Milk Chicken Bomb (19 page)

Over on my other side with my arm behind and it falls asleep right away. I can't feel it. I try to turn myself over and can't feel my arm. Reach around behind with my other hand and try to grab my shoulder but it's too far. I sort of flop forward, push my forehead into the mattress. I lever myself up with my head and reach underneath and pull the arm out and collapse. Whew.

When I'm crazy I hope I still get to have fun. I don't know if crazy people read comics or go down hills or try to drink the most milk. I try not to look at the clock. If I see the time, I get all anxious because I can't sleep and soon it'll be morning and I won't have slept and I'll go crazy. I'll get short of breath and have to roll over and I'll be awake forever. Do you have to go to school if you're crazy? Learn about Louis Riel and do sit-ups?

Tomorrow will be Monday: school and inside shoes and the dim lights in the hallways, desks and foolscap and going outside at lunch. Compasses and protractors and the Northwest Passage. And all I ever do is wait around. Wait around for after school, for Friday, for Christmas. But what am I going to do? Wake up Mullen and try to tell him? Wake up Solzhenitsyn and Mullen's dad, and tell them that I can't sleep? How come it's always my job to tell people when something's wrong anyway?

Mullen snorts and breathes heavy. He inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth. His foot pushes up and down, up and down under the blanket. Like he was hopping up and down. When I'm crazy I hope me and Mullen still get along. I hope we still sell lemonade. I guess I'd understand if he didn't want to sell lemonade with a crazy kid. If I go crazy, he'll probably make the lemonade too sweet.

Mr. Hyslop draws notes on the music-room chalkboard. Has this block of wood with five pieces of chalk all held together, draws five parallel lines across the board. Whole notes and quarter notes. He counts with his hand, back and forth and up and down, and we all sing songs, except most of the boys don't sing, just open our mouths along with the words. I do my best not to yawn too much. Sometimes my eyes droop and my head bobs forward and I almost fall asleep. Pete Leakie nudges me every time my head starts to bob and I wake up and keep opening my mouth to the words.

After school I go to see how the Russians are doing. Pavel and Vaslav sit on the porch in their parkas.

Did Solzhenitsyn fix the boiler yet?

Look inside, says Vaslav, there's frost in the sink. An icicle hanging out of the faucet. My goddamn home.

He's at the hardware store buying tools, says Pavel.

He was whistling, says Vaslav, making a sour face. Practically giddy. Like it's the best thing that's happened all year. It's appalling.

He says it will take a few more days to air out, says Pavel, before he can turn everything back on.

But he can fix it, I say, right? He can fix anything.

He can fix anything, says Pavel. Vaslav coughs.

You should stay at Deke's house until he does, I say. Vaslav coughs and spits on the porch. That miserable son of a bitch won't open the door. Says he'll shoot anybody tries to come inside. He thinks we've got that cop with us and we're all out to bust up whatever loony scheme he's cooking up in there.

I heard at the Short Stack last night that he's counterfeiting, says Pavel. He's got a metal press, making his own quarters by the roll. Planning to flood the whole municipality with counterfeit coins.

Fleer figures he's building an aqueduct, says Vaslav.

A what?

You know, like the Romans used. Fleer says he saw that El Camino go by late one night full of scrap sheet metal. Figures Howitz is building an aqueduct piece by piece, to flood the credit union over land.

Shouldn't you be working on your novel? I ask Vaslav. He balls up his fist and coughs. He coughs for a long time. Sometimes he stops coughing and tries to catch his breath, then wheezes and chokes and doubles over and coughs again. Pavel hits him on the back and he coughs heavy and wet into his hand. He takes a deep breath. Opens his hand and makes a face, holds his damp, sticky hand away. Pats his pockets with his dry hand. Pavel unfolds his cloth handkerchief and hands it over.

Who can write when there's no heat? When you can't go inside? He coughs, clutches at his chest. The proofs are out. In the mail. I'm on vacation, he says.

I pull off my inside shoes to go out for recess and Pete Leakie says, Hey. I put my inside shoes on the shelf. Hey, are you going outside? asks Pete. He squints beside the door, his face pulled back into the dark. Squints at the bright white sky. It sure is a lot of snow, says Pete. He scuffs his shoe on the black doormat.

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.

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.