Jemez Spring

A Sonny Baca Novel

Rudolfo Anaya

Jemez Spring completes Sonny’s

adventures through the four seasons.

For all the faithful who waited

for the quartet to be done,

this is for you.

An abrazo of love.

Who is worthy to open the book

and to loose the seals thereof?

~ Revelations 5:2 ~

Praise for the Writing of Rudolfo Anaya

“An extraordinary storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“One of the nation’s foremost Chicano literary artists.” —The Denver Post

“[Anaya’s work] is better called not the new multicultural writing, but the new American writing.” —Newsweek

“One of the best writers in the country.” —El Paso Times

“The godfather and guru of Chicano literature.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way

“Poet of the barrio … the most widely read Mexican-American.” —Newsweek

Alburquerque

Winner of PEN Center West Award for Fiction

“Alburquerque is a rich and tempestuous book, full of love and compassion, the complex and exciting skullduggery of politics, and the age-old quest for roots, identity, family … There is a marvelous tapestry of interwoven myth and magic that guides Anaya’s characters’ sensibilities, and is equally important in defining their feel of place. Above all, in this novel is a deep caring for land culture and for the spiritual well-being of people, environment, landscape.” —John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel

“Alburquerque portrays a quest for knowledge.… [It] is a novel about many cultures intersecting at an urban, power- and politics-filled crossroads, represented by a powerful white businessman, whose mother just happens to be a Jew who has hidden her Jewishness … and a boy from the barrio who fathers a child raised in the barrio but who eventually goes on to a triumphant assertion of his cross-cultural self.” —World Literature Today

“Alburquerque fulfills two important functions: it restores the missing R to the name of the city, and it shows off Anaya’s powers as a novelist.” —National Public Radio

“Anaya is at his visionary best in creating magical realist moments that connect people with one another and the earth.” —The Review of Contemporary Fiction

“Anaya’s prowess shows through on every page.… Thumbs up.” —ABQ Arts

Tortuga

Winner of the American Book Award

“A compelling story of a young man who suffers and learns to make peace with who he is, Tortuga has that touch of magic, of fantastical characters, of dreams as real as sunlight, associated with the best of Chicano literature.” —Roundup Magazine

“Tortuga is one those rare works that speaks to the human condition across time and space, and it well-deserves to find a new generation of readers.” —Southwest BookViews

“A highly emotional tale of a young soul who turned from a turtle into a human all in the span of 200 pages.” —Reviewers of Young Adult Literature

My Land Sings

Winner of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award

“Rich in traditional Mexican and native American folklore. Every story spins its magic effectively.” —Booklist

“Haunting. Compelling twists will keep the pages turning.” —Publishers Weekly

“Anaya champions the reading of a good book or listening to a folktale as an opportunity to insert one’s own experiences into the story and, hence, to nurture the imagination. This appealing volume will add diversity to folklore collections.” —Booklist

“The wide variety of stories demonstrate a mature understanding of life’s trappings and dangers, but retain a healthy sense of humor about the human predicament.” —Kirkus Reviews

Serafina’s Stories

“[Serafina’s] stories are simple but vivid.… There is magic and mystery too.” —Los Angeles Times

“Anaya’s prose offers … purity. [Serafina’s Stories] will restore to all but the most jaded reader a necessary sense of wonder.” —National Public Radio

“Like Serafina, Anaya is a powerful storyteller whose cuentos and other writings are a balm for the soul.” —New Mexico Magazine

“It is not hard to predict that Serafina’s story will be hypnotic and entertain.… With Serafina’s Stories Anaya again reminds us of the importance of maintaining an oral tradition.” —San Antonio Express-News

“Rudolfo Anaya is both a wise man and a gifted storyteller. Serafina’s Stories [is] a series of engaging tales.” —Santa Fe New Mexican

“Anaya’s new book is a spellbinding account of a Native American woman who spins tales to enlighten the Spanish governor into setting her people free. Clearly conceived, Serafina’s Stories contains 12 folk tales that are as absorbing as the main plot.” —El Paso Times

Heart of Aztlan

“In Heart of Aztlan, a prose writer with the soul of poet, and a dedication to his calling that only the greatest artists ever sustain, is on an important track, the right one, the only one.” —La Confluencia

“[Heart of Aztlan gives] a vivid sense of Chicano life since World War II.” —World Literature Today

“Mixed with the Native American legends and Hispanic traditions of this wonderful book are the basic human motivations that touch all cultures. It is a rip-roaring good read.” —Cibola Beacon

Jalamanta

“A parable for our time … We are in deep need of simple truths, of rediscovering our ancient teachings, and Jalamanta may provide that opportunity.” —The Washington Post Book World

Zia Summer

“A compelling thriller … Though satisfying purely as a mystery, the novel sacrifices none of Anaya’s trademark spirituality—a connectedness to the earth and a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture.… Read this multicultural novel for its rich language and full-bodied characters. Anaya is one of our greatest storytellers, and Zia Summer is muy caliente!” —Booklist

“[Anaya] continues to shine brightest with his trademark alchemy: blending Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures to evoke the distinctively fecund spiritual terrain of his part of the Southwest.” —Publishers Weekly

Rio Grande Fall

“This is a completely entertaining mystery novel, but Anaya offers two parallel lands of enchantment. One is temporal New Mexico; the other is Nuevo Mexicano, a land of santos, milagros, spirits, visions, and even brujas (witches).” —Booklist

Shaman Winter

“Be aware that if you only skate on the surface, you will miss the depth of the story. You have to dive head-first, literally, into the waves of poetic prose to catch a glimpse of the forces that keep our universe together.” —La Voz

“The fast-paced story line of Shaman Winter is fascinating and absolutely eerie as the master paints a vivid picture of the spirituality of another culture.” —Thrilling Detective

Jemez Spring

“Jemez Spring is meant to appeal to readers of conventional mystery novels, but there is nothing conventional about it.… It taps into primal and universal fears and longings but plays them out in a uniquely New Mexican setting. And the master tells his tales with worlds and images so rich and strange that it is almost as if he had invented a language of his own.” —Los Angeles Times

“Jemez Spring again blends the Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures that made the three earlier works in the series such good reads. Anaya is at his best when writing about the people of New Mexico, their traditions and their lives and how they clash with the influx of Anglos.” —San Antonio Express-News

“Anaya takes the reader beyond detective fiction.… His mysteries fall into the criminal and the spiritual, which makes them both inspiring and electrifying.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Unique and exciting … Readers thirsty for philosophy and the supernatural will devour this book.” —Daily Camera (Boulder)

“Anaya, godfather and guru of Chicano literature, proves he’s just as good in the murder mystery field.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way

1

Do dogs dream?

Sonny awakened slowly, opening his right eye first, then the left. He stretched like a rubber band until every nerve and muscle twanged. His vertebrae cracked and he relaxed back into the warm blankets.

Beside him, Chica stirred.

Do dogs dream?

That’s the question, Sonny thought. He yawned and looked at the light filtering through the window.

The denizens of the City Future weren’t discussing the depressed economy, terrorism, Iraq, tapping the Rio Grande for water, the silvery minnow, drought and fires, or politics. For weeks now the regulars at Rita’s Cocina had tossed the dog question back and forth. The discussions had grown heated, some arguing yes and others adamantly denying it.

Sonny rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Dead battery.

I dream therefore I am, he thought. In last night’s dream he had only one eye, like Cyclops. A one-eyed man lived in ordinary time, like Polyphemus. Odysseus had blinded the giant and the poor Cyclops ran out of his cave, crying I am blinded! Noman has blinded me! Chingao! Noman has blinded me!

Sonny had taught the Greek myths to his literature classes at Valley High. That seemed ages ago. He always acted out the part, working like hell to get their interest. But the ancient Greek stories were far removed from the memory of the land-locked Chicanos of the valley where the phrase we sail with the tide had never been heard. So he told them the cuentos his grandfather had taught him, incorporating them into New Mexico history. The history of la gente was embedded in the oral tradition, but it had to be mined if one was to know the ways of the ancestors.

The teachers were alchemists, turning raw material into gold, but they had to compete with teenage interests: cars, video games, rap music, after-school jobs, family troubles. And hormones.

“I was a good teacher,” he said to Chica, rubbing the head of his one-eyed dachshund. Raven’s demons had scratched out her left eye. So much loss in that winter-solstice nightmare where Raven killed don Eliseo.

For the past three months Sonny had been reading don Eliseo’s books. He couldn’t sleep, so he read till two or three in the morning, and the more he read the more he understood that ordinary people go through life thinking they see, but what they’re seeing is only the surface of things. The trick was to see beneath observed reality, and for that one needed to develop a new kind of sight.

“The Egyptians painted the all-seeing eye on their temple walls,” he said to Chica. “Horus had one eye cut out by his uncle Seth. Seth had killed Osiris, the Ruler of Eternity, as the ancient Egyptians called him. It was the eye of Horus that restored Osiris to life. A lot of powerful magic there.”

Seth cut Osiris into pieces and threw him in the Nile. Isis and her sister had brought Osiris back to life; that is, they gathered the dismembered body and sewed it together. The first mummy. One thing was missing. His penis. The organ had been thrown into the Nile where a goldfish ate it. Centuries later, a poet Sonny knew wrote that the missing organ had washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. History belonged to those who wrote its poetry.

So many allusions to sight in the old stories, he thought, and still, most of us go through life half asleep, one-eyed men, tuertos searching for the truth, a purpose, the meaning of life. Somnambulant, we stumble down the road, unto the burning sheets of the malpais. Unconscious. Why?

If you are unconscious you feel less pain, he thought.

Yeah, that’s it, we don’t want to feel the pain. A man can get along with one good eye, lead the ordinary life of Polyphemus, until along comes Odysseus and drives a stake through it.

Bile rose in his mouth. Raven had driven a stake through his heart.

“Maybe I opened a few eyes,” Sonny whispered, thinking nostalgically of his teaching days at Valley High.

But the classroom was confining, so he quit and learned PI work from Manuel López. He liked the independence.

All seemed normal until he moved to La Paz Lane and met don Eliseo. The old man became a mentor. The bond between them grew strong as the old man taught Sonny how to walk in the dream world. The world of the shaman.

Chica shook off her covers, stretched, and yawned.

“You know, don’t you Chica?”

The small dachshund had followed him into that fateful winter-solstice nightmare where she lost her eye.

Did his dream become hers?

I dream therefore I am. People in deep comas continued to dream. Death came when one could no longer dream. But what if, as the Bard asked, the dead also dream? There’s the rub. La vida es un sueño y los sueños sueño son. Life is a dream and on the other side waits another dream. Maybe?

Do dogs dream?

Several weeks ago Sonny was having a drink at Sal’s Bar—actually he was sipping on a Pepsi—and taking a ribbing from some of his North Valley amigos, weekend cowboys who once a month gathered at Sondra’s Magic Acres stable to ride along the river bosque on borrowed horses. Reliving the Old West. Pretending to trail ride. They spent more time downing beers than riding. Chicano male bonding.

Quite innocently, Sonny had said, “My dog dreams.”

The amigos knew Sonny had been depressed lately, but claiming his dog dreamed was too much. An argument ensued, the staunch Catholics in the group protesting against dreaming dogs. After all, a dog cannot recite the Nicene Creed.

“It’s, ‘I believe in God,’ not ‘dog’!” Mike challenged.

Sonny shrugged. What did Mike know? He was from Tucumcari.

“Yeah, d-o-g is not g-o-d,” Vivián, the attorney in the group, added.

Anagram madness. A shouting match broke out between those who agreed that dogs could dream and those who said no. Two off-duty Bernalillo County sheriffs hustled them all out of the bar. The “dogs don’t dream” amigos hadn’t spoken to Sonny since. The innocent comment had taken on serious proportions.

The story was then spread by the barmaid, a woman of philosophical bent who used to teach Shakespeare at the university, an aficionada of Lone Star beer. She told the story to her customers and it spread along the valley like an unchecked virus. Suddenly conversations erupted into arguments, shouting into fisticuffs, and friendships ended.

The debate, which soon became known as the Great Dog Dream Debate, spread into the neighborhoods, into the restaurants, into city hall, into the schools.

An Alameda Elementary School teacher invited Sonny to her class. The students fell in love with Chica, the dreaming dog. The dachshund became the poster dog of the Dogs Dream camp. The following day a group of Dogs Don’t Dream parents boycotted the school, pulling their children from classes. Sonny became persona non grata to a small camp of anti-dog-dream neoconservatives.

In the meantime, scientists at Sandia Laboratories recorded a rise in the decibel rate over the city. A long mantra-like hum had settled over Alburquerque. Zaaaaaaaaaaa uuuuuuuummmm, something akin to a Buddhist chant. In some of the barrios the hum became aaaaala, alaaaatuya, daaaaale chingasoooos.

The hum seeped into homes, inciting family arguments. The city libraries reported a run on dog books, people trying to figure out which came first: the dream or the dog. The police department reported a surge of fender benders. DWI’s rose; so did divorces.

The metaphysical argument invaded classes at the University of New Mexico, where just before spring break the philosophy department sponsored a symposium. If it were proven that dogs did indeed dream then the entire history of western civilization might have to be rewritten.

It didn’t get that far. Baptist students on campus boycotted the lectures, claiming that, like the Harry Potter books, dogs dreaming were the work of the devil. But what if the dog is baptized, fully submerged? an innocent voice had asked, a sylph sitting at the back of the room, and the debate took on a Reformation frenzy.

Dogs were like women, the fundamentalists argued, meant to serve the master. On this we agree with the Taliban: the man is the head of the household. Then the feminists on campus boycotted the boycott, shoving and pushing broke out at the picket lines, and the university cops had to break up the confrontation.

Recalling the events, Sonny slipped back into that sleep of the just-barely-awake, until a hullabaloo of crows, raucously cawing and crying as they ripped through his garbage can, roused Chica. She tossed off her blanket and, barking furiously, ran through the kitchen and out her dog door to challenge the birds.

Flocks of crows invaded the valley every winter. By day they scavenged in back yards and at the city landfill; by night they roosted in the cottonwoods of the river bosque.

The morning sun had just cleared Sandia Crest, filling the Rio Grande Valley with a golden hue, the same aura that often shines on Jerusalem, a sheen on Temple Mount.

Last night the crescent moon, the Water Carrier moon of the spring equinox, a goddess to lovers of long ago, a bowl moon to New Mexicans, had tipped and spilled its contents, dusting the Sandia Mountain with a thin coat of snow. In the valley the spray had fallen as a holy mist that barely dampened the tired but awakening earth.

Sonny blinked and looked at the east window. He kept the curtains slightly parted so a slice of sunlight landed on his bedroom wall, a crude calendar marking the movement of the seasons, from one solstice to the next.

Just like the sun calendar at Chaco Canyon, don Eliseo once pointed out. Here is the light on December 21, here June 21. In between, sacred space, life unraveling, our days on earth, and in March the spring equinox, time of earth’s renewal. Remember, time on the clock means little. It moves in a line. The time that encircles you is the time that provides a center. The soul is like an antenna, gathering the unity of cosmic time.

The old man had been a friend of the Pueblo Indian people, attending many of the dances and ceremonies. Don Eliseo had taught Sonny how to construct his dreams, as one would tell a story or act in a play. Sonny learned he was a dream person, one who could create his dreams and play a role in them.

If I dream a butterfly, I am that butterfly. If I dream a dog dreaming, I am that dog dreaming. If the dog dreams me then I am in that reality and not this.

One had to be master of the dream if he were to understand the message inherent in the dramas that unfolded in the unconscious, that realm so deep in the psyche that only its images gave hints of its geography. The ancients knew this. It was written on the walls of Karnak, etched on the petrogylphs all over the Southwest.

Being an actor in the dream was the only way to stop Raven and his mad plan. Raven was also a dream person. That’s why he was dangerous. If he controlled your dream, he could drown you in the chaos that was his nature.

So, dreams had to be opened, as we open our eyes after sleep. Dreams not brought into the light remained gook, troublesome dark stuff, detritus floating in the cosmic waters from which the first consciousness sprang, those first retinal cells responding to light.

But any damn psychologist knows that, Raven had once cursed. He didn’t like their ilk peering into his psychic space.

The trick was to participate in your dream as if you were the main actor. A person who could create his own dreams was a brujo, a shaman. Unfortunately, the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century no longer believed in the role of the shaman. Such persons were suspect, labeled witches or druids, shunned, set apart from their fellow human beings, ostracized.

Sonny didn’t care about the labels, but he did wonder if he wanted to enter the dream world again. Going into Raven’s dream had cost don Eliseo his life. They had gone looking for Rita’s unborn child. Sonny believed that Raven had caused Rita’s miscarriage. And during the past few months he further convinced himself that Raven somehow kept the soul of Rita’s child a prisoner.

He swore he had seen the soul of his unborn child in Raven’s nightmare. He was sure the light he saw shining was the soul of Rita’s baby. Raven had said as much. For three months all Sonny could think about was how to rescue the unborn child from Raven’s dark circle.

He knew the miscarriage had put dread in Rita’s heart. They had struggled through the winter, nurturing Rita with the remedies Lorenza prescribed, herbal teas from China, osha from Taos, massages, anything that would ease the loss. And they worked long hours at Rita’s restaurant, serving meals to the working people of the North Valley.

In work they found some respite, but at the end of each day Sonny would drive her home, kiss her goodnight, then return alone to his apartment. Rita was still grieving.

He knew she needed time to recuperate.

“I appreciate what you do,” she had told him. “Really. Having you at the cafe is more than … well, it means the world to me. I’m not afraid to be alone at night. It’s just something I need to do. Give me time.”

So Sonny waited, and three months later they were both stronger. She laughed and teased him more often. “Any day now,” she had whispered yesterday.

“Any day now,” Sonny muttered, jumping out of bed, hoping a shower would wash away the night’s images. He had seen a man drowning in a large tank that resembled a baptistry.

Wish I could just flush bad memories down the toilet, he thought, or wash them away in a hot shower.

But what was engraved in the soul was eternal. And Memoria was a tough old dame. She bedded in the cells of the body and just lay there forever, awakening at the oddest times and flooding the mind with the damnedest memories.

Memoria also lived in the petroglyphs scratched into the volcanic boulders on the West Mesa escarpment. The ancient symbols were the memory of the Anasazi. A few of the Pueblo elders whispered stories. One glyph, they said, was carved on a boulder called the Zia Stone. That sacred symbol was a unifying sign that would reveal the mystery of the universe, the meaning of life. It had been given to the ancestors long ago.

Searching for the Zia Stone, Sonny and don Eliseo had explored ancient Anasazi haunts in the windswept mesas and canyons of the state. Like penitents searching for a holy sign in gothic cathedrals, they sought the glyph that held the answer to life, a unifying theory of the universe.

Learn to enter the dream, don Eliseo said, and Sonny had followed the old man into the dream world. He became a winter shaman, a brujo who could construct his dreams. And to what end? To meet Raven. He was always there, always waiting.

“Revenge,” Sonny whispered, flushing the toilet. “I want my revenge. I will find a way—”

The struggle with Raven had gone on too long. Maybe don Eliseo was wrong. Maybe a well-placed bullet between the eyes would kill the bastard. What the hell is a dream good for if I go there only to meet my shadow?

He showered, toweled himself dry, and shaved. He put on a pair of freshly pressed jeans and a blue cowboy shirt, still thinking of revenge.

Don Eliseo appeared, as he often did when Sonny’s thoughts stampeded.

Won’t do you any good, the old man said.

You keep saying that, Sonny replied. Why?

When your thoughts are confused Raven has the upper hand.

I can take care of Raven! Sonny retorted. I know what he wants. The Zia medallion. I’ll tempt him. Hold it out to him, then shoot him—

Damn it, Sonny! the old man shouted. There you go! You’re not thinking straight. You can’t kill him with a bullet!

“I’ll find a way,” Sonny said aloud, pulling on his well-worn boots.

No time to shine them, he thought, slipping the Zia medallion around his neck, the gold medal engraved with the Sun symbol, an amulet as magical as the precious stone once suspended from Abraham’s neck. Mojo power.

The medallion was Sonny’s now. There had been no contact with Raven the past three months.

He walked into the kitchen, started the morning coffee, fed Chica, and was pouring himself his first cup when his cell phone rang. Something told him it was no good; still, he answered it.

“Sonny Baca?”

“Yeah.”

“Augie. Augie Martínez, state police.”

Augie, Augememnon Martínez, son of an influential Santa Fe politico who on a cruise of the Greek isles fell in love with a dazzling Greek beauty, brought her home, and took her as his wife. He retired from politics, raised goats in Nambe, sold goat cheese, and years later died, leaving behind his wife and a bunch of kids, restless creatures who fled home as soon as they realized there were oceans to cross.

The mother, too, grew restless, the people of Nambe said, because she missed the sound of the surf, the sun setting on the sea. She took to wandering the hills around Nambe, a gypsy with green eyes, always pushing the herd of goats just over the next hill, until one day she didn’t return.

Only Augie remained on the wind-scarred hills of the Española valley. He finished school and joined the state cops, seeking some stability in the corps, or perhaps seeking his mother, who began to appear in the oral tradition of la gente of the Nambe valley as La Llorona, the crying woman. Did she cry for her children or for the sound of the sea?

“I’ve got a homicide on my hands—”

Sonny filled his cup of coffee and waited. In his dream a body was floating in dark, swirling water.

“Who?”

“The governor—”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Jemez Springs. Someone drowned him in a tub at the Bath House.”

“Why call me?”

“We found black feathers …”

The hair on Sonny’s neck prickled. A shiver passed through his body. Don Eliseo was right! He had been too confused to figure it out. Equinox! Raven was back!

“Raven,” he whispered.

“That’s what we figure. You haven’t heard the news?”

“No,” Sonny answered, turning on the small TV set on the table. The picture slowly solidified into the blurry image of Dick Knipfing reporting from the Jemez Springs plaza.

“We have a big mess on our hands,” Augie continued. “The governor’s dead and somebody planted a bomb up on the mountain. It’s a weird contraption but the lab boys from Los Alamos say it’s radioactive. The shit has hit the fan, Sonny.”

A bomb, and the feds knew Raven was in possession of a plutonium pit. But he had lain low during the past three months. Now he was out of hiding.

“I can’t discuss it on the phone. Fucking news media is everywhere. The chief wants you. You know Raven better than anyone else—”

“Where are you now?” Sonny asked.

“I’m in Jemez Springs, interrogating people. The chief wants you to take a look at the bomb.”

Why? Sonny thought. That didn’t make sense. Anytime Raven left feathers at the scene of a crime, he was setting a trap. Raven wasn’t going to be up on the mountain, he was going to be around the corner. But where?

“Let the Los Alamos boys handle the bomb,” Sonny said.

“They will, but we need you,” Augie insisted.

“Sorry,” Sonny replied, “I don’t think Raven would leave the feathers and stick around.” He offed the phone. So Raven was back. And he had planted a bomb. Why on the Jemez mountain?

To get you there, the old man said.

Yeah, Sonny thought. Something big was going down in Jemez Springs. The faces of the reporters on the old TV set looked concerned. The Alburquerque news hounds were hot on the unfolding events.

He rose and went to the window. March was already drawing the first green shoots out of winter’s compost, hyacinth borders in pink and deep purple, apricot blossoms, yellow jonquils, the lime-green seeds of the elm trees, sienna-red cottonwood buds, swollen with promise.

Raven lived in the hot compost of the unconscious, because Raven’s world was mythic, levels and circles deeper than Dante’s inferno, dark epicycles where he composed his stories, images with which he tortured the unwary. To understand Raven one had to go into his world, a world so deep in the psyche a one-eyed man might get lost. That was the rub. The dream that revealed the dark images could liberate, or destroy the dreamer.

There was a saving grace. In the dream world everyone had friends, allies who appeared in all sorts of disguises, bringing messages from that hidden glob of memory that has been passed down since mother nature first conceived of a cell that could gather light. Primal images, the psychiatrists called them. Messages in the cells. The trick was to bring those images into the light of day. The dark shadows of the soul had to be birthed into the world. Every man, woman, and child was a creator who could build soul from the psyche’s darkness. Every dog?

So he’s back and he’s planted a bomb on my mountain. Maybe he really is up there. Maybe today’s the day we end this struggle that has gone on too long.

He closed his eyes and leaned over the table.

“All I want is to marry Rita, help her at the restaurant. I want to take care of her …”

But deep in his guts revenge seethed. He knew he would be going after Raven. It could be no other way.

He stood at the window, allowing the warm rays of the sun to penetrate him. Cupping his hands he held the light, let it shine as deep into his soul as possible. Then he felt what he hadn’t felt since the winter solstice. Something palpable in the light rays, the Lords and Ladies of the Light entering his soul.

“Señores y Señoras de la Luz, bless all of life. Bless the children of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Africa, Colombia, our barrios. Bless the sick, those in prison, those who need food. Bless the dead governor …”

He turned, offering the light in the four sacred directions, scattering the light cupped in his hands and wishing for himself only clarity of soul.

Like most rituals, the prayer had become routine, but today the fingers of light cut to his heart. He heard music, and he trembled. The essence of sunlight passed through his body like an electric current. The brilliant Lords and Ladies of the Light touched him, entered him, and for a moment a clarity beyond the light revealed itself, leaving him dazed.

He looked out the window and squinted.

One eye open.

2

He picked up the dreamcatcher, his weapon of power, the round spider-webbed instrument with a juniper handle. Because of the handle it could be mistaken for a tennis racket, but the netting had a hole in the middle for bad dreams to pass through and disappear. Good dreams were caught in the web and thus retained in the memory of the dreamcatcher’s owner.

Don Eliseo had constructed the shaman weapon, and Sonny used it to fight Raven during the winter-solstice dream, a nightmare really, in which he forced himself into Raven’s evil circle, the misty chaos where dark, fiendish bird-like demons, or vampires, kept watch, horrendous creatures who had scratched out Chica’s eye.

Only don Eliseo’s final sacrificial act had saved Sonny from being swept into Raven’s chaos, that river of a thousand currents from which there is small hope of return. Sonny struck Raven with the dreamcatcher, making him disappear through the hole in the web into the nebulous undercurrent that is always the essence and energy of the dream—or the nightmare.

Was chaos a dark, raging river, a Lethe that emptied into a stagnant lake where all was forgotten? Oblivion, the lake at the murky bottom where thoughts of home did not exist. Or was chaos the very essence of a person’s psyche, a deep, undefined energy that gave rise to the images of dreams and nightmares, a place that could be called the unconscious unconscious? A geography of the mind not yet mapped? If there was a river of life, was there also a river of dreams? A river called chaos?

But Raven, everyone knew by now, could not be killed. Not even the power of the dreamcatcher could dissipate that terrible and wondrous energy. He wouldn’t stay away forever. He was back.

Good, Sonny thought as he walked outside. I’ve been waiting. Chica followed at his heels.

Take a jacket, Rita would say. She had given him a colorful Chimayó jacket, which he kept in a plastic bag tucked behind the truck seat. He wore it for special occasions. Today his well-worn denim jacket would do.

Last night’s weather front had dropped a light snow on the high peaks of the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo mountains. The Cloud People had danced into northern New Mexico, scattering the scant moisture, passing quickly over the mountaintops, creating hope in the hearts of the Jemez Pueblo farmers. The entire region was years into a severe drought. Forest fires had eaten away at Arizona and Colorado, fires that a few years back had nearly destroyed Los Alamos. As summer progressed the fires flared up in the Northwest. It would take many snow and rain storms to break the drought.

In the heart of the sky, a skinny Water Carrier moon shone pale, a sliver that resembled a bowl. It had tipped and rained its meager contents on the dry earth.

It was time for cleaning the acequias, time for plowing and readying the fields. In a few weeks the river water would be diverted into the irrigation ditches. In Jemez Springs Melvin would be pruning his apple trees.

Over Alburquerque the thin clouds that scudded across the vernal equinox dawn would dissipate, winging their way over the Sandias like raggedy old women. The afternoon would warm up nicely.

Sonny sniffed the air, spermy and spongy with the aroma of the thawing earth, the sweet smell of cedar burning in someone’s wood stove, mixing with the aroma of tortillas baking on a hot comal. Overhead, the call of crows in the bare cottonwood trees mixed with the chatter of children gathered at the bus stop.

A few hardy old men, Sonny’s North Valley vecinos, had arisen with the sun to look at their gardens and dream of April planting.

These old-timers still planted backyard gardens, a small milpa of corn here, a chile plot there, tomato vines and calabacita plants. But for the most part Frank Dominic’s prediction had come true: the once fertile valley was being taken over by developers who subdivided the land into lots that sold at a premium. People with money were building large adobe mansions on the last of the valley’s agricultural fields.

A way of life was dying for the old Hispanos of the valley. The fertile lands the Españoles and Mexicanos had settled during those terribly cold years at the end of the sixteenth century now belonged to people who did not know the land’s history.

Across the street there was a For Sale sign in front of don Eliseo’s home. His sons had come a few days after the old man’s death, a real estate agent trailing along. Elysium Realty—a lot in heaven. The old rambling adobe had been in the Romero family for generations. Now it and the old man’s cornfield were up for sale.

What did I tell you, Sonny, the old man said, the kids don’t care about raising corn anymore.

Sonny sighed. “I know.”

Chica whined, perked her ears, and looked lovingly at her master.

“Don Eliseo,” Sonny said, reassuring her.

She understood that he talked to the spirit of the old man. Sonny had been reading late one night when a gust of wind blew the door open and in walked don Eliseo. Chica whined. She sensed the spirit in the room. She turned and saw Sonny’s book drop from his hands.

“You?” he cried.

For tense moments Sonny seemed frozen, staring into a dark space, or at the shadows cast by the window’s curtains stirring in the cold breeze. Was it a dream?

Who were you expecting, the old man answered, the Lone Ranger? You better close the door, it’s blowing outside. March wind.

Sonny stood and closed the door. In a trembling voice he said, “I didn’t know—”

Chica whined again. She understood whatever the spirit said was audible only to her master.

Then Sonny sat down, and for hours he seemed to be listening intently to the sound of the wind raging outside. Finally he fell asleep on the chair, and he slept soundly, the first time in a long time.

So the spirit of the old man was accepted by both Sonny and the dog. It was a comforting appearance, for it helped settle the restless energy that had consumed Sonny. Spending the nights alone was not good for him. He read books until the early hours of the mornings, devouring the many volumes, searching for the revelations the past had once offered seekers after truth.

Sonny placed the dreamcatcher on the rifle rack and called his bilingual dog. “Anda, vamos.”

Chica barked and eagerly scooted into the truck and up into the seat. This was the life, riding shotgun with the master, sniffing the wind, her brown dachshund ears flaring back like sails, barking at neighborhood dogs as they drove into the day’s adventure.

Sonny looked down the street. Yes, change had come to the valley. Soon the small farms would be gone, the old people would die. La Paz Lane, where Sonny had lived the past four years, would be a memory.

Todo se acaba.

Sí, todo se acaba.

It wasn’t just the city, it was the entire region. Up for sale. The Southwest was the fastest growing region in the country. Sun. Desert air. Golfing in January. Phoenix was a nightmare in a once-pristine desert, Tucson followed suit, Las Vegas burgeoned like a fat whore, and the Las Cruces/El Paso/Juárez border city kept expanding across sand dunes. All would run out of water in a few years.

Along the Rio Grande, it was the same story. The fragile land was bulldozed, deep wells were drilled to satisfy the needs of a growing population, and the river was diverted for the city to use. The silvery minnow swam toward its extinction.

We need water! the developers cried, and deals were cut in city hall to satisfy their thirst.

Water became the gold of the desert, and he who controlled the supply could make the rules.

In Alburquerque expensive homes stretched up the slope of the Sandias; on the west side of the river, tract homes spread nearly as far as the Rio Puerco. Never mind there was a water shortage and the aquifer that fed the city was drying up. The city was on a roll, burgeoning with growth, vying for new business ventures, drunk with a vision of itself as a City with a Future.

Thank God for the Indian Pueblos, Sonny said. They’ll keep the city hemmed in. They can’t build on Sandia and Isleta land.

Don’t believe it, the old man replied.

The Pueblos won’t let the developers in, Sonny insisted.

Yeah, what about the casinos? Las Vegas in your back yard. Five-star hotels, fine dining, All Pro golf courses. Money talks; those who want to hang on to the old ways walk.

Where will it stop? Sonny wondered, starting his truck and turning on the radio. Something big was happening in Jemez Springs, the Spanish-language station announced between corridos, the songs that told the stories of the Mexicanos. But not a word on the governor’s demise.

Sonny drove down La Paz Lane. He waved to Toto and Concha, who were out raking leaves, readying her garden for planting.

Chica barked in greeting.

“Hey, Sonny! How’s it hanging?” Concha called.

“ATM!” Sonny called back.

“Que Dios te bendiga! Say hi to Rita.”

“I will. Don’t work too hard.”

“Hey, Sonny! How’s Chica?”

“Still dreaming,” Sonny called back.

“Atta boy, cowboy! Ten-four!”

Sonny laughed. Retired neighbors, octogenarians, still clinging to their homes, but when their time on earth was finished everything would change, their culture and the culture of their ancestors would die.

Was the governor’s death related to the ominous feeling in the air? Spring should be a time of renewal, but for life to sprout, there first had to be death. But the dead governor was no Christ.

You got that right, the old man said. Like most politicians he’s a product of genetic drift. Some weird gene in their DNA makes them do what they do.

Genetic drift, Sonny repeated. Maybe it’s just a need for power.

Yes, the old man agreed. The world moves back and forth; now it’s in our backyard. People migrate to the Rio Grande Valley. Clovis hunters left their spear points in Sandia Cave. Folsom Man. I read about them. Then the ancestors of the Pueblos came down from Chaco, etching glyphs on rocks, signs for the kachinas. And hidden somewhere in the boulders that dot the West Mesa escarpment, there lies hidden one large, magnificent rock: the Zia Stone.

A Sun Stone. A large meteorite on which the ancestors of the Pueblos carved a symbol of universal truth, a unifying sign of being and harmony. It holds the meaning of life. I tell you, Sonny, if bulldozers plow up the West Mesa they will bury the Zia Stone forever. We won’t be able to connect the past to the future. You read about those al-cemistas. They were looking for the Zia Stone. In their own way.

In Europe the alchemists had searched for the formula that turned lead into gold, the dross matter of flesh into spirit. In the Americas the elders of the Anasazi had contemplated a unifying symbol that would unite organic and inorganic life, earth and cosmos, the universe dancing to one drumbeat.

Farther south the priests of Tula, of the Olmecs, and of the Mayas had recorded the movement of the moon and the sun, the epicycles of Venus, carving the flow of time into their calendars. Archeologists worked to decipher the symbols on the stelae, to tell the story of time, how it all begin, the ages of men. But a unifying symbol was missing; the Zia Stone was missing.

In order to dominate nature, man had stepped outside the great chain of being; he could no longer hear the music of the spheres. The new alchemists at Los Alamos National Labs were too busy converting plutonium into bombs. Soul and spirit were split apart, bombarded in vacuum chambers, reduced to quantum particles.

Quantum mechanics had forgotten that a quantum spirit moved in the material world, atoms seethed with activity, and the energy itself was the consciousness of the universe.

Sonny knew his history. He knew the Pueblos had smelled the Spanish coming. Bearded Spanish and Mexican men trudging up the Rio Grande in 1540, finally settling near Española in 1598, farming the Sangre de Cristo valleys, raising sheep. Pastores spreading east to the Llano Estacado, high into the sierras for summer pastures, hundreds of thousands of sheep. The Pueblos and the Navajo learned to eat mutton.

That was their first mistake. Then they learned to weave wool and make blankets. They learned to use iron pots and knives. That did it. Learn to use somebody else’s tools and your way of life will change forever. Learn their language and your kids grow fat and lazy, your women learn wild dances and gamble too much at the casinos. The men will leave the land, leave the old ways. Once you’re on the Booze Way you might as well call it quits. The beauty given to you by the ancestors will die.

But history doesn’t take sides, and some would say adapting to new ways was the way to survive.

Survival was the theme of the land. The Anglos arrived and the crushing wheel of change rolled on. A new argot filled the air, which to the Nuevomexicanos might as well have been Greek, but to survive they had to learn the new gobbledygook. Learned to say “jalo,” “tank you,” “how mush,” “haw-r-ju,” “see you later alligator.”

New laws came, new courts, new police, and the land slipped from one hand to another, and the way was lost.

Sonny remembered, and he knew Memoria could sometimes be a cruel comadre.

Change is constant, he thought. “And Raven has returned.”

Could he really enjoy the crisp spring air, the smell of compost, the apricot and peach trees blooming with the fragrance of a woman awakening to love, clothed in robes of luminous pink, soul flowers born of the bud’s flesh. Tall lilac bushes shrouded with regal purple blossoms. In one yard a fragile redbud tree.

Along the river stood the towering cottonwoods, unleafed but with their buds preparing to burst. And Clyde Tingley’s elms, lime green with seeds, all in hosanna of spring. Dressing up.

But up in the Jemez Mountains, in the little magical village of Jemez Springs, the governor lay dead, the image Sonny saw in the dream. But why would Raven kill the governor? That was the question of the day.

The parking lot of Rita’s Cocina was full so Sonny drove around to the back. Entering the kitchen always provoked hunger pangs, a burst of saliva. He stopped and sniffed, allowing his coyote sense of smell to take in the aromas. Butter melting on hot tortillas, warm and crisp, piled high around plates of huevos rancheros, crisp bacon sizzling on the griddle, curling next to the one-eyed eggs, sunny side up, crackling and sputtering, exuding the protein smell of life. The rich, exotic smell of the Colombian coffee that Rita loved. Papas fritas, pots of just-cooked beans that melted in one’s mouth, carne adovada, and red chile—ah, red chile de ristra, the Crimson Queen. The New Mexicans splashed chile Colorado on everything, even on Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams.

Comida sin chile no es comida. His mouth watered.

“Hey, Sonny,” Diego called, leaning over the hot stove. “How’s it going, bro?”

“Good,” Sonny replied.

“Listen, I got an idea. You know they say the country’s getting too fat. Pues, we have some Chicano heavyweights. Gordos. So why not go all the way?”

Sonny listened. Diego always had a new scheme.

“Chicano Sumo wrestlers! We feed them extra tortillas, menudo, chicharrón burritos, and we go all the way with panzones. Hey, we can compete with the Japanese!”

Sonny laughed and gave his friend a high five. “Porque no?”

“Pues, you know what César Chávez said: Sí Se Puede.”

Diego’s wife, Marta, greeted Sonny with a smile and a “buenos días” as she waltzed past him, holding a tray of food above her head.

Chicano Sumo wrestlers, Sonny thought. Why not?

From the dishwasher Cyber called, “Hey Sonny, guess what? I’m thinking of joining the circus.”

“Cool.”

Rita appeared. She greeted Sonny with a kiss and a smile.

“He saw Cirque du Soleil on TV,” she said.

“Yeah, Circo de Slow-lay,” Cyber repeated.

“Du,” Sonny corrected.

“Tú?”

“No, du.”

“Me?”

“Sí, tú. Say ‘du.’”

“Do what?”

“Cirque du Soleil.”

“Yeah, circo de slow-lay.”

“Not de, du.”

“Do what?”

“Who’s on first?” Sonny said and let it go.

Rita smiled. “I’m glad to see you,” she said and picked up Chica.

“Hey, me too,” Sonny replied.

A finely crafted silver chain hung around her neck. It held an oval silver pendant that embraced a glowing azure stone, sky-blue lapis, so polished Sonny could see his reflection in the stone.

On her wrist hung seven silver bracelets, each etched with signs of the zodiac, each blessed on a special saint’s day, each hinting at a power in nature, an animal spirit.

Her eyes glistened with the water of life.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He looked into her eyes, windows into her soul. He felt complete when she gazed at him in the quiet moments of their love.

In another time, another culture, she would have been Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love. Here she was the center of his Zia Sun universe, a hard-working businesswoman with a kind and loving soul.

I’ll be poetic, he thought, woo her with all the beautiful words ever written by the poets of the world, especially the poets of India who extol the woman’s body as a temple.

Or Hamlet, he thought. Soft you, now, the fair Ophelia, beneath the boughs of a purple flowering tamarisk, on the banks of the quiet flowing Rio Grande, I will love you …

He ran his tongue over his lips. Her kiss had left a tinge of her red chile con carne.

“You taste good,” he said, thinking maybe the undiscovered petroglyph, the Zia Stone of ancient lore, was really the heart of the beloved, and the symbol written on it was her name. One only had to open the third eye to see it, the wisdom of gnosis, the Hindu third eye.

In the dining area the old jukebox that held only fifties records blared out Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly.”

“You look beautiful,” he said.

He put his arms around her. An erotic fragrance, her own particular woman perfume that he knew so well, or a feeling, or something he couldn’t identify, passed from her to him, and he held her for a fleeting moment in the aromas of the kitchen, because with Rita sex and food often came together. Arousal could be a steaming plate of huevos rancheros for breakfast, a Navajo taco or enchiladas for lunch, an organic salad for dinner, a bowl of menudo spiked with hot red chile, onions, and oregano on Sunday mornings.

“Sorry. I slept late.”

“You need the rest, mijito,” she whispered. “By the way, the mayor’s here. There’s something going on at Jemez. Que pasa?”

Sonny shrugged.

“They called you.”

“Yes.”

“It’s Raven, isn’t it?” She knit her brow.

He nodded. He couldn’t just pretend he didn’t know the way into the dream world, he couldn’t just wish it away. Once the gift of the shaman was there, it just was. He might sit for years helping her in the restaurant, cook menudo from his mother’s recipe, man the cash register, visit with the customers he knew so well—all North Valley friends. He would pretend normalcy, but sooner or later the phone would ring, a breeze would stir, a crow would call from a telephone pole, a message would come for the winter shaman and he would have to go. She knew that.

“What about the meeting in Algodones?”

“I might get back in time.”