The Way of the Grasshopper

by Thom Whalen

Grasshoppers are big. Bigger than ants. Even bigger than spiders. Joey didn’t like spiders or ants but he liked grasshoppers. Maybe he liked them because they didn’t bite like spiders and they didn’t get into everything like ants. If you asked him, he’d say that he liked grasshoppers because they were nice. But I don’t think that’s true. I think that the real reason that he liked grasshoppers was because he couldn’t catch them, no matter how hard he tried. He could walk right up to a spider or an ant and poke it with a stick or step on it. There was no mystery there. But a grasshopper was a whole different deal. Try as he might, he could never get closer to a grasshopper than six feet. And he did try. Summer after summer, he spent whole afternoons trying to sneak up on them. On many a long afternoon, white hot sun in a pure blue sky bleaching his hair and reddening his face, he crept through the dry hay, trying in vain to get his hands on one of those big old hoppers. He learned the way of the grasshopper in the hay field. Learned that it would stop nibbling on a blade of grass when he got within eight feet and freeze in place, waiting and watching; that it would twitch and cock its powerful hind legs when he got within seven feet, raising its rear knees high; and, when he got within six feet, spring away, sometimes so fast that, if he didn’t watch carefully enough, it seemed simply to disappear. He learned to watch closely though, so that he could follow its flight and see it land on another hay stalk ten or twelve feet away, flicking its wings open briefly in mid-leap to correct its course, making sure that it dropped to a perfect landing. He had never seen a grasshopper miss the stalk. How did it do that? Did it know where it was going to land before it leapt? Or did it pick out a single stalk during that ever so brief instant in mid-leap when it got close enough to spy the best one with its bejeweled eyes? Quite a feat for a bug that was hurtling through the air almost faster than Joey could follow. Joey thought that must be what happened, though – that the hopper had no idea where it was going when it jumped and had to make up its mind with lightning speed in that instant when its arc peaked and it began to fall back to earth again.

After each incredible leap, Joey would follow his prey, hoping that, this time, he would be careful enough, stealthy enough to finally grab the thing. But he was fated only to reenact the whole drama, over and over, until he was too hot and tired to continue. The grasshopper never tired of the game; never let its vigilance lapse. It would leap and leap again, never letting Joey get closer than the magical six feet.

Joey played the grasshopper game every summer until he was ten years old. After that, he decided that he was too old to play with bugs. He still spent the summer hours in the hay field, though, just to stay as far away from the house for as long as he could. But now he would bring a book out with him and spend his time reading. Sometimes he could smuggle his father’s transistor radio out of the house in his shirt pocket and while away the hours listening to broadcasts from as far away as Saskatoon. He did not do that often because his father complained bitterly about the cost of replacing the batteries. His father complained about the cost of everything, from gasoline to insecticide. That was why the hay field was infested with grasshoppers. His father was too cheap to spray it; he saved the insecticide for the canola fields because they were so much more valuable.

Apparently he believed that the grasshoppers could not find their way from one field to the next. His father did not know the way of the grasshopper like Joey. Joey knew that grasshoppers could go wherever they wanted with one giant leap after another. They could bounce all they way to Saskatoon if they wanted. They could certainly bounce from the hay field to the canola field.

When he sat in the field reading his book, the occasional ant or spider would crawl across the page and he would have to brush it away. He would never have to brush away a grasshopper, though. No matter how many grasshoppers were leaping about in the field, no matter how still he sat, no matter how long he read, no grasshopper ever landed on his book. In fact, he never saw a single one land less than six feet from him. That, too, was the way of the grasshopper.

Two weeks after his fourteenth birthday, everything changed. For the first time, he discovered that his mother had known the way of the grasshopper, too.

He remembered back to when he was six years old. It was the week after Labour Day, and his father brought him to school for the first time. All the other children were brought by their mothers; he was the only child in his whole class who was brought by his father. He sat in the hot musty classroom at the little wooden desk that seemed so big to him back then and ignored both the fussy old teacher standing at the head of the class and the fidgety young children around him. Instead, he thought about what it would be like to be going home with a mother instead of with his father. He wondered what it was like for the other children who had a mother to cook supper and tuck them into bed. After school, riding home in the rusty old pickup truck, he asked his father why he didn’t have a mother. His father barked that his mother had died when he was a baby and he didn’t want to talk about it. Not now, not ever. Then his father told him that he better watch closely how they were getting back home and remember it because he’d be walking back and forth to school by himself from now on. Gas was too expensive to be driving a kid to school every day. He soon learned that his father was telling him the truth about having to walk to school – he was never driven again. Even when the mercury dipped below forty and froze in the bulb, Joey walked the three miles to school and the three miles back, his breath freezing in the wool scarf that he wrapped around his head. His father spent his winters in the warm house with his can of beer in his hand and the farm report on the TV, mumbling about the price of canola seed.

But everything changed two weeks after his fourteenth birthday. Uncle Mike arrived for his annual Christmas visit. That evening, after a meal of macaroni and hamburger, sitting in front of the TV watching the weather channel, Uncle Mike commented that he had seen Nancy walking down the street in Regina. No more than that – that he’d seen Nancy in Regina. His father had hissed that he didn’t want to hear that bitch’s name in his house ever again and that ended it – Uncle Mike started talking about his new truck and Joe never heard his mother’s name mentioned again. But hearing the name once and seeing his father’s reaction was enough for Joe. He was fourteen years old and knew how the world worked. Even though his father had never spoken of Joe’s mother apart from that one time after the first day of school, Joe now understood that her name was Nancy and that she was not dead. He was not surprised that his father had lied because he knew that she was dead in his heart. But, in Joe’s heart, she was risen anew. He knew that she had jumped away to Regina way back when he was still a baby.

He understood that his father could never forgive her, and now knowing that she was alive and had abandoned him, Joe could never forgive her either. But there is a difference between forgiving and understanding; though he would never forgive his mother, he could understand her. It was the way of the grasshopper. When someone got too close, you leaped away. Sudden and so fast that no one could see where you went.

Joe also knew that his father would never understand. He was the ultimate practical man. He had never followed a grasshopper through the field, had never invested the time required to learn the way of the grasshopper. He distained such foolishness. His only use for grasshoppers was to kill them; kill them by the millions whenever he could afford the insecticide.

The day after Boxing Day, as soon as Uncle Mike drove away in his new pickup, his father drove away, too, but not far – just to the liquour store to pick up another couple of two-fours. He might not be able to buy new gym clothes for Joe or drive him to the public library, but he always had enough money for beer and enough gas for the trip to the liquour store. As soon as the old pickup had rolled over the fresh fallen snow, past the end of the lane, Joe marched straight up to his father’s room to search every nook and cranny for some sign of his mother. He burrowed through the sock drawer and found a box of shotgun shells. He took everything off the high shelf in the closet and found a half dozen yellowing, tattered Hustler magazines. He searched through every paper in his father’s desk and found his own birth certificate. But nowhere did he find a single picture, a single letter, a single memento of his mother. She had disappeared completely from his father’s house; after fourteen years, there was no trace left. He should have known. Grasshoppers left no footprints.

He spent his fourteenth summer in the hay field ignoring the book in his lap; dreaming of his mother. He imagined that she must have been beautiful; otherwise his father would not be so angry at having lost her. She must have been smart because she had managed to survive in the city for all these years. What kind of job did she have? Maybe she was a clerk in a store or a bank teller. Maybe she had been walking to work when Uncle Mike saw her. Maybe, even, she was owned the store or managed the bank. Or maybe she was so beautiful that she was an actress or a model. In the hay field, in Joe’s fertile imagination, his mother might accomplish anything. Anything but earn his forgiveness.

Maybe he should have been in the canola field helping his father – he was old enough and strong enough, now – but his father never seemed to want any help; would rather do all the work alone than have his son at his side. When Joe looked at himself in the mirror, he wondered if he looked anything like his mother. Maybe he looked too much like her.

One day, he saw a Regina telephone book in the public library and looked for the name, Nancy Krowlak. There was no such person listed. No surprise there – his mother undoubtedly left her married name behind when she jumped away. Joe imagined the name peeling off in the wind and blowing away. He looked at other Nancy’s in the book and wondered if one of them was his mother, but there were hundreds, maybe thousands, and he could not guess which one she might be. It did not matter. Joe would not want to see her; would never forgive her for leaving him behind.

During his fifteenth summer in the hay field, he thought little about his mother. She was gone – the farm was as bare of her as the hay stalk after the grasshopper had sprung – and there was no reason for Joe to care where she had landed.

That was his last summer in the hay field. As soon as Eleventh Grade ended, Joe followed the way of the grasshopper. His father never saw his legs flexing, never saw where he went – Joe knew to leap without warning and knew to leap too quickly for the untrained eye to follow. He leapt without knowing where he would land, confident that he would see the right place at the top of his arc and would be able to correct his course as necessary.

Joe knew that his father would not understand him any more than he understood Nancy. He only wished that his father had indulged his own childhood curiosity, had chased the grasshoppers, had learned their way. There may be profit in the canola fields, but there is wisdom in the hay field.