960, when Felek was twenty-five years old, his first son, Arek Andrzej Szczerba, was born. Arek Andrzej Szczerba was my father, Eric Szerba.

  Felek and Ksenia Szczerba had four more strong Polish sons together. Their names were Krzys, Mieszko, Gabrysz, and Jacek.

  In 1965, Felek Szczerba and his family moved back to Iowa, to Ealing, where Felek accepted a position in the research laboratories at McKeon Industries.

  In 1968, Felek Szczerba was killed in a motorcycle accident. The history recorded in the Waterloo paper described how Felek Szczerba apparently lost control of his motorcycle and ran himself beneath the wheels of a freight car that was carrying liquid fertilizer.

  The fertilizer was made in Ealing, Iowa.

  What actually happened to Felek Andrzej Szczerba that day was this: Felek Andrzej Szczerba hatched out.

  Felek means lucky.

  Felek Szczerba was the first Unstoppable Soldier.

  PART 4:

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  SAINT KAZIMIERZ WAS not an Unstoppable Soldier.

  When he was a teenager, his father ordered Kazimierz to lead the army of Poland to conquer Hungary. Some Catholic scholars claim Kazimierz refused to do it. They say Kazimierz did not refuse because he was afraid. Kazimierz refused because he thought it was unjust to go to war against Hungary. Some historians claim Kazimierz, who was only thirteen at the time, went to war, but was defeated.

  Hungarians may have masturbated less often than Polish boys. This is probably true.

  Kazimierz’s father punished him for not going to war. It is difficult to imagine how you could punish a boy for not going to war. It is kind of like punishing a boy for skipping dinner by giving him cake.

  In order to resist sexual temptation, Kazimierz wore a hair shirt, which was something coarse and irritating that was made from goats’ hair. Devout people like Kazimierz would wear this garment as underwear so it would rub against their skin. The only purpose of a hair shirt is to cause injury and pain. Some historians claim that Saint Kazimierz may have worn his hair shirt in direct contact with his penis.

  Hair shirts work like dynamos.

  Nobody makes hair shirts nowadays.

  WE, THE NEW HUMANS

  I TOLD SHANN Collins everything that night.

  I told her about what happened at Grasshopper Jungle. I said Grant Wallace and the Hoover Boys had broken into the place looking for alcohol, and that Robby Brees and I should not have been there, but we were. I told Shann Collins what we found inside Johnny McKeon’s office, and how Tyler Jacobson dropped the glass universe and splattered what we knew was 412E all over the alley behind From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.

  This is what I said to Shann Collins: Robby Brees drove me out to Waterloo, so we could look into the future. We went to the Tally-Ho!, where a homeless man we called Hungry Jack stepped in front of the path of a speeding Dodge truck, and then this horrible creature hatched out of his body and ate him.

  Shann had to go home. It was late.

  Shann changed out of her Eden Project jumpsuit. She could not go home dressed in a strange uniform. Wendy McKeon, Shann Collins’s mother, was one of those types of mothers who paid attention to things like what their children were wearing when they left the house. Wendy McKeon would ask questions, and we did not want anyone to know about Shann’s silo.

  Nobody knew anything at all about Eden.

  Robby Brees and I kept our Eden Project jumpsuits on. We left all our clothes, except for our shoes, down inside the silo. Wearing the jumpsuits made us feel like we were an Army or something. It made us feel like we belonged together.

  Anyway, Robby Brees and I had some shit to do.

  Nobody would ever know if Robby and I didn’t go home that night.

  It was 8:30. Shann had missed dinner with her family. Her cell phone hadn’t worked when we were down inside Eden. She was going to be in trouble. Good Lutheran kids in Iowa do not forget to come home for dinner with their families.

  Coming up out of Eden under a big, black, star-filled Iowa sky made us feel like we were climbing from a spaceship and onto the surface of some alien world. Everything was different.

  We were the New Humans.

  That was exactly what Dr. Grady McKeon told us we were.

  Robby waited for me in his old Ford Explorer, so I could walk Shann to the front door of the McKeon House. I asked her if she wanted me to say something to her mom or to Johnny McKeon, but Shann said no, that she was going to be in trouble and I couldn’t possibly make things better.

  So I hugged Shann. It felt really good squeezing my body against hers in my jumpsuit, like I wasn’t wearing anything but my boxers. I kissed her for a long time and ran my hands up and down from her butt to her shoulders. I was trying to get her to accept Dr. Grady McKeon’s advice about our mission. I had forgotten all about Robby waiting in his car and about big monstrous bugs. I pressed my hips into Shann’s.

  That was exactly when Shann whispered, “I think Robby is in love with you, Austin.”

  I felt a lump in my throat, and I asked Saint Kazimierz to make things okay.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “I can tell he is,” Shann said.

  I said, “Is there something wrong with that?”

  Shann backed away from me a half step. Her eyes tracked up and down, up and down, all over my body. Jumpsuits are no good for hiding erections. I tried to adjust myself.

  Shann said, “Is there something wrong with that? Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that, Austin?”

  “Uh,” I said.

  I honestly did not think there was anything wrong with Robby Brees being in love with me.

  I was probably wrong about that.

  Shann said, “Have you guys ever done anything?”

  I felt all the blood draining out from every part of my body. It felt cold and wiggly.

  “What do you mean? Like skate? We do lots of things,” I said.

  I do not lie. It is my job not to ever lie.

  I wanted a cigarette.

  “Have you ever kissed Robby?” Shann said.

  I had to tell her. I loved Shann, and I do not lie.

  “Um. Yes,” I said.

  “Oh,” Shann said. “Like, I mean, a real kiss?”

  “Yes, I did,” I said.

  I looked away. I was suddenly aware that Robby was waiting. I could hear the clunk-clunk-clunk of the old Ford’s engine.

  Shann backed up against the front door.

  Then Shann said, “Have you and Robby ever had sex with each other?”

  “Uh. Um,” I said, “no.”

  I did not lie to her.

  “Come on, Shann. Please.” I said, “You know I am totally in love with you.”

  Shann looked as though I’d just kicked her in the stomach. She did not say another word. She went inside and closed the door behind her. I heard the sound of the deadbolt turning within the door’s locking mechanism.

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

  What was I going to do?

  The end of the world was nearly one week old.

  The end of the world was nearly one week old and only three people in Ealing knew about it: Me, Robby Brees, and Shann Collins.

  LAST LEGS

  ROBBY SLID A PACK of cigarettes across the top of the dashboard toward me when I climbed into his car.

  He did not say anything.

  I did not say anything.

  Robby could tell something else had gone wrong. Another something else. Robby always knew everything about me.

  I lit a cigarette.

  The engine clunked and clunked.

  “This car’s on its last legs,” I said
.

  DAVY CROCKETT AND DANIEL BOONE NEVER WORE COONSKIN CAPS

  ROBBY TOOK ME home. I needed to get my history books, and Ingrid, too.

  I wanted to take Ingrid with us to Eden.

  Maybe I was crazy with grief. Maybe all the shit—thinking about my brother, Eric, my grandfather, Felek, and his lost and sad father, Andrzej, poor Herman Weinbach who loved him, Saint Kazimierz, Shann Collins, and the talking European starling named Baby—playing all of those thoughts through the reel-to-reel between my ears made me feel like I was all alone and standing on the edge of a razor blade.

  Robby played one of his father’s old cassette tapes in the Explorer.

  We listened to Exile on Main Street.

  And the car shuddered past Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, which was located in Ealing, Iowa, on Main Street.

  “So. You want to tell me about it, Porcupine?” Robby said.

  I knew what Robby was talking about. I played dumb, anyway.

  I said, “Tell you about what, Rob?”

  “What happened between you and Shann back there. That’s what,” Robby said.

  “Oh.” I said, “Nothing.”

  History does show that nothing means a hell of a lot more than nothing when teenagers talk. In this case, Robby knew it meant that I did not want to talk about it, so he left me alone.

  Robby Brees was such a good friend.

  It was awkwardly quiet inside my empty house with Robby Brees that night. It was one of those exceedingly dumb moments where I did not know whether I was supposed to actually say something to him. I felt myself wanting to act like an asshole to Robby again, so I closed my eyes and asked Saint Kazimierz to help me shut the hell up.

  Ingrid came bounding for the door as soon as we were inside. She ran out into the nicely mowed front yard.

  I left the door standing open, a kind of message to anyone passing by that Robby Brees and I were not conducting experiments inside my house while my parents were gone.

  Robby knew what I was doing.

  Leaving the door open like that was the kind of thing an uptight asshole would do.

  I grabbed my cell phone from the coffee table where it had been sitting all day. I saw that I’d missed a phone call from Eric, my brother. Eric left a message. I sat on the sofa and listened to my brother’s voice. Robby stood by the door and watched me. He knew what was happening. We were soldiers in this together, wearing our Grasshopper Jungle uniforms.

  Robby Brees and I could be unstoppable, too, if we told ourselves to be.

  This is the message Eric left for me on my phone:

  Hey, Booney. I miss you and I hope you’re out having fun and smoking cigarettes and shit like that. I wish you were here instead of Dad and Mom. I’m sorry if I scared you or anything. I’m going to be okay, Booney. I promise. You be okay, too. I’ll see you soon.

  When I was nine years old and Eric was fifteen, my family took a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. I still do not understand why we went to Nashville, but I do remember that my mother and father enjoyed the trip quite a bit.

  Because Eric was a teenager, my father and mother would go out at night and listen to music. They felt comfortable leaving my brother and me alone at our hotel.

  Eric was mature and sensible enough at fifteen to take care of me.

  These days, mothers and fathers end up in jail for doing shit like that. At least, you frequently hear terrible stories about what happens to kids left alone in hotel rooms, even if the kids happen to be sensible and mature.

  While we were in Tennessee, my father bought me a fake coonskin cap, which I wore for so many continuous days and nights I began to develop a bald spot on the back of my scalp. My bald spot was right below the place on the cap where a plastic button had been stitched to the inside, in order to secure the fake raccoon tail.

  The coonskin cap was a souvenir from a place called Crockett-Land.

  The coonskin cap was made in China.

  Richard M. Nixon, president of the United States of America, brought some Unstoppable Corn to China in 1972. He used the Unstoppable Corn to dissolve Prime Minister Chou En-lai’s balls.

  To my knowledge, my fake coonskin cap did not adversely affect my balls.

  CrockettLand sold souvenirs that cashed in on a man named Davy Crockett, who was a frontiersman from Tennessee.

  Eric started calling me Booney that summer when I was nine and he was fifteen because he said I looked like Daniel Boone, who was also a frontiersman from Pennsylvania.

  History shows that neither Davy Crockett nor Daniel Boone ever wore coonskin caps, but movies made people believe they did. Meriwether Lewis wore coonskin caps, however.

  I was happy my brother did not start calling me Meriwether.

  I do not know if movies ever showed Meriwether Lewis wearing a coonskin cap. When you think of exciting movies about frontiersmen, you tend to think about Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, as opposed to some guy named Meriwether.

  Movies made people believe a lot of shit about history.

  Robby Brees and I believed what we saw in Eden Orientation Series.

  It was the truth.

  There were two prostitutes who lived in the same hotel in Nashville where we stayed.

  One night, Eric and I were playing catch with a foam rubber football out on the balcony that connected all the rooms on the third floor, which was the floor our room was on. We said hello to the prostitutes.

  The prostitutes were named Tiffany and Rhonda.

  I do not know their last names.

  History shows that a lot of prostitutes do not necessarily need last names.

  Tiffany had hair the color of whipped sweet potatoes and skin like creamy hot cocoa. Rhonda had lemon meringue hair and always wore lipstick the color of cotton candy.

  Eric knew what Tiffany and Rhonda were doing. I thought it was curious how my brother would watch Tiffany and Rhonda come and go, and come and go, and how Eric always acted so nice and proper toward them. The girls winked at us both, and sometimes Tiffany, who was quite fat, would comb her hands through Eric’s hair and flirt with him suggestively, and rub the back of my neck with her thick warm fingers.

  Tiffany and Rhonda were very nice.

  On the third night, Eric went into Tiffany and Rhonda’s room with them.

  Eric left me alone on the balcony for nearly an hour. It may have been more or less than an hour. When you are nine years old, five minutes can seem like a week, more or less.

  When he came out of Tiffany and Rhonda’s room, Eric looked pale, like he was sick or something. Eric’s hair was sweaty around his ears and along the back of his neck, and somehow his T-shirt had been turned backwards and inside out. Eric’s eyes were funny, too, like he was sleepy and startled at the same time.

  I asked him why he left me alone, and Eric told me that Tiffany and Rhonda gave him a blow job.

  To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice.

  History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words.

  I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much.

  I asked Eric if Tiffany and Rhonda would give me a blow job, too.

  Eric laughed and laughed.

  Then he told me what a blow job was.

  Eric lifted up his shirt and showed me how there were perfect kisses of cotton candy lipstick all down below his freckled, cream of wheat belly and over both of his nipples.

  At that time, being nine years old and dressed in a coonskin cap in Nashville, Tennessee, as I was, I could not understand at all why anyone would ever let someone give them a blow job.

  I listened to my brother’s message a second time. I realized I’d
almost forgotten how Eric liked to call me Booney.

  Sometimes, when I teased Eric afterward, during that summer when he was fifteen, I would call him Cotton Candy and Eric would get embarrassed in front of my mother and father, and tell me to shut up, too.

  While I listened to my brother’s voice, a text message came in from Shann Collins. It said this:

  You are disgusting.

  I did not even know that I was sitting there on my sofa in my living room crying.

  I don’t cry.

  I suppose I was tired, and disappointed, too, for what I had done to Shann and Robby, and especially because I missed my brother and I wanted him to get better, even if I knew nothing would ever be better than it was for Eric and me on those summer nights when we played catch and shit like that, all alone in that hotel in Nashville.

  Robby put his hand on my shoulder and shook me.

  He said, “Hey. Hey. Don’t do that, Austin.”

  I wiped my face and told Robby I was sorry for crying.

  Then I went back into my room and grabbed my history books.

  It was a heavy stack.

  GARLIC, DR PEPPER, AND CRYSTAL METH

  WE WERE NOT heading toward Grasshopper Jungle.

  I said, “Robby, where are you going?”

  Robby said, “I need to go to my house. I need to grab some shit, too.”

  Ingrid curled up on the backseat. I reached between Robby and me and stroked her fur.

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

  There was something unnaturally still and menacing about the night. Maybe I was only working myself up, getting too emotional.

  Ealing would always be a ghost town. It just felt like more of a ghost town that night, after Robby parked the Explorer along the curb in front of the Del Vista Arms.

  Robby said, “You want to come in with me, Austin?”

  I said, “I better wait here with Ingrid. You wouldn’t want her to shit in your car, or shit like that.”