Shaman Winter (23 page)

An old dilapidated truck, muddy red, a four-wheeler loaded with firewood, moved around the plaza looking for a parking place and, finding none, disappeared. A homeboy or a ranchero out making a living.

“Gracias,” Sonny said, and shook hands with the sheriff. He knew La Cantina de los Pícaros.

“Wish I could join you.” The sheriff tipped the brim of his hat, smiling at Lorenza. “But duty calls. Watch out for black widow spiders,” he said in parting, and hobbled toward his old '57 Chevy, a prop left from one of the movies filmed in Taos.

“Is he real?” Lorenza asked, waving as the sheriff's car pulled away.

“Is anything here real?” Sonny replied. “Qué dices we get an Irish coffee to brace us for the trip?” What he really wanted was to hear what the locals at the cantina had to say about the case.

They entered the dark and dreary bar. It was packed with a wild assortment of local characters who were smart enough to come in out of the cold. Taos artists, writers, and wannabes in one corner, and raza in the other. Sonny recognized some old campers, vatos from the area who spent a lot of time digging up local folklore. A lot of stories were told in the cantina, so the denizens didn't have to go far to gather material.

Sonny headed his chair toward the group. The boisterous conversation grew as quiet as day-old tortillas as those seated around the table turned to greet him and Lorenza. A “quién chingao es este” look crossed their faces, meaning, “Who in the hell are you and what do you want?”

Then one of the revelers, Gonidas, recognized Sonny. He grinned, stepped forward, bowed to Lorenza, and whispered, “Wanna dance?”

“Ask me Saturday night,” she replied, raising a smile of expectation in the old man.

“Quíhubole,” Sonny greeted him.

“Pues mira quien llegó!” he exclaimed. “The president of Río Abajo—” He looked mischievously at Sonny. “I forgot your name, Mr. President?”

“Sonny Baca.”

“Sonny,” Gonidas embraced Sonny as if he were a long-lost brother, blowing wine-laden breath on him.

Those at the table smiled, and Sonny recognized Cleofes Vigil, the master musician and storyteller of the area. Cleofes sang the songs of the penitentes so mournfully, they said, he could make stones cry.

Next to him sat Estevan, an artist who belonged to a group that had done a lot of work preserving the agricultural techniques of the old Nuevo Mexicanos. One could see his piñon and cedar sculptures at his gallery along the Embudo road.

Others Sonny didn't know sat at the table.

“Este es Sonny, el detective de 'Burque,” Gonidas said. “Y su linda—”

“Amiga,” Sonny said. “Lorenza.”

They all stood to greet her and to make a place at the round table, la mesa de los pícaros as it was called.

“Qué haces por aquí?” Estevan asked when the greetings were completed and drinks ordered.

“Pues, bad news,” Sonny said.

“Oh, Beto's girl?”

“Qué 'stá pasando?” Sonny asked, thinking he should jump in right away and ask what they knew because the sheriff was at a dead end, and both knew the state police dogs would sniff nothing out.

Besides, the smokey haze of the short day was settling over the Taos valley. It was two days till solstice, and Sonny didn't have much time left.

The men around the table shrugged and stiffened slightly. They didn't appreciate strangers asking questions, but the minute Sonny and Lorenza drove into the Garcias' place the entire neighborhood knew they had come to help. The gossip had reached the cantina before Sonny and Lorenza entered.

“Pues, es una desgracia—” Estevan began slowly, but Gonidas took over.

“Es el pinche Viejo Bent,” he blurted out.

Sonny sipped his Irish coffee. It helped to clear his sinuses.

“El Viejo Bent?”

“Ese sanamagón!” Gonidas continued. “Mira, en 1846, más o menos, el Kearny came to Taos.”

“Santa Fé,” someone corrected.

“Okay, he landed at Santa Fé in his boats. La Nina, la Pinta, y la Santa Maria.”

The others shook their heads, downed their beers, and called for another round. It was going to be a long afternoon if Gonidas got to recite the Viejo Bent history. Gonidas paid no attention, plowing ahead with his story.

“He told all the Taoseños that he was going to kick their ass if they didn't behave. ‘I'm putting Governor Bent in charge while I go surfing in California and check out the beach,' he told our abuelos. ‘Oh, please, Mr. Kearny, we'll be good boys,' la plebe said. Un bonche de marijuanos, how could they behave? They went and got together with the indios y colgaron al Governor Bent.”

Sonny looked at Lorenza, who was listening patiently and sipping her coffee. She seemed to understand this was history told from the point of view of los paisanos.

“The Taos Pueblo Revolt,” Sonny murmured, hoping the spiked coffee would clear his head. He felt a cold in his bones.

“The Chicaspatas Revolt,” Gonidas grinned. “La plebe and the indios fought the GIs at La Cañada, El Embudo, at Mora, all over the place. Kicking ass with Kearny. Muy ocupados, como dice el Morgan.”

“What does it have to do with the kidnapped girl?” Sonny reminded Gonidas.

“Don't you see, hermano,” Gonidas leaned forward, “el Viejo Bent was a real bad dude. He wanted to take over the whole enchilada. He wanted to be president. So when la raza and the indios killed him, he cursed the manito in charge. And that was Beto's great-great-great—uuu—
muy
great-grandfather. Entiendes. They say when el Viejo Bent was dying, les echó una maldición.”

“He cursed them.”

“Simón, cara limón. He told all the chicaspatas, especialmente a Beto's bisabuelo, he was going to get even. That means you, too, bro.”

“Me?” Sonny looked puzzled.

“Sure, you too.”

“But I'm not related to Alberto—”

“Oh, yes you are, primo,” Gonidas cut him off. “We're all primos. You may be a detective and have a college degree y todo ese pedo, but under the skin you're just a manito. So way, way, way back your familia was probably related to Beto's familia.”

Sonny glanced at those sitting around the table. Listen to him, their faces read. Sooner or later he makes sense.

Damn! Sonny thought. Don Eliseo's theory on the mark. I am related! In the dream Caridad de Anaya was going to marry Hernán Vaca! How in the hell did Gonidas know?

Sonny nodded. “Yeah, I'm related.”

“Pues, hay 'sta! So watch out for ese pinche Bent, he can get you, too. Póngate la cruz,” he said, and made the sign of the cross over Sonny, as if to ward off Bent's curse. The curse that had hung in the air since 1846. “Now that will be twenty-five cents.” He laughed and held out his hand.

Sonny smiled and gave Gonidas a high five.

“Thank you, father.”

“Padre de cinco,” he answered, and the others chuckled.

Sonny knew once a curse was laid there'd be no rest until it was lifted. Meanwhile, the ghost of Governor Bent haunted the roads and alleys of Taos, creating problems for the families of those who killed him long ago.

“Mira,” Gonidas said. “Alberto García's grandparents were the Nuñezes, el viejito Escolástico, and the grandmother doña Eulalia, who came from the familia Marquez in Rio Seco, de mi compadre Alonso, and from the Aguilar family from Hondo, el difunto Escribano Velarde, and they came from the Archuletas, de allá de Tecolote, de los Sanchez, who married a woman from Taos Pueblo, la Tonita, way back to the Seguras y Salas, de Pecos y de Taos, way back in 1846.…”

He went on and on, naming families, their villages, and how they were related, and who had married who, and who had killed who, and who slept around, and the family feuds and jealousies, la envidia, and the quarrels of one small town against another, until he laid out the history of Río Arriba, connecting all the families.

Sonny had just browsed through
Sabino's Map
, and that's what the author had done for Chimayó. Naming the families until all the relationships came out.

But Gonidas didn't need to write it in a book, the history was in his head, even tying the bloodlines down to Río Abajo, southern New Mexico, extending la familia of Nuevo Mexicanos down to the Bacas from Socorro County, Sonny's father's family, and the Jaramillos from La Joya, his mother's family, and when he was done, he had proved they were all related.

“We're all primos,” he finished. “Everybody has the same raices.” He laughed. “Como dice la Biblia, they beget y beget. And every thirty years, el 'spíritu del Viejo Bent viene a chingarlos. Especially en Halloweenie.”

“I guess.” Sonny could only nod, dumbfounded by the man who seemed to know the genealogy of the entire state.

So, since 1846 the ancestors of those paisanos who had murdered Governor Bent, Gonidas said, “even if you were just driving the getaway car,” had been blaming the ghost of the vengeful governor when they lost a cow or a sheep, or someone cut their pasture fences, or wells went dry, or husbands beat their wives, or kids took up smoking dope, or the death of a loved son occurred in a foreign battlefield.

It made sense. As much sense as any other explanation. The taking of the northern Mexican territories by the U.S. Army in 1846 was a violent affair. Manifest Destiny at its worst. The powerful forces swept across New Mexico, Arizona, and California, expanding the rule from Washington, securing a southern route to the California coast and all the lands, mines, and resources thereof.

Lorenza touched Sonny's arm. It was time to go. He looked pale and tired, and he was sneezing into the bar napkin. Enough history for one day.

“Gracias,” Sonny said weakly, putting some money on the table to cover their drinks.

“Take it easy, greasy.” Gonidas grinned.

“Tómala suave,” the others said.

They withdrew, and the plática around the table went on as if they had never been there. In the smokey bar the exchange of ideas, idle talk, philosophy, and the constant re-creating and reanalyzing of history would go on. The oral tradition exposed truth as a knife exposes the heart seeds of a watermelon when it's cleanly sliced.

Some of the plebe would get up to go home to cut firewood, home to eat, to milk cows, and as they drove, their eyes would keep darting to the side of the road, the ditches, the forest if they drove up toward Questa, searching for Beto's daughter.

Others just off from work would drop in for a beer and take their places at the round, well-worn table, the table of the pícaros, each lending his insight to the continuing story.

Sonny stopped at the bathroom. His legs were weak when he stood, his body trembled from the effort. He felt old, tired. He needed sleep; he needed something. He washed his face in cold water, splashing it on roughly to revive himself.

The ghost of Governor Bent, he thought. El Viejo Bent. Perhaps Raven had inhabited the governor's spirit to do his evil. Raven using the ghosts of history to enter the dream and destroy it. With the murder of the governor the full force of the American army came down on the paisanos, and enmity was strewn in the path of future relations. The split would be
we
versus
them: we
the Mexicanos and our way of life threatened by
them
the Americanos. In the middle were the once-great Indian pueblos of the Río Grande, which had seen the arrival of both great tides of immigrants onto their land. They cast a pox on both houses.

“How do you feel?” Lorenza asked when Sonny reappeared.

“The death of Governor Bent was a battle against an occupying force,” he replied, glancing at the table of los pícaros. “There would be others. The battle at Embudo, and Vicente Silva and las Gorras Blancas in Las Vegas, a resistance movement that turned in on itself, and Reies López Tijerina's 1966 raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse …” He paused. “But for all practical purposes, the time of the gringo had come.”

“Yes.” She noted his pallid color and the dark around his eyes and knew it was time to get him home.

“Well,” she said, guiding him outside and into the van, “there's more than one way to make a revolution.” She started the engine to get the heater going.

Yeah, Sonny thought, as long as the memory was kept alive the way of the ancestors, los antepasados, would be known, and the lessons learned would serve as guideposts for the future. Most important, the people would know that Raven worked in many ways.

“Raven is everywhere.”

Lorenza nodded.

“And he has many names.”

“Wherever the dream is destroyed, you find his prints.”

Footprints. Paiz had said the same thing.

They sped out of Taos, south, along the Río Grande Gorge while behind them spectacular clouds formed over the mountains, bringing snow to the peaks while Taos bathed in the slanting rays of mellow afternoon light, sun-showers that glowed on the sage. A magical setting. The light was biblical, spreading across the chamisa plain and infusing the foothills of the mountains, touching the clouds with burnt orange and soft mauves.

“You cold?” Lorenza asked.

“A little.” He covered himself with the serape and snuggled back into his chair. He was tired. “I'm okay. I'll just read awhile. How about you?”

“I'm okay,” Lorenza said. “You rest.”

“Gracias,” he whispered, knowing he was in good hands, and thankful for it. Lorenza had been patient throughout the trip, a source of strength.

He opened a book and put the notepad in front of him. “The History of New Mexico,” he wrote. “June 1846, Colonel Stephen W. Kearny began his march against New Mexico.”

But the fatigue and the rocking of the van made the pencil slip from his fingers. He closed his eyes and planned the dream he would enter. You prepare the stage, don Eliseo had told him.

Prepare the setting of the dream, like a play or the movies.