Jemez Spring (13 page)

Sonny waited for her to let loose, but Augie's presence intimidated her.

She settled for “Am I free to go?”

“Yeah, for the meantime. Just don't leave the state.” He laughed.

“I'll see you later, Sonny,” she said and turned and hurried out of the building.

“Where did you pick her up?” Augie asked, looking after Naomi.

“Red Rocks.”

“Hanging out with her friends. Stay away from them, Sonny, they're only trouble. We've had our people watching them for some time. Today they're having a big secret meeting in Algodones. Yeah, secret.” He paused and looked at Sonny. “You know about the meeting?”

“I heard some talk,” Sonny replied. He wasn't about to give any information to Augie.

“Come on, let's go see the professors.”

Sonny and Chica followed Augie out of the Bath House and across the street.

8

They paused in front of the bar.

“Funky place,” Augie said.

“Why did the governor keep coming back?” Sonny asked.

“He took baths. Massages. He said the place reminded him of home. Peaceful.”

He's in peace, Sonny thought and looked down the road, then at the bar.

Sometime in the past, it was rumored, Los Ojos Cantina had been registered in the National Book of Funky places. Some insisted the ancient rifles, spurs, saddles, rattlesnake and cougar skins, rusty farm implements, bad paintings, and a thousand other items hanging on the walls deserved to be called Baroque Western Americana, but for the realists it was just plain junk. Funky was the allure of the place.

The bar's ambience held, in warm embrace, the sweat, tears, hard-luck stories, and the propositions of a thousand lonely hearts who had sat at the bar nursing their beers. The wooden seats had been polished smooth by all the barflies who had killed time bullshitting there, and the well-worn dance floor creaked with the weight of lovers who had danced cheek-to-cheek on Saturday nights, lovers and those looking for love.

Sitting in the middle of the floor, like a tired rhino, the pool table, the same pool table found in a thousand western bars, from Yakima to El Paso. Every small-town bar down the spine of the Rocky Mountains owned a pool table where many an idle player had honed his skills and bet “the loser buys the beer.”

The booths, pressed against the honey-colored wood walls, were witness to the multitudes who had huddled there to eat green chile cheeseburgers, supposedly the best in the state, but then every small-town cafe in New Mexico boasted it cooked the best green chile cheeseburgers. Most of those claims were inflated. After all, the cooks in the kitchen were usually transients who moved from place to place, not looking for the best kitchen to work in, but searching to satisfy a personal, unsettling hunger in the soul.

“People think the governor just sits up in Santa Fe and does nothing,” Augie volunteered. “This state is booming, Sonny. A lot of development going on. A man makes the right deals and he can make a lot of money. Once in a while the governor liked to get away.… You know, it's quiet here. Like stepping into a different time zone.”

“Some say he came to see a woman.”

Augie bristled. “Come on, Sonny, don't get into that. You concentrate on telling me what you know about Raven's tactics. I'll take care of the rest. You have a place here, don't you?”

“Yeah, it's home,” Sonny said, surprising himself. He and Rita hadn't owned the cabin that long, and already there was a feeling of home. Perhaps it was the community he had been looking for. He couldn't return to the farm his grandfather once owned. Maybe here was a place where he could get away, a restful place close to the river and the earth.

“I'll be a minute,” Augie said. He turned to talk to the cops standing guard over a police car. The occupant in the back seat was leaning over, obviously handcuffed, so Sonny couldn't see his face.

Sonny climbed the steps and waited on the porch. He looked up and down the main street. Normally the village would be quiet. Today the crowd gathered in front of the Bath House was buzzing. Inside the governor lay dead and rumors were running rampant.

“Home,” Sonny repeated. This place has been home to some of the old families for generations. And now it was home to newcomers, people seeking a slower, tranquil way of life. The people of the West could be a restless bunch. Always searching for a yet-unrealized dream, a need to belong, a yearning for the perfect place to settle down, and in the process of settling down the people of the West fell into a love affair with the land.

It was this personal hunger that had driven many a pilgrim to settle in Jemez Springs. Like generations before them they had crossed the Rockies to the Pacific, then traveled north to Washington and Alaska, south into the Arizona desert. Always looking for a place to call home, a piece of Eden. They had survived the burning landscape, looking for a green oasis. Yes, once the burning search was satisfied, the people became one with the land.

“You can take my truck,” the old ranchers used to say. “And you can have my wife. Hell, I'll even throw in the kids. But by god I intend to die on these few scrubby acres.”

The early settlers of the West were like tumbleweeds. Dry and drifting, they had been rolled this way and that by the winds of spring, victims of stormy weather and barbed-wire fences. And what was the prize? A hardscrabble life for those who lived in the western mountains and deserts. Burned dry by the sun, weathered by the wind, they turned as hard as the unforgiving land.

People just don't want the frontier to end, Sonny thought. They keep replaying the conquest of the land in movies. Hadn't they learned by now? The land can't be conquered. Perhaps in small villages like Jemez Springs and Jemez Pueblo lay the answer. There a community could thrive, not the lone cowboy of the movies, but the people.

And where do those looking for a place gather? Sonny looked at the door of the bar. In the cantina. The cantinas of the West were places of respite from the hot sun, the constant dry wind and dust that choked, summer rainstorms drifting up from the gulf in summer, and winter snows that whipped down from Canada. When lightning and thunder tore the earth apart, cowboys and cowgirls headed for the cantina. Every western town owned a church and a cantina, but most often the weary pilgrim chose the local bar, a place of cool shades, the cavern where talk was easy and a temporary welcome was the price of a beer.

The drifter, the seeker in the wild land, the lost soul, all were drawn to the cantina. The church held answers, but the dissatisfied did not seek the easy answers. In the cantina you could tell your story before the sun set. In the dark confessional of smoke and booze and lonely hearts there was always someone to listen to your story. Paying for the beer was cheaper than paying a shrink, and for the moment the terrible weight of the search was lifted, the day got lighter, telling the story cleansed the soul.

Today the morning light seeped into the valley like a rain of gold falling from the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar.

Sonny shivered. Strange thoughts. I should be concentrating on Raven. Instead I feel I have to answer Naomi's question. The snake? The snake is related to dreams from the underworld. It wasn't by chance that I found it, then ran into Bear and Naomi.

He opened the door and stepped into the cool, dark bar.

The woman behind the counter smiled.

A transient herself, hitting forty and trying to look as she did when she was twenty. A lot of men had promised her dreams they couldn't deliver. She still showed some cleavage, just in case Mr. Good Fortune happened to show up that day, still teased her hair and brushed on bright lipstick. A Walgreens special, guaranteed to draw bees, the one good drone who could sweep her away, maybe to a condo on the California beach.

She looked as if she hurried to put on her mascara and lipstick on her way to work, and her teased hair cried that it had only waved at the comb.

What was her name? Sonny remembered the last time he and Rita had stopped by for green chile cheeseburgers. But he couldn't remember the barmaid's name. There was a different one every six months. They just moved on.

God bless the barmaids of the West. Was there ever a regal poem written for these working women who served as mother confessors, sisters, angels of mercy?

Those who came to down a beer or two didn't need to know her name. They entered the cantina to share in a few moments of intimacy. The rule of the Old West was wet your whistle, pay the bill, and move on. The cantina, like the small-town movie house, was only a temporary respite, a place to forget what was worth forgetting, a place to meet and talk to strangers, a cool, dark place where the unexpected lurked, where one just might find a moment of fulfillment, or lust, or joy, or take out bilious anger in the rage of a fist fight.

“Can I help you?” the barmaid asked.

Before he could answer Augie entered and called, “Hey, why didn't you wait? It's okay, lady. He's with me.” He nodded toward the five professors gathered at the table. “State police business.”

“Be my guest,” she answered. “Nice to see you again,” she said, smiling at Sonny. “I'll be in the kitchen.”

“Not bad, huh,” Augie whispered, looking after her. “She wasn't working last night so no use talking to her. Come on, let's meet the professors.”

The five men at the table stood. They shook hands with Sonny as Augie introduced them. “Professor Mario from Florence. His colleague Michele. Also Italian.”

“From Bari,” the soft-spoken scholar said.

“Whatever,” Augie shrugged. “Paul Taylor, looks American but he's from Geneva. Dieter is from Germany, and Jean Cazemajou from Bordeaux. Wine country, isn't it?”

“The best,” the affable Frenchman answered.

“Bon giorno!” Mario greeted Sonny. “A pleasure to meet you. And is this the dreaming dog?”

“Chica, meet the professors,” Sonny said. Chica barked a greeting.

Sonny placed her on the table. Michele offered Chica an Italian candy, which she took.

“One eye missing. Gurdjieff would love this,” Taylor said, rubbing Chica's head.

Augie interrupted. “Mr. Baca has a special interest in what happened last night. Please cooperate with him.”

“Did any of you see the governor leave the bar last night?” Sonny asked. “And was anyone with him?”

“I don't even remember last night,” Taylor groaned. “Too much tequila.” The others nodded and laughed. Except Michele, who glanced at Sonny. He had something to say.

“We walked back to monsieur Chávez's home in the dark,” Jean explained.

“What can I say, the death of the governor is a tragedy,” Mario shrugged and burped. “By the way, the Deli serves exquisite blue corn blueberry pancakes.” He turned to his colleagues. “The ancient Aztecs raised dogs as we would raise sheep or cattle. To eat. In fact, the first tamales were probably made from dog meat.”

“Dog tamales,” Augie muttered.

“That raises the question,” Michele offered. “If dogs dream, do those who ate the dog inherit the dog's dream? Is there some kind of metempsychosis, the dog dream being passed down generation after generation? You see, in many cultures the young warriors kill the old king and eat him, flesh and bones, or eat him symbolically. They do this to acquire his power. Cannibals eat their victims to gain the strength and skills of the enemy. This is symbolized in the taking of the Eucharist, eating the flesh and blood of Jesus to incorporate—”

Taylor interrupted. “But dreaming dogs don't appear in contemporary Chicano literature. Why? Because it's a recent story. I believe dreaming dogs are related to the Chupacabra mystery. Upon the deconstruction of the Chupacabra, that is, on the deconstruction of a folkloric creature with roots in the archetypal imagination whose only raison d'être was the collective shadow, i.e., fear of the lumpen, fear of the Anglo-American hegemony, and as those shadow fears imploded, they lost their hold over the collective memory and entered the Anglo world, i.e., the Chicano's desire to become more like his Anglo counterpart. Thus the appearance of the dog dream argument, a transference—”

Augie's jaw dropped. “Wha—”

Dieter poured a little of his Dos Equis beer into a saucer for Chica to slurp and joined in. “But you can't deconstruct folk memory! Does the dog wag the tail, or the tail wag the dog? You are going in circles. The essence of the dog dream lies in the artist as myth-maker. Which leads directly to the myth of Aztlán and its use as an identity marker in the
Weltanschauung
of the Chicano.”

“No, Dieter,” Jean contested in his mellifluous French accent, waving a finger. “The myth of Aztlán is dead. Contemporary Chicanos have opted for the American Dream, and their dream of a homeland has died. So has the belief in dreaming dogs.”

Sonny smiled. Scholars on the road to Canterbury wound up in Jemez Springs. The world
was
round.

I think we're barking up the wrong tree, Sonny thought, but dared not say it for fear the scholars would take hold of the symbolism in the idiomatic expression. Do dogs that dream always bark up the wrong tree? Is the dream inherent in the bark? Is the tree the tree of life, the axis mundi? The tree in the Garden of Bliss? On and on.

There are two kinds of trees, don Eliseo would say. The evergreen and the deciduous. The latter blooms, leafs out, gives its leaves to the earth in winter. Birth and rebirth. Death and resurrection. The evergreen is always shining, the eternal promise of life. People are like trees.

Sonny enjoyed listening to the professors. He had read such stuff as a literature student at the university, and normally he would love to hear the scholars argue, but it was clear they didn't know anything. Except maybe for Michele. He knew something.

Cazemajou continued. “Like my colleagues, I have written on your local writers, some of whom have achieved some recognition in my country. But I beg to differ with my two colleagues. I am a skeptic. Dogs don't dream.”