The Milagro Beanfield War (79 page)

The lawyer suddenly threw an egg, underhand, straight up into the air. It rose about twenty yards, fuzzily gleaming, then whizzed straight back to earth only a few feet away, hitting with a hard thud, but it didn't break.

Bloom couldn't believe it. He stared at the egg. Then he went over and picked it up—it wasn't even cracked. And for a long time he held the egg in his hand, both frightened and astonished and unable to move, his eyes fixed upon the moon.

*   *   *

Amarante Córdova sat on the stump beside his doorway; Snuffy Ledoux stood several feet away pensively smoking as darkness fell. For a moment the mountain peaks were crimson, then the sunlight blurred and ancient blue shadows drifted swiftly over the foothills, until only the mountaintops were bathed in rich warm rouge for seconds before suddenly it was night.

“Well, I'm home,” Snuffy said tiredly, snapping his cigarette away. “And I ain't ever gonna leave again.”

“You came at a good time,” the old man said.

“Yeah, maybe I did.” Snuffy sat down on the warm earth. “Or maybe I didn't. Now I got to make plans, though, I got to figure out how to live. I got to carve a lot of santos and peddle them down in Chamisaville, do something like that, I guess, who knows? I'm broke.”

“Do you own your parents' house?” the old man asked.

“You kidding?” Snuffy picked up a stone, chucking it aimlessly at the nearby pile of piñon. “When I left I sold it to Devine. I needed the dough.”

“You can live here,” the old man said.

“What do you mean?”

“You can live here. In this house.” He paused. “We could fix the house.”

Snuffy swiveled his head, giving the dilapidated house a skeptical once-over. “There's a lot of work to be done,” he said unenthusiastically.

“When I die you inherit the house and the land,” Amarante said. “Others will move into the houses over here and begin to irrigate the land. You'll see. We're going to buy all this land back one way or another.”

“When you die—shit!” Snuffy exclaimed sarcastically. “I better chop some wood for that stove of yours,” he added, standing. Taking the ax in hand, he approached the piñon pile.

Before he reached for a log, the silver sparkle off shiny bean leaves several fields away caught Snuffy's attention. And although he was forty-five and kind of pooped out and lonely and wondering how in hell to turn a buck tomorrow, he suddenly smiled, allowing himself a vision he only half (maybe not even a quarter, to be honest) believed. It was not a vision of the future as totally unknown, but rather a vision of the future as composed, in part at least, of what had been okay about the past. He saw the west side houses whole again, their chimneys releasing pungent smoke, the houses inhabited by a new generation of men, women, and children whose fathers, aunts, and grandparents had been phased off the land and onto wandering migrant trails, whose roots had shriveled and died. If one beanfield, why not three? Or how about a dozen? And people would return from faraway places, and chilies and pumpkins would grow in the cornfields, and you would be able to smell bread baking—

“Ah, shit…” Snuffy reached for a log. Who was kidding who with a dream like that? And what had been so great about the old days anyway? You couldn't read or write and half the people died of TB. I'd like a car, Snuffy thought, I never wanted to spend my life on a horse. And what's so much fun about hoeing a row of beans, or about sitting in the crapper with wind howling up your asshole on a night that's thirty below?

A coyote, out on the mesa, howled. It had been a long time since Snuffy had heard that sound. He turned with the small log in one hand: Amarante nodded and grinned.

“Those damn coyotes,” the old man croaked. “You're not even allowed to poison them anymore.”

“There ain't enough coyotes left to waste your poison on,” Snuffy said, abruptly dropping the log at his feet. And, with one savage, angry blow, which held in it a curse for every hour of every day of his life that he'd spent chopping wood, he busted the log neatly, downright exquisitely, in two.

*   *   *

His car was sitting there, exactly where he had left it, exactly as he had left it. Kyril Montana leaned on the hood panting heavily, big sweat droplets falling off his forehead onto the shiny metal. For possibly five minutes he was positioned that way trying to recover his breath, calming down, and then he began to feel chilled as the late-afternoon winds sweeping off the mountains hit him. Moving wearily, he swung behind the wheel and turned on the engine and the heater. Almost immediately, the police radio crackled inquisitively, asking his whereabouts. Taking a deep breath the agent lifted the mike, pressed the transmitting button, and, having dispassionately fed in his call number, he informed the dispatcher: “I'm okay; I just got back. I made no contact with Mondragón; the entire result of this search was negative.”

“We got Mondragón,” the dispatcher said. “Can you hear me? Joe Mondragón has been here and gone. Everything is cool, man. But you better come in quick and get in touch with Trucho, he's after your
ass!”

Kyril Montana said “Thanks” and hung up the mike. By the overhead light he checked his face in the mirror: it was moderately scratched, but otherwise not so flushed now, not that bad. The agent ran fingers through his hair, combing it as best he could. After that he got out and opened the trunk where he always kept a fresh sport coat and slacks, a white shirt and a tie, in case of emergency. Stripping quickly, he donned the fresh clothes and then drove out of there.

Katie Gleason, who answered his knock grinning like a dervish, bounced off toward the kitchen shrieking, “Hey, it's Ossifer Wyoming, I mean Ossifer Dakota, I mean Ossifer
Montana!”

From the den, where he was stretched out on a couch with a green eyeshade over his eyes listening to the evening symphony from a Capital City FM radio station, Bud called, “Ky, is that you? Is that
you,
Ky? Where the hell you been?”

Bertha emerged from the kitchen just as Bud, in his stocking feet, staggered groggily from the den.

“Where you been, at a cocktail party with a bunch of elk up there?” Bertha wanted to know. “Everybody else got back hours ago. Joe, he walked into the Doña Luz station just after noon and gave himself up, and they let him go an hour later when half the town showed up outside looking to burn the joint down. You missed all the fireworks, how about a cup of coffee? You look like you could use it.”

Bud said, “They say Pacheco's alright. He's like his pig used to be, indestructible.”

“That's fine,” the agent said. “Can I use the phone?”

“Be our guest—”

The agent first dialed his wife. “I'm fine,” he told Marilyn. “I just got in. No, I just wanted to stay up in the mountains a little longer, to be sure. Right, I've heard a little about what happened; I'll stop in Doña Luz for the details, and I'll probably be home round eleven unless I'm needed up here. No, don't wait up. And don't worry about that either; I'll grab a bite, probably here or on the way down. Right. Yes, everything is okay. I'll see you soon.”

He hung up, waited a moment to make sure his poise was the way he wanted it to be, then dialed Trucho.

“He went home,” the state police switchboard informed him. So he dialed Trucho at home.

“He's still at the office,” Mrs. Trucho said.

“They told me there he went home.”

“Well, if he did he didn't arrive yet.”

“You tell him I called, tell him I'll check in at Doña Luz before I head south, he can leave a message for me there if he gets home. Otherwise we'll talk in the morning.”

“I'll do that. But maybe you better call back in a little while, Mr. Montana, I heard he really wanted to talk to you—”

Hanging up, the agent went back to the kitchen, sat down at the table across from Bud, and was very grateful for the coffee Bertha set before him.

“Look,” he said, exhausted but struggling hard to keep his eyes open, alert, and to keep from slurring his words, “I'm all out of cigarettes.”

“Katie,” Bud called, “go get me a pack of cigarettes from the silver box on the coffee table in the den.”

“Get 'em yourself, I'm not your slave,” Katie screeched. “Besides, I'm watching TV.”

“Listen, you obnoxious little shrimp, you do what your daddy tells you to do!” Bertha hollered, bending over to peer into her oven at a rib roast and some baked potatoes.

“What is Daddy, a cripple? Is he a multiple paraplegic, huh? Is he, huh?”

“Oh Christ Almighty,” Bud groaned, pushing himself up.
“I'll
get the cigarettes myself.”

“You always do that,” Bertha said. “How do you expect the kid to learn if you always give in like that?”

“It's just easier. I'm sorry.”

“Well then don't get mad at her if she never does what you ask her to do,” Bertha harped, stirring some flour into a gravy base in a frying pan on the stove.

Kyril Montana sipped the hot coffee and his entire aching body tingled it tasted so incredibly good. Kitchen smells, of the roast, of baking cheese, of the gravy, a mixture of onion and garlic and strong seasoning, went to his head—he couldn't wait to eat.

Bud dropped an unopened pack of filter-tip cigarettes on the table. Kyril Montana took the pack and carefully tore off the wrapper.

“What happened to your hands?” Bud asked.

“Oh, you know. Just fending off brush, stuff like that. I lost my footing once and landed on some rocks, nothing serious.” Reassuringly, the agent smiled, “There's nothing wrong that an invitation to share whatever it is Bertha's got going in that oven won't cure.”

Bud looked down at his own clasped hands on the table. “You're not staying for dinner, Ky. Drink the coffee, take the cigarettes if you want, but then leave, please. Actually, I'm not asking you to leave, I'm telling you to leave, do you understand?”

Kyril Montana glared evenly at the top of Bud's head in the charged silence, trying to make him look up. “Bud, you're not really in a position to tell me to go to hell.”

“If you won't accept it from him, then accept it from me—” Bertha began.

“Shuttup,” Bud snapped, glancing up fleetingly at the agent, but immediately dropping his eyes again.

Kyril Montana said, “I don't want to stay where I'm not wanted, Bud, but you have to understand this is fairly sudden. I'm a little tired, you know, I've had a long afternoon in the hills. So this comes as a relative surprise—”

“I don't care, Ky. Do what you will, think what you will, plan some kind of revenge, but just finish your coffee and get out of here. Whatever happens from here on in, I'm not gonna be a part of it. And that includes letting you use my house for your red-baiting meetings or whatever. It isn't because I've got high and mighty scruples against what you're doing, understand; I haven't had any great change of heart. I'm just finally more scared of them, now, than I am of you.”

“Well. You son of a bitch.”

Bud nodded. “Right, you're right, I'm not up for any civic awards, Ky, I'm just looking after my own skin, you're absolutely right. But do me a favor and finish that coffee and get out of here, and steer clear of our lives from here on in.”

Katie suddenly pranced into the kitchen, blurting, “Show's over!” And then, noticing her father's downcast face and the calm, infuriated agent, she said, “Hey everybody, guess what pennies are made out of—?”

For a second Kyril Montana felt murderous enough to turn around and slug that obnoxious kid; he wanted to knock her bratty little head right off her shoulders and send it splattering against the kitchen wall like a rotten tomato.

Instead, he shook loose a smoke from the pack Bud had given him, set the weed in his mouth, and lit it—flame flared up before his eyes.

“Hey,” Bud said, amazed, and then abruptly, nervously giggling:
“You lit the fucking filter!”

*   *   *

It was a bright, beautiful night. Troubled, off-balance, and feeling strange, Horsethief Shorty wandered. He circled the dark swimming pool in which he had never splashed and crossed damp silver grass to the tennis courts, leaning against the wire with his hands hung in the steel webbing above his head. He had forgotten to loosen the nets at dusk and sweep the base lines, making sure they were securely tacked into the clay. Tomorrow evening he and a Chicano kid would sweep the courts and roll them flat.

But right now Shorty didn't want to loosen the nets. He leaned against, laxly hung onto, the fencing, gazing across the courts down toward the scattered town lights, toward the few mercury vapor lamps his boss had installed around the store, the café, and the Enchanted Land Motel. Across the highway in the ghost town Amarante Córdova's light glowed softly from the open door of his crumbling adobe.

Shorty rolled a cigarette, lit it, smoked quietly. After a while he snapped his cigarette butt through the wire onto the near court. “I sure spent my life kissing a lot of assholes,” he mused wearily. “And I guess maybe I chose the wrong side.”

Which was a thought that had been eating away at him for a while now, and it had really been driven home sharp as a lightning bolt when Bloom tossed that finger at him this afternoon: for some reason, the lawyer's bitter gesture had made Shorty almost want to cry.

Well, tonight it all made him sad. But shit, he thought, he'd been lonely all his life; loneliness was the absolute condition of his days, and it had been that way ever since he was a kid opening his eyes at first dawn and lying still for a minute, listening to the roosters crowing in a tiny pen out back and thinking in a minute he would have to get up and plod off to the war that was his school.

Hell, Shorty had shared Ladd Devine's dream about the golf course over there on the west side, and about the entire Miracle Valley project. He'd cast his hand in with that kind of progress, betting on the new people who were going to come in and make the town grow, and he was going to be a big part of that growth. You wouldn't have caught Shorty dead on a golf course, but he owned some of that land over there, some of the choicest parcels, and he would be a strong partner in the corporation that developed it, and there was an excitement to that kind of life.