Rita nodded.
“I remember, once, I was about twelve, and we were playing baseball. Me and the kids I ran around with. Suddenly I felt I wasn’t in my body. I was flying overhead, and the game became clear to me. I could see the kids in their exact place, and I knew ahead of time if the batter would get a hit. I knew who would win the game. It was a strange feeling, but it was real.”
He looked at Rita. “It’s nothing.” He shrugged.
“It’s important,” Rita said.
Maybe he could sense things, but when he told his friends about the things he saw, they said he was weird, so he began to shut out the visions when they occurred. Even now it felt strange to talk about those moments when he felt he was flying, but the clarity of his visions had grown since he came into possession of Raven’s medallion.
“Go on,” Rita said.
“Once there was an accident. We had played late, it grew dark. We left the park and were walking home. I had a vision. I saw the accident before it happened. I knew Robert Martinez was going to get hit by a car. The scene was clear in my mind. I looked up and saw Robert and Nick Pino horsing around as they walked. Before I could say anything, Robert stepped out into the street, and a car came out of nowhere and hit him. It ran over his leg and broke it. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t shout or move. But I knew it was going to happen.”
Sonny was recalling many images, times when the power of vision had come upon him.
“During the limpieza, Lorenza instructed me to go back to the room and see Gloria’s dead body. I saw her as clear as if she was right in front of me now. So white and pale. I felt like reaching out and touching her.”
“Did you?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was dead.”
“Yes. But in the back of my mind, deep inside, I thought I could bring her back to life. Crazy, huh?”
Rita shook her head. “Not crazy.”
“You two think alike.” Sonny smiled. “Don Eliseo told me the story of el hombre dorado. The man who came seeking the fountain of youth. Some bad people got hold of him and took his soul, and they painted him with gold. Now he can live forever, but he has no soul.”
“But you have a very sensitive soul,” Rita said. “By not touching Gloria you opened your soul to fear. That shock is what we call susto. Gloria’s spirit attached itself to yours.”
“That’s what Lorenza said.”
He thought of Tamara Dubronsky. He had faced her the following morning, told her Raven was dead, and she replied that Raven couldn’t die. Raven’s soul was born again in Sonny, she said, with a perturbing smile that told Sonny she believed what she said. So it was fitting that Sonny wear the Zia medallion, Raven’s symbol for the Zia cult.
“Maybe Raven’s also in me,” he whispered.
Rita sighed. Yes, he would have to go deeper into the world of spirits. This is what Lorenza was preparing him for.
“Shock affects the soul,” Rita said softly. “Any shock can create susto in the nervous system, but the really bad susto is when another soul frightens you, enters you. It can lead to depression. The other soul is taking your energy.”
“Like this summer,” Sonny said. He had felt so low and distracted he couldn’t even make love to Rita. Some nights when he lay beside Rita, he didn’t feel the urge. The worry compounded itself.
“I loved Gloria,” he admitted. “Once, when I was in high school, I felt I was the only guy on the high school team that wasn’t messing around. The other guys bragged all the time about the girls they were screwing. I was supposed to remain pure; you know all that Catholic stuff. I could talk to Gloria about it. She understood. She was—what?—ten years older, she knew about life. I used to go by her place, visit, and even then I guess I sensed she was as lonely as me. The week I graduated, she let me make love to her.”
He paused, thinking back to the evening she had been waiting for him, the presents she had bought him, the wine and candlelight. She made the move, and suddenly the years of friendship, the years of desire kept in check, all dissolved into a night of intense passion. It was his initiation.
“So when I saw her dead … I don’t know. It did something to me. Anger, grief, I wanted revenge. Maybe I did let her soul in.”
“Maybe,” Rita said. “But now her spirit has to move on, release the living. That’s the rule of life and death.”
He looked at her. Her brown eyes smiled. She understood him. Lord, she seemed to know what swirled in his thoughts.
“How do I get involved in these things?”
“Somebody has to fight Raven.”
“And I’m elected. I told Lorenza about the Zia sign that Veronica cut around my navel. When she had me hung up like a goat, ready to kill me. Before you and don Eliseo rescued me.”
“The Pueblo people use the Zia as a symbol for the sun,” Rita said, “but Raven and his pack have taken it as their symbol. We have to take it back. The Zia sun is good and life-giving, not negative.”
Yeah, Sonny thought. Take back the good power. Take it back from the bad brujos, the sorcerers who do evil.
“Lorenza believes Raven has the power of a brujo. He lives in the world of spirits. That’s why he’s so strong. I had to find the coyotes, my guardian spirits. For now, it’s the only way to fight him. The first part of the cleansing was the burning of incense, the sweeping away with eagle and owl feathers, the bird of day and the bird of night. She was preparing me for my journey. She played a tape. A soft and distant drum. I closed my eyes. The drumming was like the beating of my heart … ‘Imagine a lake’, she said, ‘or a cave, a spring. A hole that goes into the earth. It must be a place you know.’ And she told me to sing a song. Make one up. So I began to sing to the beat of the drum.”
He paused and looked at Rita. “The words just came to me: ‘To Grandfather Sun I send my prayers. To Tata Dios y los santos I pray. To the four directions I send my prayers. I pray to the kachina spirits of the mountains. May the power of my ancestors fill my soul. Guide me on the path of the sun. Fill me with clarity and goodness.’”
“A beautiful song,” Rita whispered.
“Something happened as I sang. I lost consciousness. I was drifting …”
He was a cloud, a shadow flying over the llano of eastern New Mexico, and he saw Santa Rosa, a town he had visited as a child with his parents. He hovered over a lake, Hidden Lake, a hidden jewel of a lake on the wide expanse of llano.
In the vision his father was on one side, his mother on the other, Armando played nearby. His father wanted them to know the state, so often he took Sonny and Armando on trips—fishing up in the Taos mountains; to see the maples turn red in October in the Manzanos; driving up to the Jemez to lie in the hot mineral springs that bubbled up from the depths of the ancient volcano; exploring the Bosque del Apache, to see the arrival of the snow geese and the whooping cranes in the fall; watching the Navajo fair and rodeo in Gallup in August.
“I want you to know your land,” his father had said. It was part of their education.
One summer evening they found themselves in Santa Rosa. They stood by the edge of a lake with Ron Chávez, a friend of his father’s, and as the sun set on the small, blue lake surrounded by ocher sandstone cliffs, Sonny looked upon what he thought must be the most enchanting place he had ever seen. Hidden Lake. He remembered it clearly and when Lorenza instructed him to find a lake or a pond, he thought of the jewel of a lake in the red sunset he had seen long ago.
“A lake,” he whispered to Rita. “I was to enter the lake. Begin the journey to the underworld, that place where I would find my troubled soul. I had to meet the animals. ‘Dive in,’ she said. ‘It is a passageway. Don’t be afraid. Dive in. Dive to the bottom. Don’t touch anything along the way.’”
He stopped. What had happened after that was weird. He looked at Rita.
“Damn.” He shook his head. “Just as I was about to dive, the image of the lake faded, and I saw Gloria!?
??
“Gloria became the passage,” Rita said.
He nodded.
“What did Lorenza say?” Rita asked.
“Entering Gloria was a journey into Mother Earth, the world of spirits, a place so deep in my mind I’d never been there. Gloria haunted me; she also wanted to help me. I entered her, fell, saw growths like poisoned mushrooms. Those, Lorenza explained afterward, are signs of the sexual abuse she suffered in life. Some who fall through a spring or lake describe similar growths. Anyway, now I have some power to fight Raven.”
“You found the coyotes.”
“The coyote is my nagual. They came to give me power.”
Sonny felt strong, stronger than he had felt all summer. Finding the coyotes, the run with them, it had all filled him with energy.
Lorenza had passed the eagle feather over his body, brushing away the dark energies. In its place he felt a lightness, like the Señores y Señoras de la Luz who filled don Eliseo’s universe. They came over his body, filling him with light from head to feet.
He had resisted when Rita first proposed they visit the healer, but now he sensed the power of the woman. She was driving away the susto in his soul and replacing it with the power of the coyotes. The trip he had just been through was making a believer out of him.
She prayed and chanted over him, in Spanish and in the old Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. She burned more copal and prayed to the Virgen de Guadalupe, the sacred mother of the Americas.
When the ritual was concluded, she passed the candle Sonny had brought over his body, then she lit it. The images of the coyotes he had seen in his vision appeared in the smoke.
“The coyote is a loner, like me,” he said to Rita. “He runs across the range and snips a sheep here or there, feeds his family. He’s shot at and hunted by the ranchers, but he survives. He’s a survivor.”
“The Indian legends say Coyote is a trickster,” Rita reminded him. “Always getting in trouble, but teaching the people through his antics.”
“You know, Lorenza could’ve helped Gloria.”
“Yes. She died a horrible death, with all that pain inside. She turned to the wrong persons for help. Raven used her, took her money, then had her killed.”
She looked at Sonny. “You feel good about the limpieza.”
“Yeah. Lots of energy. I even feel like—” He winked.
Rita smiled. “You want to come by tonight?”
“Sure. I feel better. I feel great!”
She kissed him and stepped out of the truck.
“Cuidao, amor,” she said, and walked into the restaurant.
5
Sonny drove to his house in Ranchitos. A few of the old adobe houses of the once-farming community still belonged to the old Mexicanos of the valley; the rest of the area had been subdivided by developers. Pockets of the once-traditional, Hispanic North Valley were dotted with the expensive adobe homes of those with enough money to buy the subdivided land and build large customized homes. The old settlements of the valley had been razed and the fields plowed under and covered with homes built for professionals who worked in the city.
Gentrification, the local press called the process. Displacement, the Chicanos countered. Real estate taxes went up and up, and the old Hispanos of the valley had to sell. As more of the displaced families sold and moved away, the original ambience that once drew the moneyed folks to the North Valley was lost. A few realized they had cracked the golden egg that drew them to the area in the first place.
Don Eliseo and his two friends were busy in the front yard when Sonny drove up. He and dona Concha and don Toto were roasting a basketful of green chile that don Eliseo grew in his field by the house. Don Eliseo slowly and methodically placed the shapely green peppers on the grill, turned each one with care, and when the thin skin was brown and roasted, he picked up the chile and tossed it in a pan.
Don Toto’s job was to make sure the just-roasted chiles were kept covered with a wet towel and steaming, thus making the skin easier to peel off. He also kept the wineglasses full of his own vintage, a North Valley wine that came from vines his family had cultivated since the seventeenth century. He now had no more than a dozen plants, but he bottled enough to keep him and his friends in wine all winter.
Concha, dressed in jeans and a white blouse, with circles of rouge heavy on her cheeks and her thin lips etched with deep purple lipstick, kept pushing up on her ever-sagging bra as she peeled the skins off the toasted chiles. She wrapped eight or ten of the homegrown hot peppers in a plastic bag, and they were ready to be placed in the freezer for winter use.
They were roasting the last of the green chile. The ones that had ripened red had already been strung up in ristras. Three long, fat ristras of red chile peppers hung on the front wall of the house, drying in the warm southern exposure.
“Elfego, cómo ’stás?” don Eliseo called. “Come have a sip of wine.”
Sonny walked across the dirt road to sit under the shade of the tree with them. He felt at ease with the old people, and they liked to joke with him as much as he liked the banter.
“Hi, honey.” Concha smiled. “If I didn’t have my hands full of chile, I’d give you a hug. No quiero enchilarte.”
“Concha querida, you can enchilarme anytime.” Sonny kissed her cheek, then took the cup of wine don Toto offered him.
“Híjola!” Concha smiled wider. “Did you hear that, boys! He’s feeling like a hot chile!”
“Maybe the curandera helped,” don Eliseo said with a wink.
Concha nudged Sonny. “Did she roast your chile?” She burst out in a fit of laughter.
“Atta boy, Sonny!” Don Toto slapped him on the back. “That Lorenza is a honey.”
“She’s too young for you.” Concha grinned at Toto.
“At forty they’re ripe,” he countered. “At your age, you got ganas but no juice.” He chortled.
Concha glared at him. “See this?” She picked up a roasted chile from the grill, wilted and cooked. “Toto’s!” She laughed anew.
“Pues, más sabor when it’s cooked,” don Toto said, smiling. “Put a little salt on it and wrap it in your tortilla!” He smacked his lips.
“A hot chile wrapped in a tortilla.” Concha winked at Sonny. “Ain’t that sexy!”
“Muy sexy,” Sonny agreed, and sat in the old lounge chair don Eliseo kept beneath the giant cottonwood. The day had grown warm enough to work outside in shirtsleeves.
“But you don’t sound too happy,” don Eliseo said. “How was la curandera?”
“She was all right,” Sonny answered.
“Only all right?” don Eliseo asked. The old man knew when something was bothering Sonny. Two years the young man had lived in the small adobe across the street, and during that time Sonny had become like a son to don Eliseo.
“Maybe Sonny needs someone with experience,” Concha said. “Like me.”
“She’s right,” don Toto agreed, refilling their cups. “Concha used to know all the curanderas in the valley. And she could cure el mal ojo.”
“Take an egg and place it on the person’s forehead,” Concha said. “Rub their body with it, especially the stomach. Then break it open in a glass of water. You will see el mal. Most of the time it’s just someone who looked at the baby too long,” she continued. “You know, like when the baby is so cute and you adore it. When one adores the soul of another person, you pull it out. A baby’s soul is young and innocent, so it’s easy for an older soul to draw it out. It makes the baby sick. The spirit is strong, sabes. So you can draw the soul out, like when you fall in love, ese!” She kidded Sonny. “I bet Rita’s got your soul wrapped up!”
“Hot tortilla!” Don Toto laughed and drank.
Sonny smiled.
“So you get out of harmony, como dicen los indios,” Concha continued. “The person who puts the mal ojo has to spit on the baby’s forehead. A lot of people think it’s the spit that makes the baby well, but no, don’t you see, honey, it’s the breath. The breath
is the soul, the breath gives back the soul to the baby. Makes it well. Ah, we used to have curanderas all over the valley who knew how to cure everything. Mujeres fuertes. They cured everyone, delivered babies, and—”
Here she paused and her bright, greenish eyes stared into Sonny’s. “They fought el demonio. They were the only ones who knew how to fight the diablo. La gente doesn’t realize it, but when the last curandera died, there was no one left to fight the brujas del diablo. Oh, there’s a few here and there, young women who want to learn, like Lorenza. Pero qué saben? They don’t know how strong evil is. Look around you, look at what’s happening to la gente. The kids are crazy, and so are their parents. Dope, booze, violence. The diablo is loose, and there’s no one to fight his brujas.”
Don Eliseo and don Toto nodded.
“Oh, there’s the medicine men in the pueblos,” Concha concluded. “But the people don’t go there anymore. They go to the shopping malls, to the movies, but not to the right medicine.”
“The old ways are dying,” don Eliseo said.
The three old friends—Snap, Crackle, and Pop, they called themselves—had helped Sonny track Veronica in June. They had led Sonny right to her house. When Veronica hung Sonny like a goat and was ready to kill him, it was don Eliseo and Rita who rescued him from becoming one more sacrificial victim of the Zia cult. They believed Veronica was an evil sorcerer, a bruja, in the worst sense of the word.
Sonny told them about Veronica’s death.
“Válgame Dios,” Concha said, and made the sign of the cross.
“A bad death,” don Toto said philosophically. “She did evil, and that’s how she died.”
“She killed Gloria,” Sonny said. “Raven gave the commands, but Veronica carried them out.”