The Milagro Beanfield War (45 page)

“She's got
gall,
” Nancy Mondragón said. “Just sitting around in the Pedo's whorehouse for tourists and driving all over in full view of everybody and grilling people about everything from soup to hay, pretending it really isn't their opinions about José's beanfield that she's interested in. I'd like to kick her ass from here to Chamisa V.!”

Ruby Archuleta chuckled, lit a cigarette and dragged deeply, let the smoke out pensively. “She must think we're pretty stupid,” the Body Shop and Pipe Queen operator said. “She really doesn't give us credit for much brains at all.”

“We can't let her keep parading around like this, asking everybody questions, can we?” Onofre Martínez asked, rolling a cigarette as only he could, without even using his missing arm.

Juan F. Mondragón groaned, “What are you going to do, you're gonna break the law some more? Then there's gonna be even
worse
trouble. You'll get caught, and
then
you'll be sorry. They'll pull out your fingernails with little pliers—”

Ray Gusdorf said, “Maybe there's some way we could make her leave.”

“Maybe,” Ruby said. “Maybe there is—”

As Ruby Archuleta, Marvin LaBlue, Claudio García, Onofre Martínez, Juan F. Mondragón, Amarante Córdova, and Jimmy Ortega left Joe Mondragón's house by his kitchen door, so also did the governor of the state walk out of a meeting with Xavier Trucho and Kyril Montana. And at the same time Jerry Grindstaff stepped up out of Lord Elephant's hogan at the Evening Star commune, slipping his wallet into his left back pocket as he shook hands with the hulking baby-faced doper. And on the west side, having run down the Joe's beanfield saga for Abby Tedesky, Benny Maestas chucked a pebble into the Roybal ditch and turned to leave.

The next day, when Abby Tedesky emerged—fresh from a shower and dressed to beat the band—to start her day, there was no air in the rented car's tires. Irately, she informed Peter Hirsshorn of this fact, and he immediately rushed over to Rael's for some canned air, with which he obsequiously inflated the flat tires, begging Abby's forgiveness for the locals' crude sense of humor as he did so.

Abby then steered out of the Enchanted Land parking lot, only to be pulled over by a wailing, flashing state police car.

“You got a license?” Bruno Martínez asked brusquely. “Lemme see your license, lady. One of your taillights is out.”

“This is a rented car,” Abby said tightly, hunting in her purse for the license. “It's a brand new car, how could the taillight be out?”

“Rented or not, it's still out,” Bruno said, carefully studying the license. “Hey, where's the registration of this car?”

“In the glove compartment—” Abby said, leaning across to open it. But the papers she had absentmindedly thrust in there three days before had disappeared. In point of fact, they were right now peacefully simmering in Peter Hirsshorn's office safe at the Enchanted Land Motel.

“Oh for crissakes!” Abby exclaimed, and started trying to explain.

“Don't gimme that line,” Bruno said curtly. “You just follow me on down the road, Missus Teshkadilly, we're gonna straighten this out at headquarters.”

By the time she stalked out of Doña Luz headquarters two hours later, having been badgered unmercifully and then vindicated at least partially by rent-a-car records in the capital, Abby was fuming. She hit the gas pedal going back up to Milagro … and immediately Granny Smith pulled her over for speeding.

“My radar clocked you going seventy-five miles an hour in a sixty-mile zone,” he said laconically.

“Bullshit!” Abby exploded. She had hit the pedal, but not that hard.

“I'd watch that type of language in front of a cop if I was you, baby,” Granny said, flinching internally at the “baby,” but carrying out orders anyway like a good boy.

“Who the fuck are you calling ‘baby'?” Abby exploded.

“Okay, that's enough, sister, I'm taking you in,” Granny said.

“The hell you say!”

Granny dropped his hand onto his gun. “You just get out of that car, miss, really quiet like, understand? And you walk back to my car, is that very clear?”

Suddenly Abby's anger was replaced by a feeling of being scared stiff. Things like this just didn't happen. At least they couldn't happen to her. “W-what are you doing?” she stammered. “What are you talking about? I just spent half the day with you cops, and now you're threatening to pull a gun on me because you claim I was doing seventy-five when I was hardly going sixty—”

Granny lifted his hand off the gun. “Look, baby, I don't know what your problem is, I don't even know who you are. It's just when my radar says you're going seventy-five, who am I supposed to believe, my radar? Or you?”

In her panic Abby realized she had better be conciliatory, she had better lick boots, even asses if necessary, turn a trick for this redneck son of a bitch if she had to, just to get out of this place alive.

“Oh, listen, officer,” she murmured contritely. “I'm sorry, oh brother, am I ever sorry. I've just had a rough day, that's all, I really apologize. Listen, I can pay the ticket, how much is the ticket—?”

Granny wrote her out a ticket for a hundred dollars.

“A HUNDRED DOLLARS? FOR SPEEDING?”

“I don't make the rules, ma'am, I just enforce 'em.”

“A hundred dollars for a lousy speeding ticket? Mister, who do you think you're trying to hold up, some kind of backwoods chippie? I'll get a lawyer; I'll sue you bastards until you're blue in the face!
What the hell is going on around here?
”

“I think we better head on down to the station,” Granny said.

“You bet your sweep bippie,” she hissed. “And you better not forget I've got one phone call coming to me!”

At the Doña Luz headquarters, though, a compromise was worked out between Bill Koontz, Bruno Martínez, Granny Smith, and Abby Tedesky. They decided in the end not to fine her at all, if she would just drive that rent-a-car back to the capital in the next twenty-four hours and have the taillight attended to, and stay within the speed limit during the rest of her time in the state. Trembling, Abby agreed to the terms and departed, expecting those redneck, greaseball, tanktown fuzz to shoot her in the back on her way out.

But she made it to the car, drove it very sedately away from Doña Luz headquarters, and headed north at forty miles an hour, intending to pick up her clothes and get away as fast as the speed limit allowed.

About halfway home, though, Abby noticed she was being followed. By a grubby-looking, mud-splashed van of some sort. But she was afraid to accelerate for fear of running into a speed trap. The other vehicle, almost tailgating her spiffy new car, followed that way for about two miles, then it pulled out to pass, but started to steer back in too soon. Abby braked, the van braked too; she wrenched her wheel and braked hard, coming to a stop half off the shoulder as a tall thin man with a moustache jumped out of the van's passenger door, and a big heavyset man with cherubic features, wearing a motorcycle outfit, circled hastily around the front, and a third man exited through the van's side doors.

“Oh Jesus—” Abby reached to lock her door, but too late. The lanky man pulled it open and in the same motion grabbed her arm, jerking her from the car—her forehead struck the upper doorjamb a hard blow, and she cried out sharply, then the lanky man slapped her once and threw her to the big cherubic-looking guy, who in turn shoved her roughly into the arms of the third man, who struck her hard alongside the head, shouting as she fell down: “You better get the fuck out of here lady, dig?” She landed on the pavement in the shadow of, almost striking her head against, the flaming rent-a-car. One of them kicked her shoulder, then there followed a brief scramble as they jumped into their vehicle and peeled out—like that, it was over.

What could she do—go to the cops? Who was kidding who? Abby pulled herself up and into the car and drove north in a daze, not even crying. Minutes later she coasted across the Enchanted Land parking lot, stumbled into her room, jammed clothes into a suitcase, ran outside and dove into her automobile and departed without stopping by the office that did not care whether she paid her bill or not, and as soon as she reached the highway, she floored it. Passing the Doña Luz state police headquarters at eighty-five miles an hour, she did not think it odd that although two police cars were parked in front, neither of them made a move to chase her.

To Abby the whole thing was not even remotely funny.

But all the various interest groups involved in the Miracle Valley beanfield war were satisfied because Abigail Tedesky—journalist, undercover cop, whatever—had finally taken a powder.

*   *   *

Pretty much from the moment he woke up after a bad night, Charley Bloom knew it was going to be one of those Saturdays. His spirits began, if not to sink, at least to cringe, the moment Linda announced, before either of them was fully awake, that she was going down to Chamisaville with Nancy Mondragón to shop at Safeway and J. C. Penney's, and the plan was to leave Pauline and María and the three Mondragón kids with Bloom.

The lawyer frowned, but then, deciding to extort something in exchange for what was obviously already a
fait accompli,
he nudged his crotch up against her behind and slid his hands around to cup her breasts, muttering sleepily, “How about a little hanky-panky before you go—”

She didn't really pull away from him, but he could feel her resistance; she wasn't in the mood. No matter though, Bloom persevered; and though his penetration was dry and slightly painful to her he carried it out over her weak protests, and once inside her all the way they just lay like that together, hardly moving. For Bloom it was a comfortable erotic moment and he felt close to his wife, sleepy and slightly woozy and very sexy all over. Linda dropped her arm back, laying one cool hand against his thigh, glad that he could not see her face, and neither of them said anything for a few minutes.

Then they heard a thump in the other room as a child got out of bed, and a moment later María appeared in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Hey Mommy, are you getting up?” she asked in her shrill little baby voice, and Bloom immediately shot back at her, “In a minute, sweetheart. Go take a pee.”

“I don't hafta take a pee, Daddy.”

“Yes you do, now go on, shoo, scat. I don't want you puddling on the floor.”

Frowning, María turned around and thumped through the living room to the bathroom. They both listened to her shuffle around in there for about ten seconds, then she started coming back toward them, crying, “Mommy, Pauline did a caca in the bathroom last night and I can't pee.”

Bloom stiffened now, growing tense for real, defensive and angry. Because after all, how many untold times had his children intruded on a good moment of sex like this? In fact, it seemed that they were always around, a constant threat, ruining whatever private moments he and Linda had tried to salvage. And the bitterness that immediately made his eyes narrow, his lips tighten, and all his muscles go hard was a bitterness born from a thousand nights when their lovemaking had been punctuated, made uneasy, and often sabotaged by one child's coughing, another child's nightmare, a sudden vomiting, an abrupt and chilling wail as Pauline awoke, having peed in her bed—it had been an endless succession of interruptions, so that after a while whenever they began to stroke each other in the dark Bloom had automatically tensed, waiting for one kiddie crisis or another to break the spell. Thus, his lovemaking had changed over the years; somehow a hostility he held against the children had also become directed at Linda, and now he got set to bang her suddenly, brusquely, and hard—unpleasantly, is the way it would turn out—so as at least to come before the child returned to destroy their brief flirtation with intimacy.

“You can flush the toilet,” he sang, his voice taut-tense, though trying to be reasonable and sunny even if on the verge of hysteria.

María had already padded into the doorway again. “No I can't,” she whined. “I'm ascared.”

“Well then go wake your sister and tell her to flush the toilet,” Bloom said. “But just leave us alone for a minute. Mommy and Daddy are tired.”

“I want to get in bed with you,” María said.

“Not before you take a pee, you don't,” Bloom threatened loudly, losing the sunshine in his voice.

“But if I waked up Pauline she'll hit me,” María said, starting to cry.

“Oh for Pete's sake—” Bloom uttered angrily under his breath.

Linda, glad for the excuse, started to pull off him, saying “I'll go…” but he clamped his fingers around her shoulders, hissing “Wait a minute, dammit—” and then shouted:

“Pauline, are you awake? Hey Pauline, wake up!”

“You don't have to shout,” the six year old retorted grumpily, “I'm awake.”

“Well, will you please go into the bathroom and flush the toilet so your sister can use it,” Bloom called, struggling to keep his voice from sounding too strained.

“What's the matter with her, is she a cripple?” Pauline wanted to know. “I'm reading
Uncle Wiggily.
”

Linda tried to get up again, but this time Bloom's fingers abruptly dug into her so sharply that she collapsed back against him with a tight little gasp.

“If you don't get up and flush that toilet I'm going to whack your fanny!” Bloom threatened. “You do as I say, dammit.”

“Oh, alright.” Angrily Pauline threw her book on the floor, starting to cry as she stomped across the living room. “But
she
never does
any
thing,
I
always have to do
every
thing! You watch out, María, you little pimple, when they're not looking I'm gonna get you!”