The Nirvana Blues (90 page)

They followed the road home. In Eloy's back field, they gathered at the fence where the ditch entered the property, waiting for the water. It seemed to take forever. Eloy unzipped his fly and pissed into the ditch; the urine was red; Joe averted his eyes.

“For luck,” Eloy explained, flicking the last drops off his penis and smiling wanly.

In due course, it appeared. Excitedly, Eloy exclaimed: “Ya lo veo!”

And it came—an onrushing rivulet of muddy water only a few inches deep, pushing before it an earthen foam full of dry grass-stalks. Eloy raised the guillotinelike wooden blade on one headgate, and water tumbled into the field, gathering momentum, spreading quickly.

“Now what do you do?” Joe asked.

The old man smiled. “I wait until this part of the field is soaked. Then I drop the headgate, and open another one farther across the field. After this half is done, I open the gate at that turn, over there, and flood the eastern half. It's easier there, the land is flat.”

Eloy limped off, checking his headgates. The sun was behind him and sinking fast—it seemed as if the old man walked through liquid fire. As the sun lowered even further, the afternoon metamorphosed into a savage, golden time. Joe couldn't move. He was incapacitated by serenity, sadness, a sense of loss. Though he had no desire to sleep, his eyelids drooped sleepily. As birds landed in the widening puddle, their exclamations grew remote, reaching him like cries from a distant childhood. Joe savored the moment, afraid of it, and aware that if he survived he would be haunted by its memory. Eloy leaned on his shovel handle, his eyes absorbed by the fingers of water spreading into the short grass. Occasionally, when little ramparts of foam and dry grass-stems impeded the flow, he moved forward, applying his shovel with spare, certain strokes. Moving along the ditch banks, he flicked out an old beer can, chopped at a recalcitrant stalk, and occasionally wandered out into the field to check on progress.

Birds gathered in nearby trees, their sharp eyes hunting worms and bugs carried to the surface. A sparrow hawk landed on a dead cottonwood branch: head cocked, it searched the field for fleeing mice. Magpies swooped from the sky and waddled through inch-deep puddles, spearing tidbits. Redwing blackbirds, grackles, and starlings alighted in the water and began to gobble.

It was enough to make you weep for joy; it was enough to make you bawl in outrage. My God, Joe wondered frantically, how could anybody possibly protect this fragile earth, or the few people—like Eloy Irribarren—who truly cared for it? What would you have to do, sandbag the field, set up machine-gun nests, and do a national mailing each week soliciting funds for the legal fight to protect the Lovatos acequia, so that this tiny field would be allowed to produce what it had produced for a millennium?

“It sure looks pretty, and it sure is peaceful,” Joe said.

“Yessir.” Eloy took off his hat, drying his brow against the crook of an elbow. “It sure is.”

It seemed to Joe as if his blood were slowing down. They perched on the ditch bank, their attention fixed hypnotically on the spreading water. Everything settled into place as if posing for a photograph—the birds, the leaves, shadows, the reflections of sky in the slowly spreading irrigation water. And the people did too: Joe saw the phantoms of his children in the scene again, robbed of the futures this sweet terrain could have given. Michael was half turned, looking backward expectantly at his father as if for permission to grow up; Heather, with her lips pursed, stared at a sparrow hawk on the dead cottonwood limb.…

Eloy cried, “Dios!
Cabrón!
” Startled birds fluttered up, alighting in nearby trees as the old man dropped to his knees.

Joe whirled, stumbling, and almost fell into the shallow flood. Eloy dug his right hand into the cool water, and splashed his face. Then, gasping, he made a plaintive, questioning gesture, and died.

Joe gathered up the old rancher. The body weighed next to nothing. Had the skin split, a diaphanous white fluff, such as that contained in a milkweed pod, would have floated out of the corpse. And Joe stood there, cradling Eloy's body in his arms, waiting for something to happen.

Birds sailed back down out of the trees, landed, and resumed searching for food. Transformed by the setting sun, the water glowed as in a burnished dream. Sirens wailed in a remote, molasses-thick way as if echoing from memory instead of real life. Everywhere, the air was absolutely stilled.

Joe closed his eyes, held on to Eloy tightly, and absorbed the tragic hush. Automobile tires crunched on driveway gravel; doors slammed; men called out orders. A voice, magnified through a bullhorn, issued an ultimatum. “Put the old guy down, Miniver, then place your hands on your head and walk toward us, slowly.”

Joe kept his eyes shut tightly … and giggled, envisioning the headlines:

SPASTIC DUO FLUBS BANK HEIST
:
COPS NAIL MAD DOG MINIVER IN DAMP FIELD
WITH DEAD GEEZER IN ARMS
!

The sun warmed his eyes: he changed position slightly, facing that radiant glow. Veins in the protective skin lay like pretty flower stalks across his blindness. Eloy seemed poised, ready to perish weightlessly from his arms. His children had apprehensive faces, so fragile. Heidi tried to cup his heart in her strong hands. They had missed the point, coveting wrong things, wasting precious energy. If only a person could protect the Dianas and Irénés and Eloys. Tears curled over his upper lip; his tongue moved, tasting salt. Joe Hill had called out his own finish: “Ready … aim …
fire!
” Gently, Joe bent over, eyes still closed, and relieved himself of the human burden, setting Eloy's feathery corpse on the ditch bank. Straightening, then, he faced them blindly, and, removing Diana's pistol from his pocket, he pointed it at where he surmised they had gathered.

Joe knew it was a foolhardy move. “I don't wanna die,” he whispered. But it seemed absolutely important, at last in his slipshod existence, to make that gesture.

He never heard the gunshot: nor felt death when it hit him.

*   *   *

T
HEN DARKNESS
rolled softly across the soaking field; it consumed the trees and, soon, the entire valley. Finally, it lapped up gently to cover the brooding mountains and declared itself in residence over everything for a while.

EPILOGUE

Fear not.

Departure toward the South

Brings good fortune.

 

 

 

A million years ago during his college days, if he had no classes in the early spring afternoons, Joe would lie down on his bed, tune the radio to soft pop music, and open the window a bit, allowing lilac and daffodil breezes to drowsily ruffle his hair. Still as a mouse in mellifluous sunshine, he would lie, happily cupping his groin as he leisurely drifted into sleep. For maybe an hour, just beneath the surface, he would dream, floating through a delectably lazy time, free of all woes, saturated with a sense of voluptuous irresponsibility. Then slowly he would emerge into wakefulness again. Whatever guided those wonderful soporific sessions let nothing jar his indolent ascent back into the world. And for a while, even with open eyes, his body seemed caught in the longest, sweetest orgasm ever. When finally he urged himself into a sitting position, gingerly settled his feet on the floor, and ran fingers through his matted hair, it felt almost like a crime not to prolong forever the woozy, syrup-laden mood.

It resembled that now, awakening. Lulled by a demure background drone and the swishing of a weightless fabric such as silk, Joe came to slowly, savoring the luscious mood. He thought at first, Perhaps I'm hospital-bound, morphined into rapture and protected from terrestrial noises by a sophisticated bubble-shaped plastic breathing apparatus enclosing my entire body. But why open his eyes, finding out? This was too peaceful.

A slow and thoughtful lurch occurred. Was he floating, lodged in Ralph's somehow airborne sensory isolation tank? Again he rocked gently, as if on a fuzzy vapor, this time to the other side. Joe smiled, listening for the easy, nostalgic music from his college days. Instead, he heard a vaguely familiar rustle. Flowers? Satin sheets?
Wings?
His body felt creamy, infinitely delicate, and clean, as if he had just been bathed in very hot water, patted dry with a soft white towel, and sprinkled with Johnson's Baby Powder. Ecstasy was the name of this game, and Joe lay quite still, hoping to prolong it indefinitely.

Again he tilted, this time semi-severely, in a way he associated only with airplanes. And that did it. Though the action was smooth, perfectly controlled, at the buzz word
airplane
his heart lurched, and a tremor danced from his toes to his eyelids, killing the peaceful fog nullifying his anxiety centers.

Nevertheless, Joe held his eyes shut, desperate to sustain this carefree state. Such passive, erotic drunkenness infused his slugabed body. Heaven had never felt better.

Heaven?

Airplanes?

Joe thought, Oh no, I'd better open at least
one
eye.

He lifted the lid carefully, as if hesitantly raising it with delicate tweezers. And at first, the exterior world made little sense. What was this, the inside of a cocoon from the caterpillar's perspective? About a foot above Joe's head the rounded inner wall of an enormous silken-fibered chrysalis emitted a nacreous glow. Behind closed eyes he had thought himself prone; however, now he beheld himself seated in a body-molded cottony armchair, his head resting on an invisible cushion.

Joe opened the other eye.

He was, in effect, imprisoned in a shiny, spun-glass tube that quivered faintly, being airborne. Through a circular rent in the enveloping fiber—a tear-shaped porthole—Joe could see a limpid crepuscular sky, a tilted horizon, and the merging tones of the Chamisa Valley far below sprinkled with salt-and-peppery lights.

Aloft, in a soundless flying machine, and rising!

Before him, in the pearly, glowing cocoon, sat another figure, huge and skulking, its back presented, obviously piloting the smooth-bored, instrumentless rocket. Even without tapping one shoulder and asking to see a face, Joe knew with whom he was dealing: those wings he'd have recognized anywhere.

Not so much bitterly as bewilderedly, Joe exclaimed, “
You
again!”

Without turning, Lorin said, “Yes. But this time, Joe, it's for reals. That sure was a dumb move you pulled down there.”

Joe's recollection had a blank space: “What are you talking about?”

“You don't remember?”

“My head feels funny, like there's a hole in my memory.”

“And well there should be.”

“How so?”

“That's where the bullet entered.”

“Bullet?”

“When you pointed the little gun at them, they killed you, Joe. With one shot. Right in the middle of your forehead.”

“Who's they? And where am I?”

“The ‘cops,' I believe you call them. They arrived shortly after you tried to rob the bank. I must say, the whole thing was very messy. As for your whereabouts, you're with me, and we're taking a trip. Your immortal soul, Joe, is all that remains, and we're off to train it a bit before selecting your next body.”

“
Oh Christ.
You're kidding!”

“Not me. Honesty is our most important product.”

“There's no such thing as an afterlife.”

“Tut tut, my friend. The proof is in the custard.”

“‘Pudding.'”

“Beg pardon?”

“The expression is ‘The proof is in the pudding.'”

“Oh yes, of course.”

Incredulously, Joe peered earthward. Spread out below him lay Chamisaville. Lights had blazed on at the Pueblo's dog-racing track; the green-and-white Tennis Heaven bubble glowed eerily. Most automobiles sluggishly negotiating the town's clogged arteries had turned on headlamps as the dusk thickened. An excruciatingly poignant sadness struck Joe's heart as he viewed the scene: My God, I don't want to leave! Good-bye, earth; good-bye, Michael and Heather, I love you; good-bye, Heidi, I'm sorry.…

“I'm too young,” he murmured aloud.

Lorin cocked his head knowingly, like a New York cabby: “That's what they all say. You should have listened to Nancy Ryan.”

“Why? What would I have learned?”

“That a trip like this is more fun when you're still alive. Not only that, but you could have learned things enabling you to inhabit your earthbound body for a longer and more enjoyable spell than you seemed to have managed as a raving agnostic.”

“I really dislike your superior airs.” Joe spoke guardedly, wondering if he now had any leverage with the offensive feathered creep.

“Feeling is mutual, Joe, I assure you. This has been a positively stinko assignment. In fact, after the orientation period, I hope they send you back as a newt or as an untouchable from Calcutta.”

“I thought angels weren't supposed to be vindictive.”

“Since when do you—an atheist, a Communist, and an adulterer—know anything about the rules governing angels?”

“Well, whatever happened to Christian charity?”

“Such as that which launched the crusades or tosses hand grenades into the streets of Belfast?”

Joe said, “I can't believe I'm sitting here, having a conversation with a frigging … It's not
real!
How long until we get where we're going?”

“Time? What's that, a human concept? We're no longer dealing with such phenomena.”

“But it's growing dark down there; the world is turning; clocks keep ticking.”

“Where we're headed there's no nighttime, Joe. A wonderful white light infuses everything always.”

“Stop this whateveritis, I need to get off!”

“Sorry, fella. We're on a Direct Current to the Source.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”