Jemez Spring (6 page)

“And the Al Qaeda man is there to blow up Los Alamos.”

“To blow up the whole fucking mountain!”

There was a strain in Augie's
voice
. State cops like Augie didn't panic just because somebody knocked off their boss.

But two and two could equal Al Qaeda and Raven. Chaos was visiting the world. Today it was in Jemez Springs, and Raven would be there.

“It's a radioactive contraption. The lab boys have verified that. It's sitting in the Valle Grande. You can see it from the road. Right now they don't know if it's got a live pit, or some of that dirty nuclear stuff Al Qaeda has.”

Sonny glanced at his watch. The battery was dead, but it was spring equinox time all right. Raven time.

“All we know is there's a timer in the damn thing. Ticking away. If it blows, the lab boys think the Thing—that's what they call it, the Thing—will blow the mountain apart. Not only Los Alamos and the labs, but it might create a new volcano. Hit the hot stuff. I mean, half the state could go up.”

Sonny sighed. Augie was prone to exaggeration. The Thing really wasn't to scare the Los Alamos Labs, it was for Sonny. Raven had begun the game for the day, and Sonny sensed tragic consequences ahead.

“Raven left a message for you. Lab boys found it in the bomb. I'll wait for you at the Bath House.” With that, the phone went dead.

A frown crossed Sonny's face. Damn Raven! Yes, the games have started. I'll see him dead!

You can't kill him, the old man said.

I can! Sonny replied. I will!

You've been dreaming revenge, Sonny, and that's no good. Maybe he's already gotten to you.

Bullshit, Sonny scoffed. My mind's clear. He paused and thought awhile. And suppose he has. Don't we all have a shadow inside? Doesn't that part of the mind always make trouble? Isn't half the world troubled? Time to get rid of him, once and for all.

The old man shook his head. He knew even a shaman can be confused by spirit voices, and Sonny heard voices. In fact, it was often the dream shaman who suffered most from disruptive voices. Even the saints and holy men heard the devil's temptations. The struggle raging within the soul was a battle to still the voices.

“Maybe I am—” Sonny whispered.

He creates illusions, the old man said. Be careful. Don't look up in the sky for answers. Look inside. Shadow and light, it's all inside.

“Sonny.”

He looked up into Rita's eyes, eyes of love, and the ship he had to sail that day rocked in the water of her eyes, water of life.

“Don Eliseo?” she said softly.

“Yeah … he's quite a philosopher.”

“You two make a good pair,” she said, placing a bag with chicken tacos and a thermos of coffee on the table.

“You heard him?” Sonny asked, for the first time seeking confirmation.

“No. He belongs to you. Your helper.”

“I have to go,” he said.

“I know.”

He stood and kissed her. “I'll go by the cabin.”

Years ago, before real estate prices went out of sight, he had bought a cabin by the river in Jemez Springs. He and Rita had spent Sundays there, fixing it up. Then came the summer of the Zia medallion, the large gold amulet that would belong to Sonny or Raven, whoever won the contest. Raven tried to blow up a WIPP truck loaded with toxic plutonium waste; Sonny stopped him. In October he reappeared during the Alburquerque Balloon Fiesta, and again on the winter solstice.

Raven was a predictable threat. Always lurking in the shadows, he especially picked the solstices and equinoxes to do his dirty work, days of great ancient power, days when the sun was most related to the earth. Today the sun crossed the plane of the earth's equator. The vernal equinox. The world could fall one way or the other.

No doubt about it, he was making trouble on the mountain.

“Maybe you'll have time to take a mineral bath.”

Since Christmas Sonny had been driving up to the Jemez Springs Bath House to sit in a tub of the hot, healing water that flowed from a nearby spring.

Now the governor was lying dead in one of the tubs Sonny had used.

“If I have time.”

Rita touched his cheek. “Did I tell you you're looking great? Stay that way.” She paused then whispered. “I'm ready for one of those hot baths.”

That surprised Sonny. It's what he had been waiting for. For her to say the word. “They have a tub for two.”

“Maybe Sunday.”

Sonny felt a gentle knotting in his stomach, a welcome tightening in his throat. She was coming back from the trauma. The time of the spring equinox would be a time of love. Buds, flowers, and sprigs of grass were being pushed up from the dark earth by the spirit within.

From the jukebox Little Richard continued to shout. Diego shook the box and the arm of the old record player lifted, a new record falling into place. Fats Domino.

Sonny smiled. “Sunday sounds great. Weather's clearing—”

“And you?”

“I'm strong as ever, really. The numbness is gone.”

There was nothing she could say that would keep him home that day. If Raven appeared she knew Sonny had to go. She didn't know the depth of his need for vengeance, but she knew he had been waiting to make a stand. After all, who really knows what drives a man? Destiny? Fate? The daimon within?

“Cuídate,” she said. “I love you. I'll wait—”

She hugged him and quickly returned to the cash register.

Sonny looked after her. There were tears in her eyes. Did she know what he had planned for the day? Did she sense he had to get Raven? The voices he had been hearing were shadows from his dreams, and don Eliseo had said a man fears voices when he cannot see the person who is speaking.

“Hey, Sonny, adonde la tiras?” Diego asked, bussing the table.

“Jemez.”

“Cuidao con las Inditas.”

“I already got one,” Sonny replied.

Like Cleofes Vigil used to say, when the Españoles came they found all these beautiful Inditas de los Pueblos, Navajosas, y Comanches, and the lust of men who would never see the ocean again being what it was, ipso facto, the mestizo was born. Expanding the gene pool, something nature loves. We are los manitos de las naciones de la Sangre de Cristo, Cleofes used to say. The citizens of the city states del Rio Grande del norte. Each village a polis.

The Chicano mestizo. A man on whose body was written a history of suffering. A future of great beauty. A woman throwing off the shackles of a long oppression.

Sonny walked out to his truck and opened the beat-up ice chest. It was empty except for three cans of warm Diet Dr. Pepper rolling around the bottom. Sonny tossed the tacos and thermos into the cooler.

The bed of the truck held a shovel, some rope, an old sleeping bag and a tattered tarp, a very old pair of muddy boots, a collection of empty diet-soda cans, a frayed battery cable, and an odd assortment of wrenches, pliers, duct tape, and a coil of baling wire. With duct tape and baling wire he could fix anything. Chicano welds.

He and don Eliseo had gone fishing up in the Pecos a couple of years ago and the old man swore the sleeping bag and tarp were all a king needed to sleep well. If it rains you pretend you're a rock, he said, until the rain passes. A rock with eyes.

Got everything a PI needs, Sonny thought, satisfied.

Today's the day, he thought as he and Chica headed north on 4th Street toward Bernalillo, tuning the radio to KANW. The news was leaking out: an Al Qaeda terrorist had been apprehended. But no mention of the governor.

So the governor was dead. It was rumored that he visited the Jemez Valley because he was seeing a woman at the pueblo. A very nice-looking Jemez woman, a sculptor whose pottery was known and collected internationally.

So the governor had a liaison. He claimed he went for the baths to get rid of stress, but did he really go to visit a woman?

None of my business, Sonny thought.

I don't like this, the old man said. He had been quiet, perhaps mulling over Sonny's motive. Now he spoke of caution.

Raven's threatening to blow up the mountain, Sonny replied. You want me to stay home and do nothing. Raven's up there, waiting. That's what Fox meant with his allusion to the Bible. Fox knows.

The old man said nothing. Sonny was lying to himself.

Look, Sonny continued. We know even a small explosion can change the course of the underground water. That hot mineral water worked magic for me. I can't turn my back on the mountain.

He'll be waiting.

So what! He's always waiting. Let's end it today.

That's what you really want, isn't it?

Yes!

It's not that easy.

It's him or me.

And you think I can help?

You're my trump.

You're wrong, Sonny. You're not thinking straight. There's not a thing I can do.

4

Sonny listened to his scanner. The state police had closed Highway 4 between Jemez Springs and Los Alamos, citing a jackknifed gypsum-carrying truck blocking the road. The news media didn't buy it. Too many government cover-ups had made the newshounds wary. Sonny guessed that SWAT teams from Kirtland and Los Alamos were already on the mountain.

But not a word about the governor.

The Bath House didn't open till ten, and it was still early in the morning. Did that mean the governor was in the tub all night? Not discovered till morning? And where was Augie when the gov drew his last breath?

Fear death by drowning. Sonny remembered his close encounter in the river when he was twelve. Swept under by a treacherous current, he had swallowed a lot of water before he could grab hold of cottonwood roots along the bank and crawl out. He had been under long enough to feel the fingers of dissolution working in the water, long enough to hear the siren's call.

A plaintive cry, the wind sweeping past the open window, filled the cab of the truck, reminding him the river was full of spirits. La Llorona and her son El Coco walked the dark pathways of the river forest. She cried for all the children the river had carried away.

Sonny shivered, turned the radio off, and looked toward the blue Jemez. The day was hazy, with ribbed clouds still drifting eastward, the tail end of last night's weather front.

Long ago the Nuevomexicanos had lived on the mountain, pastores grazing sheep in the high pastures. They settled the San Diego Land Grant and learned to be vecinos with the Jemez Pueblo people. With time, more lovers of the mountain made their way up the river valley and the canyons to call the place their home. Men and women who liked to make it on their own, full of independent zeal, pilgrims whose reward was the sound of the breeze sailing through the trees. But even tough mountain men and women got lonely. Sooner or later they came down from the mountain to Jemez Springs, to church, or the library, or to the cantina. Sooner or later everybody got lonely.

Was the governor's wife a lonely woman? Sonny had met her once or twice. He couldn't remember what she looked like. And perhaps it wasn't other people's loneliness gnawing at his heart, it was his own sense of being alone. His need to avenge the death of Rita's child had driven him against the wall. Only getting Raven would bring respite.

He remembered he had promised to call his mother. He took the phone and scrolled to her name. Her phone rang and she answered.

“Hi, mom—”

“Sonny, where are you?”

“I'm on my way to the cabin.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm good. Just had breakfast with Rita—”

“That woman is incredible. So, have you set a date?”

“Maybe we'll get the judge at Jemez to marry us, honeymoon at the cabin—”

“Oh, no, Sonny. I want a big wedding. The family has to come. All our friends. Promise me you won't do anything rash.”

“You're the one who keeps telling me to settle down.”

“I know, hijo, I know. You do what you think is best. But a mother just wants to be there. I'm old fashioned, I know. Armando will never get married. Wild women, cars, and gambling—speaking of gambling, Max is taking me to lunch at the Isleta Casino. The man has given me a new life. Don't worry, we don't gamble, we just go for lunch. Those poor people at the slots make me sad. Did you hear about the woman who met the devil?”

“No.”

“She was from Belen, I think. She lost everything at the slot machines. Even mortgaged her home. The machine had just taken her last dollar, and she was in a panic. How could she tell her family she had lost their home? Anyway, a handsome man dressed in black appeared. He gave her three coins. She bet the coins and each one paid her a fortune. She cried with joy. She tried to thank the stranger but he was gone. Only burning sulfur filled the air. Anyway, she hurried home to share her luck with her family, but when she got there the police were waiting. They were there to tell her an hour ago her three sons had been killed in a terrible accident. The woman went crazy. Her arm grew stiff. When they pried open her hand there were three burned spots on her palm.”

“The three coins,” Sonny said.

“If you make a deal with the devil you have to pay. I feel awful for that woman. It could be someone we know. I guess some people just don't have a choice—”

“You mean they're addicted?”

“Life is a gamble, isn't it? She lost her sons.”

“But the lottery pays for scholarships,” Sonny said. He didn't play, but if people wanted to gamble that was their business.

“Are you feeling well?” she asked.

“I'm good, really. You have fun at the casino.”

“We just go for lunch, mi'jo. Cuídate. Call me when you get back.”

“I will. Have fun.”

“Oh, Sonny, it's not going to the casino that makes me happy, it's being with Max. We fit. You know, like you and Rita fit. You could be anywhere with her and be happy. Que no?”

What she said cut to his heart. Yes, she' was right.