Milk Chicken Bomb (2 page)

In High River some cowboys sit outside the bowling alley and drink beer out of stubby bottles, their shirts unbuttoned in the cold. We stop at the traffic lights, the only set in town, red.

Hey, open the glovebox, says Mullen's dad. Get me that pen. I open the glovebox: a map of Calgary, a socket wrench, some crumpled candy wrappers. I hand him a blue-capped ballpoint pen. He puts it in his mouth and grinds the plastic between his teeth. Mullen's dad is always chewing on something: straws, keys. Sometimes he chews on pencils and gets little flecks of yellow paint on his teeth.

We drive past Lester's Meats, the parking lot all empty for the night, a few dirty cattle tucks under the single light post. Proud To Be Union Free Since 1977. I wrinkle my nose at the smell.

So I pulled the toboggan out of the garage the other day, he says. It's not doing so well. Bottom's all scratched up. Were you guys riding it on ice last winter?

There wasn't snow for so long, I say.

I was thinking of getting Mullen a new sled for Christmas, he says. You think he'd like that? The sort with runners, that you can steer. You guys could ride one of those anywhere.

Christmas is pretty far away, I say.

Yeah. Christmas is pretty far away.

We drive through the dark, past wooden gates, long driveways. People put wagon wheels on their gates, their names on
wooden arches over the road. We drive through the dark and the circles of light, under posts, around driveways. We drive through the snow and onto the highway in the dark. We get back to Marvin and Mullen's dad drops me off at my house.

You want me to come in and say something?

No, I say, it'll be okay.

It's pretty late.

It doesn't matter.

I close the door of his truck and wave goodbye.

We ought to make the lemonade sweeter, Mullen says.

Most of the leaves are already brown and falling off the trees, all the way up the street. In school we colour pictures of autumn leaves: brown and yellow and red and orange. None of the leaves on Mullen's street turn red, though, or orange. Just brown and yellow and then they fall off the trees and get wet and soggy and stick in the grates. They stick to the roofs of people's cars.

We ought to make the lemonade sweeter, says Mullen. Now that it's fall. I bet people would buy more lemonade if it was sweeter.

That sweet stuff is for kids, I tell him. We're after the adult audience. Real classy. Mullen pours himself a glass and puckers.

You're sure out early this morning, says Deke Howitz. Leans on his fence. Deke Howitz hasn't shaved this morning, and his hair is greasy and not combed. Eyes red like he's been up all night. Hey, Deke, Mullen says, do you think we ought to put more sugar in the lemonade? Deke shrugs. I don't know anything about lemonade. Shouldn't you be in school? School doesn't start for another forty minutes, Deke. I know I wouldn't be up this early if I didn't have to, says Deke.

He waves us over to his fence. Leans over and reaches back into his scruffy blue jeans for his wallet.

Did they come, Deke?

He coughs and grins. Opens up the worn leather wallet, flips through the little plastic flaps with his driver's licence, his credit cards. He pulls out a little paper card.

Davis Howe Oceanography, Mullen reads, Davis Howe,
CEO
. What's a
CEO
, Deke?

That's me, kid. Sole owner and proprietor.

I don't get it, says Mullen. Why do you have a different name on your Oceanography business card?

Because they really stack the deck against you when you've got a name like Deke Howitz. Everybody just thinks you're some hillbilly. Some real asshole.

So the bank will loan you the money now? The money to buy your submarine?

All I'm saying is that Davis Howe is a lot more likely to get $400,000 from the bank than Deke Howitz is. He puts the card back into his wallet. Now I just have to get my suit cleaned.

Is that the suit you wear to pay your parking tickets?

Yeah, that one.

I thought you had a washing machine in there, says Mullen. I thought you even had a dryer.

Sure, says Deke, but you can't wash a suit in a washing machine, it gets all rumpled. I'm rumpled enough already. Hey, Mullen, is your dad home? I need to borrow his jerry can. He's already gone to work, says Mullen. Deke leans on his fence. I need to borrow his jerry can before McClaghan comes around for the rent, says Deke. Just the four-litre would do. He's already gone to work, says Mullen. Deke goes back into his house. After a while the windows start to steam up.

Hey, buy some lemonade, best on the block. People mostly ignore us. They pull by slowly in cars, their dogs' faces pressed up against the glass, panting. They walk by reading newspapers or just looking at the sidewalk.

Across the street Mrs. Lampman tugs on the rusty hinge of her mailbox. Hey, Mrs. Lampman, you want some lemonade? She shuffles through her mail, skirt creased, hair frizzy. It's too cold for lemonade, she says, you should get a coffee pot. Well, Mrs. Lampman, we're not allowed to drink coffee,
and besides, we've got the best lemonade, and people love it even if it's cold. Mrs. Lampman roots in the pocket of her jacket, finds some credit card receipts, a sticky mint, a kleenex, a dollar. Here, give me some lemonade. Hey, Mullen, get Mrs. Lampman some lemonade. Mullen blows a bubble.

Selling lemonade is a lot easier in the summer. In the summer we hardly have to ask people; they cross the street for lemonade, their quarters right out of their pockets. We had a big grasshopper problem this summer, I guess worse than a lot of other years. Grasshoppers all over the lawns and in the gravel, grasshoppers in garden hoses, in dog dishes and mailboxes, trapped underneath newspapers. Anywhere you went you could hear them, scritching and hopping, rattling around like pennies in a jar. All the cars on the street had grasshoppers ground up in their tires. We had to put tinfoil over the lemonade jug and wrap the lemons in cellophane. Grasshoppers jumped on and off the tinfoil, like popcorn.

Mullen's dad pokes in the black mailbox. Lifts the metal flap. He pulls out a few letters, looks at the addresses. Puts one of them in his mouth and the rest in his back pocket. He takes the letter out of his mouth and tears it in half. Tears it in half again. Stuffs the torn paper in the front of his blue jeans.

Mullen's dad is probably the tallest guy in town. He comes out of the house, stretching his skinny arms way up above the top of the door frame. He scratches his chin. He puts his hands on his narrow hips and leans backward, rolls his shoulders around.

How's the old man's credit?

It's fifty cents a glass, Dad.

Come on. You know I'm good for it.

Dad, you've got a job.

Mullen's dad sits down on the curb. He takes a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and sticks it in his mouth. Mullen pulls a plastic cup off the stack and digs his tongs into the ice
bucket. Takes his dad a cup of lemonade. Then he gets a duotang out from under the bag of sugar and makes a tick on his dad's tab. Mullen won't ever let me look at his dad's tab; I can only guess how big it is. Someday he's going to pay it, though: a jam jar full of quarters, five-dollar bills tied into lumps with elastic bands. Enough nickels to fill a Thermos. We'll both buy new bikes, with handbrakes, not the backpedalling kind, when Mullen's dad pays his tab. Buy every new comic book the week it comes out, with plastic bags so they don't get sticky and torn up. We'll skip school and buy slurpees and boxes of Lego, and if they throw us out of school we'll laugh, on account of our financial security. I think they ought to try and throw us out of school. We'll just make the lemonade better.

At 8:20 we take down the signs: Lemonade! and No Dogs Please. We take the cooler and the lawn chairs into Mullen's garage. Mullen's dad lets us leave the cinder blocks and the plank on the lawn. We go to school.

At school all the Dead Kids from up the hill take off their outside shoes and put on their inside shoes. White with stripes and velcro instead of laces, or high-tops with thick laces that are always clean. Inside the school it's dark and hard to see, especially after having been outside for so long. Kids move around in the dark like they're underwater, bubbles rising from their yappy mouths.

Today I figure the whole school is underwater and all the Dead Kids are jellyfish, and you can't touch a jellyfish 'cause you'll get stung, see. Good thing I've got my snorkel and my flashlight. I figure some conquistadors must have sunk around here somewhere. Jellyfish come close and I duck and pivot like they taught us in basketball. Jellyfish stare at me with their buggy jellyfish eyes, floating on stalks in the murky water. A bell rings, it must be a fishing lure; all the jellyfish start floating off in the same direction. I bet it's a trap, I bet there's nets and harpoons waiting down the hall. They clog up the hall, all their oozy tentacles get caught up into one big jelly lump. I bob along behind them, breathing through my snorkel, in, out. Far enough behind that when the fishing starts, I won't get trampled if they panic. I wonder if jellyfish panic when harpoons start sticking into their crowd, when brother and sister jellyfish get hauled up all of a sudden, out and away. Or maybe they just bob along stupid-like, waiting, bubbling, not knowing any better, until the harpoon gets them right square.

Pete Leakie sits on the sidewalk, legs spread out, drawing with chalk. Hey Pete, what are you doing? Drawing, he says. He rubs a stub of chalk into the grainy concrete. A house, with orange flames, and people sitting on the roof. Are they yelling, Pete? They're laughing, he says. See? See all the smiles? Why's the house on fire, Pete? Pete shrugs.

Pete reaches into his knapsack, blue and full of holes, reaches in and gets some green chalk. Starts drawing green circles above the house. Where's Mullen? asks Pete. Mullen's at home, I say, doing the dishes. Mullen's dad makes him do the dishes? Sure, I say, every night after supper. Pete starts drawing green X's inside the green circles. What are you drawing now, Pete? Well, the house is on fire, says Pete.

Pete wears sweaters and glasses and has two chins. There's yellow chalk smudged in his black hair, and chalk handprints all up and down his overalls. Chalk on the arms of his black-rimmed glasses. Last year, when Mullen and I got sent up for putting wallpaper paste on all the shower floors at school, Pete brought us potato chips in the detention room. Pete Leakie isn't a Dead Kid. He's all right.

Pete shuffles backward on the concrete; he sticks a piece of blue chalk into his mouth and creases his forehead up all critical-like, examining his work.

Do you know how to draw horses? Pete asks me. I don't like drawing horses, I tell him. Yeah? What do you like drawing? You know, I say, the same old stuff. Today at school I drew some rhinoceroses. No kidding, says Pete. Yeah, no kidding.

I look at my watch. If Pete Leakie were a Dead Kid, it would be a whole different ball of wax. If Pete Leakie were a
Dead Kid we'd just talk about Mr. Weissman's math class and how many problems there are to do. A Dead Kid would be shifty and stuttery, 'cause Dead Kids don't much like me and aren't supposed to talk to me. But a Dead Kid would never draw on the sidewalk with chalk, so Pete Leakie's not so bad.

Mullen comes around the corner. Hey, Mullen, Pete Leakie says, your dad makes you do the dishes every night?

Oh yeah, Mullen says. We make quite a mess, the old man and me. Spaghetti sauce and baked-on cheese. Stacks of dishes up past your head.

Don't you have a dishwasher? Pete asks.

We got a sink. Mullen looks down the street, looks at his watch. A sink and one of those wire brushes, with the soap inside.

My parents bought a new dishwasher last year, with the tax-return money, Pete says. You don't even have to rinse the dishes off first, just put them right in. That's great, Pete, Mullen says. Yeah, I say. Great, Pete.

Mullen's got that look, that look he gets, like the time he found the boat at the bottom of the river, or when he wanted to start collecting flyers from all the offices on Main Street. It doesn't do any good to ask him, Hey, Mullen, why do you want to fill garbage bags with driver's-education pamphlets and pizza-delivery menus and bible-retreat brochures and mortgage application forms? He'll just get that look. I bet they'd have a lot of flyers at the
IGA
, he'll say, I bet they've got all kinds of flyers there.

Mullen grabs my elbow and whispers, Hey, do you know where we can get a telescope?

A telescope?

Yeah, he says, we oughta go and do some what, some surveilling.

I've got some plastic binoculars, I tell him, but they're at my house.

We have to go now. She might leave any time.

Who might leave?

Mullen stretches his arms up above his head and his black T-shirt tugs up above his belly button. Gosh, Pete, Mullen yawns, it sure has been something, watching you draw, but we have to go. See you around.

Yeah, Pete Leakie says, see you guys around. Pete Leakie finds his orange chalk. Starts drawing an orange octopus on the sidewalk.

Where are we going, Mullen?

We have to go surveil, he says. Down the street, across from the post office.

There isn't anything across from the post office.

There is now.

You can smell the Russians' barbecue all the way up the street. We walk up the sidewalk and there they are, out in their yard, sitting in their lawn chairs, reaching over now and then to prod at the steaks sizzling away on the grill. Most people have already put their barbecues back into their garages on account of it being fall, but the Russians do everything later than everybody else. They probably won't put up their Christmas lights until two days after Christmas again this year, and then leave them out until June. They wave with their brown beer bottles.

Hey, Mullen, Vaslav hollers, where's your dad?

Still at work I guess, he says.