The Nirvana Blues

by John Nichols

  “I didn’t start it, Joey. I didn’t blow off our marriage at the bus station last Saturday night.”

  “Ah, screw you.” He swung around the VW, made a grotesque face at Heather, dropped underneath the car, and applied the plier handles to the pertinent connecting points. Immediately, Heidi started the car, slammed it into gear, and drove away; the right rear tire jounced over his thighs.

  Incredulously, Joe hollered, “Ouch!”

  Heidi slammed on the brakes, crying out, “Oh no! What was I thinking!” And, while Joe writhed in pain, convinced that both legs were shattered, she tried to escape from the bus. But once the broken lock knobs had been pushed down, the only way to pop them was with the key, from outside. Frantically, Heidi rolled down the window and leaned out, trying to accomplish the maneuver upside down and backward. But she hadn’t enough leverage to open the door.

  Oblivious to the latest drama, Michael groaned, “I wadda go hobe!”

  “I’ll sue you!” Joe screamed. “They’ll declare you mentally incompetent! They’ll throw you in jail!”

  “Joey, I didn’t mean—”

  Heather’s window wouldn’t open—the winding apparatus was broken. So Heidi climbed in back, flipped up the sliding-door lock knob, and, because the interior handle was broken, reached through the vent window and jerked up the outside door handle. The sliding door popped out, but, because the U-piece attaching it to the body runner was broken, it sliced downward, clanking against the pavement, then fell outward, flopping over, and yanking Heidi, whose arm was trapped in the vent window, with it.

  Her turn to scream: “My arm!”

  Heather wailed, “Mommy!”

  Joe jumped to his feet. Surprise, surprise! Not only could he walk, but he felt only a fraction of the pain he had been prepared for. Apparently, his legs were completely unbroken, an altogether embarrassing development, given the circumstances.

  The tilted door was still attached by its bottom arm to the car’s lower runner. Heidi’s twisted arm, bent through the vent window, was pinned underneath the door, crushed against the pavement. “It’s broken…” she gasped. “Oh shit, I never felt a hurt like this!”

  “Here.” Joe fumbled. “Lemme lift this … okay … can you pull your arm out? Quick, I can’t hold this up forever … come on—!”

  “Joey, it hurts!” She was crying. Heather sobbed, Michael whimpered. As it often did, something went wrong in the accelerator system, and abruptly the engine started racing with a high-pitched piercing rattle.

  “I know it hurts, Heidi. But you gotta free it from … there!”

  She slid off the door, gripping her arm just below the elbow. The bent wrist looked sickening.

  Joe helped her to her feet. Heidi whimpered, “What are you doing? Take your hands off me.”

  “We got to get back to the emergency room.”

  “I’m not going back in there!”

  “Don’t be stupid. Look at that wrist. Come on, Heidi, grow up for ten minutes.”

  “You grow up. If we go back in there, I’ll never live it down.”

  “Oh wow.” Joe forced his wife to move. “If you don’t go, I’ll break your jaw, I swear to it!”

  She protested, then relented. Guiding her toward the hospital, Joe called back over one shoulder: “Heather, turn off the damn car.”

  “There’s no key!”

  “There has to be a key, sweetie. You can’t remove it from the ignition while the car’s still running.”

  “I did,” Heidi said faintly.

  “Come again?”

  “I don’t know why, but it popped out when I yanked. Joey, I hate that car! Just once in my life before I die I want a new one!”

  “If we buy a new car we won’t have money to start the house.”

  “Who cares? We’re gonna be divorced, and we don’t have any money anyway.”

  “Tribby says he can unload the coke and get my twelve Gs back. So we’ll have that, anyway.”

  “Not unless Tribby goes after it in a rubber suit and a snorkel.”

  “Not unless what—?” Behind them, the bus made a sound like a gunshot, shuddered, and stalled.

  “It went off by itself!” Heather called, as Joe opened the glass door and ushered Heidi inside.

  “I didn’t run over you on purpose,” Heidi whimpered, as Joe knocked on the emergency-room door. “Honest. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “What did you say about Tribby and the dope?”

  “I just wasn’t thinking, Joey. Are your legs hurt?”

  “A rubber suit and a snorkel?”

  A nurse appeared, stating the obvious: “You’re back again.” A blast of Bradley’s pained howls hit them like an anguished flock of fleeing birds.

  Dazedly, Joe said, “It’s my wife. She just broke her arm.”

  The nurse screwed up her features. “It wasn’t broken a minute ago, was it?”

  “No, listen, it’s a long story. Maybe you could give her a shot, for the pain, until Phil’s free.”

  Nancy circled the operating table upon which her child lay screaming his guts out while Phil Horney sutured. Placing an arm solicitously around Heidi’s shoulders, she said, “Oh you poor dear.”

  “Tell her to keep her fucking paws off me,” Heidi whispered weakly. Then she fainted.

  Joe, Nancy, and the nurse kept her from hitting the ground. Grunting and cursing, they lugged her to a chair; the nurse rummaged through steel-cabinet drawers, hunting for smelling salts.

  Joe murmured dreamily, “I’ll be right back. I better check on the kids.”

  Seated beside Michael in the back, Heather stroked her brother’s head. Joe checked the ignition, the front seat, and the outside lock on the driver-side door, then asked, “Where’s the keys?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “But what did she do with the keys?” Joe gnashed his teeth. “She had to have them to start the car.”

  “We didn’t take them.”

  “I’m not accusing you of taking them, Heather. I’m simply asking: did you see what happened to them?” On his hands and knees, Joe scoured the floor up front—fruitlessly. A rubber suit and a snorkel? In back he tore through old National Geographics and scattered tools, shredded newspapers and greasy rags, tennis rackets, an old shoe, and a thousand other items, most of them dump candidates, but came up empty-handed. Next, he scrabbled without luck through the glove compartment, then pawed through all the garbage lining the windshield dashboard—Bic pens, supermarket game stubs, envelopes containing shopping and chore lists, and two dozen rotted, shriveled brown apple-cores: but he found no keys.

  Outside, Joe wrestled up the sliding door, checking the pavement underneath it, which coughed up no keys.

  Heaving the door up against the car, Joe fitted the broken U-piece into its proper slot on the upper runner. After some awkward prodding, he managed to shut the door again, and lock it.

  A town cop had sidled up behind him during this operation. “Say, buddy, what’s going on here?”

  “Officer, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “We just brought my kid in for a broken nose. That’s him on the back seat there. Then, while we were leaving, this door fell off with my wife’s arm caught in it and broke her wrist. So she’s in there now, having the wrist set.”

  “I see. Do you always park your car in the middle of the road, or is tonight a special occasion?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, mister, maybe I can clear it up for you. This here portion of macadam happens to be the entrance and egress portion of the driveway for the emergency room. If a ambulance was to come in here right now, carrying a life-or-death patient, your car would be blocking it.”

  Without thinking, Joe corrected the man’s grammar: “‘An’ ambulance.”

  “That is correct. Now, that portion of the macadam back there, see? With the concrete parking dividers and the slanted yellow lines, that’s for hospital parking
. And that is precisely where this heap should be.”

  “I know sir. I apologize. But right now I can’t find the keys.”

  “It’s immaterial to me whether you can find the goddam keys, mister. Your car is in the wrong place, and it’s breaking the law. So I’m gonna have to give you a citation.”

  What to do—flare? Attack the son of a bitch, grab his gun from its holster, and—

  STATEWIDE SEARCH LAUNCHED FOR COP KILLER

  “Reliable sources with the State Bureau of Investigation claimed, early this morning, that they were closing in on the hideout of Joe Miniver, maniac cop killer, who is apparently holed up in a cave in the foothills of the Midnight Mountains just north of Chamisaville. Authorities believe that he is heavily armed, and has enough ammunition to service a small army. At 4:00 A.M. this morning, two armored vehicles were flown from the capital to Chamisaville in a pair of transport helicopters. State police spokesperson, Gary Slocum, informs us that Miniver has vowed he will never be taken alive, and police fear he may choose to die in a fiery exchange of gunfire rather than give himself up. However, on the off-chance that such a confrontation can be avoided, Miniver’s two children, Heather and Michael, were driven to the area where their father is holed out, and at right this moment they are speaking to him over police bullhorns, begging their daddy to give himself up.…”

  In the background, Nick Danger slunk out of the emergency-room exit and scuttled off, his mystifying suitcase thudding softly against one thigh.

  Joe said, “Look, sir, I’m really sorry. Maybe my wife has the keys inside, I dunno. I’ll go in and check.”

  “And leave this car camped here, illegally, a public nuisance as well as a real danger to life and limb if an ambulance should have to deliver somebody or cart a stiff away?”

  “Well, then I’ll try to push it back over there. Maybe you could give me a hand?”

  “You’re very funny, buddy. I get paid to enforce the law, not to push vehicles around.”

  Joe said, “Heather, into the driver’s seat, quick! I need you to steer this car.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “It’s easy. Now come on, hurry up. Do what I say, or this fucking cop is gonna throw us all in jail.”

  “One more cussword out of your mouth, buddy, and I’ll haul you in.” He was standing back from the rear of the bus, writing the ticket.

  “Heather!”

  “I’m scared, Daddy. I don’t know how to steer it.”

  “Get in the goddam driver’s seat right now! Or I’ll drop your pants and give you a thousand whacks on a bare fanny.”

  Hesitantly, his miniature Flo Nightingale deserted her dying charge and settled in the driver’s seat. Joe reached through the window and grabbed the wheel. “See, all you have to do is, when I’m pushing it, turn the wheel like this, in this direction, you got that? Good. Let’s go.”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  His back pressed against the front of the bus, Joe bent down, grabbed the bumper, lifted up, and heaved backward with all his might. It was easy. The light car rolled effortlessly across the flat macadam, achieved the parking area, and collided—crunching softly—against the cop’s cruiser.

  Joe let go the bumper and leaped around to the driverside door, through which he must pass to step on the brakes so the vehicle wouldn’t roll forward again. But of course the door was locked, and he had no keys. And by the time he had scrambled through the window, shoving Heather roughly aside as he reached down desperately with one hand to hit the brakes, the bus had proceeded lazily forward again, halting exactly where it had been before Joe pushed it. And by the time he resituated himself in a right-side-up position, facing forward, the cop stood at the passengerside door demanding that he “roll down this window, mister.”

  “I can’t, sir. The handle is broken.”

  The cop circled cautiously to Joe’s side of the car, and drew his gun.

  “I want you to descend from that car real slowly. And I want to see your hands at all times. I don’t want no more jokes, no more pranks, no more false moves. Try anything funny and I’ll kill you, understand? Now: open that door, and get your ass out of that vehicle.”

  “I can’t open this door, sir. It’s jammed.”

  “I’m not buying it, buddy. Now, you don’t have much time left, you really don’t. Open that door right now!”

  “I have to crawl out the window.” Joe’s throat was so dry his voice squeaked. “Honest, sir, I can’t open this door.”

  “Very well, then.” The cop raised his arm, pointing the gun at Joe’s head. He held the weapon in a classical grip, steadying it by clasping his right wrist with the left hand. The sensation engendered in Joe by this current tête-à-tête was otherworldly. A ringing commenced in his ears, and his brain reacted accordingly—it cringed, and Joe felt worse than faint. It was as if a bullet was already headed for that gray matter, which, in the next split instant, would splatter against the roof and the driverside window. Joe moved his lips to make words—“I can only get out through the window.” But thanks to his constricted throat and ringing ears, he couldn’t hear himself speak.

  He gave up, convinced it was all over. Closing his eyes, Joe expected his life to pass in review. Instead, after a few seconds (or an eternity), the jangling stopped, and distinctly (with a downright eerie clarity), he heard Nancy Ryan salute the cop.

  “Hello, Vern. Why are you pointing that gun at my friend?”

  “You better stand back, Nancy. This lug’s crazy.”

  “No he’s not. He’s simply distraught. His son broke his nose, and then just a minute ago, in a freak accident, his wife Heidi broke her wrist. She’s in the emergency room under Phil’s care right now.”

  “He’s fucking with me,” Vern said tensely. “He backed his goddam car into my cruiser.”

  “Oh come on. I’ll vouch for him. But first put away that silly gun.”

  “Not until he hauls his ass out of that car and I can see all of him.”

  “Joe, you better get out of the car,” Nancy coaxed. “Open your eyes.”

  Joe opened his eyes. “I can’t get out the way he wants me to, Nancy, because the door’s jammed shut. So I can only crawl out the window.”

  “Well, then, crawl out the window.”

  “But he said he would kill me if I crawl out the window.”

  “Oh come on. Vern? I’m surprised at you. You won’t hurt him if he crawls out the window, will you?”

  “Aw … I guess not.”

  “He guesses,” Joe mumbled with meek scorn. “What kind of assurance is that?”

  “See what I mean, Nancy? He’s an arrogant prick. That kind is usually dangerous.”

  “Vern, he’s the least dangerous person I know. Scout’s honor. Now Joe, climb out the silly window. Hurry up.”

  “If he kills me it’s your fault.” What a clammy, all-encompassing terror had now taken over his body!

  “He won’t shoot, darling. I’ve enveloped you in a cocoon of pink clouds.”

  Just what he needed—a cocoon of pink clouds! Guaranteed to stop .357-Magnum bullets any day! An impenetrable shield of cotton candy! But he moved anyway, hesitantly poking his head out the window. Awkwardly, like a colt being born, he oozed out farther. Eventually, as one hand sought a grip on the roof, and the other grabbed for the outside rearview mirror, he lost his balance, was airborne briefly, and thumped against the pavement.

  “Up against the car,” Vern ordered. “Quick! Spread your legs—that’s it. And your arms, too.”

  Joe did as he was told: Vern slapped him down for hidden weaponry, removed his wallet, and flipped it open.

  Nancy said, “See? There was no need to worry. He’s just a regular little old human being.”

  “Well, why is he acting so funny then? Turn around, Joe.”

  Robotlike, Joe obeyed. Vern had holstered the gun. He handed over Joe’s wallet. Whereas a minute ago he had looked ready to kill, now the cop seemed almost scared. He had pulled a gun un
necessarily on a law-abiding (though perhaps momentarily deranged) citizen, who might be within his rights filing some sort of police brutality suit.

  “Listen, uh, Joe. Maybe I was a little hasty, there, with the betsy. You know. Just last week a partner of mine was blown away by this hopped-up freak with a piece over a routine traffic violation. So I’m a little nervous, you dig?”

  Joe tried to speak, but could only dredge forth a squeak.

  “Vern, you’re super.” Nancy stood on tiptoes to buss his cheek. Approaching Joe, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “But he has to move this goddam car into a parking place,” Vern warned. “It’s a menace in the middle of the roadway here.” As an afterthought he handed Joe a citation for illegal parking, bald tires, a cracked windshield, an expired safety sticker, a broken taillight, and for colliding with a police vehicle.

  “You see?” Nancy cuddled up against Joe. “Everything turns out all right if you just have faith.”

  Like Amelia Earhart, Vern disappeared.

  “Faith in what? And how do you know that thug, anyway?”

  “We dated for a little bit last year. He’s really not a bad guy.”

  “He almost killed me.”

  “He was probably scared. People always act funny when they’re frightened.”

  Relieved and exhausted, Joe said, “Well, all I want to do right now is pick up Heidi and go home.”

  “I’ll wait just to make sure everything is all right.”

  Bradley focused in the background. “I don’t wanna wait, Mom. I wanna go home.”

  Staggering toward the emergency-room entrance, Joe thought: Kids!

  When he emerged again, a shaken and drained Heidi leaning on his arm, they still had no keys. Joe said, “I searched all over the car, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “Don’t look at me, Joey. They’re not in my pockets. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Can’t you think? Can’t you remember? How can I start the bus without the damn keys?”

  “I don’t remember anything. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh boy. When it rains it pours.”

  “Go ahead, dump on me. Everything is my fault. I haven’t tasted enough gas, yet, this evening.”