Free The Nirvana Blues by John Nichols Page A

September sky. Yellow leaves zigzagged off cottonwoods by the irrigation ditch. The quarter-acre garden was so rich in vegetables you could hear the vitamins crackling. Tomatoes, tied carefully to proper sticks, glowed provocatively: squashes, neatly mulched, grew plumper by the minute; pumpkins, turned regularly, had ripened evenly. Hummingbirds still nourished themselves at plastic feeders with bee-guards and ant-guards that actually functioned. All Joe’s yard tools were stacked neatly in the garage—miracle of miracles, the kids hadn’t lost an implement! In the game room, Heather and Michael played expert Ping-Pong: overcoming the tension that always made it impossible for him to instruct his children, Joe had taught them the game that summer. Nearby, seated contentedly before her loom, Heidi created beautiful wall hangings. Upstairs—in his tower—Joe was finally reading Capital by Karl Marx. In another room, best friend Peter Roth perused a Hemingway novel. As soon as Joe finished his current chapter, they would drop a Gouda cheese and a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 into a knapsack, and hit the Rio Grande for a three-hour trout bout before dinner. They would probably take the new Chevy pickup, unless Joe was in a Mazda mood and decided to select that fire-engine-red vehicle, equipped as it was (same as the pickup) with a CB, a stereo tape deck, and a Fuzz Buster. Yessirree, bob, Joe Miniver was In Control!
    Ralph and Gypsy Girl exchanged wet, lascivious kisses and fumbled erotically under the table; Tribby sucked up a daiquiri through a straw stuck into a hole in his gorilla-mask mouth; Rimpoche whined and pawed Ralph’s thigh, trying to sabotage the kissy-face—with one hand Ralph scratched the dog to shut him up.
    Forlornly, Joe said, “Apparently, everybody in town knows Peter Roth is arriving with the cocaine tonight.”
    Ralph begged to differ. “Everybody in town thinks they know. But it’s all rumors. Nobody’s taking it seriously. Chamisaville is like that. At heart I don’t think anybody believes that Joe Miniver, Boy Scout extraordinaire and non-doper par excellence, would have either the guts or the inclination to get mixed up in such a dangerous and nefarious business.”
    â€œI don’t believe it myself,” Joe mumbled.
    â€œSo not to worry.” Ralph nibbled obscenely on Gypsy Girl’s painted cheek and scrabbled the fingers of his left hand behind Rimpoche’s tattered right ear. “There won’t be a single blood-crazed, trigger-happy hit thug at the depot—I promise.”
    Joe beseeched Tribby’s glittering eyes peeping out through two little holes in the grotesque rubber mask. “What do you think?”
    â€œI’m with Ralph. But what the hell, if anything happens, we’ll just improvise.”
    â€œMaybe I need a partner at the bus station.”
    Ralph nixed that. “Crowds call attention.”
    â€œBut what if Ray Verboten and a half-dozen armed neanderthals catch me there alone?”
    â€œGive him the coke, dummy.”
    â€œJust give it to him?” Joe was shocked. “It cost me my life savings—twelve thousand clams—for that cocaine.”
    â€œIs it worth dying for?”
    â€œHe’s right,” Tribby said. “If Ray Verboten says ‘Gimme’ you better let him have it.”
    â€œAnd then what—that’s it? The end of our plan? Nobody gets hurt, and I’m out twelve Gs?”
    Tribby touched Joe solicitously. “Easy, man, calm down. We’ll simply switch over to plan B.”
    â€œWhat’s plan B?”
    Ralph had it scoped. “We go into training in Guatemala. Finally, when all is in readiness, eight of us sail a small catamaran up the Rio Grande to Chamisaville, disembark on the shores of Ray Verboten’s estate, and, with our Uzis and Ak-47s spitting out a withering sheet of lethal pellets, we snatch back the sacred brick