“This is amazing,” said his mother. “We haven’t been this busy since you made bushy tails for those rats and sold them as squashed squirrels.”
Was this any different? He’d tricked people then, and now he was going to sell them milk that had, up until last night, been sloshing around inside of him. Surely, there was some law against that. And if not, there damn well ought to be.
Lou carried through the final crate of milk and set it down on the counter. At some point during the morning, they had run out of empty bottles. The crate on the counter was therefore filled with a mish-mash of vases, urns, and jars, all topped up with the finest Lou’s Milk your unwanted jewellery, bric-a-brac and I.O.Us could buy.
Freda Decker had, somewhat cleverly, decided that the brand needed a logo, and that logo was a drop of milk seeping from the corner of a pair of lips. It wasn’t the most appealing image to ever grace a beverage, but it was either that or a pair of hairy breasts, and Lou had to draw a line somewhere. Happy with the logo, Freda had spent the rest of the morning hand-drawing labels while Lou had continued to milk himself dry. It was, and always would be, a cottage industry, but that suited Lou just fine as he only had one pair of titties to go around.
“Is that all of it?” asked his mother. “You’re not going to suddenly start pissing milk all over the floor?”
Lou shook his head. The fact of the matter was, he didn’t have a clue how long this respite would last. But one thing was for sure: there was more milk brewing inside of him. He could feel it. He could hear it as he walked, sloshing and swilling around, could feel it bouncing from rib to rib. He was a walking, talking milk-factory. Would he be able to control his nipples once the milk was ready? Would it just gush from him, an uncontrollable torrent, the way it had for most of the night? Would his secret come out sooner rather than later?
“Mother, I’m absolutely terrified,” Lou said. “What if people don’t like it? What if milk’s just not as great as it used to be? I don’t know if I can take that sort of rejection.”
“Hey!” his mother said. She marched across the store and took him by the arms; for a dying woman, she sure did have a tight grip. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said, stoic as ever. “I’ve tasted it. It’s like heaven. And now that we’ve figured out how to get the hairs out of it, it’s going to taste even better. You’ve got to have faith, Lou. Do you think Albert Einstein got nervous when he invented gravity?”
Lou thought about correcting her, but decided against it.
“No, that’s right. He threw some numbers up on his blackboard and told everyone who didn’t believe him to go fuck themselves. That’s what we’re going to do, Lou. Sure, these pricks are going to be a bit sceptical at first. They’re going to want to know where it’s coming from. But what are we going to tell them?”
“We have a milk-well,” Lou said, shaking his head even as the words passed his lips.
“That’s right,” said his mother. “We have a milk-well, and people are going to want to see that milk-well, and what are we going to tell those nosey bastards?”
“That it’s invisible to everyone but us,” Lou said. And to think they’d spent the best part of the night trying to concoct feasible explanations, and that was what they had settled on.
“Yes, we have an invisible milk-well,” his mother said. “If they don’t believe us, well, we’ll blacklist them from the milk. I’m pretty sure they’ll come around once they start hearing how sweet the stuff is…how it tastes of honey and summer and, on a really good batch, Chinese five spice.”
“I threw that batch out,” Lou said.
“What did you do that for?” She looked and sounded mortified. “I could have had that. It was alright. I don’t know what it is about your milk, son, but it makes me feel alive again. I feel…like I’ve been reborn!”
Lou rolled his eyes. Now his unnatural tit milk had medicinal properties. Who would’ve thought it?
“Are you ready to open up?” Freda Decker could hardly contain herself. Lou, on the other hand, suddenly felt very exposed, as if he’d forgotten to put his trousers on that morning.
“Ready,” he said.
Though he wasn’t.
Not in the slightest.
“Then let’s sell this shit-heap town some Lou’s Milk.”
And that, Lou thought, was a sentence he thought he’d never hear for as long as he lived.
14
The doors slowly opened, and people filed in through them in an orderly fashion, muttering pardons and excuse mes to anyone they accidentally clattered into. Each customer only picked up one bottle of Lou’s Milk before queuing once again to pay for it. And, in an ideal world, that was how it should have happened.
But this was not an ideal world; it was barely even a world.
As Freda Decker turned the final key in its lock, she was knocked from her feet by an old lady, eager to get in and get her milk. “My rice puddin’ ain’t been the same without it!” she squawked as she flew past on a sea of excited bodies.
“Now, everyone,” Lou said, taking up position behind the counter, where there was less chance of being trampled. “There’s plenty for everyone, so let’s just behave like human beings, shall we?”
The bodies continued to force themselves into the shop, even though it was quickly becoming cramped. Entire aisles were destroyed in an instant; tools and knick-knacks, Lou’s livelihood, clattered to the ground in a raucous din. Freda Decker picked herself up and put a faulty piano between herself and the crazed milk-seekers, but it wasn’t long before one of them leapt up onto the piano lid and began shouting. “Where’s the milk!? Where’s the fucking milk!?” whilst drooling and slathering like a thirsty bloodhound.
A single gunshot from somewhere in the room managed to settle things down. People stopped fighting and screaming and turned their attention to the store’s proprietor, who appeared to be holding an antique pistol. Smoke was drifting from its barrel in long, thin tendrils, and the smell of cordite in the air was only marginally better than the stench of fifty grimy and perspiring bodies.
“Wow, I’m surprised it went off,” said one man.
“That makes two of us,” Lou replied. “Now look. I have the milk here. If you could all just form an orderly queue, I’ll be happy to exchange a bottle for something of equal value.”
“What do we want!?” the old woman said, in the hope of starting a chant, but nobody joined in, so she went back to swinging her umbrella.
With a queue (of sorts) running down the middle of the store, Lou felt much better. Everything was a mess, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that he got everyone served and out of his fucking face as quickly, and efficiently, as possible. It wasn’t long before the tricky questions started to come. In fact, it was the first customer, the little old lady with the umbrella and the bubblegum-pink gums, that started it.
“What I want to know,” she said, turning the bottle over and over in her hand, “is where it comes from.” She was at the very front of the queue, and the customers within earshot were listening, trying to ascertain what was being said.
Lou glanced across to his mother, who was sipping milk (he wished she wouldn’t) through a straw. She nodded: Go ahead…just like was talked about.
“Well, Mrs Warbrown,” Lou said. “That’s an awful question. Might I suggest something less offensive? Ask me how old I am, or if I’ve ever had sexual urges toward my dying mother.”
But Mrs Warbrown was having none of it. “First of all, you’re fifty, and yes, you lie awake some nights masturbating and hoping she’s in the next room doing the very same thing. Now tell me, where the fuck is this milk from?”
Lou snatched the milk from the old biddy’s hand and said, “How very rude! I’ll have you know I’m forty-nine!” He wasn’t – he was fifty, but he’d spent the last year in denial. “Do you really want to know where this milk comes from? Do you? DO YOU!!!”
Mrs Warbrown nodded. “’s why I asked,” she said. �
�And don’t give me any nonsense about invisible milk-wells. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
Completely thrown, Lou did some stammering. In fact, Lou did a lot of stammering, hoping to buy himself some time, hoping that when he did manage to finish his sentence, something feasible came out. This wasn’t in the script, and the people in the queue behind Mrs Warbrown were growing increasingly frustrated.
“Look,” Lou said. “It’s milk. It’s white and milky and it’s made of milk. If you, or ANYONE ELSE HERE” – he raised his voice so that those present could hear – “DON’T BELIEVE ME, AND PERSIST WITH YOUR RIDICULOUS LINE OF QUESTIONING, THEN KINDLY LEAVE THE SHOP IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE TO THE MANNER IN WHICH YOU ENTERED.” He lowered his voice again and used it specifically on Mrs Warbrown. “Now. Do you want to make that rice pudding of yours, or do you want to walk out of here empty-handed?”
Lou could feel his mother’s eyes boring into him. She was angry at him for not sticking to the plan, but it had been a stupid one to begin with and Lou, for one, was glad he didn’t have to pretend they had an invisible milk-well somewhere downstairs.
“I’ll take the one bottle,” Mrs Warbrown said, snatching it out of Lou’s sweaty hand. “And in exchange, I offer you this tin brooch.” She unpinned the object from her lapel and slapped it down on the counter.
While they were being pleasant, Lou decided to play along. “I accept this tin brooch, and invite you to use the door, and please don’t let it hit you in the derriere on the way out.”
Mrs Warbrown, now cradling the milk bottle as if it was her firstborn, bid Lou a terrible day before accepting his invite to use the door. “Whatever you do,” she told the line of people as she walked along it, “don’t ask where it comes from.”
It wasn’t until she reached The Barrel that she remembered the miner and the promise she’d made to buy him a bottle of milk. “Oh, fucksticks!” she said, but it was too late to go back now, and there was not a chance on earth she was joining the back of the queue. At her age, every second of life counted, and she was damned if she was going to waste several thousand of them standing in a queue for the second time that morning.
“Oi, Roy!” she said to the barkeep smoking in the pub’s doorway. “Some idiot’s going to come to you later on for a bottle of milk. Give him these, will you.” And she handed him a plastic button and a white rock.
“Will do,” Roy said, pocketing the items. “But won’t he be disappointed?”
“Very,” she said.
Before he had a chance to ask what was going on at LOU’S LOOT, the woman was gone, scurrying down the road with an umbrella under one arm and a bottle of white fluid under the other. It looked strangely like…
Milk.
But no, that was impossible. What were the odds that Lou had started selling silk and milk on the same day? Unless…
“Oh,” Roy said, upon realising his mistake. “Oh,” he said again, for one just didn’t seem to be enough.
15
It was just before noon when Smalling and Harkness arrived at Kellerman’s office in a state of utter shock. At first, Kellerman thought one of them had figured out the meaning of life, but then he saw the bottle Smalling was holding and pointing at as if it had said something offensive.
“Please tell me,” Kellerman said as he regarded the bottle with a mixture of disgust and suspicion, “that you haven’t taken to bottling up your semen in order to bury it like some spunky time-capsule for future generations to dig up and marvel over.” Because in that moment, such a ridiculous thing was far more plausible than the alternative.
“It’s milk!” Smalling said, shaking his head and sweating profusely. “Lou’s Milk. He’s selling it right now from his store. Got a lot of it, too.”
Kellerman, frowning, snatched the bottle from his subordinate’s hand. “What are you babbling on about?” he said. “Milk is as rare as rocking-horse shit. Everyone knows tha…” He trailed off as he read the label sellotaped to the bottle.
LOU’S MILK
TASTE IT, LOVE IT, BUY SOME MORE
Kellerman couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it, not for one minute. “That little scoundrel,” he said, gritting his teeth. “And I thought I was the villain of this piece.”
“What?” Harkness said.
“He’s bottling something white up and selling it as milk,” said Kellerman. “He’s tricking the whole town into buying it and making a killing in the process.” A small part of the mayor secretly admired the deceitful fat bastard, but it was a very small part. The rest of him was just plain annoyed.
“But why would he do that?” Smalling said. “I mean, the stuff would have to taste exactly like milk in order for him to get away with it. It looks just like milk—”
“Only with little hairs in it,” Harkness added.
“Yeah, milk with little hairs in it,” Smalling said. “So if it looks like milk, and tastes like milk, wouldn’t that, in fact, make it milk, or an acceptable substitute?”
Kellerman had to give his minion credit, but decided not to. “That’s not the point,” he said, uncorking the bottle and giving its contents a little sniff. “This is false advertising. It…” It did smell like milk. Very rich and creamy, with just a hint of honey. Its sweetness was extremely pleasant, but when you were surrounded by people who had been walking around in the same clothes for two decades, a sugary fart smelt like a gift from the gods.
Kellerman tentatively put the bottle to his lips and took a small sip.
“That was very brave of you, sir,” Smalling said, for he would never have had the bollocks to do such a thing. But like the first person to eat a chilli-pepper, and the first lunatic to taser themselves, Kellerman, it seemed, would live to tell the tale.
“That,” he said, pointing to the bottle in his hand, “is milk.”
“What gave it away, sir?” Harkness said.
“Don’t get sarcastic with me, you bald-headed buffoon,” Kellerman said. “Not only is it milk, but it’s probably the best milk I have ever tasted in all my life.” He pulled a small hair from his mouth, which had got trapped between his front teeth. Then, he upended the bottle and swallowed the lot.
His henchmen could do nothing but watch, and occasionally heave.
When he was done, Kellerman wiped his dripping chin with the sleeve of his suit. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “That sonofabitch has got milk from somewhere. He’s selling this to Joe public, is he?”
Smalling and Harkness nodded in unison, but it was Smalling that spoke. “Only one bottle per customer,” he said. “Something to do with stock levels and replenishing, whatever that means.”
“It means,” Kellerman said, licking at the spout of the bottle with a darting, serpentine tongue, “that we have to speak with Mr Decker, find out where he got this from, and whether he will be getting more. If not, then we’re going to have to confiscate the lot. It’s been a long time since I had a bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios, and this has given me a right yearning for them. Since cereal is no longer on the menu, I’m going to throw together a bowl of acorns, and I would like a bottle of Lou’s Milk to go with them.”
“You want us to go back to the store?” Harkness said. “But it was one bottle per customer?”
“There are, are there not,” Kellerman said, “two of you?”
Harkness did a quick headcount, then nodded.
“Then get back to the store and pick up another bottle, and if Lou gives you any of his mouth, give it a little slap and then confiscate every drop of milk you can find in that place. Comprende?”
Neither Smalling nor Harkness knew what that meant, but they nodded anyway. “Do you want us to take your empty back?” Smalling said, gesturing to the vacant bottle in Kellerman’s hand. “Lou said he needed the bottles.”
Reluctantly, Kellerman handed the empty bottle over to his minion. Part of him wondered whether he would ever see it again; it was a very sad moment. “Any luck finding the girl?” he said, as an aside. The who
le milk thing had thrown him, and for a moment he almost forgot that the shaven gorillas had waltzed into his office without Zee Fox, yet again.
“We’re getting close,” Harkness said. By close, he meant nowhere near, for the girl had seemingly fallen from the face of the earth. “We should have her by the end of today. In fact, we were hoping that Lou’s Milk might draw her out. You know what the people around here are like, sir. One sniff of a bargain, and the next thing you know everyone’s running around in the buff, screaming obscenities at the top of their voices.”
Kellerman nodded. “You have until the end of the day,” he said, pulling a handgun from his waistband. “I want the girl, and I want the milk. If I don’t have both, I’m going to shoot one of you in the face.”
“Which one?” Smalling asked, as unruffled as you like.
“Does it matter?” Kellerman said.
“Well, sir,” Harkness chimed in. “It matters to the one about to get a new hole in his head.”
Kellerman returned the gun to his waistband. “It’ll be a surprise,” he said. “Hell, it might be both of you, so just make sure I get the milk and the Fox girl before sundown.” And with that, he shoo-ed them away, like recalcitrant kittens.
When they were gone, Kellerman settled into his leather chair and lit a new cigar. It didn’t even matter that one of his snowflake moray eels was giving him the evil eye. He wasn’t in the mood for silly fish games.
“Milk,” he said, licking his lips.
It would change Oilhaven forever.
If only he knew, as he sat there smoking and not engaging in staring competitions with his fish, how true that was.
16
The town of Oilhaven, in full swing, was an absolute nightmare. El Oscuro didn’t know how people could live like this. Day in, day out, mining for dirt that might or might not eventually turn into something more valuable; living in alleyways without any clothes (freaky, even by Los Pendejos standards); avoiding haggard old prostitutes like the plague. And they said that the small communities had it good, that they were living the dream, but El Oscuro wouldn’t have swapped what he had for what they had, not in a million years. Being a bandit had its disadvantages, but he would rather spend the rest of his life on the run, picking the pockets of these small communities, than settle down in one.
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