by John Nichols
With that he said good night and strode swiftly down the hill. But once inside his truck he felt so unfairly cheated that he damn near broke a finger clobbering the dashboard.
After Joe roared away, Marvin LaBlue turned the radio on to WBAP again. Ruby stood up and Claudio García followed her inside to their bedroom. There she turned to him and Claudio cuddled her in his mammoth arms. They undressed in the soft blue darkness that smelled of cinnamon, oregano, and sagebrush, and, atop the covers, they made love, Claudio’s enormous dark bulk curling mutely around that small tough little woman—he crushed her gently in an embrace she always thought might stop her heart. And then she sucked this inarticulate giant into herself and wept at the love, and at the pain as, in a way, he tenderly almost killed her.
* * *
A slow-pitch softball league operating in Chamisa County included two teams from Milagro: the Saints, who were made up largely of players from the town, including Charley Bloom, Eliu Archuleta, Johnny Pacheco, Jimmy Ortega, Benny Maestas, Claudio García, and Joe Mondragón, and the Angels, who were largely a Devine conglomerate, and for whom Horsethief Shorty, Nick Rael, Bernabé Montoya, and Harlan Betchel and his anemic seventeen-year-old son, Albie, played. The balls and strikes were usually called by Ruby Archuleta.
These two teams, which were currently fighting each other for the cellar (the Mormon church from Chamisaville occupied first), happened to meet a couple of days after Joe Mondragón rejected Ladd Devine’s offer to build cottages.
About fifteen minutes before game time Joe’s pickup jolted into Herbie Goldfarb’s yard and screeched to a halt: impatiently, Joe honked his horn. Herbie staggered out the door like a man about to be snatched by the Gestapo.
Joe leaned from the window. “Hey, Goldy. You play softball?”
“I used to … I mean … you know … dicking around … fraternity stuff.”
“Let’s go then. Come on.” Already Joe had it in reverse, backing around.
“But—”
“Let’s fucking go,” Joe snapped, leaning across the seat to open the passenger door. “We haven’t got all day.”
Like a zombie on the way to his own beheading, Herbie climbed in.
“Punch the button,” Joe said, popping the clutch, “else the door’ll open.”
Herbie already knew that, though, as, reaching wildly for the handle of the outswinging door, his head tunked painfully against the jamb.
Joe had a theory about driving: namely, if you didn’t goose it hell-bent for election no matter how shitty the road, you would never get anywhere on time. And if the car or truck fell apart because of this rough treatment, no sweat, Joe was an expert mechanic, he could fix anything in a jiffy because in the toolbox under his seat he had everything from an infinite variety of wrenches to tubes of liquid aluminum.
Hence he drove with his hands clamped to the wheel, his head permanently ducked so it wouldn’t go through the roof of the cab, and his ass perpetually in the air; and nobody could deny that he sure as hell got where he was going in a hurry. Though how Joe could see out the spider-web cracks decorating the windshield was a mystery to Herbie Goldfarb, and why they didn’t suffer three or four blowouts on the way to the ball field the VISTA volunteer never knew.
They skidded to a stop at the loveliest ball park in Chamisa County, the only ball park with a grass infield and outfield—in fact, the only ball field with grass, period. It was located, of course, about a hundred yards below the tennis courts on the Dancing Trout grounds.
This particular ball game began, as the games between these two teams were apt to begin, with the Saints batting around one and a half times, and with Herbie Goldfarb garnering the distinction of making two of the Saints’ first two outs. With not even half an inning over, then, the Saints were ahead, seven to nothing, and Horsethief Shorty—the old pro—trotted in from third base to replace Albie Betchel on the mound. Shorty retired the side, though not before he had clobbered Joe Mondragón between the shoulder blades with a throw (off Joe’s bunt) that Shorty at least pretended he’d meant for the Angel first baseman, Joe’s chickenshit cousin, Floyd Mondragón. At the moment of impact, Joe stopped on a dime, turned, began to charge Shorty, pulled up short, ripped off an obscene finger as he screamed a string of obscenities in Spanish, and then he almost slugged his cousin Floyd when the first baseman picked up the ball and tagged Joe out.
At this point both benches emptied and converged, and the twenty or so fans watching joined the fray. While numerous loud threats were exchanged, and some halfhearted pushing and shoving went on, Ruby Archuleta lazed over to a grassy slope, sat down, and bemusedly smoked a cigarette.
In due course order was restored and the game resumed, moving briskly into the bottom half of the first inning. Joe, the Saints’ first pitcher, promptly winged an overhand bean ball at Harlan Betchel, who staggered clear of the batter’s box, pointing his bat accusingly at Joe.
“Hey!” he called angrily. “This is slow pitch. This isn’t fast ball.” And, appealing to the ump: “Hey, Ruby, he’s not allowed to throw that fast.”
“Que no la tires tan rápido, José,” Ruby hollered nonchalantly, tilting her head back to blow out some cigarette smoke.
Joe lobbed the next one in so slowly that Harlan swung about four seconds too soon, and, all off-balance, he lost hold of the bat, which zoomed forward on a dead line for the pitcher’s head. Joe reacted quickly enough—but in flattening himself onto the mound he put a tooth halfway through his tongue.
Even before Joe was up, Harlan had begun to retreat, yelling, “That wasn’t on purpose, damn you, Joe! That wasn’t on purpose! I’M SORRY!”
Joe charged about halfway to home, obscenities and blood flying out of his mouth like shotgun pellets, but he pulled up when Bernabé Montoya stepped in front of Harlan, shouting, “Play the goddam game, José, or get the hell out! Or get the hell arrested for assault and battery, I don’t care!”
So furious that the veins on his forehead bulged and he felt dizzy, Joe nevertheless limped back to the mound, gestured a couple of times to God, and threw a relatively decent pitch which Harlan hit over Eliu Archuleta’s head for a home run.
The sheriff popped up to the second baseman, but then Floyd Mondragón and Nick Rael hit back-to-back doubles, a kid named Rúben Tafoya walked, Albie Betchel was hit (unintentionally) by a pitched ball, and Horsethief Shorty singled.
Joe set the ball down in the hollow in front of the rubber and walked out to second, thumbing at the mound as he growled to Herbie Goldfarb, “You pitch.”
“Me—?”
“Go ahead. Before it’s over everybody will pitch.”
Herbie, much to his astonishment, dealt up a double-play grounder to the first batter. At least, it should have been a double play. The shortstop, a junior high school kid named Bobby Maés, scooped up the ball and tossed underhand to Joe Mondragón, who, instead of firing it on to first, lowered a shoulder and drove himself savagely into Horsethief Shorty, who was trying to throw a block on him to queer the double play.
The ball spurted out of what followed, almost a cartoon blob of dust with furiously pounding and kicking hands and feet revolving out of it, and the Angels’ bench emptied as the Saints’ team sprinted in. All except for Herbie Goldfarb, that is, who stood on the mound, mouth agape, more or less terrified, and wondering what God had wrought. Charley Bloom and Marvin LaBlue grabbed Joe; Bernabé Montoya and Nick Rael tugged off Shorty.
“You’re grown men!” Bloom shouted, almost hysterical himself. “And this is a game!”
“Fuck this game, that son of a bitch tried to kill me,” Joe squealed, his voice skipping up a few registers like it always did when he was enraged.
Shorty just smiled, cool as a cucumber in spite of a split lip. And, allowing his goading smile to grow into a truly nasty chuckle, he said in Spanish, “Just play the game, José. Hitting the second baseman to break up the double play, that’s just part of the game, man.”
“For crissakes, t
his isn’t the majors,” Bloom complained. “Is this the majors? We’re not even in shape, some of us are old men—is the point to kill each other?”
“Fuck it. Screw these bastards. Let’s call it off,” Harlan Betchel said disgustedly. “In fact, if Joe stays in, count me out of it. He’s got too many hornets up his ass tonight and Bloom is right. You people want to kill each other, count me out.”
“Yeah,” Floyd Mondragón agreed, “there’s no point to this. This isn’t a ball game, this is a war.”
“Ah, come on,” Nick Rael said, “let’s get on with the game.”
“Not if he plays,” Joe hissed, pointing at Shorty.
“Not if he plays,” Harlan Betchel grumbled, aiming a bat at Joe.
“Are you threatening me with that bat?” Joe snarled.
“Oh shit,” Bernabé Montoya snapped, gently pushing Joe back.
“I don’t care who plays, I’m not playing,” said Johnny Pacheco. “This is no fun. A game should be fun.”
They mingled around, bickering petulantly for a minute; tempers died; the game commenced again. Herbie Goldfarb served up a home run, a deep fly out, a triple, and then Harlan Betchel laid a nice bunt down along the first base line. The first baseman charged the ball, and Herbie, perhaps acting on some latent instinct that was a holdover from a previous incarnation, stumbled over to cover the bag at first, in itself a good idea. But he placed himself directly behind the center of the bag, and at about the same time that he received the ball from the first baseman, he also caught all two hundred and ten pounds of Harlan Betchel, frantically legging out his bunt like a rusty runaway locomotive.
The onrushing Betchel express didn’t just knock Herbie down: it knocked him to earth so hard that he bounced, and, after trampling over him like the proverbial herd of thundering buffalo, Harlan toppled to the ground himself. Both Charley Bloom and Joe Mondragón probably would have reached Harlan in a photo finish, if Joe hadn’t stumbled halfway there and gone flying.
As Bloom and Harlan, and then Joe, collided, both Bernabé Montoya and Nick Rael were running toward the rumble, yelling hoarsely, “The game is over, you bastards! The game is over!”
Joe was practically sobbing when they dragged him off. “That pendejo wants to kill us!” he bellowed. “That asshole wants to murder us all!”
“Oh, come off it,” Harlan whined defensively. “Look where that kid was standing. I’m allowed to try for a hit. He’s not supposed to stand there.”
“Anyway, it’s over,” the sheriff said. “This is no game. Everybody’s too uptight.”
“Don’t look at me,” Horsethief Shorty drawled smugly. “I’m not uptight.”
“A baseball bat up your—” Joe shrieked in Spanish. “You’ll get yours.”
“Oh hell, José, go home,” Bernabé said. “Go home and grow up. You alright, kid?”
Herbie was sitting there, pinching his nose. “I think so … my nose is kind of sore.”
“Listen, I’m sorry,” Harlan apologized. “But that was a dumb place to stand. I couldn’t stop myself. Drop in at the café sometime, I’ll give you a free egg salad sandwich, or a hamburger, or a milkshake, whatever you like.”
“Oh jeezus!” Joe spat blood. “You know where the Pilar’s hamburgers come from, Goldy? From Louie Baca’s glue-factory horses down in Chamisaville. And sometimes from the monkeys that croak in the Capital City zoo!”
“It’s over,” Nick Rael said glumly. “Is it all over?”
Claudio García loomed over everybody. He could only speak in Spanish. “Hey José,” he chuckled. “Maybe if you hadn’t ducked back there that bat would of knocked some sense into your head.”
“Very funny,” Joe growled, patting his bloody lower lip, wincing with each pat.
Having returned to her spot on the grassy knoll, Ruby Archuleta said cheerfully, “This game is called on account of attempted murder.”
“It ain’t that funny,” Bernabé Montoya groused.
Herbie Goldfarb picked himself up and, letting out a deep breath, he announced: “I’m going to walk home—”
He got lost, though. Somehow, landmarks changed with dusk as he meandered down the bumpy dirt road toward town. Or maybe he had been so shook up he just couldn’t pay close enough attention. A number of times he halted to gawk at the transparent and magnified moon balanced atop a nearby mountain like a ball on a seal’s nose. Then it was the nighthawks that astonished him, those beautiful falcon-winged owl-colored birds, dashing after insects, beeping in a raspy, loud monotone. Down lower, where an Indian Creek feeder streamlet crossed under the road and the valley floor’s marshy fields began, at least a dozen bats in the air actually frightened him. Their high sonic calls were audible; and sometimes they flew so close to his head that he could hear their leathery wingbeats.
Abruptly it was dark, and Herbie had no idea how to thread the intricate maze to home. To make matters worse, dogs started barking as he walked by. Some actually pranced savagely onto the road, raising an unbelievably raucous stink. One pack of jabbering mutts charged across a field, threatening first to deafen him, then to trample him to death, then to tear him slobberingly, teeth-clickingly from limb to limb. But they skidded to a stop at their owner’s barbed wire boundary, and sat there, howling and gnashing their teeth until he turned a corner.
Next, two friendly simpering hounds crawled out of a ditch, and, limping badly from broken legs and crippled hips, from BB or real gunshot wounds, they cringed along—tails between their legs—at his heels, whining unctuously, half-creeping, half-slinking; looking up at him beggingly from out the sides of their whitened eyeballs, flinching whenever he just slightly stumbled or gave them an angry glance; starved for affection (not to mention for a bowl of Gaines Meal, for a rabbit, or for a can of Friskies). When Herbie finally snarled at these groveling outcasts, who reminded him too much of himself, ordering them to go home, they flattened onto their bellies and dragged themselves in the dirt, pleading for just a speck of human kindness, and—surprised by his reaction—the volunteer discovered that he wanted to kick them in their sly-eyed, obsequious guts; he wanted to bust some more of their ribs.
Later, Onofre Martínez’s powerful three-legged German shepherd charged off its porch like an enraged water buffalo, jumped over the picket fence, and hung on the volunteer’s heels. Practically on tiptoes, Herbie begged the dog to go away, to leave him alone. But the massive dog refused to heed his whimpering request until he crossed some invisible boundary beyond which the savage cur would not travel. As suddenly as it had attached itself, it quit dogging his heels and sat down, staring after him with eyes drowsily half-closed, contented and serene, maybe even purring.
Other dogs stayed on their porches, happy to mark his appearance and departure with passive earsplitting symphonies. Their barks set off a chain reaction, so that as Herbie limped fearfully by any given adobe, usually about fifteen or twenty insane animals were announcing his existence to the rest of the world at large.
Thinking that cutting across a field would lead closer to home, Herbie found himself suddenly surrounded by cows—which he took to be bulls—and by two of the biggest, shaggiest horses he had ever laid eyes upon. The cows gazed at him with a sort of threatening idiotic placidity; the horses peered down their long snouts like curious, intelligent gods.
Desperately, Herbie started to back up. The cows remained in place, but the two horses were interested; they lumbered toward him in a huge friendly manner. Ducking backward through a fence, Herbie caught a sleeve on a barb, tearing the shirt in his panic to reach safety. The horses stopped at the wire and rumbled a little, but apparently decided not to barge through the flimsy barbed strands and trample him to death.
Eventually, sighting on the small cluster of garish mercury vapor lamps in town, Herbie made it to Rael’s store, and from there he knew the way home.
But the skunks were flirting or fighting or whatever underneath the floorboards, making sleep impossible; his eyes burned and his brain felt
as if it had been wrapped in hot green chilies. Dogs barked and were silent and barked some more. At one awful point, every kind of canine voice imaginable cut loose, rejoicing, wailing in pain, some barks offering challenges, others announcing, with fear or ecstasy, the hectic gang-banging of females in heat. Toward midnight, coyotes on the western mesa sang their falsetto tunes and were answered. And so, how the hell could an Easterner, used to nothing more hysterical than police sirens and fire engines and cars honking and women screaming “Rape!” and muggers thudding their fists into gurgling victims, get any sleep?
Around 2:00 A.M. a small brown bear wandered into town, and the security dog Harlan Betchel kept locked in the Pilar Café, a Doberman named Brutus, went wild. The bear stared at Brutus for a while, then clumped up the road leading to Herbie Goldfarb’s redolent adobe shack. It so happened that at the time the bear strolled through, Herbie was camped in his open-air outhouse. But the bear padded silently across the dirt yard without giving him so much as a tumble, and kept right on going until it hit the juniper-piñon cover of the foothills.
When Herbie finally slept that night, Hieronymus Bosch never had such chilling nightmares.
* * *
Joe Mondragón owned four cows, three horses, and ten sheep. His personal earthen property, on which he might have grazed these animals, consisted of one irrigated acre around his house, five sageland acres in the Coyote Arroyo section of Milagro, one and seven-tenths acres of sageland and sparse gramma grass near the north–south highway, and the seven-tenths of an acre on the west side where his beans were growing.
The sum total of vegetation on this land was enough to keep one cow in food for approximately sixteen days out of every year.
Hence, in order to keep his other livestock functioning, Joe had to supplement their diets with hay bales bought locally or from outside or with hard-to-come-by grazing permits which allowed him to fatten them up on government grass, or by playing a frustrating, frantic, and never-ending game of musical pastures: that is, by switching his livestock from one small field to another small field to another small field in town, renting these fields from neighbors or borrowing them from friends. This was the most common way for animals to survive in Milagro, though also one of the most tenuous, since almost everyone else also owned animals of one sort or another that they were simultaneously and continually switching around, too. Thus, just about every small pasture was overgrazed and had been overgrazed ever since the government and the Ladd Devine Company appropriated most of the rest of the county some one hundred years ago.