Milk Chicken Bomb

by Andrew Wedderburn

  Don’t tell him that story, says Pavel. He’s just a kid.

  It’ll be good for him. Shake him up a bit. You think you’ve got a pretty good handle on things, don’t you, kid?

  I shrug. Got any jacks?

  Vaslav makes a face and hands me a card. Ivan Mortz was into some bad stuff. Real bad. I can’t even tell you what Ivan Mortz was into, you’ll get bad ideas. Stuff you’ve never heard of here in feedlot Alberta. You’re better off thinking people go about their business, that life turns out all right.

  Play cards, says Pavel.

  I’m playing cards. Any fours?

  Fish.

  Ivan Mortz wasn’t from Petersburg, he was from Edmonton, Pavel says. Remember when we lived on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton? You worked in that print shop, Gus’s Print Shop.

  Play cards, Vaslav says.

  Vaslav leans close to me. Ivan Mortz thought he was a big–time crook, stealing cars and selling dope all over Petersburg. He’d buy dope at whatever Asian border and sell it cheap in Petersburg, in Kiev and Minsk. Drove this old Volvo, must have had 500,000 kilometres on it, he was back and forth so often across the Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia.

  Don’t tell him this story.

  I shuffle my cards. I know about gangsters, I say. I watch television. Selling dope is selling drugs. There’re some kids at the junior high school that sell drugs.

  I bet there are, says Vaslav. Anybody have a queen? It’s not your turn, I tell him.

  Gus’s Print Shop did most of their work on takeout menus, see, Pavel says. Pizzerias and Szechuan, and Thai and Vietnamese. Any kind of food you could imagine. Vaslav here used to mix the ink and sort out the letters for Gus, and then Gus would set the type and run the menus off. You could ask Vaslav here about any item from any restaraunt in town, he’d tell you.

  Shut up, Vaslav says, drinking coffee.

  Hey, Vaslav Andreiovich, you could say, how much is the pork vermicelli at the Double Greeting House? Number seventy–two, he’d say, $4.50. He could tell you the phone number for Ernie’s Chicago Style Deep Dish, and what neighbourhoods Lee’s Noodles would deliver to for free. Sure was handy, having Vaslav around.

  Ivan Mortz ran out of luck, Vaslav says. They duct–taped his head to the pipe under the sink and gave him a syringe full of bleach. He makes a choking sound, rolls his eyes into the back of his head. That was the end of Ivan Mortz.

  Ivan Mortz lived down the hall from us, Pavel says, in this old building on Jasper Avenue. He did his laundry wearing a pair of wool slippers and a tiny satin housecoat. He liked to sit in the hallway and read the classifieds in the New York Times while his dishwasher was running. Always looking at the job ads in the New York Times. Senior Executive, Accounts Payable, he’d say, I could do that. Remember that, Vaslav? You always said his dishwasher was too loud.

  Solzhenitsyn comes out of the house. He smells like burnt hair. Sits down heavily on the step, lets the hammer fall out of his hands into the snow. He glares ahead and pulls the mask up off his mouth. A white circle where it pressed on his raw skin. Just leaves it on top of his head, his hair sticks out all around. Glares ahead. Across the street Constable Stullus sits in his car, reads the newspaper.

  Did you sleep at Mullen’s last night? I ask him.

  I slept at Mary’s, Solzhenitsyn says. I couldn’t sleep, because of her cats. Like steel wool in my throat. Trying to sleep under this catty afghan on the couch while she sits at the table in the corner, flipping through the Sears catalogue.

  Is that Mary works at Steadman’s? She has a lot of cats?

  The cats sit on the countertop, Solly says. One of them sits in the kitchen sink. Me wheezing, with an open mouth, trying to breathe. He glares at Stullus, across the street.

  He probably isn’t even in there, shouts Solzhenitsyn, his voice cracking. Stullus rolls up his window.

  He’s learning to check by multiplication, says Mullen’s dad. Leaning out of the not–so–open door. I fidget on the step. He leans out the door and I stand on the step and he sighs. You want to take the toboggan out? he asks.

  No, I say, that’s all right. I’ll just go home.

  Home? says Mullen’s dad.

  Across the street, in Deke’s house, hammering.

  The voyageurs paddle their caravans from every direction to the steamship. Banquet halls and chandeliers, the heavy paddle wheel, chugging through the sand. It’s not easy, working for the Petersburg Steamship Company. You could end up in the boiler room, shovelling coal, or polishing the steam stack, on a scaffold, way up in the air. Good thing I know how to make manhattans and mint juleps. They give me a little tie and a white shirt. I have to roll up the sleeves. They give me a tea towel. Every day I polish all the different glasses, make sure we have all the right bottles. I put cherries in bowls and fill a bucket with amaretto, for washing. Every night the voyageurs come in and sit at the checkerboard tables and play cards. I pour two glasses of beer at a time, one in each hand.

  We sail the ship through the desert, steaming away, past Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. We steam through the Ukraine, past all the aluminum smelters, smokestacks as far as the eye can see, puffing away into the dark sky. We pass signs, arrows point in different directions, China, Russia, Georgia. The Municipal District of Foothills, 6,000,004 miles. Just doesn’t seem far enough.

  Then it’s time to go underground. We all go down and shovel coal into the Gravity Boiler. It steams and groans, its pipes and bellows blow steam. Voyageurs take their shirts off, wrap their sashes around their foreheads and heave the pumps. We shovel and pump and the huge iron Gravity Boiler gets hotter and hotter, and the hotter it gets the heavier the steamship gets. We make the Gravity Boiler so heavy that the steamship starts to sink. We sink right through the sand, down into the bedrock.

  When I’m not shovelling I’m pretty busy bartending for the voyageurs. The hotter it gets, the more they have to drink. I throw my white towel over my shoulder and pour them Cuba Libres and Singapore slings. I wash all the glasses in the amaretto sink.

  We sail down, down, down. We sail deeper into the rock, until it gets all red and molten, and we sail down into the lava, where it gets so hot we have to put on our welding masks and oven mitts, and shovel, shovel, shovel. Maintain radio silence! hollers the captain. Watch out for leaks! We run out of coal. We cut up the cupboards, the card tables, the pool cues and shuffleboards, and burn them in the Gravity Boiler. We throw in our leather jackets and workboots, and all the empty amaretto bottles. It’s sure a lot of work, this sailing underground. Hopefully we get there before we run out of stuff to burn in the Boiler. I’d hate to get stuck, somewhere in the hot red rock strata, not even at the centre of the earth.

  In the hallway Dwayne Klatz sits leaned up against the wall. An empty plant pot between his legs. His face, his hands, all smeared with dirt. Clumps of dirt all over the floor. A few scraps of plant leaves, some branches.

  Dwayne?

  Dwayne squeezes his eyes shut, groans.

  What happened, Dwayne? Pete Leakie crouches down, puts a hand on Dwayne’s forehead. Damp and pale. What’s going on?

  Dwayne opens his mouth. His teeth black with dirt. Tries to talk but his mouth is too sticky, his tongue too big.

  Did you eat a plant, Dwayne?

  He nods. He coughs, spits out some muddy spit on the floor.

  Okay, Dwayne, Pete says, you have to stay right here, all right? Stay right here and don’t go anywhere. He stands up and grabs me. We have to go find a telephone, he says. What’s a telephone got to do with eating plants? I ask him. Just come on, says Pete. Dwayne lies on the ground, spits out some more mud.

  Come on, says Pete. We creep around the hallway sneakylike. At the pay phone outside the office Pete picks up the receiver. Dials just one number. Hello, he says after a while. Yes, I’d like to speak to the poison-control people. Yes, poison. Well, he says, that’s what I need to find out.

  I ate wax once, Pete tells me, his hand over the receiver. And my mom called
the poison-control people. They told her not to let me drink milk, and to make me throw up. They’ll probably tell us to make him throw up. But we should find out, just in case.

  Hello, says Pete. Yes, well, my friend ate a plant. Well, I don’t know, because he ate the whole thing. There isn’t any left. Yes, all the leaves and branches. He even ate the dirt. No, I don’t know what kind of dirt either. I could go back and look. What’s that? Well, I guess I can wait. But he doesn’t look good.

  We wait in the hallway.

  They don’t seem to know, Dwayne, says Pete Leakie. They don’t seem to know what we’re supposed to do. Dwayne lies on the ground, curled up in a ball. Gags and heaves a bit, choking sounds.

  My stomach hurts, says Dwayne Klatz.

  I bet it does, Dwayne. I bet it does.

  I just want, he says, I just wanted, you know. How come she pays attention to that guy? What’s he done?

  I don’t know, Dwayne. I don’t know.

  I think we should make him throw up, says Pete.

  Some teachers come around the corner, cups of coffee, piles of notebooks. Shouldn’t you boys be outside for recess? asks a teacher. Pete Leakie starts to say something and Dwayne coughs up a clump of dirt, some leaves, onto the floor.

  We sit on the bench outside the office. Heaving and choking, wet splashing sounds come from inside. We swing our feet above the floor. Pete stares down the hall, where a grey window shines down on the streaky floor. He looks over at me, panicked.

  We’re moving, he says.

  Where are you moving, Pete?

  My dad bought an acreage. Out in the country. It’s all outside. There isn’t anything around.

  An acreage in the country?

  What am I going to do?

  I think about it for a while. I sure would like to live on an acreage, I say. Think about it, Pete. All that time to yourself. All that space. Is there a forest? Are there hills?

  Pete’s wide, wide eyes don’t blink. He looks away, down the hall, then down at the floor.

  Sorry, Pete. Sorry about that.

  We listen to the gagging and splashing inside the office.

  Vaslav bangs on the window of Solzhenitsyn’s hatchback. Bangs with both fists; he has a brown leather glove on one hand, a yellow wool mitt on the other. Two scarves, his big leather hat, the wool lining scraggly and brown. I think he has a toque on under the hat, it sits back on his head like there’s a cartoon lump, hit with a hammer. His beard is black and thick now, except for a pale sliver of a scar on his chin where no hair grows. He bangs and bangs on the window.

  The car shifts, something bangs hard against the roof with a dull clunk. Thick Russian shouts inside. The door opens and Solzhenitsyn crawls out, his hand clutched around his forehead. Stands hunched over, his red eyes narrow, staring at the ground.

  I can’t curl.

  Shut up.

  I can’t curl.

  Shut up.

  If I can’t sleep then I can’t curl. I haven’t slept all week.

  We need to stop for coffee, says Pavel.

  I’m going back inside.

  Curling! barks Vaslav. It’s our sworn duty to humiliate every curler in this whole Municipal District of Foothills. Better rocks. More points. He shakes Anna Petrovna.

  We can’t drink that Okotoks coffee, says Pavel. It gets my ulcer. We have to stop at the Red Rooster.

  I can’t curl, says Solzhenitsyn. Holds his hands over his ears. Vaslav grabs him by the shoulders, hauls him over the icy sidewalk to where his truck idles. Opens the door, pushes him in. Solly keeps his hands tight over his ears. Vaslav spits on the ground. Reaches over and pulls Solly’s seat belt over his waist, snaps it shut. Pulls the strap tight.

  Can I sit in the back? I ask. Vaslav shrugs. Are you dressed warm enough? I hold up my mitts. Don’t sit in the snow, he says. I got snowpants, I say. See? I can sit anywhere. Keep your head down, he says. Pavel Olegivich, don’t crash the truck.

  We drive out to Okotoks. I bump up and down against the straw bales. Out, up the hill, out of town. Houses go by, their driveways covered in snow, belts of poplar trees here and there in the fields. I watch Vaslav, in the cab, talking non–stop. Pavel drives with one hand, a Styrofoam Red Rooster cup in the other, lifting up and down when the truck bumps to keep the coffee inside. He should have gotten a lid. I wonder how Pavel can drive with only one eye. I wonder if his eye gets tired. I close one eye for a while, try to watch the road.

  Solly stares straight ahead, sunk down low on the seat, hands still over his ears.

  We go left at the highway. Up over the hills, the Sheep River Valley cutting by. You can see the radio towers from here, way up in the hills, blinking. I think they’re radio towers. What else would be so tall and blink? Maybe they’re signals for airplanes. Maybe they’re thermometers for the centre of the earth. I wonder how tall they are. I wonder if they have a fence to keep you away.

  Okotoks is the biggest town around, all right. Every time I come there’s a new subdivision being built. Pink stucco houses and blue aluminum–sided houses. They’ve built streets and sidewalks in an empty field, the ground all dug up, bare and frozen, no houses yet. I guess they’ll build houses around them when winter is over. Looks like a town blew away, like all the houses and garages scattered in a tornado, leaving just dirt holes and curbs.

  In Okotoks they’ve got fast–food restaurants with drivethroughs, car dealerships with big flags and banners, rows of new trucks with the prices written on the windshields. They’ve got an elementary school and two junior high schools, they’ve even got a Catholic high school. We stop at a set of stop lights and I make sure to stay real low in the box of the truck. You never know what sort of things people in big towns like this will get set off by.

  We pull up into the icy gravel parking lot at the Okotoks Recreation Centre. Curlers from High River and Nanton stand around their trucks, smoking, filling out their forms. The Russians’ second stands by his truck, tugging on his moustache. I sit in the back of the truck while Pavel and Vaslav undo Solzhenitsyn’s seat belt and pull him out onto his feet. Hands over his ears.

  Now, this isn’t Kreshick’s ice, recall, says Vaslav. Be ready for uneven surface, vague and shifty pebble. Who knows what the temperature is like in there? The humidity? Don’t take anything for granted is all I’m saying.

  The Marvin Pentecostals drive up in their big brown station wagon. The Pentecostal reverend turns off the engine and gets out, opens the doors to let out his team. They wave to us and don’t smile and head inside in single file.

  Solzhenitsyn opens his mouth and doesn’t make any sound. I can’t curl, his lips say.

  Call shots, says Vaslav. Skip. Lead.

  Solly opens and closes his mouth. Blinks his red, red eyes.

  Vaslav wraps both hands around Anna Petrovna back near the end of her shaft. Heaves her behind his head like a baseball bat, and swings, cracks Solzhenitsyn square between the shoulders as hard as he can. Solly pitches forward face first into the side of the truck and slumps down into the gravel. A few curlers whistle, take off their hats. The Russians’ second crouches down beside Solly, face first in the snow. Turns him over onto his back. Solly coughs.

  You’ve got to have some dignity, says the second. He stands up and walks across the parking lot to the recreation centre.

  So Milo Foreman walks into Jarvis’s office, says Solzhenitsyn.

  I don’t want to talk about Milo Foreman, says Vaslav.

  So Milo Foreman walks into Jarvis’s office. I had this dream, he tells Jarvis.

  You can’t sleep because someone fell in a rendering vat?

  You can’t fall into a rendering vat; you have to jump. I can’t sleep because there’s an icicle in my kitchen sink. I stayed at that junior high school art teacher’s place.

  The kid, says Vaslav.

  She said I was overheated. She gave me some pills but I still couldn’t sleep. Milo had this dream.

  I don’t want to talk about Milo Foreman, says
Vaslav. He bends down and grabs Solzhenitsyn under the armpits, grunts and heaves him up.

  The Pentecostals are going to make a mess of us, says Solly. Vaslav pats him on the shoulder and nods. We all walk slow–like into the Okotoks Recreation Centre to watch the Pentecostals make a mess of the Russians.

  We wait for the truck to warm up, afterward. Pavel stands a ways off in the parking lot, staring out at Okotoks, arms at his side. Exhaust drifts past his ankles. He stands there and then bends down, picks up an old pop can. He throws it at the wall of the recreation centre. He shouts, something, Russian I guess. He picks up a rock and throws it as hard as he can at the Okotoks Recreation Centre, shouting in Russian. We wait for truck to warm up.

  Hey, kid.

  Constable Stullus leans out the window of his car. I stop, hitch my backpack up on my shoulder. He waves me over.

  Get in, kid, he says. I pull open the icy back door.

  The man in the passenger seat wears a heavy wool jacket, a white shirt and black tie. Thin black glasses. They turn in their seats and crane their heads around to look at me. I pull the door closed and pull off my mitts. Rub my cold fingers together in the warm car air.

  Everything all right, Constable?

  He gives the man with the tie a long look. The man with the tie starts to dig in a leather briefcase.

  Where’s Howitz? asks Stullus.

  I shrug. I haven’t seen him in quite a while.

  Quite a while, says Stullus. You been in his house lately?

  Deke doesn’t let anybody in his house, I say. He told the Russians that he’d shoot them, even though their boiler exploded.

  The man with the tie pulls some paper out of his briefcase, and a heavy, metal pen. I watch his lips move while he writes That He’d Shoot Them.

  What’s going on? I ask.

  Well, says Stullus, we’re heading over to your friend Deke’s house. Just to ask some questions.

  Are you a policeman? I ask the man with the tie. He chuckles to himself. No, he says, I’m an accountant. I’m much more serious than a policeman.