The Nirvana Blues (19 page)

“Tell her to go screw herself!” Furiously, he strode from the room.

Heather looked up from her dolls. “I'm not going over to any bus station with a Fascist.”

“Fine, great, beautiful.” Joe stormed out of the house feeling breathless.

“Don't get a hernia!” was his witty and sarcastic daughter's parting salvo.

Of course, he had forgotten his glasses, his wallet, and his car keys. But he couldn't return to the lion's den. So the diabolical master of the false exit would have to pedal a bike!

*   *   *

O
N THE WAY
in to town, pumping his three-speed bicycle (with Michael trailing behind on a contraption with a raised banana seat, suicide handlebars, and a two-foot front-wheel extension that resembled a Hell's Angels' lascivious chopper), Joe crucified Nancy Ryan. Fortified by a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and a handful of green pills, he kicked in her plywood door, strangled the monkey, axed to death the foaming Doberman, stuffed her kid into the washing machine and turned it on, chucked the parakeet into the dishwasher (added a box of Tide and spun the dial), collected all the metaphysical paintings and smashed them over her head (after first ripping off her clothes and committing a brutal rape), then slugged her insensate, dumped her into the bathtub hopelessly entangled in torn canvas and shattered stretchers, turned on the scalding hot water, and watched her drown.

“Jesus, people play dirty!” One thing for certain, anyway—he'd never see
that
diabolical weirdo again.

At the Ranchitos Cantina, Mimsy and Tuckums rushed them like kamikazes. Michael braked and cocked his BB gun. But Joe urged caution.

“Hold on, man, they won't bite. The thing we have to do is ignore them. If we do, they'll see we aren't a threat, and leave us alone.”

“I hate dogs when I'm on my bike,” Michael grumbled. “I wish I had an M-16.”

“Just pedal along. Don't even look at them. I guarantee they won't touch us.”

The dogs raised a fierce ruckus, snarling, foaming at the lips and snapping at their heels for about twenty yards. But they stopped abruptly upon reaching the perimeter of an invisible territory.

Joe said, “See? Listen to your old man, kid, and you'll grow up to be tolerant, wise, and magnanimous.”

Michael asked, “What's gonna happen between you and Mom?”

“I dunno. Nothing. Why?”

“Before you came home she was really mad. She said she hoped you got drunk and slipped on a banana peel and broke your neck. What did you
do,
Pop?”

“Nothing. It's none of your business.”

“How come every time I ask you a question about something important, you always answer ‘nothing,' or that it's ‘none of my business'?”

Joe said, “What happened to Dick Tracy today?”

“I forget. Pop—?”

“Don't talk to me right now, I'm in a foul mood.”

“But that's not fair.”

“Who ever said life would be fair?”

“She started crying and said maybe you and her weren't gonna live together anymore.”

“Oh God, what's the matter with her? Did she announce it to the entire valley on a bullhorn? I swear, sometimes your mother has about as much brains as a newt.”

“What's a newt?”

“It's a slimy little red lizard that lives under wet logs.”

“Like a salamander?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I haven't seen a newt since I was ten.”

Ed Diebold, hospital surgeon, Jaycee vice-president, and gung-ho Lion, drove by in his little red Toyota—Joe waved. A little farther along, Tad Hooten's gray Mazda zipped by. From the passenger seat Meridel Smatterling waved. Meridel's two kids from her former marriage to Nikita—Sanji and Tofu—had hair down to their gazots and spent twenty-three hours a day on skateboards, circling the plaza, doing tricks in the grammar-school macadam parking lot, or zooming dangerously down the hill leading from the 7-Eleven to the Safeway parking lot. Both Sanji and Tofu had been busted three or four times for smoking pot, which Joe happened to know they got from their father, who every year planted a lavish herb garden, including almost an eighth of an acre of German sweet basil, otherwise known as the best cannabis in town.

The next person to approach was Darlene Johnson's live-in lover, Spumoni Tatarsky, a jive little hypester so full of bull, so offensive, and so unalterably shallow that he positively gleamed with insincerity. Joe would walk a mile out of his way to avoid the man. Spumoni roller-skated around town wearing crushed-velour flame-purple jackets, pink shirts with ruffled paisley jabots, garish concho belts, turquoise rings on every finger, and leather bell-bottoms. His five-foot-five-inch frame was dwarfed by Darlene's six-foot body, but his ego was twelve feet tall and growing. Spumoni lied like a hound, hustled like a Times Square hooker, barked like a carnival barker, and just could not be put down, embarrassed, or in any way turned aside from his appointed rounds in life, which included pushing every kind of bourgeois drug or narcotic on the market, from coke through mescaline to LSD. Using laser beams, he manufactured hokey holograms and dichromates, which he peddled from a dozen Chamisaville curio shops. Other scams dangling on his repertoire included the mass fabrication of pornographic scrimshaws etched on plastic ivory, and the relentless pursuit of tail. Far be it from Joe to understand how Darlene could even remotely put up with it. Spumoni's rampant mistresses usually moved in with him and Darlene and their one-year-old child, Moonglow Winterwind, whom Darlene lugged around town in a deerskin cradleboard. Joe had heard rumors of as many as three mistresses living with Spumoni and Darlene at one time. Usually they were nubile teenyboppers, covered with Tatoozies, who wore filthy granny dresses and work boots, and, totally scragged from the pills, thrills, and spills they had taken so early on in life, had become professional runaways in search of a benevolent Charlie Manson.

So along came Spumoni on roller skates; Moonglow Winterwind was shoved into an old army knapsack on his back. Spumoni wore a knitted (and earflapped) Norwegian Lapp cap, a moth-eaten silk ascot, a T-shirt on which a tuxedo had been painted, a red velour jacket with buttons made out of old silver dollars, an enormous and voluptuous (and obscene) concho belt, and leopard-skin flare cuffs. Moonglow's blue baseball cap said “NAPA” on the front; the tyke's beautiful goat-fur vest had to have come from Tibet or Afghanistan, no doubt by way of Wilkerson Busbee's shop.

The last time Joe had conversed with Spumoni, the hustling creep had so enraged him that they almost came to blows. Over a crucial issue, too: had Tibet been a repressive society under the Dalai Lamas? Joe knew the Communist revolution had saved Tibet. All other Chamisa Valley newcomers believed Tibet was one of the seven karmic centers of the universe. They held that the Chinese Communists had destroyed one of the most beautiful spiritual movements in the history of the planet. And insisted that anything religious with Tibetan origins was splendiferously sacred. Their fawning attitudes outraged Joe. In private, he called them spiritual Nazis.

Give him credit, Spumoni could skate. Lifting one hand sanctimoniously, he cooed “Peace, brother” while gliding by. Joe veiled his eyes noncommitally, nodded, and managed to hold his tongue as they passed like two shits in the night. Joe retched, Michael frowned; they steered off the main drag into the bus-station parking lot, and stopped.

*   *   *

S
UCH LUCK
! A bus being imminent, the station was open. A thin frizzy freak slouched in a swivel chair at the dispatcher's desk, his back to the door, browsing through
The Autobiography of a Yogi
while keeping one eye on a fundamentalist Arkie Bible-thumper proselytizing on the tube.

Even as Joe banged one knuckle on the counter, saying “Knock, knock, anybody home?” he spotted it, front and foremost in the baggage rack—Peter's suitcase! Moderately-sized, and plaid as described. His thundering heart soared—was this actually going to be easy? Might he sashay out of here in fifteen seconds without a hitch, the proud possessor of his future land? Joe's eyes quickly bobbed to either side, surreptitiously checking for feds, bloodhounds disguised as insurance-policy vending machines, or seeing-eye cameras high in the corners—but the coast seemed clear.

He had to bite his lip to keep from giggling triumphantly.

The freak turned around at his knock: Egon Braithwhite. Joe cried
Oh no!
as Egon grinned, revealing a toothless gap. “Hi chop, Joe—durakabi?”

“That suitcase. The plaid one. I dropped by to pick it up. Belongs to a friend.”

“Mee kai chak—ruri ruri. Sakamajo.”

“Hey, Egon.” Still, Joe held his temper—after all, he was almost home free. Smiling pleasantly, he said, “Couldn't we forgo the lingo for a minute? All I need is that bag. Then I'll be off and I won't bother you further.”

Egon grinned back cheerfully, but expressed reservations concerning Joe's request: “Joy kama wachi, no moy gallum, sakamajo.”

Joe replied, “Fee fi fo fum. Now listen, Egon. Please, I beg of you—I don't understand what you're saying. But don't make life any more difficult than it already is. I'm in a hurry, we got a million guests. Just hand me the bag—”

Egon shook his head, patiently explaining: “Wan up cholly fee goo rana rana. Pi san garalingo, mauchy, sakamajo.”

“Oh for Chrissakes.” Joe stepped over the low baggage platform. “Look, you don't mind, then? I'll just fetch this little baby myself.”

Frowning, Egon leaped in front of him. “Chay no mi tai hi hirakistone, Joe. Si o minti, solly. Sakamajo.”

All of a sudden, a nightmare. What did the brain-damaged piano tuner want? What was the problem? Or had he (Joe) forgotten that today was the start of National Insanity Week?

Calm yourself, all his inner mechanisms warned. But his sense of relief had been replaced by a premonition of danger. Somebody had put a hold on the suitcase—federal authorities in Newark? Saint Louis? Denver? Had Egon already pushed a secret button, or tripped a hidden wire, causing a light to blink and a buzzer to buzz in the county sheriff's office, where six enormous thugs outfitted in riot gear, gas masks, Mace guns, hand grenades, submachine weaponry, and scope-fitted sniper rifles awaited their marching orders?

A fly buzzed; the TV preacher blathered on; Egon held his ground. Joe backed up one step, forcing himself to be calm and friendly. “Uh, listen, Egon. Maybe we can work something out. Understand, I have all the respect in the world for your religious principles, believe me. I have a hundred-percent admiration for your ability to maintain the vow. But you'll have to admit, it poses some problems. Major one of which is I don't understand a word you're saying. So maybe you could cough up just one teeny-weeny little sentence in English to explain about the bag, then I'll be on my way.”

Egon walked over to the bag, motioned Joe to approach, and, while fiddling with, and pointing to, the numbered claim tag on the handle, he said, “Toy ming no chow chow. Wokki wokki hey marinaki chicago. Sakamajo. Mooli fee tambouri.”

“Something to do with the claim check?”

“Hi, raku pan.” Egon nodded solicitously.

“You want the other half? The passenger's claim check?”

“Y rik no yama kai sanjury.” Egon beamed, nodding vociferously, pleased as punch that Joe had understood.

“Egon, I forgot to bring it, man. But this is a small town—you know me. I'm not a thief, I'm not a robber, or a gangster. I would never steal some total stranger's bag. Please, you hurt me with your insinuations.”

But Egon wouldn't budge: orders, apparently, were orders. Amicably, but with official coolness, he explained, “Mori stanislavki no tikki tikki pai monroe, kuba shrai sakamajo.”

Joe's instinct was to nail the giddy boob with a right cross, grab the bag, and skedaddle. Fortunately, the voice of reason triumphed. If he called attention to himself like that, he might as well drive down to the state penitentiary and apply voluntarily for internment. No, better to keep a level head and a low profile in this matter.

In through the door came Chamisaville's answer to grotto groupies. Glowering menacingly, Nick Danger oozed across the linoleum and, with a surreal harrumph, slapped a ticket onto the baggage counter. Egon gestured apologetically to Joe, scooped up the claim check, and fetched a medium-sized cardboard box decorated with Japanese characters and colorful rising-sun stamps. Belligerently, Nick snatched it and took a powder.

Joe said, “Listen, Egon, lemme use the phone, okay? I'll call my friend, you can grill him in person. He'll describe the bag, give you permission to release it, and we'll both save ourselves a lot of time and trouble.”

Egon made a motion with his fingers as if handling a small cardboard card: “Pider ab shat golly, runicifeeka potóto. Sakamajo.”

Flabbergasted, Joe said, “I don't believe you're doing this to me.” His entire body strained to leap forward, brain the moron, grab the valise, and flee.

Egon gave a bemused and rueful
You-can't-fight-city-hall
shrug: “Para ho mee no cum tsetse moro.”

Joe said, “I dunno for sure, but suppose my friend lost the claim check—what then?”

“Hob knob er ob tsi guru muk luk.”

Joe's temper strained like a good racehorse in the gate.

Michael said, “Pop, what is he saying?”

“You're asking
me?
”

Egon made a conciliatory, gesture. His tone of voice suggested the solution was very simple. All Joe had to do was “Meri be baba cum shoji turificati pong sakamajo.”

“Egon, seriously, pal. You lost me. All I want is the
bag.
So how about just a paragraph in English? Then I'll know exactly what to do.”

Back to the suitcase Egon went. Bent over, he pantomimed tearing a stub off the claim ticket at the perforation, and held up the invisible stub while explaining.