The Nirvana Blues

by John Nichols

  Grabbing the hammer, Joe backed out the driverside door, circled the truck, and, like a maniac, began swinging the hammer—blam!—attacking the keyhole area—whack!—smashing it as hard as possible with every blow—k-blonk!—and cursing it for good measure while the girl looked on horrified: wham!

  “Hey, you shouldn’t treat machinery like that, man. Cars have feelings too, you know.”

  “This isn’t a car, this is a truck”—k-tunk!—“and trucks don’t have any feelings”—bang! “Not this old, they don’t. General Motors didn’t start”—smash!—“putting feelings into trucks until 1954.” Emitting a grunt, he launched a final blow—k-thud!—then grabbed at the key … it slid right out.

  “Ah-hah! The human brain, with its infinite grasp of superior technology, triumphs again!”

  “Wow, man, are you okay? You’re reeking with Overts and Withholds!”

  “If you want a ride, get in the driverside door.”

  The girl backed away uneasily; she had even stopped crying. “I don’t want a ride, man. Not with you. You’re on a really scary ARC break. I bet your Theta never went Exterior, did it? What are you on, anyway?”

  “On?” Joe swung into his truck. “What am I on? Let me tell you. I’m high on smack, whacked on meth, I just dropped six tabs of some very heavy acid, smoked a doobie, snorted half a gram of coke, and ate a PCP cutworm moth pizza, and boy do I feel ripped!”

  Fuck this drug culture, he thought as the Green Gorilla surged away from her. Miss Pierson, take a letter. “Dear Fidel Castro. My name is Joe Miniver, I’m thirty-eight years old, I used to be in New York advertising. But then I came out west and became a garbage man. However, I am not so sure, at this point in my life, that the United States is the right place for me. I have always had sort of Socialist leanings, and was wondering if you ever let Americans emigrate to Cuba. Do they need garbage collectors in Havana? Other skills I have is I could probably develop into a good cane-cutter, I used to be a pretty fine athlete. Two things, though: is Scientology legal in your country, and do you have any figures about the Cuban climate’s effect on asthmatics?”

  It was dark. No point in continuing. Better to return home, admit defeat, maybe even call the cops, though he was terrified of hailing fuzz. Suppose Michael was just hanging out at a friend’s house; or had decided to hit a movie. Joe didn’t think he could face the sneering reproach in their hostile police eyes if that happened. Not to mention that they must have heard rumors about his dope score. And no doubt had been apprised of the bus-depot conflagration last night.

  A chill entered the cab. Joe’s window wouldn’t rise, but the passenger one wound up, thus he could eliminate the crosscurrent. Reaching over, he turned the handle, but nothing arose from the slot. Instead, he heard a tinkle inside the doorframe of shattered glass bits rattling around.

  Another accepted entry for Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Another five dollars in his pocket! His remarkable penchant for being an incalculably retarded moron might one day make them all rich!

  * * *

  HOME AGAIN, home again, jiggity-jog.

  Heidi and Heather were seated at the kitchen table, slurping up hot chocolates.

  Joe said, “You’ll never guess what happened.”

  Heidi replied, “It’s all right, we found him.”

  “You did? Where?”

  “Over at your friend’s house. Nancy just called a few minutes ago. She’s bringing him home.”

  “Well, gee … that’s good. What’s the matter? You guys look funny.”

  “Michael shot Sasha with his BB gun!” Heather blurted. “He hit him in the eye!”

  For a second, that didn’t register: “Sasha?”

  “The mean old monkey that bites,” Heather explained. “Mrs. Ryan said he shot him three or four times, but the one that really hurt was smack dab in the middle of his eye.”

  “Wait a minute. He ran away from here, rode all the way over there, and shot the stupid monkey?”

  “She’s very upset.” Heidi smirked. “Bradley started screaming, and then held his breath and managed to prolapse his intestine, which apparently he hasn’t done for over three years. And this time it isn’t pinworms. She’s driving Michael home right now.”

  Joe sat down. “He shot the monkey? Who is he, all of a sudden, Clint Eastwood? Teddy Roosevelt?”

  “The monkey’s in pretty bad shape. They were about to rush it down to a Capital City vet. Nancy said if that monkey dies it’ll be awful. She was in tears. I gather the beast is sacred?”

  Joe said, “Aw, really. Who is writing this script?”

  “I told her we’d pay all the vet bills, of course.”

  “Naturally. Tell her I’ll buy another monkey if she wants.”

  “I’m sure she would love to have you buy her another monkey. I didn’t realize she was a Hanuman worshiper. What do you two do together, pluck lice from each other’s fur?”

  “One more wisecrack, Heidi…”

  “Oh, pardon me, I forgot. And of course, I should have remembered—there’s that unveiling on Thursday. Do you know, Miss Whosit sounded just a trifle plussed. Perhaps Michael, where nobody else could, finally ruffled her composure?”

  “You’re starting a war, I’m warning you.…”

  “Oh me oh my. Shut mah big ol’ mouth.”

  Footsteps clumped up the outside ladder. White as a sheet, Michael appeared in the doorway. Behind him, Nancy said, “Here he is,” and fled.

  Joe cried, “Hey, wait a sec!” and sprang to the door. “Nancy!”

  “We can talk about it later, Joe. Right now I have to get back to Sasha.”

  “I’m sorry!” Joe called into the darkness, his words lost in the chattering of a VW ignition. “He didn’t mean—!”

  Back inside, Michael was proceeding like a rusty robot toward his room when Joe said, “Stop in your tracks. Where do you think you’re going?”

  He froze, but didn’t answer.

  “Boy, Michael, you’re really gonna get it,” Heather gloated.

  Joe said, “Shut up, Heather, or I’ll beat you to a pulp.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she snapped, insulted. “I didn’t shoot the monkey.”

  “You’re shooting off your mouth, and I don’t like it. Besides, it was a grubby monkey and probably deserved to be shot. So if you haven’t got anything helpful to say, keep it buttoned.”

  Heidi flared. “Just because you happen to be committing adultery with a Hanuman freak doesn’t give you the right to treat your daughter like dirt.”

  “‘Dirt’? But she has no right—”

  To Michael, Heather said, “Where’s your BB gun?”

  “They took it,” Michael admitted hoarsely.

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Nikita Smatterling. And his friend—they smashed it.”

  Joe exclaimed, “They what?”

  “First Nikita Smatterling broke it over his knees, then his friend took a sledgehammer and bashed it to smithereens and threw it in a garbage can.”

  “What about your bicycle?”

  “They let me bring that back.”

  Joe wanted to give the kid a medal. But for appearances’ sake he had to be stern: “Why in hell did you shoot that monkey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But people don’t just go out and shoot other people’s pets for no reason, do they? I mean, even Hitler knew what he was doing and why.”

  Heidi said, “I don’t think we need to compare our son with Hitler.”

  Michael mumbled, “I guess I was pissed off.”

  “We’ll have to take the vet bills out of your allowance, you know.”

  Michael nodded dismally—he knew. Between the broken window and the maimed monkey and the dead English sparrow and a dozen other peccadilloes he’d performed both long ago and of late, he had not really received an allowance during the past year. And probably would not score another Saturday handout until he reached sixty-nine.

  “What if Sasha
dies?” Heather chirruped.

  “Will you shut up?” Joe snapped.

  Heidi pleaded, “Don’t talk to her like that,” at the same time that Heather said, “Well, what happens if he does die? That’s murder.”

  “It’s not murder if you kill a monkey,” Joe said. “Murder’s just for killing people.”

  “Well, what is it called for a monkey, then?”

  “I don’t know. Monkeycide. Don’t ask so many stupid questions.”

  Heidi said, “Joey, let’s stop for a minute. Let’s all take a breather: allee allee in-come-free. Michael, darling, you look hungry. How about some split-pea-with-ham soup and a PB and J?”

  Joe asked, “Am I allowed to eat something here, too?”

  “If you want.”

  On tenterhooks, they prepared to share a meal. Heidi opened soup cans, lit a fire under a large saucepan, and added water. Joe made peanut-butter-and jelly sandwiches. Heather set the table. And Michael—without being asked!—fed the cat, and even forked some turds from the catbox into the garbage can. They circled each other on tiptoes, acting very formal, as if the meal somehow fell in the category of such events as the Job Interview, and they were all afraid of blowing it.

  Things remained calm until they sat down and Heather bit into her sandwich. With a great phwoop! sound, she spat out the mouthful as if it were cyanide, exclaiming, “You put butter on my sandwich!”

  Joe held his temper. “So what? Butter can kill? I always spread a little butter on my sandwiches.”

  “I never put butter on my sandwich. I hate it. Yuk!”

  Momentarily defensive, Joe thought: Good Christ, have I already forgotten my family’s likes and dislikes? But before he could labor for too long in such a bitter vineyard, he thought: What gives that snotnosed little Gidget the right to spit out her sandwich? Whereupon, his despotic character asserted itself: “I don’t care if you don’t dig it. In this family, you take what you get and like it.”

  Where—given his record for the day—Michael mined his audacity, beat Joe. But the next person to speak was his son, and the gist of his comments was:

  “I never have any jelly on my sandwiches, Dad. I just like butter and peanut butter. When you add jelly, it tastes kinda pukey.”

  Incredulously, Joe exclaimed, “What is going on here? What is this—the court of Louis Quatorze, and Mr. and Mrs. Stuck-up Rockefeller just paid a visit? What’s your complaint?” he belligerated Heidi. “You like it with butter and jelly, but no peanut butter? And you can’t eat the sandwich unless it’s cut in half, but not so that each half is rectangular—each half has to be triangular?”

  “Joey, ever since they were born, practically, you and I have been making sandwiches to the specifications they just asked for.”

  Joe was growing faint from anxiety, anger, guilt, bewilderment. “I don’t care.” Even though he knew the only loving, noble, and sensible thing to do would be to shut up, he couldn’t stop himself. “I’m sick and tired of harboring a couple of spoiled and thankless little brats! When I was growing up if I had ever spit out part of a sandwich, I would have been banished to my room for a week, and then executed at dawn the following Monday! Your kids, my kids, every middle-class kid in America has been spoiled rotten! I can’t stand it anymore, I really can’t. I’d like to see these two little bourgeois morons kicked out of this house, I really would. In another five years they’ll both probably be walking around in pinstripe button-down shirts, with navy-blue turtleneck jerseys underneath, and brown corduroys, and Bostonian loafers, looking like Caroline and John-John Kennedy!”

  Heather said, “It takes one to know one.” Michael cast down his eyes and squirmed.

  Joe said, “You kids are gonna eat those sandwiches if I have to shove them down your throats!”

  Heidi said, “They don’t have to do anything of the kind. I see no reason under the sun to force people to eat what they don’t want to eat.”

  Joe said, “But you don’t understand. Their attitude about the sandwiches is the same kind of idiotic reasoning that leads to racism.”

  “Joey, isn’t that a pretty big jump—from peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to racism?”

  “You don’t know what I’m saying, do you? You really don’t.”

  “I don’t see the point?—yes, that is correct. You’re not making any sense.”

  “Any kid who would spit out her peanut butter sandwich for the reasons Heather just cited is gonna grow up to be a stock manipulator and a racist,” Joe stormed. “And probably a Fascist. I absolutely guarantee it.”

  “I’m not fast enough yet to be a racist,” Heather said calmly.

  Joe missed it completely. Off-balance, he asked Heidi: “What did she just say?”

  “Ask her. I think it’s both insulting and patronizing to talk about a child in the third person in that child’s presence. Especially when that child is a girl, and has enough chauvinistic strikes against her without her father adding to the damage.”

  That did it. Joe slapped at his soup bowl; it skidded across the table, landing in Heidi’s lap. Thrusting dramatically to his feet, he savagely ripped apart his sandwich, throwing one portion at Heidi, and beaning each of his offspring with the other pieces. Then he made a mad dash for the door, where he turned, à la Zorro, to launch a final speech. Oh, it was dumb, and wrong, and ridiculous! But having gone this far, he might as well finish the job. No way was he going to eat crow, now, not in this cul-de-sac he had prepared for himself:

  “You just let them get away with it, Heidi! You don’t care! You’re just gonna let them turn into a bunch of stuck-up, capitalist preppies!”

  Jaws dropped. All three of them gaped at him as if he were a flying saucer, its retro rockets firing, settling to a touchdown on earth.

  Heather yelled, “Daddy, you’re having a nervous breakdown!”

  Heidi shouted, “Joe, just go!’

  Joe hollered, “Where am I supposed to go to?”

  “Her house! Tahiti! Who cares?”

  “Go to hell!” Heather suggested. “Go crazy!”

  “I’m sick of that kid’s foul mouth,” Joe warned Heidi. “If she’s gonna talk like a guttersnipe let her go live in a gutter.”

  “If you hadn’t fucked Nancy Ryan,” Heidi wailed, “Michael never would have shot that damn monkey!”

  “They are gonna be storm troopers when they grow up!” Joe couldn’t resist saying.

  Heather accused: “You already are a storm trooper, Daddy!”

  “Joey, get out of here! Go away!”

  “When are we gonna talk?” he raged. “What—we’ll just stay mum and hope something works out?”

  “Talk about what, for God’s sake?”

  “Would you believe, us? You and me! This so-called marriage! Our happy little family! Our living arrangements! The beautiful house we were gonna build together this summer!”

  “I hardly think this is the time—”

  “There are no right times in life, Heidi! If we always waited around for it to be the Right Time, nothing would ever get done!”

  “Well right now I want you to be gone!”

  “Great, thanks a lot, I’m going!”

  “So don’t just stand there,” she sobbed. “Get out of here!”

  “I don’t wanna go out there!” Joe shrieked at the top of his voice. “It’s a cold, cruel world out there, teeming with idiots!” Shakespeare…? He added: “It’s a tale, full of sound and fury—!”

  “Go,” Heidi pleaded. “Just go! go! go!”

  Suddenly, what had seemed life-and-death crucial to Joe a moment ago became patently absurd. He moaned, “I can’t go.” The sight of their big, wide-open, tormented eyes whammied by pathetic despair, set against soaking-wet features twisted in clownlike misery, broke his heart and raised a chortle at the same time.

  Puzzled, wary, and infuriated, Heidi said, “If you don’t go, I’m calling the police.”

  “What’s my crime? Who did I kill? What did I steal?”


  Astonished, Heidi said, “You’re actually smirking!”

  “This whole thing is preposterous.”

  For reasons even the most astute theologians, psychologists, and sports commentators would never understand, Joe’s spirits had started to soar. He was enjoying the whole ludicrous Felliniesque imbroglio.

  “Please go,” Heidi sobbed.

  Joe let his voice drop to normal. “So long everybody, it’s been good to know you.” And, tipping an imaginary Maurice Chevalier hat, twiddling an imaginary cane, he did a brief jig step, then slyly soft-shoed out of there.

  Down by the Green Gorilla, inspiration—a three-hundred-watter!—flattened our cavalier boy. Joe ransacked the glove compartment for a soiled piece of typing paper and a pen. By starlight, leaning against the front hood, he wrote, I love all three of you. A cursory inspection of the surrounding terrain soon turned up the correct-shaped stone. Joe wrapped the note around it, went into a baseball windup (doing a double-pump-and-knuckle-dusters like big Don Newcombe), then reared back and tossed a strike through the southern window of their living room. And, as he pictured them unwrapping the rock, Joe fired up the Green Gorilla, cackling in ecstasy!

  * * *

  DOWNRIGHT EUPHORIC, firmly convinced he was one of the planet’s most original and far-out human beings, Joe was about to sail onto the open road, bound for glory, when, from up high in the starlit darkness, Tribby Gordon called: “Hey Miniver! What’s going on down there?”

  At first Joe was startled: the voice, like that of God, seemed to be firing at him directly from heaven. Then he remembered Tribby’s crow’s nest atop his bedroom pyramid, and hollered back:

  “It’s nothing! Just a little domestic squabble!”

  “You’re breaking my windows, man! That’s a tenant no-no!”

  “I’ll buy you another, shmuck!”

  “Come up here a minute! Let’s talk!”

  “I can’t! I’m afraid of heights!”

  “Oh bull! Come on! I’m waiting! I’m smoking some dynamite shit up here!”

  Joe quelled the truck, thinking: I hadda throw the rock. Me and my big fat inspiration!

  Not that he wished to avoid Tribby. It’s just that, for some reason, the tattered lawyer had made his crow’s nest almost impregnable. You reached it not by navigating a sensible indoor or outdoor stairwell, or even by ascending a seminegotiable gizmo such as a ladder. Instead, you latched onto a large rope dangling from a lightning rod atop the pyramid and more or less belayed yourself up the side of the house and the treacherously steep pyramid cone. One slip, of course, at the higher elevations meant, if not instant death, at least a passel of broken bones. Razzed unmercifully by Tribby, Joe had clawed his hair-raising way to the top of the pyramid perhaps a half-dozen times, in mind-boggling terror every second. In fact, fear had made him so woozy that he had always lunged the final yards on the brink of fainting and doing an Icarus into the yard below.