Milk Chicken Bomb (21 page)

Go to school, he says. He goes back inside.

Halfway up the hill, Mullen isn't around anymore.

At school we sing Christmas songs. Mr. Hyslop taps his little plastic stick on the music stand and whips it back and forth, while all the front-row girls sing ‘Away in a Manger' and ‘Joy to the World.' Swings his stick, his fingers pinched just so. Dwayne Klatz and Pete Leakie and I stand in the back and mouth the words without really singing. Mr. Hyslop writes notes on the chalkboard, half notes and quarter notes. Dwayne Klatz pulls a handful of elastic bands out of the pocket of his overalls. Nudges me in the chest. I look at his elastic bands and shake my head. I'm not really into elastic bands today. We mouth the words to ‘Joy to the World' again.

Mrs. Lampman draws a sod house on the chalkboard. The pioneers had to make houses out of dirt because there wasn't enough wood on the prairies. I don't know why people stopped to live on the stupid prairies when the mountains are so close.

At lunch we trade sandwiches. Today it's tuna salad. Dwayne's mom chops up celery real tiny in her tuna salad, and it's just salty enough. Just messy enough.

Slipping out of the library at lunch hour is pretty easy. Days I don't feel like sitting in the stairwell I just wander around the halls. I sit in the hall around from the office and get all the cars out of my pocket. A red Firebird, like teenagers drive. I have a little blue police truck and a yellow bulldozer, with a little shovel that moves up and down. I guess there isn't much they do. You can push them around like in a chase for a while, and crash them together. Sometimes I like to see how far I can shoot them down the hall, but their little wheels always get caught on specks of dirt and they flip over.

I shoot the Firebird down the hall. Mullen's dad comes around the corner and the Firebird gets caught on some dirt and flips upside down. He looks down at the little red car and then up the hallway to where I'm sitting.

There you are.

I was just on my way to the library, I say.

He bends down and picks up the car. Walks down the hall and hands it to me. Put them in your pocket, he says. I put all the cars in my pocket. He holds out his hand. Come on, he says.

I was going to the library.

Come on.

We walk around the corner to the office. The principal leans against the doorway. He sees me and Mullen's dad and they shake hands. He gives me a look. Mullen's dad, too, the same look.

I was on my way to the library, I say.

Just wait out here, says Mullen's dad. They go into the office.

I sit on the bench and swing my feet. I spin the wheels of the little cars inside my pocket.

Does Mullen have more detentions now? I ask Mullen's dad when he comes back outside. I know he didn't come to school today, because of our fight. You should tell the principal that it's my fault, Mullen not being here. He shouldn't get any more detentions.

Mullen doesn't have any more detentions, says his dad.

So he can come out for recess again?

No. No he can't.

But if he isn't in detention …

He isn't going to be here at all. Not for a while.

I look at Mullen's dad. Inside the office, the principal sits at his desk, looks through a stack of paper. Makes notes on typed sheets. Puts typed sheets into a brown file folder.

Go outside, says Mullen's dad. You shouldn't be in here.

Right, I say. Outside.

McClaghan comes out of the Russians' house, coughing. Coughs and hacks, spits on the ground. The Russians stamp their feet and blow on their hands.

Well shit, says McClaghan. Just blown all to hell.

You must have been class president at landlord school, says Vaslav.

I'll call the gas company, get them back out here. That other guy never should have left like that. They ought to have somebody who can work out whatever's in the pipes. How hard can a boiler be to fix?

Fix? asks Vaslav. Are you nuts? Fix it and wait for it to blow up all over again? Why don't we just kick out the windows and cut holes in the ceiling while we're at it?

Wouldn't be a chore to install a furnace, says Solzhenitsyn. Think of it as an investment. Long-term improvement to the building.

Do you know how much it would cost to pull out all those radiators? Put in ductwork? Have to pull up all the floors, tear all the walls open. Better off knocking it flat and starting over. No, a new boiler should be fine. With better care and attention. I admit, I'm occasionally inattentive.

Vaslav chews on the inside of his cheek.

McClaghan runs a gloved hand over the door frame. Looks around the porch. I used to rent this house out for two hundred dollars a month. Two hundred, the whole house. I had this young couple, with a young kid, must have been fifteen years ago. He was a labour foreman for a big general contractor out of Calgary. She had some university degree. They came out here to save some money.

They moved into one of your houses to save money, says Pavel.

Damn, you men are disagreeable. They were good tenants. She grew a vegetable garden in the summer. They put on the present coat of paint. Sure looked good back then.

And you evicted them why? asks Vaslav.

McClaghan knocks on the wall, knock knock knock. Pushes his hand down on the window sill. The eave fell down during a thunderstorm, he says. So what, an eave falls down? He told me, I'll fix that presently, McClaghan. Presently. I didn't think much of it. But he was awful busy, whatever job it was, they were pouring footings on a downtown high-rise. Round-the-clock kind of work. There's all sorts of things that are liable to distract a man. And meanwhile it rained and rained.

Well, it took that kid coming down with some kind of allergic fever before he went down into that basement. I think he'd forgotten about the eave, and you know how undeveloped the basement is, no call to go down there. Six inches of water. Mould, climbing right up the walls. The most awful scum floating in that cold, cold water. McClaghan makes a face. Worst mess I ever saw. Took a ferocious amount of pumping. Fumigating. I can still remember that smell, that stale, spoiled, still-water smell. They moved out the next week. God knows how long I spent, rooting in that basement, fans, blankets. Scraping away at the mould on the walls.

Solzhenitsyn sits on the railing of the porch. Arms wrapped tight around his sides, not really looking at anything. Better off knocking it flat and starting over, he says.

We'll get the boiler fixed, says McClaghan. Zips his jacket up to the bottom of his chin. Just requires a little more attention, that's all. It can be my New Year's resolution. He pulls the flaps of his hat down over his ears, waves, heads down the stairs.

Vaslav spits over the porch, onto the frozen ground.

Mullen's dad comes home after it gets dark. Pulls his heavy orange extension cord out from under the seat of his
truck. The plug hangs out from under the hood, like a pronged yellow tongue. He walks slow toward the house, lets the cord unloop down onto the ground. He stands on the porch and waves to us.

You want to play some cards? hollers Vaslav. Mullen's dad shakes his head and goes inside. The lights come on a few at a time, in the front room, the kitchen. The windows fog up. Mullen comes to stand at the kitchen window for a minute. He blurs away into a white smudge.

Vaslav bends down in his yard, scoops up a handful of snow and rubs it into his red, bearded face. Pavel sits under a pile of blankets, stares straight ahead, his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. The black shapes of boot bottoms press against the good window of Solzhenitsyn's hatchback. I hitch up my backpack and wave.

Sometimes when I've had it with everything, I like to get away. So I pinch my nose like I'm going to dive underwater, and take a deep breath, and start sucking. I take a deep, deep breath and suck in and in, and my eyes bug out, and my chest gets bigger and bigger, and when it seems like I'm going to pop, there's this big sucking sound, and then I turn inside out to nothing. First my fingers suck up inside my hands, then my hands suck up inside my arms, and then all of me just, pop, turns right inside out. It's a good trick for bad days at school, when the Dead Kids are stomping around in a big stampede, back and forth up and down the hallways. I just suck myself inside out to nothing and get right away. Then they can stomp around all they want, and it doesn't matter to me, 'cause I'm not even there.

It's even better, though, to do it outside on a windy day. On a windy day if you turn yourself inside out to nothing, a good stiff breeze can come along and blow you clear out of town. Heck, it'll blow you clear out of the province on a windy enough day. You're like the thinnest leaf, blowing up into the grey, grey sky, spinning out over the snowy prairie. And who knows where you'll end up. If you're lucky, you'll blow all the way over the mountains, over British Columbia, and out over the ocean. You can spin and blow, up over the endless grey ocean, tossing around in the wind. The only problem is, you don't get to pick where you're going; it's all up to the wind. But on inside-out-to-nothing days, anywhere at all is pretty good.

Kid, like, what are you doing out here?

The teenager leans out the window of a big black station wagon. Inside, other faces press up against frosty glass, trying to get a look at what's going on. Fingers leave little melted holes in the glass. The wind whips around, blows tough white drifts up out of the ditch, turns the barbed–wire fences into thick, fuzzy white lines, like pipe cleaners strung out across the prairie. I pull my damp scarf down from around my mouth, try to catch my breath in the cold. I'm going to the Aldersyde truck stop, I shout. I have to be loud because a big semi is rumbling up out of the valley.

Get in, kid, shouts the teenager. You're going to get run over out here.

It takes a really long time to walk to the truck stop; this time I've hardly made it anywhere. Not even to the Welcome to Marvin sign, so I guess that means I'm still in town, even though the sidewalks have all stopped and there's just the gravelly shoulder. Behind me the last few house lights flicker in the blowing snow. I guess I couldn't have picked a much worse night, but what are you going to do.

They open the back door and I climb in. The station wagon is full of teenagers. Their eyes are all red and glassy, they start to say things and then trail off. A teenage girl in a thin grey flannel jacket puts her arm around me, pulls me in close. She stares out the window, the white snow reflecting in her shiny, wide–open eyes. There's a funny smell in the car, something sweet and smoky.

One of the teenagers in the front seat turns around. Gives me a big grin. Hey, kid, you in a rush? The girl giggles and clamps a hand over her mouth.

Like, say we had to stop and do a few things before we get to Aldersyde, says the driver. Looking at me in the rear–view mirror. The snow flies in the headlights in long white lines; it makes you dizzy to look at after a while.

Uh … sure.

They all giggle.

This one here, says someone beside me, pointing to a farmhouse at the end of a short driveway. A low garage and cars parked outside, all covered in snow. White Christmas lights, and a Christmas wreath on the door.

The headlights blink out. We drive up slowly in the dark, snow crunching under the tires. The teenager beside me reaches inside his jacket, pulls out a can of lighter fluid, like McClaghan sells.

The teenagers open the station wagon doors really carefully, like they don't want anybody to hear. The girl beside me grabs my shoulder. She grins and holds a finger up to her lips. We creep out of the car and up to the front, crouching down, looking over the hood.

Two of the teenagers walk up to the front door. One of them crouches up against the wall. He waves his arm up and down toward the other teenager. The other teenager rings the doorbell. We all wait.

A light comes on and the door opens. A woman in a big black sweater, a towel wrapped around her head, opens the door. Pokes her head out the door a crack. Yes? she says.

And then I don't know what happens, but all of a sudden the teenager is on fire. Hot yellow flames burst out all over him, his jacket, his arms. He waves his arms and the woman screams, I've never heard anybody scream so loud. The teenager jumps up and down, on fire, waving his arms, and the door slams shut, and then he jumps over into a snowbank, rolls around, squashing out the fire in the snow. Inside she's still screaming and screaming. The two teenagers run back to the car and we all jump inside. The one kid is covered in snow and stinks like
lighter fluid. The driver turns the car on and we charge backward up the driveway, skidding left and right in the snow, then back out onto the highway. And the teenagers all laugh and laugh, they laugh so hard they're crying. The girl has her eyes clenched tight, face pressed against the frosty glass, and her wet, crying face makes sticky streaks in the frost.

We drive into the zooming white snow. And the driver turns around and grins, and says, Okay, kid. Aldersyde, right?

Hoyle the waitress stops, the coffee pot tilted in her hand, when she sees me.

Kid.

I pull myself up on a stool. Hi, Hoyle, I say.

You can't just turn up here in the middle of the night.

It's not that late. Probably, what, nine o'clock? Ten? Not that late.

It's nasty out there. Were you hitchhiking?

Well, I was walking, and some teenagers picked me up. I didn't ask them to, though. They just stopped.

She starts to say something and stops. She picks up a dishtowel and twists it in her fists and then throws it down on the counter.

Kid, she says, you can't just turn up here. Okay? You're a long way from home and it's late and that's no good.

That's what everybody keeps telling me, I say.

Kid – She stops. She sighs and picks the dishtowel back up. Then she leans over the counter. She has a black apron on over her red and grey Petro–Canada shirt. A pen behind either ear. Leans right over, hands on the napkin box. Her chest on the counter.