Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

  Hungry Jack flitted down to the lot from the rooftop of the car park.

  I saw him first.

  Through the lenses on my grimacing lemur mask, a brilliant flash of red caused me to momentarily consider that I had indeed ignited the flammable, carcinogenic, messed-up-sperm-causing mask with my Benson & Hedges cigarette.

  Hungry Jack looked like a ball of flame as he flew down from the awning above the car park.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “These things really do work.”

  I was impressed by the technology of the grimacing lemur mask.

  Unfortunately, I should have been more impressed by the speed with which Hungry Jack closed the distance between us.

  It was also impressive how Hungry Jack picked me up by my head. Until that moment, I had never in my life been picked up by my head. I did find myself marveling for an instant at how well the grimacing lemur mask protected my skull from the piercing barbs of the studded spikes all along Hungry Jack’s tri-segmented pincers.

  But it was only an instant.

  Then I screamed.

  And while I was screaming, Hungry Jack unhinged his bear-trap mandibles in order to crush my Rat Boy skull. I looked over at Robby, thinking my beautiful friend, a person I loved very much but had also inflicted a great deal of pain upon, was going to be the last image burned into the screens of my dying eyes.

  Robby Brees stood there, looking more cool and superhero-ish than any Lutheran boy from Iowa ever did, calmly smoking a cigarette while his eyes, which were the color of robin egg Cadbury chocolate Easter treats, focused directly on the monster that was just about to eat my head.

  Robby raised his paintball gun and let go a burst of three rounds that splattered into Hungry Jack’s mouth and compound eyes.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  The paintballs gushed.

  The Unstoppable Soldier received a faceful of the blood of his God.

  Fortunately, this caused Hungry Jack to release his vise clamp on my head. I hit the ground, and Hungry Jack reeled away from the concussion of the blast.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit! Holy shit!” was all I could say.

  Excrementum Sanctum.

  And while Unstoppable Soldiers’ exoskeletons are as impenetrable as the hull on an aircraft carrier, the blood of their God rusts every rivet in their construction, and sinks them on the spot.

  “Glad we didn’t have to use my sperm,” Robby said.

  “Uh,” I said, dazed, on my hands and knees in the parking lot at the Del Vista Arms. “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz. And thank you, Robby Brees.”

  Louis, whose real name was Ah Wong Sing, cowered in the doorway to the dumpster corral.

  Hungry Jack hissed and gurgled.

  The Unstoppable Soldier looked confused, if such an expression could manifest itself on the face of a six-foot-tall beast that looked like a praying mantis. Hungry Jack’s left arm fell off first. The right arm disjointed and plunked down onto the ground seconds later. The tooth-spiked claw arms rattled around on the pavement of the parking lot, spastically opening and closing, opening and closing, as they scraped along the ground with no coherent mission.

  Where the claw arms had detached from Hungry Jack’s thorax, a gooey stream of slick yellow fluid burbled like twin pots of boiling unstoppable cornmeal mush. Then Hungry Jack’s chin lowered and his head rolled away from his body, landing on the ground between the two flailing arms.

  What was left of Hungry Jack scampered away on four gangly legs, which soon became three, then two, and the entire Unstoppable Soldier collapsed in puddles of oily mush.

  Robby Brees saved my life.

  Being a historian naturally has its dangers, but this is my job.

  I tell the truth.

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  AT THE CONCLUSION of the First Battle of Ealing, which took place in a parking lot at the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments, the Unstoppable Soldier that had once been growing inside a homeless man named Hungry Jack lay in a soupy yellow mess of jumbled bug parts.

  At that moment, there were only three Unstoppable Soldiers remaining on the surface of the planet called Earth. They were Tyler Jacobson, Travis Pope, and Travis Pope’s wife, Eileen, who had filled Duane Coventry’s house on Onondaga Street with a jellied, pulsating black goo of fertilized eggs.

  Robby Brees and I, the two Rat Boys from Mars who were the only people capable of saving the planet called Earth, had no way of calculating how many other Unstoppable Soldiers there were, and no way of knowing where to look for them.

  So Robby put on his grimacing lemur mask and the two of us entered the hallway of the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments. Ingrid, my silent golden retriever, and Louis, the equally silent cook from the most certainly closed-down Pancake House, cautiously followed.

  We were there to save Robbie’s mom, Connie Brees.

  “Aaah!” screamed Eunice Mayhew when Robby Brees and I entered the hallway of the Del Vista Arms.

  Eunice Mayhew was the manager of the Del Vista Arms. At the exact moment Robby and I stepped through the entrance that led in from the parking lot, Eunice Mayhew was posting two more Pay or Quit notices on locked doors to silent apartments.

  Eunice Mayhew did not glow red.

  Eunice Mayhew was fifty-three years old. She had a figure like an upended pickle barrel, and was just about the same height. Her hair was the color of cigarette ash, and her skin had a similar hue to the gritty waterline around Robby Brees’s bathtub, where I’d showered after spending the night with Robby earlier that week. I know that you would not eat either one of those things: cigarette ash or the ring inside Robby Brees’s bathtub.

  I also do not believe an Unstoppable Soldier would eat Eunice Mayhew.

  “Aaah!” Eunice Mayhew screamed again. She threw her hands up, in what I suppose was the intergalactic gesture of I surrender to the conquering Rat Boys from Mars.

  If somewhere there existed entire planets of Eunice Mayhews, Robby Brees and I could rule the cosmos.

  Eunice Mayhew is also a very solid Iowa name.

  A name like Eunice Mayhew says Sperm met egg in Iowa, and zygote grew up to become a bingo-playing, quilting square-dancer with a body like an upended pickle barrel.

  At the exact moment Eunice Mayhew screamed and two Rat Boys from Mars occupied the hallway at the Del Vista Arms, Shann Collins was lying down on her bed inside the Eden Project silo.

  Shann was scared, and she was crying, too.

  Wendy and Johnny McKeon assumed their daughter was crying because Shann was scared about the monsters, and worried about her friends who had gone out hunting the beasts.

  It was not exactly why Shann Collins was crying.

  Earlier, Shann and Johnny had crawled up to the surface in order to use their cell phones.

  There was no more cellular service at all in Ealing, Iowa.

  Shann and Johnny saw the forest-like columns of smoke that ringed the horizon.

  They had gone back inside Eden, and Shann slipped into her bedroom, where she lay down on her bed and cried.

  The night before, Shann Collins and I had sexual intercourse on the floor of the Eden bowling alley while I stared at a pair of shoes that had belonged to Wanda Mae Rutkowski.

  The healthy Polish sperm I deposited inside Shann Collins’s vagina found its way to a receptive egg.

  Shann Collins was already pregnant, and she did not know anything about it.

  The New Universe began in Eden one week after the end of the world began in Ealing.

  Eden Five needed us, and Shann Collins and I were Adam and Eve to every New Human.

  I had Unstoppable Sperm.

  Dr. Grady McKeon would have been very pleased.

  As Shann Collins, who was pregnant with a strong Polish boy who was going to be named Arek Andrzej Szczerba, cried on her bed, a volcano called Huacamochtli in Guatemala exploded in a massive eruption that blacked out the sun.

  Everything in the village of Poqomchi rattled and shook. Rocks and burning ash from t
he angry sky bombarded the little village. Robby’s father, Robert Brees Sr., his wife, Greta, and two-year-old son, Hector, tried to leave their small home. Robert Brees Sr. could not start his car. The car’s motor was strangled in the steaming ash that turned everything into a dead gray night. Robert, Greta, and Hector Brees choked in the noxious smoke. They covered their faces with damp cloths and began walking away from their small house.

  It was not a good idea.

  In a cave in Spain, at a place called Altamira, a painted bison lay folded in death, his nose pressed to the ground, mouth open, one tired and defiant eye staring and staring and staring. He had been staring that way for fifteen thousand years, neither dead nor alive, trapped by history with his nameless balls pressed down into the ground between his curled hind legs.

  Altamira means high view.

  At exactly that moment, the vice president of the United States of America was being escorted through Eric Christopher Szerba’s hospital room in Germany. The vice president of the United States of America patted my brother’s shoulder and said to him, “The United States of America thanks you, son.”

  The vice president of the United States of America did not know anything at all about what was happening in Iowa, but he did know that Eric Christopher Szerba had lost his balls.

  It made the vice president of the United States of America uncomfortable to think about a healthy young boy like Eric Christopher Szerba losing his balls to a bomb blast in Afghanistan. The vice president did not know exactly what to say to Eric.

  What can you say to a kid who lost his balls?

  All the boys at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy already knew there was no good answer to that. We all learned that lesson when EJ Elgin’s ball was torn off by a whale.

  The vice president of the United States of America was very pleased that his own balls, which he had named Theodore and Franklin, were just fine.

  At exactly that moment, three massive National Guard helicopters flew at very low altitude directly over the Del Vista Arms Luxury Apartments.

  The darkened hallway where we stood rattled and shook.

  “Don’t be afraid, Mrs. Mayhew,” Robby said. “It’s just me. Robby Brees.”

  Eunice Mayhew kept her hands up. She recognized Robby’s voice.

  Anyone who knew Robby Brees would recognize his voice. Robby’s voice was perfect and smooth. Robby Brees’s voice sounded the way soft vanilla ice cream feels and tastes inside your mouth on a blistering summer day, and when he sang, Robby Brees could make a lump form in my throat.

  Eunice Mayhew cocked her head like a confused, barrel-shaped Orpington hen.

  She said, “Something crazy is going on around here, Robby. Was that you and your friend dressed up like giant bugs this morning?”

  “No, ma’am,” Robby answered. “Uh. My friend . . . uh . . . Austin and me were only dressed up like lemurs.”

  “Rat Boys from Mars,” I corrected.

  Robby left the key to his apartment hanging from the ignition switch in his Ford Explorer. He knocked and knocked on the door to his apartment.

  “Mom,” Robby said to the door, “wake up! I left my keys in the car! Mom! You need to let me in!”

  Connie Brees was asleep.

  She did not expect her son, Robby, to be dressed as a Rat Boy from Mars. It was Friday morning, and Robby was supposed to be dressed up as a Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy Boy from Iowa. Connie Brees also did not expect her son to be accompanied by a second Lutheran Rat Boy from Mars, a golden retriever that could not bark, and Louis, the cook from The Pancake House, with whom she had sexual intercourse using condoms she found on the floor of her sixteen-year-old son’s bedroom just the day before.

  It was obvious Connie Brees did not expect any of this because she was wearing nothing but low-cut silk panties and a pale violet plunge bra.

  Connie Brees had very large tits and fine golden strands of silky fuzz that lay smooth and flat between her navel and the waistband on her panties.

  Connie Brees’s skin was the color of perfectly prepared, soft and warm buttered toast. Her eyes matched Robby’s, and her hair, which fell softly over her bare shoulders, was the color of apple spice cake.

  “Uh,” I said.

  Robby’s mother made me very horny. I definitely wanted to invite her to Eden.

  I was not so sure about taking Louis, though.

  Wendy McKeon’s pancakes were just fine.

  I wondered if Robby Brees would disapprove if I had sexual intercourse with his mother. I already knew how much it hurt his feelings that I had done it with Shann Collins.

  I sighed. I was very confused.

  Robby Brees was a good son. He did not have to be a good son. Nobody would expect it of him, unless you really knew Robby, and maybe loved him, too.

  Connie Brees did not glow red.

  Robby took off his grimacing lemur mask and kissed his mother. They held each other like they knew everything that had ever happened on every road that crossed beneath our feet.

  I was happy for Robby and Connie Brees.

  PICTURES OF ROBBY AND SHANN

  HERE ARE TWO pictures I drew the week the world ended:

  Robby Brees is sitting on the floor of his bedroom. He leans back on his elbows and there is a half-empty bottle of sweet white wine standing open beside his hip.

  Robby is not wearing a shirt. In the picture, which was drawn on Monday night, Robby Brees is wearing nothing but some tight, white cotton underwear with colorful tigers printed on them.

  His chest is square and flat, and his belly relaxed and soft. The perspective of the picture is from where I sit, cross-legged and in my socks, on top of Robby’s bed.

  I am floating.

  We are laughing.

  There is a cigarette held between the first two fingers of Robby’s right hand, which comfortably rests on his belly.

  The paper I draw on in my history book still smells of our cigarettes and wine.

  Robby’s skin reminds me of the warm insides of a late-summer white peach. Those peaches are named Babcock. Robby’s hair is the color of graham cracker piecrust.

  I can almost hear the music playing from Robby’s stereo.

  Robby is smiling, and we are reciting our favorite poems above the jangling vocals on a song called Live With Me.

  The picture makes me feel like I am floating again.

  Shann Collins sits on the staircase that leads to nowhere from her bedroom in the McKeon House. She is framed in an open doorway above, and narrow walls of distressed brick to either side of her.

  The perspective is from below, looking up at Shann Collins from her dungeon for horny Lutheran boys. I draw it so her shorts, as they did, gap open just a bit, and there is a mysterious centering to the warm spot between Shann Collins’s legs. I think about her pubic hair and the moistness in that perfect locus.

  It is history.

  It is the truth.

  Shann’s blouse opens slightly between the third and fourth button. I can almost smell the ginger and orange blossom lotion she smooths on her skin. Her hair is summer wheat and her skin is the color of a perfect October butternut squash. Shann Collins is smiling and her eyes are scolding.

  I imagine I am explaining to her every wrong I have ever committed.

  There is nothing I can do.

  It is my job to tell the truth.

  The picture makes me feel like the luckiest boy at the Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy End-of-Year Mixed-Gender Mixer, and it is the first time Shann Collins has ever danced with me. It makes me feel like seventh-grade Austin Szerba, whose best friend, Robby Brees, teaches him in secret how to dance with someone you love.

  History will show that eighth-grade boys are never aware of the roads they have built, nor the ones they are standing on.

  I love Shann Collins so much I am afraid it is killing me.

  I love Robby Brees the same way.

  I am an unstoppable train wreck to their lives.

  THE INTERGALACTIC BUG CO
PS

  ROBBY’S FORD EXPLORER was running out of gas.

  It was a matter of reasonable debate, which would happen first: Would the gas run out, or would the old car simply give up and die?

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! went the thrown rod inside the Ford’s crankcase.

  We left the Del Vista Arms with two new citizens for Eden: Connie Brees and Louis, whose real name was Ah Wong Sing.

  I thought Eden would be too crowded now. I did not want any more boys down there. Eden was only big enough for me and Robby Brees. I could make allowances for Johnny. It was selfish, I know, but it was how I felt.

  That is the truth.

  While Robby drove away from the Del Vista Arms, I plucked up my Saint Kazimierz medallion and put it into my mouth.

  We’d found a chapel in Eden. It was little more than a small broom closet, but it had a church-like appearance. There is a particular kind of angle and aesthetic to all churches. The same quality is exhibited by coffins and urinals—you know what function they serve as soon as you see them.

  These are the things that require neither signs nor labels.

  Churches, coffins, and urinals all proclaim, This is what I am.

  No questions asked.

  At the exact moment Robby and I drove away with Louis, Connie Brees, and Ingrid, my golden retriever, in the backseat, I decided that I was going to become a Catholic, like I was always supposed to be—like all the Szczerba men always had been.

  Saint Kazimierz’s blood was in me, even if he did die a virgin.

  Saint Kazimierz brought a dead girl to life, and he saved me from having my skull crushed by Hungry Jack.

  “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz,” I said.

  Near Amelia Jenks Bloomer Park, two National Guard soldiers stood in the road beside an armored vehicle. They waved their hands at us, palms forward in the intergalactic gesture of We have guns, so you better stop, motherfucker.

  We should have known the intergalactic bug cops would show up.

  “Um,” Robby said.