Milk Chicken Bomb (25 page)

Halfway to Mullen's house I stop, pull my scarf tighter around my face. I pull my coat sleeves down over the tops of my mitts. If I'd worn long johns, my legs would be warmer, but I didn't. The cold stings my face numb, makes it hard to move my legs. I hunch my shoulders up around my neck and try to walk as fast as I can. The cold burns inside my chest when I breathe.

Most places on Main Street are already closed, although it can't be much later than five o'clock. Hardly any cars parked on the street. The credit union locked up, and the post office.

Someone in a heavy parka walks up to McClaghan's door, hammers on the wood with his fist. Maynard! he hollers. It's Morley Fleer. He hugs his parka tight, waits at the door. I step back into a closed doorway, peek around.

What's so damned important, Maynard? shouts Fleer at the door. It's subarctic out here. What's the damned rush?

McClaghan's door crashes open, he pushes out onto the sidewalk, no jacket. Wet up to his ankles, feet squishing in his shoes. He runs right into Fleer.

I'll kill him, says McClaghan. I should have killed him years ago. It'd be self–defence, Morley. I'm entitled.

What the hell are you on about?

McClaghan pushes past him, looks all up and down the sidewalk. The wind blows at his loose shirt. Howitz's trying to murder me! You've got to help me get him, Morley.

You do not make an ounce of sense.

The goddamn … He flooded my basement, Fleer. There's water everywhere. Inches! He holds up his foot, yanks on his soggy pant leg. You see that? In this weather? Do you know how much stock I've lost? It's sadistic.

Howitz didn't flood your basement, Maynard. McClaghan grabs Fleer by the front of his coat. There's a smashed water main with a shovel blade sticking out of it, Morley. He dug into my basement and flooded me out.

Come on, man. Howitz didn't dig into your basement. He's one man with a shovel. How far can one man with a shovel dig in a month?

McClaghan lets go of Fleer, staggers out into the road. He wanders out into the middle of the street, kicking at the snow. McClaghan kneels down in the street, digs at the brown snow around the manhole. Hammers on the iron cover with his fist. Howitz! he shouts. Howitz, I know you're down there! You'll never see the sun again, Howitz! I'll plug up every goddamn hole!

A car fishtails, pulls to a bad–angle stop in front of McClaghan. Sits, idling, waits.

And you're evicted, says McClaghan. He cups his hands around his mouth, puts his face right down on the iron. Evicted! Another car comes up the other side of the street, comes to a slow stop. Fleer puts out his arms, walks in between them. Yanks at McClaghan's arm. More cars stop. Someone honks their horn.

Solzhenitsyn's hatchback slides to a stop, just misses the back bumper of the car ahead. The door opens, Solly looks
out the side, past the black garbage–bag window. Winces at the cold. Kid, you can't be walking around in this weather.

I was going for a walk, I say. Maybe out to Aldersyde.

What? Kid, you can't be out walking a block, let alone fifteen fucking kilometres to Aldersyde. You can't be out at all. Feel that wind? Your skin will freeze. You'll get pneumonia. Get in the car.

I sigh and sit down. Pull the door closed. Inside it's cold. I cough, my eyes swim. I cough and he revs the engine, pulls down off the sidewalk.

It smells like gas, Solly. I cough. The whole car is thick with fumes.

It does?

The air in the car wavers under the street lights. Gas fumes dance like hot pavement, my head reels, breathes. I feel my stomach clench and rise, like when you swallow cough syrup.

I'm having a bit of a problem, says Solzhenitsyn, with the fuel line.

I look down at the floor between my feet. The mat is soggy, but I don't think it's the slush from my boots. Gas fumes swim all through the car.

Why are we stopped? What's going on up there? Solzhenitsyn cranes his neck up, can't see over the car ahead of him. He rolls down his window.

McClaghan is evicting Deke, I say.

Howitz is out there?

McClaghan thinks he's under the manhole. Where are we going, Solly?

Hell, I don't know, he says. He puts his stick into reverse, backs up a bit. Turns the wheel hard around all the way and turns into the other lane. Drives back the way he'd come. I just wanted to go for a drive.

We drive down Main Street, faster and faster. The white street lights bleed in front of my eyes, like through a foggy
window. The light spreads out all in front of me. Solzhenitsyn drives faster and faster. We drive right through a stop sign.

Damned if I know how it's getting into the car. Where it's seeping from, he says. Must have eaten through something.

Solly, I say.

He goes to roll down his window, but it's already down. The car lurches. I take deeper and deeper breaths and the lights bleed further out across my eyes, running watercolour paints, squinting. My chest gets heavy. Solly drives faster and Main Street narrows down. The Short Stack swims by, red, dark. I fight for breath in the heavy gasoline air.

Solly opens and closes his mouth.

What? I shout. Cold air blasts in the open window.

It gets easier to breathe when I drive faster, he shouts. All the fresh air.

The slow rise, up the hill, out of town. The scrubby little trees, dead, everything dead all around us. Everything white and grey and the air, the ice, the not–quite fog. Nothing separated from anything else. Up the hill, the road, grey and white and ice, black wheel tracks, sometimes you can see the painted lines on the road, under the snow. We drive not quite in a lane. The flat, long road, the fences, under snow. Patches of long grass, out of the white. We drive faster and faster. Red lights blink, sometimes farmhouses, sometimes signs. Speed limits, and deer, in triangles, and how far to Black Diamond. Nothing separated from anything else.

What's going on, Solzhenitsyn? I shout.

He opens his mouth. The car leans into the other lane. He slowly veers it back. I want to open my window, but on my side it's the taped–on garbage bag.

I said, he shouts, I lost my job.

You lost your job?

At the meat–packing plant. Jarvis fired me yesterday. He said – Solly takes a hand off the wheel, roots in his shirt pocket – he said I've become unreliable.

Your ice–smashing job?

Solly looks down at me. I'm a mechanical engineer, he says. I do plumbing and heating. I'm really good with coolant. He coughs.

Solzhenitsyn pulls a cigarette package out of his pocket. Looks over at me. We swerve out, then back. I started smoking again, he says. When I breathe in he gets bigger, when I exhale he shrinks, maybe blurs.

Solly, I say.

How many years ago did I quit smoking? You get so far in life, you know. You get on top. I had a house. I kept all that fucking meat frozen. And then, all these little things.

He pushes the package open. Pushes out a cigarette.

Solzhenitsyn, I say.

He leans down with his mouth open, closes his lips around the filter. Pulls it out of the package.

Solzhenitsyn, I say. I try to be loud but my chest closes up.

He pulls a plastic lighter from his pocket. I reach over and grab his hand. I grab his hand and he startles, lurches, and then the hatchback jumps over into the other lane. He drops the lighter and there's headlights ahead. He jerks back into his lane, we skid, and then the sky spins around and fenceposts and my head bangs against the car roof and all of a sudden we're stopped, backward, in the ditch. I reach out and wrap my fingers in the garbage bag, yank it off the window. Cold air pours into the hatchback and we sit and try to breathe, a funny angle, backward in the ditch.

Solzhenitsyn holds his hands out in front of his face, fingers spread apart. Stares at the backs of his hands. There's no feeling, he says, in the tips. He screws up his face like he'll sneeze, tilts his head back, a deep breath, waits. Face red. He doesn't sneeze. Tries to put his face back in order.

We went out with Milo Foreman back in October …

I don't want to hear about Milo Foreman, I say.

Goddammit, says Solzhenitsyn, his fists up near his face. Won't somebody please just listen to me?

We sit there, in the car, in the ditch, for a long time.

Why did Milo jump in the rendering vat?

Solzhenitsyn coughs and coughs. He squeezes his cheeks with his fingers.

I don't know, he says.

We sit in the car, in the cold. The windows open, the fumes mix with the cold, cold air. Our breath blows through the fumes. I feel my feet get cold, my legs, I rub them with my mitts. Solzhenitsyn takes long, deep breaths.

You can't go out walking around when it's cold like this, he says. It's too cold. You'll get sick. You have to take care of yourself, kid. There'll be times, people won't be around to look after you.

Sure, Solly. Take care of myself.

He breathes, as deep as he can. He breathes and waits for his chest to get regular, up and down. His nose pink, his cheeks red. Twitches his fingers.

I had this dream. I'm with all these old men with white hair, trimmed moustaches, sweater vests. We walk through the forest in the autumn, and in a meadow there's this big hollow tree. What's inside? the old men want to know. So we all climb in.

It's big inside this hollow tree. They're always bigger inside. And at the back there's a tunnel, we crowd around the opening and peer inside. You ought to see what's at the bottom. Food – hot, lit–up food: roast turkeys, racks of lamb, melons and bananas, a barbecue pig with an apple in its mouth. The old men drip at the mouth and crowd around and they jump down the tunnel, and me, the last one to jump, I think, This is not good.

Now the tunnel isn't a tunnel anymore, but a chute.

We all slide down the chute and it's long and dark, and right before the tunnel ends there's this screen, this wire
mesh screen. We all shoot right down and schuck, right through the screen, and it's like we come out of a garlic press, minced right up. Schlup. And all our wet, minced, pulped bodies fly out of this chute, and into this lake, this big, slurried lake.

So I wake up, in this dream, I climb out of the lake –

Wait, I say, I thought you were minced.

I was minced, says Solzhenitsyn. Minced and stewed around, and when I climb out, soggy and dripping, I'm not me anymore. I'm a bit of all sorts of people, all the other pulped people who ever jumped down that chute after that barbecue pig. I'm this whole other guy now. I remember, dimly, that I used to be someone different.

We live underground. In a dark city, underground. The city has windows and aluminum siding and auto–body shops and all the rest of it. And all of us who live in the city are sad, because we all dimly know that we used to be someone else, and now we're not, and we can't be the same.

We stare out the window. In the distance, red lights, maybe radio towers, blink in the dark.

How are you going to get Jarvis back?

He looks over at me. What do you mean?

I mean, what are you going to do to him? To stick it back to him?

Kid. Listen. Jarvis didn't do anything. I screwed up. Okay? Look at me. You don't get back at people when it's your fault.

Oh.

I'm sorry, kid, he says.

I know, Solzhenitsyn. But it's too cold. We have to go home. I want to go home.

Yeah, he says. His face soft and red, and tired. I don't think I've ever seen anybody look so tired. I'll take you home.

Maybe you shouldn't drive, though, I say.

He thinks about it.

Yeah, he says, that's probably a good idea.

We stand on the roadside, in the cold, I hop from foot to foot. Headlights zoom up. Solzhenitsyn waves his arms. Holds out his thumb. Too skinny in the dark, against the lights.

Hey, Solly.

Yeah?

What about the times when it's not your fault? Is that when you stick it to people?

He thinks about it. Well, kid, I guess where we're from, that's when you stick it to people, yeah.

Eventually someone slows down. Solzhenitsyn explains about his fuel line, in the back of the hot car. I blow on my hands. We get driven back to Marvin.

To hell with it, I decide on the last day of school before Christmas. Kids hang up their coats, put on their inside shoes. I head straight for the stairwell.

The stairwell behind the library, up to the sixth-grade floor, gets a lot of use. There's always some sixth-grader going somewhere. And the stairwell at the back door opens right out to the parking lot, where the teachers go to smoke, so that's out. But no one ever uses the stairwell under the gym. Just a caretaker now and then, down to the storage locker, or checking the furnace in the basement. Instead of the white fluorescent lights all over the rest of the school there's just a dim bulb. I head down, duck around and sit under the stairs. I take a deep breath. I find it easier to breathe down here, out of the way, where no one's likely to find me.

I read
The Mysterion
again, in the pale light, just in case. The Under Queen lies on the beach, gasps. After the longshoremen run away, she wanders through the alleys, collar of her stolen overcoat up around her greenish face. They draw her pretty good, I guess, the
Mysterion
artists; all the inky shading makes her face real expressive. Doesn't need a lot of talking to see how she feels.

Meanwhile, the Mysterion ponders his mystic maps. Surely the theolurgical poles cannot have shifted so nefariously so soon? he says to himself. I don't even want to know what that means.

Footsteps come down the stairs. I fold up the comic, pull my knees tight around my chest. Try to be small in the dark. Wait for the caretaker, or whoever, to open the storage door.

Jenny Tierney swings around. Sits down in a heap, her heavy coat flops on the ground. She takes a deep breath and
then notices me, and yelps and claps her hands over her mouth.