Milk Chicken Bomb (14 page)

I pull my elbows up on the counter at the Red Rooster.

Hey, I say to the teenager behind the counter. Hey.

He sets down his rock-and-roll magazine and leans over. Yeah. What?

I need a Greyhound ticket, I say.

The teenager leans down over the counter.

You're what. Eight years old?

What does it matter how old I am? I need to go to the Yukon.

The Yukon. Right. The teenager flips open his magazine. Leans back against the cigarette rack.

Hey, I say.

He licks his finger. Flips a page.

Hey. How long does it take, anyway? The bus to the Yukon? I've got a pillow in my backpack, so –

Get out of here, barks the teenager. I sigh and get down off my tiptoes. Head out the door.

It's dark now, dark and only six o'clock, white street lights and snow. I sit on the bench outside the Red Rooster, kicking snow. Cars drive slow up and down Main Street. Everybody who works in Calgary coming home. A lot of people are lawyers and real-estate agents and land surveyors, but around here we only need one of everything so everybody else drives to the city. Red station wagons and long sedans, big jeeps with ski racks drive up Main Street, then turn, up the hill, to the houses up there where all the lawyers and real-estate agents and land surveyors live. Down here on Mullen's street it's just meat packers and labourers and Russians, and Kreshick, he's lived on this street longer than anybody.

The white Christmas lights shine all the way down Main Street.

The lights are on at the Elks' Hall. Mormons stand under the awning and drink juice out of paper cups. The Mormons are all young, with short hair and dark suits. They nod and sip their juice, and inside, Mormon kids in thick sweaters play in the coat racks, running through the jackets. I guess they're Mormons, on account of their suits, and none of them smoke cigarettes or spit on the ground.

The lights are out at Steadman's, the long lines of fluores-cent lights above the rows of toothpaste and paper towel. Up the street the lights go out at Yee's Breakfast All Day Western Noodle. Someone opens the door, pulls the wooden bench inside. Turns the Open sign around. Goes from table to table picking up all the napkin dispensers and soy-sauce jars. I can see the red glow of a cigarette cherry. I watch the Mormons drink their juice, laugh and gesture, dark suits on long arms. I stand under the street light and lean against the cold metal. Inside, kids hide between overcoats and long scarves. I can smell the potluck, the roast beef and gravy and hot potatoes.

Pavel walks down the street, on the other side. He stops at the intersection, looks around, sees me leaning on the street light. He walks diagonally across the street.

Just waiting around in the cold, eh, kid?

I guess so, I say.

Hold on a second, he says. He goes into the convenience store. Comes back out a minute later with a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

Can't you make coffee at home?

Pavel's eye looks up to the Greyhound sign in the Red Rooster window and the bus schedule up above the bench. Pavel's other eye, the not-real one, always looks a little past you, up and to the left. Almost the same colour of brown as his real eye, almost. A little shinier. I like the Red Rooster coffee, he says. The Styrofoam makes it taste right. And the walk.

Across the street the Mormons finish their juice, and someone gathers up all the plastic cups, stacks them one inside the other. They hold open the door and the sound of laughing kids comes out of the yellow hot light into the street.

Heading out someplace?

He won't sell me a bus ticket, I say.

Kid, why do you need a bus ticket?

Yeah, well. Sometimes you just need to get out.

Pavel nods. Sips some coffee. You know what'll cheer you up, kid? asks Pavel. Kreshick's going to lose.

I jump up off the bench. I stamp my feet. Tonight's the checkers? Pavel, you have to take me to see the checkers. Please take me to see the checkers, please, I promise I won't make any noise and I'll sit still and won't bother anybody and I won't tell anybody tomorrow or any other time.

You don't want to watch a bunch of old men cough and fill ashtrays. Go home. Read a book. When I was your age, I was always watching cartoons. You know, Winnie Pooh, he says. He pronounces it Vinny Poo-ehh.

Please take me to see the checkers, please. Is Vaslav going?

Vaslav's home, going over cover samples. He says none of the illustrators can do a bodice right.

I tug on his arm. Please please please. Pavel walks down the street, sips his Styrofoam cup. I tell you, kid, it's the opposite of exciting. Bad for the health, the habits of old men.

But Kreshick's going to lose tonight. Kreshick never loses. That's pretty exciting.

Pavel stops. Sips his coffee and looks up and down the dark street. Then he looks down at me and grins. Yes, it is. He grins and his eye looks out way to the right. He slaps me on the shoulder and we walk up the street.

All the lights are out in McClaghan's big windows. Just the red glow from the exit sign on the edges of the wheelbar-rows and table saws. Red on the
TV
screen in the corner. But the shuttered windows on the second floor are all lit up,
yellow and open, you can hear talking and laughing inside. Sometimes a hand reaches out the window to ash a cigarette. The ash floats along with the snow.

Pavel rings a doorbell beside a dark door, left of the hardware store door. I stand on my tiptoes but don't hear any bell. Pavel pulls the heavy hat off his head, holds it against his chest, puts it back on his head. Tugs it down his forehead almost over his eye. We puff under the white light bulb.

The door rattles, locks unlocking, one, two, three locks. We stand back and the door opens and McClaghan pokes his head out.

Come for the fleecing?

Brought the shears, says Pavel.

McClaghan looks at Pavel, looks down at me. What is this, a daycare? Get him out of here.

Pavel pats the top of my head. I have to take him home later. He isn't going to make any noise, right, kid? I lean back on my heels. I'll be real quiet. Won't say a word.

McClaghan coughs. Can't have kids. Ruins the whatsit, the camaraderie.

Pavel takes his wallet out of his pocket. Holds it open under McClaghan's face. I could always take the shears home, says Pavel. McClaghan's eyes get big. He holds the door open. Teach the virtues of patience, I suppose, he says, looking down at me. Scowls. Not a word. I shake my head. They look at each other and laugh.

We climb a narrow staircase, lights in brass fixtures stuck in the sides of the walls, not the ceiling. McClaghan coughs while he walks and Pavel takes off his hat, shakes out the snow. At the top is a hallway, plaster, wallpaper yellow at the edges along the rim of the ceiling. McClaghan opens a door and there's light and smoke and noise. Lou Ellis, and Morley Fleer, and a lot of other old men. They drink cans of beer and smoke cigarettes and laugh, on stools and in chairs, around a big, heavy table. A red-and-black checkerboard the only
thing on the table, aside from some dirty ashtrays. At the end of the table sits Kreshick, not talking or laughing, drinking a heavy glass of whisky in little sips.

Kreshick is the oldest guy in town. He makes the best ice for curling and he always wins at checkers. He's thin, like Mullen's dad, like Solzhenitsyn, with thick brown spots on his cheeks, his neck and hands. An old bolo tie loose around his skinny neck. He drinks his whisky and sees me and whistles.

What is this, a hostage-taking? How much are you worth, kid?

All the old men laugh. Pavel pulls a seat up to the table, and McClaghan shuts the door. I lean up against the wall. McClaghan stamps his feet and waves his arms. Shut up, shut up, he shouts. No more stragglers, let's get started. Judd Fischer isn't here, somebody says. Bad night to be Judd Fischer, says McClaghan. Everybody laughs and he waves his arms again. He stands behind a heavy man in a checked shirt, bald on top, with a moustache. Claps him on the shoulders.

This is Gord Miggins, Lethbridge checker champion. Won the big checker games far south as Salt Lake City. Those big Latter-day Saints checkers, right?

Everyone takes out their wallets, pulls out thick bundles of ten- and twenty-dollar bills. McClaghan gathers everyone's money around the room. Lou Ellis makes ticks on a chalk-board. He makes a scrawl of two-letter initials down the left side. Across the top it's
EK
/
GM
. McClaghan brings him the money, held in separate clumps between his fingers, and points around the room, while Lou takes the bunches of bills and makes ticks beside the rows of initials.

No, says Pavel, I'm for Lethbridge here. He takes out one, two, three, five, ten twenty-dollar bills. People whistle, take off their glasses and shine them on their sleeves. When all the money is counted up on the chalkboard, everybody gets real quiet and leans forward around the table.

You flip a coin round here? asks Miggins.

Allowing the foreigner rights to start, that's the custom, says Kreshick, every word slow and brittle.

Miggins moves a checker, pushes it with a finger. His head leaned a little back. Kreshick flicks his tongue against the inside of his mouth.

They push checkers, real slow and careful-like. All the men in the room sit as still as they can, crane their necks for a better view of Miggins and Kreshick frowning and pushing checkers. As the checkers get closer and closer together, they take longer and longer to move them.

McClaghan sits with his legs wide apart and one big fist around his jar, rested on his knee. Spits in it from time to time. Thick pasty spit. He rocks it back and forth and none of the bottom bands move at all, settled in the bottom like layers of glue.

Who do you like in the Okotoks bonspiel? someone asks. Kreshick snorts. They don't keep the ice for shit in Okotoks. That's where all you pick up such bad habits. Their filthy ice and your filthy knees. All you fat men who put your knees down on the ice beside the hack when you clean off the bottoms of your rocks. Do you know how long it takes to fix the holes you melt in the ice with your fat knees? I can recognize the filthy kneeprint of every fat curler in the district. He glares at Pavel. That fat Russian is the worst, your friend with the beard. I have to melt all the ice around the hack with a blowtorch. The filth works its way down into the ice, see, in sediments. I can date the ice to the weekend, depending on the knee.

No snoozing, kid, McClaghan says to me. Snoring is bad for the competitive atmosphere.

I'm not tired, I say. Miggins frowns at the checkerboard. How's Howitz's big dig coming along? McClaghan asks me. Everybody has a big laugh. Let's hope he called the municipality first, says Lou Ellis, asked for the right excavation information. I'd hate for him to dig into a gas line.

Or a water main, says McClaghan. It'd be awful if he flooded himself out before he gets the chance to do his flooding out. Everybody has a big laugh.

So he's doing a bit of digging, I say. Don't see why every-body's so bent out of shape over a bit of digging.

Kreshick gives me a funny look. Then he grins with all his crooked teeth. Course not, kid. Intrusion into the ground is the abiding concern around here. All over the foothills. Whole region's prosperity is dependent on what men have dug up out from the earth.

And when that prosperity's through, you can always dig yourself back under the earth, says Lou Ellis. Everybody has a laugh.

See, Kreshick says to me, your friend there is just keeping up with what we've always done around here. Escaping downward, as opposed to laterally.

Take Dobb Jensen, says McClaghan. You remember Dobb Jensen, Kreshick?

Sure. A big geology aficionado. Always looking at the ground for what do you call them, ore veins and trilobites.

Right. So Dobb decides he needs the mechanical advantage if he's going to get a good look at the real live geology. Starts heading to Calgary on weekends to buy up decommissioned steamship parts. All those big boats from the Kootenay Lakes. He buys up the drive screws and steam boilers, and he builds himself his very own steam excavator.

I remember it clearly, says Kreshick, Dobb there, bowler hat, bowtie. Sitting up on top of this big drill, hands on the levers, grinning. Like a giant post-hole digger. He even had a gas mask, with a hose. To feed him his air as he went drilling down into the ground.

Way my dad told the story, you could hear the explosion several towns over, says McClaghan.

It's true, says Kreshick. It rained wingnuts, rubber fan-belt scraps, fingers and kneecaps far away as Nanton.

Everybody's quiet. Gord Miggins holds a finger overtop of a checker.

You two are completely full of shit, says Morley Fleer.

McClaghan and Kreshick bust out laughing, like kids. Kreshick tries to move a checker and has to stop, wait until his chest stops shaking. He takes a deep breath. Gives me a look. Of course, he says, if we're going to talk about famous Marvin geologists, we certainly couldn't ignore your best friend's illustrious father.

Everybody gets a little funny. Morley Fleer and Lou Ellis both finish their beers and set them down loudly. Fleer opens two cans of beer at once.

Let's play checkers, says Pavel. His voice is a little high.

Yeah, I say, Mullen's dad is a geologist. He used to find oil, back before he moved out here to work at the meat-packing plant.

Everybody stares at me. Lou Ellis chokes a bit on his beer.

Kreshick wipes his mouth with his sleeve. In 1981 –

Don't tell him this story, says Pavel.

Kreshick rolls a little in his chair, sour and gleaming. In 1981 Marc Lalonde declared the National Energy Program and looted all the money out of Alberta. In Calgary the streets were empty and all the windows boarded up and office towers leaned and fell over like those old grain elevators. No one cared.

Don't, says Pavel.

Gord Miggins, Lethbridge checker champion, puts two fingers on a red checker and pushes it across a square. Kreshick taps a yellow fingernail on a black checker.