The Milagro Beanfield War (13 page)

Despite the severe cold, every morning at daybreak, before lighting a fire or cooking breakfast, Ruby emerged from her house stark naked with her soft red hair coiled across her pale shoulders, and headed for the river where she splashed briefly in a small pocket of rushing water. The river below this pool was smoothed over, icy, frozen solid.

On the one particular day of this story, Amarante Córdova, on horseback and searching for a rabbit or a deer, happened to top a rise about a quarter mile from Ruby's digs just in time to observe her trip to the river. Naturally, never before having blundered onto such a wonderful sight, he couldn't believe his eyes. So what could he do but gape as she ducked into that turbulent pool in front of the iced-over river? Then, as Ruby jumped from the water, Amarante noticed a deer tiptoeing through the sagebrush fifteen yards from where the woman had bathed. The instant Ruby spotted the buck she charged after it. Frightened, the deer veered through the sage, aiming in a northerly direction toward the river. Of course, when the animal struck the smooth ice its legs splayed and it skidded, unable to regain its balance, no longer able to flee. Catching up, the young woman flung her arms around its neck, moved her hands higher, and grabbed the antlers. For a moment both the deer and the woman were fused together, as frozen and as straining as the winter air, Ruby's hair already a glaze of transparent crystals, her breasts powdered with white ice; then she snapped the buck's head sharply back, breaking its neck, and the blood suddenly gushing from the animal's mouth covered her icy body as she lifted the deer and carried it back to her house.

The killing of that deer was a story which had become legend. Joe Mondragón's beanfield was another story which might also one day grow to the proportions of myth. And it happened that shortly after Joe cut water illegally into his field, Ruby Archuleta, her son Eliu, Claudio García, and Marvin LaBlue stopped to cast a first appraising and appreciative glance at Joe's field. For an extended pensive moment Ruby stood with her hands on her hips, an ash growing long on the cigarette held tightly between her unpainted lips. Even after the men grew bored and returned to listen to the truck's radio, Ruby stayed by the field, thinking about that damp earth, those fragile beansprouts.

And when finally she rejoined her crew at the truck, Ruby was grinning broadly. She hoisted herself spryly into the back, then suddenly broke into happy laughter.

“I knew José Mondragón couldn't go through his entire life,” she sang, “without attempting one great thing!”

*   *   *

Joe Mondragón (who, after the initial euphoria wore off, had begun to wonder if his beanfield might be such a great thing after all), was sitting on a bench fixing a boot to the inside of his pickup's left rear tire, when a mangy, flat-headed, obscene-looking, bowlegged, vomit-yellow male cat with its ears rotted down to bloody nubs from frostbite, and sporting a grotesque pair of enormous furry black balls, stiff-leggedly entered the yard, trailed by (but apparently oblivious to) three angry and very noisy magpies who were pecking at its tail and raising an intolerable ruckus.

Out of habit, Joe picked up a rock and winged it at this apparition of feline death warmed over, missing by a mile. The magpies flapped away, but, unfazed, the cat merely halted and settled down, tail wrapped comfortably around itself, contemplating Joe through unperturbed, sleepyish snake eyes.

“Hey, scram!” Joe hurled the six-inch-long butt-end of a two-by-four at the cat. But again the projectile landed way off its mark, and the animal didn't flinch.

Joe trotted inside, returning to the yard a few seconds later toting a package of Chinese firecrackers. Lighting the main fuse, he tossed the entire package at the scruffy intruder, setting off a berserk orchestration of flash-bangs. The cat roused itself as a matter of protocol and arched lazily, politely frizzing the fur just behind its snake-shaped head, and when the dust had settled and the gunpowdery smoke had drifted across the yard, the animal sat down, sleepily closed its eyes, and commenced purring as it gently kneaded the dusty earth.

“Well, I'll be goddamned.” Joe had to admire a tomcat with that kind of balls. So, muttering “Fuck you, gato,” he went back to his boot.

After a while the animal stood up, stretched, sauntered casually across the yard, and disappeared into the henhouse.

“Okay, friend, enough is enough!” Joe grabbed a hoe with which to chop the obnoxious cat in two, and entered the henhouse expecting to catch the animal stalking one of his prize egglayers.

Instead, the ragged tom was curled up in an egg box, contentedly snoozing.

Joe leaned his hoe against the wall and scrutinized this battered old refugee for a moment, wondering, what the hell kind of omen is this, anyway?

Then, retreating to the house, he popped open a tallboy and slumped at the kitchen table, watching Nancy mop the floor. Their three kids, Billy, Larry, and Luisa, were flopped acrobatically around the living room avidly gooning at the television.

Because he felt mean and unsettled, Joe barked, “How come those kids are watching TV?”

Nancy kept right on mopping. “Ask the kids, not me.”

Joe glowered at her. “What's the matter with you today?”

“Nothing's the matter with me that wouldn't be better if you went back outside where you belong.”

Joe smirked unpleasantly and drank. Then he snarled, “You kids get out of here, understand?”

They shifted their sweet arrogant little gazes over to their father, then to their mother—who merely shrugged at them while wiping a strand of hair off her forehead.

“What's the matter?” Joe growled. “You didn't hear me? I'll go get a belt.”

“Aw, c'mon…” Larry, the eldest, whined. “Ma said we could watch TV.”

“I'm gonna call up Joe S. Mondragón's Radio and TV Repair in Chamisaville and have that damn thing repossessed,” Joe spat. “I didn't raise my kids to sit around the house in the middle of summer lapping up that garbage. And anyway, you're learning too much English. So get out of here. All of you.
Beat it!
”

“What's the matter with
you
today?” Nancy wanted to know.

“Nothing's the matter with me. I came inside to have a beer in peace—turn it
off,
Larry! Yeah, just like that—
all
the way off. Now beat it, huh?” And to his wife: “How come you use so much pneumonia every time you mop the floor?”

“Ammonia, dummy!” Nancy grinned, leaned the mop handle against a counter, fetched herself a tallboy from the fridge, and sat down opposite him at the table, deliberately popping the top in such a way that foam splashed into her husband's face. “Hey,” she said calmly, suppressing a giggle but not the sarcasm in her voice, “what's the matter with my rough tough little cream puff this afternoon?”

Without moving to wipe the foam off his forehead and nose, Joe threatened quietly, “You're gonna wish you hadn't done that.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Nancy sucked in a third of her can, gulping loudly, and released a noisy satisfied sigh. “I'm scared, José. I'm trembling I'm so scared.”

They sat in silence for a minute, Nancy smiling at Joe, Joe staring at his beer can and drawing pictures with his finger in the puddles on the table.

“Stella Armijo called,” Nancy said after a while. “She said she talked with Betty Apodaca, and Betty told her she was in the Pilar waiting on tables and overheard Horsethief Shorty Wilson talking to Harlan Betchel, and Shorty told Harlan Bernie Montoya went to the state chota pendejo factory in Doña Luz about your beanfield. That was a long time ago, before those jerks from the capital came up. Lydia Martínez called too, and she said when she was mopping up over at Pedro Hirsshorn's Land of Enchantment whorehouse for tourists she heard Pedro “the Pedo” himself talking with Zopi Devine on the telephone, and she said afterward the Pedo told Nick Rael that the Zopilote was gonna fly down to the capital and talk with the governor about your beanfield.”

Sarcastically, Joe said, “Thanks for all the wonderful information.”

“Charley Bloom called too. He thinks you two should talk things over some more.”

Joe shrugged, trying to appear nonchalantly caustic instead of scared stiff.

“I guess everybody is scared,” Nancy said.

“I don't see what over,” Joe grumbled.

“If you ask me, you're scared too.”

“Who asked you?”

She retorted, “Actually, maybe you're right. Who needs to ask about what's so obvious?”

Joe looked up at her. “What do you want,” he proposed quietly, “a punch in the mouth?”

Reaching across the table, Nancy laid her hand gently over his. “You and whose army, José?”

“I'll hit you so hard,” Joe said, “they'll stop you in El Paso for speeding.”

“So? I'll hit you back. What do you think I am, afraid of you? I'll stab you in the back if you hurt me. I'll shoot you in self-defense. You don't think I won't—? Feel my muscle.”

“Ai, Chihuahua,” Joe whined miserably, withdrawing his hand from under hers and resting his chin unhappily in both hands. “I had to marry a scorpion.”

“Eusebio Lavadie called too,” Nancy informed him.

“That's the fifth time in the past two weeks.” As an afterthought Joe muttered unconvincingly: “I'll bust his nose.”

“He apologized again.”

“Whatta you mean, he apologized again?”

“He just said to tell you he hadn't understood all the facts back in the beginning and to let you know he was sorry.”

“‘Sorry,'” Joe moaned sarcastically. “He's ‘sorry.' He struts around with his tongue sticking up the Zopilote's whosit and with a machete in each hand cutting off everybody else's whatsits. His father Meliton was the lousy patrón of this hapless burg who invited old man Devine to come on in and suck the blood out of our veins and the marrow out of our bones, and he's ‘sorry.'”

“He's scared,” Nancy said. “Just like you and me.”

“Speak for yourself, numskull.”

Finishing her beer, Nancy snagged Joe's, killing it also. Too depressed to protest, he grumbled, “Thanks for all the support.”

“I'm behind you, sweet.”

“That's what I need.” Joe grinned a little in spite of himself. “Your poisonous mouth behind me. That should keep me out of trouble, alright.”

“All you
got
right now is my mouth.” Nancy's eyes flashed in a fierce, tender way. “You better treat me with respect.”

“Since when did you ever treat me with respect?”

“Ever since I knew you, amor,” she replied languidly, fetching two more tallboys from the fridge.

Joe flexed his hands. They were scarred, bruised, calloused, greasy; one fingernail was black and blue and coming off—some hands. He could see his name in blinking neon lights:
Featuring
J
OE
M
ONDRAGÓN AND
H
IS
M
ISS
A
MERICA
H
ANDS
! He cast a surreptitious glance at Nancy's hands and they weren't much better: red, tough, scratched, clobbered, the fingers permanently bent from being wrapped around mops, wrench handles, shovels, and the like—she could work as hard as him, maybe even harder … so why didn't she buy some of that pink creamy gunk they were always hyping you with on TV? And Joe had a flash, then, of their wedding day eight years ago, driving all around town in those cars covered with paper pom-poms and colored streamers, honking their horns, with the kids and dogs running after them, and all the people waving from their houses and gardens and from the wet green fields—

“Oh, hell,” Joe griped. “I just dunno…”

And he wanted to discuss with her the funny way he felt. Like he was so tired and played out and uncertain of where he'd been going ever since he was a kid that he actually occasionally wanted this beanfield thing to blow up into something where he would wind up walking out his front door with a rifle blazing, only to be riddled for once and for all by their fucking bullets in return. The thing was, Joe had never had a firm grasp on anything, he had never really understood his own motivations, he had never had an idea where he was going. He didn't even know if he loved Nancy or his children. However he operated, he had operated instinctively. And mostly it was all too much work. He was exhausted from waking up apprehensive every morning of his life. And he envied his wife one thing: she loved him and she loved their brats, and that was her life—to feed them, keep house, and fight to protect them. She understood—maybe not exactly where she was or where they were going—but she understood the boundaries of her life, and the tasks that needed doing within those boundaries.

They sat there in silence finishing up their second tallboys, moving into thirds. The kids sneaked in, turning the TV back on, and neither parent paid attention. Outside it began to thunder a little, a few raindrops fell, then a wind blew the clouds back over the mountains. Joe had an urge to make love, but that was something he had never tried in broad daylight, not while it was still light out and work could be done.

“We owe on the pickup, the washing machine, the TV, and the refrigerator,” Joe announced glumly.

“Don't worry. I mean, you know—what else is new?”

“‘Don't worry.'” He glared at her, this time with real hostility. “I been worried ever since I was born.”

Nancy was a little drunk. “Screw your self-pity, José. Go tell it to the sheep.”

“Speaking of sheep, how we doing for meat?” Joe asked a few minutes later.

“Not so good. In fact we don't have any.”

“Well, I guess I'll go kill one of those kids, then.”

“I'll help…”

Reeling a little, bumping into each other, they went out to the goat pen.