by John Nichols
Men had trouble accepting Ruby’s strength; they were flabbergasted by both her loveliness and her vitality. Many who did not peg Ruby for a witch called her The Ant because she was so busy all the time, and because it almost seemed that she could lift and manipulate objects ten times her weight and size.
There was one story about Ruby Archuleta everyone in Milagro took for the gospel truth. The incident occurred, so the self-appointed historians drawled, when Ruby was a young woman living alone close to the Rio Lucero at a point on the mesa where the stream ran in the open, unhidden by trees, for about two miles before plunging into a gorge that deepened abruptly as the water cascaded toward the Rio Grande.
It was the middle of a very bitter winter, so the story goes. A terrible winter for the sheep and for all other animals. Cattle far out on the mesa died when hay could not be trucked in. For weeks on end the windows of all the houses were patterned with elaborate jungles of ice. Although piñon fires burned in stoves day and night, dwellings stayed barely warm; outside, trucks would not start. People were snowed in for weeks, some nearly starved. And bear and deer wandered miserably down from the high country, seeking food.
Despite the severe cold, every morning at daybreak, before lighting a fire or cooking breakfast, Ruby emerged from her house stark naked with her soft red hair coiled across her pale shoulders, and headed for the river where she splashed briefly in a small pocket of rushing water. The river below this pool was smoothed over, icy, frozen solid.
On the one particular day of this story, Amarante Córdova, on horseback and searching for a rabbit or a deer, happened to top a rise about a quarter mile from Ruby’s digs just in time to observe her trip to the river. Naturally, never before having blundered onto such a wonderful sight, he couldn’t believe his eyes. So what could he do but gape as she ducked into that turbulent pool in front of the iced-over river? Then, as Ruby jumped from the water, Amarante noticed a deer tiptoeing through the sagebrush fifteen yards from where the woman had bathed. The instant Ruby spotted the buck she charged after it. Frightened, the deer veered through the sage, aiming in a northerly direction toward the river. Of course, when the animal struck the smooth ice its legs splayed and it skidded, unable to regain its balance, no longer able to flee. Catching up, the young woman flung her arms around its neck, moved her hands higher, and grabbed the antlers. For a moment both the deer and the woman were fused together, as frozen and as straining as the winter air, Ruby’s hair already a glaze of transparent crystals, her breasts powdered with white ice; then she snapped the buck’s head sharply back, breaking its neck, and the blood suddenly gushing from the animal’s mouth covered her icy body as she lifted the deer and carried it back to her house.
The killing of that deer was a story which had become legend. Joe Mondragón’s beanfield was another story which might also one day grow to the proportions of myth. And it happened that shortly after Joe cut water illegally into his field, Ruby Archuleta, her son Eliu, Claudio García, and Marvin LaBlue stopped to cast a first appraising and appreciative glance at Joe’s field. For an extended pensive moment Ruby stood with her hands on her hips, an ash growing long on the cigarette held tightly between her unpainted lips. Even after the men grew bored and returned to listen to the truck’s radio, Ruby stayed by the field, thinking about that damp earth, those fragile beansprouts.
And when finally she rejoined her crew at the truck, Ruby was grinning broadly. She hoisted herself spryly into the back, then suddenly broke into happy laughter.
“I knew José Mondragón couldn’t go through his entire life,” she sang, “without attempting one great thing!”
* * *
Joe Mondragón (who, after the initial euphoria wore off, had begun to wonder if his beanfield might be such a great thing after all), was sitting on a bench fixing a boot to the inside of his pickup’s left rear tire, when a mangy, flat-headed, obscene-looking, bowlegged, vomit-yellow male cat with its ears rotted down to bloody nubs from frostbite, and sporting a grotesque pair of enormous furry black balls, stiff-leggedly entered the yard, trailed by (but apparently oblivious to) three angry and very noisy magpies who were pecking at its tail and raising an intolerable ruckus.
Out of habit, Joe picked up a rock and winged it at this apparition of feline death warmed over, missing by a mile. The magpies flapped away, but, unfazed, the cat merely halted and settled down, tail wrapped comfortably around itself, contemplating Joe through unperturbed, sleepyish snake eyes.
“Hey, scram!” Joe hurled the six-inch-long butt-end of a two-by-four at the cat. But again the projectile landed way off its mark, and the animal didn’t flinch.
Joe trotted inside, returning to the yard a few seconds later toting a package of Chinese firecrackers. Lighting the main fuse, he tossed the entire package at the scruffy intruder, setting off a berserk orchestration of flash-bangs. The cat roused itself as a matter of protocol and arched lazily, politely frizzing the fur just behind its snake-shaped head, and when the dust had settled and the gunpowdery smoke had drifted across the yard, the animal sat down, sleepily closed its eyes, and commenced purring as it gently kneaded the dusty earth.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned.” Joe had to admire a tomcat with that kind of balls. So, muttering “Fuck you, gato,” he went back to his boot.
After a while the animal stood up, stretched, sauntered casually across the yard, and disappeared into the henhouse.
“Okay, friend, enough is enough!” Joe grabbed a hoe with which to chop the obnoxious cat in two, and entered the henhouse expecting to catch the animal stalking one of his prize egglayers.
Instead, the ragged tom was curled up in an egg box, contentedly snoozing.
Joe leaned his hoe against the wall and scrutinized this battered old refugee for a moment, wondering, what the hell kind of omen is this, anyway?
Then, retreating to the house, he popped open a tallboy and slumped at the kitchen table, watching Nancy mop the floor. Their three kids, Billy, Larry, and Luisa, were flopped acrobatically around the living room avidly gooning at the television.
Because he felt mean and unsettled, Joe barked, “How come those kids are watching TV?”
Nancy kept right on mopping. “Ask the kids, not me.”
Joe glowered at her. “What’s the matter with you today?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me that wouldn’t be better if you went back outside where you belong.”
Joe smirked unpleasantly and drank. Then he snarled, “You kids get out of here, understand?”
They shifted their sweet arrogant little gazes over to their father, then to their mother—who merely shrugged at them while wiping a strand of hair off her forehead.
“What’s the matter?” Joe growled. “You didn’t hear me? I’ll go get a belt.”
“Aw, c’mon…” Larry, the eldest, whined. “Ma said we could watch TV.”
“I’m gonna call up Joe S. Mondragón’s Radio and TV Repair in Chamisaville and have that damn thing repossessed,” Joe spat. “I didn’t raise my kids to sit around the house in the middle of summer lapping up that garbage. And anyway, you’re learning too much English. So get out of here. All of you. Beat it!”
“What’s the matter with you today?” Nancy wanted to know.
“Nothing’s the matter with me. I came inside to have a beer in peace—turn it off, Larry! Yeah, just like that—all the way off. Now beat it, huh?” And to his wife: “How come you use so much pneumonia every time you mop the floor?”
“Ammonia, dummy!” Nancy grinned, leaned the mop handle against a counter, fetched herself a tallboy from the fridge, and sat down opposite him at the table, deliberately popping the top in such a way that foam splashed into her husband’s face. “Hey,” she said calmly, suppressing a giggle but not the sarcasm in her voice, “what’s the matter with my rough tough little cream puff this afternoon?”
Without moving to wipe the foam off his forehead and nose, Joe threatened quietly, “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t
done that.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Nancy sucked in a third of her can, gulping loudly, and released a noisy satisfied sigh. “I’m scared, José. I’m trembling I’m so scared.”
They sat in silence for a minute, Nancy smiling at Joe, Joe staring at his beer can and drawing pictures with his finger in the puddles on the table.
“Stella Armijo called,” Nancy said after a while. “She said she talked with Betty Apodaca, and Betty told her she was in the Pilar waiting on tables and overheard Horsethief Shorty Wilson talking to Harlan Betchel, and Shorty told Harlan Bernie Montoya went to the state chota pendejo factory in Doña Luz about your beanfield. That was a long time ago, before those jerks from the capital came up. Lydia Martínez called too, and she said when she was mopping up over at Pedro Hirsshorn’s Land of Enchantment whorehouse for tourists she heard Pedro “the Pedo” himself talking with Zopi Devine on the telephone, and she said afterward the Pedo told Nick Rael that the Zopilote was gonna fly down to the capital and talk with the governor about your beanfield.”
Sarcastically, Joe said, “Thanks for all the wonderful information.”
“Charley Bloom called too. He thinks you two should talk things over some more.”
Joe shrugged, trying to appear nonchalantly caustic instead of scared stiff.
“I guess everybody is scared,” Nancy said.
“I don’t see what over,” Joe grumbled.
“If you ask me, you’re scared too.”
“Who asked you?”
She retorted, “Actually, maybe you’re right. Who needs to ask about what’s so obvious?”
Joe looked up at her. “What do you want,” he proposed quietly, “a punch in the mouth?”
Reaching across the table, Nancy laid her hand gently over his. “You and whose army, José?”
“I’ll hit you so hard,” Joe said, “they’ll stop you in El Paso for speeding.”
“So? I’ll hit you back. What do you think I am, afraid of you? I’ll stab you in the back if you hurt me. I’ll shoot you in self-defense. You don’t think I won’t—? Feel my muscle.”
“Ai, Chihuahua,” Joe whined miserably, withdrawing his hand from under hers and resting his chin unhappily in both hands. “I had to marry a scorpion.”
“Eusebio Lavadie called too,” Nancy informed him.
“That’s the fifth time in the past two weeks.” As an afterthought Joe muttered unconvincingly: “I’ll bust his nose.”
“He apologized again.”
“Whatta you mean, he apologized again?”
“He just said to tell you he hadn’t understood all the facts back in the beginning and to let you know he was sorry.”
“‘Sorry,’” Joe moaned sarcastically. “He’s ‘sorry.’ He struts around with his tongue sticking up the Zopilote’s whosit and with a machete in each hand cutting off everybody else’s whatsits. His father Meliton was the lousy patrón of this hapless burg who invited old man Devine to come on in and suck the blood out of our veins and the marrow out of our bones, and he’s ‘sorry.’”
“He’s scared,” Nancy said. “Just like you and me.”
“Speak for yourself, numskull.”
Finishing her beer, Nancy snagged Joe’s, killing it also. Too depressed to protest, he grumbled, “Thanks for all the support.”
“I’m behind you, sweet.”
“That’s what I need.” Joe grinned a little in spite of himself. “Your poisonous mouth behind me. That should keep me out of trouble, alright.”
“All you got right now is my mouth.” Nancy’s eyes flashed in a fierce, tender way. “You better treat me with respect.”
“Since when did you ever treat me with respect?”
“Ever since I knew you, amor,” she replied languidly, fetching two more tallboys from the fridge.
Joe flexed his hands. They were scarred, bruised, calloused, greasy; one fingernail was black and blue and coming off—some hands. He could see his name in blinking neon lights: Featuring JOE MONDRAGÓN AND HIS MISS AMERICA HANDS! He cast a surreptitious glance at Nancy’s hands and they weren’t much better: red, tough, scratched, clobbered, the fingers permanently bent from being wrapped around mops, wrench handles, shovels, and the like—she could work as hard as him, maybe even harder … so why didn’t she buy some of that pink creamy gunk they were always hyping you with on TV? And Joe had a flash, then, of their wedding day eight years ago, driving all around town in those cars covered with paper pom-poms and colored streamers, honking their horns, with the kids and dogs running after them, and all the people waving from their houses and gardens and from the wet green fields—
“Oh, hell,” Joe griped. “I just dunno…”
And he wanted to discuss with her the funny way he felt. Like he was so tired and played out and uncertain of where he’d been going ever since he was a kid that he actually occasionally wanted this beanfield thing to blow up into something where he would wind up walking out his front door with a rifle blazing, only to be riddled for once and for all by their fucking bullets in return. The thing was, Joe had never had a firm grasp on anything, he had never really understood his own motivations, he had never had an idea where he was going. He didn’t even know if he loved Nancy or his children. However he operated, he had operated instinctively. And mostly it was all too much work. He was exhausted from waking up apprehensive every morning of his life. And he envied his wife one thing: she loved him and she loved their brats, and that was her life—to feed them, keep house, and fight to protect them. She understood—maybe not exactly where she was or where they were going—but she understood the boundaries of her life, and the tasks that needed doing within those boundaries.
They sat there in silence finishing up their second tallboys, moving into thirds. The kids sneaked in, turning the TV back on, and neither parent paid attention. Outside it began to thunder a little, a few raindrops fell, then a wind blew the clouds back over the mountains. Joe had an urge to make love, but that was something he had never tried in broad daylight, not while it was still light out and work could be done.
“We owe on the pickup, the washing machine, the TV, and the refrigerator,” Joe announced glumly.
“Don’t worry. I mean, you know—what else is new?”
“‘Don’t worry.’” He glared at her, this time with real hostility. “I been worried ever since I was born.”
Nancy was a little drunk. “Screw your self-pity, José. Go tell it to the sheep.”
“Speaking of sheep, how we doing for meat?” Joe asked a few minutes later.
“Not so good. In fact we don’t have any.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go kill one of those kids, then.”
“I’ll help…”
Reeling a little, bumping into each other, they went out to the goat pen.
“You tie up the kid,” Joe said. “I forgot a knife.”
While he plodded back for the knife, Nancy caught a small brown billy, tying its left hind leg to its left front leg, then she fastened the right hind leg to a metal hook in the low ceiling of the dilapidated tool shack next to the goat pen. When Joe returned with the knife and a clean plastic bucket, he was trailed by the kids, all three of whom loved a good butchering. He gave Nancy the bucket and, without a word, clamped a hand around the dangling kid’s muzzle; then with one stroke he laid open its throat and held the animal for a moment, with the blood gushing over his fingers and into the bucket Nancy held, until the body quit twitching. Nodding, then, he let go and went to the doorway. There he licked the hot blood off his fingers and watched as that ugly yellow cat calmly devoured a small water snake over by the irrigation ditch.
Joe felt more uncomfortable than he had in ages. Danger, maybe even evil, floated on the air, thick as the scent of fox. But, not knowing what to do about it, Joe just stood there, quietly licking his fingers clean and not thinking, because in the final analysis he understood no more about life and death and politics and love and the human soul than the next man.
&nb
sp; * * *
Nick Rael’s wife Dorothy had divorced him some years back; she currently lived in Chamisaville with three of their four children, Buddy, Sonny, and Lizzie Rael, and Nick lived in Milagro in a modest adobe house right next to the store with the fourth kid, Jerry, and his eighty-nine-year-old mother. Jerry was as normal as any other awkward fourteen-year-old adolescent, but Nick’s mother, Mercedes, was another story altogether. “All her marbles are loose,” the locals were fond of saying, “and you can hear them rattling when she walks around town at night.”
Actually, Mercedes Rael wasn’t much for walking around town at night, but occasionally she did manage to jump the picket fence surrounding Nick’s house and yard and go for some protracted aimless strolls, either up into the mountains, in which case a posse usually had to be formed to hunt her down before she starved to death, or else sometimes she liked to wander down the middle of the north–south highway dressed in whatever she happened to be wearing at the time, which could run the gamut from elaborate floor-length lace nightgowns and puffy lounging robes, to nothing. More than once the various lawmakers and town officials had suggested to Nick that he should either lock his mother up in the house every day while he was next door in the store and every night while he was asleep, or, better yet, deposit her in the state funny farm down in the capital and make everybody involved rest that much easier.
But Nick wasn’t about to commit his mom to the state bin, or even lock her up in the house all day. “If I lock her up,” Nick had explained more than once to more than one exhausted sheriff or state cop after a three-day search for Mercedes, “she gets clusterphobia. And when she gets clusterphobia she starts lighting matches. Once she set herself on fire, and another time she set her mattress on fire when I had her tied to the bedpost. If you take the matches away she starts to eat things, any things. Once she ate half the feathers in a pillow when I left her locked up all day. Another time she drank an entire bottle of tequila I had hidden way back in a corner cupboard. I’m telling you, boys, it’s better if she can move around. She likes to be out in the yard—”