The Milagro Beanfield War (10 page)

“I've just got a feeling,” Bookman said. “I know the north, and something like this has been building for a long time. The war never ended in 1848, you know. We simply don't want this hearing and we don't want to arrest Joe Mondragón for using water that he lost in 1935 to grow beans today. The worst thing we could do is make him a martyr.”

The governor said, “What do you think, Ky?”

Kyril Montana put his notebook away and stubbed out his cigarette. “I'm not sure. Maybe I'll go up there. Study the town, talk a little. I've got a close friend in real estate up there, we'll chat. I think we already have a file on Bloom. I'm not positive he's got a vulnerable profile, but if memory serves me there's a couple of decent-sized holes in his life. So although right now I can't say for sure, perhaps we'll start with the lawyer.”

They all got to their feet then and returned to their separate offices.

*   *   *

There were no windows in Amarante Córdova's remaining one room: long ago he had adobed them up solid to preserve heat. All the same, he awoke on this morning, as he did every morning, at first daylight and slowly commenced his day, climbing out from under about twenty-five pounds of crazy quilts and old army blankets and hastily drawing on his sloppy old suit over his patched, foul-smelling long underwear. Then he took a shot from a half-pint brandy bottle and, before rolling a cigarette, hefted a couple of piñon logs from a corner stack and stuffed them into his twelve-dollar Sears tin heater. Usually the coals from the night before were still so hot in the heater that after a minute, if he just dropped a lit kitchen match in there—which he now did—the logs burst into flame.

This accomplished, he swung the circular cover back on the stove, unbolted and opened his door, and stood in the doorway a moment assessing the day. The view from this one opening into his room was a view like many another in Milagro. A well housing in the front dirt yard, a rusty 1949 Oldsmobile with bullet holes across the windshield sinking on its rims nearby, big yellow tumbleweed skeletons scattered among a few sunflowers, then the raggedy cottonwoods along the creekbed across the road and the majestic snowcapped Midnight Mountains beyond.

The old man coughed, scratched his balls, snagged a coffeepot with one arthritic paw, and shuffled over to the hand-dug well. Letting the bucket drop slowly to the water thirty feet below, he only a quarter filled it, then slowly, resting after each tug, pulled the bucket up and tipped some water into the coffeepot, which he carried back and set atop the heater.

Next, he proceeded cautiously around his dwelling to the backyard outhouse. And while he camped there with the door open so he could watch the turquoise-silver bluebirds flying about his crumbling farmhouse, he also slowly and shakily, though in the end expertly, rolled a cigarette and lit it, contentedly puffing away as he crapped.

After that, Amarante creaked around to his room again and made a cup of instant coffee, poured some brandy into it, and for almost an hour, while the day began, he sat on a white stump next to his front door, bathed in the early sharp sunlight, letting his eyes go bleary as he sipped the piping hot, spiked coffee and rolled and smoked another cigarette. During this time he talked to himself about his wife, his children—those still living and others dead and gone. He also carried on long, intricate, nonsensical dialogues with his good friend Tranquilino Jeantete, and with God, a number of devils, a few saints, and the Virgin Mary. And another thing during this quiet breakfast time: he had the habit of remembering scenes, moods, geography, little moments—memory blips—that had occurred yesterday or maybe fifty years ago. And so he would picture green fields full of confused and immobile meadowlarks during a late May snowstorm; or he would recall the way lightning had exploded jaggedly all around the Chamisaville drive-in theater when his daughter Sally had taken him to a John Wayne movie fifteen years ago; or maybe he would see his wife, Betita, straining, holding his hands, turning purple and howling with her legs spread wide, crushing his hands (she broke his finger once) during the birth of a child.…

And on this morning, as on other recent mornings after he had put on his thick-lensed eyeglasses, Amarante also observed Joe Mondragón several fields away, irrigating his bean plants.

The old man watched Joe's work with interest, with a certain feeling of pride, even with a kind of reverence. Amarante had been born on Milagro's west side, in this same house when it was intact; he had worked the fields that now lay fallow about him, and someday he would die on the west side, in his room, or from a heart attack while splitting wood, or maybe he would freeze to death in a ditch some sparkling winter night on his way back from the Frontier Bar—but whatever, Amarante had stuck with the west side through all the thick shit and all the thin shit, saying good-bye to his neighbors one by one while refusing to budge himself, until he had wound up alone with the swallows and the bluebirds and the crumbling houses whose rooms were full of tumbleweeds. Then here, suddenly, was a stubborn, ornery little bastard who had decided to put some life back into the west side. And as Joe Mondragón's bean plants started to grow, Amarante fixed his eyes on that patch of green, feeling excited and warm and a lot less lonely, too.

It hadn't taken long, though, for Amarante to realize that Joe's beansprouts were really going to stir up something in Milagro.

And so on this morning Amarante had a special plan. Spending less time than usual on the stump beside the front door, he drank only one cup of coffee and forewent his customary wood-chopping session. In its stead he hastily gummed down two Piggly-Wiggly tortillas wrapped around some tiny Vienna sausages, made sure a full book of food stamps was stashed safely in his inside breast pocket, and then from a peg driven into the mud wall over his bed he removed a cracked leather gun belt and holster, which he buckled around his skinny waist.

From a tin box on whose cover fading blue asters had been painted Amarante then removed a well-oiled revolver, an old, very heavy Colt Peacemaker. His father had given him the gun eighty years ago: it was the weapon he'd carried as sheriff of Milagro. Amarante had never discharged it at anybody; in fact, the gun had rarely been used, even for target practice. But it had always been, and yet remained, his most cherished possession.

The old man fitted this monumental weapon into the holster, made certain his sheriff's badge was pinned correctly to his suit lapel, and hit the road.

Shoulders hunched, leaning way forward, Amarante stomped with a rickety bowlegged gait along the potholed dirt path, eyes fixed straight ahead, absolutely determined—once in motion—to let nothing break his feeble rhythms until he had arrived where he planned to go.

He stopped once, however, near Joe's beanfield, swayed uncertainly for a moment before leaving the road, climbed up the Roybal ditch bank, and carefully picked his way over stones and dry weeds to where water left the ditch and entered the field.

He waved at Joe, who was leaning against his shovel, and Joe called, “Howdy, Chief. What's with the pistol this morning?”

Grinning toothlessly and gesturing with his hand, Amarante offered Joe a shot of cheap brandy. So Joe splashed over and fastened onto the bottle, tipping it to his lips while the old man squinted his eyes and watched eagerly, nodding happily as the young man drank.

“Ai, Chihuahua!”
Joe said. “What is this crap, burro piss?”

Amarante cackled and sucked off a swallow for himself, then patted his gut. “It's good for you,” he said. “Keeps you warm.”

“So how come the hardware?” Joe asked again.

Winking conspiratorially, Amarante put his bottle away and laid a hand on Joe's shoulder. “I'll be back soon,” he said. “I'll take care of you. I'll take care of this field.”

“Sure, you do that for me, Chief.” Gently, Joe cuffed the old man's face. “You and me together, friend, we'll keep those bastards at bay, qué no?”

Abruptly, Amarante plunged toward the road. But he halted a couple of times, and, looking back, muttered, “I'll be right back…”

In town a few minutes later, instead of heading as usual for the bar, he hoofed it directly into Rael's General Store and, pulling the gun from its holster, laid the weapon atop the rubber change mat on the counter in front of Nick Rael.

“Hello, Pop,” Nick said, wondering, what in hell is this old looney up to now?

“What kind of bullets does this take?” Amarante asked. “I forget.”

After Nick had turned the gun admiringly over in his hands once or twice, he set it back on the rubber mat again.

“Why buy bullets?”

Amarante was a little confused; he could hardly hear anyway. “What kind of cartucho?” he asked again. “I want to buy some shells.”

“Sure.” Nick swung out from behind the counter, ambling across the store to his ammo shelves. “But what for?”

Following Nick, the old man watched with interest as the storekeeper, after searching among the ammunition for a moment, selected a box of .45 shells, which he slapped into Amarante's hands. Back at the counter the old man asked, “How much?”

“Three dollars and twenty-nine cents, plus fourteen pennies for the governor, equals three-forty-three altogether,” Nick said bemusedly. “What are you gonna do, Pop, go hunting for bear?”

“How much?”

“Three-forty-three!” Nick fairly shouted into his ear.

Grinning, Amarante produced the food stamp book and, while Nick looked on incredulously, painstakingly tore out four one-dollar stamps which he laid carefully on the counter.

Nick pushed them back toward the old geezer, shaking his head. “Hey, Grandpa,” he explained. “You can't buy bullets with food stamps. You got to pay me money.”

Puzzled, Amarante held up the stamps. “What's the matter with these? They're no good?”

“They're for buying
food,
” Nick rasped. “You can't use food stamps for bullets. You need
money.
Real dollars.”

Amarante scrutinized the pieces of paper in his hand. At length he said, “This is money.”

“For food, yeah,” Nick sighed. “They're only good for food, man.”

“I don't want food. Only these bullets.”

“Then put those food stamps away and gimme three dollars and forty-three cents,” the storekeeper said.

The old man laid the food stamps on the counter again. “This is the same as money,” he explained.

“Aw, come on, Pop. You know as well as I know that there's some things you can't buy with food stamps. You can't buy dog food or beer or nonedible stuff like shampoo or toothpaste or razor blades.”

Smiling, Amarante picked up the shells and dropped the box in his pocket.

“Hey wait a minute—” Nick started to grab the old man's arm, but let go quickly. “Money,” he said, moving his lips exaggeratedly as if talking to a lip reader. “Not food stamps, you dumb old coot—money. I need
money
for those shells.”

Once again, Amarante nodded toward the food stamps on the counter, hoisted his gun and jammed it carefully into the holster, touched the front brim of his rumpled hat by way of saying good day, and lurched off.

Cursing as he did so, Nick snatched up the food stamps and slapped them into the space under the black plastic cash pan in the till.

Amarante teetered into the Frontier Bar, saluted his comrade, Tranquilino Jeantete, tugged himself onto a stool, placed the pistol and the box of shells on the bar, and, while Tranquilino watched, he slowly and very carefully loaded the gun.

“What do you want to load a gun for?” the bartender asked. “Life isn't hard enough, you're out looking for more trouble?”

His feeble hand resting lightly atop the mammoth gun lying on the bar, Amarante said, “Sometimes it's necessary to carry a gun.”

“I bet you can't even pull the trigger,” Tranquilino replied petulantly. “You're not even as heavy as a little bag of dried-up aspen leaves.”

“I can shoot this gun.”

“And what could you hit—a dead elephant from two feet away?”

“I can shoot this gun.”

“Your brains are scrambled,” Tranquilino said. “The defunct ones from the camposanto must be dancing around in there. You're going to give all us rotten old bastards a bad name.”

“Sometimes a man should carry a gun.”

“Who do you think you are?” the bartender accused. “Pancho Villa? The Lone Ranger?”

Offended by his friend's bad taste, Amarante looked stonily straight ahead, his wrinkled old hand still lying firmly atop the gun.

“Put the safety on, at least,” Tranquilino finally grumbled in a more gentle, friendlier tone. “I don't want any bullets flying around my bar.”

Refusing even to acknowledge that he'd heard, Amarante remained stiff backed, his shriveled sunken lips as tight as he could make them.

After a long silence, Tranquilino creaked onto his feet and fetched two glasses, filling both a third full of cheap bourbon. Placing one glass next to Amarante's gun hand, he said, “Let's both have a drink to your stupid gun.”

Amarante cracked no smile, but he did move his hand from the gun to the glass, and the two old-timers drank.

About half an hour later, as his friend left the bar, Tranquilino called, “Hey, Pancho Villa, you forgot your cannon!”

Amarante returned, almost daintily lifted the weapon off the bar and stuck it in the holster, and then suddenly they both started to laugh.

“Shit,” Tranquilino cackled after they had each survived minor coughing jags brought on by their laughter. “Carrying around all that extra weight I bet you get a heart attack!”

Out in the sunshine Amarante swayed and blinked. The road was littered with squashed grasshoppers; and, their wings crackling, a number of live grasshoppers sailed through the air back and forth across the road as if the summer sun, having thawed out their nearly frosted bodies, had set them abruptly to sizzling. A pickup carrying plumbing for a frame house being built by a Texas couple in the canyon slowed down and stopped, and the woman from the Strawberry Mesa Body Shop and Pipe Queen, Ruby Archuleta, poked her red bandannaed head out the window.