The Nirvana Blues by John Nichols

Author:John Nichols
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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IN THE GREEN GORILLA, slowly chugging southward, they soon reached the first impasse. A backhoe, a dump truck, and a Sno Cone Wagon had skidded into a large pit the backhoe had been digging. Present was the usual generator, coughing out rotten steam, providing electricity to run the usual bilge pump, which spewed every whichway a noisome underground liquid with the viscosity of oil and molasses. Joe veered onto a detour road without hitting anybody. A few seconds later their route was blocked by a Custer Electric Co-op cherry picker parked diagonally across the road while some geek in a fuchsia hardhat, suspended thirty feet above the world, futzed with a high-tension wire. Irritated backed-up cars honked deliriously, causing the geek to pause often in order to give them the finger.

Tribby moaned, “It’s a quarter of six, man. I just gotta catch me a trout.”

“What can I say?—we’re trapped.”

“Cut across that field.”

“How can I? It’s fenced.”

“Forget the fence. If I don’t catch a trout tonight, I swear to Christ I’ll go off my rocker. I haven’t relaxed in a month.”

“If I break the barbwire, they’ll sue.”

“I’ll defend you, gratis.”

Joe gunned the engine, spun the wheel, popped the clutch, and they jounced off the detour road, smashed through the fragile rusted strands, skidded along a soggy stretch of the lowland meadow, barged through one more wire barrier, and jounced onto Martyr’s Lane. It led them back onto the North-South Highway, where immediately they slowed to a crawl behind a huge yellow truck spewing gravel and an enormous road-building machine laying down a hot mix. A small army of hardhatted ants puttered in the hot mix with rakes and hoes and other more industrial-looking implements. Blade lowered, a bulldozer trailed this snail-paced team gouging up the still-sizzling tar and gravel and tossing it in hot crunchy heaps onto the shoulder, causing much consternation among joggers.

Tribby said, “Pass ’em, god dammit.”

“It’s not our turn. The girl is holding out her Stop flag, in case you didn’t notice. There’s also cars approaching from the other direction.”

“Forget the flag, forget the cars. Joe, if you got no guts in life, you’ll never gather any blue chips.”

“They’ll throw me in jail. And what’s this crap anyway? You’re the one trying to bail out the coke scam for peanuts.”

“I’ll defend you. On the house. The coke deal is different. Right now we’re talking about trout. Come on, goose it!”

Joe goosed it, swinging into the oncoming lane. The flag girl shrieked, an oncoming car veered onto the shoulder, and, as Tribby desultorily sucked on a cigarette, they rattled past the machinery, almost hit the southernmost flag girl, and swerved back into their lane.

“You see?” Tribby said. “It’s easy.”

“I’m gonna have a heart attack!”

“Before you do, where’s the extra flies?”

A hundred yards further along, at the single stoplight decorating the mouth of the plaza, another bottleneck had developed: the traffic light was broken. City police had not been notified early enough to avoid the seven-car collision that had promptly resulted.

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