The Milagro Beanfield War Read online

  And of course: “That conservancy district and that dam will be as hard to live with as Pacheco’s pig.”

  Which is about where things stood when Joe Mondragón suddenly tugged on his irrigation boots, flung a shovel into his pickup, and drove over to his parents’ crumbling farmhouse and small dead front field in the west side ghost town. Joe spent about an hour chopping weeds in the long unused Roybal ditch, and then, after digging a small feeder trench from Indian Creek into the ditch, he opened the Roybal ditch headgate at the other end so water could flow onto that fallow land.

  After that Joe stood on the ditch bank smoking a cigarette. It was a soft and misty early spring morning; trees had only just begun to leaf out. Fields across the highway were still brown, and snow lay hip deep in the Midnight Mountains. Milagro itself was almost hidden in a lax bluish gauze of piñon smoke coming from all the fireplaces and cook stoves of its old adobe houses.

  Last night, Joe recalled, the first moths had begun bapping their powdery wings against his kitchen windows; today water skeeters floated on the surface into his field, frantically skittering their legs.

  The Trailways bus, with its lights still on, pulled off the highway to discharge and pick up a passenger. And the water just kept gurgling into that field, sending ants scurrying for their lives, while Joe puffed a cigarette, on one of the quietest lavender mornings of this particular spring.

  * * *

  About fifteen and a half minutes after Joe Mondragón first diverted water from Indian Creek into his parents’ old beanfield, most of Milagro knew what he had done. Fifteen and a half minutes being as long as it took immortal, ninety-three-year-old Amarante Córdova to travel from a point on the Milagro–García highway spur next to Joe’s outlaw beanfield to the Frontier Bar across the highway, catty-corner to Rael’s General Store.

  Back in 1914 Amarante had been Milagro’s first sheriff. And he still wore the star from that time pinned to the lapel of the three-piece woolen suit he had been wearing, summer and winter, for the last thirty years. The only person still inhabiting the west side ghost town, Amarante lived there on various welfare allotments (and occasional doles from Sally, the letter-writing Doña Luz daughter) in an eight-room adobe farmhouse whose roof had caved into seven of the eight rooms. Until the year before Jorge from Australia keeled over with his mouth full of candied sweet potato, Amarante had gotten around in a 1946 Dodge pickup. But one summer day he steered it off the gorge road on a return trip from a wood run to Conejos Junction, was somehow thrown clear onto a ledge, and from that spectacular vantage point he watched his rattletrap do a swan dive into the Rio Grande eight hundred feet below. Since that day Amarante had been on foot, and also since that day, come rain or come shine, he’d walked the mile from his crumbling adobe to town and back again, babbling to himself all the way and occasionally lubricating his tongue with a shot of rotgut from the half-pint bottle that was a permanent fixture in his right-hand baggy suit pocket.

  On this particular day, as soon as Amarante had safely landed his crippled frame on a stool in the huge empty Frontier Bar and fixed a baleful bloodshot eye on the owner, eighty-eight-year-old Tranquilino Jeantete, he said in Spanish (he did not speak English, or read or write in either language):

  “José Mondragón is irrigating his old man’s beanfield over there on the west side.”

  Tranquilino turned up his hearing aid, and, after fumbling in his pockets for a pair of glasses, he perched the cracked lenses on his nose, muttering, “Eh?”

  “José Mondragón is irrigating his old man’s beanfield over there on the west side.”

  Tranquilino still couldn’t hear too well, so he muttered “Eh?” again. Neither man’s pronunciation was very good: they had six teeth between them.

  Ambrosio Romero, a burly carpenter who worked at the Doña Luz mine, sauntered through the door for his morning constitutional just as Amarante repeated: “José Mondragón is irrigating his old man’s beanfield over there on the west side.”

  Ambrosio said, “Come again? When are you gonna learn how to talk, cousin? Why don’t you go down to the capital and buy some wooden teeth? Say that once more.”

  With a sigh, Amarante lisped, “José Mondragón is irrigating his old man’s beanfield over there on the west side.”

  “Ai, Chihuahua!” Ambrosio made his usual morning gesture to Tranquilino Jeantete, who slid a glass across the shiny bar, selected a bottle, and poured to where Ambrosio indicated stop with his finger.

  In silence the miner belted down the liquor, then belched, his eyes starting to water, and as he left he remarked: “What does that little jerk want to do, cause a lot of trouble?”

  Ambrosio went directly from the bar to Rael’s store where he bought some Hostess Twinkies for a midmorning snack at the mine, and also casually mentioned to Nick Rael, “I hear José Mondragón is irrigating over on the other side of the highway.”

  Nick’s instinctive reaction to this news was, “What’s that little son of a bitch looking for, a kick in the head?”

  Four men and two women in Rael’s store heard this exchange. They were Gomersindo Leyba, an ancient ex-sheepman who would, for a dollar, chauffeur anybody without wheels down to the Doña Luz Piggly-Wiggly to do their shopping; Tobías Arguello, a onetime bean farmer who had sold all his land to Ladd Devine the Third in order to send his two sons to the state university (one had dropped out to become a career army man, the other had been drafted and killed in Vietnam); Teofila Chacón, the mother of thirteen kids, all living, and at present the evening barmaid at the Frontier; Onofre Martínez, a one-armed ex-sheepman who was known as the Staurolite Baron and also as the father of Bruno Martínez, a state cop; and Ruby Archuleta, a lovely middle-aged woman who owned and operated a body shop and plumbing business just off the north–south highway between Milagro and Doña Luz in the Strawberry Mesa area.

  These six people scattered like quail hit by buckshot. And by noon, many citizens engaged in various local enterprises were talking excitedly to each other about how feisty little Joe Mondragón had gone and diverted the water illegally into his parents’ no-account beanfield.

  And by and large, the townspeople had three immediate reactions to the news.

  The first: “Ai, Chihuahua!”

  The second: “What does that obnoxious little runt want to cause trouble for?”

  And the third: “I’m not saying it’s good or bad, smart or stupid, I’m not saying if I’m for or against. Let’s just wait and see what develops.”

  At two that afternoon an informal meeting convened in Rael’s General Store. Attending this meeting were the Milagro sheriff; an asthmatic real estate agent named Bud Gleason; Eusebio Lavadie, the great-great-great-grandnephew of Carlos the ringside-seat millionaire, and the town’s only rich Chicano rancher; the storekeeper, Nick Rael; two commissioners and a mayordomo of the Acequia Madre del Sur—Meliton Mondragón, Filiberto Vigil, and Vincent Torres; and the town’s mayor, Sammy Cantú.

  The sheriff, forty-three-year-old Bernabé Montoya, had held his job now for nine and a half years. All four of his election victories had come by three votes—27 to 24—over the Republican candidate, Pancho Armijo. Bernabé was an absentminded, rarely nasty, always bumbling, also occasionally very sensitive man who dealt mostly with drunks, with some animal rustling, with about five fatal car accidents a year, and with approximately seven knifings and shootings per annum. He also reluctantly assisted the state police, once in the spring and again in the fall, during their raids on the Strawberry Mesa Evening Star hippie commune, during which raids they confiscated maybe five hundred marijuana plants that later mysteriously turned up in the pockets of Chamisaville Junior High School kids. Bernabé had arrested Joe Mondragón a dozen times, and had personally driven him down to the Chamisa County Jail twice. In earlier times Joe and Bernabé had run together, and the sheriff still admired his former pal’s spunk, even though Joe was a constant hassle to the lawman’s job—a troublemaker, a fuse that was always, unpredicta
bly, burning.

  Bernabé had gloomily called this meeting because he sensed a serious threat in Joe’s beanfield. He had understood, as soon as he heard about the illegal irrigation, that you could not just waltz over and kick out Joe’s headgate or post a sign ordering him to cease and desist. Because that fucking beanfield was an instant and potentially explosive symbol which no doubt had already captured the imaginations of a few disgruntled fanatics, and the only surprise about the whole affair, as Bernabé saw it, was, how come nobody had thought of it sooner?

  “So I don’t really know what to do,” he told the gathering. “That’s how come I called this meeting.”

  Eusebio Lavadie said, “What he’s doing is illegal, isn’t it illegal? Arrest him. Put him in jail. Throw away the key. Who’s the mayordomo on that ditch?”

  Vincent Torres, a meek, self-effacing old man, raised his hand.

  “Well, you go talk to him,” Lavadie huffed. “Tell him to cut out the crap or some of us will get together and break his fingers. Or shoot his horses. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

  A commissioner for the Acequia Madre, Filiberto Vigil, said, “Don’t be a pendejo, Mr. Lavadie.”

  The other commissioner, Meliton Mondragón, added, “What kind of harm does anybody think this really might do, anyway?”

  “It’s a bad precedent,” Lavadie said. “This could steamroll into something as unmanageable as Pacheco’s pig. Any fool can see that.”

  “Are you calling me a pendejo?” Meliton Mondragón asked.

  “Not you personally, no. Of course not. But it’s obvious the question isn’t whether to let this go on or not. The only question is, how do we stop it?”

  There was silence. Nobody had a suggestion.

  At length, Bernabé Montoya said, “If I go over and tell him to stop he’ll tell me to shove a chili or something you know where. If I go over to arrest him he’ll try to kick me in the balls. And anyway, I don’t know what the water law is, I don’t even know what to arrest him for or charge him with or how long I could hold him. I know as soon as we fined him, or he got out of the Chamisa V. jail, he’d go back to irrigating that field again. It seems to me it’s more up to the water users, to the ditch commissioners and the ditch bosses here, to stop him.”

  “Well, have them talk to him, then,” Bud Gleason said. “How’s that sound to you boys?”

  It didn’t sound that good to the boys. The two commissioners and the mayordomo shrugged, remaining self-consciously silent.

  “For crissakes!” Lavadie suddenly exploded. “What a bunch of gutless wonders we got in this room! If you all are too chicken to do it, I’ll go talk to that little bastard myself. There’s no room in a town like ours for this kind of outrageous lawlessness—”

  Five minutes later Lavadie’s four-wheel-drive pickup lurched into Joe Mondragón’s yard, scattering chickens and a few flea-bitten hounds.

  A cigarette lodged toughly between his lips, Joe emerged from his shop tinkering busily with a crowbar.

  “Howdy, cousin,” Lavadie said.

  Joe nodded, eyes crinkled against the cigarette smoke. Nancy opened the front door and stood there, flanked by two big-eyed kids.

  “I came over to talk to you about that field you’re irrigating on the other side of the highway,” Lavadie said.

  “What interest you got in that beanfield?” Joe asked.

  “I figure what’s bad for this town, whatever stirs up unnecessary trouble, is bad for all of us, qué no?”

  Joe shrugged, inhaled, exhaled, and replaced the cigarette Bogey-like between his lips.

  “I just came from a meeting we had over in Nick’s store,” Lavadie said. “We decided that since it’s illegal to irrigate those west side fields, we ought to tell you to quit fucking around over there.”

  Joe delicately flicked the head off a small sunflower with the crowbar.

  “Well—?” Lavadie said.

  “Well, what?”

  “What’s your answer to that?”

  Joe shrugged again. “Who says it’s me irrigating over there?”

  “I guess a little birdie told somebody,” Lavadie grunted sarcastically.

  “Hmm,” Joe commented.

  “So what’s your answer?” Lavadie demanded.

  Joe spit the cigarette butt from his lips and, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat, expertly caught the butt, lining it across the yard at his antagonist, missing him only by inches. “Maybe you better quit fucking around over here.”

  Lavadie flushed, but kept his cool. “Are you or are you not going to stop irrigating that field?” he asked.

  Joe smiled blandly. “The real question is, are you or are you not gonna get off my property, Mr. Lavadie?” He advanced a few steps flexing the crowbar.

  Lavadie hastily backed up to his truck. “What are you doing … are you threatening me?”

  “This is my property,” Joe explained matter-of-factly.

  “Well, goddamn you…”

  Lavadie slid behind the wheel of his truck and started it up. “I’ll go over there myself and see that not another drop goes into that field,” he threatened.

  “You do and won’t nobody show up for work at your place tomorrow, Mr. Lavadie,” Joe said quietly. “Your hay and your corrals might get burned by accident, too.”

  Lavadie fumed silently for a full ten seconds before jamming the gearshift into reverse and bouncing backward out of the yard.

  “And—?” Bernabé Montoya politely inquired several minutes later.

  Lavadie, pacing around the sheriff’s living room, shook his head nervously. “What do you think, Bernie? Could he really get people to stop working at my place? Would he have the guts to burn my hay?”

  “Sure. Maybe. Who knows?”

  “I’d be up the creek without a paddle if that happened.” Lavadie picked his nose. “This is more complicated than I thought. That little shithead’s got no respect, does he?”

  “Nope.”

  Following an awkward pause, Lavadie said, “I think maybe I better back out of this, Bernie. I think maybe the best thing right now is I shouldn’t get involved, qué no?”

  “Suit yourself, Mr. Lavadie.”

  “It’s just I didn’t realize—I had no idea…”

  After Lavadie had slunk off, Bernabé slouched out to his pickup, tuned the radio to mariachi music coming from KKCV in Chamisaville, and steered onto the highway, turning south. Like everyone else in town, he automatically fired an obscene gesture (known as a “birdie”) at Ladd Devine’s Miracle Valley Recreation Area sign. Almost immediately after that he shuddered going over a painted cattleguard on the road, muttering to himself, “It sure beats me how a handful of white stripes can fool cows like that.” Then, smoking thoughtfully, he listened to the radio and allowed his eyes to drift half-assedly around the landscape as he drove the fifteen or so miles to Doña Luz. In a field some kids were flying kites. Magpies hunkered atop flattened prairie dog carcasses along the shoulder. A few miles farther, the sheriff had to stop for some cows stupidly milling around on the highway. After that he tried to think about Joe’s beanfield, but quit because already it made him uncomfortable to confront this thing; he had no idea how to deal with it. It was a situation like this, in fact, that could cost him his job. If he blew it, which was more than likely, that three-vote margin over Pancho Armijo every two years could dissolve into a landslide victory for his opponent.

  So he had decided to try and pass the buck.

  Two men occupied the tiny cinderblock state police headquarters at Doña Luz: a crew-cut good ol’ boy state cop, Bill Koontz, and a young good-looking radio dispatcher, Emilio Cisneros.

  Bernabé leaned against the counter behind which the two men sat—Koontz reading a comic book, and Cisneros typing up some forms—and he lit another cigarette.

  “What’s new up in the boondocks?” Koontz asked lazily. “Who shot whose cow last night?”

  Bernabé smiled tiredly. He disliked the state polic
e; he was also slightly awed by them. They were well-equipped men with an organization to back up their actions, and he himself was a loner with one stupid deputy. Any difficult crime he always referred to the state police: in fact, they wound up processing most of his arrests. Accident victims always awaited state cars to take them to the medical facilities in the south. All the same, he disliked going to cops like Bill Koontz for help or advice because that usually meant he wound up siccing them on his own people. And although nothing much ever really came of that, it made him uncomfortable all the same.

  Now he said thoughtfully, “I came down here because I got a problem.”

  Koontz smiled. “So what else is new?”

  “This one is kind of funny.”

  “Shoot,” Koontz said.

  “Well, there’s a guy up in my town, maybe you know him—Joe Mondragón—”

  “Sure, I know that S.O.B. What’s he up to now?”

  “He’s irrigating his old man’s beanfield on the western side of the highway.”

  “So—?”

  “None of the land over there that used to have irrigation rights has irrigation rights anymore. I don’t know the whole complicated story of how it happened, but it’s got to do with the 1935 water compact.”

  “Sounds to me like the ditch boss, the one you people call the major domo, ought to handle this kind of thing,” Koontz said. “What could we do about it?”

  “Maybe you don’t understand.” Bernabé scratched behind one ear. “It’s not like he’s just irrigating this little beanfield. There’s a lot of people in Milagro, you know, who aren’t too happy with the way things are changing there, or down in Chamisaville, or all around the north. Up in Milagro—you’ve been along the Milagro–García spur, haven’t you? You’ve seen the houses people used to live in out there, the old farmhouses, and all those fields?”

  “That’s a ghost town, man. Only that crazy old fart—what’s his name—the little waffle with the badge and the suit, lives in those ruins—”

  “Amarante Córdova.”

  “Yeah. He’s the only one lives over there.”

  Bernabé drifted away from the counter over to the door, where he stood, hands behind his back, staring at the highway. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to handle this thing himself, because after all he more or less understood and had sympathy for the situation. On the other hand, if he handled the situation himself, suppose he butchered the job (a likely supposition), what then? At least if he gave it to the state cops he was off the hook.