The Milagro Beanfield War (37 page)

So Joe went home and got drunk. After about his third beer he fetched his .30–06 from the bedroom and loaded it up; then he went back into the kitchen and laid the rifle across the table and popped open another tallboy, getting himself revved up to do what just about anybody else in town in his position would have done, given tradition and the nature of these particular circumstances.

“What are you getting ready to do, José?” Nancy asked warily, knowing only too well what her husband was getting ready to do.

“I'm gonna go over to Pacheco's place and shoot his fucking pig and his fucking chickens and maybe even his fucking self for letting my fucking cow get out of that fucking field,” Joe said.

Nancy sighed wearily and sat down at the table, absentmindedly sticking her pinkie in the gun barrel's snout.

“Oh, you are so stupid, José,” she said. “The Floresta is kicking you in the butt, so what do you do, you go and kick Pacheco in the butt. Then maybe Pacheco will go and kick Onofre Martínez in the butt, and to get back at him Onofre will charge Ray Gusdorf three times what he should charge him for a load of wood, and in retaliation Ray Gusdorf will tell Pete Apodaca to take his cows out of Ray's field, and Pete Apodaca will give his wife Betty a black eye or a broken arm in payment for
that,
and meanwhile Floyd Cowlie and Carl Abeyta will be rolling around on the Floresta office floor laughing about what a lot of dumbbells we all are.”

Joe stared at her, hostility gleaming out of his eyes.

“Well, where am I gonna get that twenty bucks?” he asked acidly. “Maybe God will leave it under my pillow tonight?”

“I don't know,” Nancy pouted. “But I'm sick of the way it's always a hundred of us who wind up paying that measly twenty bucks, and you still lose another cow off the permit.”

Joe polished off his beer, hoisted up the rifle, and said “I'll see you around” as he kicked open the kitchen door and staggered out, murder humming through his blood.

About halfway to Seferino Pacheco's house, Joe hit the brakes hard and skidded to a stop. Then he popped the clutch, lunged forward, and stalled.

And he just sat there in the truck in the middle of the dirt road, thinking.

Onofre Martínez's mottled-green, 1953 Chevy pickup with the three-legged German shepherd on the cab roof and Onofre behind the wheel, and with his great-grandchildren Chemo and Chepa in back, came down the road toward Joe and lurched to a stop: Onofre waved and then beeped for Joe to pull over a little, and Joe gave him the finger.

Onofre turned off his truck, got out, and walked over to the driver's side of Joe's vehicle.

“What's up, cousin?” he asked warily. “What's the matter with you?”

“I had a cow in Seferino Pacheco's field and he let it get out, and now it's eating mildewed hay in that fucking corral in the back of the fucking Floresta office.”

Onofre whistled softly, almost gently, the way all people in Milagro had a tendency to whistle whenever they learned about a disaster of such gigantic proportions.

Then he asked, “But how come you're sitting in the middle of the road like this?”

“I dunno,” Joe said, puzzled over his own indecision. “I was going over to Pacheco's place to pay him back for letting my cow get loose.”

Onofre said, “What's the point of that? All of us are always paying each other back when the Floresta arrests one of our animals. So then instead of just one person suffering, two people or three people or four people or twenty people all suffer, and the Floresta just sits in their wood-paneled office having a good laugh about what a bunch of lamebrained idiots the lot of us are.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joe said. “Nancy was just telling me.”

Onofre's eyes narrowed, growing a little sleepy-looking as he suggested casually: “You'd think that someday somebody in this town would have the intelligence to lay the blame where the blame deserves to be laid, qué no?”

“I suppose so,” Joe said, his own eyes narrowing a little in that sleepy, thoughtful manner—

One-half hour later a small cluster of pickups belonging respectively to Joe Mondragón, Onofre Martínez, Ray Gusdorf, the Body Shop and Pipe Queen, and Sparky Pacheco appeared at the corral behind the Forest Service headquarters, and after Marvin LaBlue and Sparky Pacheco had opened the corral gate, Joe lassoed his cow.

Both Floyd Cowlie and Carl Abeyta came hurrying out the back door of the office shouting, “Hey, what the hell do you men think you're doing?”

“I just came for my cow,” Joe said. “No problem.” And he grinned.

“That's right,” Onofre Martínez confirmed, “he just came to pick up his cow.”

“Well, you'll have to come into the office and sign a form,” Carl said. “Have you got the twenty bucks?”

“I think this time I'll just take my cow without signing the forms or paying the twenty bucks,” Joe observed calmly, casually tying the other end of his rope to the pickup bumper.

“Hey, hold on a minute,” Floyd Cowlie protested. “Just what the hell do you think you're doing?”

And, dropping a hand onto his gun, Carl Abeyta called loudly, “Come on, Joe, you know that ain't regulations.” Then more softly, to his partner: “Floyd, you hustle into the office and give Bernabé a call—”

As Floyd Cowlie headed back into the office, Joe said, “Carl, this is my cow and I don't got the twenty bucks to pay for it, and you can take your regulations and shove them.”

“Goddammit, you men are breaking the law, do you know that? This is a felony. You can be thrown in jail. I'll hand you your pimpled asses on a silver platter—”

“You do that, Carl,” Onofre Martínez drawled, “and I got a feeling you'd be transformed overnight into the equivalent of a jackrabbit on a target range.”

Joe grinned at Carl, swung into his truck, and moved off slowly, leading the cow out of the corral. Claudio García dropped off the fence and shut the gate. Whereupon Carl Abeyta drew his gun.

As soon as Carl drew his gun, he realized it was 130 percent the wrong thing to have done. But once it was out, how could he stick it back in the holster? And anyway, once it was out, and once he had shouted, “Okay, you bastards, you're under arrest for stealing government property!” how could he have sheathed the weapon without inviting them to point their rifles at him (there were eight weapons visible, either tucked in the crooks of their arms or arranged menacingly in pickup window racks) and perhaps even discharge a bullet or two in his direction?

There followed a particularly quiet standoff. None of the men moved, but they all harbored looks of disdain which suggested that nobody considered Carl was pointing anything much more menacing than a popgun. They also knew what Carl knew, namely, that if he so much as fired one shot at them, the death of Bonnie and Clyde would read like a Walt Disney fairy tale compared to the annihilation of Carl Abeyta and Company.

The group was assembled in this manner when Bernabé Montoya drove up. As soon as the sheriff assessed the situation, he sighed heavily, wishing to hell that he'd never had a phone installed in his living room. Then he opened the cab door, slouched out onto the ground near the corral, and said, “Carl, why don't you holster that gun before somebody gets hurt?”

Carl stammered, “If I do, Bernie, they'll kill me.”

“Oh cut the crap,” Bernabé said. “Not while I'm around nobody's shooting anybody, qué no, boys?”

The boys let their eyes shift vagrantly over to Bernabé, and they gave him a cluster of cool, sleepy-eyed glances that almost made him shiver. Then they allowed their eyes to float back over to Carl, who was so drained he looked like an Anglo.

“Well, how about if somebody told me what the problem is here?” Bernabé proposed.

“Joe there, he's stealing government property,” Carl said.

“You stole
my
property,” Joe snarled.

“I take it that cow is what all this fuss is about?” Bernabé said.

“We impounded that cow yesterday,” Floyd Cowlie explained. “And Joe over there, he refused to pay the fine, and now he's stealing it out of our corral, and this corral is U.S. Government property that those men broke into, and until such time as Joe pays for that cow the animal is government property.”

“Carl,” Bernabé suggested, “first off, why don't you sheathe that fucking pistol, because as far as I can see it's just creating antagonism.”

“Not on your life, Bernie. I do and they'll shoot me down in cold blood.”

“Aw, for crissakes,” Bernabé muttered disgustedly. “Hey, you boys, if Carl puts away that gun are you gonna shoot him in cold blood?”

And to a man, smiling faintly, chillingly, loving the act, the boys all just slightly nodded their heads yes.

Bernabé figured he better try a different tack. Addressing Carl, he said, “Uh, I guess you found that cow up in the forest, that's why you arrested it, qué no?”

Carl swallowed dryly and just barely tilted his head yes, keeping his eyes all the while on the “boys.”

“And you found it up there yesterday, is that right too?”

Floyd Cowlie answered: “Yup, that's right.”

“Now José,” Bernabé said carefully, “when was it that cow got out of Pacheco's field, do you remember?”

“It was yesterday,” Joe said, keeping his eyes on Carl Abeyta instead of shifting them over to the sheriff.

“Well, perhaps you found that cow before it even ate a handful of government property,” Bernabé said to Carl, “and so maybe you didn't have no right to arrest it since it hadn't yet technically broke any of the rules.”

Carl let his eyes flick over to Bernabé, who had dropped his eyes to where his boot tips—pointing outward from being on the wrong feet—were scuffing self-consciously in the dust.

The district supervisor asked, “What are you driving at, Bernie?”

“What I'm driving at is I don't think there's any way to prove that cow had actually trespassed the legal amount of time on government land, so in all fairness you oughtta just let José take it home, and if you sent him one of them letters you oughtta kill the copy in your files, and forget about the fine and the permit reduction, and then everybody will be happy, qué no, boys?”

This time the boys grinned, muttering, “That's right, Bernie,” or “Que sí, sheriff,” things like that.

Carl protested, “Bernie, you're a damn fool, you don't know your ass from government law in this case.”

The sheriff remarked, “It's your ass that has got a bullseye painted on it right now, Carl.”

Whereupon Floyd Cowlie hissed in Carl's ear, “Do like he says, you idiot, what are you trying to do, get us both killed?”

Put that way, Carl suffered a reluctant change of heart. “Well … uh, okay, Bernie. I guess maybe you're right. I hadn't exactly considered things in that light.”

“I didn't figure you had,” Bernabé said, daring to look up now as he added, “So how about stashing that firearm, okay?”

“Sure,” Carl said amenably, slowly and gingerly slipping the pistol back into the holster. “Course, I wouldn't of shot nobody,” he laughed. “Shit, you boys know that.” He couldn't quite bring himself to uncurl his fingers from the grip, however.

The boys didn't say anything, so Bernabé prompted, “Hell, you boys knew that, right?”

“Rrrrriiiiggggght…” the boys mumbled slowly, reluctantly letting it out.

“Okay. So why don't we break it up now, huh? José, you take that skinny heifer back home, or back to Pacheco's place, and see if you can't keep better track of it next time.”

With that, carefully unwinding, the men got into their pickups, started their engines, and slowly pulled away from the corral. By way of an adios, Joe tooted his horn and waved gaily at the sheriff and the two Forest Service personnel, then led his cow up the road at a brisk trot.

Bernabé grumbled, “I oughtta arrest you, Carl, for pulling that gun. What's the matter with you anyway?”

“But did you see what they did? They just came by and took that cow. In a hundred years nobody ever did anything like that. I could take every one of those bastards to court—”

“Sure you could. And I could sit tight at home out on the front porch in a rocker with my boot heels up on the railing while they had another Smokey the Bear santo riot, or did you forget about that? And then when it was all over I could mosey on down to the camposanto with a wine jug tucked under my arm and help them dig your and Floyd there's graves.”

Carl squatted and picked up a handful of dirt, letting it trickle through his fingers, thoughtful as he replied, “Nothing like this ever happened before.” As he spoke, a bird, a little pine siskin, flitted through the corral fence, zipping low to the ground, and for some reason did not register Carl's bulk in its way. Carl never saw it coming, either, and when the hapless bird banged head-on into his ear he gave a startled yelp, tumbling over sideways as if struck by a bullet. The siskin landed upside down several feet away, and lay on its back in the dust, flopping and kicking spastically while issuing pained chirrupy gurgles.

“For chrissakes!”
Floyd Cowlie exclaimed.

But none of them could move, not Bernabé nor Floyd, nor Carl lying on his side with his head in the dust, staring at the gasping bird.

Suddenly the siskin righted itself and ruffled its feathers, shaking out the dust as it blinked a few times, and then with a hotshot rocketing little explosion it took off again, only to collide immediately with a corral post and bounce back into the dust knocked out cold.

Astonished as he was, Bernabé went over and picked up the bird and frowned at it, unable to summon the proper words for the occasion.

After a moment the intrepid siskin opened its eyes and shivered, coming back to life. When Bernabé figured it was in possession of all its faculties, including that of flight, he threw it up in the air, expecting that it would take off.