Fistful of Reefer

Fistful of Reefer: scene 14 & 15

Chancho grew increasingly aware of the activity around him until he snapped out of his meditation all together. For miles around rugged, scrub-covered hills and valleys wove a maze of time’s creation, crafted by nature’s elements. In the field below him grew their precious cáñamo, the tops of the stalks bristling in the morning breeze. He loved their little farm, but something this morning unsettled him.

He yawned and stretched. A handful of goats groused around the brush at the base of the rock outcropping. Further down in the valley he finally noticed the problem; the herd had found a way to reach the marihuana buds.

“Ah crap.” He snapped his Bible shut and jumped off the rock. A startled goat at the base of it began to bleat, then belched before puking a green sludge onto Chancho’s bare feet and legs. “Ah crap.”  The goat’s eyes rolled back into its head. It staggered and wheezed, a green froth forming around its mouth. “Hold on little fella.” It gargled in response, dragging itself blindly in the direction of Chancho’s voice.

He dashed gingerly back toward the camp while calling for the others, “Muddy. Nena. Wake up, the goats have got into the field again.” As he passed the fire pit, Nena ducked her head out the doorway on the side of their wagon, her long, dark hair spilling forward. “We’re awake. And for God’s sake, at least put on a loin cloth, crazy Mexican.”

Chancho covered himself with his Bible. “Whatever. You should talk.” He rolled his eyes. “Tell Muddy some already have colic.”

The three friends mounted and rode down the hill toward the field of cáñamo, whooping and hollering as they went. The field was thick with the ghastly moaning of goats, the whites of their eyes flickering in the morning light as they swiveled blind heads on stiff necks protruding from bloated bodies. Goats belched and puked, wafting a gas that reeked of a stagnant salt-water marsh. Chancho gagged, grateful he’d not yet eaten breakfast.

Some, too sick to stagger away from the horses fell over prone. Unable to relieve their bloated stomaches, they exhaled a ragged bleating. But the riders continued to lunge at the goats, either herding them forward or knocking them over. If the goat could puke, it would live. Only when the pressure in their rumen, their largest stomach, grew too great would they die.

A chaotic stampede ensued. Belching, frothy-mouthed goats, uncertain of which direction they were being herded, tumbled out of the field. The sickest ones groaned and dragged themselves away from the horses’ hooves. Chancho rode down the furrows waving his floppy sombrero over his head while Nena and Muddy did their best to keep the goats from scattering too far toward the southern end of their property and heading for water. The springs also happened to be the source of their closest neighbors.

Finally all the goats either milled around in a loose, rasping herd clear of the field, or had collapsed from eating too much of the cáñamo’s green leaves. Nena and Chancho herded the able goats northward toward the next valley where they could counter the colic with basic roughage, while Muddy tended to those who were too sick.

He knelt beside the first goat and massaged its stomach before jabbing a large 16-gage needle into its bloated rumen. The goat bleated sharply from the pinch, but soon a noxious stream of gas purged through the puncture until the goat’s breathing returned to normal. The whites of its eyes flickered and rolled round right in its head as it belched in approval.

One by one Muddy treated every goat he could get to in time. In the end only two suffered fatal colic. Thoroughly slimed in green, frothy puke he mounted his horse, Tripalo, and gently ushered the recovering goats northward until they got the hint. With the rest of the herd beyond them they soon continued on their own.

At the southern edge of the field Muddy stared at the two dead goats. When he’d first met Chancho, Muddy had insisted they raise goats rather than sheep. Goats did better in the arid hills. Besides, sheep were stupid animals, while goats were affectionate. Muddy couldn’t help himself. He felt a connection with them.

Mohair had been bred for a specific use. Men kept and groomed the goats only to take from them what they wanted, as they did with his people. The unique product of a multi-facetted oppression, white people had found dark-skinned Seminoles useful as scouts and warriors. But each time they served their masters, they were shorn, reduced to domestic animals. Now they were a shaved people, bald and useless, and Monday “Muddy” Sampson feared their true skins would not return.

After being forced from his community upon marrying a Kickapoo woman, he felt the burden deeply. While not a hostile separation, the distance was real. Now he herded goats. He enjoyed the work, but it failed to fill his heart with passion like the stories passed on to him from his grandmother. He gritted his teeth. For all he knew in a few short days he wouldn’t even be a goat herder, but a nothing, a fugitive without land or a people.

But speculation was Chancho’s job, not his own. Work helped him push the damning anger beneath the surface, and so he worked with all his strength.

At least a dozen goats had escaped toward the springs, following their natural inclination after colic, to do the worst possible thing and drink. The water sped up the off-gassing from the tender leaves and buds of marihuana, causing death. The goats needed roughage and time for their natural bacteria to recover from the shock.

Rather than wait for the others to return, Muddy stopped by the wagon to get his rifle and bandoliers. He and Tripalo would ride to the springs alone. The black gelding tossed its head and pranced as Muddy slid his father’s Spencer Repeating Rifle into its holster. Using the Blakeslee cartridge box in his saddle bags he could fire 20 rounds a minute for three and a half minutes without stopping for more than a few seconds to reload. Having done that only once, he hoped never to again.

“Just in case.” Muddy stroked Tripalo’s neck, nudging him into a trot.

Almost 18 hands high and as dark-skinned as Muddy, the gelding had been his horse for six years. Shot twice with lead and pierced once by an arrow, Tripalo had seen his share of violence. Muddy had been the only man to serve his entire time in the 14th Scout Troop of the U.S. Cavalry on the back of the same horse; a horse that, lacking legs, would tear at his enemies’ throats with his teeth.

The pair covered the ground between camp and the springs slowly, keeping a wary eye open for any trailing dust or signs of life. He reckoned Chancho’s timetable for a potential hunting party to be mostly accurate, but wild assumption served no purpose beyond the campfire.

He reined Tripalo onto a goat path meandering down a gentle slope and chose a northeasterly path underneath a ribbon of cottonwood trees to mask both sight and sound. Considerably taller than the average Anglo, he dwarfed every Mexican he’d ever met and stood out on hilltops like night at noon. His size, an asset when his youthful blood boiled, now served as a barrier.

But unlike language and culture, the fear inflicted by his size didn’t lessen with learning. The overwhelming black menace of his presence struck hard at people’s animal instincts, initiating fight or flight. Outside of his own people, he’d met only two who did not flinch when they first saw him—Nena and Chancho. It was no small thing.

Finally he left the shade and climbed up the backside of a steep bluff overlooking the northern most spring of the Upper San Felipe Springs. For a thousand feet beneath him the cool, clear water filtered along the lateral strata of rock before emerging at multiple points along the bottom of the valley as it sloped southward toward the border.

As he drew near the crest he steeled himself for conflict. He could find a dozen colicky goats or a hornet’s nest of unhappy ranchers rattled by the thought of demons, zombie goats and witch doctors. Something essential and basic to his existence craved the violence, but he also knew that a normal life—love in the arms of his wife, possibly children—mixed with violence like blood and oil. 

He hovered over the possible scenarios and landed on the side of the goats. He was a goat herder. The goats were his charge, and he would protect them. It was a simple, clean decision, the way he liked it. Dismounting, he lay on his stomach and inched forward for a look over the edge. What he saw in the valley of the springs, while not surprising, shocked him none the less.