The Milagro Beanfield War (44 page)

Such quick, arbitrary, effective, and wholesale annihilation fazed the surviving ant armies not one whit. They kept steadily coming at about the same pace. So that even as Herbie rested, feeling slightly queasy from the executions, the dead ants were replaced at the sugarwater splashes by vigorous live ants, and in no time the busy black circles threatened to become as large as small Frisbees.

What else could this sad pacifist do? Donning his God outfit once more, in a matter of seconds Herbie stamped out the newcomers. But not even a quiver of apprehension rippled from the circles of death up along the descending lines, which were being steadily fed through little holes in the adobe walls around the vigas.

Herbie's heart sank as he observed new ants methodically plodding into the death arenas around the sugary spots; they paid no attention to the shapeless compatriots over which their tiny feet scrabbled.

Grabbing a T-shirt, the volunteer ran outside, soaked the shirt in the irrigation ditch, raced back inside, stamped out the new ant congregations, and then scrubbed each sugar spot with all his might for about five minutes.

Meanwhile, at the hummingbird feeder, regular, nonflying ants, who had only been momentarily routed by the oil ring around the main feeder limb, were crawling onto the branch above the feeder and dropping down—like lemmings—onto the sticky glass jar, drinking out the liquid and drowning as they did so, again packing the feeder with their corpses.

Herbie shuffled wearily back into Rael's store, where he put this question to Nick:

“What have you got, Mr. Rael, that murders ants?”

“Well, I got this here powder; it's pretty good, if you like powder. Or these ant buttons; you just put a drop of water in each day and stir, and they do okay if you like buttons. Then there's these ant traps, if you like ant traps. They all got the extra added attraction of the ants don't die out in the open where you can see them, they eat the poison and go back into their houses and drop dead, out of sight.”

“That's the way I want it to be,” the volunteer admitted grimly. “If they'll just die in private I think I can handle it. I better get a half-dozen ant traps and buttons, and also a can of powder.”

“Gettin kind of bloodthirsty in your old age, ain't you?” Nick teased.

“I can't help it,” Herbie whined politely. “There's so many ants in my house, when I walk they just about crunch under my feet like peanut shells.”

“Ants are one holy pain in the ass,” Nick said. He might have added, “Ants are indestructible,” but he didn't. Every year Nick made a mint unloading various half-baked ant-poisoning devices onto the people of Milagro, who persisted in believing in the myth of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, or in the story of David and Goliath, and so forth.

Herbie punched open his traps, wet his buttons, spread his powder, and snuggled down comfortably into his rancid sleeping bag, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow morning his ants would be extinct.

He dreamed the ants crawling all over his hummingbird feeder and clogging it with their bodies were a special kind of Milagro piranha ant. Whenever hummingbirds hovered at the spout to take a sip, hundreds of ants jumped on them, and for about six seconds there was a furious blurry thrashing in the air, then a spanking clean hummingbird skeleton dropped with a minuscule clunk onto the earth. All day long this went on, so that in the evening when Herbie scuttled out back to the splintered outhouse, a pile of tiny hummingbird skeletons, sparkling like rare jewels, littered the ground underneath his feeder.

But in the morning, in real life, perhaps half a million, not-yet-dead ants that had fed at the volunteer's various poisoned banquets were writhing on the smokehouse floor. They limped about in crippled, teetering circles; on their backs they frantically scriggled paraplegic legs; on their sides, twisted into grotesque agonized shapes, they arched and jerked and quivered. Their swollen abdomens seemed to glow with an evil, slow-murdering phosphorescence; their antennae drooped like wilted lettuce.

Herbie hunkered, petrified,
horrified,
on his sleeping bag, watching them die like gas victims from the First World War, like Napoleonic soldiers on a Russian winter battlefield. They twitched and floundered, weaved and bumped into each other, staggered about and toppled over and dragged their half-paralyzed selves painfully along the floorboards, little damp smears of ant crap marking the floor behind them, describing the patterns of their death throes.

“Why,” Herbie wailed, “am I such a clumsy, gullible schmuck?”

Meanwhile, ant lines, unbroken, unswerving, undismayed, still poured steadily out of all those little holes up around the vigas.

If it weren't for bad luck,
thought Herbie Goldfarb, recalling a song made famous by Johnny Cash,
I'd have no luck at all.
And he wondered all the more intently if it might not be a good idea to transfer out of Milagro, forget about his high-falutin principles, and head for Vietnam.

*   *   *

Benny Maestas had already been to Vietnam. Most of the able-bodied sons of Milagro between eighteen and twenty-five were, or had been, in the army, because aside from the Doña Luz mine, the army was the only other “area” employer that issued relatively regular paychecks, allowed people to do something—namely, hunt living things—that was in their blood from birth, and had a life insurance plan if they happened to get offed.

Thumbtacked on the wall in his room, Benny Maestas had a yellowed cartoon depicting some G.I.s on a jungle patrol in which one G.I., a Chicano, was saying to another G.I., a black, “Yo soy el único en mi família que tiene empleo.” Which translates into: “I'm the only one in my family who's got a job.”

In point of fact, the little town of Milagro had one of the highest death ratios in the United States of America. Of the fifteen boys sent from there so far to Vietnam, eight had already died: Tranquilino Apodaca, Meliton P. Trujillo, Chato Arguello, Johnny Mondragón, Elisardo and Juan Córdova, Joe P. Mondragón, and Onofre L. Martínez.

It is perhaps interesting to note that the previous year's entire seven-man senior class, except for Rumaldo Ledoux (a cousin of the noted absentee santo carver and rabble-rouser, Snuffy Ledoux), who died in a car accident graduation night, joined the army and four were subsequently sent to Vietnam.

Now, as the Asian festivities were apparently drawing to a close, a national pictorial magazine decided to do a “sensitive” and “searching” feature on Milagro's “anguish.” With this article in mind, a hip young reporter, Abigail Tedesky, flew out to the capital, rented a car, and drove up to Milagro, intending to complete some necessary background work before the paparazzi and tape-recording experts were trundled in.

Abby Tedesky had what would have to be described as a “very traumatic experience” in Milagro. In the first place, the minute her swish Cardinal crimson rent-a-car floated like a cruising shark into town eight days after the beheaded lunkers were mailed to Ladd Devine, the inhabitants pegged her for either a flimflam woman, a traveling puta, or Kyril Montana's other half, a lady cop, and, beginning with a pebble pelting by Mercedes Rael, they acted more or less accordingly.

Abby first contacted the mayor, Sammy Cantú, who was excessively polite to her. As she explained who she was and why she had come to Milagro, he nodded his head, saying “Yes, yes, yes, uh-huh,” and he didn't believe a word she said. Smiling ingratiatingly, though, he also eyed her intently, waiting to catch a high sign—a wink, a hand signal—that would indicate her real reasons for coming to Milagro and wanting to grill people. But to his chagrin, and subsequent terror, that sign was not forthcoming. After she left, toting a list of names that he had supplied, the mayor sat in a chair wringing his hands, certain Abby was in town on Kyril Montana's, or perhaps even the FBI's, behalf to keep a tight watch over people like himself.

Nick Rael nodded his head, saying “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” while Abby explained herself and her mission, and when she tried to probe more deeply into Milagro's war dead, he asked, with a knowing, sardonic wink: “Uh, which war, exactly, would you be referring to?”

And Abby wondered: Why did this tight-lipped store owner chuckle like
that
when she answered, “The Vietnam war, of course.”

After Nick Rael, things grew steadily worse.

Tranquilino Apodaca's mother kept her standing on the bienvenido mat, and when Abby finished her spiel, the bright-eyed woman replied, “What do you want to write about Tranky for; he was a good kid, but also a bum. It wasn't bad enough he did time for burglary, assaulting a chota, and rape, he had to enlist in the government too; they gave him a free gun, free bullets, and free people to shoot at. When he came home defunct there was a smile on his face. There was a smile on my face too, because the government sent a check for ten thousand dollars. You want to write a story, why don't you write it about José Mondragón's beanfield? You want to write about a war, just keep paying your rent over in Pedo Hirsshorn's Enchanted Land whorehouse for the tourists, and don't walk around town without your eyes open.”

The other mothers did not react in quite such a vituperative manner, but they all more or less chorused similar sentiments: “What do you want to write about my boy for? Dead is dead, rest in peace. I don't want to be reminded he was working for the government when he died, or that the meat he killed nobody was allowed to eat. You want to write about something, why don't you write about José Mondragón's beanfield over there on the west side? You want a war story, just keep paying your rent over in Pedro ‘The Pedo' Hirsshorn's Enchanted Land whorehouse for the tourists, wear a bulletproof vest, and keep your eyes open.”

Abby had never, not on any assignment, experienced such hostility, such suspicion. People muttered their standard replies, told her to write about Joe's beanfield, and closed the door.

Eventually Abby decided that since she was making little progress with the Dead Vet–Town's Anguish angle, she might as well humor the people a little by checking out Joe Mondragón's beanfield. By chance, Benny Maestas led her there.

They stood on the bank, overlooking the tiny beanfield surrounded by desolate land, busted fences, rotting houses. Wind raged, the bean leaves were covered with dust; they looked bedraggled, unhealthy, dying. Abby squinted her eyes, peering at this pathetic little patch of vegetables through one-way Lolita sunglasses as Benny Maestas unfolded his arm in a magnificent sweeping gesture, intoning with awe, reverence, almost religious serenity: “There it is.”

“
This
is Joe Mondragón's beanfield?”

“You better believe it.”

“But what's so special about it—?”

Meanwhile, perturbed rumors had been scooting around in high places. As a result, Ladd Devine phoned the state engineer, named the national magazine Abigail Tedesky worked for, and said, “For God's sake, Nelson, they're going to write a story about Joe Mondragón's beanfield!”

Bookman shit a brick. “Jesus, Ladd, have you talked to the governor?”

“That was going to be my next call.”

“Well, okay. Get back to me right away, will you? This is too much.”

The governor said, “Are you serious about this, Ladd? Is this woman for a fact up there right now?”

“I'm not making this up,” Devine said testily. “This isn't my idea of a thing to joke about. She's been in town three days now, talking with people down in the valley, asking them about the beanfield.”

“Okay,” the governor said quietly. “I'll see what I can do.” Hanging up, he dialed state police headquarters: “Give me Xavier Trucho, please.…”

And the governor and Trucho talked.

After Ladd Devine hung up, he sat in his black Naugahide swivel chair with his hands clasped underneath his chin, his brow furrowed, thinking hard. For about five minutes he was deadly silent, then he called in Emerson Lapp, asking his secretary to send for Jerry Grindstaff. When Jerry G. arrived, Devine asked Lapp to leave and close the door behind him. They were alone in the closed office like that, Devine and Jerry G., for about eight minutes, after which Jerry G. emerged, his face expressionless as usual. He walked downstairs and out front, slipped behind the wheel of a Dancing Trout station wagon, and drove out of the canyon and through town, turning left onto the highway, aiming south. A little past the Body Shop and Pipe Queen he turned right onto Strawberry Mesa, bouncing over a maze of rutted roads to the Evening Star hippie commune.

What Jerry G. planned to arrange was made all the more possible by the fact that recently—within the last three months, in fact—a methadone program for heroin addicts had been set up in Chamisaville. It was a program of good intentions, perhaps, and the people running it were trying to administer it fairly, but it was having at least one rather bad side effect: namely, the free methadone handouts were drawing a different kind of freak, notably smack addicts and pushers, into the area, most especially into the communes surrounding Chamisaville. This had caused a hitherto unknown tension to exist in the communes, a tension that had developed into a war between the peace-love-flower-child-grass-acid-mushroom-peyote hippies and the hard-stuff junkies moving in and ruthlessly taking over, trying to promote skag. To this new element, bean growing and gorgeous sunsets were so much crap in the spiritual can if the daily nickel bag or its equivalent did not arrive on time.

Jerry G. chugged up to the Evening Star commune, parked his car, said hello to a spacey-eyed woman traipsing along behind a herd of mangy goats, and headed briskly toward a nearby hoganlike structure in which a recent commune arrival known as Lord Elephant holed out. Jerry G. knocked on the door, the door opened, he disappeared inside.

While Jerry G. talked to Lord Elephant, some five miles away another important confab was taking place.