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.
* * *
SUCH 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.
“Chari go mariboo sakamajo. See ri sakamajo. Pu quai sakamajo. Sakamajo.”
“Sakamaio, eh?”
“Sakamajo.”
Oh you son of a bitch! But aloud, Joe said, “All right, Michael. Apparently the man is gonna insist we deliver a claim check before he’ll release the bag. No need to make a scene. Peter will just have to do without his clothes today.”
“Uncle Peter? But I thought he didn’t come in on the bus last night.”
Joe glowered. “Button it, would you, moron? Just clam for a while.”
“Fa shur ghonni boggle up lurifong?”
“Yeah, yeah, right
on.” Joe pushed Michael out the door ahead of him. “Far out, outtasight, and all that tommyrot. Oh Christ,” he groaned once they were out of earshot: “I’ll emasculate the bastard!”
“Dad?”
“Yeah…”
“What does ‘sakamajo’ mean?”
“Who knows? I forgot my Sanskrit dictionary. Probably ‘claim check.’”
“In what language?”
“No language. He invents that crap.”
“How come?”
“He took a vow.”
“What’s a vow?”
“Michael, I’m tired, I really am.”
As they pedaled along further, Michael said, “Well, where now, brown cow?”
“Good question. I’m supposed to have a meeting at the airport in an hour. I can’t believe that dumb ninny won’t hand over the suitcase!”
“Why didn’t you talk back to him in a made-up language?”
Joe pondered that as they cruised past the 7-Eleven. Nick Danger was lurking in the public phone booth, clutching his mysterious beige suitcase and the Japanese package to his chest. Only a single vehicle, a hippie van with a CHICKEN RIVER FUNKY PIE logo on the side, was parked in the Yellow Front lot next door. Behind the wheel sat a hairy apparition, eating a banana. Finally, Michael said, “I guess that wouldn’t make any sense, either.”
Joe failed to respond. Already his mind was racing ahead, deviously scheming. Before anything could happen, they needed that suitcase—badly. The longer it stayed in the bus station, glowing invisibly like a plutonium brick, emanating unsavory, guilt-ridden vibes, the sooner its contents would be exposed. Even if the authorities had somehow blunderingly stayed in the dark despite all the clues scattered about Chamisaville like the shattered refuse after a tornado, sooner or later they’d stumble upon the answer, given Joe’s miraculous facility to play himself for a fool. Probably Egon would invite in some stray starving dog for a watercress handout, and the dog, having been trained, in a former life, to sniff out drugs at O’Hare airport, would start barking at the black-watch valise, refusing to quit until Sheriff Eddie Semmelweis arrived, put two and two together, and opened the bag.
STRAY MUTT AND INCOHERENT GEEK BAG DRUG HOOLIGANS! CRIMESTOPPER’S HOTLINE AWARDS ’EM 1,000 CLAMS!
Michael said, “Why do you need that suitcase?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Well, what’s such a big deal about a crummy old suitcase?”
“Michael, it’s not a ‘big deal.’ Uncle Peter checked his bag, but couldn’t get on the bus at the last moment, that’s all. If we leave the suitcase rotting in the bus station, somebody will probably heave it back into a cargo hold by mistake, and carry it off to Timbuktu.”
My God, he thought, veering at the last second to avoid catching a tire in a storm drain: that’s exactly what’ll happen.
Oh woe!
Think, he ordered his brain. They didn’t have much time. Obviously, they had to steal the bag. Okay, but how? He’d recruit Ralph and Tribby. They’d wear ski masks. And black gloves—no point in leaving fingerprints all over the place. Driving up when the lot was deserted, they’d jump out, race inside, and—while two of them held Egon—the third would grab the bag and make a dash for it.
Brilliant! Egon only knew that the bag belonged to a friend of Joe Miniver. It might take the authorities all of eighteen seconds to arrive at Tribby’s Castle of Golden Fools, warrants in hand, cherry tops flickering, walkie-talkies crackling!
Of course, if they found no evidence.… They could hide the bag in Ralph’s float tank. Or better yet, fly it into the mountains in Tribby’s plane, attach a parachute, shove it out over some high country clearing, and return later, when the heat had subsided …
… and the whole brick of coke had been devoured by junkie chipmunks!
“Brick” of coke? Joe was so hip to the dope scene he had no idea if uncut coke came in “bricks” or “leaves” or “powder” form.
He should have kept his mouth shut with Egon. Now, if he couldn’t raise a claim check from Peter.…
Then Joe had a brainstorm. Hot dog! Here’s what they’d do. Break in, leave traces, smash a window, bust the door, so what?—no problem. Quickly, they’d click open the suitcase, remove the cocaine, close the suitcase, and take off, leaving the bag behind! Let Egon report the break-in—the cops would never figure out what had been stolen. And no fingers could legitimately point at Joe.
“Brilliant!” Joe giggled out loud. “I’m an Einstein in a garbage truck!”
Michael said, “Is it something inside Uncle Peter’s suitcase that you want especially?”
“Never you mind. I got it all figured out. Mr. Genius is in control.”
“Is Uncle Peter’s cocaine inside? If it is, you know what you could do? You could break into the bus station at night, take the cocaine out of the suitcase but leave the bag there, and split. Then nobody would know what had been stolen.”
Calmly, Joe said, “Michael, why don’t you run that by me again like a good little boy, all right?”
Michael ran it by him again.
Joe said, “Where did you hear about Uncle Peter’s cocaine?”
“It’s all around school. I think maybe Tofu Smatterling mentioned it.…”
All right, Joe said to himself. Don’t panic, stay calm. If the entire grade school knew about the dope deal, there existed a real good chance that somebody else in town knew about that plaid suitcase, and was planning its removal. Yet unless they had been idiots, like Joe, and also demanded the bag from Egon, if it were now stolen outright, Joe was the only suspect at whom a finger could point.
His overactive imagination immediately conjured up the following scenario. Under cover of darkest night, he and Tribby and Ralph broke into the depot and stealthily snatched the coke. That same evening others broke into the station and grabbed the entire suitcase, thus automatically casting the blame on Joe and his gang.
Obviously, then, after lifting the coke, they must leave behind a gang member to keep watch on the station, making sure nobody else broke inside, eager to abscond with the priceless goodies.
The thought wearied Joe—was there no respectable way out?
Michael said, “If you didn’t want to steal the suitcase, you could sneak in and take the number off the claim-check tag and counterfeit the other half of it.”
“How would I know what to make the counterfeit look like?”
“I could walk in this afternoon and ask for a baggage-check ticket, and you could copy off it, only changing the numbers.”
Joe said, “Quiet a minute, I gotta think.”
But so many possibilities offered themselves that his mind went blank. The scam was too complicated, overly riddled with traps that a single bumbling step could spring. He didn’t want to play anymore. He wasn’t tough enough. And anyway, if Heidi and he divorced now, Eloy Irribarren’s land was a moot point, whatever the drug deal’s outcome. At worst, the divorce papers would arrive on the same day some Capital City hanging judge put him away for life.
Trapped in a holocaust of his own devising, the only way out seemed to be for Joe to kiss off his family and the land, become a born-again Hanuman freak, and skip gaily down the yellow brick road to a far Eastern nirvana hand in hand with Nancy Ryan and Bradley and Sasha and Cheepy.…
And Bozo.
* * *
JOE STEERED INTO Eloy Irribarren’s driveway and stopped. The land, maybe one day (soon) his land, their land, lay ahead. If he wasn’t killed in the process of trying to acquire it. And with that in mind, Joe wanted to see the terrain again, just to be sure it was worth it.
Panning slowly from left to right, his eyes riffled lovingly over the scenery. Ears pricked, Eloy’s old brown horse, Geronimo, snorted softly. Three magpies and two boat-tailed grackles canvassed the shortcropped grass and horse-dung piles for tidbits. Tall cottonwoods awash in dead and dying branches from oyster-shell scale disease lined the property’s road frontage. The field itself was thirty yard
s wide and a hundred yards deep. The Pacheco irrigation ditch was situated on its eastern border. Alongside the ditch ran another row of trees: silvertip poplars, a few honey locusts, a pear tree, and big, shabby chinese elms. Birdhouses for wrens, starlings, bluebirds, and flickers were nailed up high in the trees. The driveway, running along the southern side of the small meadow, was egregiously potholed. A flock of geese waddled up the rocky path noisily announcing their arrival.
“Whose horse is that, Dad?”
“It belongs to Mr. Irribarren.”
“Who’s Mr., uh, watchamacallit?”
“The man we’re trying to buy the land from.”
“How come his horse is still in our field?”
“It’s not our field yet. And even if it were, he’ll leave it here until he can locate another pasture.”
“How come he wants to sell this farm if he doesn’t have another one to go to?”
A trifle curtly, Joe said, “I guess he needs the bread. C’mon.”
Taking their time, they negotiated the driveway on foot. Joe had such a lust to own the land that he couldn’t stop himself from already considering it as good as his. This freed him to idolize the natural world he now (almost) owned as if only a few minutes ago God had touched it with a magic creation-rod, and everything from the ancient cedar fence posts to clover plants in the ditch were exhaling their first sweet breaths of life. Complex and contradictory emotions quickened his heartbeat. Last night’s terrors and thrills galore mingled with an apprehension (and awe) born of the fact that, for mere money, a person could actually own land. All of it could belong to him—this lovely grass, these majestic trees: even the horse manure dotting the front field had a heightened significance. It was valuable, it glowed, endowed with benevolent qualities, a precious resource fertilizing his front field. Or it would make his vegetables grow. In a pinch it could be burned as fuel. Had he no use for it, he could sell it to somebody else. No, perish the thought! Better it stayed right there. In fact, as soon as Geronimo was gone, Joe would kick that shit all over the field, spreading it evenly. And the grass would grow even greener. Then he would cut the grass, sell the bales—how many bales would such a field produce? What would the bale price be come autumn? Once cut, he could rent the pasture to a neighbor for grazing. At harvest time, they would sell squash, corn, and beets at the Farmer’s Market beside the courthouse. Eloy had a big chicken coop; Joe would keep it full of high-caliber hens. They’d sell eggs, kill, pluck, and freeze their own birds, make cheese from their goats’ milk, and, in October, slaughter a couple of hogs. And what about keeping on Eloy’s beehives for their honey…?