Read Online Milk Chicken Bomb by Andrew Wedderburn - Free Book Online

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