Milk Chicken Bomb (13 page)

He wasn't from Quebec. He was from New Brunswick. An Acadian. One of those French-Canadian Maritimers.

Is Acadia at sea level? asks McClaghan.

Of course it is.

So there you go.

He always said it started at home, says Ellis. Came out here to find some quiet, he'd tell me. I don't recall if it was any quieter back then.

McClaghan watches announcements run by on the television screen: Tomorrow night, the Calgary Flames versus the Hartford Whalers. Her name is Hélène, says McClaghan. Hélène Lévesque. Don't sell her that thermostat. Don't even show it to her.

McClaghan, why are you such a son of a bitch? asks Solzhenitsyn.

McClaghan thinks about it. Force of habit, I suppose. I try to get most of my son-of-a-bitchedness out of the way before Thursday, so that I can be more, what do you call it, on the weekends.

Relaxed?

No, you know, my good deeds and all.

Benevolent.

That's the word. What do you want anyway?

Solly reaches inside his jacket, pulls out a long white envelope. Here's November then, he says. How's hardware?

McClaghan nods and takes the envelope. I brought in this mitre saw, he says. Jarvis Lester was on about taking up a hobby and, I don't know why, I thought, I bet he'll want a mitre saw. But now I hear he's building a ship in a bottle. Sometimes you're just plain wrong.

I'm sure someone else will want a mitre saw.

McClaghan leans in close. You think Jarvis is going to make it? Every time I drive by, the lot of that new Meatco plant is crammed full, trucks coming and going from every which way. Feedlots all the way to Brooks, all the way to Lethbridge. How is Jarvis going to get any kind of comparable price?

Solzhenitsyn shrugs. All this competition makes my stomach hurt. Sure, the Meatco plant is big and expensive. Us, we render meat in open vats. But Jarvis Lester is a fair and admirable man. Goes a long way.

He's too small, says McClaghan. They'll buy him out and then what? He coughs into his fist. Say, you're in plumbing and heating, aren't you?

And gauges. And valves. I mainly do refrigeration. Somebody has to keep all that meat frozen.

McClaghan snaps his fingers. I knew it. I knew that one of you guys did that job at the plant. Can I get you to take a look at something?

Sure.

We follow McClaghan down the aisle to the back of the store. He pulls out a set of keys and opens the door in the back. Don't touch anything, he says to Mullen and me. Pulls the door open and flicks a light switch. We follow him in.

Something smells, really bad. We stand in McClaghan's little office: a black-and-white checkered floor, and a desk covered in paper. Stacks of cardboard boxes with pictures of nails and screws stamped on the side. Against one wall there's a little counter, with a sink, and an old avocado-green refrigerator. Mullen and I both pinch our noses.

Solzhenitsyn opens the fridge door; the smell gets way worse. I don't know when it blinked out, says McClaghan. I had some chicken in the freezer, though, and it went off. Scrubbed the whole thing out but that stench just isn't going away. Anyway, I can't for the life of me get the stupid thing to work. Solly closes the door. Reaches around and pulls the whole thing forward with a grunt. He peeks around behind. Here, says McClaghan, I'll get you a flashlight.

Grab me a set of screwdrivers too.

McClaghan brings him tools. The two of them pull the fridge out even further. Behind it there's all kinds of dust and gunk, coils of wire. Solly squats down and starts to poke
around with screwdrivers. Here, he says to me, hold the flashlight. I shine the light where he's working, try to get it so that his shadow doesn't get in the way.

Where'd you learn all this?

Used to do odd jobs for the Labour Collective Council in our neighbourhood back in Leningrad. Fixed stoves and heaters in the apartment blocks all up our street. Some of these things had grime and gunk under the tops that would ask you about the tsar's health. Everything was barely held together. Made quite a good living, keeping those appliances up and running.

I tell you what. You get this thing working, I'll reseal your windows. Put some of that plastic sheeting, you know, over the panes. Cut down on your heating bill.

Right benevolent of you. Solly sticks his tongue out of the side of his mouth. Twists something. Twists it again, and then the whole fridge rattles, starts to hum.

I'll be damned, says McClaghan.

Sorry I can't help with the smell, says Solzhenitsyn. Stands up and hands McClaghan the screwdriver. Opens the door again, reaches into the back and turns the dial underneath the light. Try not to fill it up too full. The air needs to circulate freely for everything to work properly.

Right, right.

And next week's probably a good time to come by and do those windows.

Sure, says McClaghan. Next week.

I sit on Mullen's step and yawn. Rub my hands together. Inside I hear the taps come on, which means somebody will be out soon. Some days when I'm up too early I have to wait forever, out here on the step, for Mullen to get up so we can sell lemonade. I sit on the step, in the dark, yawning, wishing I'd been able to sleep last night. Nights you can't sleep, there isn't much else you can do except get up early, so here I am, waiting.

The door opens and Mullen comes outside, zipping up his coat. Yawns.

Every morning the pounding sound comes out of Deke's house from seven–thirty, when the mailman comes by, until Mullen and I call last call for lemonade and go to school. And it's not just one kind of sound. Sometimes it's hammering, but not hammering like a nail into wood. Rings more, rings and clangs. Or sometimes duller and deeper. Every morning at seven–thirty Deke peeks out the window of his door. Deke never used to get up at seven–thirty: he used to say he wished he'd never see the sun rise again.

Constable Stullus sits in his car outside Deke's house. He shows up every morning right after we set up the lemonade stand. Pulls up and shuts off his car, sits there reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. Sometimes he turns the car back on for a few minutes at a time, when he gets cold I guess. Sometimes, when the hammering and banging inside Deke's house gets loud, he turns up his radio.

Hey, Officer, Mullen shouts, you could use some lemonade. Get the blood flowing. Get your detective skills up to snuff.

He rolls down his window. You kids should be in school.

School doesn't start for half an hour, I say. Plenty of time to sell some lemonade.

Yeah, Mullen says. It's not like we're causing public mischief or anything.

Officer Stullus prods his chin with a toothpick. When I was in Alert, he says, we made hot lemonade. Boiled water with a kettle and stirred in a can of that concentrate. You know, the cardboard can with the metal cap.

Mullen flips a quarter. Where's Alert?

North, says Stullus.

North like Edmonton?

You don't know north, kid. He rolls up his window. His windows fog up but you can still make him out, leaning on the steering wheel, staring at Deke's house.

It's too cold, Mullen says. Look, all the ice cubes are frozen together. I can't get them apart. All up the street, smoke puffs out of metal chimneys on the roofs. Look, Mullen says, chipping at the ice with his closed tongs, It's like a stupid rock.

Deke comes outside for a cigarette. Hey, Deke, Vaslav shouts from the chair on his porch, committed any crimes lately? Stullus rolls down his window. Blew up the legislature in Edmonton, Deke says. It was hard work, I had to rent a truck. You sure are hardboiled, says Vaslav. Stullus rolls his window back up.

I bring a cup of lemonade over to Deke. We sit down on his porch and he shows me his new submarine magazine. Flips the pages and points to pictures. Look at this, he says, the Kilo. Diesel electric. Gets up to sixteen knots underwater. And these big sons of bitches, the Typhoons. Biggest submarines anybody ever built. They can get down to 1,300 feet, on account of their titanium hulls.

What do they do down there, Deke?

Well, there's lots of stuff they've got to do. Maintain radio silence, for instance. And you've got to make sure you don't
have any radiation leaks. He flips through the pictures. Narrow hallways, lights in cages, sailors in undershirts leaning on metal walls. Ladders and hammocks. Black metal and black water. Technical drawings of submarines cut in half, arrows point out the engine room, the fuel tanks. The top tower of a submarine alone in a wide, empty blue sea. The water still, barely a wake behind. He folds up the magazine. Stands up and glares at Stullus in his car. Gives me the plastic cup and heads back inside.

Mrs. Lampman draws a Red River cart on the chalkboard: tall wheels with spokes. They made so much noise, she says, because they couldn't oil the axles. People called them Squealers, because you could hear them coming before you even saw them. Kids write notes on their lined paper: Red River, Squealers. Mrs. Lampman tells us about David Thompson, the Athabasca River, the Kootenay River, the Columbia River. We all write the words on our lined paper. The bell rings and we pack up everything for recess.

Hey, Mullen, you're through with your detentions now, aren't you?

For a while, says Mullen. Yep. For a while.

We lie on our bellies in the snow, looking at the grey sky. I can feel old leaves under the snow: sticks and tough bark, and soft mouldy leaves. We look at the grey sky. Mullen points out where people might be staring at us through periscopes, up in the black tree branches. Turns out there's a lot of spots.

Some Dead Kids look at hockey cards. Sometimes they look over at us and we back up real slow-like on our elbows. We talk under our breath and stare straight ahead. Sometimes they shake their heads and sometimes they watch us awhile. Mostly they ignore us.

I unwrap my sandwich. Mullen cranes his neck to see.

What did Dwayne Klatz's mom make today?

Ham and cheese, I say. She slices the ham real thin. I like the mustard a lot.

Those must be some sandwiches, says Mullen.

Did you finish your outline? I ask Mullen. For your social studies report?

Outline? Hell, I started to write the report. That'll shake them up some, me getting my report done early. I may not be the smartest kid ever, says Mullen, but I figure David Thompson was the best ever in Canada for history.

David Thompson just made a bunch of maps, I say, just like all the rest of those explorers. Who can keep them all straight?

When we moved from Winnipeg, my dad and I got stuck, Mullen says. I mean stuck. We drove right off the road into the ditch. That was the coldest I ever felt, when we were sitting in the ditch beside my dad's car because we were waiting for it to get fixed. Sometimes my dad isn't the best driver. David Thompson was that cold all the time, not just when he had to wait for something, but he had to eat dinner and brush his teeth when it was that cold too.

Way down at the little hill some kids have blue plastic carpets. They slide down on the blue sheets, rattling on bumps. The thin, hard snow scrapes at the bottoms. A lot of kids have fancy three-runnered Canadian Tire sleds, they've got crisp, waxy toboggans. We watch them zoom down the little hill.

Those fancy sleds are wasted on those kids, says Mullen. They're hardly even doing anything. If you went off a snow bump with one of those, you'd get right up in the air. You could build as big a ramp as you wanted and just shoot right off it.

You should ask for one of those Canadian Tire sleds, I say, for Christmas.

Mullen looks at me. Yeah, he says, easy for you to say.

No, really. You should ask for one. I bet your dad –

My dad can't afford one of those sleds, says Mullen. Just 'cause some kids get everything.

Oh yeah, I say, everything.

Well, Mullen glares at me, some of us are never getting stuff, whether we ask or not. There's a big difference between
never asking 'cause you won't and never asking 'cause you can't. So just don't even talk about it, okay? He sits there, legs out like scissors, hands slouched on the ground.

I get up and point at the school. The bell rang, I say. Mullen, slouched and scissored, stares ahead. I've had it, he says.

Kids start to line up against the ribbed aluminum portable walls. Mrs. Bea, one of the sixth-grade teachers, leans one skinny hand on the black railing. Just a sweater around her thin shoulders, even though it's real cold. I've got two pairs of socks on. Kids start to line up. A few kids walk back from the swings. Some kids are still running around.

The bell rang, I say. Get up. He stares.

Mullen, come on.

Nah, he says, I'm really through. I think I'll just sit here. Why not?

Kids stop running and get into line. They shuffle around and Mrs. Bea looks them up and down and they all get real still and quiet.

Mullen, come on. Everybody's back. Sure are, says Mullen, those kids sure are back. They sure stand still good. Mullen, come on. I mean, he says, you figure you can stand still that good, you ought to go show them. Get in on that serious-type good fun. Serious-type, I say. Real serious-type. That's great.

She looks out at us. She raises her head and sees me, standing and looking back and forth, and Mullen, sitting in the snow. Not just sitting but sprawled. Like on a sofa. She raises her head and crosses her arms and just keeps looking.

Okay, she sees us, I say. I look back and forth and realize I'm looking back and forth real fast and snap my head back to Mullen and try not to move it.

Mullen sticks his tongue out and tries to cross his eyes to look at it.

Boys, calls Mrs. Bea.

Hey, did you ever look at your tongue? asks Mullen. Well, I'm not really looking at it, 'cause it's all out of focus and double. But have you ever tried and thought, if I could just relax my eyes right, I'd be able to see it right square?

We have to go right now, I say.

Mullen uncrosses his eyes and looks at me. The last two kids walk to the back of the line and Mullen sighs and stands up. Walks past me with his hands in his pockets. We walk to the back of the line.