Shaman Winter (49 page)

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?”