Globe and Mail loves The Milk Chicken Bomb
The consequences of neglect
JIM BARTLEY
June 2, 2007
By Andrew Wedderburn
Coach House, 291 pages, $21.95
In Andrew Wedderburn's dreamlike novel of odd adults and persevering kids, the 10-year-old kid telling the tale lacks not only a name, but evident parents. We open with him trudging along a wintry highway, backpack stuffed with a runaway's essentials: sandwiches, thermos, comic books. A car stops and he's taken to shelter in a truck stop, where he's spotted by his friend Mullen's dad, who delivers him back to his doorstep late that night. "You want me to come in and say something? ... It's pretty late." The kid firmly declines.
As we're diverted in the ensuing chapters by neighbourhood eccentrics and the child's-eye view of adult deficiencies, why this child went willfully missing begins to nag at us. The kid seems to live entirely out in the world, his social life circumscribed by best friend Mullen and other schoolmates, Mullen's taciturn dad and a few local eccentrics. Life in non-descript Marvin, Alberta, "slugs along." Meanwhile, the life-at-home, the parents, the kid's very name, all seem part of a calculated absence. The kid's narrating voice holds a neutral pitch. Its music is all in the hum of characters and events. The kid describes all that's around him but never what's inside. He interacts but never introspects. It's the story's driving, increasingly intriguing mystery.
A teenage skateboard ace tantalizes the boys one day with reference to a ghastly explosive device. "The Milk Chicken Bomb is the worst thing. ... The Milk Chicken Bomb wrecks everything. You can't clean it up." Mullen begs for the recipe. The ace refuses, adding ominously, "If I tell you, you'll build it." Then there are the Ant People. They overrun the town, gorge on human flesh. Their towering anthill is built from the detritus of homes. The kid survives alone in a hidden gully. Other comic-bookish fantasies include visits to sub-ocean civilizations and surreal Soviet republics. The scenarios begin to feel like allegories for the darker things haunting his mind.
Why does the kid repeatedly mention trouble sleeping, to the extent that he's often found on Mullen's doorstep before dawn, waiting for his friend's household to take him in? Three garrulous Russian men share a rented house nearby. It becomes a home away from home for the kid and Mullen. As the kid arrives one night, the Russians' ancient furnace blows up. The scene of smoke and stench and panic twigs us to the perils of absent caretakers.
A tunnel is discovered in a neighbour's basement. The kid leads us into the dark place - where he continues to wrap his secrets in self-preserving metaphors. The boy's heart is shut tight. Was there ever a way to avoid this?
Wedderburn's uncompromising story ends as it must. His theme is avoidance, and he will not let us or himself escape it. He refuses to let us in. You finish the book knowing that harm has been done. You recall news reports of things that kids suffered for years in their own homes, while everyone ignored the clues. The kid does take action in the end. He asks Mullen to help him construct the appalling milk chicken bomb and plant it behind the furnace. "Sure," says Mullen, "I always wanted to see your house." Do we want to see? Yes and no. We want to know the truth. We also want fiction's redemption.
Wedderburn doesn't give it, and that's the big risk and great strength of this novel. His kid is that kid you saw once, down the street, who had the eyes of something hunted. Maybe you thought for a moment that something wasn't right. Then you carried on with your day.
