Milk Chicken Bomb (20 page)

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.

Vaslav makes a harrumphing sound, arms crossed across his chest. Slumped in his lawn chair, extra round from layers of sweaters and jackets. He looks like a pile of laundry.

Well, everything in there must be worked through by now. That smoke isn't getting distributed anymore at least. Let's go down there and turn it on.

Yes, says Solzhenitsyn, let's do that. The two of them go inside the house. Vaslav makes another snorting sound and sinks deeper inside his clothes.

How's school? asks Pavel.

It's not too bad, I say. It's the Christmas play soon, so we spend all our time cutting snowflakes out of construction paper.

That's educational? Construction-paper snowflakes?

Well, it's not the only thing we're doing. There's lots of geometry and Canadian history too. The other day we learned about John Franklin, and the Northwest Passage.

John Franklin found the Northwest Passage?

I don't know, I say, we haven't got that far yet.

That's when the shouting starts inside the house. We all look up at each other. Inside there's some crashing sounds, like heavy stuff getting thrown around, and a lot of shouting. Pavel half-stands up out of his chair.

What the hell?

We stand there and listen: banging and shouting and swearing. Then the whole house gives a big shake, and there's this really awful groaning, rattling sound.

Pavel stands all the way up. Vaslav holds his hand up. Let the good doctors do their work, he says. We'll just get in their way.

It sounds like –

Yeah, yeah it does.

The man from the gas company comes upstairs. The bottoms of his pant legs are soaked grey. He pats his pockets. Makes a face. Any of you guys got a cigarette?

What the hell happened down there?

Well, we turned the boiler back on and it started flooding. You really do keep too much shit in your basement.

Flooding?

Yep. All the water from the pipes, just gushing straight out the bottom. Most of it went straight into the ground, but when it thaws, it's going to stink something fierce. You ought to get a dehumidifier. They sell them at the hardware store.

What about the airlock? Can you fix the airlock?

Fix it? Hell, I don't work on gravity systems, they're a goddamn nightmare. He writes in his tiny coil notebook. I'll order a new boiler, but it will take about three weeks.

Three weeks?

They have to build it in Ontario, he says. Near Sault Ste. Marie, I think. Nobody out here makes them anymore.

Three weeks, says Vaslav, I'm going to sleep in the back of my pickup truck? Should I get a tent?

Downstairs Solzhenitsyn is still yelling. He's taking this pretty personally, says the gas man. Like some kind of personal affront.

It always listened to him in the past, see.

The gas man shrugs. Talk to your landlord. We'll want to get that order in soon, especially with the Christmas season coming up.

The Christmas season, says Vaslav.

You should really change over to central heating, says the gas man. Tear out all those radiator pipes and get a furnace. Talk to your landlord about it. He gets in his big pickup truck and drives away. Downstairs, Solzhenitsyn shouts a lot less. Less often and less loudly.

Vaslav puts his hand over his mouth and goes inside the frozen house. He comes out with a plant pot. He brings out all their plants, sets them down on the porch. Clay pots and plain orange plastic pots, and a white plant pot with blue ducks printed all around the rim. Every pot filled with sticky, gooey dead green. That's what happens when plants freeze I guess. They melt down into this gooey green mess, like frozen spinach.

I pour myself some lemonade. Just a little, in a cup.

Sweet. Gritty sweet, each little bit of sugar. I can feel the sugar between my teeth, on my gums. I spit the lemonade on the ground.

Mullen, what the hell is wrong with you?

Mullen chips at the ice with the tongs. What do you mean?

Why'd you have to go and ruin the lemonade? 'Cause you sure ruined it.

He chips ice. Don't know what you're talking about.

I pick up the pitcher. Walk out into the street and pour it out onto the snow. Mullen sticks his hands in his pockets. Lemonade makes puddles in the dirty snow.

Now that was a hell of a thing to do, says Mullen. Wasting money like that.

You shouldn't have ruined the lemonade.

Mullen opens our money shoebox. Takes out a quarter and throws it at me. While we're at it, we might as well get rid of everything, he says. Throws a nickel, it whizzes past my ear.

You're a real piece of work.

He throws a dime and hits me in the shoulder. So the lemonade's too sweet. So what?

Sweet lemonade is for Dead Kids.

Oh right, I forgot, it's just for rich kids who live up the hill, kids whose parents work in Calgary and make lots of money and get their kids anything they want. Right, Dead Kids. Kids like you.

I drop the pitcher and run into him. We roll around on the ground. We get on top of each other and rub snow in each
other's faces. I guess we must be pretty loud because Mullen's dad comes out of the house and picks us up. Carries us to the porch, one of us under each arm. Drops us on the porch, our faces all wet and pink and cold.

Go to school, Mullen's dad says. Smarten the hell up and go to school. Both of us sniffle and don't say anything. Mullen's dad goes down and gets the shoebox, picks the pitcher up off the ground. He takes down the sign, pulls the plank up off the cinder blocks and takes everything into the garage. We sniffle and don't say anything.