Sonny nodded. He’d still have to pay for a new tire, but he understood about anger, and he knew there was plenty on the eastern slope of the mountain, where there was nothing for young men to do except wash dishes in the tourist restaurants or pump gas in the gas stations over in Moriarty. Some tried to hold out by running a few cattle in the dwindling scrub land, but the odds were so against them that anger took on a new meaning. They had their backs against the wall all right; they knew the ways of their fathers were dying. Still, they kept up the church, the fiestas, and the dance of the matachines. They tried to keep their familias and their community intact.
“Come in and join the fiesta,” Escobar said.
The tables had been set up in front of the church, and they were covered by the dishes of food the people had brought. The procession had returned from the mayordomo’s house, and the women had set out the food for all to eat. The musicians were playing a polka and an old couple was dancing. People clapped to the beat, encouraging the old man and woman as they stomped to the music. Children chased each other in a game of tag around the cemetery.
“Gracias,” Sonny answered, “but I have to see Raven. Y gracias for saving my life.”
Escobar shrugged. “You have a gun?” he asked.
Sonny nodded and shook Escobar’s hand, wondering how he’d be at actually using his gun.
“Mucho cuidado,” Escobar said and tossed the Jim Beam bottle they had shared into Sonny’s truck. “You might need another shot,” he said with a smile. “Come anytime. And listen, don’t turn your back on Raven. Or the women.”
“I won’t.”
“You know,” Escobar whispered, “the first day of summer is almost here. The brujas start doing their evil work.”
First day of summer, Sonny thought as he headed down the dirt road that Escobar said led to Raven’s place. He would have liked to stay and eat and dance and get to know Escobar’s people, but inside, the churning anger called for him to get to Raven.
So the mutilations were made around the cycle of solstices and equinoxes. Did they offer the blood to the sun, as Howard suggested? When the days of the summer solstice approached did Raven’s group drain a cow of its blood and cut away the vagina for their perverted summer solstice rites? It was almost June twenty-first, when the sun would reach the farthest northern point in its journey and stand there for a day before beginning its journey south. An important day in the cycle of the seasons; sacred for those who marked the sun’s path. Were they offering blood to the sun?
Sonny’s truck bounced down the washboard road, raising a cloud of dust that settled on the piñons and junipers.
Sonny was convinced Raven was the one who had tried to kill him. Maybe he was getting close to something Raven didn’t want known. Feeling the bullets sputtering around him had tightened the knot of fear in his stomach. He had actually felt the presence of death, and it had made him giddy for a moment. The thoughts that filled him those few seconds were incredibly clear.
He had felt doña Sebastíana close to him. The Nuevo Mexicano thought of death as a comadre, one of the familia, a godmother who came to visit from time to time, came unexpectedly.
“You ever think of death?” Sonny had asked don Eliseo.
“Every day,” the old man replied. “It’s natural. To think of death makes life real.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“No,” don Eliseo replied. “Don’t you see, la muerte is a Señora de la Luz.”
“What?” Sonny protested. How can death be one of the Ladies of the Morning Light who brought life?
“Dressed in white, her arrow is a shaft of light. She strikes you, and you are not dead, you are filled with light. Don’t you see, Sonny, there is no death! There is only the clarity we all seek. The illumination. That is why we Mexicanos don’t fear death. She releases us into the light!”
“Ah,” Sonny groaned, “when am I ever going to understand?”
“In time.” Don Eliseo smiled.
Just ahead Sonny saw a clearing and an adobe house. If he had followed Escobar’s directions correctly, this was Raven’s place. He braked the truck to a screeching halt, turned off the ignition, and opened the glove compartment. He took the pistol and its well-worn leather holster. He jumped out of the truck and strapped on the holster, checked the pistol. At close range the .45 was as deadly as a rifle. Its shiny pearl handle had Bisabuelo Baca’s name engraved on one side, eleven notches on the other. Now let Raven try something, he thought and looked around.
Dark pines surrounded the place, creating an eerie feeling. Piles of sun-bleached cow bones and deer skulls lay scattered around the place. Bunches of black crow feathers hung on poles around the adobe house, swaying in the hot breeze. Two savage pit bulls near the house had charged when Sonny got out of the truck, only to be yanked back by the chains that kept them tied to posts.
Raven keeps his dogs mean, Sonny noted. He smelled the air, instinctively searching for scents that might warn him of lurking danger. It was an evil place, not good, the dead odors in the air told him. He felt the hair along his neck rise as he walked cautiously toward the adobe building and called. “Raven!”
There was no answer. The wind swept across the clearing and raised dust; it moaned through the pine tops. Sonny took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
What if Raven was still in the forest? Armed. He cursed himself for being foolhardy. The anger inside had made him expose himself again.
“Raven!” he called. The enraged dogs charged again, snarling and rising up on their hind legs as they tugged at their chains.
A young woman appeared at the door, shaded her eyes to look at Sonny, then stepped out and spoke harshly to the dogs.
She was dressed in buckskin beaded with symbols, the old primal signs lifted from petroglyphs. A Zia sign in gold on her chest. Blond hair curled from beneath her head scarf. Her eyes were bright blue, shining eerie in the sunlight.
“What do you want?” she asked, unsmiling.
She was measuring him, Sonny figured, his gaze resting on the one earring she wore. A brass Zia sign with a black feather hanging from it.
Was this one of Raven’s wives? Sonny wondered. “I’m looking for Raven,” he said.
“Raven ain’t here,” a voice behind her said. Sonny turned and faced the second woman. She had come around the building from the western side. She was thin and disheveled, and she was followed by two of the thinnest and sorriest-looking boys Sonny had ever seen. These people are starving, Sonny thought.
This woman was also dressed in tattered buckskin. Soot covered her face.
“Don’t tell him anything, Sister,” she said to the younger woman.
“Get the hell out of here!” a third voice cursed, and Sonny turned to see a third woman appear from the eastern wing of the building. “You’re on private property!” she snarled. She looked as thin as the first two. A baby, maybe a year old, clung to her. She moved toward the lunging dogs, to let Sonny know she would let them loose if he came closer.
“I need to talk to Raven,” Sonny insisted.
What kind of a leader was Raven, he wondered, who kept these women, his followers, maybe his wives and the mothers of his children, starved?
“Call Sister!” the third woman said to the young girl.
“I’m here,” the fourth woman spoke as she appeared. She was large and stout, not starved like the others. She was dressed in a leather dress with lots of beads, and her complexion was dark, made darker by black paint or soot smeared around her eyes. She wore a beaded headband with feathers, and in her right hand she carried a wooden staff, the top of which was crowned with a Zia sign, feathers, and rattlesnake rattlers.
Veronica!
“We meet again,” Sonny said and looked around. If there had been other members in this cult, they were apparently long gone.
Veronica glared at Sonny. “We know you came to our mountain to cause trouble. This is a sacred place, and we don’t want you here. L
eave!”
Sweat trickled down Sonny’s temples. The high, thin cirrus clouds that swept over Sandia Crest didn’t hold promise of rain. Around the dogs the flies buzzed. A crow called from a pine nearby and the women turned to look. Sonny put his hand on his pistol.
Veronica drew closer.
“You better put that pistol away,” she said, “or Sister will let the dogs loose. Ain’t no pistol goin’ to stop them,” she snarled.
She had not been friendly at their first meeting, Sonny thought, but she had been polite. Dressed in black and mourning Gloria, she had presented an eerie picture. But now she had completely changed, dressed in dirty buckskins, covered with dirt. And mean.
“I need to talk to Raven!” Sonny insisted.
“What do you know about Raven?”
Sonny hesitated. He knew nothing about Raven, other than what he heard from the ranchers about the blood being drained from mutilated cows, and that the shape of his Zia compound resonated to the way Gloria was murdered. And his suspicions about who had been shooting at him. It was a leap, but it’s all he had to go on. A tenuous lead.
“The ranchers around here want to know about a mutilated cow.”
Veronica grinned. “Shit, if they wanted to talk to Raven, they know where to find him. I think you’re snooping. You saw the sign on the road: No Trespassing. That means you! This is sacred ground, and no firearms are allowed. You have to leave! We are here to celebrate the sun’s journey. The day of the solstice is almost upon us. We have come to pray to the sun.”
“Amen,” the others answered, and all raised their arms skyward to the sun. The baby whimpered.
“Besides, you know Raven ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” Sonny asked.
“He’s in jail. Sheriff Naranjo busted him yesterday. Just for growing a little pot. We use the sacred herb in our ceremonies, and the sheriff busted him!”
Sonny arched an eyebrow. Something inside told him he was about to feel very foolish. If that’s true, he thought, then of course it wasn’t Raven who fired at me.
His mind clicked as he retraced the steps that had brought him to Raven’s place and the four women. Why would Raven, or one of his fellow cult members, shoot at him? He presented no threat to Raven; he only wanted to ask questions. But his thoughts were confused, and that’s why he had taken crazy chances.
“Damn,” he whispered.
Veronica laughed.
“Raven’s not here, but his spirit is with us,” said the youngest woman. “Hear the ravens of the forest crying?”
“Amen.” The women nodded. They looked at the top of an old lightning-scarred pine tree where a large raven had landed. “He is with us,” one murmured, her voice quivering.
“He’s always with us. Jail can’t hold his spirit.”
The other three wives nodded. The one near the dogs reached down and grabbed a chain, and the starving pit bulls, sensing they might be let loose, snarled and strained at their chains. The children stared at Sonny as they cringed against their mothers.
“Ain’t no jail that can hold Raven,” Veronica spoke. “He comes and goes. He’s always with us, guarding his mountain,” she said mysteriously, and she waved the staff, rattling the rattlesnake tails, making the feathers flutter.
“Raven watches over us,” she intoned, shaking the staff again.
He’s a brujo, Escobar had said. He comes and goes. The large raven on the pine tree lifted furiously into the air and circled the compound, then it dove southward and disappeared.
“His spirit has come to cleanse the world,” one of the thin wives sang.
Sonny turned to face the dogs, one hand on the handle of his pistol. If they charged, he had no choice.
“They’ll kill you, mister,” one of the thin boys said. He was warning Sonny to back off.
Sonny nodded and stepped back. They will mislead you, don Eliseo had said. He had come to the compound expecting to find Raven. Expecting to find whoever had been shooting at him, and he had been wrong.
“You put the Sun King in jail, but bars cannot hold him. Now you get off our land or we’ll turn the dogs loose,” Veronica threatened. “This is sacred land. This is our temple,” she said, gesturing toward the large adobe compound.
“Come, sisters, back to our prayers,” she called the women and marched back into the round adobe house.
The others followed her lead, returning inside. But the young woman remained.
“She means it,” the young woman whispered, “if you don’t leave, she’ll turn the dogs on you.”
Sonny looked at the thin woman in front of him, his best chance for a break. If he worked fast. “Did you lose your other earring?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Only wear one.” She smiled.
She was lying. Sonny could see both ears were pierced.
“Do you ever go into the city?” he asked.
“Only with my sisters,” she answered. “I’d like to go more often,” she said in a whisper. She glanced nervously over her shoulder, took one step toward Sonny, then hesitated. “Raven is everywhere,” she said and rubbed her hands nervously. She glanced in the direction the big black bird had disappeared.
“Are you afraid?” Sonny asked, sensing an opening. She wanted to talk, that’s why she stayed, and he heard fear in her voice.
“There’s danger,” she whispered, looking at the dusty ground.
“But you said he’s in jail.”
“Don’t make no difference. He’s going to bring the warmongers to their senses! And make me the new Earth Mother!”
Sonny could barely hear her whispered words. Bring the warmongers to their senses? What the hell was she talking about? The new Earth Mother? Was the fat woman the present Earth Mother? Did they take turns? One at a time the wives got fed, became the fat woman for Raven’s pleasure?
“You mean you will marry Raven?”
“I am to be the Earth Mother of the new year,” she answered.
So that’s it. Four wives for Raven, one Earth Mother at a time. That’s how he kept them together. Sex figured into every cult, sooner or later. The leader was not only the messiah, he was the father, the progenitor, and having sex with him was bedding with the Sun King. The two other thin women had been holding young children. But not Veronica. Had she failed to produce a child in her year as Earth Mother?
“Take this,” she said to Sonny, and nervously slipped a thin blade from the pouch at her belt and handed it to him. It was a surgical knife.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked. The blade was covered with a dark stain. Blood?
“Don’t ask questions, just take it,” she whispered.
“Who are you?”
“I grew up in the North Valley,” she whispered, and cast furtive glances toward the house. “I came last year to live in the house of the Lord of the Sun. I was born again into the way of the Zia sun. I gave up my old life, got a new name. But it’s lonely here. It’s dangerous.…” Her voice trailed. “They call me Dorothy.”
Holy enchiladas. Sonny shook his head. The youngest woman had been given a name that was the same as the woman killed a year ago—Dorothy Glass. Five women would have disrupted the sign of the Zia; one would have had to go. Were the wives sacrificed one by one? Would a new wife appear, renamed Gloria?
Dorothy suddenly turned and fled, disappearing into the dark forest.
Sonny looked at the knife she had handed him. Stainless steel, but dull. He wrapped it in his handkerchief. It probably didn’t amount to anything, but he would let Howard check it out. Or maybe she really wanted out of the cult, and this was her message to him. More likely, she had been allowed to talk to him to give him a false clue.
He turned to go just as a gust of wind whipped up, a dust devil that swept across the clearing and made the feathers and gourds rattle. The gust moaned in the pine trees, then moved away.
Even if the surgical knife Dorothy gave him was a false clue, her fear was real.
15
br /> Sonny climbed slowly into his truck. He felt exhausted. The young girl, Dorothy, troubled his thoughts. He stuffed his pistol and the knife into the glove compartment. Of course the knife didn’t have Gloria’s blood on it. Or could it?
He felt angry, at himself and at the pathetic women, their imprisonment by Raven, the thin children with their pleading eyes. Could Dorothy walk away if she really wanted, or was Raven’s hold too strong? These sorry-looking women, out-of-date flower children, were descendants of the hippie communes in Taos in the seventies, but they never moved on. Instead, they found Raven and his message, and now they were his slaves. Raven had cast a spell over the women. What did he promise? Salvation? Sex? Both?
So the women worshiped the anointed leader, they would follow him to any ends. Raven, the Sun King. The women fell under his control, until their wills were bent to do his bidding, because one at a time each could become the Earth Mother, the mother of his children!
Sonny reached for his car phone. The reception was garbled. Was it the place that interfered with the signal? Maybe the large, white rocks that encircled the place? Ah, he’d wait till he was in the canyon to call Howard.
He backed up his truck and headed down the mountain road. It had already been a long day. He wanted to talk to Rita, and he needed to talk to Frank Dominic. And he knew he should pay a visit to Raven himself. Maybe he should forget the deal he made with his tía Delfina. Let the cops handle the homicide. He had followed a false trail up the mountain and nearly gotten himself killed.
The chief may be right. I’m out of my league, Sonny thought.
“You’re doing it for Gloria!” he told himself angrily and another voice within reminded him Gloria was dead, there was nothing he could do about that, and he might as well leave the case to the police.
“You’re not your great-grandfather,” the voice said. “You’re not Elfego Baca! You’ve never even fired his pistol! You keep it oiled and ready to use, you keep the ammunition ready, but you’re afraid to use it! Afraid to use the pistol of Elfego Baca!”