Milk Chicken Bomb Read Online Free Page A
glaring at each other, never quite leaving the ground.
Hey, Mullen, whatâs Solzhenitsynâs real name? I donât know, he says, I thought Solzhenitsyn was his real name. I saw some other guy on TV with that name, I say, some famous Russian from history. Mullen throws a rock out across the street. They canât both have the same name? Course they canât have the same name. You never met anyone named Benjamin Franklin, did you? Or Genghis Khan? I met a Benjamin once, Mullen says. Back in Winnipeg in the second grade. When his front teeth fell out no new ones grew back, so he had faketeeth. He could take them out. You canât name your kid after somebody famous, I say. Itâs not allowed. Thatâs why you have to get a birth certificate when youâre born, to make sure that youâve got an allowed name. I donât know what Solzhenitsynâs real name is; thatâs what my dad always calls him, Mullen says. All the other Russians call him Solly. Is that an allowed name?
Mullenâs dad comes out of his house carrying a bunch of TV trays tight against his chest. Closes the door with his hip. Walks out onto the sidewalk, past Dekeâs. Pushes open the little wooden gate with his hip. The Russiansâ lawn is about as dead as everybody elseâs on the block, except for Mrs. Lamp-manâs maybe. In the summer she always digs little patches along the path, plants sweet peas. Everybody else on the street is doing pretty good if they keep their lawn cut. Pavel and Solzhenitsyn sit in their lawn chairs around the barbecue, their heavy jean jackets buttoned all the way up in the cold, brown beer bottles tight in black gloves. Vaslav sits on the step, his belt undone and his big stomach pushing the bottom of his sweater up over his belly button. Heâs working on his novel. Drinks beer and scribbles on a huge pile of paper in his lap. He scratches his forehead with his pen, leaves a blue line.
Hey, you ever torn the corset from the heaving chest of a kidnapped virginal millionairess?
The kids, says Mullenâs dad. Starts to unfold TV trays.
The kids have never torn the corsets off anything. Iâm trying to get the facts straight. So as to be historically accurate.
Theyâve got a lot of buttons on them. Those corsets. It would take some tearing.
Right, says Vaslav, it sure would.
Does the virginal millionairess have a name? asks Mullen.
Well, Iâve got it narrowed down to a short list of about eighteen. Has to have the right tone, see. Iâve left it blank so far in the manuscript. He holds up the top few pages and, sureenough, the pencil script is full of blank spaces. Itâs got to go well with all the other words, see, he says, especially the ones I use a lot. And itâs got to evoke the proper balance of Victorian restraint and bottled passion. Voluptuous without being lusty, see. Owing to the virginalness of the character.
Pavel takes the lid off the barbecue and starts to turn chicken legs with his black-ended tongs. He squints with his one eye, making sure he gets the legs okay with the tongs. His glass eye looks off somewhere else, never quite in line with the real one. Solzhenitsyn goes back and forth to the refrigerator inside, bringing out all kinds of food: jars and jars of all kinds of pickles, and plates with different coloured strips of fish, covered tight in plastic wrap. A bowl of hard-boiled eggs. Him and Mullenâs dad talk all serious-like, in between bites of pickled beets and anchovies, lots of big serious words, like newscasters on television.
Vaslav reaches across them for a pickle. Hey, he asks Mullenâs dad, is there hot water in your house?
Hot water? Sure there is.
Vaslav sticks the pickle in the side of his mouth. Wedges a beer bottle against the arm of his lawn chair, hits it with the flat of his palm, pops the cap off. I called McClaghan three times last week about the hot water, he says through a mouthful of
Hey, Mullen, whatâs Solzhenitsynâs real name? I donât know, he says, I thought Solzhenitsyn was his real name. I saw some other guy on TV with that name, I say, some famous Russian from history. Mullen throws a rock out across the street. They canât both have the same name? Course they canât have the same name. You never met anyone named Benjamin Franklin, did you? Or Genghis Khan? I met a Benjamin once, Mullen says. Back in Winnipeg in the second grade. When his front teeth fell out no new ones grew back, so he had faketeeth. He could take them out. You canât name your kid after somebody famous, I say. Itâs not allowed. Thatâs why you have to get a birth certificate when youâre born, to make sure that youâve got an allowed name. I donât know what Solzhenitsynâs real name is; thatâs what my dad always calls him, Mullen says. All the other Russians call him Solly. Is that an allowed name?
Mullenâs dad comes out of his house carrying a bunch of TV trays tight against his chest. Closes the door with his hip. Walks out onto the sidewalk, past Dekeâs. Pushes open the little wooden gate with his hip. The Russiansâ lawn is about as dead as everybody elseâs on the block, except for Mrs. Lamp-manâs maybe. In the summer she always digs little patches along the path, plants sweet peas. Everybody else on the street is doing pretty good if they keep their lawn cut. Pavel and Solzhenitsyn sit in their lawn chairs around the barbecue, their heavy jean jackets buttoned all the way up in the cold, brown beer bottles tight in black gloves. Vaslav sits on the step, his belt undone and his big stomach pushing the bottom of his sweater up over his belly button. Heâs working on his novel. Drinks beer and scribbles on a huge pile of paper in his lap. He scratches his forehead with his pen, leaves a blue line.
Hey, you ever torn the corset from the heaving chest of a kidnapped virginal millionairess?
The kids, says Mullenâs dad. Starts to unfold TV trays.
The kids have never torn the corsets off anything. Iâm trying to get the facts straight. So as to be historically accurate.
Theyâve got a lot of buttons on them. Those corsets. It would take some tearing.
Right, says Vaslav, it sure would.
Does the virginal millionairess have a name? asks Mullen.
Well, Iâve got it narrowed down to a short list of about eighteen. Has to have the right tone, see. Iâve left it blank so far in the manuscript. He holds up the top few pages and, sureenough, the pencil script is full of blank spaces. Itâs got to go well with all the other words, see, he says, especially the ones I use a lot. And itâs got to evoke the proper balance of Victorian restraint and bottled passion. Voluptuous without being lusty, see. Owing to the virginalness of the character.
Pavel takes the lid off the barbecue and starts to turn chicken legs with his black-ended tongs. He squints with his one eye, making sure he gets the legs okay with the tongs. His glass eye looks off somewhere else, never quite in line with the real one. Solzhenitsyn goes back and forth to the refrigerator inside, bringing out all kinds of food: jars and jars of all kinds of pickles, and plates with different coloured strips of fish, covered tight in plastic wrap. A bowl of hard-boiled eggs. Him and Mullenâs dad talk all serious-like, in between bites of pickled beets and anchovies, lots of big serious words, like newscasters on television.
Vaslav reaches across them for a pickle. Hey, he asks Mullenâs dad, is there hot water in your house?
Hot water? Sure there is.
Vaslav sticks the pickle in the side of his mouth. Wedges a beer bottle against the arm of his lawn chair, hits it with the flat of his palm, pops the cap off. I called McClaghan three times last week about the hot water, he says through a mouthful of
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