Milk Chicken Bomb (15 page)

So this big-shot geologist from Manitoba shows up in Turner Valley. Bad time all over those towns, not like growing grain was doing anybody any good, then the oil industry collapses. The whole southern foothills were drunk for a few years. This Winnipegger pulls into town with a black portfolio and a station wagon full of surverying equipment.
Makes himself real obvious, out on the side of the road, photographing and looking through the, what, the theodolite. Writing in his little notebook. Turns up at the municipal hall one day and gets himself a meeting with the resource department. Hours and hours. Now, people have been talking for days: is it natural gas? Some kind of petro-tar? What's he found? What's he found?

Kreshick pushes a black checker. Coughs.

Comes out of that meeting with a licence to excavate ten miles out of Turner Valley for coal. Coal. Says he's found the biggest stake of coal in Alberta since goddamn Turtle Mountain.

Kreshick hops a red checker at the left front, pulls it off. Shows his teeth. Hey, anybody from Turner Valley in here tonight? He looks around the room. Where's Sigmann? You're from Turner Valley, aren't you?

A man in the back with a big red beard coughs. Turner Valley all right.

You invest in that Winnipegger's coal mine?

Sigmann just glares. Everybody with a beer has a long drink.

Even I can see the path Kreshick has left for Miggins. One, two, three black checkers, in a neat zig-zag, all ready to jump. Miggins narrows his eyes. Tries not to stare at the route. Looks from face to face. Kreshick's lips pull further back, black lines above his teeth, black veins and yellow cracks.

Lethbridge checker champ, he says.

Nobody says anything. Miggins jumps the first, the second, the third. Stacks the three black checkers and pulls them off the board. His front red checker now deep on Kreshick's side, nothing behind it, a sitting duck. Kreshick doesn't jump it, though. Moves a black from the side into the middle of the board.

A lot of people wondered how a geologist from Winnipeg would know the first thing about coal in Turner Valley.
They've had geologists in Turner Valley for seventy-odd years now. You'd think they'd have come across a seam as big as this son of a bitch was talking about. Most people in town just figured he'd taken them for suckers and cooked the whole thing up. That's most people, mind. Sorry, Sigmann.

Yeah, well. That's how it is sometimes.

Miggins has been staring at the board. Suddenly, anywhere he might move, there's a black checker in front and a gap behind. His front red trapped against Kreshick's back row, to be jumped any time.

Kreshick stares at me. Fingers wrapped around his glass. McClaghan stares at me, leaned back in his chair, his hands rested on his belly. Gord Miggins takes his eyes off the checker game he's about to lose to stare at me.

Did he find any coal? I ask.

Kreshick laughs. A big gut full of ghua-gha-gha-HA-ha. He coughs and sputters and laughs and drinks whisky and chokes and spits it out on the checkerboard and laughs. McClaghan throws his hat on the ground and laughs. Stands up and wipes his eyes and sits down and thumps his hand on the table. Lou Ellis and Morley Fleer clap each other on the shoulders, hug each other tight and laugh.

Did he find any coal!

They laugh and laugh. Kreshick takes all of Gord Miggins's checkers in a few turns and Pavel throws up his arms. Lethbridge checker champ, he mutters. He pushes out of his stool, kicks the table leg. Lou Ellis's stack of bills knocks over onto the floor. Everybody still laughing too hard to even pick up the money. Did he find any coal! Kreshick has to struggle for breath.

On Fridays they open up the Snack Shack at lunch. Kids line up in front of the little counter at the far end of the gym to buy little bags of potato chips, spicy beef-jerky sticks, chocolate milk. Kids line up right down the hall. Everybody wants them to open the Snack Shack every day, but the teachers say that eating junk food every day is bad for you. They're always going on about junk food and the Canada Food Guide and the Nutrition Pyramid.

We open up our lunch boxes, standing in the long line for the Snack Shack. Dwayne Klatz's mom made egg salad. Egg salad is usually pretty gross, but not when Dwayne Klatz's mom makes it. Dwayne's gotten pretty good now at getting the wrapper off my pizza sub. Hey, Dwayne, says another kid, You want to trade that pizza sub for my Hershey bar? Dwayne snorts. You've got to be kidding, he says. Do you know how good these things are?

Mullen rubs his quarters together. I wish they sold pop, he says. I wish they sold root beer. I can drink more root beer than anybody.

Drinking root beer is easy, says Dwayne Klatz. Drinking any kind of pop is easy, half of it's gas. What's hard about that?

I can drink more root beer than you can, says Mullen.

I can drink more milk than anybody, says Dwayne.

Milk? says Mullen.

Drinking milk is hard. If you drink too much milk you throw up. Milk hasn't got any gas in it at all.

We get to the front of the line. Dwayne and Mullen spread out all their change on the countertop. The Snack Shack lady
leans down and listens to them. Shrugs and picks up all the quarters. She brings out four half-litre cartons of milk.

That's not so much milk, says Mullen. I bet I could drink that much milk.

Dwayne and Mullen each drink a half-litre of milk, a glug at a time, staring at each other overtop of the cartons. Keep glugging away, raise the cartons higher and higher until they're both empty. Klatz wipes milk off the top of his lip with the back of his hand. Other kids stand around and watch, munching on their potato chips.

Man, says Dwayne Klatz, I could just drink milk all day. They open the second cartons, they drink milk, smack their lips, drink milk. Mullen sticks out his tongue and lets the last drops drip from the carton mouth.

We all get back in the Snack Shack line.

Sorry, says the Snack Shack lady, I haven't got any more milk. We all stand at the counter and look at each other.

What do you mean? asks Klatz.

I haven't got any more milk, she says, that's what I mean. Those were the last four cartons.

But we can drink way more, says Mullen.

You'll throw up if you drink too much milk, she says. She wipes the counter with a cloth.

We sit down in the hallway by the library. Kids in gym shorts head into the gym for intramural floor hockey. You can hear the rubber balls slapping against the walls inside.

Hey, I bet I could eat that plant over there, says Dwayne.

Forget it, Klatz, says Mullen.

Come on, he says. That big spider plant. I'll even eat the dirt.

Forget it.

The Glue Men come down out of the sky in their yellow parachutes. Legs out wide, hooting and hollering. Uh-oh. That's the last thing I need today: the Glue Men. They land on Main Street and their parachutes blow up behind them in the wind; they pull the cords and their parachutes blow off. Like sails, disappearing up into the sky. The Glue Men hoot and laugh and drip their thick yellow glue everywhere. They go to take a step and they can't, 'cause their gluey feet are stuck to the pavement, and they all howl and laugh and strain and then pull chunks of asphalt right up out of the street. Now we're in trouble. Everybody in town runs away shouting, confused, while the Glue Men stomp around town on their new asphalt shoes. They stick to everything. They stick to stop signs and drag them along behind. They stick to car doors, yapping dogs, teenagers on mountain bikes. They stomp around dragging everything that gets caught in the sticky glue. Laughing and slobbering – everything sure is funny to the Glue Men.

The only good thing about the Glue Men is that you've just got to wait it out. Eventually each of them has so many tires and mailboxes and bowling trophies and garage-sale fliers stuck all over that they can't even move. The overloaded Glue Men struggle to take that one last step, then fall over and sit in the street. They keep laughing for a while, but it doesn't sound so funny anymore, and pretty soon the streets are full of sobbing Glue Men, and all the scared, crying kids and little old ladies stuck to their sides. Yep, the Glue Men are the last thing anybody needs.

This time we do it right, says Mullen. Right, I say. Right.

Curlers carry their gym bags into the recreation centre, brooms over their shoulders, every broom with a little bag over the bristles. Mullen and I get to carry the Russians' brooms, which is pretty fun, although you've got to be careful. You wouldn't want anything to happen on the day of a big match like today.

We watch the Pentecostals warm up in the next rink, stretching and sliding up and down the ice. The reverend takes a minute to talk to each of the players. He'll whisper something close to them, then the two of them will grab each other's hands, close their eyes and move their lips.

Do you have to play them today? I ask.

Today we play the Golden Oldies, says Solzhenitsyn. And it's a good goddamn thing too. The Pentecostals really made a mess of us last year, in the big Okotoks bonspiel. Just a complete disaster. We'd cleaned up all the other rinks, here in Marvin, and in High River too. Then we go to Okotoks and these holy rollers here just cream us. That minister there, he's inhuman. You'd think he was some kind of hydraulic curling robot. Every movement the man makes, it's uncanny. Like he's not even real.

Well, God chooses his instruments, or something like that, says Vaslav.

Maybe God should go join some bigger league, says Solzhenitsyn. Give the rest of us a sporting chance.

Come on. You don't want to get soft, do you?

It's rubbing off on you. That Prairie Protestant zeal.

I'll see you in Hell, says Vaslav.

You're going to spend a lot of time in Hell, says Solzhenitsyn. Seeing all these people.

Come on, Mullen says, we need to find a can.

The second-graders play their marble game just like always, their duffle bags full of swimsuits and towels piled up against the wall. Some of them have already had their swimming lessons; their eyes are red and their wet hair sticks to their foreheads. Marbles clack into each other.

A Dead Kid from our grade winds up and throws his giant king cobb steelie. The biggest marble ever. He pitches it underhand like a bowling ball. Rolls over marbles and scoops them into his purple whisky bag. The kids watch the big steel marble roll around with hungry eyes, they flinch every time it smashes one of theirs. His purple marble bag strains at the seams.

We watch them play marbles. Mullen uncaps his pen, writes
OLDIES
/
RUSSIANS
on the pad. Four to one on the Russians, says Mullen. They've got those old-timers cold.

You don't know anything about curling, says the kid with the marbles. He's tall and has hair down in his face. Pulls chocolate-covered peanuts out of a bag and pops them into his mouth. You're full of it.

I'm telling you, says Mullen, no one on the Golden Oldies rink has any shot at all. The skip, he calls shots like a choir-boy. Yeah, I say, a choirboy.

You're that Mullen, whose dad works at the shithouse.

You're that Ed Carter, who's going to be doing community service, like the last kid who said that.

Hockey players, says Ed Carter. You think a bunch of downtown deadbeats are going to beat hockey players at anything? Come on.

Mullen shrugs. Put you down for what, fifty cents? Seventy-five? You can get one of those roller hot dogs when you win.

How much are you putting in?

Mullen reaches into his pocket. Pulls out a handful of quarters. Pushes them around in his palm. I've got three … nope, four dollars. Feeling pretty good here. I think I might put the whole thing down.

Four dollars on deadbeat Russians against hockey players.

Mullen pours all the quarters out into his tin can. Lets each one ring.

Here, says one of the second-graders, I've got fifty cents. Is that enough?

Sure thing, says Mullen. We take all comers.

I've got a dollar, says another kid. They all dig in their pockets, pull out dimes and quarters. Ed wrinkles his nose, then pulls two two-dollar bills out of his pocket. Drops them in the can.

Hockey players, he says.

Sure thing, Ed. Sure thing.

The Golden Oldies throw some pretty good rocks. They puff along with their brooms, sweeping when their skip tells them to, stopping when he tells them to. They get rocks right inside the eight-foot line. Their second even puts a guard rock up, just outside the house. The second-graders all point. What's happening? asks a kid. Is that good? Yeah, says another kid, that means we're winning.

Vaslav smirks. He holds Anna Petrovna out with both hands and kisses her right in the yellow bristles. Heaves himself down into the hack – he looks like he could fall over any time. At the other end of the rink, Solly stands beside the cluster of rocks in the house. Swings his broom above them like a baseball bat, points to the back of the room. Then he walks up a little further and puts his broom near the guard rock. Raises an arm for the turn he wants.

Vaslav creaks back, his rock comes right up off the ice, and he pushes out of the hack. The rock curls gently down the ice. Pavel and the second shuffle along sideways just in front of it, sweeping when Solly tells them to. Kids get right
up close to the glass. The rock passes by the guard, nearly touches it. Sweep! we hear Solly shout, as loud as he can. Pavel and the second lean into their brooms and sweep as hard as they can. The rock curls right inside, like they're drawing it along with their brooms, and crash, knocks right through both the Golden Oldie rocks, sends them spinning out against the boards.

Hey, he hit all of our rocks, says one of the second-graders. Is he allowed to do that? Ed Carter puffs out his cheeks.

After a few more ends the Russians are way out in front. Every time the Oldies get a few carefully inside, Vaslav lumbers into the hack and knocks them all out. Every time he does it Ed Carter swears under his breath.