Milk Chicken Bomb

by Andrew Wedderburn

  It’s not that much snow, Pete, I say. I pull on a boot. Why don’t you come outside? I figure I’ll go sit in the gully awhile. Pete watches the sky.

  Mullen in detention? he asks. I nod. Pete tugs at the neck of his sweater.

  You reading any of those books you like, Pete?

  Pete looks down at the book in his hand. Horses and swords and pointy white mountains. Well, I read all these books, he says, and they’re all kind of the same. There’s a country without a king, and a kid who doesn’t have parents, and then a stranger, with a ring, or else it’s a kid from somewhere else, like England, who gets lost, and ends up in this place with wizards and badgers. And everybody wants things how they used to be, except things changed, and now there’s a dark lord in a tower, or a witch in a tunnel. So the elves or wizards or badgers or whatever give the kid a sword that makes him a king, a ring that makes him hold his breath, or a hat that makes him hear the sleeping queen when she’s breathing.

  Pete turns away from the white sky. Sounds great, Pete, I say.

  Yeah, well, you have a good time sitting in the gully, says Pete. He backs away from the door, neck a little bent, eyes narrow. It’s awfully big, isn’t it? he says.

  It’s the sky, Pete.

  Sure it is. Sure it’s the sky.

  Out in the field Dead Kids play ball hockey in the hard-packed snow. Kids wind up for big slapshots and whack other kids in the chest. Whenever Dave Steadman winds up for a slapshot, all the kids take one hand off their sticks and cover their crotches.

  Dwayne Klatz stands near the monkey bars. Looks all over the playground. He hops from one foot to the other. Dwayne takes a deep breath and slaps himself across the face. He shakes his head and slaps himself. Shakes his shoulders, like he’s going to run a race.

  Dwayne steps in front of Jenny Tierney, on her way toward the school. She almost walks right overtop of him. Get out of my way, she says.

  He reaches into the chest pocket of his overalls. Unfolds a piece of paper, holds it out in front of his face. Clears his throat. Then he reads out loud.

  Jenny, all I ever do

  Is think of spending time with you,

  And how you are the prettiest girl

  I ever saw in the whole world.

  He coughs into his mitt.

  Jenny’s eyes get about as wide as I’ve ever seen them. Not a face like in gym class, the dodgeball hitting the wall and her leaving the room. Her eyes get wide and her eyebrows raise up and her mouth sort of hangs open. Dwayne stands there. Scratches the back of his head.

  Uh, do you want to keep the poem?

  Jenny stares at him. She balls up her fist, raises it a little, waits.

  Some front–row girls near the swing set whisper to each other. They point and whisper, point at Jenny and Dwayne and giggle. Jenny looks at them, she looks at Dwayne and then she looks at her fist.

  Uhm, says Dwayne.

  Jenny Tierney puts her hands in her pockets and walks away, toward the school. Dwayne looks at me, real pale. I shrug. The front–row girls by the swing set laugh and laugh.

  The hardest part about November is the night. The nights get bigger and bigger. In November you walk out of the double front doors of the school and the sun is already low on the horizon and the air is grey and before you know it, it’s nighttime. And it’s cold and it’s dark.

  The thing to do is get all the fireworks you can carry and bundle them all together, and tie them onto your backpack. You can tape them on with duct tape, that’ll hold them good. You have to make sure that they’re all facing the right way. Then all you need to do is make sure that your backpack is strapped on real good, and light a match. And then bang, you’re flying away. You’re shooting off into the sky on the front of the brightest, loudest explosion ever. The trick is to get enough fireworks that you can keep going, zooming through the air, the wind stretching your face, like you were standing up in the back of a racing truck. If you’ve got enough fireworks you can keep up with the day, firing off west, chasing the sun.

  Pavel comes out of the frozen house with his arms full of clothes: black overcoats and white shirts. Mullen and I sit at the table flicking pennies at each other while the grown-ups go into the bathroom, one at a time. Solzhenitsyn and Pavel both squeeze white shaving foam out of metal tubes. Mullen’s dad just lathers up a white bar of soap, spreads it on his bristly cheeks. Vaslav doesn’t shave at all. They all brush their teeth and comb their hair with black plastic combs. They put their white shirts on over their white undershirts. Then they line up and Pavel ties all their neckties. Mullen’s dad and Solzhenitsyn have thin black ties. Vaslav has a wide red-and-white striped tie. They hold their chins up and Pavel loops the ties around and ties the knots, folds their collars back down. He has a good look at them all, then nods.

  I’ll start the car, says Solzhenitsyn.

  Mullen’s dad nods. He looks at us. Chews on his lip. I don’t think we should bring the kids, he says.

  Solly shrugs. So don’t bring the kids.

  Yeah, but I don’t want to leave them alone either.

  So send them to the rec centre. Lock them in the living room. You leave them alone all the time.

  That’s exactly the point. I leave him alone all the time, and look at the results. If I let this miscreant out of my sight for a second, he’s liable to burn my house down. I’ve had it with school principals calling me a jerk and a bum.

  Every kid needs to go to a wake, says Vaslav. There’s living and there’s dying and you’ve got to see it all.

  So bring them along, says Solly. It’s just the Short Stack. Not like we’re taking them to the casino in Calgary.

  He glares at us. Mullen holds up his scribbler. I’ll bring my homework, he says. Won’t bother you at all. Long division, I’ll be in the corner. Yeah, I say, I’ve got a book report. We’ll sit in the corner and won’t even look up from our books. Heck, we’ll be so busy we won’t even know where we are.

  Absolutely not. Absolutely no way am I taking my already disreputable, hell-bound child to the town trough.

  Jarvis said – hell, how did he put it? Solly tugs on an earflap. Said that failure to attend would constitute sedition. You know how it is when he talks all Reader’s Digest style – means he’s in a right flap.

  Send them over to that teacher lives across the street, says Pavel. She can look after them.

  She has a low enough opinion of me already. Take the kids, I have to go to the bar? Can’t do.

  Howitz, says Vaslav.

  Mullen’s dad raps his knuckles on his knee. Chews his lip. Get your car, he says to Solzhenitsyn. Stares at us. You sit in the corner, he says. You don’t talk to anybody.

  The corner, Dad. Right.

  You sit in the corner, you don’t talk to anybody, you don’t get up from the table.

  Long division, with a remainder. Right, Dad.

  We wait for Solzhenitsyn’s hatchback to warm up. He gets a roll of duct tape out of the glovebox, puts a few new strips around the garbage bag over his window. Scrapes the frost off his windshield. Mullen’s dad paces on the porch. Mullen puts his scribbler and his math textbook in a plastic IGA bag. Drops in a handful of stubby pencils.

  The hatchback putters down Main Street, Mullen’s dad and Solzhenitsyn up in the front, too tall, heads hunched over the dashboard, past the IGA and the Red Rooster, past houses, where the street narrows down and the sidewalks stop. Vaslav and Pavel follow behind us in the pickup truck. The road curves out into scrubby poplar trees along the river, and the railroad tracks run right up beside it, and Solly drives around the curve and there’s the Short Stack. A few old trucks in the parking lot, dirty, one of them snowed right over like it hasn’t moved in weeks. Red neon blinks in the dark, SHO T ACK, blinks on and off, makes all the snow red, then dark, then red.

  It’s been a long wait, says Mullen’s dad. Feels like a long wait. Funerals usually happen a lot sooner.

  Well, says Solzhenitsyn, it’s not like there was a body.
<
br />   Mullen’s dad shudders. No, he says, I guess not.

  We park and get out of the car. Mullen’s dad walks up the wooden porch, a few plastic chairs still outside, covered in snow. Stamps off his boots, opens the heavy door.

  Inside it smells like old towels, like the sink in Deke’s kitchen when he rinses out his beer bottles for the depot. Red and blue light from neon beer signs, posters with women in bikinis, on sailboats, or in car garages, with toolbelts around their hips. Men in denim shirts and corduroy ball caps sit at the bar, their legs spread wide on their stools, their bellies resting against the dark wood. Big fists around their bottles. Ashtrays full of crushed butts.

  The men from Lester’s Meats stand around the pool tables, all of them in their best black coats, clean blue jeans. Some of them wear big black cowboy hats with fancy bands. They stand around the pool tables, each of them with a bottle or a glass, talking. They look serious and sad and a little drunk, all of them. Jarvis Lester sits in one chair, leg up on another, drinks something pale out of a small glass. Everybody waves when we come in.

  The bartender stacks glasses: short glasses, fat glasses with flat sides, tiny glasses with stems, shot glasses. Water from his soggy hands drips on the row of wineglasses, leaves streaks through the dust. He picks up two pint glasses, holds his arms out to either end of the long row of beer taps. Flips down the handles with either forefinger, the pints loose in his hands. Gold beer fills the tilted glasses. He straightens them as they fill, closes the taps with his thumbs.

  Mullen’s dad looks for a dry spot on the wood, leans on his elbows. I’ll get four Labatt 50s and – what do you kids want? You want lemon-lime? Root beer? Ginger ale, says Mullen. Yeah, I say, we want ginger ale.

  The bartender leans over to look at us. Christ, he says, you can’t bring kids in here. It’s not the goddamn dinner theatre.

  Babysitting, says Mullen’s dad. We’ll keep them under strict parental supervision.

  No minors. I’ll get shut down.

  What, says Mullen’s dad, the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission is going to shut you down for a couple of kids drinking root beer?

  Ginger ale, says Mullen. We want ginger ale.

  It’s not like we’re out for a night on the town, says Vaslav. It’s a wake.

  The AGLC is everywhere, says the bartender. Leans close and hushes his voice. They’ve got spies. Secret sting operations. They send in seventeen-year-olds, undercover, dress them up as college students.

  When I was a bartender in Edmonton we got AGLC stings, says Solzhenitsyn, but they get too into character. You can spot them because they always order fancy import beer. Anybody asks for something made by monks in Belgium is an AGLC spook. He looks down the bar at all the old men. How about those 50s?

  The bartender pops the caps off four brown bottles. Keep them away from the bar, he says, fills two plastic glasses with ginger ale out of the soda gun. And keep them away from the pool table. Keep them away from everybody.

  Mullen here has long division, says Mullen’s dad. And you, he says to me, where’s your book report?

  I didn’t bring it.

  You didn’t bring it. He takes his beer from the bartender. You got anything this kid can read?

  The bartender pulls a plastic tub from under the cash register. Corkscrews, a box of chalk, stretches of wire, a television remote control. He finds a skinny book. Old Trafalgar’s Finest Cocktail and Bartending Guide. A picture of Queen Victoria on the cover. I mean it, he says, I don’t want them talking to anybody.

  How’s homelessness? Jarvis asks Vaslav.

  Vaslav thumps his chest. A little adversity never hurt anybody. Keeps a man alert, dealing with less than ideal circumstances.

  I’ve been running space heaters, says Solzhenitsyn. To keep the pipes from freezing. Guy from the gas company is coming tomorrow and we’re going to turn it all back on. I think we’ve got the blockage clear; ought to be drying our socks on the radiators tomorrow night.

  Listen to him, says Jarvis, he’s never had such a good time. Massive heating emergency in his own home. Finally gives him something to do.

  I flip through the bartending book. Look, I say to Mullen, pointing to the pictures, fancy brown drinks in stemmed glasses, cherries and plastic swords, limes and umbrellas.

  What’s triple sec? asks Mullen. He strains his head to see the shelves of bottles behind the bar. Which drink do you think uses the most of those bottles?

  A manhattan has three drops of bitters, I read. And an amaretto wash.

  What’s amaretto? What does it wash?

  Somebody holds up their bottle. Everybody gets quiet and does the same. The men with the cowboy hats all take them off. Jarvis gets his cane and hoists himself up. Holds up his pale glass of something.

  I want to first thank everybody for coming to work last week. I know we’re all rattled. I wouldn’t have been surprised had no one darkened the plant door on Monday. But I think we all know, a small outfit like ours, well, losing a day or two and we’d be through. So thanks, everyone.

  Everybody nods and has a drink.

  Think the bartender would make us one of these mint juleps? asks Mullen. It looks pretty harmless. I bet it uses a lot of those bottles. Mullen’s dad glares at us.

  We’ve been an accident-free operation for a long time, says Jarvis, barring the obvious. He knocks the side of his leg with his cane. Everybody has a little laugh. Otherwise it’s been six months since Little Joe put that boning knife into Henry’s arm out on the line.

  He really shouldn’t have reached in front of me like that, says a short little man. Everybody has another laugh.

  But this, well, this is something else. We’ve all lost a friend, we’ve lost a teammate. It’s happened where we work and I don’t imagine many of us feel very good about it. I know I sure don’t.

  Something crashes into the bar door, hammers on the door, pushes and pushes. Pull! shouts the bartender. The door pulls open and in stumbles Deke Howitz. People turn, a few at a time, while Deke walks across the room, slow, has to stop now and then to lean on chairs. Makes it to the jukebox. Nobody in the bar says anything, they just hold their drinks close to their mouths and watch Deke. He digs in his pockets. Spills lemon throat drops and dimes out onto the wooden floor. He puts a few quarters into the jukebox, leans right down against the glass, reading. Pokes the buttons with a slow finger. He turns around and leans, head back against the jukebox, and a piano starts to play over the speakers. Deke takes a deep breath and sings along.

  When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely,

  You can always go

  Downtown.

  Go to hell, somebody shouts. Everybody shouts and Deke sings along for a while then sort of trails off. People throw pennies and peanut shells. Deke rolls around, falls back against the jukebox. Looks all over. He takes a deep breath and pushes himself up. Takes slow, careful steps across the floor. Shit, says Mullen’s dad. Deke walks past the bar, to the pool table.

  He opens his mouth to talk and Mullen’s dad cuts him off. Deke, the grown-ups here need to have a conversation. Please.

  Deke shuts his red eyes, opens them. Deke’s eyes are pretty red most of the time, but never this red. He takes off his jean jacket. Deke used to be really skinny, but he’s not so skinny anymore. His arms and chest are bigger. You can see the shapes of his muscles, like he was a comic-book character. You never used to be able to see any muscles at all on Deke.

  You’ve got a real chip on your shoulder, says Deke. His voice is pretty slurred. I may be a deluded welfare bum, but I’ve never brought a child to a bar. He winks at us. No sense studying in the bar, kids, he says. Take a night off for once.

  Jesus Christ, Howitz, says Mullen’s dad, you’re a grown man. Don’t you have any friends who aren’t ten years old?

  Everybody in the bar is real quiet. Someone snickers over by the window.

  It’s all right, Dad, Mullen says. We all –

  Quiet, says Mullen’s dad.


  Deke has turned real pale. Stares at Mullen’s dad. Somebody else snickers and Deke shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. ‘Downtown’ keeps playing on the jukebox. After a while he opens his red, red eyes.

  The bartender comes out and stands behind Deke. Slips his arms under Deke’s armpits. Around his chest. Deke doesn’t really notice, just staring, pale. He looks like he might say something, then looks down at the arms. Looks at Mullen’s dad. He sighs and slumps backward against the bartender. His heels drag on the floor as the bartender walks him backward to the door.

  Mullen and I watch each other and don’t say anything. Jarvis and everybody else from Lester’s Meats tell stories about Milo Foreman and I don’t pay attention because I really want to go. Mullen flips through the bartending book. Other workers from the meat-packing plant show up, they come and shake Jarvis’s hand. They all talk real quiet and serious, they all take off their hats. There’s a sad serious woman that everyone hugs and speaks to quietly, and she nods and tries to smile but doesn’t do a good job. I want to go.

  An airlock, eh? asks the man from the gas company.

  That’s what I figure, says Solzhenitsyn. He’s got his grey coveralls on, and his toolbelt. He looks extra skinny in the baggy coveralls. Screwdrivers and wrenches hanging from the leather loops, pulling down off his skinny hips. I figure there was an airlock somewhere in the line, he says, so the hot water never made the full circuit through all the pipes. When that happens, the boiler thinks it isn’t actually running, so it fires itself up full-bore to overcompensate. It runs too hot like that for too long, fries out the seal, that’s when you get the glycol leak.

  The man from the gas company rubs the little black beard around his mouth. Takes a pen out of the chest pocket of his coveralls, puts it behind his ear. This is why I never work on gravity systems. They’re a goddamn nightmare. You know, in Calgary, they won’t even sell you a house with a gravity system. Nobody will insure it. ’Cause of this sort of thing. You should tell your landlord to put in central heating.