He turned to Lorenza and held the medallion aloft. Now the full October moon that rose over the top of the pine trees shone on the clearing. Its pale light glistened on the gold medal.
“He’s dead,” Sonny said.
“No.” She shook her head. “The ravens have taken his soul, but only for the moment. Quickly,” she warned him. She took the medallion and placed it around Sonny’s neck.
“Now the Zia medallion is yours. Its energy can return you from the world of the guardian spirits.”
The Zia medallion had been Raven’s way to his nagual; now it was Sonny’s. Knowing this, Sonny could return from the world of guardian spirits, the world of Coyote, more easily, without the help of Lorenza’s preparations.
He looked around him and sniffed the air. The smells he had so thoroughly distinguished moments ago now blurred, losing their individual pungency. The luminosity in the trees was replaced by dark shadows. He looked at Lorenza, reached out, and touched her.
“Gracias,” he said.
“Rita,” she said, “we have to go quickly.” Her voice told him there was still danger around them.
Sonny followed her out of the clearing to the house. A dim light shone at one of the windows; otherwise, the dark, ominous building appeared deserted.
Sonny didn’t hesitate. Using the coyote power he felt ebbing from him, he lunged at the door. Under his weight the dry wood around the lock splintered and the door sprang open. There in the center of the room, lighted with a kerosene lantern, arms and feet tied with ropes, huddled Rita and Cristina.
“Sonny!” Rita cried, and Sonny was at her side, gathering her in his arms, untying the ropes, kissing her face, and tasting the tears that streamed from her eyes as she cried his name over and over.
Lorenza swept up Cristina and comforted her as she untied her.
“How did you find us?”
“It’s a long story,” Sonny replied.
He pulled Rita up and helped her stand on her weakened legs. “You okay?” he asked Cristina as he pulled her into an embrace.
“Yes,” the girl sobbed.
“Gracias, gracias, gracias,” Rita cried, embracing Lorenza.
“God, I thought we would never—”
The four stood in a close abrazo. They were safe now.
“I knew you’d come,” Rita whispered.
He took her hands in his, examined the swollen, purple bruises on her wrists. He looked at Cristina cradled in Lorenza’s arms.
“How are you, mi’jita?”
“I’m fine,” she said through tearful eyes. “I want my mama and papa.”
“Your daddy and mother are safe. They sent us for you. Can you walk?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“Good girl.” Sonny tousled her hair and turned to Rita.
“We have to hurry,” Lorenza said. Sonny nodded and Lorenza led the way out, holding Cristina closely. Sonny’s arm was around Rita. They followed the dark trail back to the clearing. There Lorenza paused and motioned to Sonny.
Raven’s body was gone.
“Damn,” Sonny cursed. He peered at the ground where Raven’s body had fallen. There were no tracks. Flown again. The brujo could not be stopped by a bullet.
“You hit him, I was sure you hit him,” Sonny whispered.
“I tell you, bullets cannot kill him,” she replied.
“Sonny? What is it?” Rita asked.
“The magic of a sorcerer,” he answered.
He felt the medallion on his chest. In the middle of the medallion was the dent the bullet had made. He held it up in the moonlight for Lorenza to see. Her shot had struck the medallion and saved Raven’s life. The force of the shot may have knocked him out, but he sure as hell wasn’t dead.
“Outside his circle he lost some of his power,” Lorenza whispered, “but bullets can’t kill him. Come.”
They turned and hurried Rita and the girl past Raven’s evil circle and down the dark forest path to the truck. The gathering night was cold on the mountain. The shivering Rita and Cristina bundled up with the seat blankets.
Sonny started the truck and found the road that would take him back to the highway, back to a world he knew and recognized. Rita, exhausted, fell asleep, leaning her head on his shoulder. Cristina, too, was instantly asleep on Lorenza’s lap.
Suddenly he, too, felt exhausted. The world of the truck was new to him. He touched the steering wheel and listened to the sound of the motor beneath the hood. The headlights illuminated the darkness. How strange this world of metal and motors seemed. How weak and fragile.
It could carry him away, as an airplane might carry many people through the air, but the power did not pass to the body or soul of a person. The energy of gas, oil, and metal was an illusion.
In the world of the nagual, he had felt a new kind of strength. He had felt the transformation in his body and soul. The animal guardian spirit was there, lurking around the corners of the world of metal, waiting to teach each person a part of an ancient inheritance.
Once upon a time, in the world of Mesoamerica, in the world that stretched north along the Río Grande, in the primal world that later came to be known as the Americas, men and women had conversed with the world of the spirits. Lorenza had said there were many ways to enter that world. And what was that world but a deep kinship to nature? A deep kinship to one’s inner self.
What the Franciscan friars had called the evil of the shaman was really the potential for uniting the human soul with the soul of nature. Tonight, Sonny had felt that unity.
I have walked in the path of Coyote, Sonny thought, and so I am Coyote. I have used the power of the guardian spirit and freed Rita. That power of the brujo can be used for good.
He thought he heard don Eliseo chuckle, then say, “Hijo, you will make a good brujo.”
Exhaustion drained him, but he still felt the vibrations of the coyote spirit in his blood. He had wanted only to find Rita and the girl. To protect them he had to take the coyote body, the coyote spirit. But something else had happened, something that he was sure would only reveal itself slowly in the future.
In the dim light of the truck he looked across at Lorenza.
“Gracias,” he said.
“De nada,” she answered, smiling.
“I feel like …”
“A smoke?” she finished.
“How did you know?”
“A good smoke cleanses the evil we picked up from Raven. If we had the time, I would have burned incense there where you met Raven. But the safety of Rita and the girl is more important now. Now we can smoke.”
Very carefully, so as not to awaken the girl or Rita, she reached into her bag, took out some tobacco, and rolled it in tobacco paper. He pushed in the cigarette lighter, then handed the glowing ember of metal to her. When the tobacco caught, she offered the smoke in four directions, cleansing the people huddled in the small cab of the truck.
Then she passed the cigarette to Sonny. He had never tasted sweeter tobacco.
“Your own mix?”
“My own mix,” she said.
“Good.” He nodded. The smoke cleared his mind.
“Good,” he repeated, turning onto the paved road, and headed for Tijeras Canyon and the interstate that would lead them home.
His nagual spirit had entered the world of the brujo. Now he believed that perhaps both don Eliseo and Lorenza were right. He, Sonny Baca, was also a brujo.
28
“When your boss, la blonde, pulled up at the Pyramid Hotel, she parked next to a Mercedes,” Diego said. “She looked at it like she recognized it.”
“So who does it belong to?” Sonny pondered as he and Diego sat in the kitchen having their morning coffee.
“After she met Gilroy, I figured it was his.”
“No, not his,” Sonny replied, and gazed out the window toward don Eliseo’s place.
The old man was up early, as always, to greet the sun, to work. Today he was raking up the huge gold le
aves that had fallen from his cottonwood.
Madge, Sonny thought, Madge. You double-crossed me all along. Led me by the nose. Maybe money and dope had always come hand-in-hand for her, a past she couldn’t shake loose.
Sonny sipped his coffee and watched don Eliseo raking. The gigantic hundred-year-old tree had bloomed late in June. Now it was turning golden, dropping its leaves, ready to rest.
A new season was settling into the valley, and those who still farmed had brought in the harvest of the land. Red chile ristras hung against adobe walls. The warm October air, crisp at forty degrees in the mornings, warmed into the seventies by midday. The hot, dry weather slowly dried the chile and turned the pods from a glistening bright red to dark reddish brown.
Red or green? Sonny thought. It was the most-asked question in New Mexico. The next: hot, medium, or mild?
“Damn,” Diego groaned. “I should have taken the license plate number.”
“Madge knows who the Mercedes belongs to,” Sonny said, fingering the gold medallion on his chest. He turned his head to stretch his neck muscles. He was sore and bruised.
He felt like sleeping for a week. Last night the fits of sleep had been cluttered with images of Raven.
Lorenza had taken Rita and Cristina home with her. “They need to sleep,” she said. “Rita is strong, but the little girl is frightened. I can help, but right now it’s the presence of her mother that will reassure her.”
Sonny and Diego understood. It had been a time of terror for Rita and Cristina, a time when they feared for their lives. Sonny knew the shock of a trauma, if not treated, could get worse. They were safe and that was what mattered, but they needed Lorenza’s healing ways.
“That woman is incredible,” he said.
“Which one?” Diego asked.
Sonny smiled. Diego’s wife for the struggle she endured while keeping her family together. Rita and Lorenza. Women warriors, like the curanderas of the past. Strong women. Mentors. Yes, like don Eliseo, these two women were guides, and more was yet to be revealed. Sonny Baca’s journey to the world of spirits was just beginning.
“All of them,” Sonny replied.
“You betcha.” Diego winked.
The phone rang and Sonny rose to answer it.
“Sonny?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t sound like you. Garcia here.”
Diego had called the police chief last night and told him Rita and Cristina had been rescued.
“What’s the matter with your voice? You got a cold?”
“No,” Sonny replied. Had his voice changed?
“How’s Rita?”
“Resting. She’s going to be okay.”
“And the girl?”
“Fine, just fine.”
“I don’t know how you did it, Sonny, but I’m damn relieved you found them. I’m going to ask the mayor to give you a medal or something.”
Sonny fingered the Zia medallion he wore around his neck.
“Thanks, Chief, but having them back is all the thanks I need.”
“Yeah, sure,” the chief said. “Look, I had my men at Raven’s place all night. Howard cleaned the place, but no luck so far. Lots of junk but no trace of drugs, money, nothing. Oh, yeah, Howard said to tell you there’s a trace of lilac perfume in the air. You know what that means?”
“Maybe one of Raven’s women,” Sonny answered. Lilac was the perfume they had put in the water when they pumped Gloria Dominic’s blood from her body.
“Look, Sonny, we need a statement from you. Just need to know what happened up there.”
“Any word on Raven?” Sonny asked.
“No. That sonofabitch knows how to disappear! Look, I need you to come in,” the chief implored. “The press won’t let me rest. The press is hounding me for a story. Even José Armas called.”
“Sounds serious,” Sonny replied, still looking at don Eliseo across the street.
“Damn right, it’s serious. Don’t you read the paper? You’re splashed all over the front page. The paper likes you, Sonny. I don’t know why but they like you. Look, I know you’re tired. God knows Rita and the girl suffered. Come in tomorrow. First thing in the morning. Okay?”
Garcia hung up, and Sonny, too, cradled the phone. He had been fingering the medallion, feeling the dent caused by the bullet.
“Mira,” Sonny said to Diego, pointing at the indentation the bullet had made. “I don’t know where Lorenza learned to shoot, but she hit him dead center. The medallion saved Raven’s life.”
“Chingao!” Diego exclaimed.
“You can’t kill Raven,” Sonny said, remembering Tamara’s warning. Raven does not die, his spirit always returns. He set down his coffee cup and slipped on a light windbreaker.
They stepped outside into the bright, cool morning. The wide, blue sky was already dotted with balloons.
“Where to?” Diego asked.
“Go see Madge,” Sonny replied.
“Why?”
Yeah, Sonny wondered, why not drop it? Return to normal life. Hang around Rita at the restaurant and learn to make tacos and enchiladas. Plan the wedding for just before Christmas. He knew now how badly he wanted to marry Rita, settle down, enjoy life as he once had.
“The dope,” he answered.
“You think it’s still in town?” Diego asked.
“It’s got to be. Mira, with that much stuff going out, one of the gofers was bound to make a mistake, party too much, talk too much, start sharing some of the stuff with friends, and wind up busted.”
“But not a single person’s been arrested—except the one guy they wanted you to find,” Diego said. “So it’s still here, still intact.”
“Yes,” Sonny replied.
But finding the dope was Garcia’s business, not his. Let Garcia follow the tracks. That was his job. He got paid for it.
Me, I should get back to a simple life.
Ah, he could never lead a simple life again. Raven was still out there. The score last night had been settled only for the moment, but Raven would return to haunt Sonny. As don Eliseo said, it had always been so, good against evil.
Lorenza had been fighting the sorcerers all along, and so had don Eliseo in his own way. Now Lorenza and don Eliseo needed help. Coyote spirit help.
Sonny called to the old man. “Buenos días le de Dios, don Eliseo!”
Don Eliseo looked up from his work. “Sonny, gracias a Dios you found Rita.” He ambled across the road and embraced Sonny in an abrazo. “Gracias a Dios they are safe. Diego told me last night. I prayed, Sonny. Dios mío, I prayed. My wife—que descanse en paz—she really believed in the santos. She knew every santo in the book, and she knew how to pray to them. I learned many prayers from her, and I figured if anybody could help, my wife can. Pues, now she’s a saint. That woman never harmed a living thing in her life. So I kept saying, take care of Rita, vieja. Tell your diosito and your santos to take care of Rita. It worked, Sonny,” the old man said, and wiped his eyes.
“It worked,” Sonny agreed.
“Y tú?” he asked.
“I stopped Raven, but you know he doesn’t die,” Sonny replied.
The old man’s eyes glistened. “Sí. Now you know. The war is not won in one night. Even now he is out there, planning the next movida. He will find a way to make more trouble. More evil things will come. Now you know.” He put his hand on Sonny’s shoulder.
“Yes.” Sonny understood. The old man was blessing him for the struggle yet to come.
“Life is this struggle, back and forth, the force of evil and the force of good,” don Eliseo said. “All through the centuries, man creates the gods and the demons, and they fight, back and forth. And where does the fight take place? In the heart. El corazón is the battleground. There is clarity for the soul if a person pays attention. If you don’t pay attention, evil fills the soul. One has to pay attention, every day, every minute.”
Sonny nodded. Some winter evening when there was time to sit in front of the fireplace and
talk and eat piñon, he would tell the old man about last night. Don Eliseo would explain more of the movement of the soul, how it traveled, how it could fly, how to enter the world of spirits through the many paths.
“Cuídate, Sonny. Those evil people are never done.” He looked at the Zia medallion.
“Lorenza said to keep it.”
“Yes. So we let it be. Bueno, you’re back, Rita’s safe. Mira,” he said, pointing at the tree. “Did you ever think it would look so good? The leaves are turning to gold. This is the only gold we need, the leaves, corn, pumpkins. Qué no?”
Sonny and Diego nodded in agreement.
“Bueno, cuídate. Come and have some red chile enchiladas this afternoon. Toto and Concha are coming, and you know Concha’s enchiladas are the best. Bring Rita, all your friends. Let’s celebrate!”
“Por qué no?” Sonny agreed.
The old man gave Sonny an abrazo, then ambled across the road, back to raking leaves. Sonny and Diego watched.
“Quite a man,” Diego said.
“I still have a lot to learn from him,” Sonny replied. “In the meantime, I’ve got a date.” He turned toward the truck.
“You want me to go with you?” Diego asked.
“No, you stay. Your family needs you.”
“Pues, be careful, bro.”
“I’ll be okay. Now it’s just me and Madge. You stay with your wife and daughter. Lorenza might need you. All I’m going to do is twist Madge’s arm until she talks. Keep track of me on the phone.”
“Okay,” Diego reluctantly agreed, “but I don’t like it. Every time you go near that woman you get in trouble.”
“Es mi destino,” Sonny said, got into his truck, and drove away.
He dialed his mother’s number.
“Sonny!” she cried. “Malcriado! Why didn’t you call me? Rita called me this morning. I was surprised, and so happy. So relieved. Gracias a Dios, she’s safe! Where are you?”
“I’m here.”
“I know you’re here, but where? And why is your voice so gruff? You sound like a coyote with a hangover.”
Sonny laughed. She hit the nail on the head. So she knew. A lot of people knew; they just didn’t talk about it. Yes, he felt like a coyote with a hangover.