Jemez Spring (25 page)

The men around him nodded. In the end his prophecy might turn out to be true. Had Fox outwitted Dominic? If the city secured enough water rights along the river's basin, there would be precious little for Dominic's cartel.

Fox's gleam disappeared. He's telling the truth, Sonny thought. I'm out on a limb, again. “What did he offer?” he asked.

“He claims to have the code to disarm the bomb. Claims he was the one who took it from the terrorists. Al Qaeda. Can you believe? In New Mexico?”

Here he paused, drew himself up, puffed a little, watching his cronies out of the corner of his eyes. The same pose Mephistopheles must have struck when he swore damnation on the seventh seal.

“What does he want in return?”

“You.” Fox chuckled. “He wants us to sit with him on stage and bow. His five minutes of fame in front of the cameras. The cell phone problem is a temporary nuisance. We'll eventually find the hackers and get everything back on line. But the bomb has the Los Alamos scientists scared. We play ball with him and he defuses the bomb. After that, you can have him.”

Sonny nodded. He should have guessed. The net was tightening; Raven was at the movies, but not at Fox's interview. The rift was already happening, the politicos were washing their hands of Raven, as the governor tried to do. But there were a dozen movie houses around town. Where?

“Turn me loose.”

“On one condition. You stay away from him till he gives up the code we need. After that, he's all yours.”

Get Raven, Fox was saying. He's too much trouble for us. The entire Dominic scheme was unraveling and those who could were jumping ship. They hadn't planned on the governor's murder. Raven, they quickly learned, could not be trusted. Make him disappear, Fox was saying to Sonny. We don't care how. We don't want to know.

“We're meeting with him at the Hispanic Cultural Center. Seems he likes the theatrics. Wants to show off in that beautiful new auditorium. The directors didn't want him there, but he holds the trump card. The bomb's code. So, for now, whatever he wants, he gets. And he wants a show. National TV and all that.”

For a moment Fox grew serious. “Isn't it funny how the mind works. There's a megalomaniac in all of us …”

Genetic drift, Sonny thought.

“Anyway, all we want is the code to disarm the bomb.”

“I understand,” Sonny said.

“I'm glad you see it our way,” Fox said, puffing up his chest. “Take the cuffs off.”

The two city cops, big, burly men left over from the Neanderthal age, took the handcuffs off and stepped back. The others in the room breathed a sigh of relief, as did Fox.

Sonny turned and walked out of city hall.

Let Raven have his fun. He's given me the clues I need. I'll be there.

17

Sonny, give it up! the old man cried in exasperation, as they fled the labyrinth of city services and city ordinances, the Maze of Laws that was the postmodern pyramid, city hall, the ziggurat of the city council, lobbyists, lawyers, police, burro-crats, wannabes, all sorts of folks suffering from the genetic drift of a quantum universe gone wild.

Sonny didn't listen. He was following the thread of his frustration, a deep ache that told him too many deals had been made for him to trust the makers of social justice. He wasn't the only one who had been sold out by “the system.” A lot of people had been bought and sold and the ripping at the seams was the sign the seals were not holding, the structure was falling apart, as sooner or later all social structures run by men of greed are bound to collapse.

People forget: every nation born of human dreams and desire rises and falls. No one can divine history's purpose; in fact history, like evolution, can be said to have no purpose.

The thread of betrayal led Sonny to the exit and the shining light outside, where the frenetic rush and panic-stricken atmosphere reminded him of Dante's inferno, a vociferous circle of lost causes, his own painful need reflected in the cacophony of the city's spiraling down.

Gotta find Chica, he gasped, trying to find purpose in the center, which was slipping away.

It's not just Chica you're after, the old man said, nearly shouting, still trying to get Sonny's attention.

Find Raven.

Raven's playing games all around you! You can't think straight. Get hold of yourself!

Post-9-11 angst? No, I know what I'm doing.

Don't kid me, it's that damn obsession. It's no good, Sonny, you can't bring back the dead.

They're not dead! Raven was able to get into Rita's womb and take the spirit of the child, and we both know he holds prisoners! I need to find him!

He sensed he was shouting, unaware of the rush of women fleeing city hall, gorgeous dolled-up Chicanas who spent half their pay on Lancome cosmetics, or Maybelline if they were on the lower end of the city's pay scale. These modern-day sirens sat in warm offices in winter and air-conditioned in summer, doing the people's work day in and day out, whiling away the time singing siren songs, tales of last weekend's pleasures if they were single, the pressures of family life if they were married, and plans for next weekend, for that's the way time was measured, from weekend to weekend.

But Sonny seemed unaware of the phalanx of women rushing by him, and he didn't smell the sweet plumes of their perfumes, desert currents that any other time would have flared his coyote nose to catch a whiff and turn his head in admiration.

Now he could only sense Alexandria was falling, Ephesus burning, Burque, the City Future on the Rio Grande, was grinding shut. Raven-created panic lay as thick as the smog cloud that fell over the city on winter days when the cold kept the pollution trapped along the valley floor.

Sonny! the old man cried. It's not just the spirit he took. I was there when Rita miscarried. I saw the blood. The flesh is gone. There's nothing to hold the spirit!

Sonny stiffened. A cold chill ran through him.

The old man had hit him as hard as he could with a burning hammer from the forge of truth. The blacksmith is after all an alchemist, one who can shape forms, so dross metal may become Thor's hammer, or Santiago's sword. Either can kill the dragon, and as everyone knows the ancients were misguided dragon slayers. Always thrusting at the projection, never at the dragon within.

Sonny stopped cold, the old man's words ringing in his ears. Around him the blare of sirens announced Fox and his henchmen rushing out of city hall, skipping out, surrounded by cops and media, fleeing to the Hispanic Cultural Center, where Raven was to hold his press conference, where he would bargain with the city fathers as ravens and foxes are wont to do.

The afternoon sun was warm, but the old man's words froze his blood. No, Rita's babies weren't gone. There must be a place where a few ancient heroes had trod, perhaps a heaven of sorts, a Limbo, any hint of a promise where Sonny might yet meet his child, or two if they were twins. That place had to be Raven's lair, and he had to get there.

He had to cling to this hope. It was all he had left, and even the warning of the old man, his mentor these past few years, would not deter him.

But the old man's words took so much out of him that he had to sit down on the steps of the building. His obsession had created a burning energy, but his frustration—realizing he might not know how to get into Raven's circle—depleted his strength.

Was he the Fool on the tarot card? Could he live up to the reputation of his bisabuelo, Elfego Baca, the Chicano lawman of New Mexico who had stood against a gang of bad-ass Texas cowboys? Sonny carried his great-grandfather's Colt 45. in his truck, a family heirloom handed down to the firstborn, like the bow of Odysseus, but everybody knew they just weren't making men like the grandfathers anymore. Was it really the fear of failure that had caught up with the young Sonny Baca?

There is a time in every Chicano's life when he feels the gods and all the universe have conspired against him, and all he can say is
que chinga!
That's what Sonny whispered. “Que chinga!”

He wiped his eyes. This is preposterous, he thought. Cowboys don't cry. What would Rita say? That I've lost it? I'm all right, he told himself, as he sought to control the awful sense of loss that racked body and soul.

You've got to get a hold of yourself, the old man said.

Yeah, Sonny replied.

The rush of workers fleeing city hall skirted him swiftly. Some recognized him. His exploits were well known in the city, but all treated him like a homeless person. All were hurrying home to see if the phones were still working, or to turn on TV sets where they could watch the story of the bomb on the Jemez unfold. CNN was already there! So was Dan Rather! They would tell the truth!

No one stopped ask why Sonny sat so forlorn on the steps. Except one, a young woman. She recognized Sonny. Stout and big-bosomed, her large hips wrapped in a tight Tyrian-purple dress, the indigo of royalty, her tiny fat feet sore from shoes that pinched, her black hair bubbles of curls that rose like an afro teased beyond teasing, a birthmark on her chubby cheek, a gleaming spot she had glued there right after she curled her eyelashes with a mascara as black as her tiny pupils.

She stopped by Sonny and felt a pity in her round heart, which already was pounding with some fear that she would arrive late at her lonely apartment and find Bosque, her dog, had eaten her box of chocolates, the last one on earth if truly the world was ending. She bit her puffy lower lip, a lip glistening with red, greasy lipstick, which she had paused to dab on before she rushed out of the building.

A stout girl had to look her best, no matter what. She had sat at enough singles bars with her thin friends who got picked up and driven to weekend pleasures, while she wound up walking alone across dark parking lots to her beat-up Ford Escort and driving home in that terrible loneliness that only late Saturday nights can lay on the soul. Wasted days and wasted nights, Freddie Fender's elegy.

Doing what humans do when they find someone more bereft of direction than themselves, she lifted her tight skirt just a few inches and sat down beside Sonny, her large, ballooning nalgas immediately warming the cold cement. Soft and motherly, she touched Sonny. The bracelets on her fat arms chimed a sad song, costume bracelets from Dillards, for this was no queen of the desert, no queen of Sheba, this was a city worker who was paid lowly wages and who always tried to look her best.

“Hi,” she whispered.

Sonny looked at her and wondered who had stopped to greet him. He glanced at her ample bosom, two large, soft pillows where she had always hoped some seafarer cast on her shore might find a welcoming dock.

Instead, there sat Sonny Baca, in a moment of loneliness she recognized so well.

Sonny welcomed her touch, and thought, is this the sylph who caught a ride in my truck when I wasn't looking? Or the turtle? Yes, that tortoise I picked up could be a bruja who took the form of a turtle. But he knew that in New Mexico folklore there were no recorded stories of witches becoming turtles. And the turtle had given off very little heat while the woman at his side was as hot as a carne adovada enchilada.

Sonny smiled. Her voluptuous breasts gave off the aroma of ripe watermelons, awakening Sonny's memory of childhood afternoons on his grandparents' farm in La Joya, when summer watermelons were lifted from the cold water of the well where they had sat all day, then sliced open with grandma's kitchen knife, splitting the rind with a cracking sound, exposing the red meat, and at the center the dark, seed-spotted heart.

He looked into the woman's small jewel eyes, the glistening beads of perspiration on her forehead, and the beauty spot wet with sweat on her chubby cheek.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Sophie,” she replied.

Sofia, the goddess of wisdom, not Athena, come to guide me, thought Sonny.

“Do I know you?”

“Sophie Valdez. You don't remember me. I used to sit behind you in twelfth-grade English.”

Sophie Valdez, of course. She was there, always in the shadows, always in the background of the gung-ho Rio Grande High cheerleaders. Sophie had cheered every pass Sonny ever threw. She attended every game, every assembly where he spoke, every Saturday night dance in the gym. He remembered her sitting quietly by the punch bowl at the senior prom, without a boyfriend, without anyone asking her to dance, so he had asked her to dance, because the preppy cheerleaders and his jock friends had dared him.

“You were so smart, Sonny. God, when you gave the graduation talk I cried. And last summer there you were again. Chasing the bad guys. I clipped all the newspaper stories about you. You stopped the truck full of atomic stuff. Something or other. You saved the city. I've got all your pictures in my scrapbook.”

“I remember the prom—”

“You danced with me. The DJ was playing oldies. ‘In the Still of the Night.' God, I think of it every day. It was like being in heaven. I play the song every night.”

Sonny felt uncomfortable, ashamed of himself. Someone he hadn't noticed during those heyday high-school years had now paused to offer confidence.

“You work here?”

“Yeah. They let us out early because of the bomb. And the cell phones quit working.”

“It's been a while,” was all Sonny could offer. “What did you do after high school?”

“I got married. You remember Bernie? He was a tecato, used to sell drugs for your primo, Turco. Anyway, he was abusive. Beat me, called me fat, said I deserved it. One night he beat me so bad my cousin Nadine took me to a battered women's shelter. They took care of me for a while, got me into Joy Junction. I took courses at TVI, and now I work here.”

She paused. “Let's not talk about me. How about you? Why are you sitting here? You look kinda sad—Oh, I didn't mean it.”

“It's okay,” Sonny replied. He stood and pulled her to her feet. “It's good to see you, Sophie.”