Grasshopper Jungle (34 page)

Here is what I concluded:

All this time, I have been devoting too much thought to the guys who painted the bison on the wall of the cave, and too little attention to the bison itself.

I mean, the bison is the important member of the team, isn't he?

But once the historians put the thing on the wall, it was almost as though every bison for all eternity became doomed to face the hunter's interminable slaughter.

We killed this big hairy thing and this big hairy thing. And that was our day. You know what I mean.

I began to consider the fact that maybe history is actually the great destroyer of free will. After all, if what we blindly believe about history is true—the old cliché admonishing us to learn how
not
to repeat the same shit over and over again—then why do the same shitty things keep happening and happening and happening?

I felt guilty for ever having written anything at all about me, about Robby or Shann, Johnny McKeon, Pastor Roland Duff, Unstoppable Corn, Saint Kazimierz, Krzys Szczerba,
Contained MI Plague Strain 412E
, Andrzej Szczerba, Herman Weinbach, a talking European starling named Baby, Felek Szczerba, Phoebe Hildebrandt, Eva Nightingale, my brother, Eric, and two prostitutes named Tiffany and Rhonda, whom we met on the third-floor balcony at a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

Each of us became a bison on the wall of my own cave.

Paavi Seppanen.

Julio Arguelles.

Everyone on every road that crossed beneath the point of my pen was always going to do the same things over and over and over.

I was confused.

How could I be in love with a girl
and
a boy, at the same time?

I was trapped forever.

You know what I mean.

WELCOME TO EDEN.
Please secure the hatch upon entry.

The repeating message finally stopped.

Whoever had joined Robby and me in Eden closed the hatch after they came inside.

But it was no six-foot-tall praying mantis army of spike-armed killers, nor was it some crazed hermit McKeon Industries Unstoppable Scientist. Our new arrivals in Eden were Shann Collins, her stepfather, Johnny McKeon, and her mother, Wendy McKeon.

Johnny McKeon was carrying the biggest handgun I had ever seen.

Johnny McKeon's Smith & Wesson .500 magnum was made in Massachusetts. A bullet fired from the pistol travels at nearly two thousand feet per second.

“
I wonder if Johnny kills queers
,” Robby whispered.

“Uh,” I said.

Johnny McKeon did not come down into Eden to kill Robby Brees and me.

Shann and her family had come down to Eden because they knew the Unstoppable Soldiers were running wild in Ealing, Iowa.

Robby and I stood in the doorway to the locker room. Ingrid, never one to get too worked up about such things as late-night visitors, sat on the floor between us and yawned.

To Johnny McKeon and his wife, Robby Brees and I must have looked like players in a science fiction movie, dressed as we were in our matching and numbered Eden Project jumpsuits.

Shann Collins, who now officially hated me and Robby Brees, avoided my eyes when I tried to look at her.

“Welcome to Eden, Johnny,” I said. “I think you are safe down here.”

“Uh,” Johnny McKeon said.

Johnny McKeon was pale and shaken. He looked at the gun in his hand, then back at me with an apologetic expression like Johnny McKeon wasn't aware that a gun the size of a small bazooka had somehow attached itself to the palm of his right hand.

“You can't shoot them, anyway,” I said.

“Uh. I know that, Austin,” Johnny McKeon said.

And then Johnny asked, “Are you okay?”

I caught Shann's eye.

Shann Collins had been looking at my face. She turned pale and immediately lowered her gaze. Shann Collins was confused. She was in love with the Polish kid who was also confused.

I said, “Yes. We are okay, Johnny.”

Johnny McKeon walked across the floor of the mudroom and placed his Smith & Wesson .500 magnum on the bench just below the scientist's old windbreaker that had been hanging from a hook on the wall for nearly half a century.

I said, “I suppose it's time for me and Robby to show you what has been going on.”

Shann coughed nervously.

You know what I mean.

WE WERE THE
New Humans.

Johnny McKeon, Shann Collins, and her mother, Wendy Collins McKeon, changed into Eden Project jumpsuits and white scientist socks. Robby and I did not stay in the locker room and watch them change their clothes. Things were weird enough without doing shit like that.

When the newest New Humans joined us in the lecture hall, I pointed out the chalkboard diagram of the development from
412E
, the Unstoppable Corn mold, to the creatures Johnny McKeon had seen fucking and eating earlier that evening in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.

Although we suspected it, Robby and I did not know for certain that there were several more Unstoppable Soldiers up above us in Ealing until we heard it from Johnny McKeon.

Up until that moment, Robby and I had only seen one Unstoppable Soldier, the one that came out of Hungry Jack. Despite that, we did believe the Hoover Boys and Grant Wallace had to have hatched out as well.

Johnny McKeon also confirmed the Unstoppable Soldiers were spawning.

Robby Brees and I had watched all five reels of
Eden Orientation Series
. We knew the world had less than twenty-four hours before every human being on the planet dropped to a lower level on the food chain.

It was not a good level to be on.

“Uh, Rob,” I said. “You still against the paintball idea?”

Robby said, “Uh.”

Johnny McKeon drank Scotch, and Wendy made herself a vodka gimlet at Eden's
Tally-Ho!
, which was the nicest bar in a thirty-mile radius for this part of Iowa.

Things would be better for Johnny and Wendy McKeon if they were drunk.

Robby Brees reached across the bar and nonchalantly grabbed the bottle of Scotch whisky and poured some out into two glasses.

Nobody said anything about it.

Robby said, “
Tally-Ho!
”

Robby Brees and I drank the Scotch whisky. It tasted like hot cinnamon and dried fruit.

Johnny McKeon said, “This Scotch must be sixty years old.”

Johnny McKeon appreciated good Scotch whisky.

“It is like drinking history,” I said.

Johnny said, “Cheers.”

Robby Brees and I got drunk with Johnny McKeon and Shann Collins's mom in Eden. It only took two small glasses of Scotch whisky to make me feel like everything was funny, and I wanted to dance with Robby Brees again.

We lit cigarettes.

Wendy McKeon might have known Robby and I smoked cigarettes, but we had never done it in front of her. She was distant and unaffected by what was going on. Johnny and Shann must have scared the shit out of her with the stories about what they knew was happening in Ealing.

And Johnny and Shann didn't know half of it.

Wendy McKeon was very pretty. Her breasts were tight and sharp beneath the shimmering fabric of her jumpsuit. I wanted to touch them.

Wendy McKeon was Eden 93.

Johnny McKeon was Eden 7.

Wendy McKeon's hair was the color of ground coriander.

I fantasized that somebody would suggest we all have an orgy when we got to the parts of the film where Dr. Grady McKeon commanded us to breed. The Scotch whisky made me feel very horny and confused. I would be the first one to volunteer to strip naked out of my clothes, but Johnny McKeon kind of made me feel nervous.

I could not imagine Johnny McKeon ever having sexual intercourse with Wendy Collins McKeon.

Johnny McKeon was the only person in Eden I did not want to take a shower with at that exact moment.

I realized I was getting a Scotch whisky–fueled erection. I did not believe anyone would approve of my erection at that moment. So I sat at the bar and asked Robby for another cigarette.

Robby knew what I was thinking. He always did.

“
Tally-Ho!
Porcupine,” Robby said.

Robby Brees was drunk. He lit a cigarette for me and passed it to me.

The filter end was just a little bit wet with Robby's spit.

“I'll be danged if they don't have everything you'd ever need down in this place,” Johnny McKeon said.

Johnny McKeon got up from the barstool. He threw a dart at the board that hung on the other side of the pool table.

“I'll be double-danged,” Johnny said, daringly.

“A proper Eden will always have everything a guy could ever need or want, Johnny,” I said.

“That, and the two best rock albums ever made in the history of humankind,” Robby added.

WE TOOK JOHNNY
McKeon and his family on a tour of the silo.

We did not show them the entire
Eden Orientation Series
. Johnny McKeon only wanted to see a portion of the final film. He wanted his wife to know what the creatures he saw at Grasshopper Jungle looked like.

It did not matter. You could not watch five minutes of
Eden Orientation Series
and not witness some experiment with sperm, or shit like that, or hear Dr. Grady McKeon telling us that it was our duty to start having sex.

“My big brother was a nut case,” Johnny McKeon concluded.

“Isn't there television down here?” Wendy McKeon asked. “Maybe there would be something on the news about what's going on.”

It was a good question.

The lack of televisions did not register with me until Wendy McKeon asked about it. We hadn't seen one television set in Eden. I imagined Dr. Grady McKeon concluded that when the Eden Project became a necessary sanctuary for humanity, there would be nothing at all worth watching on any broadcast stations.

New Humans would be without commercial television.

Maybe there was hope, after all.

Dr. Grady McKeon was probably correct about post-apocalyptic television broadcasts, although we eventually did find a bank of five side-by-side televisions that night in Eden's Brain Room.

Here is what happened:

We were all very tired after watching the final few moments of corn eating and three-legged-race running in Reel Five. Shann would neither speak to me nor sit near me inside Eden's theater. I thought Johnny McKeon or Wendy might have seen Shann's behavior as cold or unexpected, but if they did, I could not tell.

I began to think guilty thoughts that maybe Shann had said something to her parents about me. I was confused and frustrated, and I desperately wanted to have an opportunity to speak to Shann.

Robby Brees and I were also drunk. The Scotch whisky made us brave and reckless.

I admitted to Johnny McKeon that we had come up with a plan to kill the Unstoppable Soldiers—a plan involving Robby Brees's blood and the paintball guns that had been stored inside my garage ever since my brother, Eric, went away to join the Marines and have his testicles blown off.

Robby announced that if he could have one more drink of Scotch whisky he would let me take blood from him.

It was all a very ghastly proposition.

I did not think I could actually do something like stick a needle into Robby Brees's arm. The thought of inflicting pain on Robby nearly made me cry. With everything that had been going on in my life that past week, and now with Shann treating me like an enemy, I was an emotional disaster.

Shann's mother, Wendy McKeon, had been a registered nurse before marrying Johnny McKeon and moving to Ealing. She said if she could have one more vodka gimlet, she would draw a few vials of blood from Robby Brees.

I went pale.

Robby went pale.

It was all very ghastly.

The clinic filled with the steaming smell of alcohol breath. There is something about the sterility of clinics that repels everything, as though they are vacuums unto themselves, like the glass globes into which the McKeon scientists trapped all kinds of shit. As soon as the five of us entered the Eden Project clinic, the place absorbed the odors of booze, sweat, cigarettes, and golden retriever.

“I have B.O.,” I said.

Ingrid sighed and curled up on the floor beneath the flat, padded examination table.

“Saint Kazimierz brought a dead girl back to life, and he also made a blind boy see,” I said. I unzipped the top of my jumpsuit and slipped the silver chain over my head. I told Robby he should wear the Saint Kazimierz medal while Wendy McKeon drew blood from him. I put my chain on Robby. He looked scared.

Wendy McKeon told Robby to lie down on the table and strip to his waist. Wendy began opening cupboards and drawers in the clinic, gathering the things she would use to collect blood from Robby Brees.

Robby undid the top of his jumpsuit and slid it down around his hips. He lay there, half naked on the operating table.

“I wonder if those McKeon sickos ever operated on teenagers here,” I said.

Robby said, “Uh.”

I touched the Saint Kazimierz medal and pressed it against Robby's heart.

Wendy put two wadded balls of gauze into Robby's palm and told him to squeeze them.

“I bet that's the first time you ever squeezed someone else's balls in a doctor's office,” I joked.

Robby said, “Shut up, Austin.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Shann was exasperated. She said, “I can't watch this.”

Shann
thud-thudded
in her padded scientist socks out into the hallway.

I wanted to follow her, but I was stuck. I could not just leave Robby alone in the clinic. I looked back and forth, from the door to Robby's pale chest as Wendy McKeon tightened a rubber tube around my best friend's bicep.