“We made it,” Sonny said, embracing Rita.
“Gracias a Dios,” she answered.
Sonny opened his hand and Raven’s gold medallion glittered in the light from the cars.
Both shivered as state police and FBI agents surrounded them. They had seen the struggle at the edge of the arroyo, and they had seen Raven disappear; then they, too, had been flattened by the explosion.
“You got him, Baca! You got the sonofabitch!” Somebody slapped Sonny on the back. Sonny looked at the face illuminated by the headlights. Mike, the FBI agent who had worked Sonny over the day he visited Raven’s place.
“The fucker’s going to wind up buzzard bait when the water settles,” his partner, Eddie Martinez, said. He aimed his flashlight at the angry arroyo.
The flood had hit with fury, but it wouldn’t last long. As soon as the rain clouds cleared the Sandias, it would subside.
“Governor’s gonna make you a fucking hero,” Mike said, his wet face grinning in the light.
“Hero!” Sonny shot back. What the hell did the bastard know about being a hero? All the anger he’d felt from the time he saw Gloria’s dead body came rushing over him, and he hauled back and hit the agent.
Mike reeled from the blow. He put his hand to his mouth and spit out blood. “What the hell was that for?” he asked.
“I owed you one,” Sonny reminded him.
Mike glared at Sonny, then slowly smiled. “Yeah, you did, Baca. Sorry about roughing you up. You got my fucking vote now, if it makes any difference.”
“I feel like doing the same,” Escobar complained.
“Hey,” Mike held up his hands. If Sonny’s blow had staggered him, Escobar’s would floor him.
“We apologize,” Eddie explained, “we didn’t know what was coming off.”
“My troca!” Escobar moaned. “My pinche troca’s in the pinche arroyo!”
“We’re sorry about your truck,” the agent said apologetically.
“Ah, the troca wasn’t worth a damn!” Escobar retorted, “but my whiskey was in it.”
Sonny looked at Escobar, then at Rita. They put their arms around each others’ shoulders and laughed.
“Your whiskey?” one of the agents said, and they too laughed.
“Hell, we can take care of that,” Eddie nodded, and someone appeared with a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The agent opened it and handed the bottle to Escobar, who handed it to Sonny.
Sonny took a swig, then passed the bottle to Escobar, who took a long pull. He passed the bottle to Rita.
“To Escobar’s troca!” She smiled, lifted the bottle, and took a drink. A new round of laughter filled the air.
In the headlights of the cars, the bottle was passed around, the cops and FBI and DOE agents taking turns, celebrating that the catastrophe had been averted.
Sonny hugged Rita as they stood in the circle and passed the bottle. Each new pass deserved a new toast.
Tonight the earth will not be burned by the deadly heat of radiation, Sonny thought as he peered through the dark and rain toward the wide Estancia Valley, and tomorrow the sun would shine, and after the rain, the slaked earth of summer would green again.
Time and again, the seasons came and renewed the Earth. The drought was broken and now the grasses of the land would green up. Across the broad expanse of land, the leaves of grass would feel the blessing of the rain. Plants and animals and the families who struggled for survival would give thanks.
In the meantime radioactive waste continued to pile up in Rocky Flats, Pantex, Los Alamos, and Sandia Labs, and so the scientists made plans to store the junk at the WIPP site and other places. One of the Indian tribes had already petitioned the state for a license to set up a nuclear storage facility on their land. The storage of radioactive waste had become big business.
I don’t want it in my state, Sonny thought. Not in this land that nurtured my ancestors, nurtured the dreams of don Eliseo. If there was one thing don Eliseo had taught him, it was that the Earth was alive. A soul throbbed beneath its flesh. The soul should not be burned and shriveled by the works of man.
But the deadly waste was here, and it was here to stay. It’s life would outlive generations of the Río Grande valley. His children’s children would live with the consequences. Somewhere it had to stop. Somewhere men and women had to come to their senses and stop producing what they could not control.
Raven had tried. Fight fire with fire, he said. Scare the world to its senses. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had not been enough. Show them what a terrorist could do.
But Raven had another agenda, a darker, more evil plan. Chaos was his god. Violence his end. Raven envisioned the end of the world, and his cult coming into power in the new world. That’s what Veronica meant. The struggle was bigger, the stakes greater than just tonight on the bridge.
“Qué piensas?” Rita asked. She sensed his quiet mood.
“Just thinking,” Sonny replied. “Let’s go home.”
“Yes, it’s time to go home,” she agreed.
31
Sonny sat on Tamara Dubronsky’s patio and watched the sun rise over the mountain.
The Señores y Señoras de la Luz came flooding over the valley, the bright light turning every dewdrop into a scintillating crystal, and igniting in Sonny a radiant emotion that overwhelmed him with its beauty.
“Ahhh,” he sighed.
He shivered as he felt the warm sun on his face, and gave thanks to the old Abuelo Sol as don Eliseo had taught him.
“Bless all of life,” he whispered, then leaned back in the patio chair, closed his eyes, and allowed the light to bathe his face.
The energy of the sun warmed his body, seeped into his soul. Overhead the sky was as clear as if last night’s thunderstorm had never gone through. True, the air was hazy with humidity, but otherwise there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Maybe by afternoon the sun would warm the land and the great clouds would rise over the mountains again.
He looked at the mountains. The humidity lent a bluish cast to the outline of the Sandias. That’s all he could see, the blue outline of the mountains, as if they were cut out of the sky and one could step through their outline into another dimension.
Clear sky, outline of mountains, the green of the valley dazzling with light. That’s all there was.
Someday I will practice becoming a Señor de la Luz, he smiled. He flipped on his Walkman and let the Symphony in D major by Juan Arriaga fill his pores.
This man is bad, thought Sonny. More New Mexicans should know his music. The Mozart of Spain, a homeboy from the old country.
Sonny let the stirring music drain the tensions from his body. He thought about Raven and his watery death. The flood had hit like a train, washing away everything in its path, but like all arroyo floods of the high arid country, it would subside as the rain subsided. The cops were already searching for his body.
Sonny wanted to be at Tamara’s at sunrise to tell her about Raven, and to finish the unfinished business. So without awakening Rita, he had dressed and tiptoed out of the house. He wore a blue cowboy shirt with pearl snap-on buttons, Wrangler jeans, and his good boots. It had taken a long, warm bath to wash away last night’s mud and grime, but after that he had slept soundly in Rita’s arms.
Except for the questions that kept repeating: Had either Tamara or Raven been in the room when Gloria was killed? Were they, too, responsible for Gloria’s death, along with Veronica? And where was Gloria’s blood?
Raven’s medallion rested on his chest. He caressed the texture of the bas-relief Zia sign. The gold was cold to his touch. The Zia sun is good, don Eliseo had said. Make it good. Don’t let those brujos use it for their evil.
Gingerly, he touched his stomach where the cut of the Zia symbol was a recent, painful reminder of his brush with death. After his soaking bath last night, Rita had sprinkled osha powder on the cut and rebandaged it. Did Grandpa Elfego have a woman like Rita to help him?
What a woman. Last night
on the arroyo, she had saved his life. They made a good team. Sonny and Rita, Private Investigators. Beats making tacos. No, she was too much her own woman to give up her restaurant. She liked what she did and she did it well. But she worried about him running around the city in the dark of night, meeting people like Raven and Tamara.
“Tough way to make a living,” she had whispered last night as she slipped into bed.
“Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys never had it like this,” he agreed.
He looked at the flowers that surrounded Tamara’s flagstone patio. Bright roses and rows of petunias glistening with dew. On the edge of the patio sat a cloisonné vase. Washed clean by last night’s rain, the vase was a deep blue, with a large burst of orange in the center. As he looked closer, he saw the design was the Zia sun.
He thought of Gloria. Gloria’s soul haunted him; even now he felt her strong presence. He sat up straight and looked around the garden. She was here! He listened, thinking he had heard her voice, thinking he could smell the lilac perfume of her death.
Maybe he should see Lorenza Villa again, have her do the limpieza she had recommended. The traditional way to get rid of susto was to have a curandera clean away the fright.
No, he told himself. Get ahold of yourself. Gloria’s not here. Couldn’t be. Or could she? Maybe she was haunting those involved in her murder.
He touched his stomach and felt the fresh wound Veronica had cut into his flesh. “It will heal,” Rita said, but the thin, barely visible scars would remain. He would carry the mark of the Zia all his life.
He stretched his legs. The left ankle felt good this morning. The storm was past, the pressure had changed. Life was good. As long as the Señores y Señoras de la Luz came daily to bless life, it was good. Still, he felt uneasy, fearful of something he couldn’t explain.
He knew he needed to delve deeper in don Eliseo’s old ways, the traditions the ancestors had honed to perfection in the Río Grande valley. The old people knew there was evil in the world, and they knew how to take care of it. Lorenza Villa was a link, so was don Eliseo and his Lords and Ladies of the Light, so was Rita, so was his mother, so were so many people.… Him? What was he a link to? Had he lost the way and didn’t know it?
Evil messed up the equilibrium of the soul, jumbled the internal harmony. Evil disoriented and weakened the person as it captured the soul, shut the spirit in a dark prison where it could not pray each morning to the Lords and Ladies of the Light.
Fragmentation of the soul. Like a fine porcelain vase, the soul could break, and few knew how to fix it. Only those who believed in the soul could help put Humpty Dumpty together again.
We live in the era of la gente dorada, the people covered with a sheen of gold, Sonny thought. The beautiful people of Hollywood, television, movies, caricatures surrounding themselves with luxury, coated with a gold sheen but empty inside. Even here in the North Valley we have those who cover themselves with the sheen of gold, all over the city we have the hombres dorados, men of empty promises.
“Mira, Sonny,” don Eliseo said. “This place where we live is special. It is a sacred place. That’s why our vecinos from the pueblos have lived here for so long. That’s why people come here. But what attracts the angel attracts the diablo.”
Raven was such a diablo. A strange disquietude swept over Sonny. He would feel a lot better when Raven’s body was found. Raven was a man who could fly, and even now his spirit was out there, calling to Sonny.
Sonny shivered. What about WIPP? For a few jobs and a federal investment in the state, the people had created a trash dump for plutonium. Now some of the Indian tribes were thinking of storing the stuff in their backyards. The radioactive waste was everywhere, at Sandia Labs, in Los Alamos, in the hospitals, even in the industry that came in to build microprocessors. Once created, the element was going to be around for thousands of years. The goal was to stop the creation of the poison.
Around him the pungency of junipers filled the air, the sweetness of roses, the sperm smell of the towering cottonwoods of the valley.
A spiderweb glistening with dew hung on a rosebush. The garden spider moved tentatively toward the fly that had crashed into the web. Then swiftly the spider was on the struggling fly. Arachne feeding on the juices of the fly it held tightly, leaving behind the emptied carcass.
Birds called from the nearby trees, the shrill cry of the colorful oriole, the startling song variety of the mockingbird. The clarity of their songs sharp in the clean air. In the distance a peacock called, the mournful cry that sounded like “Le-on, le-on.” A neighbor raised peacocks.
The rain had settled the dust, brought relief from the dry heat of summer. The valley was refreshed; the June heat wave was broken. Now, hopefully the rains would come on a more regular schedule, the moisture rising in giant anvil-shaped clouds over the mountains and swelling to fruition in the afternoon.
The valley was becoming too populated, Sonny thought. Up on the West Mesa they were building new cities on soft sand, and when the summer rains came, the arroyos flooded, homes and streets would buckle. Water could destroy anything. As builders disturbed the old arroyos, the rains would cut new channels, the worm will turn.
Tamara’s patio appropriately faced the Sandia Mountains to the east. Grandfather Sun had burst over the crest of the mountain and flooded the valley with its light. Warm, life-giving energy of the first full day of summer. Now the sun begin its journey south, to Mexico, the pyramids of the sun, to Machu Picchu, the gatepost of the sun.
In six months, on December 21, the winter solstice would be even more important, because if the sun didn’t have enough energy to return, it would sink into the darkness of the southern horizon and all life would end.
Those devoted to the beneficence of the sun would offer prayer and ceremony to help the sun return north.
Rita was Catholic, but on December 21 she would perform a ceremony. Songs, food for a few invited guests, poetry, the exchanging of stories. In the blood she’d feel the need to pray for the sun’s return.
Don Eliseo would go to Sandia Pueblo to pray with the old men. To talk about Christmas, but to watch carefully the day the sun dipped to its southernmost point on the horizon. To pray for its return.
Around Sonny, the light penetrating the earth and lighting up the green plants and trees; a fuse burning within. Brilliant, living light, not the fire of Raven, but the light of the Señores y Señoras de la Luz, the ancestors of don Eliseo’s world, dropping in radiant raiment to touch the Earth with light.
I could spend the rest of my life contemplating this, Sonny thought. The light that draws painters to paint, to capture the meaning of color. The same light calls the medicine man of the pueblo to awaken long before dawn to climb the hill east of the pueblo to await the morning sun. Both painter and medicine man were in search of the Señores y Señoras, the daily illuminating fulfillment.
Somewhere a boy called, and Sonny thought of baseball. Last night’s game had been canceled. Que suerte! Kismet! His destino had been good to him; tonight he could go to the game. He smiled. Like his namesake, Elfego Baca, he had shot it out with the enemy and lived to tell about it. He would tell his grandchildren about the fight with Raven at the bridge on the Arroyo del Sol.
It might become as famous as the Bisabuelo’s shootout at Frisco Plaza, or the fight at the OK Corral. Maybe someone would make a movie out of it?
He heard a door open and turned to see Tamara appear at the patio door. She hesitated when she saw him, then she boldly stepped toward him, smiling, calling, “Sonny, buenos días, I am so happy to see you.…”
She was dressed in a gold gown, so revealing that he could see the outline of her body. An offering. Around her thin waist was a bright belt, glittering with precious stones, the buckle also gold, a Zia sun design.
Queen Tamara, he thought as he removed the Walkman earphones. Quite a beauty. He felt a stir as she walked seductively toward him, and he stood and took her hand.
“Buenos días.?
?? He kissed her cheek lightly. Lilac cologne stirred in the air.
“What a wonderful surprise to find you in my garden,” she exclaimed. “Have you changed your mind about what we can learn from each other? It is the first day after the summer solstice, a very propitious day,” she said and touched Raven’s medallion on his chest.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Sonny replied but he knew that she knew. “Raven’s dead.”
A dark look crossed her face. Then she whispered, “Raven cannot die.”
“He fell into a flooded arroyo last night,” Sonny said. “I reached for him: I tried to grab him, and all I caught was this.”
“The medallion? Then it was meant for you to wear it. It is appropriate. No other man could wear this sign of power. It fits you.”
“Did you hear what I said? He fell into—”
“I heard,” she snapped back. “It is you who have not heard. Raven cannot die. But for now you are the keeper of the Zia medallion. You don’t know what this means, do you?”
“It’s not mine.” Sonny shrugged. “I came to return it to you.”
“No, you must keep it,” Tamara insisted, her voice softening. “It is a gift for the moment. You see, darling, Raven will return and claim it when it’s time. In the meantime you have become the new Raven!”
“The new Raven?” Sonny mused.
Tamara’s eyes glistened with dark fire. She was serious.
“Yes! It is a gift! You are my Raven,” she whispered, her arms encircling him. She pressed her body against his, her eyes holding him with their strong, mesmerizing light. A dark jade reflecting centuries. Mystery. Her body an offering in the morning light.
“It is a perfect morning for making love,” she said. “Today is the first day of the sun’s journey south. Our love can guide its way.”
“I have a woman,” he said, even as he felt the stirring in his loins.