It's hot, says Mullen.
You got burned, says his dad. I'll bet it's hot.
You going to be home in time for dinner? asks Mullen.
We're eating at the Russians' tonight, says his dad. If I'm not back just go over there. Take that bottle of wine, I said we'd bring one. The red one, in the rack. He pats Mullen on the head, gets into his truck. Plays with the rear-view mirror a bit. See you at dinner. Yeah, Dad, at dinner.
Where's your dad going, Mullen? Mullen climbs up on the porch railing. It creaks. I dunno, he says. Hey, you know what I found down by the river? A bucket of paint. They don't put paint in buckets, I tell Mullen, they put it in pails. Mullen reaches up, tries to grab the lip of the roof. Yessir, a whole bucket of paint, just sitting there under some leaves, by a stump. You know down by the river where we dug that hole that one time? Somebody must have dropped off a bunch of trash there.
We wander around the back of the house. Mullen's dad has a tire hung off the only tree. In summertime during storms you can hear it, banging on the tree, into the side of the fence. On the back porch there's a little table, some beer bottles neatly stacked in their cardboard boxes underneath.
We climb the fence. I hang on the edge for a second, like I always do, one leg swinging on the other side. The alley behind the yard is overgrown with old poplar trees and rose bushes; there's a chain-link fence and the big hill on the other side. Mullen pushes a piece of plywood off the fence; behind it we've got a pretty good hole cut in the chain. We get on our hands and knees and crawl through the fence, into the scrub.
What colour paint is it, in this pail? I ask. Mullen's shoelaces scurry away ahead of me. Red, he says. We crawl through the bushes until the side of the hill runs up straight vertical, where the big tractor tire is, leaned up against the mouth of the culvert. Which is how you get Underground.
Everything we keep, we keep Underground. Like the traffic pylon, and the construction light â we've had it for months and it still blinks. The orange blinking gives us all the light we need; it makes you kind of dizzy at first, but we know our way around pretty well. We have an old card table, with ring marks and a wobbly leg, and we've got some milk crates we found behind the
IGA
. All our stuff is stacked up against the wall there: the burnt-out fluorescent tubes and the old rake with the taped-up handle, our cattle-auction posters and our air-show posters. We've got Russian pictures that Solly gave us, of red-jerseyed hockey players and frowning statues. Square letters with English underneath: Visit Leningrad, Moscow Metro 1973. We have a Sears catalogue, the thick winter one, all the pages stuck together because of the damp. Vodka bottles, one of them filled with sand, and a tea cup with a mouse we found under Solly's porch.
We brought in all this stuff ourselves, except the old refrigerator, which was already here, leaned up on the dirt wall at the back of the culvert, the door hanging open. Bent in all funny to make it fit. The culvert is just tall enough for Mullen to stand, but I have to duck my head. Our feet ring on the ribbed steel. Mullen opens the fridge door and gets out a big white plastic pail with a steel handle. It's definitely a pail. Smears of red around the edge of the lid.
What do you want to do with all that paint? I ask. Mullen grunts and sets the pail down with a clang. Well, you know the fluorescent tubes we found behind the
IGA
? I figure we could go down to the railroad tracks and throw those tubes around, like they were whatsit, javelins. What about the paint? Well, he says, I figure we could pour the paint into the
tubes. So they blow up when they hit the ground. I think it over while Mullen looks around for the tubes. Yeah, that sounds like fun. Yeah, Mullen says, I figure it'll be.
Turns out the tops of the fluorescent tubes don't screw off, so instead we dip the ends of them in the paint and then throw them, over in the alley behind the credit union. They float real good and you can see the red up there in the grey sky, and when they hit the ground they explode, glass bursting in a big red splash.
Isn't it ever going to snow? Mullen says.
It's not even October yet, I tell him. It isn't even winter.
Back in Winnipeg it snowed so much I couldn't pass the second grade, on account of all the not-going days, Mullen says. Dad would stand out on the balcony and watch cars slide down the street, drinking coffee, all these cars sliding in the snow and him laughing and pointing. He didn't have a job and just wrote letters all winter, trying-to-get-work sort of letters and when he wasn't writing letters he'd read the newspaper. So when I didn't have to go to school I'd just sit around with him and we'd laugh at the cars.
Mullen smears a puddle of red paint with the tip of his shoe. He knows how to make an igloo, my dad, that's how much snow we had in Winnipeg. And he'd let me build snowmen on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. I'd put my snowsuit on and go make snowmen and he'd sit on the balcony, shout things at me. Hey, Mullen, he'd shout, you ought to give that one by the mailbox a nose. He'd throw old ball caps and carrots down to me, and spatulas and flyswatters and crummy old ties. This one day it snowed and school closed and the snowplow didn't come, nobody could drive down the street 'cause of all the snow, and I built snowmen right out in the middle of the street. Dad tossed me down some of Mom's old clothes, this fancy hat of hers with a black rim and flowers in it â I put her right in the middle of the street.
When Dad said we had to move here so he could work, I asked if there'd be snow and he said there would be, but last winter it never snowed more than an inch. School didn't even close once last year. Hey, Dad, I said to Dad, in Alberta do they have snow? And he said, Mullen, in Alberta it snows so much that everybody has to dig tunnels to get to the grocery store. In Alberta it snows so much people can't drive their cars between November and April, they have to go everywhere on snowmobiles. You won't take your snowsuit off for six months, he told me. But school didn't even close once last year.
We throw some more tubes. Paint trails drip behind them. A car drives down the alley and we run away. We forget the pail of paint.
Paul Grand comes into the hardware store, skateboard under his arm. None of the old men look up, but Mullen and I both set down our comic books, watch him. He walks through the aisles, skateboard under his arm, chews a green apple. The other skaters from the junior high are all tall and skinny, long arms, their jeans too big, holes in their black T-shirts. They wear punk-rock T-shirts with letters,
DOA
and
SNFU
and
TSOL
. They wear jean jackets with patches sewn on with dental floss. Paul Grand isn't tall, though. His cheeks are big and red, and he isn't much taller than me. Black sideburns cover most of his face, and his red mesh ball cap sits high on his head like someone from the Aldersyde truck stop.
Everybody knows that Paul Grand is the best skateboarder in town. Probably any other town around here too.
He walks up the aisles to where McClaghan keeps the skateboards. They lean up against the wall, the bottoms of the decks facing out, with their bright devils in monster trucks, skeletons on motorcycles. Bright wheels and plastic rails along the sides. The other skaters all go into Calgary for skateboards; they spend two hundred dollars on narrow decks with little wheels, name-brand trucks and bearings. Paul Grand is the best skater in town and he only ever rides forty-dollar boards from McClaghan's. Paul Grand can ollie without cracking his tail, it's true. Everybody always says it's impossible to ollie without cracking your tail, until they see Paul Grand do it. It probably is impossible, for anybody else. He picks up a fat board, green rails and wheels, a minotaur in a biplane on the back, steam puffs out of his nose, hoofs on the control stick. He hefts it up and down. Takes it by the nose and swings it back and forth in the aisle. Holds it upside
down and spins the wheels, listens to them. Then he walks up to the counter and sets the skateboard down, wheels up.
I'll give you thirty dollars for this, he says.
McClaghan looks down. Can't you read? It's forty-five dollars.
Come on, says Paul Grand, the bearings are for shit. What kind of wood is this? Particle board?
Watch your mouth, kid. You're the one who wants to buy it.
I'll give you thirty dollars.
Forty-five. Get out of my store.
Paul takes his wallet out of his pocket, a green vinyl wallet with a sailboat printed on the flap. Takes out six wrinkled five-dollar bills. Maybe you'll sell a lot of hammers today, he says. Maybe somebody will want to buy a rake. Any of these guys buy any rakes today? He flicks the bills like a movie gangster.
Get out of my store, says McClaghan. All of you kids, he shouts over at me and Mullen, put the comic books down and get lost. He spits in his jar. Paul leaves the minotaur on the counter, picks up his old skateboard. We follow him outside.
Hey, says Mullen, I heard one of those junior high kids bought a skateboard in Calgary for two hundred and fifty dollars. Picked out all the right parts and they put it together for him.
Paul shrugs. It's just about winter. If you ride a skateboard in the winter it gets wrecked; it rusts and warps and gets wrecked. But who wants to stop skateboarding? So why buy a good skateboard? He bites off the last of his apple and throws the core out into the street.
You ought to get McClaghan, says Mullen. Everybody in town wants something bad to happen to him, all his tenants, I bet everybody else too.
My buddy had this Ford Pinto, says Paul Grand. Little tiny car. We'd all pack right in there and drive, I don't know, anywhere but here. Like in Okotoks, all the parking lots are
paved, right, so we'd go there. You should see the curb cuts on the sidewalks â it's, like, everything is round. Yeah, all the people in town are like pink-stucco-garage types that yell at you for skateboarding on anything, but it's worth driving all the way out there for those curb cuts. They've got railings on the stairs. It's perfect.
The best thing in Okotoks, though, there was this lawyer, right. Had this empty swimming pool. I don't know what kind of chump builds a swimming pool in Alberta, it's not like it's ever warm enough to go swimming, but whatever. He had a swimming pool, empty eight months out of the year. We'd drive out there and skate it as long as we could, before the lawyer called the cops. It was like California. You'd get right up out of the bowl. We took pictures. Then the cops would come and you had to pile back into that Ford Pinto and drive the hell out of Okotoks.
This one time, we get there, and it's pretty late, so we figure everyone around is in bed. And it's dark and all the lights on the street are out. We get all around and my buddy Dave Wave goes in first. Takes a run back from the patio, from this lawyer-white fence, and runs and jumps into the pool on his board and hits the concrete and we all clap, quiet-like 'cause it's so awesome, and then Dave screams and falls off his board and hits the concrete and hollers as loud as he can.
So we jump in the pool and the whole thing is full of jacks. You know, jacks, like marbles and jacks, little steel jacks. He hit those and his wheels locked and he flew off into the pool and was sitting there, he had jacks stuck in his arms and his jeans all tore up. And then the lights come on and there's the lawyer, laughing, Come back any time, you punks, he said, and turned off the light. We carried Dave back to the Pinto and drove the hell out of Okotoks.
Paul Grand takes out some cinnamon gum. Unwraps a stick of cinammon gum, then another, puts them both in his mouth.
Well? says Mullen. Did you break his windows? Steal his car? Shit on his doorstep?
Paul puts a third piece of gum in his mouth. Chews and chews. We got him with The Milk Chicken Bomb. He laughs and chews.
Mullen frowns. What's The Milk Chicken Bomb?
Paul Grand stops laughing. Turns and looks at us, like a grown-up. Kid, he says, The Milk Chicken Bomb is the worst thing. The very worst possible thing. Nobody should ever build The Milk Chicken Bomb. I don't like even knowing about it. Like, because I know, I might tell somebody, and they'll build it, and it'll be my fault. The Milk Chicken Bomb is the worst thing.
What's The Milk Chicken Bomb?
If I tell you, you'll build it, says Paul. The Milk Chicken Bomb wrecks everything. You can't clean it up. You can't ever get the building back. That lawyer tried to sell his house, and couldn't. Nobody would buy. We'd drive by and take pictures of the For Sale sign. He couldn't give that house away. If I told you, you'd build it.
I promise I won't ever build the Milk Chicken Bomb, says Mullen, I promise. Please please tell me.
Paul Grand gets up, scratches his sideburn. Rolls the skateboard under his foot. I'll see you kids around, he says. Pushes down the street, sliding around all crazy on the ice. I don't think he'll fall off, though. Ollies off the curb into the street, skates down the street. Slow and easy, even on the ice, like he'd never fall off. Like he wouldn't even know how.
The Russians let us sit in the back of Pavel's truck on the way to the Marvin Recreation Centre. Pavel keeps hay bales in the back, for weight, he says, and you can lean up against them, looking backward while he drives. Mullen's pockets are full of elastic bands â we shoot them off our fingers at light posts, stop signs, station wagons.
At the recreation centre people stand around the parking lot, lean on the boxes of their trucks, smoke. Curlers hold their cigarettes with their thumbs and first fingers, except the women from the post office, who smoke between the first and middle finger. Curlers wear heavy jackets with fleece around the collars and no gloves, big round sunglasses like policemen in movies. They smoke their cigarettes and drink beer from coolers in the backs of their trucks. Vaslav unscrews the lid of his flask and takes a long pull, then another. Kids from the church with gym bags hurry to their swimming lessons. Old men come up to the Russians and lean on Pavel's truck, pat them on the shoulders. Good group this year, eh? No goddamn picnic. Pavel comes back outside with forms on a clipboard. Everybody takes turns signing with a green stub of pencil tied to the clipboard with a string.