I smoke cigarettes. I hate church. But one day, after I talk to my father about my confusing sexual impulses, I will change my name back to Szczerba.
My father’s name was Eric Andrew Szerba. My mother was Connie Kenney before she married him.
People from Iowa like vowels and rhymes.
Lutherans in Iowa like John Deere tractors and big breakfasts on Saturdays.
Usually, my dad would only have to stand outside my door and speak my name to get me out of bed for our Saturday breakfast. That morning, the morning after Robby and I went up on the roof of the Ealing Mall to find some shit, my father had to come into my room and shake my shoulder.
“You stink, Austin,” my father, whose name was Eric, told me.
“I have B.O.,” I agreed.
“Ingrid needs to shit,” my father said.
That was how we told each other good morning that day.
I sat up.
I would have gotten out of bed, but I realized I was naked under the sheet. I’d taken everything off when I finished writing, when I went to bed.
No sixteen-year-old boy wants to stand up naked in front of his father.
I thought about my decision to talk to him. I wanted to ask him if maybe he was confused about sexual attraction when he was my age. Or if maybe he was still confused about sexual attraction. Experimenting. Things falling into place. Where else would things fall, if not a place? It’s not like things are just going to float away. Gravity works. Dr. Grady McKeon certainly knew that when he was watching the Gulf of Mexico get closer and closer and closer.
Maybe the guys who painted the caves in Lascaux and Altamira were sexually confused, too.
I could not bring myself to talk to my father about sexuality while I was naked.
I decided it could wait.
Things would have to float a little while longer.
My father could tell I was naked. He watched me, like he was testing to see if I would get out from under the sheet.
But I was naked. I wasn’t going anywhere.
We watched each other, both of us caught up in eyeballing the palindrome of each other’s lives.
My mother took an antianxiety drug called Xanax. It was a little blue pill that looked like a tiny kayak. Robbie’s mother took it, too. Our moms were like Xanax sisters, except they didn’t know much more about each other than first names, who their baby boys’ best friends were, and Ealing gossip.
Kayak and Xanax are palindromes.
Robby’s mother was named Connie, too.
It was always fascinating to me how perfect things could be if you just let all the connections happen. My history showed how everything connected in Ealing, Iowa.
You could never get everything in a book.
Good books are always about everything.
My mother would take her antianxiety drug when she felt stress or panic setting in. Saturday mornings usually meant no drugs. She took her drugs in the afternoons, on holidays, and whenever we had visiting human beings at the house.
“Um. Dad?”
“Yes, Austin?”
“Would you please let Ingrid outside for me so she can shit?”
“No problem, son.”
I got out of bed and pulled on some shorts.
I stunk.
My phone was lying on the floor, under the rumpled boxers I wore the day before. No fire trucks and dogs. They were blue plaid. Iowa was blue plaid. That is the truth.
The battery in my phone was nearly dead.
At 3:45 a.m. I received a text message from Robby. It said:
I’m sorry, Austin.
Robby and I always used punctuation and spelling in text messages.
We both despised abbreviations.
I sent him a message in reply:
Don’t be dumb, Robby.
I was certain Robby was asleep at that precise moment. I felt bad for calling him dumb, like maybe he would take it the wrong way and not know if I meant dumb for asking to kiss me or dumb for being sorry, which is what I meant.
So I sent him another message:
You shouldn’t worry about me, Rob. Let’s talk and have a fag later. Ha-ha. Now relax, and come meet me at SATAN’S after I get off at 5. Bring boards.
I was so confused.
That was true.
A BATH, A SHAVE, AND MODESTY
I AM POLISH.
My hair is the color of potato peels and I have skin the shade of boxed oatmeal.
Food descriptions work well in Iowa.
Polish kids have natural and persistent bags under their eyes. I think we evolved through a lot of sleepless nights or shit like that. If you read the history of Poland, which I have done, you’d probably just shake your head and say, That is full of shit.
I am Krzys Szczerba’s great-great-grandson.
That is the only thing I know about myself with absolute certainty.
I think I would like to smoke a cigarette with him. I have a feeling Krzys Szczerba could cuss, had hair the color of russet potatoes, and Quaker Oats skin, just like me. I feel like I could ask him anything. He would tell me what to do.
He came to America when Theodore Roosevelt, a man who apparently never took a shit in his life, was president.
Connie, my mother, drove me to work at Johnny McKeon’s From Attic to Seller Consignment Store that morning.
I did not have a big Lutheran Saturday breakfast with my mother and father because I needed a bath more.
On Saturdays I shave.
I did not actually need to shave. It was something that boys in Iowa start doing when they are sixteen, regardless of necessity. I ran the tip of my finger around my lips before applying the shaving cream. Robby’s lips had some spiny little whiskers around them. I felt them when we kissed. I found the feeling to be a little unexpected. Also, his lips were thinner, not as heavy, as Shann’s. I never thought about it before, how maybe Shann felt spiny little whiskers around my thin, un-meaty lips when we kissed.
I was disgusted with myself.
I called Shann while the bathtub was filling and I sat on the toilet, locked inside the bathroom. My mother and father ate their big Lutheran Saturday breakfast downstairs.
I told Shann I loved her.
She said she loved me.
I was naked, so I knew I was telling the truth.
Also, Shann did not say I love you, too.
Everyone knows I love you, too does not mean I love you.
The too makes it a concession, a gesture, an instinct of politeness.
History lesson for the morning.
I turned the water off and slid into the tub. My face began to sweat.
“I am in the bathtub, Shann,” I said.
“Are you naked?” she asked.
“Well, I would be normally,” I said, “but since I knew I would be talking to you, I went out and slipped into a modest bathing suit.”
She knew I was kidding. It made me very horny to admit to her that I was, indeed, fully naked.
“I am totally naked,” I admitted.
Shann told me that she slept well, that she was not scared in her new old bedroom as she thought she would be. But, she said, at exactly 6:00 a.m. there came a ticking sound from inside her wall. Shann explained that it sounded like a typewriter.
Nobody uses typewriters anymore, I told her.
At exactly 6:01 a.m. I was taking off all my clothes and going to bed.
Johnny McKeon was buying donuts.
The Contained MI Plague Strain 412E was dying off, but managed to wriggle around on three slices of Stanpreme pizza we threw in the dumpster, where it wormed its way down the esophagus of its last initial carrier, a homeless man named Hungry Jack, who participated in the killing of an entire village of women, elderly people, and
children in Vietnam.
Ollie Jungfrau was probably masturbating.
Ah Wong Sing was taking a shit.
Something was ticking inside Shann Collins’s wall.
She said the ticking stopped after a moment. Shann used words like moment. The way she talked made me horny. I told her if the ticking came again, maybe she could record it on her phone because I’d like to hear it.
She told me she would do that.
I shaved.
“The Pancake House is busy this morning,” my mother said when she pulled into the front lot of the Ealing Mall. Then she said, “We should eat breakfast there sometime.”
“Okay, Mom,” I said. “If you want a donut, Johnny always brings coffee and donuts in for me and Ollie Jungfrau on Saturdays.”
“Johnny McKeon is such a nice man,” my mother said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “Johnny takes good care of us.”
She parked almost as far away from the secondhand store as you could get and still be on Kimber Drive. My mother was not very steady-handed at squeezing our Chevrolet between slotted cars in parking lots.
I wore a Modest Mouse T-shirt, the shoes we salvaged from the roof of the mall the night before, clean boxers—Iowa plaid—and loose 501s with a belt. I smelled good. My hair was still wet from the bath I took. I did not like my jeans to droop like Robby did. Boys at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy were required to wear belts and matching socks. We would be called in to Pastor Roland Duff’s office if our underwear showed.
Lutherans in Iowa are very modest.
“What is a Modest Mouse?” my mother asked.
She had a stretchy thing on her hair. It was green and looked like the waistband from a pair of fat guy’s underwear. I didn’t know what those things were called. You know, women from Iowa wear them. In their hair. Her nails needed a new coat of paint. They were chipped or grown out around the edges. Apparently, my mother’s nails grew much faster than mine did. Real dynamos. She wore a green velour tracksuit with a zip-up top. I guessed it would be called a tracksuit. I’d never seen my mother run one time in my life. Who wants to run when you can kayak everywhere?
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t know.”
She parked the Suburban facing out toward the street, directly across from Satan’s Pizza.
My mother was very calm that morning.
Maybe all I needed was a tiny blue kayak, to get things to fall into place for me.
I decided I would ask Robby if he’d ever gone kayaking on one of his mother’s Xanax before. Probably not. Like me, Robby never even got drunk before.
But we could smoke cigarettes like real dynamos.
“Do you need one of us to come pick you up, Sweetie?” she asked.
My mother called me Sweetie when she was calm.
When she said one of us, it meant that she anticipated being drugged out by five, and my dad could come get me.
History does show that more of what we actually say is not contained in words, anyway. It’s why those cave guys simply stuck to the pictures of big hairy things and shit like that.
“Robby and I are going skating,” I said. “I’ll call if I’m going to be late for dinner.”
My mother leaned over and kissed me.
JOHNNY AND OLLIE
IT’S ABOUT TIME you met these two:
Ollie Jungfrau lifted half a maple bar to me when I walked through the door to From Attic to Seller Consignment Store. It was the kind of gesture drunken soldiers at a bar would make when weary battlefield comrades came in from the war looking for a drink.
But it was with half a donut.
“Hey, Dynamo,” Ollie said, winking at me.
Ollie Jungfrau called me Dynamo. The first time he said it, I had to look it up. Who says Dynamo? People in Ealing, Iowa, do, that’s who.
That’s another word I’m going to try to erase from history, never say it again. But it is a challenging redirection. I’m from Ealing, Iowa, after all.
I rather wished Robby was there, so we could go have a cigarette.
“Hey, Ollie,” I said.
Ollie panted contemplatively between bites of his donut. He had red stuff on his chin. The front lines of jelly donuts had already been decimated by the panzer division of Ollie’s appetite.
“Coffee.” Ollie waved his hand gracefully between a tall paper cup and me, as though he were introducing blind dates at a barn dance.
“Thanks,” I said, appreciative of my date’s quiet demeanor.
Coffee is a girl who never tells boys no. The idea of such a compliant partner normally would have made me horny, but I was too hungry, still sleepy, and I was also watching Ollie Jungfrau eat a donut at the exact moment sexual thoughts involving a quiet girl at an Iowa barn dance occurred to me.
I liked coffee. And cigarettes. Neither of these truths were welcome at my home. I did not like jelly donuts, however. All the more for Ollie and the customers. Jelly only belongs in one place. Two, if you have decent toast, I suppose.
History.
“John-nnnny!” Ollie called out in the direction of Johnny McKeon’s office, “The kid’s here!”
I heard Johnny moving things around in the back of the shop. I had already confirmed to myself that I did not feel guilty about being in the shop at night. I was an employee. Robby and I didn’t do anything wrong. Well, we didn’t do anything wrong inside the store, at least. What Grant Wallace and those other boys did would have happened whether or not Robby and I were there to see it.
So I did not feel guilty about the below-the-roof part of the night.
I sat down across the display counter from Ollie and selected a white-frosted cake donut with blue and yellow Iowa plaid sprinkles that scattered a candy galaxy over its surface.
Ollie nodded. He had an expression on his face like a saint receiving a vision of a bloodied Jesus. Ollie Jungfrau would have been the patron saint of donuts. Not that I’m allowed to believe in saints.
I did not believe in Jesus, either, even if he was good at picking donuts. I was not allowed to say that, either.
I might not put that shit down in the book.
“Good choice,” Ollie said.
“It was calling my name, Ollie,” I said.
“A voice like an angel.”
Ollie took his donuts seriously.
Johnny McKeon looked agitated. He stood beside Ollie at the counter, with his palms flat on the glass and his elbows locked straight. Johnny was a giraffe of a man, and his hands looked like twin octopi. I had never seen anyone with fingers as long as Johnny McKeon’s.
If Johnny McKeon ever gave you the thumb-and-index-finger international gesture for OK, trained poodles could jump through it.
Maybe even dolphins.
I looked past his fingers at the vampire bat and bugs in the collections below our donuts. Most people would probably not want to eat donuts here.
“Good morning, Johnny,” I said. Sometimes I would say something corny, like “Hey-ho, Johnny.”
But not today.
Johnny McKeon said, “Is it still morning?”
That was what Johnny always said to me.
Johnny McKeon was a mover. He was out of bed every day by five. He got things done. I liked him very much, and he knew that. Johnny was aware I smoked cigarettes, too. He’d get mad at me for it, but he’d also sometimes give me free smokes when he broke up vendor multi-pack specials at Tipsy Cricket.
“If your dad or mom tells me anything about this, I’m saying you stole them,” is what he always said to me, too.
That morning, Johnny McKeon said to me:
“I’m going to leave you in charge of the store this morning, Austin. You can handle it. I need to run in to Waterloo and pick up some plywood and stuff. Some a-hole broke in through the podiatrist’s last night.”
Johnny never cussed. He had to be pretty mad to say something as daring as a-hole.
“Someone broke in?” I echoed.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Right through the dang wall.”
I looked at Ollie Jungfrau. He was eating a glazed bow tie and nodding. Apparently, he knew all the details. Naturally he would. It was Saturday, donut day, and Ollie always showed up first, before Tipsy Cricket was supposed to open.
“Sign of the times,” Ollie analyzed, shaking his head in a grim I-saw-this-coming rhythm.
“Did you call the police?” I asked. My heartbeat accelerated. The coffee made me sweat. Under my armpits, the chemical beads of my deodorant stick began to erupt like miniature laboratory volcanoes. Outside in Grasshopper Jungle, the Contained MI Plague Strain 412E was now completely dead, having moved into the bodies of seven hosts. Robby Brees was asleep in his bed at the Del Vista Arms. Ingrid was taking a shit.
“They were here all morning. What can you do?” Johnny said. “‘You should have a video system. You should have an alarm,’ they said. But this is Ealing.”
There never was anything worth filming in Ealing, unless you were one of Grant Wallace’s buddies watching him kick the shit out of a couple Candy Cane faggots.
In Iowa, there are cameras trained on cornfields. So you can watch corn grow.
“My house has been robbed,” I said. “Because my dog can’t bark. I should teach her to shit on people.”
Ollie chewed thoughtfully. “My uncle has a German shepherd who will do that. He only takes commands in German. Scheiß, Dieter, scheiß! And he’ll toast a brownie on the spot.”
Ollie Jungfrau was full of Scheiße.
“Did they take anything?” I asked.
Johnny said, “A case of Gilbey’s Gin. And the sons of guns got into my office, too. They took a display I had in there.”
I sipped my coffee and looked at the candy galaxy on my donut. It hovered on a perfect plane of glass above a rhinoceros beetle.
Johnny went on without any prodding, “I had one of those glass globes the scientists at M.I. made. It had this photoluminescent mold sealed up inside it. I really liked that thing. It made the nicest blue glow if I’d turn the lights on it at nighttime.”