The Nirvana Blues (89 page)

Nevertheless, he understood that Eloy was going to die. Death was bright and beautiful and intimate all around the man.

The acequia wandered through backyards, it almost touched the foundations of newly built homes. Where burrowing dogs had blocked it, they had to clear it out again. Where planks, over which cars traveled, had flattened the banks, they worked to build up those banks again.

Unable to reflect for long on their tragedy-in-the-making, Joe worked quietly, on the verge of tears, yet almost happy. Eloy remained dry-eyed. Obviously, some newcomers occasionally used the acequia water for their lawns and gardens. But basically, the agricultural area the ditch had once served was extinct. They cleared out no horse dung, they patched no muskrat excavations. Instead, they removed from the channel smashed tricycles, overturned doghouses, and bald car-tires. They lifted out a wrecked TV set, shifted a jungle gym thoughtlessly constructed atop the acequia, moved a woodpile completely blocking it, and pushed aside a dozen fifty-five-gallon oil drums, the refuse of a home builder who was into solar collectors.

Often people sunning themselves in their yards challenged Eloy and Joe: “Hey, what are you people doing on this property?”

“We're just cleaning the ditch.” Eloy always answered without looking up as he methodically redug, rearchitected, and revitalized the ditch after its winter of disuse.

“But what's the point?” a Harvard-Law-grad-turned-cocaine-dealer asked. “Who uses it anymore?”

Eloy explained: “We have a field, and we plan to irrigate it once again. Our water rights are in order. So please don't interrupt the water flow while we're using it.”

“I'm tired of having that trench in my backyard,” a woman complained. “It's dangerous. I twisted my ankle in it last autumn.”

Eloy apologized politely and ambled ahead, rhythmically scooping out dirt, repeating a ritual as old as the first Indian tribes that had entered the Chamisa Valley nine centuries ago. “This is a public thoroughfare,” he told the woman, without once breaking his chopping rhythm.

“Well, I'm sick of it. Nobody ever uses it anymore.”

“We use it,” Eloy said.

“Why are you all bloody?” she asked.

“I fell on my shovel.”

She stared after them, offended by their raggedy-ass, bloody clothes.

A few minutes later they climbed over a chain link fence into Vincent and Marion Bailey's yard and shoveled up to the back line of a badminton court while a spirited game was in progress.

“Hey, Joe,” Vincent complained, “what's going on here?”

Eloy said, “You aren't allowed to block the acequia.”

“What's an ‘acequia'?”

Joe said, “It's the ditch that transports irrigation water to our field.”

“But this is our badminton court. You can't just come in here and—”

Eloy removed a dirty old manila envelope from his dungaree pocket. “I got all the papers in here, if you want to look at them. This acequia is the Lovatos Ditch, and it has a legal priority date of 1790. It's still a valid artery, because we are using it. All the correct papers are on file down in the state engineer's office, if you don't believe me.”

“Wait a second.” Deftly, Vincent loaded and packed a pipe, and rather portentously lit it. “Now, first of all, the two of you are trespassing on private property.”

“The acequia is public property,” Eloy reiterated calmly. “It has a three-foot easement on either side.”

“All right, let's have a look at those papers.”

Eloy handed over the blood-soaked documents, and everybody else lolled around, impatiently cooling their heels, while Vincent frowned, puffed, and prepared to wade through the papers. Now, finally, Joe heard sirens: across the valley, miles away, cop-car cherrytops were blinking.

“Hey,” Vincent cried. “These are all in Spanish!”

“It's the law,” Eloy explained. “For many years they had to be in both Spanish and English. You can get an English copy on file at the courthouse.”

Vincent tried another tack. He smiled, shook his head, toed the earth. “Look, this is silly. I mean, nobody can tell me what to do with my own backyard. When I bought this land nobody said I had to leave this trench open so that water could go through. If I'd known that … listen. I mean, what's this water used for? None of my neighbors irrigates.”

“I use it to grow grass and alfalfa,” Eloy said.

“Aw, come on. Nobody grows alfalfa anymore. Hey, I've got an idea. You can sell your water rights, no? I mean, for cash on the barrelhead?”

Eloy nodded.

“Okay, then here's what we'll do. Since nobody except you uses it anymore, I'll buy it. Or anyway, me and my neighbors, we'll chip in and purchase the rights from you. Then we can fill in this hole, and everybody will be happy. How much are they worth, your water rights? A hundred dollars? Two hundred?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

“What?”

While Vincent, Marion, and their perspiring guests looked on aghast, Eloy led Joe up through the center of the badminton court, restoring the trench to its original depth, and building ramparts on either side.

“Why are you two all bloody?” one of the guests called to Joe.

“We fell on our shovels.”

Further along people glowered, chided, or made hostile jokes as Joe and Eloy progressed through one yard after another, clearing a channel for the trickle of Midnight River water that would irrigate the diminutive back field, perhaps for the final time.

Eventually, they reached the river and sat down to rest. The water was high and swift and a little cloudy from spring runoff. A band of dampness circled Eloy's hat; the armpits and back of his workshirt were drenched with sweat as well as blood. Joe too was soggy. And groggy. And unable to think.

“Well,” he sighed, “we did it.”

“I'm tired.” Eloy scratched his nose. “It's stupid for just two men to clean the acequia. We used to clean this little veina with twenty men, and it only took half an hour.”

“But we did it. The thing will function.”

“I first cleaned this ditch when I was eleven. That would have been what…?” He tilted his head back dreamily, calculating. “Around 1906, qué no?”

“Hace muchos años.”

“Yes.” Eloy nodded. Joe forced himself to check the old man's eyes: queerly out of focus, they drifted. On his lips played a sad and compassionate smile. Joe's attention was drawn to Eloy's hands: they seemed exquisite, tender, all-powerful. If only they would touch him, embrace his shoulders, communicate safety … courage … well-being. But how to ask for that succor?

Eloy made a simple gesture. “I am the last leaf upon this tree, as the poet said. I never thought it would happen. Nobody thought it
could
happen. Sometimes I have felt sad, I have pitied myself, I have given myself headaches. Today I went a little crazy. I thank you for helping me. We did not lose our dignity.…”

Joe said, “It's a beautiful day.” The trees surrounding them and the river literally shivered with silken tranquillity and the condoling permanence of natural things. Way far away police sirens continued faintly whining.

“Every day is so beautiful.” Eloy smiled: playfulness leavened his tired eyes. “I never woke up but what the day was beautiful. Even if I cursed the rain or the winter ice, it was okay. Weather is perfect, just like horses and sheep. Today is perfect also. Right now I am calm. I have no regrets. My sorrow is for you, and your future, and the future of your family.”

“It's all right. I'm responsible for everything I did.”

Leaves rustled overhead as a breeze swept through the cottonwoods. Joe almost hallucinated; he could picture his daughter, with her pants rolled up, wading along, peering intently into the magical depths. He could picture his son seated on a nearby rock, mesmerized by the currents. An overwhelming urge to protect the world hit Joe. Compassion flooded his heart; his real connections were to human universals far more important than the petty brouhahas constituting his own little plight. Because he realized this, with luck one day he might actually have a legitimate shot at growing up to be something more than just another self-interested American consumer. He might learn to make contributions beyond his own bailiwick. If only—

Joe experienced a rare, disquieting thrill. Inside him stirred inklings of a new sense of responsibility, not just for his own offspring, but for things, ideas, human beings way beyond them. Was it too late to retrench his life in favor of society, humanity, the planet…?

Eloy murmured, “Even if we had succeeded in exchanging ownership of my property with each other, I could never have walked away from it on my own.”

“Listen, please, I mean…”

“A bad thing is that you won't even get back your earnest money. The day after you paid it, I signed your check over to the hospital. If I had not done that, last Monday their lawyer would have initiated proceedings to—I can't think of the word. To garnishee the land, is that it?”

“Close enough. But—”

“I thought perhaps a miracle would happen. You would earn the dollars with your drugs to pay me. After that, I hoped you would let me remain on your property. While you raised your new house, I thought perhaps I could stay, helping to build it. I feel ashamed, but I had those plans. Many times when you came over recently I deliberately avoided you by staying indoors or hiding in the outhouse so as not to face you. And every night I have lain awake desperately trying to think how, if somehow you managed to purchase the land, I could convince you to let me stay on.”

“It's over,” Joe said. “Neither of us wins.”

“I was so torn apart,” Eloy continued. “For months now my thoughts have been shady, desperate, criminal. I cannot tell you how much vergüenza I have felt. I prayed that Scott Harrison would die, that the bank would self-destruct. I thought of setting fire to the hospital. When I heard that you might be divorced, I was both happy and frightened. On the one hand I hoped that even if you bought my place, the legal snarls would allow me more time on it. On the other hand, it terrified me to think that then the land would be claimed by others. At which point my last hopes for staying on would have flown the coop. You understand, I held out for almost two years, waiting to unload it, stalling the hospital and other creditors, until I found you. I didn't want to give that land to just anybody.”

“Why choose me? I'm hardly a paragon of working-class virtue.”

“You had a look.” Eloy chucked a pebble into the river. “I sensed a rapport. You did not seem as greedy as most others. I don't know. Your eyes appear gentle.…”

“I'm glad somebody sees something in me.”

Eloy smiled thinly. “You were patient: for that I am grateful. Myself, I have been a sneak and a thief with you; for that I apologize. Yesterday afternoon, however, I reached a conclusion. I knew that my life here was almost over. That's why I loaded up the pickup and scattered my smaller animals. After that, I had plans to kill myself. First, however, I needed to kill Geronimo and Duke and Wolfie—but I couldn't pull the trigger. Then I realized I should clean the acequia and do a final irrigation before I died. And when I awoke this morning, all of a sudden I had a rage to live. That's when I mustered the absurd courage to rob the bank. It was stupid. We never had a chance.”

Eloy paused. A kingfisher rattled by overhead. Joe threw a pebble into the water and kept silent.

“Last night I dreamed I irrigated my field. Then I took my old rifle, the .25-.35 I used to hunt deer with. Fitting a single bullet into the chamber, I blew out my old man's senile brains. I died with the smell of my land in my nose. With the cool wet smell of a newly irrigated field in my heart.”

“You're not gonna die. Soon as we finish here, I'll drive us to the hospital. You're as strong as ten men.”

“Let's put it this way. I realized, eventually, that I couldn't bump myself off. In fact, when I awoke this morning in puro sunshine, I realized all those suicide thoughts were just stupid prattlings inside a tired brain. I love this life too much to throw it away just like that because I am ashamed of acting like a fool. Nossir,” he said, unable to look Joe in the eye, “while we have been cleaning this acequia I realized that I never could commit suicide. In fact, I realized that if you had actually bought my land, in order to take possession of it for yourself, even though you paid for it, you would have had to kill me to claim it.”

“I wouldn't have killed you.”

“This life is too sweet,” Eloy said fervently. “Also, I could tell you really don't know beans about land, or about animals. That one-point-seven acres needed me.”

Joe was exhausted from the effort to withhold tears. “I know. I agree. And it's over.”

“Yes, it's over.…”

Joe turned away, ashamed to have Eloy see him weeping. “I'm sorry it came to this,” he blubbered. “I wish it hadn't. I don't know what to say. I can't deal with all this calamity.…”

Eloy tapped his back. “Calmate, primo. We're not finished yet. Are you hurt badly?”

“I can't tell. I'm afraid to touch myself. There's no hurt, only numbness.”

“Bueno, let's go, then.” Eloy coughed, wiped his nose, and hawked a bloody lunger into some weeds. “We must build a headgate fast in order to irrigate before dark.”

First, they dug a passage through the riverbank, connecting the acequia with the fast-flowing river. Then they gathered large dead cottonwood branches, lodging them in the water at an upstream slant to the mouth of the vein, funneling water into the ditch. Blood swirled away from their legs as they waded in the water. After that, they canvassed the riverbank for stones and lugged large rocks over to the headgate, lodging them against branches to keep them in place. Finally, Eloy found some old tires which they filled with rocks and sank against the tree branches, weighting down the makeshift dam.