by John Nichols
The topic under discussion this morning, as Joe tinkered with the tractor’s innards, was Kyril Montana’s top secret visit to Milagro and his top secret meeting in Bud Gleason’s living room.
“I guess they’re kind of worried down there,” Ray Gusdorf said. “I guess somebody down there don’t know whether to crap or get off the pot.”
Joe grinned. “They better be careful. Next time they send that chota up here he might fall in a well.”
The old men chuckled, the young men cackled, thinking that was a funny statement for Joe to make.
Ruby Archuleta asked, “What’s Bud Gleason’s stake in all of this? He ought to know better, it seems to me.”
“Oh, hell, that Bud Gleason,” Tobías Arguello said. “He’d sell the boots off his mother’s corpse. If there wasn’t but one piece of land left in the county, and that was his own, with his house on it and everything, he wouldn’t think twice to put it on the block.”
“Somebody ought to leave a dead horse on his doorstep,” Joe said, grunting as he turned a wrench.
“He’d tie a pink ribbon around it and try and sell it to the vultures,” Benny Maestas laughed.
“All the same, he’s got no right to let that cop in his living room,” Claudio García observed.
Gomersindo Leyba said, “Knowing Bud, he probably rented his living room out at six dollars an hour to that state cop.”
“What was the name of the chota again?” Ruby asked.
“Somebody said Montana.”
“Like the state of Montana? With a name like that, he’s Chicano?”
“Nope. I heard Anglo. And his first name’s Ken.”
“Carl. I heard Carl.”
“Ken or Carl, where’s he from, the capital?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“But who sent him up here?”
“The chotas. Or the governor. Who knows? Why do they always send those bastards up here?”
“I never saw him around before, though.”
“You seen one chota you seen them all.”
Ruby Archuleta, seated on an old engine block and smoking a cigarette, said, “They send him up like that, saying those things he said at that meeting, they must mean business. That guy didn’t just come up here to look at the scenery.”
“How come Lavadie was there? Is he a cop too? I didn’t know he was a cop.”
“He ain’t a cop, for crissakes. He was there for Zopi Devine.”
“What’s the Zopilote got to do with all this?”
“Well, most of it’s his land over there, where he’s planning to build that golf course when they put in the conservancy and the dam, qué no?”
“I ain’t irrigating his land,” Joe said. “That field ain’t his field, it’s my field.”
“It’s the state engineer’s office sent the chota, that’s who. They’re worried about their lousy dam.”
“Well, how’s my beanfield gonna hurt their dam?” Joe sneered.
Ruby said, “Probably they consider this some sort of organized resistance, or symbolic act.”
“Who organized it?” Joe asked petulantly. “I didn’t organize it. I didn’t talk to nobody. If I’d talked to anybody they would of told me not to stick my neck out. Nobody organized nothing.”
“All the same, they’re pretty worried,” Benny Maestas grinned. “Those chotas are walking around with their pants full of little itty-bitty goat-sized chota turds. They think this is a revolution.”
Everybody had a hearty laugh over that one.
“Maybe the Zopilote feels it’s a challenge or something,” Tobías Arguello said. “Maybe this Montana fellow knows something we don’t.”
With a stick Ray Gusdorf drew a line in the dirt. “Actually they probably just want to get us all stirred up and confused and at each other’s throats so that nothing bad or organized could happen around here.”
“What you all ought to do,” Johnny Pacheco said, “is get up some morning around 4:00 A.M. and irrigate the whole west side.”
“Ai, Chihuahua! Are you crazy, man?” Joe’s great-uncle gagged as if he had just swallowed a cat. “They’d set up a machine gun in front of Rael’s store and kill the whole bunch of you when you came back across the highway. What do you want to go and fool around with those bastards for? They’ll slit your throats without even saying hello if you start acting crazy like that.”
Tobías Arguello rolled a cigarette. “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t irrigate that field, José. Maybe innocent people will get involved. Or even hurt.”
“That’s my field,” Joe snarled. “I didn’t ask for help. Did anybody hear me call for help? I just felt like doing what I did, that’s all. Who heard me ask for help?”
“Nobody,” Ray Gusdorf said. “At least I didn’t.”
“I don’t need any help,” Joe said. “I never needed anybody’s help. Tell that to them chotas.”
“Maybe you’re going to need help, though,” Ruby mused.
“What for? I mean, tell me the truth, who really could care less about a crummy beanfield and a couple gallons of water?”
“That Carl Montana for one.”
Joe dismissed the cop with an arrogant wave of his hand, “Screw him.”
“Now wait a minute,” Marvin LaBlue drawled. “Now this thing isn’t just that simple, is it? I mean, I don’t know, but I sure don’t think it’s just this simple.”
“It isn’t,” Ruby said. “And we’re all involved. José, I don’t care what you say, that beanfield belongs to all of us.”
“When I harvest those beans I’m gonna eat those beans myself. Because those are my beans. I paid for the seed. I bought the gas for the tractor to turn over that earth.”
Silence ensued for a minute, while Joe angrily ripped a few things loose from the tractor’s engine and unloosened a couple of bolts.
“United we stand,” Eliu Archuleta said, “divided we fall.”
“Oh screw that Yankee Doodle bullshit,” Benny Maestas growled. “United we flounder, divided we flounder.”
“But what’s true is the truth,” said Gomersindo Leyba.
Juan F. Mondragón grumbled: “Me, I don’t want trouble. Every time one of us gets mad at one of them we go out and kill another one of us. Now you tell me, where’s the sense in that?”
“There is no sense in that.”
“Damn right there’s no sense in that.”
“That’s how come we should kill the chota, qué no?”
“Kill, kill, kill,” Nancy muttered sullenly. “Five days ago I told José, I said ‘José, I want to cook a turkey, go cut me off the head of one of the turkeys.’ So did he take the ax—who, José? Oh no, he’s from the Ford car company and he’s got a better idea. He takes the pistol. He’s gonna shoot me a turkey. All the turkeys, they’re gathered over by the sheep pen, only there’s just one arthritic old ewe over there, and five or six lambs we’re bottle-feeding; they’re lying in the straw, and the turkeys are out front. So José, he shoots the turkey. Only maybe he didn’t aim so good or something, because the turkey does a back flip, and flops all around for a minute, and then starts running around in the field, gobbling and going crazy, and all the other turkeys fly up into that big tree over there and don’t come down for three days, and one of the lambs is bleating like a stuck pig because the bullet passes right through wherever it hit the turkey and goes into the lamb, and one of the other lambs is so scared it runs into the wall and breaks its neck. So José had to shoot the other lamb he’d wounded, and then I had to take the shotgun and run down that damn crazy turkey—and then what happened? I broke a filling on a piece of buckshot when we ate it! So don’t talk to me about kill, kill, kill. I’m sick of it!”
Joe said, “Who asked you to talk?”
Nancy’s eyes flashed. “I’ll talk when I want to talk.”
“Nobody’s going to kill a chota,” Ruby said.
“Maybe I will if he messes with my field,” Joe snarled.
“I’m not going to
back you up with any shotgun,” Nancy threatened.
“Ai, Chihuahua!” Joe threw up his hands.
“It would be crazy to kill a chota,” Claudio García reasoned. “Anybody who wants to kill a chota should see a doctor, because when you start thinking like that it’s time to turn in the old brain for a new one.”
“Well, what was that bastard doing up here laying down that rap against José here?” Benny Maestas wanted to know. “I’ll go get that pendejo. What’s his address in the capital?”
Ruby said, “The thing is, they probably think we’re united. They probably think we’re all together in this.”
“You really think they’re that dumb?” Nancy asked bitterly.
“Well, we are in this all together, qué no?” Tobías Arguello mumbled passionately. “I’m behind José. I’ll help you irrigate that field, José.”
Joe shrugged. “A baby could irrigate that field. Amarante Córdova could irrigate that field with both hands tied behind his back. It’s set up so good you don’t have to do a thing, you just cut in the water and twenty minutes later it’s done.”
“In the old days—” Juan F. Mondragón began.
“Old days, old days—bah. This ain’t the old days anymore,” Joe snapped. “The old days been here and gone.”
“In the old days people were more together,” the old man insisted.
“In the old days a hundred throats were cut every Saturday night, and money was as rare as a rattlesnake higher than eight thousand feet, and everybody dropped dead from TB before they were forty.” Joe grimaced his teeth at his great-uncle. “Look at your mouth, Tío, it’s empty. And you come from the old days. But look at my mouth, it’s full of gold and silver and almost all the choppers I was born with. I’m gonna be chewing a steak when they say my rosary!”
“All this doesn’t have much to do with the beanfield,” Ruby complained.
“Just leave me in peace about my beanfield,” Joe sulked. “People start helping me, sure as hell it’ll get screwed up.”
“The fact remains,” insisted Ray Gusdorf, “that that Carl Montana fellow had a meeting at Bud Gleason’s with Bernabé and Lavadie, Meliton Naranjo, and—who else was there?”
“I heard the Zopilote himself.”
“No, he wasn’t there.”
“What about Horsethief Shorty?”
“I didn’t hear he was there either.”
“And Jerry Grindstaff—?”
Those that had heard something shrugged.
“Sammy Cantú was there,” said Gomersindo Leyba.
“Sammy Cantú couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.”
“But he was there, qué no?”
“Yeah, I heard he was there.”
“Mostly who he talked about, as I understand it,” said Ray Gusdorf, “was Charley Bloom. And of course you, Joe. He said irrigating that beanfield was your idea and his.”
“Bullshit.” Joe fumbled for the right-sized wrench in his toolbox. “That’s a lie. I never talked to anybody about it, I just went and did it. If I’d talked about it with somebody, we’d still be talking about it and arguing and fighting about was it good or bad or smart or stupid or whatever. If nobody around here had talked about what we were all gonna do the past two hundred years we wouldn’t all be hanging by our fingernails like we are today.”
“So what are we going to do?” Marvin LaBlue drawled laconically. “We aren’t just going to sit around on our fat duffs and do nothing, are we?”
“What can we do? Who made a move?”
“They made a move. They sent the chota.”
“The state engineer’s office sent a couple of their jerks to me and I told them to go to hell,” Joe said. “It was as simple as that. If this chota came around to see me, I’d tell him to go share a piece of hell with the state engineer’s idiots.”
“If you hadn’t told them to go to hell we wouldn’t be in all this hot water,” the great-uncle bitterly complained.
“Hot water?” Joe popped his eyes. “Where’s the hot water, Tío? What has happened?”
“You’ll see,” the old man pouted, retreating. “Pretty soon … I hate to think about it. You’ll see.”
“It’s my affair,” Joe said. “Why is everybody worried about my affair? I can handle it.”
“No, it’s our affair,” Ruby said firmly. “It’s your beanfield, but it represents all our beanfields. That dam is gonna hurt all of us, and we’re all gonna pay those conservancy district taxes, and there isn’t anybody here who hasn’t been screwed by Ladd Devine.”
“What does all that got to do with my beanfield?” Joe snapped. “I didn’t say I had a beef with the Zopilote.”
Benny Maestas laughed. “Wow, you people are too much. This is just too heavy. Chi-hua-hua!”
Gomersindo Leyba offered an opinion: “But José, you see, the trouble you started will affect us all. They think we’re united. That’s how come they sent the chota. To scare us so we won’t be united anymore. If they knew you were almost alone, José, they would break you in half like a matchstick and Ernie Maestas would throw you in the Chamisaville jail and eat the key.”
“I ain’t scared,” Joe bragged.
“I am,” Ruby said.
Everybody looked at her, and there was a moment of silence.
“Me too,” Nancy admitted. “I’m scared. I don’t care what José says. Suppose they kidnap the kids—”
“Oh Jesus, nobody’s gonna kidnap the kids!”
“Well, I don’t know…” Nancy murmured uncertainly.
Johnny Pacheco was disturbed by the sudden seriousness of the moment. “Ah, it’ll all blow over. Soon as you quit irrigating that useless field everybody will forget about it.”
“That field stays irrigated.” For emphasis, Joe spat.
“I don’t know. Maybe you should quit doing it,” Tobías Arguello said. “Maybe it isn’t worth it.”
“He speaks the truth,” said the great-uncle. “Everybody knows it isn’t worth it. For a lousy sack or two of beans?”
Ruby stood up. “I think it’s worth it.”
No one else said anything.
“And I think, whether we know it or not, that we’re united,” the Body Shop and Pipe Queen operator said gently. “I mean, how in God’s name can a bunch of sorry types like us live together in the same damn valley for three hundred years without being united? So there’s got to be a meeting.”
“What do you mean a meeting?”
“Of everybody. We’ll open the church…”
“Trouble,” groaned Juan F. Mondragón, “here comes trouble, big as an elephant, to flatten us all.”
* * *
Precisely these same sentiments were churning up the troubled mind of the sheriff as he guided his pickup onto the north–south highway, gave the finger to Ladd Devine’s pompous Miracle Valley sign, flinched uncomfortably as his vehicle’s tires whirred noiselessly over the painted cattleguard, and then gunned it down to Chamisaville.
It was noon, a lazy summer day. The Chamisaville News staff had gone to lunch; five drunks, three of them burned and twisted Indians, the other two bloated, sour Chicanos, were resting in a shady portal between La Paloma Liquors and the deserted News office. Farther on some teen-agers halfheartedly chopped at weeds along an irrigation ditch behind the junior high school football field bleachers. Beyond them, in a town park, Anglo mothers and fathers spilled from VW buses and bugs to pick up their kids who had been in a Monday–Wednesday playgroup. A sprinkler was going on Jim Hirsshorn’s lawn; Bernabé accorded the office a lackluster birdie as he glided slowly by, pinned down now in the tourist traffic, all but immersed in adobe dust.
By the time he reached the Kachina Motel the sheriff felt shitty, like he should have phoned Vera and canceled their appointment. But he had been chasing after tail on this strange clockwork schedule for so many years it had become a habit that couldn’t be broken, even if he did not enjoy it that much anymore. So he parked and slumped out of the
truck with a wistful sigh, locked up, and ambled slowly into the Kachina Bar’s purple gloom, bought a pint of Old Grandad from the bartender, Teddy Gallegos, checked his watch to make sure he wasn’t early, and went out back to 12G, on the other side of the swimming pool.
“It’s open,” Vera said, and he walked in. She smelled like daffodils and reminded Bernabé a little of the chubby, sexy Mexican actresses who played bit parts in taco westerns. Her face once had dark, very Indian features, but it was puffed out of shape now, sensual still, but well over there on the sad side of her early forties. Her pitch-black hair was nice, hairdresser tousled especially for him, and she had small pearls in her earlobes, like a little girl. She wore a dark yellow jersey, a short brown miniskirt, stockings, and high heels. Her body’s dumpling plumpness made warm and cuddly what could have looked nasty and cheap, and she was okay, a lonely and pretty gentle woman underneath. She understood Spanish but couldn’t speak it anymore, talking instead in a slurry English, so he spoke in English—“Hey, how you doing?”—as he went to where she was sitting on the bed and leaned over and kissed her, sliding his hand in a perfunctory way up the inside of a thigh, while she briefly touched his crotch and smiled the way she always smiled, strained like a person either worried about dust in the air or about to cry.
Seating himself at the dressing table, Bernabé peeled the sanitary cellophane wrappers off two glasses and poured them each a drink. She took her glass without comment, stirring the straight bourbon with her finger, and sipped reflectively while the sheriff also sipped. Eventually she asked, “So how’s Carolina?”