Grasshopper Jungle (40 page)

Everything in the village of Poqomchi rattled and shook. Rocks and burning ash from the 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.

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.

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.

“Uh,” I said.

“I wonder if they are going to give us tickets for underage smoking of cigarettes,” Robby offered.

“I wonder if they are going to shoot us for being Truant Rat Boys from Mars,” I said.

The truth is, the two National Guardsmen nearly
did
shoot Robby and me for being Rat Boys from Mars who were also ditching school.

We had no way of knowing that school, like everything else in Ealing, Iowa, had ceased to operate, due to the end of the world, and shit like that.

Coincidentally, Robby Brees and I were both wearing our grimacing lemur masks as we sat in the front seat of the dying Ford Explorer.

One of the guardsmen glowed red.

“Holy shit, Rob,” I said.

“I see it,” Robby concurred.

“What's wrong?” Connie Brees asked from the backseat.

“Nothing,” I said, in the intergalactic teenage response to any question ever asked.

Robby corrected me, “That stocky guy on the left is going to turn into one of those bugs.”

And, from the backseat of Robby's Ford Explorer, Louis finally spoke.

He said, “Shit.”

“How could that
happen
?” I said.

“Those McKeon guys didn't know shit about what they were doing. Their experiment never got outside their lab,” Robby said.

“You deserve a Nobel Prize, Rob,” I said.

I dreamed of going to Sweden with Robby. I hoped he would let Shann come, too.

Connie Brees reached over the seat back and touched Robby's shoulder.

Connie said, “Do you know what's going on, Robert?”

She liked to call her son
Robert
.

I liked the way it sounded, too.

Robby said, “It would take hours to explain, Mom. Austin and I will tell you everything.”

“Uh,” I said.

I did not want Robby and me to tell his mother
everything
.

Robby stopped the car in the middle of the road.

Both of the National Guardsmen showed edgy, wide-eyed alertness. They were obviously uncertain as to how to respond to the two monsters in blue-and-white jumpsuits driving a beat-up Ford Explorer through the ruined town of Ealing, Iowa.

History will show that it is exactly times like these that having a grown-up
and
a golden retriever in the backseat of your Ford Explorer when you are also dressed as a Truant Rat Boy from Mars has potentially lifesaving benefits. The guardsmen, who were armed with M-16s, also thought Connie Brees was very sexy, which provided a considerable anesthetizing influence over our detainers.

An M-16 rifle is the military equivalent of a Colt AR-15. The difference is that the guardsmen's M-16s had thirty-round clips and were fully automatic. Also, unlike Earl Elgin, I did not believe the soldiers would miss Robby and me if they decided to shoot.

CONNIE BREES SHOWED
the soldiers her breasts and FedEx identification badge.

She explained she was taking her “sons” and “husband” to safety in Waterloo.

Robby's mother did not actually expose herself in front of her teenage
sons
, but she did elevate her chest, the way that some women do, as though she were hoisting a battle flag before a lesser enemy.

It made me happy to think of Robby as my brother, but I was not comfortable with the idea of Ah Wong Sing being my father. It was quite obvious that he would have had to be our stepfather, and no son ever likes his stepfather.

That is a fact of history.

The guards' names were Beau Barton and Florencio Villegas.

Beau Barton had a real dynamo of an Iowa name.

Florencio Villegas did not.

Also, Florencio Villegas had somehow been infected by
Contained MI Plague Strain 412E
.