Grasshopper Jungle (20 page)

I knew I would have to pee in that thing.

My destiny was calling.

Once again, every highway that had ever been laid was intersecting right at my feet. I rubbed the Saint Kazimierz medal against my chest and thanked the virgin boy.

Robby had opened some of the lockers. They all contained identical sets of supplies: clean towels and shower kits with soap and razors, fresh white-and-blue nylon jumpsuits that zipped up the front, sealed packages of white socks, and cloth caps, all of which had been embroidered in blue and gold thread with the McKeon Industries Scientific Labs Department logo.

All the jumpsuits were numbered and said
Eden
on their chests.

“I wonder if we should change our clothes or shit,” Robby said.

“If there's one in there that says
Eden 5
, I am putting it on,” I decided.

Robby waved a hanger like a banner in front of me. On the left chest, the jumpsuit said this:

E
DEN
5

“This is like some kind of sign or shit,” I said.

THE UNIFORM MADE
me look like someone who worked at a place that sold hot dogs and ice cream cones.

I stripped down to my boxers and slipped myself hurriedly inside the jumpsuit. Shann and Robby gave in to their desire to conform. All teenagers really want to be exactly alike, so why wouldn't they?

Shann and Robby put on uniform jumpsuits as well.

Watching Shann and Robby take off their clothes made me realize that nylon jumpsuits were also not very good at hiding erections. Saint Kazimierz kept me strong.

I wanted a cigarette.

Shann Collins was Eden 49.

Robby Brees became Eden 133.

We put on our white caps and socks. We were an army now.

There were a lot of lockers down there, enough to find suits that fit us perfectly. Enough to last forever.

“Do you think this place would explode or shit if we smoked down here?” I asked.

Robby said, “I was wondering the same thing, Porcupine.”

The place did not explode.

I noticed there were ashtrays built into the walls of the locker room. Everyone smoked in the 1970s, especially in Iowa. Who wouldn't smoke if you were sealed underground and the world above was going down a cosmic shithole?

Walking silently over the cool, slick floor in our brand-new McKeon Industries Scientific Labs Department white socks, we left the locker room through the only hatched doorway at the opposite end from the entry.

We came out into a massive auditorium with rows of cushioned seats that all faced a podium and rolling blackboards at the front of the room.

It was like a lecture hall.

The stage area was lit up in track lights that pointed down at the lectern, so the audience's attention would be focused on whoever might be up there telling them all the important shit they needed to know.

On one of the chalkboards behind the speaker's podium, a diagram had been drawn.

It looked like this:

412E
HUMAN BLOOD HOST
LARVAL STAGE
METAMORPHOSIS
SEXUAL REPRODUCTION
INFESTATION

It was just like biology class with pollywogs.

I hated biology, and as far as I know, pollywogs cannot destroy the world. Then again, I never paid attention in biology class unless the teacher was talking about sexual reproduction with humans.

Our ninth-grade biology teacher at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy was named Mrs. Edna Fitzmaurice. She had a mustache and would not tolerate nervous giggling when she said a word like
penis
or
vagina
. Edna Fitzmaurice's main function at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy was to make teenagers morbidly terrified of sex.

History lesson: Over the course of centuries in the history of education, although fought valiantly by endless armies of pedagogues, the attempt to frighten teenagers away from sex has proven to be a losing battle.

The lecture hall had multiple sets of doorways leading out from each of its three curved walls. There was so much for us to explore. The place was easily five times larger than the McKeon House where Shann lived, maybe bigger than that.

The first door we opened took us into a type of lounge. It looked like a television set from a 1960s-era family comedy, with low, straight-backed sofas perched on narrowly tapered birchwood peg legs, shag carpeting, and coffee tables shaped like kidney beans. On one of the tables was an assortment of magazines. They were perfectly unwrinkled, dustless, hardly touched. The most recent date on any of the magazines was 1971.

There were framed photographs on the walls: an image of the flag of the United States of America planted on the surface of the moon, the faces of presidents carved into Mount Rushmore, a herd of longhorn cattle, what apparently were Iowa cornfields, Willie Stargell swinging at home plate in the 1971 World Series, and a black-and-white picture of President Richard Nixon and his family, taken in the White House in front of a fireplace, and a painting of President George Washington. It was everything that made America worth living in an underground cave for, while the rest of the world went entirely to shit.

That was our day. You know what I mean.

And there was a cigarette machine in the lounge.

Discovering it had an almost religious impact on Robby and me.

“Thank you, Saint Kazimierz,” I said.

I pulled my medal out from my jumpsuit and kissed the saint.

“You're going to go to hell for turning Catholic,” Robby said.

Robby pulled one of the levers on the machine. Out popped a red pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and a book of matches that advertised how you could get into art school by drawing a cute little fawn named Winky.

You did not need to put money into the machine to get cigarettes out of it.

It was a miracle.

Robby said, “Thank you, Saint Kazimierz.”

We sat on one of the couches and smoked.

The Pall Mall cigarettes were a little stale, but they were free.

I had read somewhere that cigarette manufacturers during the 1970s also put saltpeter in their tobacco. I wondered if Americans had fewer erections during the 1970s than during other decades. Apparently, the saltpeter in my Pall Mall was not having much of an effect on my penis. I sat beside Shann and rubbed her leg with mine. The jumpsuits felt very nice. I put my hand on her neck. We kissed, and I slipped my tongue into Shann's mouth.

I believed Robby was a better kisser than me. I tried to kiss Shann like Robby would.

Robby watched us. He was not bothered at all by what I was doing with Shann.

He got up from the couch and went over to the wall, where a built-in shelf surrounded an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. There was a big spool of tape that had been left threaded across the machine's playheads.

Robby pressed the power button and the two level-meter windows on the bottom of the machine flickered with yellow light. There were red needles that looked as fine as strands of horsehair, and they pricked up inside each window. Robby flipped a switch. It made a soft click, and the reels jerked and spun.

Music came from everywhere around us.

It was a recording of the Rolling Stones's album,
Let It Bleed
.

Robby said, “Oh, hell yes.”

Robby danced and smoked.

He was such a great dancer. It was just like when he taught me how to dance in his room at the Del Vista Arms so I could win Shann's attention when we were in seventh grade. I wanted to dance with Robby, too.

Robby said, “I never want to leave Shann's silo.”

Mick Jagger sang Gimme Shelter.

History will show that Gimme Shelter is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. It sounded so beautiful down inside Shann's silo. Robby danced in his jumpsuit, which he had unzipped all the way past his belly button, so you could see his brightly colored, non-plaid, non-Iowa boxers. They had pictures of ice cream cones with rounded scoops of colorful ice cream melting down the diamond-patterned waffle cones in suggestive drips.

Robby always had the coolest boxers.

He waved his hands around and tilted his cigarette daringly from his lips.

Oh, a storm is threatening

My very life today.

I got up and danced with Robby there in my jumpsuit and socks on the thick shag carpeting in the lounge room. It all felt very good. Shann joined us. The three of us danced together. It made me very horny.

I said, “I never want to leave Shann's silo.”

Shann smiled and danced between Robby and me.

We were in Eden.

Eden needed us.

All roads crossed on our dance floor.

WE DANCED AND DANCED.

The tape played. We were sweaty and hypnotized, and we lost ourselves as the music fell all around, washing over us.

I said, “I love you, Shann. I love you, Robby.”

What was I going to do?

Shann and Robby smiled at me.

Shann combed her fingers through my wet hair. Robby touched my hand with his.

We danced and danced.

And while I danced with Robby and Shann below the ground, things happened in the world above.