Jemez Spring (11 page)

Hundreds of times Sonny had crossed the bridge over the Ponderosa Creek, a bridge that separated different worlds, the bridge of La Llorona, who haunted late-night travelers carrying discontent in their hearts.

In the time of summer thunderstorms, the stream rolled and tumbled rocks along its bed, creating a sound that echoed in the canyon. Those from the plains mistook the noise for a train rumbling across the broad belly of the continent. Those from distant oceansides heard the surf beating its heart against a sandy beach. The natives knew: the laughing waters were rushing into time.

Sonny could not help but wonder on which palisade of crumbling rocks might be found the Zia Stone, the one petroglyph that held the meaning he sought. The ancient people, the Anasazi, had left their footprints on the sandy gullies, left their old pueblos on the mesas, left their drumming and songs playing along the piñon-covered foothills and in the tall ponderosa pines of the high country. Their voices could be heard. The spirits were there.

“Why so silent?”

“Just thinking,” Sonny replied.

“This place does that to you,” Naomi said. “I left a lot of my culture behind, traveled the world, got caught up in artsy fartsy New York. A girl's got to make a living. But I still feel the presence of the ancestors here. I'm still a Jemez Pueblo woman, no matter what they say.”

For a while Sonny didn't respond, but he knew he had to ask.

“Where was the governor last night?”

“At Los Ojos, dancing. Yeah, I was there. That's why Augie called me. It's not what you think, Sonny.”

“What?”

“You know, what people say. Damn pueblo is a gossip mill. So is every little town I know, so is every big city I've ever been in, from New York to Paris to Barcelona. People gossip. Gossip can kill you. Maybe it killed the governor.”

“Gossip doesn't kill, people do.”

“Words kill. Maybe the governor knew too many names.…” Her voice trailed off; then, “And eyes. Eyes can kill too. You know. You know about the mal ojo. The evil eye.”

The governor knew too many names, Sonny thought. What the hell did that mean?

“This place is full of spirits,” Naomi said, shivering. “Some people just don't see them. They hear them but don't see them. They go crazy. Some don't want to see them. I know you see them. Hey, why do you think I'm dressed in this white buckskin All-American-Indian fucking outfit? It was Bear's idea. Hell, I only wear this outfit when I go to an opening. People who come to buy my pots wants to see a
real
Indian. They still think
real
Indians wear buckskin. I got to take it off.”

She opened her bag and took out a pair of jeans and a cowboy shirt with pearl buttons. Before Sonny could say a word she was wiggling out of the buckskin outfit, revealing in the light of the cab soft curves of flesh that would drive a landscape artist to portraiture. In his gut, Sonny felt the same disturbing hunger he felt when he needed a fix of
ice
cream. Chocolate.

He glanced at her and felt feathers in his blood. He glanced at his rear mirror, pulled over to the side of the road, and turned off the ignition.

“I'll wait outside,” he said.

“Whatever,” she replied. “I heard one of the girls at Los Ojos say ‘the governor looks like a duck, he must fuck like a duck.'” She laughed.

Sonny stepped outside and looked at the river.

A neighbor in Jemez Springs had ducks. He had seen a male duck frantically chasing a female, dust and feathers rising, loud quacking and crying as every duck in the yard chased after the two, a gang bang, then a hullabaloo as the suitor finally caught the beloved, clamped his beak on the crest of her head, and mounted for a few fateful moments.

Zeus, in the form of a swan, had descended hot and lusty from Olympian heights, looking for Leda. The oldest stories tell us that the gods have always left their transcendent castles in the sky to mate with beautiful women. Zeus or Yahweh, it made no difference. A woman could draw the gods from heaven. And what progeny did such passion engender? Polyphemus or prophets?

Naomi called. “You know what? I get the feeling you're missing something. Or someone. The people say when you're sad like that and thinking about only one thing, that someone has stolen your heart. Is it true, Sonny, has someone stolen your heart?”

What does she mean somebody stole my heart?

He turned, and her reflection appeared in the rearview mirror, soft curves and a smile. He looked up at the cliffside, the towering palisades where, if one looked long enough, one could see the outline of a figure. San Diego.

Long ago in early mornings when he and Dennis went fishing on the Jemez, Dennis's grandfather, don Pedro, often accompanied them. The old man would make them stop along this stretch of road so he could get out of the car and point at the imposing cliff, which stood like Hercules holding up the bulk of the mesa and the heart of the sky.

Mira, don Pedro intoned, his thin voice raspy as the wind. In 1696, o de por'ay, de Vargas and some Zia Pueblo allies fought the Jemez Pueblo people up on the cliff. Rather than surrender the Jemez warriors jumped off the cliff. San Diego saved them from sure death. On the other side, the women jumped. La Virgen de Guadalupe saved them. It is said they floated down to safety like butterflies. You see, there is the image of San Diego. Carved on the cliffside. On the other side is the figure of La Virgen. We'll go see it someday. Before I die. A miracle, que no?

Where? they asked, peering up at the imposing rock slabs. Countless centuries of wind, rain, and ice had carved messages on the face of the cliff.

They followed the line of the grandfather's shaking finger, straining to see what he saw, until by sheer will power or faith they nodded, yes, they could see the outline of San Diego.

Yeah, I see it! Yeah!

The old man made the sign of the cross.
So
now the people pray to San Diego de Alcalá. Some resist and keep their traditional ways. That's the history of our land.

Hushed by the mystery they then piled into the car and continued up the road to stop at the Jemez Springs cafe for pie and coffee.

Those were innocent times, Sonny thought. Fish, drink beer, eat baloney sandwiches, return home with a few rainbow trout, which his mom would fry for him, shower, and go out with barrio friends for a beer. Eliseo, Jimmy, Arthur. Play barroom pool, return home late at night to prepare for Monday's university classes.

“What do you see?” Naomi asked. She came around the truck.

“I used to see the figure of a saint carved into the cliff. Now I'm not so sure. Sometimes instead of saints I see kachinas.”

“Ah, Sonny, you're a poet,” she whispered, and leaned close to him.

He could hear his heart pounding, the gentle morning breeze sliding down the canyon, the faint voice of the river. A truck passed by, then a car.

“You've been in the spirit world?”

Sonny couldn't tell her he had chased Raven in his dreams, chased him through hinges of New Mexican history, until the bastard killed his child and don Eliseo.

Sonny had seen the soul of the child, a bright light splitting in two, just before Raven murdered don Eliseo. That ball of glowing light had saved Sonny.

Now he wanted Raven. That's why he had come. Could he force Raven to give back the child?

“Bear came to help you, Sonny. Don't you see? You helped the snake and Bear helped you. You're a warrior, Sonny, but you don't make a very good warrior if your heart is stolen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just feel it. Maybe that's why I'm here. I don't trust Augie.”

“Why go?”

“He threatened me,” she said.

The morning breeze stirred, moving like La Llorona among the bare cottonwood trees, her torn and ragged skirt catching in the branches. The brittle grass of winter shivered and sounded like a rattlesnake about to strike.

From the cliff a raven called.

He's here, Sonny knew.

“Damn place is full of spirits,” Naomi said.

“Yeah.”

They got in the truck and drove in silence to Jemez Springs.

7

Have I changed so much? Sonny wondered. Are any of the vatos I went to school with out chasing their shadows? Was I destined to meet don Eliseo and learn his shaman ways? Why am I here and not there?
There
meant leading the kind of life some of his amigos led. They were entering their thirties now, mostly married and with kids. A few had been in Desert Storm.

Sonny ran into them, they talked, promised to call each other, but it wasn't the same. In the thirteen years since he graduated from Rio Grande High things had changed. People changed. The city was mushrooming with new immigrants from California and the Midwest; even from New York they flocked to Rio Rancho. Like snowbirds seeking warmer climates they found the Rio Grande Valley, nestled, and called it home.

The old valley cultures clung tenaciously to their roots, their land of passion. The light of the high desert and mountain region was a light of passion. As, he thought, it must be in the African savannah, on the mist-shrouded peaks of Machu Picchu or Tepoztlan, on Temple Mount or at the Taj Mahal, or on the blue Nile when the red orb disappeared in the western desert, coating the river with a rich alligator sheen and the pyramids of Giza with the hue of Ra.

The sun was the symbol and the source of the universal light, and New Mexicans were a people of the light. The old people understood light was time, and time was to be shared with family and friends.

The curves of the road entering Jemez Springs are low-rider territory, Sonny thought. That's why he was thinking about the South Valley homies. Good friends, good times. The old houses of the village spoke of a time gone by, a history those who hurried would never know.

But Sonny felt the urgency to get to the Bath House and talk to Augie. What Naomi had told him made sense. Raven had returned and was up to dirty business. But a bomb on the Valle Grande? An Al Qaeda prisoner? A dead governor? How in the hell did it all tie together? Or maybe it didn't. Maybe it was the unraveling of Sonny's world that Raven was after on the first day of spring. The path had already taken many turns. Perhaps it was just about to take more, all plotted by Raven.

Now something else was ticking in his thoughts, what Naomi said, about his stolen heart. Yes, he felt the vacuum, the emptiness. Not because Rita could not yet lie at his side—he could wait; it was her well-being that mattered to him—but because something he couldn't name had been lost deep inside, in recesses even he could not enter, and therefore could not know. If his heart was stolen, who had it?

In his dreams he heard the whispers of lost souls, voices he couldn't identify. Like the ancient mariner with the albatross tied around his neck, he felt the weight of the dreams. Try as he might, he had not been able to enter those dreams.

“What next?” he asked Naomi.

“Depends on Augie—” She paused. “I don't know what he wants.”

“You need a ride back?”

“Bear will come for me. I'm his girl now.”

She looked at him. It was obvious he was hurting, and she might be able to help.

“You want to know who stole your heart?”

Sonny shrugged. It wasn't like him to ask for help, but she had touched the sense of loss he felt in his dreams. She also knew something of the shaman way.

“You have a place here?” she asked.

He pointed to a cabin by the river. “The one with the apple trees.”

“I'll wait there. If that's okay.”

“Sure. Its open.”

“Be careful with Augie,” she said. “He's as deep in this as anyone.”

Sonny nodded. A sense of relief made his shoulders relax. Maybe there was a reason she had come back into his life. Maybe she had come to help.

The old village homes always reminded Sonny of a time past, a village he had known in another life, perhaps the small towns south of Isleta, villages he had visited with his grandfather as a child, villages where his grandfather knew the people: Los Lentes, Los Lunas, Tome, Peralta, Los Chavez, Casa Colorada, Jarales, Las Nutrias, Sabinal, La Joya. La Joya, his mother's birthplace. The history of Rio Abajo was written in the blood and sweat of the Mexicanos and genízaros of those pueblos.

Each village in the state lay comforted and enveloped in its own mystique, its own history, its own ambience of time, space, and people interacting. The movement of the sun and its light transformed each town's geography into sacred space, a circle the people called home. That's what drew tourists to the state, a feeling of old-world tranquility, villages caught in a time warp.

The Mexicanos had learned from the Pueblo Indians by attending their fiestas. The early Hispanos learned the languages of the vecinos: Tiwa, Towa, Keres, Apache, Navajo. The Pueblos learned Spanish, and thus business was conducted. Young Hispanos going to a dance at the pueblo liked to flirt with the young Inditas, and it helped if they knew the language.

The women learned herbs and remedies the Pueblos had been using for hundreds of years. A bruja could pierce a man's knee with a stone. It helped if the bruja's victim knew a little Keres so he could get the help of a medicine man. Only he could pull out the stone and make the patient well.

The Catholicism of Spain with all its mystery entered the circle of the Pueblos. The statues of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the saints became ancestors to be venerated. During feast days the Pueblo men erected a choza, an arbor of green branches. Placed in the plaza during the summer dances, the choza protected the altar on which were placed the statues of La Virgen and the pueblo's patron saint. Elders sat in folding chairs on either side of the altar. The dancers and guests entered to pay their respects to the santo and to sprinkle corn meal.

Both the Pueblo way and the Catholic way were paths of the sacred, for as long as men and women could pray and believe in its efficacy, dance, beat the drums, and sing, the ceremonial song of life would continue.