The kid is on his knees, his hands rummaging around in the picnic basket. I'm standing with binoculars, looking down Highway 13 there is no sign of our annual carnival. Or are they so smart that they can lie to us and to themselves? The beautiful thing about Arnie is that he's too stupid to lie. I wonder if it ever occurs to them what they did, and if it ever sinks in to a point that their bodies ache from the horrible mess they made. Makes this brother wonder what kind of a world it would be if all the surviving Nazis had such remorse. He kept saying, "I killed 'em, I killed 'em." And me and Amy, we held him close, patted his back and told him it was okay.Īrnie cried for hours, cried himself to sleep. ![]() But last night, when we were sitting on the porch eating ice cream, a countless sea of grasshopper bodies from summers past must have appeared to him, because he started weeping and sobbing like the world had ended. ![]() ![]() He always giggles hysterically when he does this, having the time of his life. In the summertime, he catches grasshoppers and sticks them in this metal tab on the mailbox, holding them there, and then he brings down the metal flag, chopping off the grasshopper heads. His face is a kind of bulletin board for the four major food groups.Īrnie is the gentlest guy, but he can surprise this brother. One of the first things you should know about Arnie is that he always has traces of some food on his face - Kool-Aid or ketchup or toast crumbs. In a thermos was a quart of black cherry Kool-Aid, all of which Arnie drank in such a hurry that above his top lip is a purplish mustache. My oldest sister, Amy, has fixed us a picnic feast. At this particular moment, I've a good mind to push him in front of the oncoming traffic. Some days you want him to live, some days you don't. Ten came and went and now the doctors are saying, "Any time now, Arnie could go at any time." So every night my sisters and me, and my mom too, go to bed wondering if he will wake up in the morning. Doctors said we'd be lucky if he lived to be ten. He's about to turn eighteen and my family is planning an enormous party. This beats the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny: all those stupid figures that only kids and retarded adults seem to stomach. One truck will carry the Octopus, another will carry the Tilt-A-Whirl with its blue and red cars, two trucks will bring the Ferris wheel, the games will be towed, and most important, the horses from the merry-go-round will arrive.įor Arnie, this is better than Christmas. My brother Arnie is so excited because in minutes or hours or sometime today trucks upon trailers upon campers are going to drive into our home town of Endora, Iowa. Standing with my brother Arnie on the edge of town has become a yearly ritual. ![]() With this wry portrait of small-town Iowa - and a young man's life at the crossroads - Peter Hedges created a classic American novel "charged with sardonic intelligence" (Washington Post Book World). As the Grapes gather in Endora, a mysterious beauty glides through town on a bicycle and rides circles around Gilbert, until he begins to see a new vision of his family and himself. But the biggest event on the horizon for all the Grapes is the eighteenth birthday of Gilbert's younger brother, Arnie, who is a living miracle just for having survived so long. Gilbert's long-suffering older sister, Amy, still mourns the death of Elvis, and his knockout younger sister has become hooked on makeup, boys, and Jesus - in that order. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in. 1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. Just about everything in Endora, Iowa (pop.
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