An Ocean in Iowa by Peter Hedges

time they had been neighbors, Andrew Crow hadn’t said much. But now he was talking, and Scotty listened close, because he wanted to soak up every word.
    “Junior high information is what I’m giving you. Are you listening?”
    Scotty nodded.
    “Are you!”
    “Yes.”
    Andrew Crow dribbled the basketball, then stopped. He looked directly into Scotty’s eyes.
    “First base you kiss.”
    “Okay.”
    “Have you kissed anybody?”
    Scotty quickly replayed his kissing memories. “Carole Staley kissed me. Right here,” he said, pointing to his elbow.
    “Gotta be on the lips, Ocean, for it to be first base.”
    “Oh.” Scotty remembered kissing his mother repeatedly and his sisters, too. “My mom and sisters—”
    “Mothers and sisters don’t count.”
    “Okay.”
    “Now if I were to kiss one of your sisters… let’s say Claire… if I were to kiss
Claire
, it would be first base. But if you were to kiss—”
    “It wouldn’t count.”
    “Right.” Andrew dribbled the basketball twice, drove toward the hoop, and missed a lay-up. Scotty followed after the ball, which had bounced off the court into a mound of raked leaves. He brought it back.
    Taking the ball, Andrew continued. “Second base you put your hands on her boobs.”
    Scotty didn’t know whether to cover his ears or what.
    “You better hope she has boobs. Your sister Maggie has no boobs—if I put my hands there, they’d be like big pimples. That’d be no fun.”
    Scotty nodded in agreement, as if he understood, as if he knew from experience. Andrew tossed the ball from a great distance, missing the basket completely. Scotty retrieved the ball.
    “Third base is a finger. Maybe two fingers if she’s over fifteen.”
    Scotty looked puzzled. He thought, a finger? Scotty had seen a magician at Jimmy Lamson’s birthday party do an amazing trick. He raised a hatchet above his head suddenly, brought it down quickly, then held up a bloody finger, severed. Later, because one of the kids watching started screaming, the magician revealed the finger to be rubber. The blood turned out to be red paint. Scotty got to hold the finger. How realistic, he thought at the time. How lifelike. Weeks later he came across a box of those fingers in the novelty section at Kmart.
    Scotty’s face betrayed his confusion now. Why should it be a third base when a guy can go to the mall and buy a finger? Or a whole box of fingers?
    Sensing Scotty’s confusion, Andrew stopped dribbling and elaborated. “A guy uses a finger—one from his own hand—to penetrate the girl.”
    Penetrate, Scotty thought. Penetrate must be a sixth grade word, a junior high word.
    “Stick in, enter, pierce—like that.”
    “Oh,” Scotty said.
    “Between her legs is a hole. It goes by many names.” Andrew listed several.
    Later, Scotty could only remember one name. Vagina. It sounded eternal, vagina, like a vacation land.
    ***
    At dinner that night he studied his sisters. Each of them must have a hole. Had any of them been fingered? Before dessert Scotty asked Claire the meaning of a word he struggled to pronounce. She replied, “The word is penetrate.” She said the word, spelled it, used it in a sentence, then said it again.
    The Judge said, “Correct.”
    Scotty thought about the word “vagina.” It was a word he did not need defined. But he wished he could spell it. If only he could, Scotty thought, then he would write it a million times in a row or until his hand fell off, whichever came first.
    (11)
    Scotty sprinted for the phone, which he answered in mid-ring.
    “Hello, young man!” a male voice said. This is a happy man I’m talking to, Scotty thought.
    “Hi!” said Scotty, sending back a happy sound.
    “What are you doing tonight?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Well, young man, is the lady of the house there?”
    Scotty went, “Uhm.”
    “May I speak with your mother?”
    “No.”
    “Is there a time I could call back?”
    “She’s not here.”
    “When might she be