by John Nichols
Eventually, they reached the river and sat down to rest. The water was high and swift and a little cloudy from spring runoff. A band of dampness circled Eloy’s hat; the armpits and back of his workshirt were drenched with sweat as well as blood. Joe too was soggy. And groggy. And unable to think.
“Well,” he sighed, “we did it.”
“I’m tired.” Eloy scratched his nose. “It’s stupid for just two men to clean the acequia. We used to clean this little veina with twenty men, and it only took half an hour.”
“But we did it. The thing will function.”
“I first cleaned this ditch when I was eleven. That would have been what…?” He tilted his head back dreamily, calculating. “Around 1906, qué no?”
“Hace muchos años.”
“Yes.” Eloy nodded. Joe forced himself to check the old man’s eyes: queerly out of focus, they drifted. On his lips played a sad and compassionate smile. Joe’s attention was drawn to Eloy’s hands: they seemed exquisite, tender, all-powerful. If only they would touch him, embrace his shoulders, communicate safety … courage … well-being. But how to ask for that succor?
Eloy made a simple gesture. “I am the last leaf upon this tree, as the poet said. I never thought it would happen. Nobody thought it could happen. Sometimes I have felt sad, I have pitied myself, I have given myself headaches. Today I went a little crazy. I thank you for helping me. We did not lose our dignity.…”
Joe said, “It’s a beautiful day.” The trees surrounding them and the river literally shivered with silken tranquillity and the condoling permanence of natural things. Way far away police sirens continued faintly whining.
“Every day is so beautiful.” Eloy smiled: playfulness leavened his tired eyes. “I never woke up but what the day was beautiful. Even if I cursed the rain or the winter ice, it was okay. Weather is perfect, just like horses and sheep. Today is perfect also. Right now I am calm. I have no regrets. My sorrow is for you, and your future, and the future of your family.”
“It’s all right. I’m responsible for everything I did.”
Leaves rustled overhead as a breeze swept through the cottonwoods. Joe almost hallucinated; he could picture his daughter, with her pants rolled up, wading along, peering intently into the magical depths. He could picture his son seated on a nearby rock, mesmerized by the currents. An overwhelming urge to protect the world hit Joe. Compassion flooded his heart; his real connections were to human universals far more important than the petty brouhahas constituting his own little plight. Because he realized this, with luck one day he might actually have a legitimate shot at growing up to be something more than just another self-interested American consumer. He might learn to make contributions beyond his own bailiwick. If only—
Joe experienced a rare, disquieting thrill. Inside him stirred inklings of a new sense of responsibility, not just for his own offspring, but for things, ideas, human beings way beyond them. Was it too late to retrench his life in favor of society, humanity, the planet…?
Eloy murmured, “Even if we had succeeded in exchanging ownership of my property with each other, I could never have walked away from it on my own.”
“Listen, please, I mean…”
“A bad thing is that you won’t even get back your earnest money. The day after you paid it, I signed your check over to the hospital. If I had not done that, last Monday their lawyer would have initiated proceedings to—I can’t think of the word. To garnishee the land, is that it?”
“Close enough. But—”
“I thought perhaps a miracle would happen. You would earn the dollars with your drugs to pay me. After that, I hoped you would let me remain on your property. While you raised your new house, I thought perhaps I could stay, helping to build it. I feel ashamed, but I had those plans. Many times when you came over recently I deliberately avoided you by staying indoors or hiding in the outhouse so as not to face you. And every night I have lain awake desperately trying to think how, if somehow you managed to purchase the land, I could convince you to let me stay on.”
“It’s over,” Joe said. “Neither of us wins.”
“I was so torn apart,” Eloy continued. “For months now my thoughts have been shady, desperate, criminal. I cannot tell you how much vergüenza I have felt. I prayed that Scott Harrison would die, that the bank would self-destruct. I thought of setting fire to the hospital. When I heard that you might be divorced, I was both happy and frightened. On the one hand I hoped that even if you bought my place, the legal snarls would allow me more time on it. On the other hand, it terrified me to think that then the land would be claimed by others. At which point my last hopes for staying on would have flown the coop. You understand, I held out for almost two years, waiting to unload it, stalling the hospital and other creditors, until I found you. I didn’t want to give that land to just anybody.”
“Why choose me? I’m hardly a paragon of working-class virtue.”
“You had a look.” Eloy chucked a pebble into the river. “I sensed a rapport. You did not seem as greedy as most others. I don’t know. Your eyes appear gentle.…”
“I’m glad somebody sees something in me.”
Eloy smiled thinly. “You were patient: for that I am grateful. Myself, I have been a sneak and a thief with you; for that I apologize. Yesterday afternoon, however, I reached a conclusion. I knew that my life here was almost over. That’s why I loaded up the pickup and scattered my smaller animals. After that, I had plans to kill myself. First, however, I needed to kill Geronimo and Duke and Wolfie—but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Then I realized I should clean the acequia and do a final irrigation before I died. And when I awoke this morning, all of a sudden I had a rage to live. That’s when I mustered the absurd courage to rob the bank. It was stupid. We never had a chance.”
Eloy paused. A kingfisher rattled by overhead. Joe threw a pebble into the water and kept silent.
“Last night I dreamed I irrigated my field. Then I took my old rifle, the .25-.35 I used to hunt deer with. Fitting a single bullet into the chamber, I blew out my old man’s senile brains. I died with the smell of my land in my nose. With the cool wet smell of a newly irrigated field in my heart.”
“You’re not gonna die. Soon as we finish here, I’ll drive us to the hospital. You’re as strong as ten men.”
“Let’s put it this way. I realized, eventually, that I couldn’t bump myself off. In fact, when I awoke this morning in puro sunshine, I realized all those suicide thoughts were just stupid prattlings inside a tired brain. I love this life too much to throw it away just like that because I am ashamed of acting like a fool. Nossir,” he said, unable to look Joe in the eye, “while we have been cleaning this acequia I realized that I never could commit suicide. In fact, I realized that if you had actually bought my land, in order to take possession of it for yourself, even though you paid for it, you would have had to kill me to claim it.”
“I wouldn’t have killed you.”
“This life is too sweet,” Eloy said fervently. “Also, I could tell you really don’t know beans about land, or about animals. That one-point-seven acres needed me.”
Joe was exhausted from the effort to withhold tears. “I know. I agree. And it’s over.”
“Yes, it’s over.…”
Joe turned away, ashamed to have Eloy see him weeping. “I’m sorry it came to this,” he blubbered. “I wish it hadn’t. I don’t know what to say. I can’t deal with all this calamity.…”
Eloy tapped his back. “Calmate, primo. We’re not finished yet. Are you hurt badly?”
“I can’t tell. I’m afraid to touch myself. There’s no hurt, only numbness.”
“Bueno, let’s go, then.” Eloy coughed, wiped his nose, and hawked a bloody lunger into some weeds. “We must build a headgate fast in order to irrigate before dark.”
First, they dug a passage through the riverbank, connecting the acequia with the fast-flowing river. Then they gathered large dead cottonwood branches, lodging them in the
water at an upstream slant to the mouth of the vein, funneling water into the ditch. Blood swirled away from their legs as they waded in the water. After that, they canvassed the riverbank for stones and lugged large rocks over to the headgate, lodging them against branches to keep them in place. Finally, Eloy found some old tires which they filled with rocks and sank against the tree branches, weighting down the makeshift dam.
They followed the road home. In Eloy’s back field, they gathered at the fence where the ditch entered the property, waiting for the water. It seemed to take forever. Eloy unzipped his fly and pissed into the ditch; the urine was red; Joe averted his eyes.
“For luck,” Eloy explained, flicking the last drops off his penis and smiling wanly.
In due course, it appeared. Excitedly, Eloy exclaimed: “Ya lo veo!”
And it came—an onrushing rivulet of muddy water only a few inches deep, pushing before it an earthen foam full of dry grass-stalks. Eloy raised the guillotinelike wooden blade on one headgate, and water tumbled into the field, gathering momentum, spreading quickly.
“Now what do you do?” Joe asked.
The old man smiled. “I wait until this part of the field is soaked. Then I drop the headgate, and open another one farther across the field. After this half is done, I open the gate at that turn, over there, and flood the eastern half. It’s easier there, the land is flat.”
Eloy limped off, checking his headgates. The sun was behind him and sinking fast—it seemed as if the old man walked through liquid fire. As the sun lowered even further, the afternoon metamorphosed into a savage, golden time. Joe couldn’t move. He was incapacitated by serenity, sadness, a sense of loss. Though he had no desire to sleep, his eyelids drooped sleepily. As birds landed in the widening puddle, their exclamations grew remote, reaching him like cries from a distant childhood. Joe savored the moment, afraid of it, and aware that if he survived he would be haunted by its memory. Eloy leaned on his shovel handle, his eyes absorbed by the fingers of water spreading into the short grass. Occasionally, when little ramparts of foam and dry grass-stems impeded the flow, he moved forward, applying his shovel with spare, certain strokes. Moving along the ditch banks, he flicked out an old beer can, chopped at a recalcitrant stalk, and occasionally wandered out into the field to check on progress.
Birds gathered in nearby trees, their sharp eyes hunting worms and bugs carried to the surface. A sparrow hawk landed on a dead cottonwood branch: head cocked, it searched the field for fleeing mice. Magpies swooped from the sky and waddled through inch-deep puddles, spearing tidbits. Redwing blackbirds, grackles, and starlings alighted in the water and began to gobble.
It was enough to make you weep for joy; it was enough to make you bawl in outrage. My God, Joe wondered frantically, how could anybody possibly protect this fragile earth, or the few people—like Eloy Irribarren—who truly cared for it? What would you have to do, sandbag the field, set up machine-gun nests, and do a national mailing each week soliciting funds for the legal fight to protect the Lovatos acequia, so that this tiny field would be allowed to produce what it had produced for a millennium?
“It sure looks pretty, and it sure is peaceful,” Joe said.
“Yessir.” Eloy took off his hat, drying his brow against the crook of an elbow. “It sure is.”
It seemed to Joe as if his blood were slowing down. They perched on the ditch bank, their attention fixed hypnotically on the spreading water. Everything settled into place as if posing for a photograph—the birds, the leaves, shadows, the reflections of sky in the slowly spreading irrigation water. And the people did too: Joe saw the phantoms of his children in the scene again, robbed of the futures this sweet terrain could have given. Michael was half turned, looking backward expectantly at his father as if for permission to grow up; Heather, with her lips pursed, stared at a sparrow hawk on the dead cottonwood limb.…
Eloy cried, “Dios! Cabrón!” Startled birds fluttered up, alighting in nearby trees as the old man dropped to his knees.
Joe whirled, stumbling, and almost fell into the shallow flood. Eloy dug his right hand into the cool water, and splashed his face. Then, gasping, he made a plaintive, questioning gesture, and died.
Joe gathered up the old rancher. The body weighed next to nothing. Had the skin split, a diaphanous white fluff, such as that contained in a milkweed pod, would have floated out of the corpse. And Joe stood there, cradling Eloy’s body in his arms, waiting for something to happen.
Birds sailed back down out of the trees, landed, and resumed searching for food. Transformed by the setting sun, the water glowed as in a burnished dream. Sirens wailed in a remote, molasses-thick way as if echoing from memory instead of real life. Everywhere, the air was absolutely stilled.
Joe closed his eyes, held on to Eloy tightly, and absorbed the tragic hush. Automobile tires crunched on driveway gravel; doors slammed; men called out orders. A voice, magnified through a bullhorn, issued an ultimatum. “Put the old guy down, Miniver, then place your hands on your head and walk toward us, slowly.”
Joe kept his eyes shut tightly … and giggled, envisioning the headlines:
SPASTIC DUO FLUBS BANK HEIST: COPS NAIL MAD DOG MINIVER IN DAMP FIELD WITH DEAD GEEZER IN ARMS!
The sun warmed his eyes: he changed position slightly, facing that radiant glow. Veins in the protective skin lay like pretty flower stalks across his blindness. Eloy seemed poised, ready to perish weightlessly from his arms. His children had apprehensive faces, so fragile. Heidi tried to cup his heart in her strong hands. They had missed the point, coveting wrong things, wasting precious energy. If only a person could protect the Dianas and Irénés and Eloys. Tears curled over his upper lip; his tongue moved, tasting salt. Joe Hill had called out his own finish: “Ready … aim … fire!” Gently, Joe bent over, eyes still closed, and relieved himself of the human burden, setting Eloy’s feathery corpse on the ditch bank. Straightening, then, he faced them blindly, and, removing Diana’s pistol from his pocket, he pointed it at where he surmised they had gathered.
Joe knew it was a foolhardy move. “I don’t wanna die,” he whispered. But it seemed absolutely important, at last in his slipshod existence, to make that gesture.
He never heard the gunshot: nor felt death when it hit him.
* * *
THEN DARKNESS rolled softly across the soaking field; it consumed the trees and, soon, the entire valley. Finally, it lapped up gently to cover the brooding mountains and declared itself in residence over everything for a while.
EPILOGUE
Fear not.
Departure toward the South
Brings good fortune.
A million years ago during his college days, if he had no classes in the early spring afternoons, Joe would lie down on his bed, tune the radio to soft pop music, and open the window a bit, allowing lilac and daffodil breezes to drowsily ruffle his hair. Still as a mouse in mellifluous sunshine, he would lie, happily cupping his groin as he leisurely drifted into sleep. For maybe an hour, just beneath the surface, he would dream, floating through a delectably lazy time, free of all woes, saturated with a sense of voluptuous irresponsibility. Then slowly he would emerge into wakefulness again. Whatever guided those wonderful soporific sessions let nothing jar his indolent ascent back into the world. And for a while, even with open eyes, his body seemed caught in the longest, sweetest orgasm ever. When finally he urged himself into a sitting position, gingerly settled his feet on the floor, and ran fingers through his matted hair, it felt almost like a crime not to prolong forever the woozy, syrup-laden mood.
It resembled that now, awakening. Lulled by a demure background drone and the swishing of a weightless fabric such as silk, Joe came to slowly, savoring the luscious mood. He thought at first, Perhaps I’m hospital-bound, morphined into rapture and protected from terrestrial noises by a sophisticated bubble-shaped plastic breathing apparatus enclosing my entire body. But why open his eyes, finding out? This was too peaceful.
A slow and thoughtful lurc
h occurred. Was he floating, lodged in Ralph’s somehow airborne sensory isolation tank? Again he rocked gently, as if on a fuzzy vapor, this time to the other side. Joe smiled, listening for the easy, nostalgic music from his college days. Instead, he heard a vaguely familiar rustle. Flowers? Satin sheets? Wings? His body felt creamy, infinitely delicate, and clean, as if he had just been bathed in very hot water, patted dry with a soft white towel, and sprinkled with Johnson’s Baby Powder. Ecstasy was the name of this game, and Joe lay quite still, hoping to prolong it indefinitely.
Again he tilted, this time semi-severely, in a way he associated only with airplanes. And that did it. Though the action was smooth, perfectly controlled, at the buzz word airplane his heart lurched, and a tremor danced from his toes to his eyelids, killing the peaceful fog nullifying his anxiety centers.
Nevertheless, Joe held his eyes shut, desperate to sustain this carefree state. Such passive, erotic drunkenness infused his slugabed body. Heaven had never felt better.
Heaven?
Airplanes?
Joe thought, Oh no, I’d better open at least one eye.
He lifted the lid carefully, as if hesitantly raising it with delicate tweezers. And at first, the exterior world made little sense. What was this, the inside of a cocoon from the caterpillar’s perspective? About a foot above Joe’s head the rounded inner wall of an enormous silken-fibered chrysalis emitted a nacreous glow. Behind closed eyes he had thought himself prone; however, now he beheld himself seated in a body-molded cottony armchair, his head resting on an invisible cushion.
Joe opened the other eye.
He was, in effect, imprisoned in a shiny, spun-glass tube that quivered faintly, being airborne. Through a circular rent in the enveloping fiber—a tear-shaped porthole—Joe could see a limpid crepuscular sky, a tilted horizon, and the merging tones of the Chamisa Valley far below sprinkled with salt-and-peppery lights.
Aloft, in a soundless flying machine, and rising!