Grasshopper Jungle (28 page)

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.

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 was 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.

Sometimes historians need to fill in the blanks on their own. It is part of our job.

You trust us because we are historians.

Historians are reliable blank-fillers.

It is my job.

Hungry Jack's mandibles yawned open. A gooey string of bug saliva hammocked between his jagged side-hinged jaws. The mandibles opened and closed, opened and closed. Hungry Jack wanted to eat me and Ingrid. Hungry Jack pressed his head into the windshield of Robby's Explorer. He tried to bite me through the glass, but he could not figure out what was keeping him from getting me into his mouth.

He bit and bit at the windshield, each time leaving streaks of milky bug spit on the glass.

Ingrid squeezed her way up between the front seats, into my lap, and also tried to bite Hungry Jack through the unyielding windshield.

Bugs are not very smart, but Hungry Jack was persistent.

I reached over to the steering column, but Robby had taken the car keys with him. Of course Robby would have taken the keys. He would have no way to enter the Del Vista Arms without his keys.

I pressed down into the car's horn.

Robby's Ford Explorer was exactly like Ingrid: barkless. The horn did not work.

I pushed Ingrid back and scooted my way deeper into the rear cargo compartment of the car. Hungry Jack whipped his arms up and struck them into the windshield. He was figuring out the puzzle. Cracks starred outward from the impact, fracturing the windshield in every direction, all the way to the rubber gasket frame.

At exactly that moment, Robby Brees stepped out from the foyer at the Del Vista Arms. When I saw Robby, he was standing on the sidewalk with some objects under one arm, only a few feet away from Hungry Jack.