The Milagro Beanfield War (40 page)

“I think what you need is a gun,” Nick said.

“A gun? What would I do with a gun?”

“Put those skunks out of their misery, for one.”

“Do you really think so?” Herbie's heart hammered at the thought of actually owning, let alone pulling the trigger of, a gun.

“Sure. Christ, you wouldn't catch me sleeping three minutes on top of a bunch of stinking skunks. It'll give you the GIs, after a while your skin will peel, your eyes will puff almost shut, and you'll have to move out.”

“What kind of gun would a person use to kill a skunk?” Herbie asked meekly.

“How much money can you spend?”

“I don't have much. Only about seventy-five dollars right now.”

“Well, how about this .38?” Nick chuckled. “It belonged to a nice little old lady who never drove it over forty.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“A joke,” Nick explained. “Seriously, I'll give it to you for forty bucks, box of ammo included. You can't go wrong. And anyway, living out there where you do, next door to Mad Dog Joe Mondragón on one side, and Thrill Killer Pancho Armijo on the other side, I'd think you would want something for self-protection. Also, you never know when a bear might come around, or something like that, trying to get into your bacon and beans. Me, I wouldn't be caught dead in a wide open frontier town like this without some kind of self-protection, you want my honest opinion.”

“But how would I kill the skunks?”

“There's a hole, ain't there? Under the edge of the house somewheres?”

“Sure, there's two big holes that I've noticed.”

“Well, that's how they got under there in the first place. What you want to do, see, is sit down a little ways away, round about suppertime, and just blow them apart when they poke their heads out. Or hell, stick your hand down the hole and blast off a cylinder or two. Even if you don't hit anything, skunks are pretty smart, they're bound to get the idea.”

“I never owned a gun before,” Herbie said.

“Every man should own a firearm,” Nick admonished. “Christ, I got my first gun when I was eight years old. A .22 rifle. By the time I was nine I could thread a bullet up a prairie dog's ass and out his nose from thirty yards away while he was on a dead run. I killed my first deer when I was twelve.”

“You really think this type of gun would be the kind to use on a skunk?” Herbie said.

“Sure. You could use it on just about
any
kind of skunk,” Nick sniggered.

“I guess maybe I'll buy it then,” Herbie said abruptly, his heart racing like a stuck throttle.

“You ‘guess maybe,' or you actually want to buy it?”

“Yes, alright, I mean, I'll buy it,” Herbie—flustered—mumbled. “Would you show me how to load it, and how it works and everything?”

Fifteen minutes later Herbie Goldfarb, pacifist, conscientious objector, VISTA volunteer, walked out of there like a young man who had just lost his virginity, the gun and a box of bullets tucked down snug in his pack among the corned beef hash and Spam cans, peanut butter, Bunny bread, and beer. It felt to him as if he had just undergone some powerful rites of passage and now belonged to the western mountains instead of to the East Coast, fair-haired college culture. He was so eager to be home that he almost broke into a trot, pack and all. But then, envisioning the spectacle that would be, he slowed down, and, uncomfortably aware of the Chicano faces following his progress with utter disdain, if not out-and-out hatred, he walked slope-shouldered and humbly the rest of the way home.

There, having opened and drained a beer, he straightaway loaded the gun, and, moving swiftly before second thoughts could sabotage his determination to rub out the skunk colony that was making his life so miserable, he kneeled at the larger of the two entrances to their lair, shoved down his arm, leveled the gun as best he could, and pulled the trigger.

The first explosion hit him with the wallop of a bomb, the sheer volume of sound scaring him so much that he shrieked, yet somehow he managed to pull the trigger again, driving a slug up through his own wooden floor, and with the third shot the gun kicked right out of his hand and he tumbled over backward, expecting the house, or at least the nearest wall, to collapse violently on his head.

In the Pilar Café, Bernabé Montoya knocked over his coffee cup, spilling the hot fluid onto his egg salad sandwich as he cried
“Oh shit it's beginning!”
and dove off his stool. Grabbing a .38 from a shoebox on the shelf under the cash register, Harlan Betchel leaped after the sheriff out the door. Bernabé swung up behind the wheel of his pickup, and Harlan just made it into the passenger seat as the sheriff gunned the truck, spinning his wheels and veering in a sharp U-turn that almost sliced off Seferino Pacheco's knees. They careened into the narrow lane that led to Joe Mondragón's house three hundred yards up the road.

“Get that gun off the rack!” Bernabé panted. “There's a clip in the glove compartment!”

As he complied with the order, Harlan gasped, “It's out at Joe's place, isn't it?”

“Where else, goddammit!”

Tires squealing, they thundered into Joe's yard, and as they did so Joe bolted out his front door, hunched over and running fast, carrying a rifle like a marine gutting it up a Pork Chop Hill, dashing behind a huge cottonwood. Even before Joe reached the tree, however, Harlan was diving out of the truck, his .38 blazing in Joe's direction. Bernabé tumbled out of his door, tripping and crashing belly first into the dirt, then he scrambled up into a squat and backpedaled frantically until his shoulder whacked against a tire, and he spun, duck-waddling hysterically toward the rear as he heard Joe return Harlan's fire, Harlan bellowing and scrambling rearward too as a slug splintered into the other side of the truck, and, plunging around the tail of the pickup from opposite sides, the two men collided head on, each of their weapons—Harlan's .38 and the sheriff's rifle—discharging, though somehow missing, both of them. “You idiot!” Bernabé raged, slugging Harlan clumsily in the chest.
“It's Armijo!
” Joe screamed from the tree.
“He shot at me! What are you shooting at me for?”
“Where is he?” Bernabé hollered.
“I dunno!”
Joe shouted back.
“He's over there somewhere though, he fired three times!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, but no thanks to you, God damn you, Betchel, are you crazy? You point that gun at me again I'll blow off your balls—!”

“He … he had the gun … he was running…” Harlan blubbered, ashen-faced, about to faint.

Joe leaped out from behind the tree and scrambled pell-mell across the open space, diving practically into their laps in the shelter of the truck.

“I'm sorry…” Harlan stammered. “I didn't think…”

“What would Armijo be doing this for?” Bernabé gasped, all out of breath, his heart thundering so hard he thought his chest would explode.

“I dunno. He shot three times,” Joe blurted. “I never even saw the bastard. I was watching TV.”

“Where did the bullets hit?” the sheriff asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Joe crawled up front and peered around the edge of a tire. “I can't see a fucking thing over there. Maybe he's lying on the roof, the bastard, behind the fire wall—”

Actually, Pancho Armijo and his wife Stella were lying on the floor beside their telephone table, Pancho with a rifle in his hands, and Stella manning the telephone.

“Hello, Carolina?” she gasped. “Where's Bernie? José Mondragón is shooting at us! He's gone crazy! He's shooting at us for no reason at all!”

“What? What?
What?
”

“Where's Bernie!” Stella shouted. “They're going to kill us over here!”

“Try the Pilar!”

Stella tried the Pilar. Betty Apodaca answered. “Where's Bernie?” Stella sobbed.

“He just ran out!” Betty babbled excitedly. “There's a shooting over at Joe's and the Armijos'!”

“I'm
Stella Armijo!” Stella wailed. “And I don't see Bernie anyplace around here!”

“But where are you?”

“On the floor beside the telephone table!”

“Well, tell Pancho to look out the window—!”

“But they'll shoot him in the head!” Stella cried. “They'll shoot him in the head!” And she hung up.

“Oh shit,” Pancho Armijo moaned. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” The weapon in his hand was empty. He hadn't a single bullet in the house. That madman José Mondragón was going to gun them down in cold blood because they didn't have a single bullet in the house.

Their phone rang and Stella answered. It was her talkative good friend Mary Ann C. de Baca down in Doña Luz, who, before Stella could get a word in edgewise, was wondering if she could contribute a cake or some chocolate chip cookies or something to the Hospital Ladies' Auxiliary bake sale down in Chamisaville this upcoming Saturday.

“I can't,” Stella sobbed into the telephone. “We're being shot at, they're trying to kill us, good-bye!”

At the store, Nick dialed the Dancing Trout. Emerson Lapp answered. “They're shooting it out at Joe Mondragón's,” Nick shouted breathlessly into the phone.

“Who's shooting what out? And who's this?” the secretary wanted to know.

“This is Nick at the store. Bernie and Harlan just went over in Bernie's pickup! I heard six, seven shots at least! You better get Mr. D.!”

Emerson Lapp ran outside. A pickup, with Horsethief Shorty at the wheel and Jerry Grindstaff and a cowboy named Hugh Slocum beside him, both holding rifles tensely between their knees, barrels pointed at the ceiling, and with two younger hands—Tommy Gallegos and Richard Tafoya—in the back clutching guns, roared by, gravel flying.

“Where you headed?” Emerson Lapp called.

“There's a gunfight down at José Mondragón's!” Tommy Gallegos yelled excitedly.

At the first sound of shots, Charley Bloom set down a cup of Campbell's tomato and rice soup and almost sobbed to Linda at the table across from him, “God help us now, it's beginning.”

“What's beginning, Daddy?” Pauline piped. “Tell me what's beginning?”

Bloom got up and went to the open doorway.

“Where did they come from?” Linda asked.

“Where did what come from, Mommy? Where did
what
come from?”

“Joe's place,” Bloom answered. He could see, across several fields and through a few young Chinese elms to Joe's house, the jumble of outbuildings and rusted machinery and the ten-foot-high piles of piñon.

“What do you think is happening?” Linda asked, terrified.

“What's happening, Daddy?” the child echoed. “What's happening, what's
hap
pening?”

“I don't know…”

“What are you going to do?” Linda wailed.

“I don't know.” And Bloom waited, unable to act. Suddenly there was a loud popping bang, and then a heavier but also sharper explosion that ricocheted across the valley. That was followed a few seconds later by another hollow pop and sharp gunshot almost in unison. And then silence.

Bloom waited, still unable to move, hardly thinking. He was too scared and too chicken to act, and he abhorred the deep-down feeling of relief in himself, for this must mean, surely, thank God, it signaled the end of the affair.

The Dancing Trout pickup rattled past Nick Rael and then passed three older men legging it on the double up the road toward Joe Mondragón's house. It skidded to a halt behind Bernabé Montoya's pickup, and the five men who hopped to the ground were surprised to find Joe Mondragón hale and hearty and in the companionship of the sheriff and Harlan Betchel, all with their guns pointed past Herbie Goldfarb's shack toward Pancho Armijo's cozy little farmhouse.

“Pancho!” Bernabé yelled. “Cut the shit and walk out of there, hands on your head, toss the weapon out in front of you!”

“Bernie!” Pancho shouted back. “Is that you?”

“Who the fuck do you
think
it is?”

“This is a hell of a way to win the next election, then!” Pancho shouted. “Trying to kill your opponent!”

“You just come out with your hands on your head, Pancho, and don't forget to toss out the gun ahead of you. There's twenty-five of us out here, and if we have to rush the house and somebody gets hurt it won't go well for you!”

“Where's José?” Pancho yelled.

“He's right here, he's alright, you didn't hit him!”

“
I
didn't hit him?—of course not! I never
shot
at him! He shot at
me!
I didn't shoot at anybody!”

The sheriff fired a hairy eyeball Joe's way. Joe said, “Don't look at me. That man's lying.”

“You come out of there, and then we'll see what's what!” Bernabé called.

“I got Stella with me!”

“Tell her to come out too!”

With ten guns trained on his front door, Pancho Armijo tossed his unloaded rifle out into the dirt yard, then both he and his wife, their hands clasped atop their heads, emerged, babbling Hail Marys, into the bright sunshine.

The sheriff, Joe Mondragón, Harlan Betchel, Horsethief Shorty, Jerry Grindstaff, Hugh Slocum, Richard Tafoya, Tommy Gallegos, three old men from the Frontier, and Nick Rael advanced slowly toward the Armijos, and as they did, passing the corner of Herbie Goldfarb's bungalow, they came upon the sight at which both Stella and Pancho Armijo were staring aghast.

For there was Herbie, seated in the dirt at the side of his house, banging his head to try and drive the high-pitched, scary ringing from his ears.

He looked up at them all, puzzled, and during the last few seconds before it dawned on him what he had caused to happen, he lifted up his right hand, gingerly trying to wiggle the thumb, explaining to Bernabé Montoya, to them all: