Ooh, Mullen says, big bet. That’s some tough talk. Some tough talk.
The kid with all the marbles starts to say something, but one of the other second-graders cuts him off. What, all those ladies? With the sweaters? You think they’re going to win?
I think they’ll at least finish the first end ahead.
No way, says the kid. They’re all girls. The other team only has one girl. No way they’ll win.
Mullen shrugs. Rattles the can. The second-graders look at each other, then they all pull dimes out of their pockets.
Kids press their faces up to the glass, their runny noses make streaks. The church throws first. The reverend stands down in the house, broom forward. The organist sets up to throw, drags herself back with a little wheeze, slides out of the hack. Purple sweaters rub their black-bristled brooms, shuffling down the ice. On this side of the glass you can hear the reverend shout, Sweep! He waves his arms for them to stop. The rock slides, too fast, just outside the last ring.
We’re set, Mullen, I whisper to him. Aw hell, Mullen says. What? Over there, he says, points to the back corner, by the door of the swimming pool. Aw hell, I say.
Jenny Tierney sits on a milk crate, sucking on a red straw. Chews it. She takes a box of mint dental floss out of her pocket, reels out a skinny white stretch. She ties a dental floss bow around her right thumb, loops it around the back of her hands, ties it again around her other thumb. Makes a cat’s cradle.
You kids here to sell lemonade or something? Jenny asks. Tugs her cat’s cradle taut. I don’t think curlers much like lemonade. Mullen takes a penny out of the jar, flips it. We came to watch our friend Solzhenitsyn. He’s the best curler in town. Jenny takes one of the sides of her cat’s cradle in her teeth, tugs it down over the backs of her hands. What the hell is curling? Is it a sport? I see old men who drink too much. Do they fall down? Do we laugh?
The first end finishes: three postie rocks in the first two circles. The church isn’t even close. All the people inside put down their Styrofoam cups to clap and whistle. Mullen rattles around the can while the curlers push the rocks back against the boards. Well, what do you know about that? He grins at the kids. What do you think? I bet the reverend there pulls it together this time. The kids just look at him.
Uh, that was all the change I had.
Yeah. Me too.
Hey, says one of the kids to one of the others, I want to play you for that giant creamy. They walk over to the other end of the bench and get back to marbles. Mullen puts his chin on his hand and shakes his can.
Over on the next rink the Russians start up against the RCMP. There’re quite a lot of people sitting on the benches for this one; everyone in town knows that the Russians are just about the best curlers around. Mullen and I sit right against the glass.
Curling takes a long time. Television hockey games and Sunday-afternoon football might feel long, but curling takes forever. If the Russians weren’t the best curlers around it wouldn’t really be a lot of fun. Every draw Pavel throws curves right in, pulls around other rocks like there’s a magnet in it. Vaslav brushes real careful, hardly even totters. Flicks Anna Petrovna from side to side. At the far end he leans on Anna, catches his breath. The second stares down the ice and strokes his moustache. Rubs his bald head, slides careful up and down the ice, broom resting over his shoulder. In the sixth end Solly knocks four RCMP rocks out into the boards. The constables all groan and shake their heads. People on our side of the glass whistle and cheer.
Outside, Mullen hangs a chocolate cigarette off his lip. Lets it stick there by the paper. He upends the nut can: a dollar-eighty. Next time, Mullen says, I guess we’ll have to plan it a bit better.
Jenny Tierney throws some rocks at the side of the building. You should have bet their marbles, she says. Jenny Tierney throws rocks like she doesn’t much care where they end up, just pitches them underhand. But hard. They leave little chips in the paint of the wall. She stops and lights a cigarette.
What you got there, she asks. Chocolate? Real tough kid.
Real tough girl, says Mullen. Next time you should bet on some curling. Get a bit of the action. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a sport or not, but you could at least have the guts to put some money down on it.
Jenny cocks an eyebrow, bites her tongue like she’s thinking about something. Then she spreads her feet and hits Mullen between the eyes. He yells and falls down. Slowly, like she isn’t in a hurry, she sits down on his chest. Grabs his wrists and wedges them under her knees. Mullen hollers and she hits him a few times in the face, her fists coming right up above her shoulders. Then she stands up. Rubs her hands on her jeans and goes back inside.
Hey, Mullen, you okay?
My nose is bleeding.
Yeah, your nose is bleeding.
Is my lip bleeding?
Your lip is bleeding. Come on, we’ll go inside. We’ve got to clean that up before it gets on your shirt.
Mullen sniffles, rubs his eyes. Blood drips on the concrete. How come it never snows in this stupid province?
We sit in the bathroom, he sits up on top of the sink. I mop his face with a wet paper towel. In the curling rink people whistle and clap.
It starts to rain. Rains and rains, for days. Nobody can say why. On Main Street people stand around under the eaves of their shops, in heavy winter jackets, holding newspapers over their heads. People watch the rain and talk about it. No sign of stopping, they say, no sign at all. It rains and the rain freezes; ice floats in puddles in the gutters. Ice on the picnic tables. The doors of people’s cars won’t open, on account of the ice. Mullen and I get a patio umbrella from the Russians, for the lemonade stand. A picture of a sunset on top.
And then there’s the Ant People. The Ant People come and twist the tops off all the fire hydrants. The Ant People bite trees in half with their giant ant jaws; the trees fall and cut power lines, crush cars. People run around in the street, Help! Help! they all scream, while the Ant People storm through the aisles in the supermarket, smash all the ladders at the fire hall. The Ant People start fires. Their six buggy, hairy legs and their squishy, slimy abdomens. They build an anthill in the parking lot of the recreation centre out of mattresses and car seats, chesterfields, deep–freezes. The anthill towers up into the sky and everybody cries and hides. Why, oh why, they cry. Why did these awful Ant People come? When will they leave?
I hide in the gully, in the old tool shack. I cover the windows with some classified ads and make a fire, like Mullen’s dad taught me. Building up a little teepee out of twigs. It gets pretty loud at night, down in the gully, with all the burning and shouting and eating alive up the hill. I cover myself in old newpaper and the red sky shines through my newspaper curtains. I wonder if Mullen and his dad got away from the Ant People. I bet them and the Russians hightailed it out, drove up on the sidewalks in Mullen’s dad’s pickup truck, running over Ant People, kicking them in their six ugly eyes when they tried to climb on the running boards. I bet they’re all the way up to the Yukon by now, sleeping under the stars, in the box of the pickup truck.
The Ant People won’t come into my gully; it’s too narrow and tricky. I ought to be pretty safe here for a while. It’s too bad when everybody’s dead and gone, but sooner or later the anthill will collapse in on itself, trapping all the monsters inside. It’ll be them hollering, shrill ant hollers. I’ll roam around town, through all the broken buildings. I’ll eat dry cereal in the empty IGA. I’ll be pretty sad, I figure, being all by myself.
Jesus, kid, says Deke, in his undershirt, holding a can of beer. Jesus, you’re soaked. What the hell are you doing out in the rain?
I was waiting for the bus, I say. You know, the Greyhound stop at the Red Rooster.
The bus? It’s late, kid, it’s past nine. Get inside.
I duck under Deke’s arm. Stand on his welcome mat, dripping. Deke shuts the door. Christ, don’t move, he says, I’ll get you a towel. He runs down the hall. Deke’s house is warm. Hey, Deke, I say, it sure
is warm in here. What the hell were you doing, he shouts, waiting for the bus in the rain? He brings me a towel, thin, with a windsurfer on it. A windsurfer, blue waves. I take my shoes off; Deke wraps the towel around my shoulders.
Deke must have cleaned his kitchen. The dishes sit on the counter in neat piles on tea towels. All the beer cans stacked in the corner. Deke opens the fridge and gets another can of beer. He gets out a bottle of root beer, a real glass bottle with a cap. You like root beer? Yeah, Deke, I like root beer. Sit down, he says. You want a glass? No thanks, Deke, no thanks. He looks in a drawer, in another one. He wedges the bottle cap against the side of the counter and hits it, pop, with the heel of his fist. The cap hops off, rattles onto the floor.
What’s all this? I ask, climbing onto a chair. His table a mess of paper, some of it scribbled and some of it typed. Yellow envelopes and a page of stamps. Deke hands me the damp bottle. My paperwork, he says. He snaps open his can of beer. Use the towel, he says. Don’t drip on anything. This all for Davis Howe Oceanography? I ask. He picks up a piece of paper with holes on the side, like comes out of a computer. This here is a statement on release against collateral. And this is an affidavit asserting my financial security. I put my lips on the bottle and slurp, the fizz tickles my nose.
You’re shaking, kid. Look at you. Use the towel to dry your hair. What were you doing at the bus stop?
Waiting for the bus.
Which bus? You mean the Greyhound that leaves from in front of the Red Rooster?
I guess so, yeah.
Where were you going?
I don’t know. I rub the top of my head with the towel. Down the hall, you can see the the parts of Deke’s house that aren’t finished. There’s a lightbulb hanging on a string, and electrical sockets that stick out of the wall. The walls aren’t painted, they’re that drywall, with putty patches here and there. Here in the kitchen the walls have wood panelling, only I don’t think it’s real wood. It’s the shiny kind, like it’s been covered in plastic. A calendar hangs above the sink, with red circles around the days, and arrows pointing from one day to another. The refrigerator hums. I can hear the dryer, spinning and thumping.
On the fridge, held on with magnets, pictures of submarines. Cut out of newpapers, or glossy from magazines. Some look like they were cut from calendars. The tops of submarines sticking out of the water, or submarines under the ocean, surrounded by rocks and coral. There’s a picture, I guess you’d call it a shipyard: a submarine inside a huge building, like a barn. All covered in scaffolding. Men with craggy faces stand around holding wrenches and electric drills.
I took the bus to Swift Current once, Deke says, for a job. Hey, Deke, they said, why don’t you come out here to Swift Current for some skilled labour. You know what they had me doing? He takes a long drink of beer. They had this stack of plywood. Twenty feet high. It’d been used as forms laying down the second floor of this elementary school, and it was all full of nails. I took the bus fourteen hours into the middle of goddamn Saskatchewan for skilled labour and they had me pulling nails out of plywood for nine hours a day. You know what that is?
What’s that, Deke?
That’s bullshit, kid. Complete bullshit. Deke drinks some beer. How’s your handwriting, kid?
My handwriting?
Here, he says. He hands me an envelope with a plastic window – you can see the red letters inside. He gives me a pen. Write your name, he says.
I write my name on the back of the envelope. Deke whistles. How come kids always got such neat handwriting? When I was a kid I sure had neat handwriting, all straight and even like yours. Look at it now, he says, waving one of the yellow pads. Even I can’t read a word. You want to do me a favour?
Sure thing, Deke. I sip some root beer.
I need you to be a stockholder, he says. All you’ve got to do is sign some forms.
A stockholder?
Yeah, he says, in Davis Howe Oceanography Ltd. He shuffles through the stacks of paper. I figure if I can convince the bank I’ve got some investors, they might loosen up with the dollars. They don’t give $400,000 to just anybody, kid.
I haven’t got any money, Deke. I’m a kid, kids can’t be stockholders.
Deke finds some paper, longer than usual, like the foolscap we get at school for writing stories. It’s not like we’re going to put your picture on the form, he says. You won’t really be a stockholder, I just need your signature. You have a signature, kid?
I do, Deke.
Here, he says, pointing with a pen. On this line. So, what are you out so late for anyway?
I wrap the towel around my head, the way women in shampoo commercials do. I don’t want to talk about it, Deke.
You boys get sent up? he asks. The dryer buzzes. Deke gets up, goes around the corner. Is that why you were at the bus stop?
I don’t want to talk about it, Deke.
There’s still a big empty spot in the middle of Deke’s bookshelf. Deke used to keep fish. He had this big aquarium, a lot of litres in it, he had blue pebbles and real plants, and a treasure chest that opened and closed. Mullen and I came over to help him strain the pebbles in the sink. You should get a diver, we told Deke, and a castle. The pump he bought didn’t work, though, and all the fish suffocated. Fish need air, I guess, even in the water, which is why you have to run a hose into the treasure chest in your aquarium. To pump in the air.
Hey, Deke, I say. Seeing as I’m a stockholder in your oceanography company now, why don’t you tell me the story about the submarine again?
Kid, he says, I’ve told you the story about the submarine seventy times.
A stockholder, Deke. With a signature.
Hey, says Deke, you want some more root beer? He comes around the corner and bangs his knee on the lip of the table. Hops over to the fridge. He sets his beer down on the counter and opens another one with one hand. Know what? I haven’t got any more root beer. How about some cocoa? You like cocoa? I’ve got a kettle. Whoever heard about rain in November anyway? It’s bunk, kid. He crouches down and roots through a cupboard. Pulls out a cutting board, a box of cereal, an electric knife. Thought I had a kettle, he says.
Deke walks over to the filing cabinet, holding his knee. Takes a key out of his pocket and fiddles with the lock. He gets out a file, brings it over to the table.
Do you know where Uzbekistan is, kid?
I don’t, Deke.
Hell, he says, I don’t even know where Uzbekistan is. But I’ve been there. Skilled labour, they told me. Real top wage, real good work.
Uzbekistan isn’t really a place. The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic – that’s a place. That’s where I’ve been. Quite a mouthful, eh? But everybody there, they call it Uzbekistan. Someday, they say – they get all serious when they talk about it – someday, they say, we’ll live in Uzbekistan.
So it’s in Russia.
Right, says Deke. Out there in the desert in Communist Russia. Now, kid, there are a lot of crooked people out there. You’ve got to be careful believing what people tell you. I met some characters in Calgary who claimed they had a licence from the Soviet government to set up an oil exploration company out there in the Uzbek desert. They were going to run a pipeline. Showed me all sorts of maps and graphs. Great opportunity, they said; all they needed was some skilled Western types to come along and help get things rolling. Guys with real oil–patch experience. Guys like me.
And you’ve got real oil–patch experience, right, Deke?
I’ve got real every kind of experience. So there we are, out there in the desert. First thing is, they’re building a high–rise, thirty storeys, right there in the middle of the tundra. Housing for the pipeline workers. Well, turns out after an all–night plane flight and a few days’ drive through I don’t even know where, steppes they call them, and I get to the site and it seems there’s been a filing error. No one there knew I was coming. They already have enough, what do you call them, Uzbeks around. So every morning I’d have to get into my boots and my ther
mals and gloves, and get my shovel. Go from floor to floor, shovelling snow out the window. The building kept filling up with snow, see, owing to all the uncovered windows. Deke drinks some beer. You ought to see that, kid. Snow flying out the window, thirty storeys up, the sun coming over the steppe or whatever you call it. Snow falling in sheets, all the way down.
Is the submarine in Uzbekistan, Deke?
The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Deke says. Well, one day I show up to work, only the place is crawling with soldiers. Soviets with rifles and a lot of angry guys waving paper around. I guess there wasn’t any licence after all, just a lot of hot air. Don’t know how you’d be dim enough to try and pull a stunt like that over there in Communist Russia, but then again, this is the same outfit that flew me halfway around the world to shovel snow out of windows. Well, I made it out without catching any notice, drove myself back to the nearest city, where we’d flown into. Had to do a lot of waiting around and arguing to convince anybody to send me home. But it’s in the airport there that I meet Alev. Alev Ahmedivich Mohammed Djazic – how’s that for a mouthful, eh? And Alev Ahmedivich Mohammed Djazic is trying to get out of the Uzbek ssr too. He tells me about the submarine. How he’d got it at a surplus auction on the cheap, owing to the officer serving as auctioneer being given over to nervous fits. Nervous fits and no one else came to the auction. The naval command, though, didn’t much approve of the sale and were trying to track him down. He had his submarine hidden somewhere in Turkey. Wanted to unload it cheap. Believe me, kid, $400,000 may be more money than I’ve got, but it’s goddamn cheap for a surplus Soviet diesel submarine.
Deke gets up, looks in a cupboard. Pulls out some white sugar cubes in a bowl. A jar of nuts. The Uzbeks, they drink coffee out of tiny cups, he says. And all the women keep their heads covered. It’s hot, kid. Real hot. I mean, I was there in the winter and it was pretty cold, but they told me that in the summer it gets real hot. He drinks some beer. Spills a bit on his chin. He yawns.
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