Milk Chicken Bomb (28 page)

The damp, soggy dark blows out of the tunnel, soaks my clothes, makes me heavy, sticks me to the floor.

I take a step and trip on the space–heater cord. I pitch forward and drag the heater with me and the cord pulls out of the socket, and I hit the ground in the dark.

That's when I just disappear altogether. I knew it would happen someday. I take a deep breath and let it out, and it just goes, that breath, and I feel my lungs and insides just puff away, like ice on a stovetop. Everything inside me just steams
and blows away down in the dark boiler room, and there's this cold feeling as the rest of me follows along in that long, cold breath, until everything blows away and I'm gone. And I guess what I mean is, I'm cold and I'm lonely and I'm scared.

Some light comes into the room. I lie there and watch the light move around, parts of the boiler room appearing, cords and nails and drywall, rough hardpacked dirt. Making the room out of nothing as it pans across.

The light gets close and shines right in my eyes, just blinds them right out, like truck headlights in the night. I squeeze my eyes shut. I open them slowly when the hot light moves away.

Mullen sits beside me, cross-legged. His hard hat turned to the side, so that the miner's light in front doesn't shine right into my face. He sits beside me and I lie there on the ground and try to breathe more slowly, try not to gasp and pant so much.

You're crying, says Mullen.

Yeah, I'm crying.

Why are you crying?

I think about it for a while.

I really like the sandwiches Dwayne Klatz's mom makes, I say. It was tough, at the end of school there, when he had to stay home sick, from eating all that dirt. I couldn't trade sandwiches with him. That was a pretty lousy week.

Most kids would love to have a pizza sub from the store every day. Those things sure taste great.

Most kids don't know much, I say.

Yeah, says Mullen. Yeah, most kids don't know much.

I sit up. I crawl across the floor, feeling in the dark with my hands. Mullen looks over with his light, across the cold floor, to the cord, lying a few feet from the socket. I plug the heater back into the wall. We watch the dark coil slowly turn
red. Mullen's light twitches around the room, never stays on anything long enough to get a good look. I guess that's how things look to Mullen all the time: jumping around like the boiler room, twitchy and brief.

We hear it, off somewhere underground: the clanking. We both sit and listen: clank clank clank, all muffled and ringing, coming through the ground, through the walls, through the dark hole behind the old curtain. It rings for a while and then fades away, and after a while we can't tell if it's even there anymore.

What's behind that curtain? asks Mullen.

It's a tunnel.

Mullen's eyes get real big. No kidding, he says. Really a tunnel? All dug down into the ground? No way.

Have a look, I say. It's pretty dark.

Mullen pushes the old curtain away. He whistles, the hard–hat light passing around on rough dirt, old beams. They hold the ceiling right up, he says. Look how old the wood is. This must have been down here forever.

Why did you come and find me? I ask.

They must have dug this years and years ago. Braced, that's what they call it, all this wood. It's like a mine shaft. My dad has all sorts of books with pictures of mines, they've got these wood beams. He leans into the tunnel. I can't even see … He stops. More ringing. Maybe even someone talking, or shouting – it's tough to tell, like hearing a quiet radio in another room. You can tell there's sound, but not what it is.

Mullen runs his hand up the beam. Grey old splinters bend out into the fabric of his mitt. I bet he could use a hand, he says. We could help him carry dirt; he's got to carry the dirt back up somewhere. How much do you think he's dug? How close do you think he is?

He doesn't want anybody to find him, Mullen.

What do you mean, he doesn't want any–

I know about wanting to be found. He doesn't.

Mullen keeps looking at me. I have to squint in the white light. It leaves blue circles scratched everywhere I look. He looks down the tunnel, down the rough dirt walls, the greenstained wood beams, everything dusty and old and dark.

My dad told me you were down here, says Mullen. Go find your friend, he said. He's in the junk–shop basement. I asked him how he knew and he wouldn't say. It's time he came out of there, he said, time he came back up. Wouldn't say how he knew. The light wavers out of Mullen's hard hat. He reaches up and fiddles with the bulb, it flickers and goes out for a second, leaves us a flash of dark, then the beam comes back, a little dimmer maybe. We stare down the tunnel, listen to the clanging, far away.

Your dad told you.

Yeah.

Well, why wouldn't he? I say. Why wouldn't your dad decide when it's time for me to come back up?

I can't see Mullen's face behind the white light.

I know how to make the Milk Chicken Bomb, I say.

The what?

The Milk Chicken Bomb. You remember when Paul Grand told us about the Milk Chicken Bomb?

How did you get him to –

I figured it out. I know how to do it.

You figured it out, he says. He has another long look down the tunnel. We ought to go back up there, he says.

Yeah, I say, I guess we should.

At McClaghan's I go straight to the counter. Mullen wanders around the aisles, poking at rakes and garbage bags. I stand up on my tiptoes and rest my arms on the counter. McClaghan sits behind the counter on his stool, arms crossed, chewing, watching his television. The quiet newsman behind his desk, saying something none of us can hear. A map of some country behind him.

McClaghan chews and looks around for his jar on the counter and leans over to spit black juice into it. Spittle trails down into the jar, he waits for it to stretch and thin out, longer and thinner, finally snap off. He pushes the jar back down the counter. Looks over at me.

What?

Do you sell thermostats?

He narrows his eyes at me. What did you ask?

Thermostats. My friends are having problems with their boiler, I thought that –

Get out of here, says McClaghan. He crosses his arms and looks back up at the television.

I pull myself up on the counter to get a look over the other side. They've got a gravity boiler, I say, with an airlock. I figured maybe you'd have –

McClaghan lurches off the stool and swings a heavy hand at me. Get out of here! he barks. I duck my head and slide off the counter. I jump up and grab his telephone. Do you know Morley Fleer's phone number? I ask. I start to press buttons on the phone. Fleer would probably have something like that, right? Some kind of thermostat? McClaghan grunts and comes around the corner. I run down an aisle, pressing buttons on the phone. What did you say Fleer's number was?
I holler. McClaghan jogs around the aisle after me. What in god's name are you doing, you miserable shit? Put down the goddamn telephone!

I run around the aisle, then stop and run back, straight at McClaghan. He opens up his arms to catch me and I tip over a stack of rubber garbage bins. Rubber bounces and rattles and a bin knocks down some mops. McClaghan trips and tumbles over top of me, arms flailing, crashes over into one of the rubber bins. I run around the aisle and put the phone back on his counter. If you find one of those thermostats, let me know, I yell at him. He picks himself up and kicks a few mops out his way. Red–faced and puffing. I run out the door.

Down the alley, Mullen sits with his back against the post–office wall. I sit down next to him, panting. We sit and I pant for a while. Mullen unzips his jacket. The jar in his lap, its sides thick and waxy, all tobacco brown and flu yellow.

We probably shouldn't go in there for a while, says Mullen.

No, I guess not, I say.

The chinook lasts a few days, the wind warm and always blowing, all day long, down from the mountains. The sky a blue band above the mountains, in an arch, under the high clouds.

We sell lemonade all morning, on Christmas vacation. We don't pack everything back into the garage before nine. Heck, we don't even start selling lemonade until after nine. We sit behind the table, our scarves up over our noses. Mullen pushes dimes on the table with his mitts, can't quite pick them up, to stack. We keep the lemonade jug in one of Mullen's dad's beer coolers, to keep it from freezing. When we open the lid, the lemonade steams in the cold, frost around the rim of the plastic.

Solzhenitsyn walks up the street, his thick toque crooked on his head, his collar up around his raw face. He sees us and stops. He walks up the walkway. Stands in front of our lemonade table and watches us, then sits down in the snow. Pulls his knees up against his chest.

You kids sell much lemonade?

We haven't sold any lemonade in a week, says Mullen.

Solzhenitsyn pulls off a black wool glove. Leans over and digs into his pocket. He finds a key or two, a pencil stub, a lottery ticket. A few nickels.

You know, Solzhenitsyn, it's been a bad few weeks. We can cover you, says Mullen. He opens up the cooler. Pulls a cup off the stack. Solzhenitsyn sits in the snow, arms around his legs. We pour him some lemonade – no ice, though. Sure it's a chinook, but it's still cold. He takes the cup of lemonade, has a long sip. Swishes it in his mouth, swallows. Smacks his lips, has another sip.

That is a damn good glass of lemonade. Tart. Awfully refreshing, tart like that. He has another sip.

It's pretty cold for lemonade, though, he says.

Yeah, yeah it is.

You just get the water out of the tap?

Of course we do.

Solzhenitsyn nods. Pretty good water in this town. I noticed that first thing when we showed up. I've lived a lot of places where the water wasn't so good. We had to boil it, in Petersburg, a lot of the time. You never knew what someone might have poured down the storm sewer.

Do you miss living in Russia? asks Mullen.

Solzhenitsyn shrugs. I like curling a lot. You don't get curling clubs in Russia. And your dad can carry on a good conversation, even if it is in this foreign language.

What foreign language?

English, says Solzhenitsyn. I don't know how you people do with so few vowels. He drinks some lemonade.

For a while, in Edmonton, I did instrumentation at a refinery, out past Leduc. A ways out into the field. You'd show up at the mobile shed, you'd be all sweaty and filthy, days' worth of dust worked into your clothes. You showed up to the shed for a drink of water, and they keep the water cooler beside the propane heater. Do you know that smell? That sour, pinched smell of a propane heater? Which is all you can taste, of course, when you drink the water.

Solzhenitsyn drinks some lemonade.

Milo Foreman's brother coached bantam hockey in Okotoks. Coaches, I mean. I mean, he still does. We liked to go and watch the games. They played good hockey, those bantams. None of this banging on the glass, none of this drilling kids on dump and chase, hit and wait. Milo's brother had them skating. I like that good skating hockey, carrying it in off the wing, like back home. Fast and loose.

I liked this one restaraunt in Okotoks, I think it closed. Up a flight of stairs, in an alley, low ceilings and thick steaks. Milo and I would head there after the games, while his brother got all those kids home, talked down the parents, made everybody happy. I can't recall the last time we went out there, Milo and I. I guess his brother must still coach hockey.

You should really show those Pentecostals next time, says Mullen. Really let them have it.

Yeah, laughs Solzhenitsyn. Drinks some lemonade. Really let them have it. Really show them.

Any time I smell a propane heater, I get depressed. I hated that job, twisting pipes out past Leduc. I smell propane and it's first thing in the morning, cold, waiting to start work, and you can't warm up for hours, and when the sun gets high then there's no cooling down, and even when you want a glass of water, it smells like propane.

He finishes the last of the lemonade. Holds up the cup, lets the last drop drip onto his tongue.

Hey, do you kids want to see something?

What have you got? asks Mullen.

Solzhenitsyn takes an envelope out from his jacket. A thick brown kind, like you get at the post office, probably all padded inside. The flap torn open. He hands it to us. From Toronto, it says, addressed to Vaslav Andreiovich Kurskinov.

What is it?

Look inside.

Did you open it already? Did Vaslav?

Just look inside.

We pull out the red paperback book from the plastic bubble padding. Mullen holds it up, reads the title out loud.

THE TENDEREST TEMPEST
ANDRE KIRK
Uncorrected Proof

He's always on about his pseudonym, says Solzhenitsyn. Who's going to read Vaslav Andreiovich Kurskinov's book? he always says. I think he spent more time coming up with that name than any other part of the stupid thing.

The paper cover is shiny and thick, the letters of the title pressed out, gold. Mullen opens the first few pages, looks for the start.

Troy Deville had the world, Mullen reads, slow and careful. The biggest estate in Louisiana, a house with forty rooms. He had marble columns and high glass windows with black wrought-iron ledges. Across his hundred acres would stroll the livery men to the stables, the gardeners about their business, and even an iridescent peacock. Often Troy Deville would sit in the highest window and gaze down the hill, to the port where his ships waited, their precious cargo to be unloaded. Troy Deville had all of this. But he didn't have Lucia, so he didn't have anything.

I look at Solzhenitsyn. That's her name? Lucia?

I guess that's her name, says Solzhenitsyn.

We open up the Profit Envelope at Mullen's house. We sit inside his kitchen and Mullen pours all the lemonade money out onto the white table. He piles quarters up into stacks. He stacks up quarters in piles of ten, and then, real careful–like, takes a stack of quarters and puts it on top of another. He gets quite a stack of quarters and then starts to put dimes on top, one at a time. Gets maybe two dollars in dimes on top before it all spills over and we have to recount everything. We put aside enough change for lemons and sugar and put all the profits into our pockets.