Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring Read online

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  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, whic
h 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

  The Sonny Baca Novels

  Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shamen Winter, and Jemez Spring

  Rudolfo Anaya

  CONTENTS

  Zia Summer

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  17

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  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

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  27

  28

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  30

  31

  32

  33

  Rio Grande Fall

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

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  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Shaman Winter

  Preface

  Part I: The Shaman Dreams

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Part II: Solstice Time

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Part III: The Shaman’s Guide

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Jemez Spring

  1

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  4

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  6

  7

  8

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  26

  A Biography of Rudolfo Anaya

  Zia Summer

  A Sonny Baca Novel

  Rudolfo Anaya

  Dedicated to the old people who walk on the Path

  of the Sun and who remind us that clarity of the soul

  is possible, even in these violent times. I also thank

  my mother Rafaelita Mares Anaya; Ana Rosinski,

  who adopted us in Cuernavaca; Rachel Lawless, my

  mother-in-law; Patricia, my love, and the spirit of

  Ultima. These women have encouraged me

  along the path of illumination that

  comes with Lords and Ladies

  of the Morning Light.

  CONTENTS

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  33

  1

  Sonny awakened to the sound of a chain saw and felt it slicing through his leg. He kicked out wildly as the searing chain ripped through flesh and bone. A cry of pain tore from his throat, and as he jumped back to escape his tormentor, the nightmare faded.

  “Chin-gaaa-o,” he groaned, reaching down to massage his numb leg.

  Outside the buzz of a chain saw tore through the morning silence. He sat up, remembering that don Eliseo had been talking all spring about cutting down the big cottonwood that grew in his front yard.

  Sonny shook the cobwebs of sleep and rubbed his leg. It was okay, just a bad dream, but who was the woman? Lord, she was good-looking. A dark gown hugged her curves, revealing long legs, lots of cleavage, lips glowing ripe as cactus fruit, green eyes like hot jade, a seductive, alluring voice. But as he reached out, she raised a chain saw and whacked at him. Sonny had felt the slash and blood oozing from his leg.

  It was his left leg, the foot he had broken while bulldogging two years ago. He looked down and expected to see blood, the scene in the nightmare had been so vivid.

  Outside the gas saw sputtered then died. He had promised don Eliseo he would help cut down the old tree, but he had been too busy. Too lazy, he admonished himself, to help my neighbor. What’s a vecino for?

  The woman in the dream had meant to kill him; her lunge was forceful, aimed right between his legs. A spurned woman from his past? No, he wasn’t that kind of guy. He always parted on good terms with women. And it had been years since he had rented the Texas chain-saw murder video. So why the hell a nightmare full of chain-saw gore and violence?

  He didn’t like it. A dream like that meant no good. His mother believed dreams predicted the future. There was the grim flash of death in the woman’s eyes as she swung the saw at him.

  “Too much party time,” he mumbled as he looked out his window into the bright blue skies of a clear Río Grande morning. Soon the solstice would officially mark summer, but already the heat had been relentless. The clear light hung over the valley, scintillating on the cottonwood leaves.

  “Marry me,” Rita had whispered last night, “I’m tired of letting you have it for free. It’s time you settled down.”

  “With you?”

  “Yes. You’re not getting any younger!”

  “I’m only thirty. Too young to settle down.”

  They had gone to her place after dancing, and as they made love she whispered, “Eres un cabrón, but I love you.”

  She was great in bed, but it was more than that, he had to admit. Her love was the most satisfying he had found since his divorce. It was more than just sex; he worried he might really be falling for her.

  Was it Rita who appeared in the nightmare? No, of course not, it was another woman, someone threatening. Pues, getting married could be threatening, he thought. If he married Rita he would have to give up the lady friends he had cultivated the past two years.

  Sonny prized his freedom. It was the ability to call his own shots that had attracted him to take up with Manuel Lopez a few years ago and learn how to be a private investigator. Or perhaps it was the fact that Sonny’s great-grandfather, El Bisabuelo, was Elfego Baca, the most famous lawman New Mexico ever produced. True, more people knew about Pat Garrett, the sheriff who killed Billy the Kid in old Fort Sumner on the night of July 14, 1881, but that was only because history wasn’t fair.

  Of the two sheriffs, Elfego Baca had been more interesting, more complex. Sonny felt a special kinship to his Bisabuelo.

  Or, and this he didn’t like to admit even to himself, perhaps he had become a
private investigator because in his daydreams he saw himself as a hero. In his fantasies he was always doing something heroic, putting down the evildoer or rescuing women from perilous situations. His mind was always active, always creating stories, and he was the hero of each story.

  Whatever the reasons, he endured the lousy take-home pay because that way he could be his own boss. He came and went as he pleased, took just enough cases to make a living, and had not given a thought to the future until Rita came along.

  She wants me to marry her and help her run Rita’s Cocina, he thought to himself. “I’m not a taco pusher! Sure, I like her cooking.…”

  Rita’s image appeared before him. “That’s not all you like,” she said. “You like to make love to me.”

  She was brown, a soft, sexy tan, like the earth of the valley after rain. Her long, jet-black hair fell in cascades over her round shoulders. She put her hands on her hips and swung them slowly.

  “Yes, but I like to make love to all the women,” he answered with a gleam.

  “You think you’re a big stud. Mr. Macho Man”—she glared back—“but I’m going to tame you!”

  “I’m not a horse!” he shouted.

  “You’re a coyote from the hills,” she said as her image dissolved.

  Sonny swung his legs free of the sheet. “Chingao,” he said as he jumped up, stumbled to the window, and pulled up the blinds.

  He sniffed the air. The calm, hot morning was heavy with the aroma of green leaves, alive with the twittering of sparrows outside the window, the darting flight of the swallows from the river. He smelled coffee brewing, tortillas cooking on a comal, beans boiling, and simmering green chile: the aromas of home and peace. Why, in the midst of tranquility, a horrible dream?

  Across the narrow dirt street don Eliseo was directing operations as his grandson, who had restarted the saw, pushed it into the tough, gray bark of the old alamo. The giant cottonwood was over ten feet in circumference; its dark, gnarled branches rose high into the sky. It had been witness to the last hundred years of history in the village of Los Ranchitos in the North Valley of Alburquerque. Its spreading branches had shaded don Eliseo’s family for many generations.

  But over the years this old valley cottonwood had succumbed to disease, and now it was June and there were still no leaves showing in its age-worn branches.

  “Trees get cancer, just like people,” don Eliseo said, “or their livers and hearts grow weak. Just like people.” So he mixed well-cured cow manure and bonemeal in water from the acequia, and each day he poured some of the healing solution into the holes around the drip line of the giant tree.