A great cheer went up from the men, and the natives, sensing something important had been said by the bearded leader of the barbarians, also cheered. The first meeting of the Oñate expedition with the natives of the kingdom of La Nueva México had gone well. No blood had been spilled on either side.
But the celebration was short-lived. Now Owl Woman was missing, and Capitán Andres Vaca was hurrying to the Indian village. A stately bridal house had been erected from poles of desert mesquite and covered with the green branches of the river cottonwood. A pine tree had been brought down from the mountains as soon as the wedding was announced, and the men from one of the clans peeled the bark from the tree and planted it in front of the jacal. From crossbeams at the top of the pole hung sacks of gifts for the wedding guests, food in the form of bread, dry corn, vegetables. Even one of the Spaniards’ slaughtered sheep hung there. During the ceremony the men the Spaniards called clowns would dance and frolic and finally shimmy up the tree to cut loose the gifts to distribute to the pueblo.
The women had tended Owl Woman all day, bathing her and covering her body with the luxuriant oil of the sunflower. They washed her hair with yucca roots and yerba de la negra, then tied the long, black glistening hair into the braids of marriage. Under their care and in the secrecy of the bride’s house, the young woman had been transformed.
Now as Oñate and Andres Vaca approached the jacal, they found the women outside the hut, crying and filling the air with their keening.
Where is Owl Woman? Andres shouted. He didn’t understand the cacophony of voices that answered him.
Andres entered the jacal and was met by Juan Diego. What has happened?
They say a spirit came, Juan Diego replied. They say an evil spirit came from the sky and stole her away.
What do you mean a spirit from the sky? Andres asked.
The shaman who stood by Juan Diego raised his hand. As he spoke, Juan Diego translated.
It is the one we call the Bringer of Curses. He came for Owl Woman, claiming her as his own. He came and he left his sign.
He pointed at the soft-tanned buckskin that lay on the ground.
Andres drew closer to the marriage bed and spied four black feathers on it. He bent to pick them up, but the shaman stopped him.
No, do not touch the feathers. The Bringer of Curses has taken the woman who was to be your wife. Now you must go in search of her and bring her back. She carries your children. If you do not find her, there will be no future for your children.
Who is this Bringer of Curses? Have you searched the village? She can’t disappear into thin air! Perhaps she went to the river.
No, the shaman replied. She is not here. The Bringer of Curses has taken her soul to the land of misty dreams, there where we cannot see clearly.
Where is this land of misty dreams? he asked the shaman.
It is the underworld, the place of spirits. The Bringer of Curses came for the girl because he wishes to destroy you. Long ago you fought a battle with him. You have fought many battles with him, and now he has found a way to kill you.
Andres drew back. There it was, the evil that had followed him from Spain now came to steal away the woman he loved. He shuddered, feeling defeat in his blood.
Yes, he mumbled, I have fought many battles with him.
Owl Woman came to bring you the dreams of peace, the shaman continued. This river is the center of our world, and from here in four sacred directions live the people. We have made peace with the earth and the universe. We have vowed to respect all life, for we are the children of the dream. She was to give birth to your children, so the great violence you have done to our world can be forgiven. Together you were to deliver the Calendar of Dreams to the north, and there your sons and daughters would learn to live in peace with the earth. But without the knowledge of the dreams, you are nothing.
Nothing, Andres repeated. Only last night he had dreamed the curse of violence that had followed him to the Americas had lifted. He had awakened with renewed energy, his heart singing. Suddenly the dreams of finding gold and becoming rich and prosperous seemed unimportant. It was not gold he desired. What he wanted was the dream of a new home in La Nueva México, of family, of the love Owl Woman brought. He was part of that dream, and it could come true.
There had been too much violence and death in the conquest of México. If that could be averted in La Nueva México, then the colonization of the region would not be written in blood, and the future would be one of peace and harmony.
Where do I search for her? Andres asked the shaman.
There! The shaman pointed at the opening of the bridal house. A luminous light filled the entryway. Andres Vaca squinted. Shading his eyes with his hand, he walked through the entry and its blinding light.
The shaman had said that he and the Bringer of Curses had fought this battle before. Now the future was at stake. If he didn’t find Owl Woman, there would be no future.
2
Sonny laid down his pen and glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven. Over the Sandia Mountains Venus, Sunbringer, was as dull as a pea in the eastern sky.
“Incredible,” he said to Chica.
December 18 he dated his dream.
He had seen city workers putting up Christmas decorations in the downtown streets when Rita drove him to physical therapy. The radio played Christmas carols, and along North Fourth Street once-empty lots were suddenly covered with small piñon and pine trees. But the season aroused little emotion in Sonny.
Each morning he got up, showered, dressed, and got into his wheelchair to go to therapy. When Rita brought him home, he sat in his chair and looked out the window or read. Don Eliseo visited him daily, usually at lunchtime to fix Sonny something to eat.
“Gotta keep your strength up,” the old man said, meaning Sonny had to overcome the waves of depression that swept over him.
Don Eliseo’s close friends, don Toto and doña Concha, also visited once a week. Don Toto’s lowrider Chevy needed a battery, so they showed up less frequently. When they came, don Toto brought a bottle of his homemade wine and they drank and told stories.
The three elders were in their eighties, and they knew enough stories to fill a book. Sonny’s brightest part of the day was spent listening to his old friends. Don Eliseo brought a bag full of piñones and Concha baked biscochitos, filling the kitchen with the aroma of the sugar cookies, cinnamon, and anise. They spoke about their lives, how it was when they were young, the neighbors they knew in the ranchitos up and down the North Valley, vecinos they went to visit in the Indian pueblos, the vast gardens and vineyards that dotted the valley.
“Now it’s all commercial,” Concha said. “If you don’t got money, nobody pays attention to you.”
“We’ve got more than that,” don Eliseo reminded them. “We have our spirit. The way of our ancestors.”
“Our herencia.” Toto nodded.
They told stories about witches, brujas and brujos who could fly in the form of an owl or other birds, old stories the Hispanos and Mexicanos of the Río Grande had forgotten. Stories about Navajo witchcraft their grandparents had told.
“The brujo is as old as Adam,” don Eliseo said. “They fly to capture your soul in their circle of evil. A good brujo, a shaman, he flies to set the soul free.”
They looked at Sonny.
“The spirit is powerful, it does not die,” Concha said. “It flies around. I still hear the old people …”
On and on they went, telling about spring planting, the cleaning of the acequias, the summer milpas that needed constant care, the harvest of the fields under a moon so full it was a sun that embraced the Río Grande valley, filling it with a light so bright it cast shadows.
“We worked in peace with our neighbors.”
“We slept in peace.”
“Now it’s gone. What will come in its place?”
Sonny listened.
In the afternoon Rita came with food. An enchilada dinner with beans and rice, hot tortillas, co
ffee, natillas for dessert. She saw to it that he ate well. Throughout his convalescence, she had cared for him. Without her he would not have survived the depression that came with the paralysis.
So he thrived on food for the soul and body. Don Eliseo’s lessons and the mouthwatering, hot chile that smothered the beans, meat, and potatoes sustained his spirit. Listening to the old man, Sonny discovered that don Eliseo knew how to enter the world of dreams. During the long December afternoons he was sharing his knowledge with Sonny.
His mother came often to bring freshly laundered sheets and make his bed, and like Rita to bring food to fill his refrigerator.
“You have to eat,” she coaxed him, bringing hot menudo spiced with red chile from the Barelas Coffeehouse. They made the menudo the way he liked it.
When he was alone, Sonny read. In the afternoons he returned to reading as a solace. New Mexico history books he had accumulated since he finished college and was always too busy to read, he now devoured. He read beneath the dates and historical events, trying to understand the underpinnings of the Indohispano culture of New Mexico, the culture of his ancestors, which seemed to flare into life at odd moments. Then came the sudden illumination. The dreams he was having were related to the history he was reading.
“You have a gift,” don Eliseo had said. “A dream is a way to enter the world of spirits. It is also a way to enter history. If you want to return to a place and a time in which your ancestors lived, you must dream about that place. The dream takes you there.”
Create the place you want to visit in a dream? Sonny wondered. Was it possible?
That’s what happened last night, he thought, slapping his thigh. I was reading about the Oñate expedition. I created the time and place, and my dream took me there.
“I’m learning to create my dream!” he said to Chica, rubbing her. “Don Eliseo’s going to be proud of me.”
He had become, in one way or another, the capitán in the expedition of Juan de Oñate, and the woman he loved had been kidnapped.
Why did he feel he knew the Indian woman so intimately? In the dream he had made love to her, and she had assured him she would bear his children. The marriage was planned, then the Bringer of Curses struck.
Chica scratched eagerly at his arm, rising to lick his face. It was all right, he was awake and a new day was starting.
“Sí, buenos días to you,” he said.
Soon after Sonny returned home from the hospital Chica had shown up, as if she understood the man sitting in the wheelchair needed her. Rita placed an ad in the paper advertising the found dog, and she called the local vets, but nobody claimed her.
“Keep her,” don Eliseo said. “She has come for a reason. She has magic, look.”
Sonny looked into her eyes, and the understanding he saw there surprised him. A few years ago he had sold his mare, Stella, to a girl named Kristan. The closeness he had felt for the mare was the same he felt for Chica, the same spirit shone in her eyes. He vowed to go by Sondra’s North Valley stable and check on Stella as soon as he felt better.
“Animals adopt people,” don Eliseo had said, and he cut a dog door into the kitchen door so Sonny wouldn’t have to climb into his wheelchair every time Chica needed to be let in or out of the house. When she needed to, she would go outside, bark to announce to the world that she was now watching over Sonny’s house, stake out her territory, and then rush back to sit patiently by his side.
Something of her spirit began to rub off on Sonny. He took an interest in her, and a bond grew between them. He secretly hoped no one would call and claim her.
“You’re a great friend, Chica,” he said.
She barked, jumped out of bed, and ran out of the bedroom. In seconds he could hear her outside, barking. She would explore for a few minutes, then the cold would drive her back inside.
Sonny rubbed his legs, still weak from the paralysis he had suffered when Dr. Stammer placed two paddles from the defibrillator machine to his head and shot a jolt of electricity into his skull. He had lived through it, but it had jumbled his nervous system. Those first few days he could barely talk, couldn’t move, but slowly he recovered his speech and the use of his hands and arms.
Using the strength in his arms, he lifted himself out of bed and into his wheelchair. He wrapped a blanket around his cold legs, and on the way to the bathroom he pushed the thermostat up to warm the house. In the bathroom he heaved himself up and stood clumsily, clutching the cabinet, to use the toilet.
Damn Dr. Stammer! The sonofabitch nearly killed me. Early October, the most beautiful time of the year, during the balloon fiesta. I chased a shipment of dope right into Stammer’s lab.
“Tamara saved my life.”
The blood of the doctor splashed through the image, and Sonny shook his head.
He remembered very little. For weeks he lay in bed, a near vegetable. Rita fed him. His mother came every day and bathed him. Don Eliseo lifted him onto the bedpan. He was helpless. Anger coursed through his blood, invaded his thoughts.
Don Eliseo spoke to him.
“This will not last,” he assured Sonny as he sat with him in the afternoon. “You are being born again. Think how lucky you are, you can be born again as Sonny Baca. Here in this place, now. Keep that in mind. Only a brujo is born again.”
A born-again shaman, Sonny thought. “Why is this place so important?” he asked the old man.
“Because you need to center your soul,” don Eliseo explained. “The shock has scattered your soul. This valley is the place of your ancestors. They are here to help bring your soul together.”
“My ancestors are here?”
“All around you.”
Sonny listened. Voices spoke to him.
For don Eliseo the spirits of the ancestors hovered in the breezes that swept over the valley, the wind of the universe. He honored them with prayer, and they lent strength and guidance. All was alive; nothing was lost.
Sonny had nearly given up hope those first few days he was paralyzed. When he realized he couldn’t move, he entered the underworld, a helpless bag of flesh, and for a while he gave up on returning.
But those who loved him wouldn’t let him remain in the darkness that engulfed him. They pulled at him, cared for him, spoke to him. They wouldn’t let him give up. They fanned the lone ember that was his soul.
His mother helped bring him back from the world of the dead. Rita forced him to eat to regain his strength, whispering her love in the frozen nights. Lorenza the curandera massaged his limbs, made muscle and nerves spring back into action, worked to make the scattered energy harmonious.
I owe them so much, he thought as he entered the shower, clutching the towel rack for support.
“I am here, now. I’m not dead,” he said as he turned on the hot water and scrubbed. He had to shower quickly. Even leaning against the shower wall, his legs would support him for only a few minutes.
Living with a jumbled brain these past months was hardly what he’d call being alive. For weeks his speech was slurred. Something in the circuitry of the brain had been screwed up. He couldn’t grip anything with his fingers, and when he told his right arm to move, his left one did, but slowly the shorted circuits returned to normal. The strength in the arms returned, and the leg muscles were beginning to respond.
At first, when he realized how bad off he was, he wanted to die. Better dead than a cripple, he thought. The first few weeks had been especially tough. Rita bought him a computer with a board he could hold on his lap to spell out messages.
“Where is Tamara?” he had asked Rita when he could punch the letters on the laptop.
“No one knows.”
“And Raven?”
“Disappeared.”
“Madge?”
“In jail.”
Don Eliseo appeared. The old man sat by his side during the long, empty days of November. The old man told stories, long involved stories that wove the history of New Mexico into his personal life. He interpreted his dreams,
told him of the seven paths into the dreamworld. Sometimes the old man brought a book and read from it. He was especially fond of the Frank Waters novels.
Sonny listened, slept, and the adventures in the books filtered into his dreams. Sometimes he awakened to find don Eliseo had fallen asleep in the chair, and then Sonny wondered if he was awake or dreaming, or simply a character in the novel lying on the old man’s lap.
With the recovery also came depression; memory returned and he realized how bad off he was. Would he remain a cripple? No one knew. The young neurologist who checked him weekly couldn’t promise anything. “It’s a matter of time,” he kept saying.
“I can’t do it,” Sonny had confessed one night to Rita. “Better to die.”
“No!” Rita replied. “I’m not letting you go!”
She slipped under the covers with him and lay next to him, saying nothing, caressing his chest, then slowly down to his stomach, his thighs, fondling him. He sniffed the dark air and smelled the fragrance of her body, the spice of her flesh and sweat. “Ah,” he responded, his desire for her breaking through the dead weight he felt in his soul.
She made love to him and the soul-sickness lifted, a springlike night filled the valley, and the sense of wonder returned to Sonny’s heart.
“I can finally smell you, taste you,” he whispered, and she laughed. They lay together in the aromas their bodies gave to the November night.