work early, says Solzhenitsyn.
Mullen’s dad opens another bottle of beer. Shrugs. Sometimes you’ve got to leave work early. Solly drums his pencil on his knee.
I can’t tell who’s skinnier, Solzhenitsyn or Mullen’s dad. It’s hard to imagine the two of them with sledgehammers, in a steel room, smashing blocks of ice. It must get slippery in the ice room. The floor must get slushy and deep, like outside the curling rink in March, when the weather starts to break.
Earl Barrie got hit by a side of beef just before three o’clock, Soltzhenitsyn says.
What?
A frozen side of beef. Took a wrong swing and hit him in the head. Luckily, his hard hat –
And he’s …
Jarvis and I drove him to the High River hospital. Had to clear all the empty egg cartons out of the cab and lay him across our laps. His head in Jarvis’s lap and his feet sticking out the window. To keep his head steady. He got conscious every now and then, went on and on about spanking his wife. Lord, just let me spank my wife again, he’d say. Jarvis had to put the talk-radio station on.
Earl hates talk radio.
Right. Kept him awake. So he went off about how much he hates talk radio, and how he wants to spank his wife, all the way to High River.
Why does Earl Barrie want to spank his wife? asks Mullen.
His dad glares at Solly. I don’t know, Mullen. He must have taken quite a bump. Pretty delirious.
Days I can’t find Mullen I like to walk over to the gully and throw rocks. There’s this grocery cart in the gully I like to throw rocks at. Rattles real good when you hit it. Or I like to walk over to the football field and watch them building houses in the new subdivision. Some of them wearing hard hats, with stickers: Safety First, and 1,000 Consecutive Hours. They’ve got heavy belts and hammers. If Mullen and I had hammers and tools like that, we could build all sorts of stuff. We could get shovels and dig out the back wall Underground. Dig tunnels and other rooms: a library for our comics and a workshop for all the building we’d do. We could build shelves, put down a plywood floor. We could put down roofing felt so we could take off our shoes and not get slivers. We could build a wall, like the fur-trading forts in social studies class, with sharpened logs, and a drawbridge. Then we could just stay down there and do whatever we wanted. Grown-ups from the school could come by and hammer on the log walls and we’d just ignore them from inside our underground fort. They’d fall into the sharpened logs underneath our drawbridge and we’d laugh and laugh.
After recess, all the Dead Kids stop what they’re doing: hanging up coats or unlacing boots or popping open the rings of their new binders. They start to point and then realize what they’re doing, and stand there, looking awkward. A few binders pop, like grasshoppers jumping.
Jenny Tierney walks to her coat hook. Hangs up her black leather purse. Takes off her black jean jacket. She looks around the hallway and all the kids have to pretend like they weren’t staring at her, get back to taking off their boots or getting their textbooks off the shelf.
Jenny Tierney is the only kid who gets sent up more than me and Mullen. But me and Mullen get sent up for dumb stuff, like wallpaper paste and soap flakes and racing toilet-paper rolls down the staircase. Jenny Tierney told a kid to stick scissors into an electric socket, and he did. Jenny Tierney is twelve years old and still in the fifth grade, like us. She’s two inches taller than me and four inches taller than Mullen. Jenny Tierney hit a kid in the face with her math textbook so hard he has to wear glasses now. They didn’t even send her up for that, at least not like we get sent up, cleaning chalkboards or washing the windows on the school buses. She had to sit in the office for hours, and her parents had to come and sign forms. I remember her math book sitting on Mr. Weissman’s desk, the brown paper cover with a dark red splotch. Some people say that every time Jenny Tierney hits a kid with her math book, she peels off the brown paper and puts it in a scrapbook. She’s got pages and pages of other kids’ bloody noses, beat into brown paper.
We all rush off to class with Jenny Tierney watching us. She waits until we’re all on the way off to class before she follows, her hard-heeled boots ringing on the tiled floor.
In the morning we sell lemonade. I stir in sugar, the wooden spoon tight in my mitt. You can’t just pour in the sugar and stir, or it all settles at the bottom. You have to do it slow-like: a little water, a little sugar, a little more. Mullen doesn’t like to stir ’cause he says it takes too long, but I don’t mind. Who’s in a rush? Some water drips off the spoon into the sugar, makes little grey clumps. I try to pick them out and sugar gets all stuck in my mitt, bits of mitten fuzz stick in the sugar. I take off my mitt and drop a fuzzy sugar clump onto my tongue.
The trick is making sure you don’t get any seeds in the pitcher. I pull off my mitts and squeeze the wedges into my palm. The slimy little seeds squirt into my hand. They try to slip through my fingers. They want to get into the lemonade. Lemon seeds are tricky like that, they know that everybody hates them, so they try to sneak up on people. Because if no one wants you, you might as well ruin it for everybody. If they get in there they’ll hide behind the ice cubes and wait, then sneak into your mouth and spread slime all over your tongue, make you gag and choke, and they’ll laugh and laugh, jump down your throat, right into your stomach, and who knows what they’ll get up to down there. I squeeze the juice into the pitcher and throw the slimy seeds out on the road. That’ll teach them.
Deke pulls up in his rumbly car. Deke drives a silver El Camino, the only one in town. Everybody always stops and points when Deke drives by, slow-like, window rolled down and elbow sticking out. He leans out the window with an unlit cigarette stuck to his bottom lip.
What are you kids doing?
Well, Deke, we’re making lemonade. Figure we’ll sell some and then go to school.
You should come for breakfast with me, says Deke. Thought I’d get some breakfast. He bats at the cardboard air freshener, knocks it up against the windshield. You sell any lemonade today?
Nah, I say.
That’s ’cause it’s too cold, Mullen says.
It’s because people are chumps, I say. They don’t appreciate the value of our product.
We sold a glass to Constable Stullus yesterday, I say. He was measuring between people’s cars and the curb with a tape measure.
That son of a bitch gave me a ticket, says Deke. Next time put vinegar in his lemonade. Or bleach. That’ll teach him.
What do you want, Howitz?
Deke bats the air freshener. Just seeing how the boys are doing.
Mullen’s dad lifts the top of the mailbox with his index finger, peeks inside. They have to be at school, Howitz. Don’t have time to go running around. Yeah, sure thing, says Deke. Mullen’s dad goes back inside.
Let’s get some breakfast, says Deke. The cigarette still hanging off his lip. Hey, Mullen, you want some breakfast?
Mullen whistles. Well, the thing is, Deke, my dad doesn’t like you very much.
No, Deke says, I guess he doesn’t.
So I ought to just stay home and go to school.
Think you’ll sell any more lemonade? I ask Mullen.
