MY WIFE DECIDED TO RE-WATCH THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR the other day because our grandniece had never seen it. She moved in with us in the middle of the semester after the dorms closed due to Covid 19. My wife and I had told Ana about our own experiences after we had bought an old adobe house in our own version of Milagro. My wife:

       “Early one morning, your tío came to wake me up about an hour before I normally wake up. You know, your tío always gets up about 6 am, but I get out of bed about 7 am. He stood there for a moment by the bed, afraid to wake me…”

       ‘You have to see this’, he whispered.

      “I climbed out of bed and looked out the window…there was…a giant hog eating our hedges, just like Pacheco’s pig. The hog headed east toward the park. A police car pulled up; your uncle said,

       ‘If you’re looking for the pig,’ he said, ‘he went thatta way.’

       ‘We already have him corned over by the canal. Thanks.’

*

       WE LIVED FOR TWENTY YEARS AS OUTSIDERS in a

town where everyone knows who is local and who is not.

And yes, it matters. Some local people took a shine to us,

and to them we are eternally grateful for their kindness

and generosity. The house we bought was more than 100

years old and it was the most derelict, inhabited structure

in the entire town. A quarter-acre of barrenness, except

for two large pecan trees and lots of weeds. In fact, when

we bought it from Roberto, the occupants were a blind

elderly woman and her mentally-disabled adult son. It

was obvious the person hired by social services had

never cleaned anything (we hauled the stove and the

refrigerator to the dump). I suppose he thought, “A blind

woman and a retarded kid won’t notice.”

       Eventually, our new-old house miraculously became

a gem of sorts. The outside character of the structure remained the same, completely in character with the neighbor-hood; no one would have suspected that outsiders lived here. But the quarter-acre was divided between a gravel area where we parked the cars under a shade structure and desert landscaping. Scores of native and migratory bird species have nested in or passed through our yard. We put up a wooden fence around the property to protect our privacy from our only human neighbors—the H family—and to keep kids from walking through our property as they had when the previous tenants lived here.

       The Milagro property had not come without its issues. We were not gringo outsiders stealing local water rights. However, the local locals often do not care for the newcomers in their town. The H family consisted of a grandmother, her adult daughter, and the daughter’s children (ages 10 to 16). There were never any adult males living there as far as we could tell, just men who occasionally spent the night—one of which was a local cop. Not our concern. But sometimes the grandmother would stand out in the yard in the middle of the day, screaming that everyone needed to,

       “Get out of my house!”

       Occasionally she would wander over to our house and we would chat with her politely… like neighbors often do, we respect our elders. She seemed to suffer from senile dementia and we felt for the daughter raising three teenagers on her own. When the daughter noticed, she would take her mother home immediately without a word.

       The two younger children attended school; the eldest was a drop-out. Not a big deal around here. If you do drop out, you can get a GED like our son did. However, Benny H was a gangsta wannabe. His “day job” seemed to be removing car stereos at night, and then (re)installing them into other cars during the day. More importantly to us, he would often hold parties in the middle of the week that would last for 24 hours or more. Scores of drunken teenagers listening to ear-splitting hip hop, songs glorifying men who rape and murder women. His poor mother! One weekday at 3 am, I made the mistake of calling the police; the cop showed up and gave us a bunch of “How dare you outsiders call the police on locals” (he later became police chief, was fired, and went to prison).

       We were in a state of undeclared war with the H family for several years. Finally, I went to visit an elderly town councilor who has been friendly to us and begged him to intervene; things settled down a bit. However, the problem did not come to an end completely until our son informed one of his friends—whose brother was a real gangsta—that our neighbors were pissing us off and overnight…the parties stopped. A miracle!

*

       TWENTY YEARS LATER: We live in our new 120-year-old adobe house, about 1 mile from Milagro (our son and his wife rent-to-own our Milagro house; we tried to talk them out of it). I read in the local newspaper:

       “Man arrested in the case of a dead shopkeeper”

       According to police, Benny H. has been taken into custody and charged with one count of murder and one count of armed robbery. The elderly victim died at the scene from gun-shot wounds. Just hours before the homicide, Benny H. had been questioned by police about another crime in the same neighborhood: an officer had recorded Benny on his body cam and a witness came forward and said that he had seen him near the crime scene about the time of the crime. Benny had had many run-ins with the law over the years, including alleged crimes of violence against family members. However, he had only one misdemeanor conviction at the time of his arrest. Helps to have a dirty cop, I told my wife, who used to patronize the dead man’s shop. And I will not lie: My first thought was that I would like to say to Benny H.’s mother (his grandmother died many years ago), You must be so proud. Then I thought, no, it would not be fair to criticize her since I could not say the same thing to Benny’s nameless father. Perhaps Benny’s father was proud of him; maybe they will meet up in prison. And neither of Benny’s younger siblings went to the dark side.

*

       There are no pigs, cops, or gangstas here in our new neighborhood. From time to time, a skunk, a raccoon, or a fox, wanders through our yard (we have to tie up our dog when he goes out at night so that he maintains proper social distancing from the skunks). Each spring, hummingbirds, hawks, and great horned owls nest and raise their young here and during the summer, vultures roost our large old trees at night; wonderful neighbors they all are. But it is hard to forget that our former neighbor Benny H still sits in jail, now for more than two years due to Covid 19, accused (and in our minds guilty) of a brutal crime.