Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

  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.”

  Robby shrugged.

  We both knew what we were thinking about.

  Robby said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I turned around and patted Ingrid again. I tried not to be nervous about things, but my head was swimming, drowning actually, in uncertainty. I unzipped the top of my jumpsuit and played with the Saint Kazimierz medal that hung from my neck.

  And then I whispered, “What am I going to do, Ingrid?”

  Robby ran around the front of the car and disappeared inside the Del Vista Arms.

  I thought about Shann Collins, and how she told me I was disgusting.

  At exactly that moment, Ollie Jungfrau was killing aliens in an online space-shooter game. He was sitting up in his bed, in his underwear, with his laptop resting on his thighs. Ollie had eaten a large pizza and drank five cans from a six-pack of Dr Pepper. Tiny speckles of pizza sauce dotted Ollie’s swollen breasts. Ollie Jungfrau needed to piss, but he did not want to get up from bed. He tried to calculate whether he could get away with peeing in his empty Dr Pepper cans. Ollie Jungfrau decided trying to do that might cut his penis, which he could not actually see due to the roll of his belly, or it might cause him to piss in his own bed. Ollie had pissed in his bed before, when he was too tired to get up and walk to the toilet. Ollie Jungfrau got up. He walked past his window and looked down at the street.

  Ollie Jungfrau saw Robby Brees running around the front of a Ford Explorer parked in front of their apartment building. Ollie hated Robby Brees because Robby was gay, and Ollie knew it, and also because Robby was so young and good-looking. Ollie wished Robby Brees would fall down, trip on the curb or shit like that, but Robby was also coordinated and balanced.

  Ollie Jungfrau hated young, good-looking, coordinated kids. Especially ones like Robby Brees, who were gay.

  Ollie Jungfrau’s eye caught the movement of something farther down the street in the dark. Ollie Jungfrau’s eyes were good at noticing quick movements. That was how he killed so many aliens in the game he played every day. The motion Ollie detected was not caused by an alien, however.

  Ollie Jungfrau saw the dark form of an Unstoppable Soldier crossing the street ahead of Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer. He saw the creature just as Robby disappeared into the foyer at the Del Vista Arms.

  The Unstoppable Soldier, a six-foot-tall mantis thing with spike-studded arms, was Hungry Jack.

  Hungry Jack was hungry again.

  I sat inside Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer. I was turned toward the backseat, stroking Ingrid’s fur and flipping the silver Saint Kazimierz medallion with my left hand. Ollie Jungfrau did not know the Polish kid he sold cigarettes to and called Dynamo was down there in the gay kid’s car on the street.

  Ollie Jungfrau stood at his window, frozen in fright. He was in his boxers and socks, and he was standing in a puddle of his own steaming piss.

  Ollie’s piss had the slight smell of garlic and Dr Pepper.

  And at the same time that Ollie Jungfrau was urinating down his bread dough thighs, watching in horror as Hungry Jack scampered like a metal windup puppet through the dark toward me and Ingrid while we sat in Robby’s car, Duane Coventry, the chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, put down his glass meth pipe after smoking three peanut-sized rocks of crystal.

  Duane Coventry sat completely naked at his computer. The chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy could look at pornography for endless hours when he smoked meth. The only thing that sometimes interfered with viewing pornography, which frequently lasted until daybreak, was if Duane Coventry turned the computer’s camera on himself. Then Duane Coventry used his monitor as a mirror, so he could study his face, scratch at it, pick spots out of his skin that were not there, until he made them real with his own yellowed fingernails.

  That was what Duane Coventry was doing at the exact moment Ollie Jungfrau was pissing himself, and Hungry Jack was click-stepping toward the smell of Robby Brees and the food-meat things that sat inside Robby’s car. Duane Coventry was picking his face, naked, seated at his computer, picking and picking and picking.

  Duane Coventry thought he left his doors and windows open. Duane Coventry always had to check his doors and windows whenever he smoked his meth. He stood up, took a step toward the front door of his small Iowa house. Then Duane Coventry turned around and grabbed his pipe. He burned the amber residue inside the little glass globe and inhaled deeply.

  Duane Coventry forgot why he’d been standing up. He sat down again and began picking his face.

  Every night Duane Coventry smoked methamphetamine was exactly like this.

  Nobody knew anything about Duane Coventry.

  Duane Coventry wanted to look at pornography and masturbate, but he needed to check his doors and windows. Duane believed people were always outside, always watching him.

  Duane Coventry went into his kitchen, where he’d been cooking methamphetamine for over a year without anyone knowing about it.

  Duane Coventry loved methamphetamine more than he could ever love anything else.

  He checked the door that opened onto the kitchen porch.

  It was locked.

  Duane Coventry walked through the small living room and checked the windows behind his sofa. The windows were latched secure. Then he checked his front door. The front door had not been closed all the way.

  Scrawled into the plasterboard wall, all down along both sides of Duane Coventry’s front door were letters and numbers. They were license plate tags from cars Duane Coventry saw outside his house whenever he smoked meth.

  There were exactly 464 different license plate numbers etched into Duane Coventry’s living room wall. Duane Coventry knew there was always someone out there watching him, waiting for him.

  When Duane Coventry opened the front door, he stepped outside. As soon as Duane Coventry went outside his little Iowa house, he strained to think about why he was going out into the night. He had forgotten what he needed to do, but Duane Coventry, our chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, did realize he was completely naked.

  He thought that maybe he was supposed to check to be certain his car doors had been locked.

  Duane Coventry’s car was parked in the driveway beside a hedge of rosebushes.

  Duane walked across the yard toward his car.

  It wa
s not a good idea.

  Tyler Jacobson and Roger Baird had caught up to the exhausted Eileen Pope, who was trying to find something as big as an empty house or a garage in which to lay her millions of fertilized eggs. Roger Baird had Eileen Pope pinned down. He was fucking her on the lawn just beyond Duane Coventry’s rose hedge. Roger Baird was doing one of the only two things Unstoppable Soldiers ever want to do. Eileen Pope was too tired to eat Roger Baird. Tyler Jacobson was tired and hungry. Tyler Jacobson smelled Duane Coventry’s sweat as soon as the meth smoker opened his front door.

  Duane Coventry looked over the hedge and saw the three monstrous things in the grass of his lawn.

  Duane Coventry said, “Big fucking bugs.”

  That is exactly what they were.

  Tyler Jacobson, Roger Baird, and Eileen Pope were the materialization of a meth smoker’s most horrible delusion: gigantic bugs with jagged bear-trap mandibles and folded claw-arms prickled with mountain ranges of knife-blade, triangular teeth.

  In the last second of his life, Duane Coventry felt a sort of jubilant vindication: He had been right after all this time. There really were horrible things waiting to get him outside his house.

  Duane Coventry was right.

  Tyler Jacobson left little more than a few dime-sized bloodstains from the meal he made of the chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy.

  Tyler Jacobson was unstoppable.

  And at exactly that moment, Ingrid’s ears perked up.

  If Ingrid were a normal dog that hadn’t lost her throat’s barking mechanism to cancer, Ingrid would have barked and barked.

  Ingrid heard and smelled the monster named Hungry Jack as he got right up next to Robby’s old Ford.

  I scratched Ingrid’s ears.

  I said, “What’s wrong, Ingrid?”

  I turned away from her and I saw the triangular, glistening head of the giant bug that stared at me, fascinated, watching me through the windshield of my best friend’s car.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  I am not certain that is exactly what I said, but I did say something.