“You got that right,” José said. “So let’s get Raven.”
“I’ll get to Raven on my own terms,” Sonny replied.
“Don’t play the fool, Sonny. You can’t see everything.”
A fool has limited vision, Sonny thought, just like a one-eyed dog. He rubbed Chica’s neck. She had accepted José, a good sign.
He turned on the radio, but it was garbled static.
“You’re cut off from the world, Sonny.”
Cut off from Rita, he thought. He would try a phone when they got to Bernalillo.
“That’s how we felt in Nam,” José said, and in a quiet voice he mentioned places with Vietnamese names and recited the names of guys in the squad. He talked about never-ending reconnaissance patrols, calling in coordinates, taking sniper fire, living in the jungle for days on end, wet and rotting.
Then he fell silent, listening to the wind howling its last curse at the people of the Cabezon llano and the people of the valley.
Overhead, the energy of the wind had formed a giant dust devil, a whirlwind such as Pecos Bill might have saddled and ridden like a wild bronco, except this swirling mass came curling down the desolate mesa like a Chinese dragon, a venomous dragon with no pity in its heart. Whipping up dust and trash, the huge funnel rose into the womb of the dry sky, and as they watched it bear down on them, Sonny remembered that the Devil rode inside the dust devil. That’s what the old people said, and they had taught him to ward off the evil by making the sign of the cross with his fingers, and so he stuck his arm out the window and made the sign of the cross to ward off the evil that came slapping at the truck, but even the holy sign, the rock of ages, could not turn away the howling fiery dragon.
Its hissing awakened the old man in the back, who also crossed his thumb over his index finger and started humming, “Bendito, bendito, bendito sea Dios … los ángeles cantan y alaban a Dios.”
“Raven!” José cried above the roar of the wind as the truck shuddered, caught in the blast of the rotating funnel. He reached for the Colt .45 in the glove compartment, opened the window, and felt the vacuum in the truck sucked out as the dust devil stuck its blistering tongue into the interior, blinding them with heat and sand, rattling and shaking the truck.
“No!” Sonny shouted as the eye of the terrible wind bore down on them, and he fought to keep the truck on the road. But too late.
“Fuck you, devil!” José cursed, aimed up at the heart of the dark swirl, and fired.
The report of the pistol was almost lost in the shrill cry of the wounded wind, which—screaming and hollering—struck one final blow against the truck. Then, like a snake shot through the head, the dust devil unfurled and fell sideways, thrashing but spent, its energy lost.
They watched as the dust, trash, and tumbleweeds settled to the earth, the demon dead.
The old man gave thanks. Gracias a Dios. He looked at José. Damn, they are going to call him Shoot Dust Devil Calabasa from now on. He had never seen an Indian kill a dust devil before, but he knew there were many things yet to be revealed, in life and death.
Sonny breathed a sigh of relief as he steadied the truck.
That was the bullet meant for Raven. Now he would have to go into the dream world and drag Raven screaming into the light. Or drown him in holy water and let the element dissolve the very energy it once engendered, for all aspects of the psyche were born in water. Or hit him again with the dreamcatcher, the mandala with a hole in the middle, the hole in the universe. But in the end, nothing could really kill Raven. Violence would only dissolve him into a deeper chaos, for the moment.
Raven thrived in the dark recesses of the soul, corners of the unconscious so old the smell of dinosaur scat, methane gas oozing from the marshes, and the putrid smell of rotting primeval forests still lingered there. Raven lorded over that nubbin of a brain formed in the cosmic sea.
José looked at the pistol, then placed it back in the glove compartment. “Has quite a kick,” he said. The demons of Nam awakened by the smell of cordite lay heavy on his heart. Memories locked in his brain cells announced once again that he could never forget the war and its atrocities. He fell silent.
Sonny drove down the long thigh of the hill that spread languorously toward the valley and Bernalillo, the air pleasant after the last gasps of wind whooshed up the face of the Sandias and fell like a spent lover over the Estancia Valley.
A deep quiet fell over the Rio Grande, silent and peaceful. The storm had passed, leaving the last of its caresses playing on the stems of chamisa and dry grass that dotted the mesa. In New Mexico the wind never died. It whimpered to a gentle breeze that cooled the foreheads of those who worked outdoors. Like earth, sky, and clouds, the breeze was a constant friend, a compañero, vigilant over the land. Its strength rose and fell, carrying the whimper of a woman betrayed, or the rage of La Llorona.
The valley actually looked inviting. It was not yet in bloom, but the ochre sheen of spring buds rested on dry branches, on the russet buds on the river alamos, and here and there a globe willow ballooned in bright lime green. Flowering apricot trees graced a few front yards, as did purple plum and redbud trees.
Across the way the turtle hump of the Sandias rose, a faint outline etched against the eastern sky, a turtle on its way to some meeting of mountains, its granite feet leathery, bound to the foothills. In the light of the garish sun the turtle seemed to move. The pattern of light and shadow, deep ravines and outcropping of granite boulders, and the shawl of white limestone along the crest reflected the light, and it was the light that was the breath of the mountain. Deep below the granite exterior, the pounding heart.
“Old turtle,” Sonny whispered.
“Alive,” José answered.
Sonny’s tension dissipated when he made contact with the mountain. For the people of the valley, the Sandias were a force of positive energy. As a lightning rod collects the ever-present energies of thunderstorms, the mountain collected the chi energy of the solar system, gathered it into its bosom and spread it outward, throughout the land. Those whose feet were made of mud could feel the chi rising from the earth to comfort the seven chakras, until even old men’s curved spines felt renewed, and women suffering from osteoporosis felt like dancing. Chi for crooked backs and arthritic hands, water for the tree of life, the twisted serpentine spine, the energy of the mountain massaged fibers and flesh, and renewed the soul.
“You don’t have to live on the mountain to benefit,” José said. “We Pueblo people need the land and water of the valley for our crops. But we honor the mountain. It provides deer, green trees, a spirit. Up there you feel you’re close to the Creator.”
The true Creator who still imbues the earth with its power, it soul fire, its light.
Yes, Sonny agreed. But he could not enjoy the raw beauty of the land as he used to. The image of the fetus in the jar of water haunted him. Why had he seen two? In the winter-solstice dream, he had seen a light, the soul of Rita’s child, blinding Raven for that crucial instant that allowed Sonny to strike with the dreamcatcher. When he recalled the image of the dream he saw it split in two. Twins? It was possible. There was a history of twins in his mother’s family. She had a twin sister, and he and Armando were twins.
Raven had killed Rita’s twins. No, not killed, was holding them captive. Sonny was sure he could go there, and bring back to life what Raven had taken from him.
12
He pulled into the Sonic Drive-In to phone Rita.
“Sonny, where are you? Have you seen Lorenza?”
“I’m on my way—”
“Are you all right? The cell phones still aren’t working. The place is going crazy.”
“I’m okay. In Bernalillo.”
“There’s an important call for you. Augememnon from the state police. He wants you to call him. He left a number—”
She read the number and he penned it on the wall of the phone cubicle.
“I’ll call him. How are you?”
“I’m f
ine. I kept the restaurant open. Brought out the TV set. Everyone is glued to it.”
“Everyone?”
“Guys. The place is packed. No one’s going to work. They’re sitting here drinking coffee and watching the news on TV.”
Guys, Sonny thought. Working stiffs from the North Valley. They loved Rita’s home-cooked breakfasts, the best red and green chile in the city, and, he knew, they liked to linger and enjoy her presence.
“You’re not the jealous type,” she said once.
He was, but he said nothing. She was a beautiful woman.
He knew if he was gone all day, by closing time one of the young studs might be tempted to ask to take her home after work. Not that Rita would accept, they all knew that, but they liked to push the envelope. Yeah, he knew his raza, every Chicano a suitor in the heart, always on la movida. It was bred in the bone from day one. Mama Nature had laid one of her hot chile genes in the pants.
He smiled. Yeah, hot chile genes, a hormone gene not yet traced on the DNA molecule, but it was there, waiting to be roasted, peeled, and sandwiched. All’s fair in love and war, and the bachelors hanging around Rita’s place would just love to score.
Gotta get home before I’m dead, Sonny thought.
“What about the bomb on the mountain?” Rita asked. “Most don’t believe it’s real. Is it?”
“Nothing to worry about. They have the lab boys out there. I’m sure they will take care of things.”
“I hope so. Did you eat?”
“Yes, Chica and I had a great lunch. The tacos were great.”
“You didn’t give her carne adovada, did you? I put a chicken taco in for her.”
Chicken taco sin salsa. The taco he gave José.
“Ah … no, she’s fine.”
“And don Eliseo?” She was hesitant, but she asked anyway.
Sonny turned and looked at the truck.
“Everything’s cool. I’ll be home in no time.”
“I know you, Sonny Baca. You get tied up with Raven and you’re a bulldog. He’s dangerous, especially if—”
Especially if he messes with my mind, Sonny thought.
“I’m okay. Really.”
“Bueno. Just don’t go chasing wild horses. I love you.”
Wild horses, he thought. The white, the red, the black, and the pale horses of the Bible, and the pale horse carried death, the penitentes said it pulled Doña Sebastiana’s cart, la comadre, la muerte. Why was it that every word became an image? Sound moved into picture, as light moved into time, forming symbols from the world of vibrations. And symbols became story, playing like a concert in his mind.
Today’s story had started with the snake. Yes, the snake was a sign on the road. So was running into Bear and Naomi at Red Rocks. The dead governor floating in the tub. The bomb, the helicopter ride. He could see the signs, but he couldn’t change their consequences as their ripples moved out in the pond that was the day.
It had always been like this. Waking or dreaming, an idea, a thing, a person, or a word announced itself, became an image in neural fluids, but always the image stood for something else, and the something else it stood for was as nebulous as the original germ. Could even the Logos be trusted to remain static? To mean something? Or had its progeny become just more images floating in a sea of images?
Was the shaman’s world a world of symbols? Was this part of the training received from don Eliseo? Something stood for something else, and so it went to the last syllable of recorded time, and there was no way to get at the reality of things, the truth, the essence. Was the world nothing but Vishnu’s dream? A world of illusion.
“I love you, querida. Just keep those guys at arm’s length.”
She laughed. “Maybe if I make you jealous you’ll come quicker.”
Come quicker. Her words were always playful and suggestive, teasing. Just last week they had driven to the Sandia Casino to a mariachi concert. On the way she heard “Las Mañanitas” on the radio and she turned and told him when she heard the song it made her want to make love to him. The more he bonded to her the more he felt that in the depth of her soul there resided the light of her spirit and the sex of her flesh. It was one.
“I’ll be there anyway and kick them all out. And—”
“And what?”
“You know.”
“Sonny, we can’t make love while someone is blowing up half the state.”
“Think of the blast.”
She laughed again. “Okay. Just hurry.”
“Un beso.” She blew a kiss into the phone, and he blew one back. He hung up the phone and lingered there, trying to feel his way through the phone wires to touch her, to make sure things were all right with her. Her laughter swirled in the small booth, an apple-blossom fragrance. Yes, she was okay.
He dialed Augie’s number.
“Augie. Sonny.”
“Sonny, damn glad you got back to me. Where are you?”
“Bernalillo. And you?”
“Never mind. I need to see you, Sonny.”
“What’s up?”
“Have you found Raven?”
“No.”
“Is Naomi with you?”
“No.”
“She disappeared with a gang of Indians. She’s the one who led the governor to the Bath House. She’s in with Raven.”
Sonny shook his head. The medallion on his chest felt warm. Raven was near. Sonny looked at the truck. Something stirred under the tarp.
“Either way, I’m in deep caca. The chief has called out every officer available. He thinks I’m involved. Imagine, me, a suspect! I’m supposed to be guarding the governor and he’s dead.”
“What about the Al Qaeda suspect?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“The FBI took him. He’s gone.”
“Where?”
“Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. He’s gone. Don’t you get it? Gone!”
“And the professors?”
“I let them go. What do they do? Read books! For crying out loud, nobody reads books anymore! They’ll be deported. I don’t give a holy hill of beans about them, I’m talking about getting Raven! I need to clear myself.”
“Where are you?”
Crisply, as if a knife had sliced through the air and cut the wire, Augie hung up.
Sonny cradled the old black phone, a relic of a prior time, almost a museum piece in a world headed toward complete wireless transmission. A few short years ago everyone depended on the telephone, and telephone booths were part of growing up, where you went to call your girlfriend, or call home if you were going to be late. The booth in the movies where someone always made a desperate call. An entire culture had grown up around telephone booths, and now the men in black used cell phones, so did Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez, and all the brokers in the world, generals calling in bomb strikes, on and on. Gone wireless and at the mercy of cell towers dotted around the country, satellites circling the earth. In your car with your cell phone you could reach everyone in the world, and still remain isolated.
Sonny looked at the phone cubicle, intimate, with enough room to hold the phone and a tattered phone book, the walls scratched with the graffiti of all the lost souls who in time of need had come to this shrine, to call out, to reach out, to talk to someone. Littered with phone numbers and names, gang signs, modern glyphs, cousins to the petroglyphs the Anasazi had etched on desert boulders. These glyphs were penciled on the walls of the booth, on the tattered phone book, the rock of ages.
He looked closely at the dozens of numbers and messages written on the walls of the cubicle. Maybe this is the Zia Stone of our time, he thought, for here are encoded the encrypted messages of the community. If I could just read the meaning, not the individual messages, but the gestalt, the pattern, find meaning in the scribbles, decipher the names, the lines that lead from one sacred direction to the next, pagan, plaintive cries of crisis, of hope and of sadness, for there, handsomely penciled next to a sad tree, the m
essage, Christmas day, she left me, estoy en el rincon de una cantina …
The graffiti resounded with a forlorn cry, a canto hondo from deep in the soul. Cries of unrequited love, lust seeking its fulfillment. A crude drawing of a full-bosomed, big-hipped woman holding a very large penis.
The old and smelly phone booth became the cave of Lascaux. There, prehistoric man had painted the mastodon to gain power over the hairy mammoth and be able to kill it. Here, the drawing of the naked woman represented a mad, hopeless desire.
Perhaps the hurried scrawls of body parts that adorned the walls of sleazy bar bathrooms also had a purpose. Neanderthal on the make had to draw the object of his desire. Sex and its need, sometimes a true longing, sometimes perverse.
Sonny studied the names, cryptic messages, lipstick red, Sharpie black, knife scratches, hearts pledging love, fuck-you’s, numbers to call for help. For good dope call. Terry loves Flaco. Chuy rules. Darwin. A fish with four legs. And the strangest one, written in seraphim script, at the bottom of the cubicle: Come to Macedonia and help us.
Was there a town called Macedonia in New Mexico? A place in desperate need? Sonny scratched his head. Riffing through his memory bank he found the image of the book a Professor Pearce had written long ago, a listing of all the towns and places in New Mexico, a work of love, but then it was teachers like him and George Arms and Dame Edith who had taught a generation of students long before Sonny got to UNM. Professors whose names still rang in the halls of the English Department where he had matriculated. But no, he couldn’t recall a Macedonia.
The war in Croatia? Ethnic cleansing? Was the plea for help a call to those who would sit on the fence while entire populations were massacred simply because of their ethnicity? What did ethnic mean? Cultural patterns? Or the fear of a different kind of blood? Fear of mestizos? How could one blood be different from another? If a blood transfusion would save your life, you weren’t going to ask its ethnicity. The color.
As the center of the world fell apart the guilty would also be those who did not go to help, and their names would be called when Armageddon fell on the fertile fields of Macedonia. The Third World War had already begun, in Iraq, Croatia, in Palestine, Ireland, North Korea, the jeweled Persia of old, Kashmir, Tibet where the Chinese overran ancient monasteries, wherever neighbor turned against neighbor the world shattered. 9-11 was the tolling bell of the new millennium. And who would send to ask for whom it tolled?