by Andrew Smith
Neither of us said a word.
I was more confused than ever.
I felt terrible for all the things I had selfishly done to Shann and Robby. I shut my eyes and asked Saint Kazimierz to help me.
Outside, I heard Wendy McKeon calling for us in the hallway.
I stuttered guiltily, offering something shitty about bowling a few frames when I saw Robby Brees, Ingrid, and Shann’s parents looking for us in the hallway.
I do not lie, and now I was a liar, too.
Shann and I were mortified with embarrassment.
Robby’s mouth tightened in a disappointed frown. He looked drained and tired.
Robby knew what we did. He could tell.
Robby Brees always knew everything about me.
Robby Brees slipped my silver chain over his head and handed the medallion with Saint Kazimierz back to me.
Robby said, “Thanks for this, Austin. You probably need it more than me now.”
A cigarette was what I needed, but I did not have the guts to say anything to Robby Brees.
I looked at Ingrid and said, “What am I going to do, Ingrid?”
Ingrid yawned, which is what Ingrid always does when she is confused.
I was confused, too.
Johnny McKeon said, “Dang. A dog who understands English. Ain’t that a kick?”
RULES ARE RULES, BUT THE BRAIN ROOM IS NOT PARTICULARLY BRAINY
JOHNNY MCKEON DID not have to try very hard to convince me and Robby that we should wait until daylight before going back to my house for the paintball guns.
Robby Brees and I were going to use my paintball guns and Robby’s blood to kill the Unstoppable Soldiers and save the world.
Nobody wants to go out in the dark with Unstoppable Soldiers on the loose, even if you happen to be hanging around with their God, who is armed with a paintball gun, or shit like that.
I hoped the God of Unstoppable Soldiers was not too upset with me for sneaking away while his blood was being drained so I could have sexual intercourse with Shann Collins on the floor of a bowling alley.
Unlike my great-grandfather, Andrzej Szczerba, I was not testing myself or trying to prove anything.
That was what I told myself, at least.
I was probably wrong.
I mumbled something about wanting to take a shower. I stunk.
Wendy McKeon said that if we had to stay in Eden for a while, we would have to make some kind of rules about when boys could shower and when girls could shower.
It was a ridiculous thing to make a rule about. Wendy McKeon may just as well have made a rule about the rotational speed of the earth.
History shows that as long as there have been human beings on this planet, once you put two of them together, rulemaking will start up before you know it.
“I sometimes take showers with Ingrid,” I confessed.
Ingrid yawned.
We made this stupid rule and this stupid rule.
Boys are not allowed to love each other.
Then we painted a bison on the wall.
I wanted to take a shower. I was sticky and scratchy between my legs. I felt like the abrasive acrylic carpet fibers from the bowling alley were boring into my balls. I had B.O., and I needed to pee really bad.
Everyone else wanted to go to sleep. It was very awkward and nerve-wracking for me, talking about going to bed. I wanted Shann and Robby to sleep in the same room with me. I wanted to hold them both and tell them how sorry I was.
I knew that would not happen. You know, rules, and shit like that.
It was on our way through the hallway of Eden’s dorms that we discovered the Brain Room.
Here is how we discovered it: The door had a brass plaque with etched banker-font letters that said this:
BRAIN ROOM
Robby, Shann, and I did not notice it before when we were running crazy through the sleeping compartments, jumping on beds and not making rules, and shit like that.
“What the heck?” Johnny McKeon said.
“Maybe it’s some kind of command post,” Wendy, Johnny’s wife, offered.
“Uh,” I said. “After watching and listening to Dr. Grady McKeon for about three and a half hours tonight, I would not be surprised if the room on the other side of this door was filled with actual brains.”
“Or sperm,” Robby added.
“Uh,” I said.
I turned red.
Shann was absolutely silent.
Nobody wanted to hear about sperm at that exact moment.
But Robby was actually closer to winning the guess-what-is-inside-the-Brain-Room game.
It turned out there was quite a bit of sperm inside the Brain Room.
Robby Brees, the God of all Unstoppable Soldiers, pushed his way between Johnny McKeon and me. Robby turned the knob on the door.
We went inside Dr. Grady McKeon’s Brain Room.
To be more precise, we went into the receptionist’s office of the Brain Room.
Dr. Grady McKeon kept a secretary. History will verify that his secretary was highly involved in Dr. Grady McKeon’s mission to breed. Dr. Grady McKeon attempted to breed with his secretary on top of her desk, on the floor of the reception area, on the pool table in Eden’s Tally-Ho!, and even on the stainless steel tray caddy in the cafeteria.
Dr. Grady McKeon’s sperm was not very lively. Dr. Grady McKeon’s sperm was not unstoppable. In fact, Dr. Grady McKeon’s sperm never got started.
Dr. Grady McKeon’s secretary’s name was Wanda Mae Rutkowski.
She had a nameplate on her desk that said so.
Moments earlier, Shann Collins and I had sexual intercourse below Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s pink bowling ball and tricolor bowling shoes. Wanda Mae Rutkowski had feet like Godzilla. While my penis was inside Shann Collin’s vagina, I noticed that Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s shoes were women’s size 11.
It is my job to notice accurate details, no matter what is going on.
Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s desk was frozen in time.
“Hey! Gum!” I said.
Wanda Mae Rutkowski left an opened, pale green rectangular package of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum on her desk. There were three sticks left inside the pack. I took one and began chewing it. The texture at first was cardboard-like and somewhat disappointing, but there was still a remarkable double-mintiness locked within the sugary gum.
“Unstoppable Chewing Gum,” I said.
Robby said, “Um.”
I prayed to Saint Kazimierz that he would see to it my balls would not dissolve.
Wanda Mae Rutkowski also had a pack of cigarettes called Virginia Slims. I wanted to smoke one of them. There were two cigarette butts in an ashtray that came from Clement’s Motor Inn in Cedar Rapids. Wanda Mae Rutkowski had cotton candy lipstick. It made me horny thinking about Wanda Mae’s lips. My penis was a real dynamo. I finally settled on names for my balls.
My balls deserved names.
The Virginia Slims cigarettes were menthol, and very thin. They looked like candy.
Wanda Mae Rutkowski obviously enjoyed minty pleasures.
A rotary-dial phone sat on her desk, too. Like the others we had seen in Eden, it had a row of clear plastic buttons across its base.
NEVER LOOK FOR ICE CREAM IN A SPERM FREEZER
“WELL, I’LL BE a monkey’s uncle,” Johnny McKeon said.
I never knew what that meant, but in Dr. Grady McKeon’s case, it would have to mean that someone’s sperm got inside a monkey.
Ingrid yawned.
Johnny McKeon picked up the handset for the phone. “I haven’t seen one of these beauties in a coon’s age.”
In the wild, North American raccoons live approximately three years.
Doublemint gum was invented in 1914.
Krzys Szczerba was twenty-six years old in 1914.
I stuck my stale Doublemint chewing gum under Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s desk.
Johnny McKeon dialed Ollie Jungfrau’s phone number. Ollie Jungfrau could not answer his phone a
t the Del Vista Arms because Ollie Jungfrau had been eaten by Travis Pope on the Kelsey Creek Bridge.
It didn’t matter because the Brain Room’s phone did not connect to phones on the surface of the planet Earth.
“This is only an internal line, I guess,” Johnny McKeon said.
Who would you call after the end of the world, anyway?
“Satan’s Pizza does not deliver in the event of global cataclysm,” I said, adding, “It says so right at the bottom of the placemat menus.”
“I never noticed that,” Johnny McKeon, who had absolutely no sense of humor, said.
Satan’s Pizza would no longer be delivering because Stan, the owner, whose real name was Sevastián Hernandez, had his head removed by Travis Pope’s crushing mandibles earlier that evening.
On the wall behind Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s desk hovered the sun-like golden shield of McKeon Industries’s infinita frumenta! seal. On either side of the seal hung black-and-white, framed photographs of Dr. Grady McKeon with President Richard M. Nixon, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, and CIA Director Richard Helms. There were two other photographs hanging on the wall. The first was a photograph of a man named James Arness, who was a television star in a program about the Wild West. The second was a photograph of Dr. Grady McKeon standing with Pope Paul VI. The inscription on James Arness’s photograph said:
To Grady—Thanks for the Corn!!!
The pope wrote a message across his picture in blue ink:
Dear Grady, This corn is sublime.
Dr. Grady McKeon dissolved the pope’s balls.
Excrementum Sanctum.
Below the Great Seal of McKeon Industries was a small brass plate that read:
SPERM VAULT
IN EDEN, MANKIND IS UNSTOPPABLE!
The seal was actually a door cover to Dr. Grady McKeon’s bank of frozen sperm.
Robby opened the seal door. Behind the door was a heavy steel freezer.
“They have the president’s sperm in there,” Robby said.
“Uh,” I said. “They have the pope’s sperm in there.”
“And James Arness’s,” Johnny McKeon added.
“Oh my!” Wendy McKeon said.
“James Arness was a handsome man. Handsome. My favorite actor, too,” Johnny McKeon offered.
“Maybe there’s some ice cream in there,” Robby suggested.
“Uh,” I repeated. I pushed the Great Seal shut. “Let’s not look for ice cream in a sperm freezer, Rob.”
To the side of Wanda Mae Rutkowski’s desk was a windowless door marked:
PRIVATE
It led to Dr. Grady McKeon’s Brain Room.
A REAL CONCRETE IOWA THINKER
TWO HEADS, WITH four gaping eyes, sat on Dr. Grady McKeon’s desk, staring directly at us when Robby opened the door marked Private.
Shann gasped.
Wendy squeaked.
Johnny McKeon said, “Ain’t that a kick?”
There were two identical grimacing lemur masks inside the Brain Room.
They were the first things we noticed, simply because they looked like severed monster heads resting atop Dr. Grady McKeon’s desk, poised to defend the room against intruders. They were exact matches to the one Robby and I took from the roof of Grasshopper Jungle, only these were cleaner and appeared to be brand-new.
“Grady McKeon must have owned the world’s finest collection of grimacing lemur masks and sperm,” Robby theorized.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“I wonder if they make your face stink,” Robby said.
Shann finally spoke. She was not looking at the grimacing lemur masks. She stared in shocked wonder at the cases along the wall behind her dead stepuncle’s desk.
“What is this stuff?” Shann said.
Johnny McKeon sighed and leaned against his brother’s desk.
Johnny said, “It looks like the same boatload of oddities McKeon Industries had delivered to the store when they packed up and closed down the plant.”
Robby and I tried to play dumb. Johnny McKeon never found out that Robby Brees and I had been inside his office at From Attic to Seller Consignment Store the night Grant Wallace and the Hoover Boys broke in and robbed Tipsy Cricket Liquors. We were not about to tell him, either.
I said, “What is it, Johnny?”
And Robby said, “Uh.”
Here is what we found inside the Brain Room:
There were ten perfect globes of pulsating black Contained MI Plague Strain 412E—more than one for every continent on Earth—enough to ensure the annihilation of the entire human species. And all along the other shelves sat rows of bottles and bottles of deformed, clay-like body parts that had been cultivated from Dr. Grady McKeon’s inadequate sperm in the Human Replication Unit labs. I noticed a foot inside one of the polymer-electric cells. It sprouted long nails that grew all the way to the glass barrier and its toes twitched, which made faint tick-tick! tick-tick! sounds against the jar. And there were oblong cases that contained some of the segmented parts of the first Unstoppable Soldiers that’d been dissolved with Dr. Grady McKeon’s own blood.
It was a deranged carnival sideshow.
Against one of the Brain Room’s walls was a bank of five television sets.
The televisions were absolutely useless, as primitive as kerosene lanterns. Each of them had a numbered dial that went from channel 2 to 13. Johnny McKeon explained to me, Shann, and Robby that at one time, televisions had to be calibrated and tuned by hand. Johnny McKeon told us that people stopped having so many children in Iowa after the invention of the remote control. Johnny said when he was a kid in Iowa, there were only five channels broadcasting, and that none of them was on the air twenty-four hours per day.
“Wow,” I said. “Did they have programs instructing you on how to paint bisons on your walls?”
Johnny said, “I don’t think they had any art classes on TV in those days, Austin.”
Johnny McKeon was a real concrete Iowa thinker.
Johnny turned on one of the televisions. It took the picture tube nearly a minute to light up. There was nothing but monochromatic electric sandpaper on every one of the ratchet-knob channels Johnny McKeon clicked through.
“This is a real beauty,” Johnny said.
“Oh,” I said.
“It sure is,” Robby agreed.
The real prize of the Brain Room was Dr. Grady McKeon’s personal logbook.
The logbook looked like it had been written by a seven-year-old with a dull pencil. Dr. Grady McKeon’s scientific record included undiluted details of every time Dr. Grady McKeon masturbated for one of his experiments, or engaged in coitus with other Eden Project volunteers.
In the frenetic scrawl of a crazed disciple of unstoppability, Dr. Grady McKeon also confessed to flushing Pope Paul VI’s sperm down his Nightingale. The other contributors’ samples soon followed.
Dr. Grady McKeon saw himself as the future King of a New Universe.
Too bad his sperm never worked for anything.
But the logbook also provided relevant pieces of information about the upside-down universe of McKeon Industries Labs.
“It says here,” I said, flipping through the book, “that the lemur masks are detection devices that cause people to glow bright red if they are contaminated with the 412E.”
“That’s cracker-jack science, right there,” Johnny said.
Scotch whisky made Johnny McKeon talkative and enthusiastic, even at the end of the world.
Robby slipped one of the masks over his face and looked around at each of us.
“Red balls,” he said.
“What?” I said. I cupped my hands over my balls.
“On the wall. All the balls look red,” Robby said, pointing to the globes of 412E. “But we are all a boring shade of blue.”
I remembered how, the night I slipped away on my mother’s blue kayaks in Robby Brees’s bedroom at the Del Vista Arms, when I put his lemur mask on my face, it made Robby appear to turn blue.
&
nbsp; I would not say that it was a boring shade, however. Robby Brees could never be a boring blue.
“And the best part is,” Robby continued, “this one does not make my face stink!”
NIGHTTIME IN EDEN
SHANN COLLINS, HER mother, Wendy McKeon, and stepfather, Johnny, all stayed in one room together.
We said good night in the hallway. I tried to catch Shann’s eye, but she was nervous and shy—not like Shann at all.
We should not have had sexual intercourse.
It was an unstoppable mistake.
History will show that teenagers are unstoppable horny dynamos once the jumpsuits come off. I knew that well enough after living through the week when the world ended in Ealing, Iowa.
The Collins-McKeons slipped into their room and shut the door.
Then Robby quietly said good night to me and went inside one of the rooms by himself.
“Hey—” I said.
Robby did not want to talk to me.
“What am I going to do, Ingrid?”
I did not know what to do. Everything was a mess. I was in love with my two best friends, and I was making them both miserable at the same time. And there were big horny bugs up above us that were eating the whole planet.
I walked away from the dormitory rooms, carrying Dr. Grady McKeon’s logbook.
Ingrid followed me into the locker room.
Ingrid lay on the tile floor and watched me while I took a shower.
Afterward, I put my boxers on and dropped my jumpsuit into the Eden Launderette. I sat on the washing machine while it ran, and I remembered how Robby Brees had told me the Ealing Coin Wash Launderette was like a vacation in Hawaii compared to the Del Vista Arms’s laundry room.
I left my Eden 5 jumpsuit there, tumbling and tumbling in the dryer, then found my way into my own, lonely sleeping compartment, which happened to be the messy one—the room where Robby, Shann, and I had jumped on the beds.
I sighed and sat down.
I wrote until I fell asleep with the lights on.
Tucked inside Dr. Grady McKeon’s personal logbook, I found a 1971 brochure that featured Cypress Gardens’s water ski team and a creased glossy photograph of Wanda Mae Rutkowski.