“I own a tent.”
“So what?”
“Maybe you would let me pitch it on your land for a while?”
“It isn’t my land yet.”
“But you put up the earnest money.”
“Granted. But it might look funny.…”
“To who?”
“Oh, who cares anymore? You’re welcome to try. Just ask the old man—Eloy Irribarren—for permission, okay?”
“Hey, thanks.” She gave him another hug, another sweet kiss. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Joe Miniver.”
“In my previous incarnation they called me Mr. Big.”
“Don’t beshry.…”
She was gone, leaving him alone again and terrified of this Brave New World into which he had floundered, a swingler’s madhouse with liberty, if not justice, for all. Though Joe started by thinking about Heidi and the kids, he wound up, split seconds later, fantasizing about Diana in bed. Her white thighs considerately muffled his hearing; her fingers plucked at his lips; she smelled like snow when it was still falling. Her cheeks were like unutterably soft ice. Her heavy breasts fell into his hands, and he molded them with trembling fingers into near-bursting happy globes The phone rang, and without thinking he answered.
Nancy Ryan said, “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”
“Will I be where for what?”
* * *
WHEN HE PEDALED as surreptitiously as possible past their lair, Mimsy and Tuckums remained beneath the Laidlaw pickup, nursing their broken ribs, punctured lungs, and dreams of revenge. Joe heard a disheartened snarl and caught an ambiguous glower from the darkness under there. Assailed by guilt, he also gave them the finger, wondering why he had never summoned the guts in his simpering lifetime to punt an animal—a child, a wife, an enemy—as had Bertram Laidlaw yesterday. No matter how they misbehaved, Joe’s kids would never know the humiliation of being battered children. No matter how she taunted and tormented him, Heidi would never be able even remotely to conceive of what it was like to be an abused and battered spouse. Often Joe wished he could liberate the King Kong inside his fumbling, semicompassionate, quasi-gentle body. CIRCUS ELEPHANT GOES AMOK, TRAMPLES WORLD-FAMOUS CUB SCOUT! The release offered by murder, maiming, and other m-words (marauding, maliciousness, and malevolence to name a few) had to be wonderful. He admired the ability, nay, the passion, of a Nikita Smatterling, who could, in defense of his principles (and his child), stick the snout of a loaded .38 into the plump belly of such a goon as Ephraim Bonatelli and pull the trigger. My God, what a purge! Dig those lurid headlines! Flee those police dragnets! “Using a machine gun borrowed from a black disc jockey, Joe Miniver, age thirty-eight, a Caucasian drug kingpin, went on a rampage last night. After blasting his wife and kiddies while they were watching a ‘Kojak’ television program, Mr. Miniver assassinated his paramour, one Nancy Ryan, her child Bradley, and the Ryans’ pet monkey, Sasha. Then, leaving a swath of death and destruction across Chamisa County, Mr. Miniver escaped on foot into the thickly forested Midnight Mountains.…”
“Mr. Miniver!” Jesus H. Effing Et Cetera! As Don Adams, playing secret agent Maxwell Smart on the old “Get Smart” TV show, might have said: “Aha, it’s the old New York Times ‘Mr.’ So-and-So trick!”
What was behind such formal reverence for propriety? “Then, having razed, burned, pillaged, and raped Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Rumania, Hungary, and other assorted countries, Mr. Hitler gassed six million Jews.” “From his perch in the Texas tower, Mr. Whitman then proceeded to kill everybody he could get in his telescopic sights.”
Joe swerved to avoid squashing a tarantula, and this action just may have saved his life. For as he prepared to hang a right off 240 in the direction of Eloy Irribarren’s place, there was a roar and a screech of underinflated rubber heralding the approach of a kamikaze-like assassin. A van hurtled by Joe, skidding sideways, even before he realized he was under attack. Hot exhaust scorched his pantleg, and a hollow whump!—as if he had actually been creamed broadside—shocked the air. Through a boil of dust and pebbles, as he tipped over, Joe recognized the Chicken River Funky Pie vehicle. Spinning tires whined, pelting Joe with more dirt and gravel; then the panicked van clattered off, bucking down the road doing eighty. Joe had caught no glimpse of a driver.
Standing, he brushed himself off, amazed, once the dust had dissipated, at how silent the moment became. Benevolent sunshine warmed his earlobes; no noise tarried; tree leaves shivered mutely in a teasing breeze. He could have been killed, but the day remained uneventful, soporific, sensual.
It had happened so quickly, Joe’s heart wasn’t even drumming loudly. In fact, maybe the van’s driver had meant no harm: perhaps he or she had simply applied the brakes suddenly—having forgotten to bring their shopping list—and turned around.…
A kingfisher, perched on a telephone wire, eyed the Pueblo River water. Then a butterfly landed on a cornflower.
* * *
JOE STOPPED AND dismounted in order to savor the walk along Eloy’s front field. Although he knew it was emotionally dangerous to do so (given that he was far from owning the little farm), Joe nevertheless felt—each time he ambled slowly up the potholed access road—as if he were further claiming this small, beautiful territory for himself, his family, his heirs. The longer he allowed trees, leaves, last autumn’s dry weeds, and driveway rocks to burn into his memory, the more they became his, acquiring a slightly Miniveresque personality because of the sensibilities he washed them in, recreating their uniqueness in himself.
Today, however, three men in the front field marred the serenity of this vision. Nikita Smatterling, Skipper Nuzum, and … Scott Harrison? Joe did a double take. Nikita waved; his stentorian voice boomed: “Hello, Joe!”
“What are you guys doing?” Joe flushed like a spiteful owner, wanting to kick them off his property. The poison of their presence made his stomach clench.
“Just getting the lay of the land for Thursday,” Nikita responded. He said something to Skipper Nuzum, who swept his hand obscenely through the air, indicating a portion of the pasture in a way that seemed to claim it forever in the name of the Forces of Evil. Joe’s heart sailed into his mouth, clammy perspiration burst from every pore. He knew Eloy had rented the site to the Simian Foundation for the Hanuman unveiling. But seeing those three clustered together was like coming across maggots on the corpse of a virgin.
Joe shuddered and gazed elsewhere.
All his ribs mewling plaintively, gaunt Geronimo limped slowly toward the driveway. He looked like a goofy police artist’s composite sketch: mule ears, basset-hound eyes, ostrich legs, the gait of a sorely dismayed pole-vaulter. If ever a horse resembled a bad joke, this one had to be the quintessential punch line. Still, a flicker of alertness made intelligent the droopy eyes. The flabby velvet nostrils dilated curiously, picking up the Miniver scent. Or perhaps its odor detector was threading delicately through currents of horse dung, alfalfa pollen, green leaves, and apple trees, searching for the aroma of sugar cubes. At the fence, reeking of pathos—or was it bathos?—the horse snorted feebly. Don’t throw us out, the animal seemed to be saying, referring not only to itself, but to its master, Eloy Irribarren, and all the other animals. We have no place to go. We are old, and should have been venerated in our old age. Instead, we’re alone, cast out, at the mercy of the financial tides.
Moved to attempt communication, Joe touched Geronimo. He cupped the furry nose, and felt hot breath against his palm. Geronimo twitched one ear, but stood perfectly still, eyes closed. A piece of Joe’s inner being donned a plumed helmet, adjusted its tin gauntlets, and galloped down his arm to joust with the sensitivities of the thirty-six-year-old beast: the world equinely perceived. Breezes slowed, the wind melted instead of blowing, nature adopted its lackadaisical bluff. Leaves detached from the mighty cottonwoods voyaged simplistically on the poignant ether, taking forever to settle atop life’s unending banquet (for a horse).
Immense sadness, triggered b
y the three background men, flooded Joe’s body. There was too much to lose in life, including life itself—it seemed unbearable. How could he live without his children, assimilating that emptiness, accepting the irrevocable mistake, becoming used to the absence of his gangly, wiseass daughter’s body in his morning bed? Threats to the very survival of the planet were psychic tremors traveling up through earthworms, pebbles, and timothy roots into the unshod hooves of a derelict caballo; they coursed through Geronimo’s meat, muscle, and blood to his lungs, then hitched a ride on the hot breath that arrived eventually in Joe’s palm, transmitting to him an immense forlorn apprehension that everything he considered precious might be lost tomorrow, no matter how he abetted, or abjured, the process. The Amazon Basin, bigger than Australia, containing one-third the earth’s forests. a fifth of its water, and generating half the photosynthesized oxygen, was no longer a vacant wilderness. In fact, if current development by the Brazilian government continued, it would be a desert by the year 2002. Elephants and lions would be extinct before Michael and Heather were old enough to vote. In Waterloo, Iowa, people were finding ortho nitroaniline—a bladder-cancer-causer—in their drinking water. All across the nation, Americans were inadvertently guzzling arsenic, trichloroethane, and 2, 4-5 T, to name not even a few. In Italy, terrified of kidnappers, the kinds of people who fostered such pernicious chemicals were investing so heavily in bulletproof vests that stores couldn’t keep them in stock. All across the Yankee homeland, every day in every way, murder was the name of the game. In Sausalito, a fifteen-year-old flower child is found wandering nude (having been raped), both her arms hacked off below the elbows by a man with an ax. In Ypsilanti, a man kills two people in the parking lot of a saloon, offs somebody else in a tool-and-die shop, goes home, shoots his mother, then executes his father and stuffs the body in a freezer. In New York, a quiet man, exasperated because his wife had a job and he didn’t, beats his spouse to death, then methodically and fatally bludgeons one crippled offspring, another deaf, blind, and mute son, and finally an adopted daughter, after which he sticks his head in an oven, trying to commit suicide. “Bob always seemed like a sweet guy, a marshmallow,” said a neighbor. “But there was a lot going on inside his head.” Babies in Third World countries suffered severe malnutrition from drinking watered-down American instant formulas their mothers couldn’t afford in the first place. And the price of cocaine was 120 bucks a gram. Progress, the slogan had been saying for years, is our most important product.
Geronimo whinnied softly, shifted slightly. Clouds overhead sat in the sky like deaf-and-dumb children on their haunches laconically observing ants. Swollen with grief, Joe wondered if he could make it through the next ten minutes. Bitter tears welled—my God, after so many years without sobbing, his waters had finally burst! He had a great humble urge to race home and embrace Heidi and the kids, squeezing them tightly against his bosom, protecting them as he swore undying love. His emotions couldn’t sit still for a minute. It seemed as if every tree within eyesight would evaporate when darkness slipped over the mountains and glided across the plain, creating a snakelike fantasy of night. Oh, that whirlwind of death was about, clobbering anything that twitched or peeped!
Frightened, excited, and stymied, Joe said, “Geronimo, you’re a pathetic excuse for a hayburner.” Taking his hand away, he pushed his bicycle up the driveway. Geese honked as he approached; Sweetie Pie, Daffodil, and their irritating ilk bounced and cavorted, yippety-yapping. Tom turkeys puffed out their chests and thumped menacingly. A peacock screeched and cats meowed.
Yet something was wrong. Too strong an air of inactivity permeated the little adobe ruin. He’s dead, Joe thought instantly, neck hairs prickling. Things weren’t convoluted enough, now he had an eighty-three-year-old corpse on his hands!
Petulant dismay oozed into his body as he neared the house. If Eloy was dead, even if Joe could raise the cash by next Monday it would do him no good—he’d be out of the game. The Scott Harrisons, Nikita Smatterlings, and First State People’s Jugs would fight over this raggedy-ass piece of earth until nothing remained except Holistic Laundromats, Universal Life bungalow monasteries, and retirement condominiums.
Duke, the immortal wonderdog, opened one eye halfway, focusing the bleached pupil on Joe.
Trying to erase his fear with false joviality, Joe said, “Hiya, Dukie—how’s the old pup? Fit as a fiddle and bopping with all the bitches?”
Releasing a long, slow exhalation, Duke let his eyelid droop closed again. Joe figured he breathed only once every seventeen minutes. In fact, Duke had probably died two years ago, but some bizarre canine instinct, inherited from a race of animals used to surviving under adverse conditions, had kept him going, even if—albeit—with the metabolism of a hibernating frog.
Joe knocked on the door. Awaiting a reply, he gazed around, surveying the property, the world, the sunshiny and impassive weather, the lazybones clouds and the lumbering magpies. Quite consciously, he sucked in a final moment of tranquillity, prior to entering the shack and finding the old man twisted grotesquely halfway out of the bed, drenched in his own blood and vomit, his last excruciatingly painful doomsday paroxysm evident in his horribly glassy eyeballs.
Joe knocked again. Silence seeped back at him through the keyhole like a malevolent genie. “Just when everything was going so good,” Joe ridiculed out loud, “this had to happen.”
For good measure, allowing the body in there ample time to resurrect itself and bid him enter, Joe knocked a third time, banging his knuckles hard enough (he grimly and fervently hoped) to waken the dead.
What’s the absolute of zero—zilch squared? Joe strained his ears, trying to will a chirrup from the deadly vacuum behind the door.
Had the head been gnawed off by rats? Would Eloy’s bowels have loosened, unleashing heaps of noisome defecation? Joe turned the handle: the door wasn’t locked; it opened an inch. Then stealthily, feeling sick to his stomach, careful not to make a sound, he pulled it back closed.
Ghastly premonitions had his hair standing on end. Duke’s slow sighing—his second breath in the past five minutes—came so unexpectedly that Joe jumped.
One of these days, he could hear Heidi vituperating at him, you’re gonna wake up dead. By making an offer the sick old geezer couldn’t afford to refuse, Joe had partially captured this delectable chunk of virgin earth, causing Eloy Irribarren, a far more noble human entity than ninety-nine percent of the Cosmic Cookies (including—let’s not be stingy in assessing guilt—Joe Miniver himself) pizzafying this valley, to die of a broken heart.
Well, maybe not quite yet. When Eloy opened the door, saying “Oh, hello there,” Joe nearly did a backflip. “Hope you haven’t been waiting for long,” the old man said. “I’m a little deaf. And I move kinda slow, anyway.”
In his hands, Eloy held an old, octagon barrel, lever-action .30-.30. An ancient, yet freshly oiled, leather bandolier for holding rifle cartridges was draped over one shoulder. Around his waist was a simple gunbelt and holster. A wood-handled, double-action, old-fashioned revolver, probably a .38, rode snugly in the holster.
Joe said, “What’s with the hardware—you going hunting?”
“Hunting for money.” A twinkle lighted up his cool green eyes.
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“You’ll excuse me if I speak frankly, then?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure how to put this—maybe I better just say it out straight.”
“That’s the only way.” A chill spread up from Joe’s groin, ruffling his body, causing a cold sweat.
“Bueno. My understanding, then, is that you won’t have the money for my land by next Monday’s closing. As I interpret it you had hoped to raise the cash by selling a certain item which arrived on yesterday’s bus. However, apparently last night that item was removed from the depot by force, and is now in the hands of others. That can only mean that I am now at the mercy of my creditors, a situation I had hoped to avoid.”
/> Joe said, “No, you don’t understand—a miracle happened. I wound up with the coke.”
“Oh.”
“The only problem is that the guy who was supposed to help us market it never showed.” Joe waved his hands helplessly. “So I’m not quite sure how to begin.…”
“Then maybe I should go ahead with my own plans.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’m gonna rob the bank.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“Why?”
“Well, I, um…” Joe fumfered. “I mean, you’re what, eighty-three years old? They have guards. And seeing-eye cameras. That bank dick, Tom Yard, he’s nuts—he’ll shoot to kill. And because you’re the only Chicano left in the valley they’ll know immediately…”
“I’ll wear a monkey mask and a Hanuman T-shirt. Like all those people involved in the depot fracas last night.”
“But those guys were insane!”
“Who in this town, these days, isn’t?” Eloy smiled sheepishly.
Joe hung his head. “Look, I’ll admit I’m ashamed of what I’m doing. By nature I am not a drug pusher. But I just ran out of options.”
“These are hard times; we’re all desperate. Who worries about morality anymore? My morality is my geese, and that cottonwood tree, and my piglets. I think I would kill human beings to ensure their existence. Only animals and flowers are moral these days.”
Joe said, “Somebody actually fired a gun at me last night.”
“But they missed, thank God.”
“They could have killed me, though. And so could somebody plug you if you try to rob the bank.”
A trifle shyly, ashamed of his own bravado, Eloy said, “When you need money you make a withdrawal.”
“At least wait until I try to pass the coke.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? Aren’t they always mangling hippies who deal drugs?”
“‘Mangling’?” Joe gulped. Then he thought a moment, and said, “On second thought, maybe we could rob the bank together. You’re an old man. I might come in handy.”