A solemn don Jóse turned and mounted the small stage in the middle of the plaza. He spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
As you know, Governor Armijo has retreated to El Paso. The rumors from Santa Fé are mixed. Some say he sold out to Santiago Magoffin, and Santa Fé is now helpless to resist the invaders.
But we’re not, brave Lisandro shouted, holding up his buffalo rifle. Other young men around him cheered and also waved their pistols and rifles. Some only waved pitchforks or sticks, for as herders and farmers, they had only these weapons.
Let the Yankees come, one shouted, and we’ll give them a taste of lead!
Go home, Yankees! another young man shouted, and the crowd took up the refrain. Go home, Yankees!
They come to ruin our way of life! Why can’t they stay where they belong! a farmer shouted.
We should build a fence to keep them out, his vecino added.
For years the mountain men and traders from the United States had worked their way into the land of the northern Río Grande, and the people reluctantly accepted the intrusion. New goods appeared, farm implements, better rifles, iron pots for the kitchen, steel axes, all useful instruments in the daily life of the paisanos. But still the people feared being overrun by the Americanos, and now that war had been declared against México, their fears were about to be realized.
The shouts for war grew, and only don José could quiet down the young men who were ready to take on the Army of the West.
As you know, he said, the American colonel brings two divisions. Thousands of infantry. He has artillery, and we do not. Kearny has a thousand mules carrying their ammunition and supplies. And what do we have to meet such a force?
The men looked at their weapons. A few wore pistols, and some carried the buffalo rifles that they used to hunt the bison in the eastern plains in the fall, but compared to the army described by the scouts, they would be like wheat before the scythe.
What can we do? one of the elders asked.
We must protect our families, our homes, another said. For many years now we have seen the Yankees come to our land. They speak a different language. They refuse to learn Spanish. Soon they will want us all to speak only English. And … they are Protestants.
A gasp went up from the women, who crossed their foreheads and muttered a prayer at the mention of the word.
So we must fight! the young Lisandro cried out, and again the young men cheered him.
Don José raised his arms. Wait! Sometimes the better part of valor is to listen and to learn, he said. Let us listen to the Americano colonel. Let us see what terms he offers. To resist will mean our young men will die. I do not want to be responsible for so many deaths, for the burning of our fields and homes, nor for the widows left in the wake of war.
The older men around him nodded. Perhaps the Americanos would be kind and show mercy. Don José was correct, the inhabitants of Las Vegas just didn’t have the men or armaments to resist. Many would die if they opposed the huge army that even now was at their door. There would be carnage on the grasslands of the land they loved so well.
Don José put his arm around his daughter. If I want peace and time to grow into old age, he said, some will say it is because I am a coward. I am not! If you vote to fight, then I will march alongside you. But you know, and I know, that our armed resistance is useless. We will die. Who will care for my family when I am dead? Who will teach my grandchildren the ways of our ancestors? It is for my family that I vote for peace with the Americanos. We must trust that this occupation of our land will be short-lived and that finding no gold, they will move on to California.
Or go back where they came from! a man shouted, and the crowd applauded.
The older men agreed, but the hot tempers of the young men were not so easily cooled.
If we don’t resist now, they will take our land! Lisandro insisted.
Listen to my father, mi amor, Epifana whispered to Lisandro. He wants what is best for us.
I will listen to you, amor, he replied, and turned to the assembly. I will abide by what don José thinks is right, he said, and the people cheered. The young men reluctantly gathered around to slap him on the back and tell him they were with him.
They are speaking as though in a movie, Sonny thought. I am directing my dream! He looked for Coyote, but he wasn’t around. It’s me, I can do it! Sonny laughed.
I must finish my preparations, Epifana said to Lisandro as she withdrew. Be careful, he replied as the young men lifted him on their shoulders and paraded him around the plaza.
What am I doing? Sonny wondered. Am I really in charge here? What about Kearny?
The scene shifted and for a moment Sonny was caught off guard. He saw the long column of Kearny’s army marching across the llano. Dust rose into the hot August day, horses and mules strained at their harnesses. The land of the Nuevo Mexicanos had seen many changes sweep across it, but none was to be as momentous as the coming of the Americanos. Military occupation, a new Code of Laws, a different language, and loss of their original land grants were to follow. The bones of history rattled and ached at the thought.
Sonny grew sad. Should the people of Las Vegas have resisted? No, of course not. Don José was right. A bloody battle would have inflicted casualties on both sides, but the losers would have been the people of Las Vegas. Farmers and sheepmen were no match for an army trained for war.
In the plaza fear turned to curiosity as the assembled people looked at the weary and thirsty volunteers who straggled in. Their faces were covered with dust, their lips cracked from the sun, and their blond hair matted from days on the trail. They were young men far away from home, and they were hungry and thirsty.
A woman took pity on the soldiers. From her pail of water she offered a soldier a drink. He smiled and said in his strange tongue, Thank you, ma’am.
Tanque Mam, she repeated. Se llama Tanque Mam, she said to her neighbors.
Tanque Mam, they said in greeting. The seventeen-year-old from Missouri didn’t appear to be much of an enemy at all. He was thirsty and hungry and as appreciative of the drink of water as if his own mother had handed it to him.
Tanque Mam was the first Yankee to receive the hospitality of the Nuevo Mexicanos. While Colonel Kearny gave his famous “I’m taking over this territory” speech in the plaza, laying down the new American law, the soldiers wandered among the people, receiving gifts of cool water, meat rolled in tortillas, combs for their hair. They hadn’t laid eyes on a woman for months, and now their eyes flirted with the young Mexican women.
But there was another enemy who dismounted. In the periphery of the dream Sonny spied a shadow. A lone soldier moving down a back alley, in and out of the stables and animal pens. The man, dressed in an army uniform, moved stealthily but quickly in the direction of Epifana’s house.
Sonny waited, unable to will himself forward. He had fallen into the dream, but he wasn’t constructing it! The image began to shift, as a dream shifts at will.
“No,” Sonny mumbled, knowing he was losing the dream, trying to concentrate. Deep in the recesses of the dream he knew the U.S. soldier sneaking toward Epifana’s home was Raven, but Sonny felt mired in a darkness he couldn’t break. The darkness itself was the dream, it held the images, but Sonny couldn’t order the sequence, he couldn’t cast light on the images.
The man reappeared, this time carrying a bundle he lifted on to his horse. Epifana! Sonny gasped.
Raven mounted and turned his horse. He looked at Sonny and held him with eyes so dark and penetrating Sonny felt their chill.
She will give birth to Lisandro’s children, your mother’s Jaramillo ancestors, Raven shouted. Now she’s mine!
He spurred his horse, and the horse’s cry shook the ground, the blood from its flanks swirled into a dark whirlwind that swept all the images of the dream away.
“No!” Sonny cried, awakening, flailing out, grabbing at Lorenza, and the van went flying off the road, thumping along the shoulder of the highway until she broug
ht it to a stop.
Lorenza turned to Sonny. “Qué pasa?”
Sonny opened his eyes, gasping for air.
“I was dreaming.”
“Raven?”
“Yes.” Sonny rubbed his eyes, his neck. The dream had been very real. He had smelled the horse lather, the sweat of the soldiers. The cigarette smoke of the men in the plaza. He had heard the flies buzzing in the hot air, the bark of a dog, the lowing of cows in the distant meadows.
“I couldn’t get into the dream. Raven took the girl. A young woman, Epifana. She was to marry Lisandro Jaramillo.”
“Isn’t your mother a Jaramillo?”
Sonny nodded. “The family was originally from the Las Vegas area.”
“Did Raven see you?”
“Yes.”
“At least he knows you’re watching!”
“To really stop him, I had to get into the dream.”
“Yes.”
“Where are we?” Sonny glanced out the window. In the dusk the Sandia Mountains loomed oven him, weaning a thick scarf of low-lying clouds.
“We’re nearly home,” Lorenza replied, and started the van.
12
They sat at Sonny’s table in Rita’s Cocina and talked about what they had learned in Taos. Sonny wiped clean his plate, scooping up the last of the carne adovada with a piece of tortilla. He had looked pale and tired when they entered the restaurant, but the meal revived him.
He studied Rita surreptitiously, noting the shadows around her eyes. Running the restaurant and taking care of him hadn’t been easy. But tonight he sensed a quietness, something stirring deeper in her.
“And you, amor?” he said, reaching out to hold her hands. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, just fine. When the weather changes, people eat more. We’ve been swamped.”
“You’re working too hard. You look tired.”
She caressed his hand. “It’s just a cold. Everyone seems to be coming in with the flu. Nothing to worry about.” She glanced at Lorenza.
“You should see a doctor,” Sonny said.
“I did,” Rita replied. “I had a checkup today. I’m healthy as a horse.”
“Who did you see?”
“Dr. Sanchez. She’s with a new group near Osuna.”
“Good.”
“She’s wonderful. We talked for an hour. You know, women doctors really listen to you. I like that. Anyway, let’s not talk about me.”
“I’m concerned,” Sonny said.
“Thank you, amor, but I’m fine. You’re worried because I’m never sick. I haven’t had a cold since I was in the sixth grade.”
“I wish I had the time to be here more—”
“Hey, it’s the missing girls we have to worry about. If Raven has them—”
“He’s loose and he’s dangerous,” Sonny said. “By the way, did Eddie Martínez, the FBI agent, come by?”
“Yes. Said he’d hang around the restaurant during the day. I told him I didn’t need protection, I can take care of myself, but he insisted.”
“I insisted. You have to be careful.”
“Careful? It’s you two that have to be careful. I’m fine, really, I am. I keep thinking about the girls.”
One of the waitresses brought hot sopaipillas, and they ate them with honey for dessert.
“Me, too,” Sonny said. “And I don’t have a damned clue to go on. I’m sure they’re here in the city, but where?” He looked out the window. It was dark outside; few cars moved on Fourth Street.
“When Raven’s woman, Veronica, murdered Gloria Dominic, there were four women in his cult. What happened to them?” Rita asked.
“They scattered.”
“Or he couldn’t use them against you,” Lorenza suggested. “So he needs four young women to initiate into his new cult.”
“That frightens me,” Rita said. “He’s liable to …” Her words hung in the air. Then: “What if the girls won’t obey him?”
“He has ways to control them,” Lorenza said.
Sonny agreed. “He isolates them from their families, takes away their orientation to reality. Takes away that Center don Eliseo calls the here and now.”
“But the girls you’ve described have strong values,” Rita said. “They’ll resist him.”
Sonny had thought of that. Yes, the girls came from families with strong values. If they resisted Raven, they would be useless to him. How far would Raven go? How much did he need them? The girls represented Sonny’s grandmothers; would he kill them and thus symbolically kill Sonny’s grandmothers?
He looked at Lorenza, knowing she was thinking along the same line.
“Maybe he wants to distract me. Have me looking for the girls while he works the bomb angle.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Lorenza agreed. “He’s working here, so his hideaway is here. You have to keep on his track. When you find him, you’ll find the girls.”
Sonny nodded.
“Both girls came from families that are related to yours,” she continued. “It’s a distant relation, but it’s there. And both were participating in Christmas pageants. Consuelo was in Los Pastores, and Catalina was in Las Posadas.”
“And both were about to be married.”
“The girls were playing the role of the Virgin Mary in the Christmas pageants. The Virgin is about to give birth …”
“The birth of Christ comes four days after the winter solstice,” Rita whispered. “Raven doesn’t want the sun to return after the solstice, he can’t stand for Christ the Light to be born. He is the Destroyer of Light.”
“And he’ll use the girls to carry out his plan.”
These strands of the plot they knew, but the details escaped them. Sonny shivered, trying to shrug off the feeling of despair.
“Maybe Paiz will find something. Or we have to find a new way of tracing Raven,” Sonny said.
“Like?”
“What is needed to put a nuclear bomb together? People and materials, I mean really specialized materials. Can someone like Raven buy those materials? And couldn’t those purchases be traced? We need information on how to build a nuclear bomb.”
“Will Eric help?” Rita asked.
Sonny shook his head. Right now he didn’t trust Eric.
“He either won’t tell us anything because of security or he’ll lead us down a wrong alley. There must be a way to break into his system.”
“Break into Los Alamos Labs?” Rita exclaimed. “Whoa! I will draw the line at that. That’s a lot of years in jail, Sonny Baca. Or they’ll kill you. Like they electrocuted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.”
“Ethel and Julius Rosenberg?” He looked puzzled.
“It was one of the books you had in the van. I read most of it last night. The way the book tells it, the whole thing was Harry Gold’s fault.”
Sonny vaguely remembered the names in the famous spy case. Harry Gold had passed atomic bomb secrets to the Russians, or something like that.
“The spy?” he asked.
“Yes. Harry Gold got the atomic bomb secrets from Klaus Fuchs, who had managed to get the information out of Los Alamos. Gold gave the secrets to the Russians. And part of the secrets he got from Greenglass. It happened right here in Albuquerque. Two-oh-nine High Street, I drove by there today. Can you imagine, all that happened right here in the 1940s? Now you want to break into Los Alamos. I don’t think so.”
Sonny smiled. “Looks like you’ve done your research. I had forgotten about the Rosenbergs.”
“They took the rap,” Rita reminded them. “They catch you breaking into their top-secret buildings, you will take a big rap.”
“I don’t mean break into Los Alamos Labs buildings,” Sonny said. “I just need to find what is needed to put a bomb together. Begin to trace materials, see if suppliers lead to Raven.”
“You mean break into their computer system,” Lorenza suggested.
“Yeah, that’s it. And for that I need a computer expert. PIs no longer chase credit card t
hieves or guys not paying alimony. Now they can all be traced with computers. It’s all on the Internet!”
He smiled uneasily. The technology was there, and he needed it, but what the hell did he know about it.
“In the meantime, Raven will come for another girl,” Rita said solemnly.
“I’m sure. The question is where?”
“At another Christmas pageant.”
Sonny arched an eyebrow. She was on to something.
“If he came back here because his plans for building the bomb are here, and he’s hiding the girls somewhere in the city—they’re having Posadas in Barelas!” she blurted.
“When?” Sonny asked.
“Tonight. They have the Posadas every night for a week before Christmas.”
“It’s just possible—”
“—that he’ll be there,” Lorenza finished.
“What else do we have to go on? Let’s go!”
“Sonny.” Rita reached across. “You’ve been out all day, your cold is getting worse. You have to rest.”
Yeah, Sonny thought. He felt the cold building inside, the aches, the sniffling in his nose, the strange low-level fever clinging to him. But he couldn’t rest, he couldn’t sleep. Sleep meant dreams, and that meant, somehow, opening a channel into his past, a way for Raven to travel to the grandmothers.
“I have no choice,” he said.
Rita looked at Lorenza.
Lorenza understood Rita’s concern; it was hers, too. She had seen the day take its toll on Sonny, but Raven wasn’t resting. To rest meant death for Sonny. Raven was taking a girl a day, and there were only two to go. That meant Raven had to strike again, tonight.
“I’m all right, really.” Sonny said, squeezing her hands, trying to allay her fear. “I just had a good meal, I’ll stay warm, we’ll go just to look around. It’s probably nothing. But if you don’t feel well—”
“I’m fine,” Rita replied. “Remember we were there last year.”
“That’s right.” Sonny smiled, the memory suddenly flashing like the scene from a movie in his mind. This is the way the past had been returning since his brain had been buzzed by Stammer. A word, a phrase, a sound would suddenly bring forth an image from the past, and the memory would be clear. He remembered the crisp December air at nightfall, the procession of people holding candles as they followed Joseph and Mary from house to house, the smell of wax, the songs.