The Nirvana Blues

by John Nichols

  MINIVER FARMS, OF CHAMISAVILLE, WINS J. I. RODALE “GREEN THUMB” AWARD!

  Pausing atop the Pacheco Ditch culvert pipe, Michael said, “There’s some water skeeters.”

  Joe positively tingled from the thought of owning his own water skeeters!

  Michael said, “Hey, what was that animal?”

  “A muskrat.” Not only would they possess land, trees, fruit, and water, but they had purchased, as well, a partial share in a southwestern equivalent to the Bronx Zoo!

  A large orange-and-black butterfly blithely bobbed toward them. Joe was flabbergasted. “Holy mackerel! A swallowtail!”

  “You mean monarch,” Michael chided.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Excitedly, Joe pointed out a twisted, pastel-blue bush beside the culvert. “That’s a sagebrush plant, Michael. We own a regular Garden of Eden!”

  “Do we own it already? I thought—”

  “Don’t think,” Joe snapped. “It’s bad for your brain.”

  A slight rise led to a wide rounded parking area. Here the geese mingled noisily with a dozen chickens, some guinea hens, several belligerent, thumping, posturing (and enormous) tom turkeys, two curious peacocks, and a bunch of Chihuahuaesque dogs named Sweetie Pie, Cookie, Honey, Fuzzy, Squeaky, and Daffodil.

  Ay, such a racket!

  A dilapidated pickup snoozed in front of the crumbling three-room adobe house in which Eloy Irribarren had lived most of his life. The truck’s outer skin looked as if some baseball maniac had set up a pitching machine and fired hardballs at ninety miles an hour against it for a decade. The windshield was cracked, splintered, impossibly spider-webbed; the passengerside window was made of cardboard and silver duct-tape. The sides, the tail pipe, the rear fender and license plate were attached by snaggles of rusty baling wire. A twisted coat hanger jammed into a corroded gap in the right rear of the hood served as an antenna for a radio that apparently functioned.

  Eloy still held a valid license and insisted on driving himself everywhere. Known around the valley as a one-man demolition derby, when out plying the highways and byways as if they were his own personal Dodg’emcars rink, Eloy was assiduously avoided by all other motorists. Approaching cars a hundred yards away braked as soon as they recognized Eloy’s pulverized Chevy, pulling way over to let him pass. Occasionally, oncoming drivers parked, jumped out, circled their vehicles, and dived into the roadside ditch as if escaping an overhead strafing. Those who did not pull over usually wound up careening onto soft shoulders, or plummeting into ditches anyway, as Eloy slalomed along, oblivious to it all.

  Smoke issued from Eloy’s chimney. Beside the house stood a vast and ragged pile of wood—piñon, cedar, lumber slabs, sawmill butt-ends, and silvery gray aspen trunks gathered at old forest-fire burns. Wood chips, from years of log-splitting, surrounded the house and trickled into the parking area. Duke, a grotesquely flea-bitten German shepherd, lay in the front of the shack’s only door, eyeing them lethargically. On the roof, on the front stoop, in planters that might once have held flowers when the mistress of the household still lived, a pride of ragged cats sprawled, snoring, meowing, coughing up fur balls and vomiting grass, scratching in the dust to cover up turds, or glowering at bullyboy magpies. Conservatively, Joe guessed Eloy had fifteen cats.

  And curled up within Duke’s paws was an enormous tattered and one-eyed gray-and-white rabbit called Tuerto.

  Several feet in front of the house, a quaint wooden structure protected Eloy’s hand-dug well. The water dipped up out of that well by a hand-cranked bucket was crystal-clear and cold. Joe knew, because the old man had offered him a cup when they first started talking deal.

  Off to the right, a pleasant murmur of animal and fowl sounds issued from the hodgepodge conglomeration of wire-covered pens that stretched for about thirty yards between the house and the small back field. Constructed of forty-year-old fence posts, warped lumber slabs, and all manner of chicken, sheep, and goat wire and screening, the chaotic, ramshackle pens housed an almost surreal zoo. Posed arrogantly against the skyline atop the goat shed, a peacock spread its gorgeous tail-feathers. Goats bounded eagerly around in a wooden corral, trying to leap out. Dozens of rabbits wrinkled their noses, sniffing indifferently, in a crazy, patchwork warren. A sow and six piglets snorted and chuffed beside a pen in which pheasants strutted nervously, their bright feathers glittering iridescently. More tom turkeys, hen turkeys, and chicklet turkeys occupied another jail. Pigeons cooed and fluttered in a green plastic dishpan, bathing themselves. Ten quail strutted around in their barren dirt pen, hunting tidbits. And in a far cage, Wolfie, a twenty-three-year-old timber wolf, paced patiently, awaiting his Alpo and Sunday morning stroll.

  A miniature orchard was situated directly north and east of Eloy’s tiny dwelling. It harbored a crab-apple tree, one green-apple tree, one Delicious apple tree, a pear tree, and several greengage plum bushes. Around them bees hummed busily. Eloy’s garden area lay just to the south. Some dry cornstalks remained standing among patches of leaves and straw he had used for mulch.

  The back field, another six-tenths of an acre, was planted in brome. Earlier, the old man had burnt off the dead grass. Now, streaks of carbon darkness were rapidly being obliterated by new spring shoots. A line of dry grass stalks running across the middle of the field like a mohawk haircut indicated where a Lovatos Acequia feeder ditch passed through.

  A killdeer screeched over the field, glided, and touched down with a bounce. Joe said, “Look at that bird! We’ll even have killdeers! Do you think they’ll nest out there?”

  And, wise to the cornball proclivities of human beings, a meadowlark on a fence post unleashed its melodic riff.

  Joe kicked down his bike stand and entered the back field. His eyes skimmed over the ground, marking alfalfa clumps, a gopher hole, a budding anthill that might have to be eliminated, and a black dung-beetle creeping along, its head to the ground, rump pointed skyward. Screeching, the killdeer jumped and winged away. Four more chinese elms against a fence delineated the eastern boundary: starlings, gathered in their branches, twittered noisily.

  In the center of the field, Joe rotated several times ecstatically. “Michael, me boyo, what do you think?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just ‘okay’?” Joe pushed his kid over, tackled him, sat on his chest, and poised a protruding knuckle directly above the boy’s sternum. “If you don’t say this is the most beautiful little chunk of natural nirvana you ever saw I’ll give you the Chinese knuckle torture!”

  “Ouch.” Michael grimaced stoically. “You’re hurting my stomach.”

  “Who cares? Let’s go, punk. I want something more expressive than a stupid ‘okay’ out of you. Or I swear to Christ I’ll tear you asunder.”

  Michael asked, “When we own the land, are you just gonna kick him out of there?”

  “No, dumbbell, he’ll move out. I’ll pay for the land, he’ll go someplace else.”

  “What if he doesn’t have anyplace else to go?”

  “Michael, do you know how much bread I’ll give that old man for this place?”

  Eyes squinched against the sunlight, Michael shook his head.

  “Sixty thousand dollars.”

  “Oh.”

  “So the man could rent a castle if he wanted.”

  “How much exactly is sixty thousand dollars? What could you buy for it? Like how many cars?”

  “Depends what kind of car.”

  “VW buses.”

  “New?”

  “Yes.…”

  “Well, I think about six.”

  Michael said, “I heard you tell Mom once that Mr., uh, you know, was in debt almost as much as he would get paid for the land, so in the end he’ll wind up with almost nothing.”

  Joe jumped up. “Hey, kid, who’s paying you to be a killjoy?”

  “Well, maybe we shouldn’t buy it.”

  “If we don’t buy it, somebody else will. You see, he has to sell.”

  “
Why?”

  “He’s in debt and he’s trying to get a decent price before they take it away and auction it off for a lot less than it’s worth.”

  “Why don’t we wait until the auction, then?”

  “Because somebody else would buy it before the auction.”

  “You mean, no matter what, the auction can’t really happen?”

  “It could. But too many people have a vested interest in nailing this place down before that happens.”

  “Oh.”

  At the well, Joe said, “Watch this.” He cranked up the bucket, and poured clear water into a tin cup he’d retrieved from a rusty nail. Downing a healthy slug, he pantomimed ecstasy while emitting a satisfied “ahhh.” Then he tendered the cup to Michael.

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m offering you real live H2O, no fluoride, no chemicals, no asbestos fibers, no chlorine, and you have the unmitigated gall to say ‘No thanks’?”

  “Isn’t that water polluted?” Michael peered suspiciously into the dark liquid rippling fifteen feet below them.

  “Polluted? This is water in its natural state. Taste it. Champagne pales beside this elixir.”

  “But melted mung from that outhouse could be seeping into it. In school they said you’re supposed to drill down to the third aquifer.” He fired a BB that entered the water with an echoing chug!

  “What are you shooting at?”

  “My own face.”

  “Well, don’t be killing any frogs.…”

  Apprehensively, Joe knocked on Eloy’s door. It took a while. When the old man finally answered, Joe said, “Buenos días, sir. Are we disturbing you?”

  “Disturbing me? Qué va! I always welcome a visitor. What’s the weather like out here?—sorry I took so long, I must have been asleep. Though I didn’t return from the fiesta until midnight, I couldn’t sleep. I drowsed for a while, then all of a sudden I woke up, startled. There was a strange light coming into the house. So I went to the window and peeped outside. And you know what I saw? I know this sounds crazy, but I thought I saw an enormous angel drinking water at my well. I pinched myself to make sure I was alive, and went right back to bed. But I was up at five as usual, chopped some wood, made my breakfast, sharpened an ax, and then damned if I didn’t fall asleep again.”

  Squinting, Eloy assessed first the high white clouds casting shadows against the mountains, then the direction of the breeze lazily tinkering with cottonwood leaves. His handshake was gentle: no squeezing, no pumping—it was simply there, relaxed and friendly.

  “Who’s this handsome little diablo?” Eloy asked.

  “Handsome?” Joe tousled Michael’s hair. “He’s my son, but I sure wouldn’t call him handsome. Ugly as sin is the way I’d put it.”

  Horribly shy with strange grown-ups, Michael hung his head, abysmally uncomfortable.

  The old man asked, “What kind of a gun is that?”

  “It only shoots BBs. It’s a Daisy.”

  Michael muttered, “I can speak for myself, Pop.”

  “Give it here a sec.” Eloy examined the rifle. Joe watched, fascinated: in the old-timer’s practiced hands the gun took on a different dimension, acquiring the dignity of a weapon. Eloy worked the hand lever, took aim, and fired at a magpie cackling in the crab-apple tree.

  Joe said, “Hey!” as the offended bird took off, scrawking loudly.

  Eloy shook his head, running one finger down the tin barrel. Then he handed it back to Michael. “It shoots real low, son. You should adjust the sight.”

  Embarrassed, Joe nevertheless felt called upon to lodge a protest. “I try and teach him not to shoot at living things.”

  Eloy smiled, “You couldn’t hurt a magpie at this distance with a BB gun. What day is today, anyway?”

  “Sunday.”

  “I thought so.” All his facial wrinkles seemed to explode as he giggled, giving Joe’s shoulder a tap of recognition.

  “By God, I missed church again. What do you think about that? The good Lord is liable to blight my tomatoes again this year, qué no? You folks aren’t church people, are you?”

  “Not us. I was brought up Episcopalian. But I quit going to church by the time I reached college.”

  “This whole valley used to be religious,” Eloy mused. “Hell, they flocked to the Catholic church like flies to hot horse manure. Sunday mornings the entire valley reverberated from the chiming bells. Now it’s like a spiritual circus—with dancing bears, and white horses, and elephants and clowns. But in the old days—”

  He raised a harkening finger, the tip of which was missing: they listened for the faint echo of yesteryear’s Sunday tolling.

  Joe said, “Look, we don’t want to disturb you.…”

  “I’m so busy? Inundated with family and friends to care for? I want a game of cards with my neighbor, Elivirio Baca, I go to the camposanto. If my addled brain needs to ask my wife, Teresita, what herb is best for rheumatism, I make another trip to the graveyard. If, on a whim, I wish to ask my youngest son Larkin how’s tricks, I got to wait until the one day a month they allow visitors at the state penitentiary—he went crazy three years ago in the La Tortuga and smashed a female real-estate agent on the head with a beer bottle. If I decide to share a cup of chokecherry wine with my eldest boy, Cruz, it’s back to the cemetery again with a bottle and my broken heart—thanks to that place across the ocean, Vietnam. In all the tertulias for us old-timers … we convene on boot hill. It’s grown mighty lonely around here above ground. These days only the skeletons speak Spanish.”

  Joe said, “Well, you know, I mean…”

  Abruptly, Eloy softened. “Don’t be sorry. I should apologize. I know my bitterness is childish. Sometimes I hate my own bile. I stick my finger down my throat and try to upchuck it. I’m very lucky I lived so long, and had such a good life. But the day an old man in my position claims he’s being molested by two young fellers like you will be the day.”

  Michael had a question: “Is that well-water polluted?”

  “Yup, you bet it is.”

  Joe said, “Hey, Michael—who asked you to open that fat yap of yours?”

  “You need to tap the third aquifer if you don’t want it to be full of horse piss and human feces,” Eloy explained.

  Joe said, “But it tastes wonderful. And you drink it.”

  “I’m used to it. I guzzled it all my life.”

  The cheerful animal chatter, the sunshine glittering in apple trees, made Joe increasingly nervous. The land would not be his, really, until Eloy departed, taking his horse, his dog, his decrepit wolf, his one-eyed rabbit, and the rest of his menagerie, leaving the Minivers as sole proprietors of the diminutive estate. Meaning the animals were doomed. For what could Eloy do with all these beasts? Sell them, obviously. Or give them away. Suppose he offered them—gratis—to Joe? Ay, perish the thought. Yet the request was inevitable. And if Joe refused? He was condemning the animals to death. After all, what market existed for glue-factory horses, half-blind rabbits, and toothless wolves?

  Heart sinking, Joe realized that the cacophonous group of flea-bitten barnyard critters would come with the territory. For sixty thousand clams, he would find himself the guardian of a bunch of useless misfits right out of a Buñuel film! The specter was horrifying. He’d have to borrow a backhoe, dig an enormous trench, and hire Jeff Orbison and Tom Yard to drive the flocks, herds, coveys, and gaggles into it, then cut loose with their .357 magnums and police .38s.…

  CHAMISAVILLE’S OWN BABI YAR! SPCA FILES SUIT IN ABSENTIA AGAINST BARNYARD “SHOCK-DOC”! MINIVER FLEES, RUMORED IN PARAGUAY!

  For such problems he was going to risk his life? Let the suitcase rot in that bus station!

  Of course, until the old man and his charges departed, everything here belonged to Eloy. After all, it was his home; his history gave personality to each grass-blade and fence post; his kindness and concern had forged the personalities of the stock. So long as Eloy and his animals remained, Joe and the children and Heidi (if she hadn’
t already reserved a plane ticket for New York!) would be strangers on their own turf. Yet how could he broach the subject?

  Gretchen Horney, at Sköl Realty, had promised to deal with Eloy, alerting the law if he refused to budge. “Sometimes the old ones won’t move, even after they’ve taken your money,” she had explained. “I don’t know why that is. Maybe they have a spiritual anchor to the land they’re not strong enough to pull up.”

  Joe had posed this hypothetical dilemma to Gretchen: “Suppose a guy like Mr. Irribarren has no relatives and no place to go to?”

  “With what you’re paying him, he could rent a room at the Chamisaville Inn for the next ten years.”

  “Yes, I know. But I mean, suppose he has no place to go to?”

  Employing a Bic pen, Gretchen poked her wide round glasses up to the top of her head and regarded him wistfully. Finally, with a sigh, she cautioned: “Joe, there’s not much room for emotions in the real-estate game.”

  Bueno. Maybe he should just hire Tom Yard and Jeff Orbison to come over here and perform a hit on the old man himself. Or figure out a way to have him OD on cutworm moths saturated with PCP.

  Eloy said, “You’re going to build a house. A big house?”

  “Well, we have plans to build, of course. But it won’t be that large.…” Confronted by the three-room, wood-heated, outhouse-serviced shack Eloy had raised a large family in, Joe choked on the rest of his sentence. Life wasn’t tough enough, now God had decided to punish him for last night by making him freak out on a guilt trip over an eighty-three-year-old fox almost sixty Gs richer thanks to the Miniver largesse.