The Milagro Beanfield War

by John Nichols

  The floors of Rael’s and the Pilar Café became coated with mud. To clean his place, Nick chipped away with an adobe hoe. Harlan Betchel, on the other hand, just sat in a corner staring at the buildup on his floor, wondering if he should drill holes and plant dynamite or what.

  Finally, all movement and motion in town broke down; the roads became blocked by stuck vehicles. Worms squiggled frantically from a billion holes in the ground and drowned, their pale bleached bodies floating everywhere. Milagro metamorphosed into one great gloppy bog, overrun with muskrats and water snakes. The grass alongside irrigation ditches bolted toward the sky like some jungle weed shot full of hormones. Trout, which became lost in the muddy streams, suddenly found themselves being plucked from the water by curious horses in alfalfa fields. A million short-tailed field mice, forced to flee from their pastureland homes, got bogged down in mud; within minutes their crusted bodies lined the roadsides like the bodies of Christians put to death in Roman times. And prairie dogs, attempting to make the higher ground of the Milagro foothills, became so heavily coated with mud that they soon grew exhausted, and when the mud hardened they died, looking like plump little fritters, croquettes, or corn dogs.

  “I think I’m starting to shit mud,” Joe Mondragón complained to Nancy one morning.

  And, although Herbie Goldfarb didn’t know it, he might have been glad to hear that approximately thirteen billion ants suffocated to death in the Milagro mud.

  Bernabé Montoya, seated on his bed beside Carolina and peering curiously into the barrel of his service revolver one night, discovered that the barrel was permanently clogged with a brown, hardened, cementlike substance. He groaned, “Now I’ll probably have to buy another gun!”

  But men like Onofre Martínez and Sparky Pacheco, Tranquilino Jeantete and Amarante Córdova smiled, remembering how in the old days they had deliberately flooded the north–south highway with irrigation water and then waited nearby with teams of horses to pull out—for a small fee—all the northbound or southbound travelers whose horse-drawn rigs or Model Ts became mired in the tenacious ooze. That had been almost as lucrative a racket as setting fires up in the Midnight Mountains and then hiring on with the Forest Service to fight them.

  All motion ceased, except, that is, for Ruby Archuleta, who gunned her plumbing truck around town until she could no longer navigate through the brown glop; then she switched to a horse, until that became impossible; and then she proceeded on foot going from farmhouse to farmhouse, always with some petitions under one arm, talking to the people, asking them to sign, explaining a thousand times over the situation in the valley, pushing her concept of the Milagro Land and Water Protection Association. Some people listened courteously, drank coffee with Ruby, asked questions. Others argued, bitched, and shouted—both with her and at her. Almost every man and woman agreed with Ruby’s assessment of the situation in the Miracle Valley; “Yessir, that Zopilote has got to go,” they cried emphatically. But they were also afraid of Ladd Devine; they did not sign; they didn’t want trouble, or not any more, anyway, “because we already got Trouble with a capital T, qué no?” They wondered, too: Could Ruby Archuleta really be trusted? And although admiring Joe Mondragón, they also thought he was a jerk—you had to be loco to ask for a kick in the ass like that. And again: they were as leery of taxing themselves to fight the conservancy district as they were of the conservancy taxes themselves.

  Persuading somebody to sign the petition was hell. Ruby tried to explain it all, and then she tried to explain it again. When, for the umpteenth time, the same people asked the same stupid questions, the dauntless woman gave the same patient replies. Everyone was very friendly and understanding and polite and suspicious and afraid, and almost nobody signed, although many began to wonder if Ruby wasn’t perhaps a saint. But all the same, Ruby, drenched, covered with mud, exhausted from plodding through the molasses muck, persevered. Ranchers got used to her coming around with the petitions: some folks even looked forward eagerly to her visits. Children cried, “Here comes The Ant again!” Women said, “Can you beat it, the bruja is knocking on our door once more.” Seferino Pacheco, who was in favor of the petition, refused to sign it because he liked Ruby’s visits so much. And, spurred on by a relentless and unflagging determination, Ruby kept dropping by. Their talk ran the gamut from the conservancy district to the death of Betita Córdova, who fell in the gorge in the snow on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

  Suddenly it stopped raining and a wind began to blow. Day and night the wind roared across the valley, knocking over old cottonwood trees and driving people crazy. By the third day the air was brown with dust that got between people’s teeth and stung their eyes and ruined their sweaty lovemaking. In no time the roads dried hard as cement; trout were left baking in dry pasturelands. Like sea things retreating with the ocean’s tide, water snakes and muskrats went back to the green areas along ditches and in the dampest vegas. At first people said, “Thank God, this will dry things out”; and then they began to curse the wind; and finally they tried to get their cars, trucks, and horses unstuck. They went at the hardened zoquete with pickaxes, hatchets, even acetylene torches. Men and women had to flood the areas around their cars and pickups in order to get them unstuck; they pulled them free with Ray Gusdorf’s tractor. But then Ray’s tractor broke down and wound up back in Joe Mondragón’s shop and from then on Jerry Grindstaff, perched frostily behind the wheel of Ladd Devine’s backhoe, had a monopoly on the towing business—at ten dollars a throw. People cursed, but what could they do? The wind died down for a minute, allowing dust to settle over everything and everybody, then it started blowing again. On his daily junket to town, Amarante Córdova had to climb over a dozen dead cottonwood trees that lay in his way like king-sized hurdles. A cottonwood landed atop a Forest Service pickup being driven by Carl Abeyta, who received a broken nose and a mild concussion from the incident, but, unfortunately, nothing worse. Another accident occurred when Flossie Devine, in a Dancing Trout station wagon late at night on her way back from a Capital City dentist, swerved to avoid a mammoth tumbleweed loping across the highway and wound up in a ditch with her new bridgework in her lap. And men irrigated, but the wind sucked up the water almost before it could seep into the ground.

  “What the hell is this?” Joe Mondragón asked Nancy one day. “After the flood are we gonna have a drought?”

  For a week the wind dried everything out. It even began to dry the people out. Skin shriveled; lips became chapped; hair grew stiff, caked with dust. Hundreds of little birds were blown into windows and adobe walls and killed, and, trailed by the everpresent scrawking magpies pecking at its mangy tail, the ugly yellow, snake-eating cat, that both Seferino Pacheco and Joe Mondragón had begun calling Cleofes after the legendary Cleofes Apodaca, had a field day trotting from house to house, feasting on all the little dead birds with broken necks.

  Then, abruptly, the wind ceased; dust settled over the town almost gently, like a fine lace handkerchief. People stumbled outside, into their fields, slightly stunned by the peaceful silence. Birds ruffled their feathers, shaking out the dust. Horses that had been standing perfectly still for days with their asses just sweetly touching against barbed wire strands casually moved on stiffened legs back into their pastures, grazing again. A light rain fell; the sun shone; a light rain fell once more.

  Dew turned up on grass tips again, compliments of the night; dogs dared to bark; flocks of hummingbirds returned to Onofre Martínez’s gingerbread kingdom; life returned to normal. Ruby Archuleta started making her petition rounds in the Pipe Queen truck once more, and an army of men, led by Horsethief Shorty, Joe Mondragón, Claudio García, and Harlan Betchel, moved around town with chain saws, cutting up the trees blocking roads or crushing houses. And although cottonwood logs didn’t burn that hot and made too much ash, it was free wood nevertheless, so it was distributed to many houses, which led Carolina Montoya to observe to her husband, the sheriff:

  “You see, it�
��s an ill wind that blows no good.”

  And by then it was time for the rodeo.

  * * *

  Every year, and this year was no different from any other year, Milagro had a rodeo of sorts. The town owned a rodeo grounds, enclosed by a low link fence that had a few stock pens down at one end, and there was a megaphone system that went on top of Ray Gusdorf’s pickup, Ray being the rodeo announcer. There were no grandstands; people drove their cars and trucks up to the edge of the fence and sat in their front seats or on the front fenders, drinking beer and looking on. Nick Rael’s son Jerry sold pop, candy bars, Hostess Twinkies, and gum from an impromptu concession stand, and that was about how things stacked up.

  The stock for the Milagro rodeo came from local ranchers. There were no Brahma bulls, only a couple of bucking Herefords. And there were no lean, mean, powerful broncos, only a half-dozen pint-sized Shetland ponies, two of which, Orangutan and Sunflower, belonged to Charley and Linda Bloom.

  There were four events in the rodeo: bareback bucking Hereford riding, bareback bucking pony riding, team roping of the same sad-sack cow by six entrants, and pony racing for kids.

  Rodeo day dawned hot, simmering, dusty. Joe Mondragón and Jimmy Ortega drove over to Bloom’s house early, loaded Orangutan and Sunflower into a trailer, and dropped them off in a pen at the rodeo grounds. Then they went and retrieved the placid little brown pony Pete and Betty Apodaca kept in their backyard. After that they fetched a milk cow, belonging to Rafael Maestas, that had bucked like hell last year if you zapped her in the udder—just before the chute gate opened—with a cattle prod.

  By the time Claudio García, Onofre Martínez (accompanied by his two great-grandchildren, Chemo and Chepa), and the sheriff’s deputy, Meliton Naranjo, had chased down and brought in the team-roping cow, which was the entire herd of a rancher named Cleofes Mondragón (Joe’s second cousin), the rodeo grounds were surrounded by various vehicles and men and women and children, and they were ready to begin.

  Carrying some American flags, the state flag, and a sheriff’s posse flag, Joe, Claudio García, Eliu Archuleta, Sparky Pacheco, Nick Rael, Eusebio Lavadie, and a few others rode their horses into the arena and lined up for the National Anthem. Ray Gusdorf dropped the needle onto the record, but his megaphones weren’t working so hot, and it was pretty difficult to hear the song over the noise of the gas generator powering the announcing system anyway. In fact, the generator sputtered and whined so loudly nobody could hear a word Ray said during the entire proceedings, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  The action took place in a sunny, lackadaisical way, with long lags between riders. As often as not, when a pony or a cow came out of a chute, it would just lope harmlessly around the arena while the spectators laughed and clapped, and the rider furiously kicked, thrashed, and beat his animal about the head, neck, and rump to make it do something. The rides were also hard to time because Ray Gusdorf’s eight-second buzzer either didn’t work (thanks to a loose connection), or else couldn’t be heard (because of the noisy generator) when it did work. No matter, though. There was no money to win in this rodeo, and nothing to lose, either, since a contestant paid no entry fee.

  When the Blooms’ pony Sunflower made her first appearance, the crowd went ape. She leaped clear of the chute like a crazy grasshopper, rearing and twisting, wiggling and kicking high, revolving in dizzying circles and whinnying even louder than Ray’s generator, and the rider catapulted off her back like a flopping rag doll. Benny Maestas hit the dirt in his first second, picked up a stone and furiously winged it at the pony, but missed and instead broke one of the headlights on the Body Shop and Pipe Queen truck. Later, Jimmy Ortega landed on his head and was kicked in the ass to boot. And after him Johnny Pacheco was knocked off when Sunflower bucked into the chute gate Nick Rael couldn’t swing open fast enough; Johnny almost broke a leg.

  Which left the way to first-prize kudos wide open for Joe Mondragón.

  But he only lasted two seconds. Sunflower did a flip out of the chute, landing on her (and Joe’s) back, and the crowd let out a shrill gasp because it looked as if Joe had been killed.

  But he was up even before Sunflower, throwing handfuls of dirt and screaming obscenities at the pony. Then, dusting himself off, he shouted at the corral boys: “Get that fucking horse back in that goddam chute, I’m going again!”

  Claudio García and Rafael Maestas galloped across the arena, shooing Sunflower back into the pen; Nick Rael and Onofre Martínez herded her up into the chute. And when the people saw Joe was going to ride again, they clapped heartily, whistled, and honked their horns and chucked a few dozen empty beer cans into the arena.

  This time Sunflower emerged from the chute like a horse with a Pegasus complex, taking off and bumping the chute gate so hard it knocked Nick Rael over backward, and then dropping suddenly out from underneath Joe like the trap door in a gallows, so that for a second there was a sight to make the crowd “Ooohhh,” and “Aaaahhh”; Joe extended perfectly vertical with his feet high in the air, his head down, his right arm extended further downward and ending where his hand still grasped the loose rope which had come unraveled … and Sunflower was twenty yards away grazing on imaginary grass. Then the crowd shrieked as Joe plowed face first into the turf like an ass-backward rocket.

  He knelt in the dirt a moment, tenderly feeling his mouth, while the hundred or so spectators cheered and honked some more and clapped and bammed their hands against their hoods and fenders. After a minute all their noise became rhythmic, the people chanting “Otra vez! Otra vez!” meaning they wanted to see Joe’s skydiving act again and knew he possessed an ego that could be goaded into it.

  Once more, Claudio García and Rafael Maestas herded the pony into the stock pen, and, calling the horse every swearword he could think of, Joe lowered himself onto her back for another try. After all, he was about the best rider in the county, and everybody out there knew it—hell, he’d even broken horses with Horsethief Shorty for the Dancing Trout! And so simply the idea, let alone the fact, of not being able to stay aboard a two-bit, slanty-eyed, pea-brained Shetland pony just about had Joe shitting cupcakes.

  Nick Rael yanked open the gate; Ray Gusdorf’s excited shouts couldn’t be heard; and vehicle horns went berserk—as did the mighty little pony. On her first twisting leap Joe found himself riding sideways; on her second jarring heave he was upside down, clinging to her belly; and a split second later, the hooves chopping terrifyingly but harmlessly past his ears, Joe was flat on his back, lost to everyone’s view in a miniature atomic bomb of dust.

  Grabbing a beer can and screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs, Joe charged after Sunflower. The horse ran to a corner, whinnied and reared, then galloped past Joe, who furiously threw the can, hitting her in the butt.

  More jeering, whistling, catcalls, and scattered boos accompanied this unsportsmanlike conduct. Then the horns commenced again, along with some rhythmic handclapping, and taunts of, “Come on, José, can’t you ride that little teeny-weeny horse?” and “Oye, primo, don’t eat all the dirt up, we got to use this place again next year—!”

  “Get that bitch ready again,” Joe snarled. “I’m gonna kill that fucking horse!”

  They got her ready again and he hopped on, adjusting the loose rope until it set just right in his gloved hand; then he yelled, “Open that fucking gate, Nick!” and Nick did, and all hell broke loose. For although the gate was open, Sunflower had decided to do her act in the chute. The crowd saw Joe’s head bob up and down a few times, they heard a chilling splintering sound accompanied by some spine-tingling human bellows, and then suddenly Sunflower trotted calmly into the arena, minus Joe, who was lying on his back, not seriously hurt but out cold, in a pile of horseshit in the chute.

  That evening, just before dark when nighthawks were flying over the meadows and robins were making a final run down freshly irrigated fields, Joe, sporting a noticeable limp and a sullen forehead bump, and toting a loose rope in one hand, knocked on the B
looms’ door.

  “I come to ride that pony,” he said tightly when Bloom answered.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I come to ride that horse,” Joe reiterated. “Where is it?”

  “Out back, in the corral.”

  “Let’s go,” Joe said, starting around the house. Bloom followed.

  Joe let Bloom fit a rope around her neck and lead her into the back field. And, while Joe mounted and adjusted his rope, the lawyer held Sunflower tightly; she didn’t move.

  But when Bloom let go it was as if somebody across the field had pushed in a detonator’s plunger, exploding a hundred dynamite sticks affixed to Sunflower’s belly. Long before he knew what hit him, Joe was up to his elbows in alfalfa with a tingling, bone-jarred spine, and Bloom was laughing so hard he had dropped to all fours and commenced beating the earth with his fists.

  “Oh shit, that was beautiful!” Bloom gasped. “If you only could have seen what you looked like, oh Christ, what a beautiful beautiful thing!”

  Joe didn’t think it was so diddly-fucking funny, though. Enraged, but this time outwardly calm, he wrenched painfully onto his feet and stood for a moment, rubbing his can, staring at the pony feasting deliriously on alfalfa ten yards away.

  “I’ll be back,” he threatened miserably, heading toward the house, toward his truck in the driveway beyond. “You just wait and see!”

  A rage like nothing he had ever experienced burned throughout Joe’s bruised and battered body. Maybe he was going off his rocker or something. Or maybe it was just that all this beanfield business was starting to get him down.

  Back home Joe made sure his rifles and his pistols and his shotgun were loaded and within reach. Then he tumbled into bed beside Nancy. But how to sleep? He just lay there, all tensed up, waiting for a fusillade of bullets to come buzzing through his windows. In fact, he wished the real shooting would start so they could get this whole charade over with.