So, thought Sonny, Raven was already calling the shots. The bomb Augie mentioned was probably a hoax. To get him up on the mountain. Get him out of the city while he made his deals with the politicians. And both events were diversions. What Raven really wanted was to confuse, and in the confusion grab the Zia medallion.
“You better change your tie,” Sonny suggested.
“Look, Sonny, it’s not just politics I’m talking about. What happened to the governor is just the tip of the iceberg. If you get involved it’s going to hit you like a bucket of—you know.”
“You’re saying I should stay out of it?”
Fox nodded. “Yeah, stay out of it. You don’t want to mess with the big boys. My father used to say, the only words you’ll never hear in New Mexico are We sail with the tide. You just missed your boat, Sonny.”
Fox grinned, turned, and hurried out, followed by his flunkies.
Sonny burped again. Lordy, Lordy, a satisfying breakfast, but sitting with Fox had left a bad feeling in the air. It was rumored Fox and the governor were business partners with Dominic. Fox had taken Dominic’s money when he ran for mayor, and if the governor was dead that left Fox in charge of the henhouse, or the water house. If Fox didn’t want him involved in the governor’s murder, that was all the more reason to get involved.
He’s no dream man, Fox had said. A dead governor can dream no more. Did they want the governor out of the way?
His cell phone buzzed and Sonny answered.
“Sonny, Augie. Where are you?”
“Having breakfast.”
“You were there when Raven infiltrated Los Alamos Labs.”
Yes. Raven had waltzed into the labs, or flown in like a brujo. He had stolen a plutonium pit from under the nose of Los Alamos security.
“You know the core of a nuclear weapon is still missing. So what if Raven sold it to Al Qaeda?”
Sonny paused. Raven would form alliances with anyone out to create panic.
“Don’t believe me? What if I told you I have an Al Qaeda operative prisoner?”
“You have an Al Qaeda agent?” Sonny repeated. That got his attention. What the hell was an Al Qaeda operative doing in Jemez Springs?
“Here’s what I’m guessing. Raven was paid by Al Qaeda. The FBI’s been following this agent. All of a sudden he shows up in Jemez Springs. Walks right into my hands. You know what this means. Promotion for me. I call the shots.”
“And the Al Qaeda man is there to blow up Los Alamos.”
“To blow up the whole fucking mountain!”
There was a strain in Augie’s voice. State cops like Augie didn’t panic just because somebody knocked off their boss.
But two and two could equal Al Qaeda and Raven. Chaos was visiting the world. Today it was in Jemez Springs, and Raven would be there.
“It’s a radioactive contraption. The lab boys have verified that. It’s sitting in the Valle Grande. You can see it from the road. Right now they don’t know if it’s got a live pit, or some of that dirty nuclear stuff Al Qaeda has.”
Sonny glanced at his watch. The battery was dead, but it was spring equinox time all right. Raven time.
“All we know is there’s a timer in the damn thing. Ticking away. If it blows, the lab boys think the Thing—that’s what they call it, the Thing—will blow the mountain apart. Not only Los Alamos and the labs, but it might create a new volcano. Hit the hot stuff. I mean, half the state could go up.”
Sonny sighed. Augie was prone to exaggeration. The Thing really wasn’t to scare the Los Alamos Labs, it was for Sonny. Raven had begun the game for the day, and Sonny sensed tragic consequences ahead.
“Raven left a message for you. Lab boys found it in the bomb. I’ll wait for you at the Bath House.” With that, the phone went dead.
A frown crossed Sonny’s face. Damn Raven! Yes, the games have started. I’ll see him dead!
You can’t kill him, the old man said.
I can! Sonny replied. I will!
You’ve been dreaming revenge, Sonny, and that’s no good. Maybe he’s already gotten to you.
Bullshit, Sonny scoffed. My mind’s clear. He paused and thought awhile. And suppose he has. Don’t we all have a shadow inside? Doesn’t that part of the mind always make trouble? Isn’t half the world troubled? Time to get rid of him, once and for all.
The old man shook his head. He knew even a shaman can be confused by spirit voices, and Sonny heard voices. In fact, it was often the dream shaman who suffered most from disruptive voices. Even the saints and holy men heard the devil’s temptations. The struggle raging within the soul was a battle to still the voices.
“Maybe I am—” Sonny whispered.
He creates illusions, the old man said. Be careful. Don’t look up in the sky for answers. Look inside. Shadow and light, it’s all inside.
“Sonny.”
He looked up into Rita’s eyes, eyes of love, and the ship he had to sail that day rocked in the water of her eyes, water of life.
“Don Eliseo?” she said softly.
“Yeah … he’s quite a philosopher.”
“You two make a good pair,” she said, placing a bag with chicken tacos and a thermos of coffee on the table.
“You heard him?” Sonny asked, for the first time seeking confirmation.
“No. He belongs to you. Your helper.”
“I have to go,” he said.
“I know.”
He stood and kissed her. “I’ll go by the cabin.”
Years ago, before real estate prices went out of sight, he had bought a cabin by the river in Jemez Springs. He and Rita had spent Sundays there, fixing it up. Then came the summer of the Zia medallion, the large gold amulet that would belong to Sonny or Raven, whoever won the contest. Raven tried to blow up a WIPP truck loaded with toxic plutonium waste; Sonny stopped him. In October he reappeared during the Alburquerque Balloon Fiesta, and again on the winter solstice.
Raven was a predictable threat. Always lurking in the shadows, he especially picked the solstices and equinoxes to do his dirty work, days of great ancient power, days when the sun was most related to the earth. Today the sun crossed the plane of the earth’s equator. The vernal equinox. The world could fall one way or the other.
No doubt about it, he was making trouble on the mountain.
“Maybe you’ll have time to take a mineral bath.”
Since Christmas Sonny had been driving up to the Jemez Springs Bath House to sit in a tub of the hot, healing water that flowed from a nearby spring.
Now the governor was lying dead in one of the tubs Sonny had used.
“If I have time.”
Rita touched his cheek. “Did I tell you you’re looking great? Stay that way.” She paused then whispered. “I’m ready for one of those hot baths.”
That surprised Sonny. It’s what he had been waiting for. For her to say the word. “They have a tub for two.”
“Maybe Sunday.”
Sonny felt a gentle knotting in his stomach, a welcome tightening in his throat. She was coming back from the trauma. The time of the spring equinox would be a time of love. Buds, flowers, and sprigs of grass were being pushed up from the dark earth by the spirit within.
From the jukebox Little Richard continued to shout. Diego shook the box and the arm of the old record player lifted, a new record falling into place. Fats Domino.
Sonny smiled. “Sunday sounds great. Weather’s clearing—”
“And you?”
“I’m strong as ever, really. The numbness is gone.”
There was nothing she could say that would keep him home that day. If Raven appeared she knew Sonny had to go. She didn’t know the depth of his need for vengeance, but she knew he had been waiting to make a stand. After all, who really knows what drives a man? Destiny? Fate? The daimon within?
“Cuídate,” she said. “I love you. I’ll wait—”
She hugged him and quickly returned to the cash register.
Sonny looked after her. T
here were tears in her eyes. Did she know what he had planned for the day? Did she sense he had to get Raven? The voices he had been hearing were shadows from his dreams, and don Eliseo had said a man fears voices when he cannot see the person who is speaking.
“Hey, Sonny, adonde la tiras?” Diego asked, bussing the table.
“Jemez.”
“Cuidao con las Inditas.”
“I already got one,” Sonny replied.
Like Cleofes Vigil used to say, when the Españoles came they found all these beautiful Inditas de los Pueblos, Navajosas, y Comanches, and the lust of men who would never see the ocean again being what it was, ipso facto, the mestizo was born. Expanding the gene pool, something nature loves. We are los manitos de las naciones de la Sangre de Cristo, Cleofes used to say. The citizens of the city states del Rio Grande del norte. Each village a polis.
The Chicano mestizo. A man on whose body was written a history of suffering. A future of great beauty. A woman throwing off the shackles of a long oppression.
Sonny walked out to his truck and opened the beat-up ice chest. It was empty except for three cans of warm Diet Dr. Pepper rolling around the bottom. Sonny tossed the tacos and thermos into the cooler.
The bed of the truck held a shovel, some rope, an old sleeping bag and a tattered tarp, a very old pair of muddy boots, a collection of empty diet-soda cans, a frayed battery cable, and an odd assortment of wrenches, pliers, duct tape, and a coil of baling wire. With duct tape and baling wire he could fix anything. Chicano welds.
He and don Eliseo had gone fishing up in the Pecos a couple of years ago and the old man swore the sleeping bag and tarp were all a king needed to sleep well. If it rains you pretend you’re a rock, he said, until the rain passes. A rock with eyes.
Got everything a PI needs, Sonny thought, satisfied.
Today’s the day, he thought as he and Chica headed north on 4th Street toward Bernalillo, tuning the radio to KANW. The news was leaking out: an Al Qaeda terrorist had been apprehended. But no mention of the governor.
So the governor was dead. It was rumored that he visited the Jemez Valley because he was seeing a woman at the pueblo. A very nice-looking Jemez woman, a sculptor whose pottery was known and collected internationally.
So the governor had a liaison. He claimed he went for the baths to get rid of stress, but did he really go to visit a woman?
None of my business, Sonny thought.
I don’t like this, the old man said. He had been quiet, perhaps mulling over Sonny’s motive. Now he spoke of caution.
Raven’s threatening to blow up the mountain, Sonny replied. You want me to stay home and do nothing. Raven’s up there, waiting. That’s what Fox meant with his allusion to the Bible. Fox knows.
The old man said nothing. Sonny was lying to himself.
Look, Sonny continued. We know even a small explosion can change the course of the underground water. That hot mineral water worked magic for me. I can’t turn my back on the mountain.
He’ll be waiting.
So what! He’s always waiting. Let’s end it today.
That’s what you really want, isn’t it?
Yes!
It’s not that easy.
It’s him or me.
And you think I can help?
You’re my trump.
You’re wrong, Sonny. You’re not thinking straight. There’s not a thing I can do.
Buy Jemez Spring Now!
Jemez Spring
A Sonny Baca Novel
Rudolfo Anaya
Jemez Spring completes Sonny’s
adventures through the four seasons.
For all the faithful who waited
for the quartet to be done,
this is for you.
An abrazo of love.
Who is worthy to open the book
and to loose the seals thereof?
~ Revelations 5:2 ~
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
1
Do dogs dream?
Sonny awakened slowly, opening his right eye first, then the left. He stretched like a rubber band until every nerve and muscle twanged. His vertebrae cracked and he relaxed back into the warm blankets.
Beside him, Chica stirred.
Do dogs dream?
That’s the question, Sonny thought. He yawned and looked at the light filtering through the window.
The denizens of the City Future weren’t discussing the depressed economy, terrorism, Iraq, tapping the Rio Grande for water, the silvery minnow, drought and fires, or politics. For weeks now the regulars at Rita’s Cocina had tossed the dog question back and forth. The discussions had grown heated, some arguing yes and others adamantly denying it.
Sonny rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Dead battery.
I dream therefore I am, he thought. In last night’s dream he had only one eye, like Cyclops. A one-eyed man lived in ordinary time, like Polyphemus. Odysseus had blinded the giant and the poor Cyclops ran out of his cave, crying I am blinded! Noman has blinded me! Chingao! Noman has blinded me!
Sonny had taught the Greek myths to his literature classes at Valley High. That seemed ages ago. He always acted out the part, working like hell to get their interest. But the ancient Greek stories were far removed from the memory of the land-locked Chicanos of the valley where the phrase we sail with the tide had never been heard. So he told them the cuentos his grandfather had taught him, incorporating them into New Mexico history. The history of la gente was embedded in the oral tradition, but it had to be mined if one was to know the ways of the ancestors.
The teachers were alchemists, turning raw material into gold, but they had to compete with teenage interests: cars, video games, rap music, after-school jobs, family troubles. And hormones.
“I was a good teacher,” he said to Chica, rubbing the head of his one-eyed dachshund. Raven’s demons had scratched out her left eye. So much loss in that winter-solstice nightmare where Raven killed don Eliseo.
For the past three months Sonny had been reading don Eliseo’s books. He couldn’t sleep, so he read till two or three in the morning, and the more he read the more he understood that ordinary people go through life thinking they see, but what they’re seeing is only the surface of things. The trick was to see beneath observed reality, and for that one needed to develop a new kind of sight.
“The Egyptians painted the all-seeing eye on their temple walls,” he said to Chica. “Horus had one eye cut out by his uncle Seth. Seth had killed Osiris, the Ruler of Eternity, as the ancient Egyptians called him. It was the eye of Horus that restored Osiris to life. A lot of powerful magic there.”
Seth cut Osiris into pieces and threw him in the Nile. Isis and her sister had brought Osiris back to life; that is, they gathered the dismembered body and sewed it together. The first mummy. One thing was missing. His penis. The organ had been thrown into the Nile where a goldfish ate it. Centuries later, a poet Sonny knew wrote that the missing organ had washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. History belonged to those who wrote its poetry.
So many allusions to sight in the old stories, he thought, and still, most of us go through life half asleep, one-eyed men, tuertos searching for the truth, a purpose, the meaning of life. Somnambulant, we stumble down the road, unto the burning sheets of the malpais. Unconscious. Why?
If you are unconscious you feel less pain, he thought.
Yeah, that’s it, we don’t want to feel the pain. A man can get along with one good eye, lead the ordinary life of Polyphemus,
until along comes Odysseus and drives a stake through it.
Bile rose in his mouth. Raven had driven a stake through his heart.
“Maybe I opened a few eyes,” Sonny whispered, thinking nostalgically of his teaching days at Valley High.
But the classroom was confining, so he quit and learned PI work from Manuel López. He liked the independence.
All seemed normal until he moved to La Paz Lane and met don Eliseo. The old man became a mentor. The bond between them grew strong as the old man taught Sonny how to walk in the dream world. The world of the shaman.
Chica shook off her covers, stretched, and yawned.
“You know, don’t you Chica?”
The small dachshund had followed him into that fateful winter-solstice nightmare where she lost her eye.
Did his dream become hers?
I dream therefore I am. People in deep comas continued to dream. Death came when one could no longer dream. But what if, as the Bard asked, the dead also dream? There’s the rub. La vida es un sueño y los sueños sueño son. Life is a dream and on the other side waits another dream. Maybe?
Do dogs dream?
Several weeks ago Sonny was having a drink at Sal’s Bar—actually he was sipping on a Pepsi—and taking a ribbing from some of his North Valley amigos, weekend cowboys who once a month gathered at Sondra’s Magic Acres stable to ride along the river bosque on borrowed horses. Reliving the Old West. Pretending to trail ride. They spent more time downing beers than riding. Chicano male bonding.
Quite innocently, Sonny had said, “My dog dreams.”
The amigos knew Sonny had been depressed lately, but claiming his dog dreamed was too much. An argument ensued, the staunch Catholics in the group protesting against dreaming dogs. After all, a dog cannot recite the Nicene Creed.
“It’s, ‘I believe in God,’ not ‘dog’!” Mike challenged.
Sonny shrugged. What did Mike know? He was from Tucumcari.
“Yeah, d-o-g is not g-o-d,” Vivián, the attorney in the group, added.
Anagram madness. A shouting match broke out between those who agreed that dogs could dream and those who said no. Two off-duty Bernalillo County sheriffs hustled them all out of the bar. The “dogs don’t dream” amigos hadn’t spoken to Sonny since. The innocent comment had taken on serious proportions.