You’ve got to get a hold of yourself, the old man said.
Yeah, Sonny replied.
The rush of workers fleeing city hall skirted him swiftly. Some recognized him. His exploits were well known in the city, but all treated him like a homeless person. All were hurrying home to see if the phones were still working, or to turn on TV sets where they could watch the story of the bomb on the Jemez unfold. CNN was already there! So was Dan Rather! They would tell the truth!
No one stopped ask why Sonny sat so forlorn on the steps. Except one, a young woman. She recognized Sonny. Stout and big-bosomed, her large hips wrapped in a tight Tyrian-purple dress, the indigo of royalty, her tiny fat feet sore from shoes that pinched, her black hair bubbles of curls that rose like an afro teased beyond teasing, a birthmark on her chubby cheek, a gleaming spot she had glued there right after she curled her eyelashes with a mascara as black as her tiny pupils.
She stopped by Sonny and felt a pity in her round heart, which already was pounding with some fear that she would arrive late at her lonely apartment and find Bosque, her dog, had eaten her box of chocolates, the last one on earth if truly the world was ending. She bit her puffy lower lip, a lip glistening with red, greasy lipstick, which she had paused to dab on before she rushed out of the building.
A stout girl had to look her best, no matter what. She had sat at enough singles bars with her thin friends who got picked up and driven to weekend pleasures, while she wound up walking alone across dark parking lots to her beat-up Ford Escort and driving home in that terrible loneliness that only late Saturday nights can lay on the soul. Wasted days and wasted nights, Freddie Fender’s elegy.
Doing what humans do when they find someone more bereft of direction than themselves, she lifted her tight skirt just a few inches and sat down beside Sonny, her large, ballooning nalgas immediately warming the cold cement. Soft and motherly, she touched Sonny. The bracelets on her fat arms chimed a sad song, costume bracelets from Dillards, for this was no queen of the desert, no queen of Sheba, this was a city worker who was paid lowly wages and who always tried to look her best.
“Hi,” she whispered.
Sonny looked at her and wondered who had stopped to greet him. He glanced at her ample bosom, two large, soft pillows where she had always hoped some seafarer cast on her shore might find a welcoming dock.
Instead, there sat Sonny Baca, in a moment of loneliness she recognized so well.
Sonny welcomed her touch, and thought, is this the sylph who caught a ride in my truck when I wasn’t looking? Or the turtle? Yes, that tortoise I picked up could be a bruja who took the form of a turtle. But he knew that in New Mexico folklore there were no recorded stories of witches becoming turtles. And the turtle had given off very little heat while the woman at his side was as hot as a carne adovada enchilada.
Sonny smiled. Her voluptuous breasts gave off the aroma of ripe watermelons, awakening Sonny’s memory of childhood afternoons on his grandparents’ farm in La Joya, when summer watermelons were lifted from the cold water of the well where they had sat all day, then sliced open with grandma’s kitchen knife, splitting the rind with a cracking sound, exposing the red meat, and at the center the dark, seed-spotted heart.
He looked into the woman’s small jewel eyes, the glistening beads of perspiration on her forehead, and the beauty spot wet with sweat on her chubby cheek.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Sophie,” she replied.
Sofia, the goddess of wisdom, not Athena, come to guide me, thought Sonny.
“Do I know you?”
“Sophie Valdez. You don’t remember me. I used to sit behind you in twelfth-grade English.”
Sophie Valdez, of course. She was there, always in the shadows, always in the background of the gung-ho Rio Grande High cheerleaders. Sophie had cheered every pass Sonny ever threw. She attended every game, every assembly where he spoke, every Saturday night dance in the gym. He remembered her sitting quietly by the punch bowl at the senior prom, without a boyfriend, without anyone asking her to dance, so he had asked her to dance, because the preppy cheerleaders and his jock friends had dared him.
“You were so smart, Sonny. God, when you gave the graduation talk I cried. And last summer there you were again. Chasing the bad guys. I clipped all the newspaper stories about you. You stopped the truck full of atomic stuff. Something or other. You saved the city. I’ve got all your pictures in my scrapbook.”
“I remember the prom—”
“You danced with me. The DJ was playing oldies. ‘In the Still of the Night.’ God, I think of it every day. It was like being in heaven. I play the song every night.”
Sonny felt uncomfortable, ashamed of himself. Someone he hadn’t noticed during those heyday high-school years had now paused to offer confidence.
“You work here?”
“Yeah. They let us out early because of the bomb. And the cell phones quit working.”
“It’s been a while,” was all Sonny could offer. “What did you do after high school?”
“I got married. You remember Bernie? He was a tecato, used to sell drugs for your primo, Turco. Anyway, he was abusive. Beat me, called me fat, said I deserved it. One night he beat me so bad my cousin Nadine took me to a battered women’s shelter. They took care of me for a while, got me into Joy Junction. I took courses at TVI, and now I work here.”
She paused. “Let’s not talk about me. How about you? Why are you sitting here? You look kinda sad—Oh, I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay,” Sonny replied. He stood and pulled her to her feet. “It’s good to see you, Sophie.”
“It’s good to see you, Sonny. I always remember you. I never missed a game when you played. God, those were good times, huh?”
“Yeah, good times.” Sonny nodded.
He could have kicked himself. Pendejo! What’s new? Don’t you know, even the lonely living in the backwash of life enjoy the fleeting moments they call good times.
“That’s quite a bruise you got. If you want, I can go get—”
“It’s nothing. Thanks.”
“Well, I gotta go. My dog is home alone. Oh, and I do believe you, Sonny. Dogs do dream. Bosque, that’s his name, talks to me. We sit in the afternoon, and I allow myself a glass of wine. I put my feet up, and Bosque sits on my lap and he talks to me, tells me so many things. Dreams of faraway places. You know.”
“I’m glad, Sophie. I’m glad.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. They let us all go home early. You know, the bomb. Maybe you can help catch whoever’s responsible. We trust you, Sonny.”
“I’ll try, Sophie.”
“You’re our hero—”
Sonny shrugged. Something in his heart melted. There were people out there depending on him.
“Call me sometime—” she blurted, then quickly corrected herself. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re busy—”
“No, no, as soon as this is cleared up I will call you. Maybe we can go to lunch, catch up on high-school days.”
“Oh, Sonny—” Her voice caught. “That would be just like heaven.”
She hugged him and her rotund warmth revived hope in his tired body. Her moist cheek pressed against his, leaving her beauty mark stuck to his face. Then she turned and fled down the remaining steps, as agile as an angel descending from heaven to touch an unsuspecting heart with her magic wand.
“Bye!” she called.
“See you,” Sonny answered, raising his arms, while in the background a mariachi band played his theme song. He straightened his shoulders with new resolve as he watched Sophie disappear into the street that held the rushing workers.
Quite a woman, said the old man, nodding, perhaps remembering his wife had been round and firm, and in their youthful days a lot of woman to handle.
Yeah, Sonny agreed. Funny how we don’t notice the beauty in people until they touch us. She was the only one of the hundreds rushing out of city hall who had stopped to lend c
omfort. In her memories he was a hero.
Sonny looked east to the Sandia Mountain, and although the dry air of March now wafted through Tijeras Canyon, he was sure that in July the monsoon would flow north from Mexico, as it had done from the time of the Toltecs, a giant plume of moisture from the gulf would appear, flowing north, a serpent smashing against the northern Chihuahuan desert of New Mexico and its rugged mountains, delivering to the parched lands the renewing rain, rain laden with the sounds of Mexican corridos, the beauty of mornings in Cuernavaca.
Such July afternoons the clouds would begin to form over the Sandia and Manzano mountains, rising in rounded cloud forms, fat billowing cumulus, which from that day forth would always remind Sonny of Sophie’s round calves, her saddlebag thighs, her watermelon tummy pinched in by a thin belt, her swelling breasts. Such clouds grew and grew, expanding with the heat of the day, sensuous forms that excited the fantasies of men who loved clouds, men who praised the bodies of clouds and admired the beautiful faces of clouds whose round, puffy cheeks held puckered lips, lips that blew gentle, cooling winds upon the dry earth. And hair! Medusa-like entanglements of swirling hair, boiling froth of dark cloud moisture, the hair of a wild woman who held in her body the energy of a nuclear explosion.
Reclining in all their glory, clouds with Sophie’s shape would rest luxuriously supine over the skies of Alburquerque. They would appear as Paleolithic Venus figures with the super-large breasts, hips, and fruitful yoni, such figures as were found in caves where women were once the shaman of the tribes and their pregnancies analogous to the earth’s fecundity. No wonder the myth of Demeter and Persephone still illuminated the daydreams of farmers.
The shapes of clouds were the bodies of women. Women born of the heat of the earth and the Mexican moisture, they were the sex creatures of the summer, scantily covered with dark rebozos whose fringed edges were the dark rain that fell, releasing New Mexicans from the tensions and anxieties of the dry summer. Skirts of dark rain washed across the earth as the clouds came to their natural climax in a bed of ecstasy, the arms of Father Sky. Wise men hurried home to make love under the pelting of raindrops, those first crystal drops that awakened the pores of mother earth and gave forth a sweet perfume, the moisture of a woman making love.
The drops turned into a crescendo, falling in a fury, heavy and immediate, gathering into rivulets, rushing along street gutters, filling arroyos with surging chocolate waters. Cloudbursts finished as quickly as they started. Exhausted by the frenzy, the cloud women picked up their dark skirts and moved on, tumbling east toward Santa Rosa, Clovis, and West Texas, leaving in their wake the freshness of their breath on the land.
The billowing sails of moisture rose into the heart of the blue-bowled sky, and reaching the high, thin atmosphere they began to flatten out, forming the familiar anvil shape, for even as they reached for the highest heavens the clouds transformed themselves into a blacksmith’s anvil, and Father Sky, the eternal alchemist, could pound his hammer on the flat surface, casting loose, like Thor or Zeus, bolts of zigzag lightning and booming thunder that shook the land, snake lightning that flashed across the dark sky, adamantine thunderbolts with diamond edges.
High above Mount Taylor, Grandfather Sun would fling his palette across the sky, lighting up the clouds with watermelon reds, brilliant oranges, lilac violets, soft mauves and apricot colors, breathtaking hues.
And Rainbow Woman would run her herd of wild, stomping mares across the sky, sliding down to the verdant Rio Grande Valley, white mares of cloud sinew and muscle, manes of wispy cirrus. Grey mares dripping with sweat that fell sweet to earth, their tails dark showers that fell on the thirst-plagued land.
The people of the valley would give thanks for the holy rain.
Some would thank the saints, or Jesucristo; some would thank the Cloud People, the Holy People who came from the land of the kachinas to bring rain. Some would thank Tlaloc the rain god of the Aztecas, or Vishnu who at the end of time takes the form of a cloud and rains to quench the world’s conflagration, flooding the earth as it was once inundated during Noah’s time, dissolving everything back into a cosmic sea, then alone on a cloud in that vast eternal ocean Vishnu would sleep, alone, aware only of himself.
Sonny was no oceanographer of clouds, but he would think of Sophie when the clouds of summer came north from Mexico. And he would thereafter call the sensuous and sweet-smelling summer clouds Sophie’s Clouds.
He breathed deep and felt a release of endorphins, chemicals flooding body and soul. He felt renewed.
“Time to get cracking,” he said.
Yes, the old man agreed.
“Hey! Where’s my truck?”
His truck was gone.
“You’re Sonny Baca, aren’t you?” a young photographer standing nearby asked.
“Yeah.”
“I took some pictures of you at the Kimo. For the Journal. Remember?”
Sonny nodded.
“They towed your truck. Everything parked here was towed to the city lot.”
His words hung in the air, and just then an SUV jumped the curb and came to a screeching halt a few feet away. Naomi rolled down her window and shouted, “Get in!”
Sonny jumped in, and the photographer clicked a picture, which in some future alchemist’s bath would become the photograph that testified to a turning moment of that day’s history.
18
“Where in the hell did you come from?” he asked, and she answered, “That’s just it,” as she gassed the SUV, jumped the curb, and turned toward Central, swerving around slow-moving cars and groups of people overflowing the sidewalks onto the street.
“Move!” She honked the horn, and the throngs of suddenly freed workers of the city laughed and waved.
“Party time!” they cheered. “Viva la fiesta!” “Viva Annie Oakley!” “Viva Zapata!” They banged on the hood of the SUV.
The annual Spring Arts Crawl scheduled for the day had suddenly and gratuitously been rewarded with party-goers numbering in the thousands. The art galleries along Central flung open their doors, welcoming the gathering, a powwow of revelers.
Central Avenue and Fourth Street were the crossroads of the City Future, a rangy, burgeoning, desert city whose history lay lapping at the shores of the Rio Grande. Here Highway 66 of Anglo America met the old Camino Real of the Mexicanos. Here the east-flowing, English-speaking, Bible-thumping axis met the great meridian that connected Mexico with its northern colonies, creating the center of a Zia sign, the center of a mandala where the Americanos’ latitude met the Spanish and Native American longitude, and always at the center there was sure to be trouble as differing world cultures met and clashed, with little knowledge of each other’s ways, until a son might be born of these worlds to bind the bloods of antipathy. Or a daughter, a new mestiza.
A block from Central the street was blocked off. A policeman blew his whistle and signaled Naomi to turn. She cursed and shut off the ignition.
“Let’s go!” she cried, jumping out of the SUV and diving into the tide of office workers. Workers who had been let out of PNM, city hall, federal and municipal buildings, and lawyers from the offices that filled downtown. The city was awash in attorneys, purveyors of every legal tort imaginable.
Sonny followed her into the crowd.
“Where are we going?” he shouted.
“Follow me!” she replied.
Those lucky enough to be let out of work because of the bomb scare weren’t going home at all. The afternoon was warm, and most decided to take advantage of the bars and restaurants that lined Central Avenue. Time to have a brew and a bite and watch TV. On the Jemez crater images of men appeared crawling around the barrel-like contraption the media was calling Fat Boy.
Never mind that the governor was dead; that was politics as usual. The lieutenant governor had already spoken to the masses via TV, assuring the natives that state government would continue to operate on schedule—which only drew moans from lowly taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the noise and laughter echoed along the sidewalk cafes where instant game pools were devised by the Alburquerqueños, who loved to bet on almost anything. Horse races, dog races, duck races, casino slots, Las Vegas blackjack, sports events, the Lobos or the Isotopes—every game was fair game. If a sparrow fell from heaven, none would ask if God saw it; instead a bet would be made on when it would hit the ground. So today, a dollar bought a numbered square on the big board, the numbers corresponding to different times when the bomb might go off. There were also bets on if it was or wasn’t a bomb, bets on whether the radioactive cloud would reach Alburkirk if Fat Boy did go off, etc., etc.
As far as Sonny could see from Seventh Street to First Street, and beyond to the railroad tracks, the crowd of revelers resembled a spontaneous Mardi Gras party. Lenten promises were forgotten for the moment. Who was to know you downed a few beers and ate a couple of hamburgers? Besides, if you were Catholic, and there were a lot of those partying, you could go to confession later and be forgiven for the price of a rosary, and on Sunday you could receive the Holy Eucharist and feel whole again. By Easter all the sins would be forgotten. By Easter the governor would be long-buried and forgetfulness would settle into the lives of the one-eyed partygoers.
The fiesta was in full swing. Was it fear, dread, loss of hope or anxiety, or just an afternoon off work that drove the suddenly freed slaves from the machinery of government?
Sonny caught Naomi’s arm and stopped her. She looked scared, her complexion ashen.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m getting out of town,” she replied. “You should too. You’re in danger.”
“I can take care of Raven.”
“And Augie.”
Sonny didn’t trust Augie, but danger?
“They tried to pin everything on José Calabasa and his group. The ones they call Green Indians. They claim he killed the governor. They’re going after him, and me.”
“Augie …”
“Who else? He’s in with Dominic. The plan is to take over the water rights of the pueblos.”