So the spirit of the old man was accepted by both Sonny and the dog. It was a comforting appearance, for it helped settle the restless energy that had consumed Sonny. Spending the nights alone was not good for him. He read books until the early hours of the mornings, devouring the many volumes, searching for the revelations the past had once offered seekers after truth.
Sonny placed the dreamcatcher on the rifle rack and called his bilingual dog. “Anda, vamos.”
Chica barked and eagerly scooted into the truck and up into the seat. This was the life, riding shotgun with the master, sniffing the wind, her brown dachshund ears flaring back like sails, barking at neighborhood dogs as they drove into the day’s adventure.
Sonny looked down the street. Yes, change had come to the valley. Soon the small farms would be gone, the old people would die. La Paz Lane, where Sonny had lived the past four years, would be a memory.
Todo se acaba.
Sí, todo se acaba.
It wasn’t just the city, it was the entire region. Up for sale. The Southwest was the fastest growing region in the country. Sun. Desert air. Golfing in January. Phoenix was a nightmare in a once-pristine desert, Tucson followed suit, Las Vegas burgeoned like a fat whore, and the Las Cruces/El Paso/Juárez border city kept expanding across sand dunes. All would run out of water in a few years.
Along the Rio Grande, it was the same story. The fragile land was bulldozed, deep wells were drilled to satisfy the needs of a growing population, and the river was diverted for the city to use. The silvery minnow swam toward its extinction.
We need water! the developers cried, and deals were cut in city hall to satisfy their thirst.
Water became the gold of the desert, and he who controlled the supply could make the rules.
In Alburquerque expensive homes stretched up the slope of the Sandias; on the west side of the river, tract homes spread nearly as far as the Rio Puerco. Never mind there was a water shortage and the aquifer that fed the city was drying up. The city was on a roll, burgeoning with growth, vying for new business ventures, drunk with a vision of itself as a City with a Future.
Thank God for the Indian Pueblos, Sonny said. They’ll keep the city hemmed in. They can’t build on Sandia and Isleta land.
Don’t believe it, the old man replied.
The Pueblos won’t let the developers in, Sonny insisted.
Yeah, what about the casinos? Las Vegas in your back yard. Five-star hotels, fine dining, All Pro golf courses. Money talks; those who want to hang on to the old ways walk.
Where will it stop? Sonny wondered, starting his truck and turning on the radio. Something big was happening in Jemez Springs, the Spanish-language station announced between corridos, the songs that told the stories of the Mexicanos. But not a word on the governor’s demise.
Sonny drove down La Paz Lane. He waved to Toto and Concha, who were out raking leaves, readying her garden for planting.
Chica barked in greeting.
“Hey, Sonny! How’s it hanging?” Concha called.
“ATM!” Sonny called back.
“Que Dios te bendiga! Say hi to Rita.”
“I will. Don’t work too hard.”
“Hey, Sonny! How’s Chica?”
“Still dreaming,” Sonny called back.
“Atta boy, cowboy! Ten-four!”
Sonny laughed. Retired neighbors, octogenarians, still clinging to their homes, but when their time on earth was finished everything would change, their culture and the culture of their ancestors would die.
Was the governor’s death related to the ominous feeling in the air? Spring should be a time of renewal, but for life to sprout, there first had to be death. But the dead governor was no Christ.
You got that right, the old man said. Like most politicians he’s a product of genetic drift. Some weird gene in their DNA makes them do what they do.
Genetic drift, Sonny repeated. Maybe it’s just a need for power.
Yes, the old man agreed. The world moves back and forth; now it’s in our backyard. People migrate to the Rio Grande Valley. Clovis hunters left their spear points in Sandia Cave. Folsom Man. I read about them. Then the ancestors of the Pueblos came down from Chaco, etching glyphs on rocks, signs for the kachinas. And hidden somewhere in the boulders that dot the West Mesa escarpment, there lies hidden one large, magnificent rock: the Zia Stone.
A Sun Stone. A large meteorite on which the ancestors of the Pueblos carved a symbol of universal truth, a unifying sign of being and harmony. It holds the meaning of life. I tell you, Sonny, if bulldozers plow up the West Mesa they will bury the Zia Stone forever. We won’t be able to connect the past to the future. You read about those al-cemistas. They were looking for the Zia Stone. In their own way.
In Europe the alchemists had searched for the formula that turned lead into gold, the dross matter of flesh into spirit. In the Americas the elders of the Anasazi had contemplated a unifying symbol that would unite organic and inorganic life, earth and cosmos, the universe dancing to one drumbeat.
Farther south the priests of Tula, of the Olmecs, and of the Mayas had recorded the movement of the moon and the sun, the epicycles of Venus, carving the flow of time into their calendars. Archeologists worked to decipher the symbols on the stelae, to tell the story of time, how it all begin, the ages of men. But a unifying symbol was missing; the Zia Stone was missing.
In order to dominate nature, man had stepped outside the great chain of being; he could no longer hear the music of the spheres. The new alchemists at Los Alamos National Labs were too busy converting plutonium into bombs. Soul and spirit were split apart, bombarded in vacuum chambers, reduced to quantum particles.
Quantum mechanics had forgotten that a quantum spirit moved in the material world, atoms seethed with activity, and the energy itself was the consciousness of the universe.
Sonny knew his history. He knew the Pueblos had smelled the Spanish coming. Bearded Spanish and Mexican men trudging up the Rio Grande in 1540, finally settling near Española in 1598, farming the Sangre de Cristo valleys, raising sheep. Pastores spreading east to the Llano Estacado, high into the sierras for summer pastures, hundreds of thousands of sheep. The Pueblos and the Navajo learned to eat mutton.
That was their first mistake. Then they learned to weave wool and make blankets. They learned to use iron pots and knives. That did it. Learn to use somebody else’s tools and your way of life will change forever. Learn their language and your kids grow fat and lazy, your women learn wild dances and gamble too much at the casinos. The men will leave the land, leave the old ways. Once you’re on the Booze Way you might as well call it quits. The beauty given to you by the ancestors will die.
But history doesn’t take sides, and some would say adapting to new ways was the way to survive.
Survival was the theme of the land. The Anglos arrived and the crushing wheel of change rolled on. A new argot filled the air, which to the Nuevomexicanos might as well have been Greek, but to survive they had to learn the new gobbledygook. Learned to say “jalo,” “tank you,” “how mush,” “haw-r-ju,” “see you later alligator.”
New laws came, new courts, new police, and the land slipped from one hand to another, and the way was lost.
Sonny remembered, and he knew Memoria could sometimes be a cruel comadre.
Change is constant, he thought. “And Raven has returned.”
Could he really enjoy the crisp spring air, the smell of compost, the apricot and peach trees blooming with the fragrance of a woman awakening to love, clothed in robes of luminous pink, soul flowers born of the bud’s flesh. Tall lilac bushes shrouded with regal purple blossoms. In one yard a fragile redbud tree.
Along the river stood the towering cottonwoods, unleafed but with their buds preparing to burst. And Clyde Tingley’s elms, lime green with seeds, all in hosanna of spring. Dressing up.
But up in the Jemez Mountains, in the little magical village of Jemez Springs, the governor lay dead, the image Sonny saw in the dr
eam. But why would Raven kill the governor? That was the question of the day.
The parking lot of Rita’s Cocina was full so Sonny drove around to the back. Entering the kitchen always provoked hunger pangs, a burst of saliva. He stopped and sniffed, allowing his coyote sense of smell to take in the aromas. Butter melting on hot tortillas, warm and crisp, piled high around plates of huevos rancheros, crisp bacon sizzling on the griddle, curling next to the one-eyed eggs, sunny side up, crackling and sputtering, exuding the protein smell of life. The rich, exotic smell of the Colombian coffee that Rita loved. Papas fritas, pots of just-cooked beans that melted in one’s mouth, carne adovada, and red chile—ah, red chile de ristra, the Crimson Queen. The New Mexicans splashed chile Colorado on everything, even on Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams.
Comida sin chile no es comida. His mouth watered.
“Hey, Sonny,” Diego called, leaning over the hot stove. “How’s it going, bro?”
“Good,” Sonny replied.
“Listen, I got an idea. You know they say the country’s getting too fat. Pues, we have some Chicano heavyweights. Gordos. So why not go all the way?”
Sonny listened. Diego always had a new scheme.
“Chicano Sumo wrestlers! We feed them extra tortillas, menudo, chicharrón burritos, and we go all the way with panzones. Hey, we can compete with the Japanese!”
Sonny laughed and gave his friend a high five. “Porque no?”
“Pues, you know what César Chávez said: Sí Se Puede.”
Diego’s wife, Marta, greeted Sonny with a smile and a “buenos días” as she waltzed past him, holding a tray of food above her head.
Chicano Sumo wrestlers, Sonny thought. Why not?
From the dishwasher Cyber called, “Hey Sonny, guess what? I’m thinking of joining the circus.”
“Cool.”
Rita appeared. She greeted Sonny with a kiss and a smile.
“He saw Cirque du Soleil on TV,” she said.
“Yeah, Circo de Slow-lay,” Cyber repeated.
“Du,” Sonny corrected.
“Tú?”
“No, du.”
“Me?”
“Sí, tú. Say ‘du.’”
“Do what?”
“Cirque du Soleil.”
“Yeah, circo de slow-lay.”
“Not de, du.”
“Do what?”
“Who’s on first?” Sonny said and let it go.
Rita smiled. “I’m glad to see you,” she said and picked up Chica.
“Hey, me too,” Sonny replied.
A finely crafted silver chain hung around her neck. It held an oval silver pendant that embraced a glowing azure stone, sky-blue lapis, so polished Sonny could see his reflection in the stone.
On her wrist hung seven silver bracelets, each etched with signs of the zodiac, each blessed on a special saint’s day, each hinting at a power in nature, an animal spirit.
Her eyes glistened with the water of life.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
He looked into her eyes, windows into her soul. He felt complete when she gazed at him in the quiet moments of their love.
In another time, another culture, she would have been Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love. Here she was the center of his Zia Sun universe, a hard-working businesswoman with a kind and loving soul.
I’ll be poetic, he thought, woo her with all the beautiful words ever written by the poets of the world, especially the poets of India who extol the woman’s body as a temple.
Or Hamlet, he thought. Soft you, now, the fair Ophelia, beneath the boughs of a purple flowering tamarisk, on the banks of the quiet flowing Rio Grande, I will love you …
He ran his tongue over his lips. Her kiss had left a tinge of her red chile con carne.
“You taste good,” he said, thinking maybe the undiscovered petroglyph, the Zia Stone of ancient lore, was really the heart of the beloved, and the symbol written on it was her name. One only had to open the third eye to see it, the wisdom of gnosis, the Hindu third eye.
In the dining area the old jukebox that held only fifties records blared out Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
He put his arms around her. An erotic fragrance, her own particular woman perfume that he knew so well, or a feeling, or something he couldn’t identify, passed from her to him, and he held her for a fleeting moment in the aromas of the kitchen, because with Rita sex and food often came together. Arousal could be a steaming plate of huevos rancheros for breakfast, a Navajo taco or enchiladas for lunch, an organic salad for dinner, a bowl of menudo spiked with hot red chile, onions, and oregano on Sunday mornings.
“Sorry. I slept late.”
“You need the rest, mijito,” she whispered. “By the way, the mayor’s here. There’s something going on at Jemez. Que pasa?”
Sonny shrugged.
“They called you.”
“Yes.”
“It’s Raven, isn’t it?” She knit her brow.
He nodded. He couldn’t just pretend he didn’t know the way into the dream world, he couldn’t just wish it away. Once the gift of the shaman was there, it just was. He might sit for years helping her in the restaurant, cook menudo from his mother’s recipe, man the cash register, visit with the customers he knew so well—all North Valley friends. He would pretend normalcy, but sooner or later the phone would ring, a breeze would stir, a crow would call from a telephone pole, a message would come for the winter shaman and he would have to go. She knew that.
“What about the meeting in Algodones?”
“I might get back in time.”
A group of Pueblo men intent on preserving their water rights had asked Sonny to join them in Algodones. The newspapers had labeled them Green Indians because of their pro-environmental stand. All they really wanted to do was protect their ancient water rights. Those rights, once taken for granted and protected by codices going back to the Spanish entrada into New Mexico, were under attack.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Whatever the day holds.”
“I love you. My fair Ophelia,” he whispered.
She smiled. “That’s a sweet thing to say.”
“I mean it.”
“I know, but doesn’t Ophelia go crazy and drown herself?”
He blushed and looked down at his feet. His boots needed a shine.
“Maybe you could be my Helen of Troy.”
“Oh no. She was too beautiful. Besides, she left her husband for Paris. I would never leave you, mi amor.” She touched his cheek.
“Hey, what if I said you’re my chile and beans.”
“I like that best,” she replied. “Now to work. Lorenza’s not here today. She called early this morning. She might not return in time to attend the Algodones meeting.”
“Where is she?”
“She went to Las Cruces to help a friend. A writer whose friends swear the image of Pedro Infante appeared on a tortilla. You know how Elvis appears, now it’s Pedro. First he was spotted in El Paso, now in Las Cruces on a tortilla they were baking for their Pedro Infante Club party. We all have our spirits, que no?”
“Yeah, we do,” Sonny agreed. “I’ll take Chica.”
“I’ll fix you two a lunch.”
“Great.”
He wished they could cancel everything and spend the day together in Jemez Springs. But she had to be ready. Something fragile had broken in her during the miscarriage, and that would take time to mend.
She needs time, Lorenza had told him. Right now she’s just dealing with the cafe, living on the surface of the world. Her love is still there, perhaps stronger than ever. You just be ready.
“I will be—”
Rita turned. “What?”
“Nothing. I love you.”
She winked.
Sonny walked into the dining area, which was buzzing and crackling. Jemez Springs was the morning’s conversation. What the hell was going on?
 
; In a corner table sat the mayor, Fox, and a couple of his cronies from city hall, men who wore two faces.
Chicano activists called the mayor Fox because his favorite TV show were reruns of the X-Files. La plebe loved to nickname politicians. Once baptized the name stuck for life, and those who recognized the crafty man’s politics said he played like a Zorro, so Fox it was.
Today the Fox was sniffing around Rita’s Cocina.
The mayor looked at Sonny and signaled.
Yeah, Sonny thought, genetic drift. Now I’m caught in it.
3
Rita’s Cocina was packed with an assortment of North Valley paisanos, including a chorus of retired elders. Los viejitos ate breakfast at Rita’s then headed for the North Valley senior citizen center, their agora, to discuss the politics of the day. Today they would sit glued to the TV set, ignoring the primped-up, purple-haired comadres who tried to get them to play bingo. Instead the old codgers would watch the sketchy news they were getting from Jemez Springs. A terrorist plot in the air. They loved it. Any news was fodder for their plática.
Retired, bent, slurping their coffee, they talked, a continuous buzz, bees in a hive. “En aquellos tiempos la gente vivía en paz.” “Hoy no sabe nada la plebe.” “Chingaron bien a Saddam. Pulled down his statue. Nothing lasts.” “You know, todo se acaba.” “You got that right!”
Plática, the oral tradition of the forum, ancient as the Nuevomexicanos who first settled the Rio Grande Valley. In the shadow of the Sandia Mountain they had settled to farm, to raise sheep and kids, and to leave their bones in the penitente earth once their plática was done.
Plática was a cultural ritual, old as the Greeks at the agora, old as the Sumerians who told stories of the flood and the creation of first man and woman long before those stories were recorded by the Hebrews. Stories older than the telephone and TV. The oral tradition was alive, gone digital, buzzing through telephone wires and cell phone frequencies up and down the valley, from Taos down to Las Cruces and to Chihuahua. Down to el Valle de Tejas all the way to Brownsville where the river emptied into the gulf. Plática infused the poetic marrow of every community.