The Nirvana Blues (72 page)

Wow. Where did it come from, such a blithering, prejudiced, and yet alarmingly heartfelt, venom?

Barely sixty seconds ago, the Peace-Love-Groovy Kid had drawn his double six-guns and shot flowers into the cosmic domain of Tranquillity, Concern, and Caring. Now, suddenly, decked in black, he was firing dumdums at all those helpless, warm, and soft rabbits hopping about the greensward of Familial Experience.

Time to apply the brakes—to himself, not the bus—but in this he failed miserably. Completely disregarding his good intentions, totally ignoring the fact that he'd been a loyal husband and devoted father for a decade, his wife, Heidi Medea, would stop at nothing to poison the kids against their Daddy!

The accumulating fury soon boiled over. By the time he neared the Castle of Golden Fools, a wicked froth bubbled between his lips. After a fifth reading of Heidi's note, Joe concluded that the only way to handle her was with an ax. Or by kidnapping the kids.

He would abduct the only two human beings he truly loved before her poisonous fangs had sucked all their rational blood, transforming them into miniature hate-filled ogres greedy for dollars, property, and power!

*   *   *

A
S LUCK WOULD HAVE IT
, Heidi was gone when he entered the apartment in Tribby Gordon's infamous digs. Both kids were home, though, in the middle of a jigsaw derby.

Twice a year they hauled out every puzzle they owned, and initiated a marathon of jigsaw construction usually lasting the better part of a week. Or until the living-room floor became carpeted with the mosaics, and all family members had cramped calves from tiptoeing around the completed works of banal art. Some puzzles were so familiar they could do them in minutes. In fact, they often competed to see who could do a puzzle faster. Last Christmas Michael had received a stopwatch. Awed, Joe had watched them time each other doing a hundred-piece exercise in under five minutes. Their destinies, obviously, lay as genius physicists or inmate extras in the Titicut Follies. What else could you say about a little boy shrieking off stopwatch seconds as his kid sister raced to complete a puzzle faster than her brother had done it minutes earlier, with a quarter of her dollar allowance at stake?

Joe said, “All right, let's go, fetch the suitcases from the closet and pack all your clothes, we're getting out of here.”

“No we're not,” Heather said calmly. “We're doing puzzles.”

“Screw the puzzles.” Joe towered menacingly over them. “Where's Heidi?”

“We don't know.”

“How can you not know? She didn't leave a note where she was going?”

“She was gone when we got home.” Heather fitted a piece into Snoopy's nose.

“I can't believe she would split without giving you kids a number. I mean, suppose there was an emergency?”

“Aw, you don't have to make a federal case out of it.” Heather added, “Come on, Daddy, be quiet. We hafta concentrate.”

“Maybe you didn't hear me. I said find the suitcases and pack all your clothes, we're getting out of here.”

Michael looked up. “Where are we going?”

“I don't know. But I've had it with this stupid town.”

Heather asked, “Is Mommy coming?”

“No. I'm sick and tired of her, too.”

“Then I'm not going.”

Michael said, “Me neither.”

“Wait a minute. I don't think you kids understand. I'm not
asking
you twerps if you want to go with me, I'm
ordering
you to pack your bags and tag along.”

Heather said, “You can't make us if we don't want to.”

“Heather, if you don't shut up and hop to it by the time I count to three, I'll yank your pants down and give you a hundred whacks on a bare fanny.”

“I don't care.”

“This time I wouldn't be kidding around, I assure you. And believe me, it would hurt.”

Michael looked uneasy. “If we go with you, does that mean I'll have to go to a different school?”

“Well, no … I mean, sure … uh, you know—I don't know. It depends on where we wind up. But probably—well,
sure.
I mean, I'm not going to hang around this town—”

“Then I'm not going. I don't wanna leave my school.”

“Whaddayou mean, you don't want to leave it? Yesterday a bunch of creeps hunted you down and busted your nose in cold blood.”

“I don't care,” he said defiantly, finishing off one of King Kong's ears, “I don't want to go to a different school right in the middle of the year.”

“You got hardly any time left, Michael. Then you'll have all summer to adapt to a new neighborhood.”

“Well, we're not going with you,” Heather said, “and that's final.”

“Heather, you stand up right this instant and go pack your suitcase or I'll really start kicking ass around here, and it won't be a damn bit funny.”

To Michael, Heather said, “Gimme that piece over there, it goes on his leg.”

At a loss for words, Joe hovered over them, capable of destroying their puzzles with one swift kick and of knocking their insolent little blocks off with one brutal haymaker, yet he could not act. Apparently, to them he was a small irritant, a mosquito buzzing on the outskirts of their action, and they had decided that, if they ignored him, he would soon buzz off.

Joe said, “I'm gonna start counting, dammit. You kids better pay attention.”

“We still have a whole bunch of puzzles to do,” Heather informed him.

Joe exploded: “I don't believe you monsters! You know what would have happened to me if I had defied my father like this? He would have slapped me unconscious, grabbed me by the ankles, and dropped me down the laundry chute. And you know what my mother would have done? She would have grabbed a chair and beaten me over the head with it. Then she would have snatched a log from beside the fireplace and chucked it at me.”

“What's a laundry chute?” Heather asked.

Joe said, “If you guys won't do it, then I will.”

“What?”

“I'll pack your goddam bags.”

Heather exaggerated her typical obnoxious shrug: “It's all the same to me.” And both kids sniggered. Michael set about finishing their work on the ape puzzle.

“Jesus, I don't know why I'm not killing you rats!” Joe stomped into the bedroom. “In my time, if somebody talked back to their folks like that they were boiled in oil!”

Many moons ago, he had very carefully stored the children's suitcases in the back of their closet. No longer were they very carefully stored where he had placed them.

“Where's the suitcases?” he growled … loudly.

“We don't know,” they chimed back … in unison.

“Well, I put them in your closet. Now who moved them, dammit? I'm sick and tired of every time I try to find something around here, it's never where I put it!”

No response from the living room.

“Did you kids hear me?”

Vaguely: “Uh huh … yup…”

“Well, then answer me.”

“Maybe somebody stole them.”

“Who would steal such lousy bags? Come on, Heather, use your noodle.”

“I already did in a bowl of chicken soup.”

Joe said, “If you kids don't hop to it, I'm gonna flare. And then you'll be sorry.”

Heather pantomimed an enormous yawn and spoke to Michael. “Give me that piece over there, the one with part of his finger on it—no, not that one, the other one … that's right. Thanks.”

Joe warned, “I don't think you guys realize I'm serious.”

The mouthpiece, Heather, future shyster for both the Mafia and some multinational corporate entity financing fascism around the globe, calmly replied: “We know you're serious, Daddy. That doesn't go over there, Michael, it goes right here. This piece belongs over there.”

“I'm gonna count to three, and if you two little pricks aren't on your feet and hunting suitcases by then, the first thing I'll do is destroy all your puzzles. Then I'll break every toy in your room, especially your Baby Alive, Heather, and I'll burn all the
Mad
and
Cracked
magazines, Michael.”

Michael looked uncomfortable and started to rise. Heather said, “You wouldn't dare.”

With A Little Voice telling him this was no way to commence a kidnapping, Joe strode purposefully into their room, gathered the Baby Alive doll, three
Mad
magazines, and two models off the display shelf his kids had constructed and painted by themselves, and returned to the living room. “Watch this, you guys.”

Michael stared. But Heather feigned intense interest in their puzzle. Onto the floor Joe dropped two fragile plastic airplanes that Michael had meticulously painted and decalled, and, in five quick stomps, reduced them to rubble.

Heather looked up.

One at a time, using swift no-nonsense rips, Joe reduced the
Mads
to smithereens and casually allowed the confetti to drift off his fingers.

Then, their beady, astonished eyes indicating rapt attention, Joe tore off the doll's head, arms, and legs: pathetic pink appendages clattered onto the floor.

“That's for starters,” he said icily. “Now get your spoiled-brat butts in gear and find those suitcases before I actually get pissed off.”

Hurriedly, they rose, circled Joe without letting their eyes off him for a second, and rushed to do his bidding. Michael found one suitcase behind a stack of games, a pile of filthy Jockey briefs, and a set of blocks and orange Hot Wheels tracks beneath his bed. The other turned up under an enormous dirty-clothes pile in the linen closet. Something rattled inside it—a half-dozen cat turds, hard as marble. But when the kids went to pack, they had no clothes in their bureau drawers.

“No
clothes?
”

Meekly, Michael said, “I guess they're all in the laundry.”

“Doesn't your mother ever go to the laundromat?” Joe was a little frightened by the enormous anger causing his temple veins to stand out rigidly. “Can't she take even a tiny bit of responsibility when I'm not around?”

Michael asked, “Where are we going?”

“I don't know. We're just going.”

“I still don't wanna leave,” Michael whispered.

“You can't make us,” Heather said. She was close to tears.

“I'm your father, and you'll do what I say whether you like it or not. Now, go gather some of your dirty clothes from the linen closet and fill those suitcases.”

“But—”

“Go!”

They went.

Joe felt almost giddy with power. Never had he treated his children so insensitively. Always, even when he screamed, they had accepted his anger as a put-on, his ferocious epithets as a jest. Today was the first time he had ordered them about in a tone that absolutely meant business. Today was also the first time they had actually raced to do his bidding without arguing the semantics of his case until he retreated from their wizened little sophistical half-brains in total frustration.

Not such a bad feeling, this: a case could be made for fascism in the family! In fact, Joe experienced a downright sensual blast of heady well-being he'd rarely known. From now on, whenever he wanted a clean bathtub, the Kitty Litter divested of its fecal harvest, or the wastebaskets emptied, he would simply appear on the scene with a hammer in one hand and Heather's E-Z Bake Oven in the other hand, and start counting to ten.

“If you want to bring any toys or books, put them in too,” he said gruffly.

Heather growled, “Boy, are you ever gonna be sorry.” But she packed a Raggedy Ann doll, two Sesame Street coloring books, a box of forty crayons, and a miniature tea set. Michael threw in the chess set, a slingshot, and three Hardy Boys mysteries, and they were ready to haul ass.

“Take those suitcases down. I'll be there shortly.”

Michael said, “I'm hungry.”

“We'll eat on the road.”

“But my stomach's about to explode.”

“Okay, make yourself a sandwich. But hurry up.”

“I'm hungry too,” Heather said. Like condemned prisoners, seconds before the gallows, they would use any stalling tactic, hoping for the governor's last-second pardon. Which in this case would be Heidi's arrival and subsequent dramatic conniption, Joe surmised.

In the bathroom, he confirmed his worst premonitions. The tea box lay in the wastebasket. So she had done it—willfully, callously, insanely deprived him of a small fortune! Or was the empty box a ploy to throw him off the scent? Suppose she and Scott Harrison had plans to market the dope in secret, get married, and purchase Eloy Irribarren's land for themselves?

Using a bar of Dial soap, Joe scrawled a message on the medicine cabinet mirror:

I took the kids. Screw you

and Scott Harrison!

J.

PS You owe me $100,000!

*   *   *

S
OMBRE-AND-FAIRLY-SILENT
characterized the children's mood as they loaded the bus. It was a little like leaving the chancellory bunkers during the final battle of Berlin in 1945. Pinched faces, compressed lips, weary and frightened eyes. Now that he was actually going to make the snatch, Joe felt self-conscious, and rather stupid. He wanted to cop out, call it all a big joke—ha ha. Instead, he slammed shut doors, initiated the crazy sequence necessary to fire up the engine, and, casting but a single backward glance, hit the road. Beside him, Michael and Heather stared through the windshield. Joe beeped nervously. The kids' heads swiveled; they fixed apprehensive, already-growing-adult eyes on their former home, saying au revoir to their childhoods, to all the cheerful unfettered times of youth. Only when the Castle had disappeared did they face forward again, their hard, mistrustful eyes peering into a future where beatings, street hustling, child pornography, and shoeshine kits waited to forge them as cynical little diablos long before their time.