by John Nichols
As he complied with the order, Harlan gasped, “It’s out at Joe’s place, isn’t it?”
“Where else, goddammit!”
Tires squealing, they thundered into Joe’s yard, and as they did so Joe bolted out his front door, hunched over and running fast, carrying a rifle like a marine gutting it up a Pork Chop Hill, dashing behind a huge cottonwood. Even before Joe reached the tree, however, Harlan was diving out of the truck, his .38 blazing in Joe’s direction. Bernabé tumbled out of his door, tripping and crashing belly first into the dirt, then he scrambled up into a squat and backpedaled frantically until his shoulder whacked against a tire, and he spun, duck-waddling hysterically toward the rear as he heard Joe return Harlan’s fire, Harlan bellowing and scrambling rearward too as a slug splintered into the other side of the truck, and, plunging around the tail of the pickup from opposite sides, the two men collided head on, each of their weapons—Harlan’s .38 and the sheriff’s rifle—discharging, though somehow missing, both of them. “You idiot!” Bernabé raged, slugging Harlan clumsily in the chest. “It’s Armijo!” Joe screamed from the tree. “He shot at me! What are you shooting at me for?” “Where is he?” Bernabé hollered. “I dunno!” Joe shouted back. “He’s over there somewhere though, he fired three times!” “Are you hurt?” “No, but no thanks to you, God damn you, Betchel, are you crazy? You point that gun at me again I’ll blow off your balls—!”
“He … he had the gun … he was running…” Harlan blubbered, ashen-faced, about to faint.
Joe leaped out from behind the tree and scrambled pell-mell across the open space, diving practically into their laps in the shelter of the truck.
“I’m sorry…” Harlan stammered. “I didn’t think…”
“What would Armijo be doing this for?” Bernabé gasped, all out of breath, his heart thundering so hard he thought his chest would explode.
“I dunno. He shot three times,” Joe blurted. “I never even saw the bastard. I was watching TV.”
“Where did the bullets hit?” the sheriff asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Joe crawled up front and peered around the edge of a tire. “I can’t see a fucking thing over there. Maybe he’s lying on the roof, the bastard, behind the fire wall—”
Actually, Pancho Armijo and his wife Stella were lying on the floor beside their telephone table, Pancho with a rifle in his hands, and Stella manning the telephone.
“Hello, Carolina?” she gasped. “Where’s Bernie? José Mondragón is shooting at us! He’s gone crazy! He’s shooting at us for no reason at all!”
“What? What? What?”
“Where’s Bernie!” Stella shouted. “They’re going to kill us over here!”
“Try the Pilar!”
Stella tried the Pilar. Betty Apodaca answered. “Where’s Bernie?” Stella sobbed.
“He just ran out!” Betty babbled excitedly. “There’s a shooting over at Joe’s and the Armijos’!”
“I’m Stella Armijo!” Stella wailed. “And I don’t see Bernie anyplace around here!”
“But where are you?”
“On the floor beside the telephone table!”
“Well, tell Pancho to look out the window—!”
“But they’ll shoot him in the head!” Stella cried. “They’ll shoot him in the head!” And she hung up.
“Oh shit,” Pancho Armijo moaned. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” The weapon in his hand was empty. He hadn’t a single bullet in the house. That madman José Mondragón was going to gun them down in cold blood because they didn’t have a single bullet in the house.
Their phone rang and Stella answered. It was her talkative good friend Mary Ann C. de Baca down in Doña Luz, who, before Stella could get a word in edgewise, was wondering if she could contribute a cake or some chocolate chip cookies or something to the Hospital Ladies’ Auxiliary bake sale down in Chamisaville this upcoming Saturday.
“I can’t,” Stella sobbed into the telephone. “We’re being shot at, they’re trying to kill us, good-bye!”
At the store, Nick dialed the Dancing Trout. Emerson Lapp answered. “They’re shooting it out at Joe Mondragón’s,” Nick shouted breathlessly into the phone.
“Who’s shooting what out? And who’s this?” the secretary wanted to know.
“This is Nick at the store. Bernie and Harlan just went over in Bernie’s pickup! I heard six, seven shots at least! You better get Mr. D.!”
Emerson Lapp ran outside. A pickup, with Horsethief Shorty at the wheel and Jerry Grindstaff and a cowboy named Hugh Slocum beside him, both holding rifles tensely between their knees, barrels pointed at the ceiling, and with two younger hands—Tommy Gallegos and Richard Tafoya—in the back clutching guns, roared by, gravel flying.
“Where you headed?” Emerson Lapp called.
“There’s a gunfight down at José Mondragón’s!” Tommy Gallegos yelled excitedly.
At the first sound of shots, Charley Bloom set down a cup of Campbell’s tomato and rice soup and almost sobbed to Linda at the table across from him, “God help us now, it’s beginning.”
“What’s beginning, Daddy?” Pauline piped. “Tell me what’s beginning?”
Bloom got up and went to the open doorway.
“Where did they come from?” Linda asked.
“Where did what come from, Mommy? Where did what come from?”
“Joe’s place,” Bloom answered. He could see, across several fields and through a few young Chinese elms to Joe’s house, the jumble of outbuildings and rusted machinery and the ten-foot-high piles of piñon.
“What do you think is happening?” Linda asked, terrified.
“What’s happening, Daddy?” the child echoed. “What’s happening, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know…”
“What are you going to do?” Linda wailed.
“I don’t know.” And Bloom waited, unable to act. Suddenly there was a loud popping bang, and then a heavier but also sharper explosion that ricocheted across the valley. That was followed a few seconds later by another hollow pop and sharp gunshot almost in unison. And then silence.
Bloom waited, still unable to move, hardly thinking. He was too scared and too chicken to act, and he abhorred the deep-down feeling of relief in himself, for this must mean, surely, thank God, it signaled the end of the affair.
The Dancing Trout pickup rattled past Nick Rael and then passed three older men legging it on the double up the road toward Joe Mondragón’s house. It skidded to a halt behind Bernabé Montoya’s pickup, and the five men who hopped to the ground were surprised to find Joe Mondragón hale and hearty and in the companionship of the sheriff and Harlan Betchel, all with their guns pointed past Herbie Goldfarb’s shack toward Pancho Armijo’s cozy little farmhouse.
“Pancho!” Bernabé yelled. “Cut the shit and walk out of there, hands on your head, toss the weapon out in front of you!”
“Bernie!” Pancho shouted back. “Is that you?”
“Who the fuck do you think it is?”
“This is a hell of a way to win the next election, then!” Pancho shouted. “Trying to kill your opponent!”
“You just come out with your hands on your head, Pancho, and don’t forget to toss out the gun ahead of you. There’s twenty-five of us out here, and if we have to rush the house and somebody gets hurt it won’t go well for you!”
“Where’s José?” Pancho yelled.
“He’s right here, he’s alright, you didn’t hit him!”
“I didn’t hit him?—of course not! I never shot at him! He shot at me! I didn’t shoot at anybody!”
The sheriff fired a hairy eyeball Joe’s way. Joe said, “Don’t look at me. That man’s lying.”
“You come out of there, and then we’ll see what’s what!” Bernabé called.
“I got Stella with me!”
“Tell her to come out too!”
With ten guns trained on his front door, Pancho Armijo tossed his unloaded rifle out into the dirt yard, then both he and
his wife, their hands clasped atop their heads, emerged, babbling Hail Marys, into the bright sunshine.
The sheriff, Joe Mondragón, Harlan Betchel, Horsethief Shorty, Jerry Grindstaff, Hugh Slocum, Richard Tafoya, Tommy Gallegos, three old men from the Frontier, and Nick Rael advanced slowly toward the Armijos, and as they did, passing the corner of Herbie Goldfarb’s bungalow, they came upon the sight at which both Stella and Pancho Armijo were staring aghast.
For there was Herbie, seated in the dirt at the side of his house, banging his head to try and drive the high-pitched, scary ringing from his ears.
He looked up at them all, puzzled, and during the last few seconds before it dawned on him what he had caused to happen, he lifted up his right hand, gingerly trying to wiggle the thumb, explaining to Bernabé Montoya, to them all:
“I was trying to shoot the skunks under my house. But I think I sprained my thumb.”
* * *
About two hours after the gunfight at Herbie Goldfarb’s, as Charley Bloom saw Ruby Archuleta’s plumbing truck pull up outside his house, he wished to hell that he’d driven down to Chamisaville that afternoon to Xerox some deeds and other papers at the Legal Aid office there. Because if Ruby wanted something from him, it could only spell trouble, and after today he wanted no part in the kind of trouble her desires were certain to cause. Yet how to escape?—he let her knock before opening the door.
“Can I talk with you a moment, Mr. Bloom?”
“Sure, sure, come on in…” Bloom was all smiles, expansive, a good guy, a wonderful lawyer: Champion of the Poor.
Ruby scraped her feet carefully, flicked a cigarette butt away, and entered the kitchen, sat down at the table.
“You want coffee? Or a beer?”
“A beer is okay, thanks.” Ruby lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply. Bloom popped the top for her and sat down on the other side of the table.
Ruby said, “I need some help to write a petition. We’re gonna pass around a petition, you know? Against the dam and the conservancy district. Also I want to know if we can hire you…”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“The Milagro Land and Water Protection Association.”
“Are you incorporated? In what ways do you exist?”
Ruby smiled toughly and leaned back, tapping her head. “Up here we exist, Mr. Bloom.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s a start.”
“How do you plan to grow?”
“I’ve talked with the commissioners and the mayordomos on all the ditch systems. They listen, they’re talking with each other now. Nobody knows for sure. Some are very bitter, others are angry, everybody is afraid. To fight this thing takes money and we have no money and people are afraid of anything that calls for money. But they understand what’s happening here. By talking at the meeting you helped. Still, they don’t trust me, they don’t trust you. If Snuffy Ledoux came back tomorrow they probably wouldn’t trust him. They don’t even trust themselves. Many think it’s hopeless to oppose the Zopilote. But there is José’s example that won’t go away. People are watching him; they’re watching you too, waiting to see how you will act when the chips are down. Maybe nobody will sign my petition, I don’t know, we’ll see. But it’s a first step, you know? After the first step comes the second step. If we can scare those bastards up in the canyon and down in the capital, maybe we can get a boot in the door. Because of José—and because of your talk in the church—I think some people will sign this petition, and once they sign this petition it will be possible to form as a group, and once we’re an organized legal group, then maybe we can tax ourselves enough to pay you to help us, if you will…”
Bloom lowered his eyes, a surge of hopelessness causing him almost to shiver. She was talking about maybe destroying his life. She was talking about engaging him to do a twenty-four-hour-a-day job for peanuts—no, not even for peanuts, probably for a couple of abrazos, some sacks filled with illegal deer meat, and a bag of beans. She had no idea what it would take to stall or defeat a conservancy district in the courts, the cost in dollars and time of the paper work alone, the cost of transcripts for the inevitable appeals. She had no concept of how emphatically the conservancy laws were stacked against her people. To put up even a half-decent fight they would need a billion dollars. She was crazy, foolhardy—she and Joe and anybody else in this town who thought the small farmers had (or even deserved) an outside shot at survival against Ladd Devine’s conglomerate, the state, and the Government of the U.S.A.
“I dunno,” Bloom said, wondering where to begin, begging himself to muster the guts to refuse.
Ruby stubbed out her cigarette, saying “We will be like the Vietnamese.”
Bloom glanced at her sharply. She was smiling; for the first time he noticed her almost mystical loveliness, her beautiful wind-toughened face, the crow’s-feet ranging out from the corners of her sharp green eyes, the strength glowing from her, clean and pure, copper-colored, indomitable. She made him feel incredibly weak and flabby.
The lawyer shook his head. “I don’t think here could be like Vietnam.” His voice sounded ridiculous; but for God’s sake, the thought was ridiculous. “Who have you really got?” he asked petulantly.
“Me. Claudio. My son Eliu. Marvin LaBlue. Amarante Córdova. Tranquilino Jeantete. There are others. A lot of people are thinking. And what about José? And Nancy? And Onofre Martínez? Sparky Pacheco?”
The lawyer said, “You can’t make a revolution with a bunch of decrepit old men.”
“Bullshit. If the spirit is willing I can make a revolution with a bunch of three-legged burros, or a sackful of bullfrogs.”
Bloom smiled, sighed. “This petition you’re going to circulate, what will it be basically, just against the conservancy district and the dam?”
“Sure. You know, that, and with a couple of reasons, like you mentioned in the church, written out. That we will be taxed too heavily to pay for Zopi Devine’s lake; that we will lose our land—”
“And you plan on sending it where?”
“To the governor. To our representatives in the Congress.”
“You know that’s a useless, almost a foolish gesture, a complete waste of energy and time?”
“The point isn’t to change their minds,” Ruby said quietly. “The point is to have our people sign. The point is to make an action together. Signing a petition will draw us together. It’s a kind of official beginning.”
Bloom said, “Okay, but I’ll bet you something. We’ll draw up the petition right now, and if you want I’ll take a draft to Chamisaville later this afternoon and Xerox a lot of copies, no problem. But I’ll bet you this: I’ll bet you five dollars that if you take the petition over to Joe Mondragón this afternoon, he won’t sign.”
“That’s a bet,” Ruby said, smiling at him almost pityingly. “Now, let’s begin…”
* * *
An hour later, crestfallen, Ruby returned; Bloom was out back with his children, helping them feed hay bale flakes to their Shetland ponies. She walked up to the corral and, without a word, handed over a five-dollar bill. Bloom laughed, pushing it back at her:
“Oh, come on, Mrs. Archuleta. It was a joke, you know, I wasn’t that serious, I mean, you know—”
Ruby nodded, shrugged, and slipped the five spot into her blue jeans pocket. Then she offered him a clipboard holding a copy of the petition, saying, “What about you, Mr. Bloom? If you’re defending José, if you’re willing to work for us, you should sign—”
Bloom stared at the petition, at the two names on it, Ruby’s and Claudio García’s, and he thought: Oh my God, how do I get out of this? Then, absolutely not wanting to make the commitment, he took the cheap ball-point pen she offered and signed his name the way a prisoner, by confessing to some heinous crime, might sign his own death warrant.
Ruby grinned. “From now on,” she said, “I’m gonna call you Charley. Carlito. And you just call me Ruby, okay?”
The lawyer smiled sickly an
d nodded, thinking: Don’t do me any favors.
“I’ll tell the people they can trust you,” Ruby said.
Bloom wanted to say, No, don’t tell them that, because they can’t, but he couldn’t say it; he laughed hollowly and could not really think of a proper way to react at all. Then of a sudden he truly hated her guts and Joe’s guts for holding him up, for jamming him back into a corner from which there could apparently be no escape.
* * *
Whenever Joe Mondragón felt really nervous, he charged into his chicken shed and started madly catching the English sparrows that fed on the hen scratch Joe kept in a long aluminum hopper in there. The birds became so panicky at Joe’s appearance they forgot where the door was and just kept battering from window to window until Joe had caught ten or fifteen of the obnoxious little fluffballs, which he stuffed into his front shirt pockets. Of late, the scruffy yellow, snake-eating reincarnation of Cleofes Apodaca had taken to accompanying Joe into the shed. And, while Joe raced around trapping sparrows against the window panes, the cat, like a great glove at third, repeatedly leaped up and snagged the frantic little birds in midair as they flew away in line drives from Joe’s grabbing hands. Not one to stand on ceremony, the cat killed each bird with one crunch, ate it with two bites, digested it with three swallows, burped out four feathers, and leaped to catch another.
Now, even though he had been shot at by Harlan Betchel four hours before, and even though he had just refused to sign Ruby Archuleta’s petition, when Joe staggered huffing and puffing from the shed with his pockets stuffed chock-full of English sparrows, he felt much better. So also did the cat, its stomach gorged with tiny crumpled wings. Joe tromped loudly into the house and transferred the twelve birdlets from his pockets into an old-fashioned, hexagonal glass-paneled ballot jar which he had bought for five bucks at a Monte Vista, Colorado, auction. This ballot jar Joe then set on the kitchen table, and, snapping open a beer, he ordered Nancy, who was in the living room reading a book, to fix him some lunch.
Nancy said, “Fix it yourself.”
Joe ignored that by remarking, “Look at all the birds I caught.”
“I think it’s dumb to terrify those little birds like that. Now don’t bother me, I’m reading.”