Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

  Hungry Jack, whose real name was Charles R. Hoofard, but was now a massive green bug that looked like a praying mantis, and Travis Pope, who was also a massive green bug that looked like a praying mantis, were back in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle. They were fighting over mating privileges with Travis’s wife, Eileen Pope, who was also a massive green bug that looked like a praying mantis.

  It didn’t matter. Travis had already inseminated her a dozen times that day, and now he was more hungry than horny. There was plenty of Eileen Pope to go around.

  Eileen Pope was about to become queen of a new world.

  Once her six suitors got to her, they would collectively fertilize millions of eggs inside Eileen Pope’s burgeoning abdomen. It would take her several days to produce and hide her egg mass, but then in a matter of hours there would be more hatchlings from those first seven victims of the Contained MI Plague Strain 412E than there were people in the entire state of Iowa.

  The world would have just about seven days before the bugs started taking over.

  And bugs only want two things.

  So Travis Pope submitted to Hungry Jack and scuttled away down the alley behind the Ealing Mall.

  Travis Pope hunted for someone to eat.

  Hungry Jack joined himself to Eileen Pope as she clamped four of her arms onto the dirty convertible sofa in Grasshopper Jungle and buzzed with contented, fizzling coos like a short-circuiting wall socket.

  We danced until the entire tape played through and flapped its disconnected end over and over around the receiving spool in an unending counterclockwise loop.

  Shann and Robby and I were soaked with sweat. The three of us collapsed onto the thick shag carpeting, panting and staring up at the high ceiling overhead.

  Shann said, “Let’s try to find something besides shower water to drink.”

  I said, “I want to go piss in my great-great-grandfather’s urinal.”

  “So do I,” said Robby.

  History often loops around into complete circles.

  The spool of tape spun and spun.

  SOUP FROM PAINT CANS

  ANDRZEJ SZCZERBA’S AMERICAN name, the one with swapped-out consonants and shit, was Andrew Szerba. Andrzej Szczerba was my great-grandfather. His mother was Eva Nightingale, and his father was Krzys Szczerba, who Americans renamed Christopher Szerba, manufacturer of palatial urinals.

  Robby and I peed all over the gleaming receiving wall of Krzys Szczerba’s beautiful urinal.

  “This is the greatest urinal ever made,” I said.

  Robby stared at the spot on the wall where the disembodied praying hands would be hanging if this were Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy.

  “Very accommodating and unoppressive,” Robby offered.

  “If the act of urination had self-esteem, it could not help but feel better about itself after occurring in such a splendid location,” I said.

  Robby said, “Without a doubt, this is the nicest thing I have ever urinated on, with the possible exception of Sheila’s husband’s new Harley-Davidson.”

  Sheila was Robby’s sister, who lived in Cedar Falls.

  “You peed on your brother-in-law’s Harley-Davidson?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t my brother-in-law at the time, but, yes, Porcupine, I peed all over the seat,” Robby explained.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” Robby said. “Something inside me just told me that motorcycle needed a good peeing-on.”

  “Well, I have never peed on anything that was particularly nice. Except for maybe the grass on the football field at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy,” I said.

  “You peed on our school?” Robby asked.

  “Yes,” I said. And then I asked, “Robby? Are we done talking about peeing yet?”

  “I’m pretty sure we’ve said everything that needed to be said, Austin,” Robby answered.

  “We probably should shake hands,” I said.

  “Meet me at the hand soap dispenser,” Robby answered.

  Andrzej was seventeen years old when he left home, the same age his father was when Krzys Szczerba found himself entirely alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Great Depression had arrived in the United States of America, and urinals—even beautiful ones with names that sang—were no longer in high demand.

  Growing up, Andrew—Andrzej—always felt there was something quiet and troubling that made him different from other boys.

  You know what I mean.

  Krzys Szczerba’s boy was often afraid and confused, just like another Andrzej who was going to be his great-grandson. Since he was born, his father, Krzys, only spoke to his son in Polish.

  Andrzej Szczerba rescued an injured bird when he was thirteen. That would have been about the same year he was in seventh grade in Minnesota, where his father ran the Nightingale Convenience Works.

  History shows that lots of shit happens to Polish boys when they are in seventh grade.

  I do not know why, but that is not my job. My job is saying what. The shit that happens to us Polish boys is causally related to the bags under our eyes.

  The bird Andrzej found was a European starling. Andrzej kept it and raised the bird as a pet. He named the bird Baby.

  By the time Andrzej was seventeen and left home, Baby could talk. Baby spoke English as well as Polish, which displeased Eva Nightingale, who believed that Krzys and his son frequently conspired against her will, and plotted in their anarchists’ tongue. She thought the bird was in on the Polish conspiracy, too.

  Whether or not Baby actually understood the things he said was always a matter to be decided by the person listening to Baby speak.

  Andrzej loved Baby. He never kept the bird in a cage, either. In fact, Andrzej tried to encourage the bird to fly away and find a suitable mate or a more natural place to live, but Baby would not leave Andrzej. Baby preferred to stay inside Andrzej’s coat, or perched near his collar at all times.

  People in southern Minnesota, where Andrzej was a boy, thought Andrzej was crazy. You must be crazy, after all, if a bird loves you.

  In 1933, when Andrzej was seventeen years old, he and Baby found themselves at the very center of a vast continent. They were somewhere in the state of Iowa, in a place called Boatman’s Bluff. Andrzej, like a lot of young men during the Great Depression, was more or less a hobo.

  I also do not know why people say more or less. Everything is more or less of anything you can think of. Iowa is more or less the French Riviera. The French Riviera has the largest per-capita consumption of Spam in the world, more or less.

  That is more or less the truth.

  Andrzej was a hobo.

  On a frozen morning in April, Andrzej arrived at a farm foreclosure auction. Sometimes, he went to these auctions just to stand in the midst of the people, where he could stay warm. Often, when auction-goers saw how young Andrzej was, and what a beautiful face the boy had, they would invite Andrzej home and feed him and allow him to take a warm bath or sleep for a while in their outbuildings.

  It was natural for kindhearted people to feel a sense of sadness or obligation when they looked at young Andrzej, all alone and helpless. He looked like an angel, or like an injured bird.

  Perhaps it was that people were also attracted to the strange talking bird that stayed inside Andrzej’s collar and nuzzled against the boy’s neck, which was the color of hominy grits.

  That kindness people sometimes showed him was what Andrzej was looking for on the morning in April at the farm foreclosure auction. Andrzej was very hungry, and the ground of the dead farm was frozen in such deep black ruts that it hurt his feet when he walked through the crowd.

  Andrzej ran into another drifter among the people at the auction: a nineteen-year-old boy named Herman Weinbach, who had come from Michigan. Herman Weinbach’s straight hair, which was the color of pot roast gravy, hung down across one eye. His skin was the color of soda-and-flour biscuits.

  Herman Weinbach had been a member of the American Communist P
arty, but he quit all political activities due to hunger, he explained. People were leaving the American Communist Party in the early 1930s, and Herman simply didn’t believe anything was ever going to change, whether it was destined to, as Karl Marx said, or not.

  Herman Weinbach was also homosexual, but nobody knew anything about it.

  When Herman Weinbach saw Andrzej Szczerba at the auction, he asked Andrzej if he was a Jew. Andrzej told him no, that he was Catholic, and Herman said that would have been his next guess, after Quaker.

  Herman Weinbach was a Jew, but nobody knew anything about that, either. He told Andrzej he was an atheist.

  Andrzej Szczerba had never met an atheist before. At least, he had never met anyone daring enough to say they were atheists. Just the thought of denying God frightened Andrzej, who, like me, frequently touched a silver medallion of Saint Kazimierz he constantly wore on a chain around his neck.

  Before Herman Weinbach died, he told Andrzej Szczerba that being a Communist homosexual Jew in Iowa in 1933 was like being a European starling that spoke two languages.

  Andrzej did not know what Herman meant when he said that, but I believe he meant it was something beautiful and wonderful.

  The boys found a man in the crowd who was smoking. He gave Herman and Andrzej some tobacco, and he let them roll cigarettes. Cigarettes were a good way to not feel so hungry.

  That day Andrzej and Herman became great friends and traveling companions. They shared their hunger, and Andrzej showed Herman the tricks he could do with Baby.

  The boys had to go to a soup kitchen in Ames to get a meal that day. They had to wait for other boys to finish eating, so they could borrow something to hold soup for themselves. Herman and Andrzej had nothing except a talking bird named Baby.

  They ate out of borrowed paint cans.

  The boys who loaned them their paint cans waited for Herman Weinbach and Andrzej Szczerba to finish their meal.

  You just don’t give away empty paint cans when there’s soup that needs to be ladled out.

  This is the truth. It was America, and America had very little to spare for boys like Herman Weinbach and Andrzej Szczerba.

  Herman was going to California, he said. He told Andrzej about his uncle, a man named Bruno Wojner, who had trained an amazing dog act for a circus.

  The name of the circus act was Bruno’s Amazing and Incredible Dogs. Herman said his uncle, Bruno Wojner, would be very excited about Andrzej’s talking bird, and maybe they could go to work at Bruno’s circus in California.

  Andrzej thought California would be much better than Iowa, even if it was only a different place to starve and be cold, so the boys decided to try to go to California together, and find Uncle Bruno and his amazing dogs.

  They made a pact to stay together—Herman, Andrzej, and Baby.

  Of course, Andrzej never managed to leave Iowa, but the idea was good and romantic. That’s what all Polish boys like when they are seventeen years old: Romantic ideas and somewhere to go.

  Andrzej and Herman ate their soup from paint cans and saved half of their bread for later, and also to feed to Baby.

  Things like this were what made America great: romance, talking birds, eating dinner from paint cans, and setting off with your friend to see the world.

  There was an entire world inside Shann’s silo, which was actually called Eden.

  The world was frozen in time from around 1971.

  That world included telephones wired into the walls. The phones were made from heavy plastic. Their mouthpieces were connected to the machinery of the telephone with tightly corkscrewed rubber cables. The phones had rotary dials on them and illuminated square buttons along their bottoms that were labeled with the names of other extensions within the silo called Eden.

  Not one of us had ever used a phone like the ones we found in the silo.

  I could hear a dial tone in them, and I’m certain I could have figured out how to place a call, but we decided there was no one any of us wanted to talk to, anyway.

  We found out that Shann’s and Robby’s cell phones did not work inside the silo.

  We discovered Eden’s cafeteria, a museum piece in stainless steel and formica.

  There were soda taps behind the buffet lines, with machines that must have been producing ice cubes for several days. The only soda brand I recognized was Coca-Cola. There was also something called Nesbitt’s, which was orange, and another, piss-colored beverage named Vernors. The taps worked. The sodas came out cold and carbonated.

  It was another miracle.

  Free sodas.

  And there was a warehouse filled with food. The food was all boxed in cardboard and contained green cans of just about every imaginable concoction you could eat. There were green foil pouches of peanut butter, and every one of the boxes contained small packs of cigarettes. This was the same kind of stuff the United States of America sent to its troops fighting in Vietnam, cigarettes and all.

  “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz,” I said.

  “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz,” Robby repeated.

  Shann would not compromise her unsteady Lutheranism, most likely because she did not smoke.

  “Robby and I both went to church on Sunday,” I pointed out.

  “I was moving in,” Shann explained. “No one expects you to go to church when you’re unpacking boxes.”

  There were enough boxes in Eden for us to unpack that we’d never have to go to church again.

  GIDEON’S BREEDING RIGHTS

  SHANN’S BEDROOM HAD a door that led into a brick wall and another that dead-ended at the foot of a stairwell. It was what I called a dungeon for horny Polish boys.

  In truth, the silo called Eden went all the way into the foundation of the McKeon House, and the doorways in Shann’s room had been bricked off when the Eden Project work crews finished construction on Dr. Grady McKeon’s subterranean shelter.

  Just as those McKeon Industries scientists back in the 1960s had been playing with self-sustaining universes they trapped inside globes of glass, the bigger enclosed bubble project they’d been working on lay beneath the ground under Shann’s bedroom and stretched beyond the derelict cornfields on Dr. Grady McKeon’s own property.

  Here is what we found: Eden had a gymnasium, a fitness center with polished wood floors and weightlifting equipment, a sauna, and another shower room. There was a small facility for laundry that put the Ealing Coin Wash Launderette to shame in terms of its cleanliness and lack of discarded condoms and cigarette butts on the floor.

  There was even a salon with those old-fashioned hair dryers that looked like brainwashing torture machines from science fiction movies, barber chairs, and haircutting tools.

  Shann looked at her hair in the mirror. As always, it was beautiful, the color of mature wheat in late August. Her skin was perfect and unblemished.

  I said, “Would you like us to do something with your hair?”

  Shann said, “Do either of you guys know anything about hairstyles?”

  And Robby continued our string of unanswered questions with, “Why are you both looking at me? Do you think it’s just natural that I’d be, like, into doing hair and shit?”

  Later, we found Eden’s dormitories. Naturally, I was incapable of wandering through the bedrooms with Shann and Robby without feeling horny and guilty. I wondered if there had ever been threesomes inside Shann’s silo.

  Each room had two double beds. They looked, in style, like hotel rooms, except they lacked bathrooms and toilets, which were all located at the center of a hub of hallways that connected the fitness center and the lecture hall and entry room where we had changed out of our Iowa surface-dweller clothing.

  There wasn’t much room for argument in the discussion we had as we explored the bedrooms: Eden was built to house survivors for the end of the world. We could say the idea was to protect a few human specimens in the event of a nuclear war, but Robby and I knew Eden was probably built for something else entirely.

  The idea that Robb
y and Shann and I were inside some kind of breeding compound for the genesis of an entire new species of humans was particularly thrilling and attractive.

  “If we never came out of Eden, the three of us would be able to start an entire new race of underground Iowans,” I said.

  “Uh.” Robby was unenthusiastic.

  “Well. If we had to,” I offered. “Between you, me, and Shann, we would have enough genetic diversity to not breed two-headed boys and shit like that.”

  I was somehow working into a long-range threesome strategy.

  “Uh,” Robby repeated.

  Shann said, “I bet that’s what Grady McKeon had in mind with the whole idea of Eden: starting everything over.”

  “Everyone who eventually came out would just end up doing the same stupid shit that always happened up there,” I said, and pointed my thumb at the world above us.

  “We should leave a copy of Porcupine’s History of the World down here, just to save mankind the trouble,” Robby said.

  “That would be a good strategy,” I said. “When do you two suppose we might start working on the new species?”

  Shann rolled her eyes and pushed my chest.

  I liked that.

  She also changed the subject: “There must be books or stuff like that down here,” Shann said.

  Robby jumped on one of the beds like it was a trampoline. He said we should all do that, so Shann and I joined him. It was fun. We made a mess of that room. It was ours, anyway. Nobody could stop us.

  I pulled out my little medal of Saint Kazimierz and looked at him and thought about how difficult the boy-saint’s life must have been.

  I hopped down onto the floor. I pulled open the drawers on the nightstands at the head of the double bed Shann and Robby were jumping on. There was a Gideon’s Bible inside, but, naturally, there would be no condoms in Eden.

  Every room had a Gideon’s Bible in it.

  Grady McKeon must have worked some kind of deal with those Gideon people. Maybe he promised to let them leave some sperm down here, besides just a bunch of Bibles, I thought.