The Milagro Beanfield War (84 page)

It was his field, his bunch of crummy beans; he loved them, he loved enchiladas and burritos, and he would fart a lot because of these purebred Milagro beans. But when he'd planted them he had not really known what he was doing, and he had certainly not anticipated the particular consequences that had occurred. And he had an inkling of what some more of the consequences were going to be now that this officially was not just
his
beanfield anymore, and he didn't like them one bit.

One thought Joe had never entertained, even in his most uncomfortable dreams, was that somehow he would be singled out to be a leader. Which in this case, Joe figured, was tantamount to being singled out to be a human target on the state police pistol range down in the capital. Or it was like getting chosen to be dressed in a deerskin outfit and then lowered from a helicopter into the Little Baldy Bear Lake region during the first weekend of the fall hunting season.

And Joe knew something about himself: he was not a leader. A fighter maybe, but no leader. He couldn't articulate things well enough for that, he couldn't think things out. His brain worked like his tractor: if you tinkered with it, drowned it in oil, kicked it and cursed it, and maybe threatened to shoot it, it would just barely function, plow half a field, perhaps, before breaking down again.

As for tomorrow—he could just see it: five, ten, maybe fifteen of them would come to his house, and after they were all together in the living room and had drunk a beer apiece or guzzled some coffee, they would ask, with big, lopsided, toothless, cheerful smiles plastered against their faces: “Well, José, what are we gonna do now?”

And he would stare at them, his head bowed under the weight of an excruciating hangover, and say, “What do you fellows think we
ought
to do?” And they wouldn't even have to think about that one. They'd all shrug and smile and nod their heads, and say “We don't know. It's for you to say.” That—or, one would say this, the other would say that, a third would call both their plans ridiculous, a fourth would agree with the first, a fifth would have another idea, a sixth would stalk out in a huff never to return, a seventh would talk with the first, explaining the faults in his plan and causing the first to abandon his plan, which would leave only the fourth agreeing with the first's plan the first no longer believed in himself anymore, and finally somebody would say, “José, you and that lawyer Bloom, you go talk to Devine,” or “You go talk to those motherfuckers in the capital,” or—

Nancy came over, squatting beside him, resting an arm over his shoulder. “Heigh ho, José my love,” she whispered drunkenly, tenderly kissing his shoulder.

The mesa coyotes were singing, calling to each other or challenging the moon. And, of course, there were a lot of silent ones out there hunting rabbits in their dogged, loping style. No matter how much you poisoned them, shot them, scared them, trapped them, hated them, caged them, or generally raked over their habitat, you could not entirely kill all the coyotes, Joe thought. And the cottonwood leaves were so still they could hear Indian Creek bubbling over smooth stones across the road a ways. They could even hear the jukebox music at the Frontier Bar in town, the music remote like a fiesta memory from the old days.

“When Seferino Pacheco gets back, you know what?” Joe murmured.

“I'm afraid to ask.” She leaned over just slightly, touching her tongue to his earlobe.

“I'm gonna give him one of those piglets we got. For a present.”

“Ai, Chihuahua,” Nancy laughed. “What do you wanna go and start that trouble all over again for?”

“So when the pig grows up I can shoot him again,” Joe cackled, and suddenly, sputtering happily, he toppled out of her arms and rolled right down the short slope into his bean plants, laughing to beat the band—

*   *   *

At first the noise sounded like machine guns; then it enlarged into thunder, and Herbie Goldfarb stirred uneasily, dreaming of snakes and rain. But soon he was dreaming of the Butterfly of Love, of the way her jumbo tits had smiled at him before the piranha mosquitoes attacked … yet the thunder kept on thundering, even though now sunlight and whopping breasts flooded his dreams. Finally he realized all that urgent loud noise was coming from outside his dreams in the real world, heralding another calamity, no doubt, and with a fatalistic whimper the volunteer awoke.

“Coming. Just a sec. Wait a sec—I'm coming.
Christ
!”

Joe Mondragón was standing there, grinning like a hyena, a Tasmanian devil, a Cheshire cat; behind him, seated on the hood of Herbie's accordioned 1956 Chevy convertible (which hadn't budged since the wrecker dropped it off), was Joe's wife, Nancy, also grinning like a hyena, a Tasmanian devil, a Cheshire cat. Lord God have mercy, they've come to kill me, Herbie thought.

But Joe flung an arm around Herbie's shoulders. “Hey kid,” he shouted, “how come you're sleeping? This is a night for celebration. We
won
!”

“Oh,” Herbie said, scratching behind one ear.

“Put your shoes and pants on,” Joe ordered. “We're gonna have some
fun
!”

Oh Lord no, Herbie thought, anything but
fun.
But if he did not do what Joe wanted, no telling what the little punchdrunk maniac was likely to do to Herbie's flabby city-boy body, so he pulled on some pants, a shirt, and his sneakers, accepted a tug from the pint bottle of alcoholic gunk Joe offered, and shuddered as Nancy threw her arm around his shoulders, shouting, “Let's go!” Between them, silently saying good-bye to all that, Herbie teetered out of his yard.

It was a little before midnight when a very sleepy Charley Bloom opened his door, and there stood Joe and Nancy Mondragón flashing him a pair of the world's most lopsided pie-eyed grins, and caged between them, looking a bit like a duck that had just crawled out of an oil slick, was Herbie Goldfarb, drunk by now, greeting Bloom with a sort of apologetic—in fact, call it a sick—leer.

“We came to ride that horse,” Joe said, and both he and Nancy, bumping into Herbie and swaying unsteadily, giggled. Herbie produced a faint “What-me-worry?” expression, and shrugged.

“Go ahead,” Bloom said. “Just leave me out of it.”

“You got to come, Charley. I can't get on her if you don't catch the bitch and hold her steady.”

“Oh hell. Alright. Jees…”

Bloom put a raincoat on over his pajamas, shoved his feet into some mud-encrusted irrigation boots, and followed their reeking little entourage around the house. The moon shone brightly, the night was quiet and crisp, already an autumnal tinge rode the air. Bloom caught Sunflower, wrapped a rope around the pony's neck, and led her into the back field. With no further ceremony Joe hopped on, Bloom let go, and immediately Joe was revolving like a pinwheel about six feet above the ground while Sunflower just trotted out from underneath him.

Joe sat in alfalfa, momentarily stunned, while Bloom and Nancy writhed in paroxysms of wonderful idiotic laughter. Herbie Goldfarb just stared dumbfoundedly at the scene.

“You'll never ride that horse!” Bloom shrieked. “Never, never,
never
!”

“Maybe not,” Joe said with a hurt, puzzled grin. “But I sure aim to keep trying.”

With that, Herbie tipped up the booze bottle, killing it, wiped his lips with gusto, and was more than a little taken aback to hear himself boasting, “I can ride that horse.”

Nancy snorted; Joe howled, “You can ride that horse my
ass
!” And Bloom, abruptly alarmed, quit laughing in order to scrutinize Herbie closely, wondering was the volunteer okay, or had he suffered a nervous breakdown, or what?

Herbie's hands flapped expressively in the night air: “I can ride that horse,” he again declared.

“You can't even drive a car, how can you ride that horse?” Joe wanted to know.

“If he wants to commit suicide let him commit suicide,” Nancy giggled.

Joe said, “Charley, go get that horse.”

“Oh, hey, wait a minute,” Bloom protested. “I mean, a joke is a joke—”

“I can ride that horse,” Herbie insisted matter-of-factly, and suddenly he had never felt so cool and collected in his life.

“So get the horse,” Joe repeated. “The man said he can ride that horse.”

“Aw, why don't you all go home,” Bloom suggested, distressed by the ugliness in Joe's voice. “What's the point—”

“Get him the horse, Charley.”

“Yeah,” Herbie chimed in. “Go get me that horse.” And he giggled at Joe, who did not giggle back.

Cursing himself for answering the door, Bloom retrieved Sunflower and held her while the volunteer mounted up and Joe helped adjust the loose rope. Then Bloom kept holding onto the pony until Joe said impatiently, “Let go,” whereupon the lawyer released the horse and all hell broke loose.

Sunflower's hind end jerked up almost perpendicular and, as her heels still touched stars, she twisted her belly in a number rodeo people call a “sunfish,” causing Herbie to swivel around sideways, but not only did he hold onto the rope, he also kept his legs wrapped tightly around her chubby guts. So Sunflower bounced up, down, sideways, and backward, rearing and kicking and chopping, snorting furiously, only Herbie still wouldn't come unglued. He held onto that rope like it was a check for one million dollars, and although it felt as if maybe his spine was already busted and his balls had been split like fat grapes and his teeth had been jarred right out of his mouth, he kept holding on tightly, with the stars boiling around in his eyes like sparks shot from a cannon, and he saw Bloom and Joe and Nancy, too, rightside up here, upside down there, but he didn't fall off Sunflower, because the minute he had upturned that liquor bottle Herbie had known he was going to ride this pony if it killed him, or else die trying.

Sunflower unleashed every dirty trick in the book, she even twisted her head around and tried to bite his forearm, but Herbie rode her across Bloom's tiny field and back again, and within a minute the ferocious little horse was exhausted; she came down off a spinebender and stopped on a dime, twitched for a moment and let out a whole series of strange indignant whinnies, and then stood still, with Herbie still astride her, pleased as punch.

Somehow—God forbid the volunteer should question how—a miracle had occurred.

Who could speak? Who was a great enough human being to come up with words for this occasion? Nancy stared, Bloom stared, Joe stared. When the ringing departed from Herbie's brain, he realized that not only had he ridden a very cantankerous horse, he'd accomplished something nobody else had ever accomplished. And with that he understood that this moment was probably one of the most precious moments, if not
the
most precious moment, in his life, a triumph he would treasure forever, a foolhardy act that had turned into a stupendous victory of mythic proportions, a single, violent, heroic experience that had made his summer worthwhile. He could brag about this for eternity, to his future lovers, to his wives, to his children, to his grandchildren. His tombstone would be a simple plaque, inscribed: “Herbert Goldfarb, 1948–?” And then: “He rode Sunflower.”

In what could not be characterized as other than a patronizing manner, Herbie patted the horse. Then, letting go the rope, he quietly dismounted. Sunflower's ears lay back flat, but she was defeated; she couldn't move. And Herbie, standing there cupping his aching testicles as he faced Joe and Nancy and Bloom, grinned at them like a movie star.

A hush such as rarely fell over the Miracle Valley fell now. Crickets and frogs halted their nocturnal prattling for a moment as if in homage to this great event, owls ruffled their feathers and were still, the dogs in town and the coyotes on the mesa quit issuing bloodthirsty challenges to each other—the world grew remarkably still as a Jewish star was born.

Then, moving unsteadily more from amazement than from all the booze he had consumed, Joe Mondragón marched up to Herbie Goldfarb and punched that smart-ass East Coast son of a bitch right in his prissy little nonviolent mouth.

*   *   *

And Pacheco, asleep, laboring for his life, breathing stertorously, dreamed.

It was five o'clock on a summer evening. Bees simmered; a lush apricot swoon weighted the air. His wife was playing the piano; Chopin, a prelude. Men, irrigating in the silver fields, paused, leaning contemplatively on their shovel handles, to listen. A sheep bell clanked … animals lazing home. Dust, stirred up by the day's traffic on the roads, hung softly, a beige mist across the fields. Melvin, who died later on in Korea, caressed the slow August landscape, chasing butterflies. The laughter of children a half-mile away carried clearly across the fields, somehow releasing memories of making love early on a frosty autumn morning, when people could hear the ax blows of their neighbors chopping wood all across the small valley.

Then Death, decked out in a sombrero, a serape, and shiny silver spurs, a spicy carnival apparition dancing over the little village, chuckled like a dove, winked in a joking, comradely fashion at Pacheco, and jitterbugged quietly on into the resplendent and remarkably spangled horizon.