And so the alchemist of lead and heat cast a bullet for Sonny.
In the morning, there on his kitchen table sat the glistening bullet. On the lead was scratched an indentation, the form of a cross. The mandala of death, or the original quincunx from the beginning of time. With trembling hands Sonny had loaded it in his pistol where it rested, waiting for Raven.
“What about the governor?” he asked.
“He’s what’s called a meat-and-potatoes man. Typical politician. They get into office and start making deals.”
“Water rights,” Sonny offered.
“Yeah. We used to be able to get along. There was enough water. Now there’s just too many people for too little water. So if you’re a businessman you buy up water rights. Dominic wants to empty the reservoirs and store the water underground. He puts a spigot in the aquifer and sells you water that used to belong to everyone. The market will pay what he demands.”
“Quite a scheme,” Sonny said. So Naomi knew the score. Bear was a leader of the young Indians fighting Dominic, and she was running around with Bear. Yes, she knew the score.
She smiled at Sonny. “I learned about the market selling pottery. The world rotates around what the market gives and what it takes. Now I’m back. And what do our people want? They just want to go on holding their dances, doing their thing. Old ceremonies for the kachinas. It’s been like that for hundreds of years. Now everything is market driven. I hate it.”
“Myth and ritual are dying,” Sonny said. “Except in the pueblos.”
“Yes. It’s a shitty little place. But it’s home. The world out there chews you up and spits you out. Here, I feel a tranquility I haven’t felt in ages. I feel committed.”
Sonny had learned that myth was empty without ritual, and so the pueblos performed the ceremonies, the dances. Without enacting the myth, life was empty, the children would forget. Along the Rio Grande corridor, in all the pueblos surrounding the Jemez caldera, it was the old people who kept the cycle of ceremonies intact, prodding the young to remember.
“Were you involved with the governor?”
“None of your business,” she snapped back. “Look, I’ve made mistakes.” After a long pause she said, “Maybe I can’t change. I’m cursed. I keep telling people what’s going to happen and no one believes me. Maybe I’m just one of those voices that left the center, and now I’m just floating around. Bear listens. Bear is what I need. He’s big and loud and crazy, but he’s real.”
She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Of course, I never got over you, Sonny.”
He smiled at her and she laughed.
He looked out the window, thinking that if he concentrated on the road and the landscape he wouldn’t remember what she had tasted like ten years ago.
Outside the truck the morning light fell like a mellow mist into the valley, imbuing the place with its sacred touch. The light was absorbed by the land and became the spirit of the place.
Light becomes time, the old man said. It penetrates and becomes the red rock, pine tree, dry earth, the deer and the maggot, crustaceans and humans. Light becomes a dance. The stars that sweep through the night sky dance, and the atoms that reflect the stars also dance. All is dance and music. The full moon sails over the mesa and fills the valley with a light that whispers, the waters of the river whisper back, soon the entire mountain is humming and drumming, the light of love, nights of passion, the energy gathers in lust, giving birth again in spring.
“What do you know about Raven?” he asked.
“He’s got a bomb. He wants to blow you up.”
“Just me?”
“Probably the whole fucking place.”
“Where do you fit in?”
“Augie thinks—”
Sonny waited. “What?”
“That I was screwing the governor.” She paused, then continued. “I guess that makes me a suspect. You know, I love this place, I really do. But, God, there’s just too many bad things happening. What used to be fun and joyful is now called sinning. Screwing around used to be part of life. You know, real. Maybe if all the preachers went away we might just be better off.”
Sonny smiled. He remembered the story of a preacher who came to preach against the sinners who lived in the valley. He claimed the sins were washing into the river. Sin in the river water was irrigating the corn, chile, calabacitas, and apples, and the people eating the fruits of the valley became sinners. One old man stood up and said, preacher man, water is our life, our soul. It does not sin. The preacher left and never returned. The people went on irrigating their fields and eating calabacitas con mais and chile verde in summer, and the women went on baking sweet, fat, juicy apple pies. All the great aphrodisiac fruits of the valley continued to be eaten with great gusto.
Near the pueblo the valley spread out gently. The river gave up its turbulent soul, becoming placid, flowing softly, allowing itself to be diverted into the acequias that fed the fields. The nurturing earth received the liquid gold. The river breathed a sigh of relief, slowed its rush and gurgle and continued sluggishly down past Zia and Santa Ana, finally emptying its last ejaculation into the Rio Grande at Bernalillo. Like one life ebbing into the greater stream of time, the river disappeared, took on a new name, and the waters of the Jemez Mountain Cloud People joined the Rio Grande, and all was as it might have been ordained at the beginning of time.
The river carved its own path, and at each turn the river put on a different face, just as a woman will make over her face for each of the four seasons of her life, for each day, for different lovers, even on the day she dies and whispers to those nearby, “My lipstick. I want my Maker to see me made up.”
So the river had a persona for each season. El río, the Spanish said, but the river was a woman whose waters came pouring from the hot springs that dotted the caldera, a woman whose eyes bubbled with the water of life, a touch of mint in her breath, an apricot-blossom blush to her cheeks.
The mountain was female, its rounded caldera soft breasts—not like the male peaks of the Sangre de Cristos. The crater itself—a womb opening, the cleft of a distant ecological birth that spewed forth its hot magma, the birth stuff. The caldera reflected the sipapu of the kiva, the hole of emergence. The mountain had been born in the boiling belly of mother earth, and the birthing was not yet done. The magma and boiling water still slithered like giant serpents in the dark womb of the mountain, the dark womb of the mother.
The mountain watched impassively the works of men and women. Its waters ran deep; its fiery magma burned white. The old volcano would long outlast the scientists whose formulas created nuclear fire in the Los Alamos labs. The mountain was patient, the mountain could wait, and eons after man’s tracks were erased from its slopes and hidden paths, its fire would still be burning deep, its waters rushing from dark, deep springs.
The Jemez River by all comparisons was a small mountain stream that petered out by the time it reached the Rio Grande. Nevertheless, it was one of those sacred places where time entered the earth and the spirit became song. It was Alph, a sacred river feeding the people of the valley.
Even after the desecrations of man, the river’s magic was still intact. From the sage hills up to the flat mesa tops of piñon, juniper, and ponderosa pine, into the blue haze of the peaks, the subterranean waters could be felt but not seen, and from sheer granite cliffs small springs gurgled, sliding and tumbling downward, pulled by a force stronger than the mountain itself, the gravity of time.
On the walls of the canyon the intruder—he who was the visitor to the mountain, a pilgrim, a lost lover—could read the ages, and if he fell under the spell of the mountain, he stayed. He became a lover of the mountain and could confess, like all others who in their moments of joy said, This is our holy book, this we praise and protect, this river and mountain.
The lips of the canyon opened, red with iron ore, a bloody greeting, an entrance into the earth itself. No one could escape the feeling of entering, the shock of returning to the
source, the first thrust as one entered at the Red Rocks, then moving farther into the wide Cañada, with furry mesas on either side cramping down as the passage narrowed, and the lost lover wondered if to enter meant to stay forever, as time had once penetrated the canyon and stayed forever.
But the virginity of the earth was no longer intact. Every traveler entering the canyon was an intruder, a pilgrim lost according to the ages written on the walls, a lover lost, always returning, never quite achieving the burst of clarity that would relieve the tired flesh. And every lover knew the entrance into such dark, mysterious space quickened the breath, formed some knot of fear or incertitude deep in the belly. Those that did not thrust deep enough would never know the ecstasy the mountain offered.
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 t
he 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.