Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring Page 18

  “Yeah,” Sonny replied.

  “I’ll keep digging on Raven,” Howard said. “Gloria deserves some justice. The evidence is so thin the DA can’t keep Leroy Brown more than a couple of days.”

  “Yeah,” Sonny acknowledged. “Bueno. Talk to you later.”

  “Take care, amigo.”

  16

  Sonny clicked the phone off. He was driving down into the valley now, into the dry heat of the city. On the western horizon he could see the clear outline of the volcanos, etched against a band of soft, apricot light. The sun, which was setting like a brilliant red ball, created the band of soft light around the bowl’s lip, the horizon. Above the band of apricot light lay a band of light blue, very clear blue that seemed an opening into another universe, and above that hung the gray-blue sky of twilight.

  Overhead, a few mottled clouds reflected the soft color of the horizon. It had probably hit ninety-five today. A blanket of heat hung over the valley. South, toward the Manzanos, clouds rose, not rain clouds, not clouds with a dark underbelly, just the first signs of moisture from the south.

  A high-pressure system sat over the Southwest desert, from LA to the Texas line. The land cried for relief, cried for a low-pressure to move moisture from the south. The puffy clouds teasing the Manzanos and the Taos mountains did not yet contain enough moisture to bring the summer rains.

  The outline of Mount Taylor near Grants disappeared as Sonny dipped into the valley. In the fifties they had mined the uranium out of the mountain, one of the sacred mountains of the pueblo world, and they had ripped it open for the uranium. And Raven had been there, helping with the destruction he said he abhorred, learning the secrets he would now use. Now the cold war was temporarily halted, and the Mount Taylor mines were closed. Now the huge tailing ponds full of uranium waste were leaking into the earth.

  Stories were told of Navajo shepherds who let their sheep drink at the huge ponds around the lake, and many died. Mutated lambs were born in spring. The waste left over from the mining of uranium was poisoning the earth. Now Raven was going to create a bigger radioactive pile. His lunatic plan could contaminate half the state if it worked, and even if it failed, it could destroy the right-minded antinuclear campaign.

  In a city park off the interstate, a summer-lot baseball game had already started. Sonny remembered the Dukes were playing tonight. Tacoma. He had planned to take Rita. El Gallo was pitching. Young kid, but he had been blowing the competition away. Poetry in motion. Sonny had met the pitcher at a party. They had a couple of beers and talked baseball. Sonny wanted Rita to see him pitch before the Dodgers moved him to LA.

  But he couldn’t enjoy a game, not now. He slipped in a cassette and the Texas Tornados’ corridos filled the truck. Coasting down the slope of I-40 into the Río Grande valley, he had time to think.

  The Zia sign was going to plague him until the case was solved. The powerful, positive image of the sun, symbol of the state flag, god of life, grandfather of all, now perverted by those who scratched the sign on Gloria Dominic’s stomach. Now the beauty of that life-giving image was associated with death as far as the city was concerned. The media was making a lot out of the symbol, playing up the rumors that Gloria Dominic’s murder was a cult murder. Sonny feared those rumors were going to prove true.

  The Zia sun, the positive symbol of the sun, giver of life, the grandfather whose path in the sky was daily observed by the medicine men in the pueblos along the Río Grande, was now a symbol of murderers.

  Humans have always used symbols to unify the group, Sonny thought. Sun worshiping had a long history, and even those who did not think of the sun as a deity had ingrained in their psyche a very positive human response to the orb that brought warmth and light. Yeah, Raven had found the perfect symbol to serve his evil needs. The season had become the Zia Summer, a summer of fear, a summer when ghouls came to drain the blood of Gloria Dominic and the life in her womb.

  He remembered the case of the pregnant woman who had been abducted a few years ago. A woman who wanted a baby had kidnapped a pregnant woman and taken her up to the mountains, where she strangled the woman and performed a crude cesarian. She removed the baby with a beer bottle opener. People with deep desires were driven to the bizarre.

  He thought of his mother and he dialed her number.

  “Sonny,” the welcoming voice answered.

  “Mom. Cómo ’stás?”

  “Why haven’t you called me! Where have you been, malcriado?”

  “Mom. I got busy. How are you?”

  “Bien, bien. Y tú? How’s Rita?”

  “Fine. Did Armando come by?”

  “Mando? That lazy brother of yours. No, he didn’t come. He only comes when he needs to borrow money. He’s got a new girlfriend now. A little gringita from Amarillo. He spends his time running around with her. Ay, Dios, Sonny, I worry about him.”

  “He’s okay,” Sonny tried to reassure her. “Listen, do you remember me … you know, when I was a baby?”

  “Of course,” she answered.

  “When I was in your womb?”

  “Of course I remember. That’s something a mother never forgets. Especially when she carries twins. Heavy? Oh, Lord, you two were heavy. You came easy, but Mando came kicking. But why are you asking?”

  “I was just thinking.…”

  That’s what he wanted to know. What she felt. But it didn’t ease the disquietude he felt; instead, it reminded him how much he had grown apart from his mother. How little he saw her. How little he saw his brother.

  “So how are you?” he asked.

  “Spending time with Delfina. Ay, que mujer, she’s strong. You know we didn’t visit that much, before. Now that we’ve been together, I begin to understand what she’s been through. I feel there’s something she wants to tell me, but she just can’t come out with it. She does talk about Frank. She blames him. You don’t believe he—”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, hesitating, not wanting to tell her all he was uncovering. She’d just worry.

  “I don’t know what to do. Max said to try to put it out of my mind. Go back to T-VI and finish my classes.”

  Data processing. She was taking classes. But she didn’t need to be a data processor, Sonny thought. She didn’t need a computer course; he wanted to think she still had everything she needed at home. But of course, she had her own life.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I’m glad.”

  His mother was slipping away from him, like the romantic, almost overwhelming emotion of the song that echoed in his truck: Freddie Fender singing “Lonely Days and Lonely Nights.” Had her days and nights been lonely since his father died? What had been her needs during the last twelve years? He didn’t know. The thought made him sad.

  “Armando’s drinking again,” she confided. “He has his office in the bar. He and his gringita. She’s his secretary, he says. He wants to set up his own used-car lot. Mando, I said, get a job. A regular job. You’re thirty, when are you going to settle down? That goes for you, too. Rita’s a good woman. Marry her. Go back to teaching school. You want to spend your life chasing men that don’t pay child support?”

  “No.”

  “You’re like your Bisabuelo. Not happy unless there’s something exciting going on. Maybe I shouldn’t have let your father name you after him. His name stuck on you.”

  “It’s a good name.”

  “I know, m’ijo. Your father blew his top when your first-grade teacher couldn’t pronounce Francisco Elfego Baca. Because her tongue tripped on Elfego, she started calling you Sonny. He raised hell with them. He went to the principal and said ‘you call him Elfego Baca. That was his great-grandfather’s name.’ Do you think they listened? Oh no. They put Sonny on your report card. It stuck. I told your father, está bien. It fits him. Sonny, like sol. Your father never agreed. ‘The gringos even change our names,’ he used to say.”

  The sun, he thought. The bright New Mexican sun. “I gotta go,” he said.

  “C
uidate, m’ijo,” she said. “Don’t you start drinking like Mando. Bring don Eliseo to visit. Bring Rita. Que Dios te guarde.”

  Que Dios te cuide, Sonny thought. His mother always ended their conversations by entrusting him to God’s care. So did don Eliseo. They knew the world was full of danger, evil men and evil things, and so they entrusted those they loved to God’s care.

  This afternoon he had come close to buying the farm. He could still hear the whine of the bullets and feel the dirt spitting into his face. Someone had tried to kill him, and had come very close. He could be dead. The ante had been raised.

  A sudden awareness of who he was and what he had done and not done in life flooded over him. The thought of death makes the authentic man, he remembered reading. Unamuno. No one read Unamuno anymore. How in the hell had he wound up with that paperback of the Spanish philosopher’s work? Ruth? No, he must have picked it up at Salt of the Earth Books. At least once a week he visited the bookstore and thumbed through the used-book cart looking for a discarded gem.

  Yes, the dark streets of the city throbbed with death. The city was growing, expanding, flexing its muscles, envying Denver’s wealth, never pausing to ask how it could take care of all the new immigrants it welcomed. Entire subdivisions sprouted on sandhills seemingly overnight. The city was looking for its character, its heart, and as it grew, it reflected the violence of the society. The peaceful, rangy city of his childhood was no more. Its violent statistics mounted, as they did everywhere else, and today he had almost become one of them.

  He could be lying dead now, the flies buzzing over him like they buzzed over the dead cow. But it wasn’t his time, it wasn’t his time. Maybe being close to death taught one to savor life. That’s what the philosopher meant. You come close to death and you only have yourself to face. That wisp of an essence inside. The real Sonny Baca. Maybe facing up to what happened at Escobar’s ranch would teach him not only how deep fear could run, but something about himself.

  His left foot ached as he clutched the truck into a lower gear and turned off the interstate and headed north on Río Grande toward Dominic’s. He made a vow to see his mother more often. They had to stay together as familia. He had to see his brother, too. Pull him out of his bar one Saturday night and take him to see the Dukes play. Maybe go up to the Jemez and go fishing. Do something together, like they did when they were kids. It was hard to keep family together when they spread out over the city. Each person got into his own thing, change came with the distance, and soon familia and friends were forgotten. What the hell did he and Mando have in common anymore? Nada. They were brothers, but they might as well be strangers. Their father’s death had left a vacuum, and Mando was still trying to fill it. He wandered from one used-car lot to the next, changing jobs like he changed women.

  Maybe it was that sense of familia he was missing, Sonny thought, and his thoughts turned to Rita. Maybe he should marry her and stop running around. Become a taco pusher, help her run the business, join the Mike Gallegos gang at the Hispano Chamber of Commerce.… Ugh, he thought, enough was enough.

  The city he knew when he was a kid had changed. Change was inevitable. But something else had seeped in with the change, or maybe it had always been there and he had been too young to see it. The rift between the cultural groups seemed to grow.

  “No doubt about it,” Sonny thought, change had come to the North Valley. Most people knew little of don Eliseo’s kind of love of the earth, of the memory that ran through the roots of the plants and trees and the water of the river. They knew little of don Eliseo’s prayers, his saints, his visits to Sandia Pueblo to pray to the deities of the pueblo, his daily prayers to the sun.

  Different groups knew so little of each other. “The ricos,” don Eliseo said, “can do anything. They spend a fortune on stopping the bridge project. Why not give the money to the kids who can’t afford to go to college? As long as people live apart from each other, there will be prejudice. That’s the way the world is. Watch out for the hombres dorados, Sonny. They promise everything, but they have no soul.”

  The old man made sense, even gave him insights into his feelings about Gloria’s murder. She was good, she did charitable works, and evil came and claimed her. Maybe she didn’t have the time to be filled with the light of the Señores y Señoras de la Luz. Maybe her soul hadn’t ascended into the arms of the Lords and Ladies of Light, and it still roamed the Earth. Her soul was haunting him.

  Tears broke out in his eyes, and he felt a heavy depression come over him. He wiped his nose, sniffed. “Damn!” he whispered. “Keep the thoughts straight,” he said and shook his head. “I gotta think straight. Thirsty. Why am I so thirsty?”

  “Mira,” don Eliseo had said when he showed Sonny where rainwater dripped from the roof onto the sandstone patio.

  “You know how long the water has been dripping from the roof? Since 1693. This casa de adobe was built by my ancestors after the Españoles and Mexicanos of the area came back after being driven out by the Pueblo Indians in 1680. Over three hundred years ago this adobe house was built.…”

  Sonny looked at the large piece of sandstone. Those centuries of water dripping had worn a smooth depression into the stone.

  “Water dissolves rock. It is the most powerful element on the Earth. Look at the valley the river has carved. Water, m’ijo, is the blood of life.”

  Sonny pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Images and memories threatened to overwhelm him. He shut off the sad corrido on the tape. “Think!” he said to himself. “Think straight! Get hold of your thoughts!”

  Frank Dominic was squeezing blood from the valley. He wanted to build “Venice on the Río Grande.” He wanted to turn Alburquerque into one of the fabled Cities of Cibola. He wanted to build a canal close to the river, following the river bosque. A new city stretching from Isleta Pueblo on the south to Alameda on the north. Casinos everywhere. The puritanical view of the west was dead. The newcomers aren’t going to be entertained by the old fiestas or Indian corn dances, nor by mariachis for Cinco de Mayo. The new immigrants wanted action.

  You think Denver’s booming, Dominic said, make me your mayor and I’ll build you a city the likes of which you’ve never imagined! I’ll bring back the grandeur of the Spanish past! There will be jobs! Money pouring in! A new Camelot!

  “Camelot of the desert,” Sonny said. The city would run out of water long before Dominic’s wild plan got off the boards.

  Whoa, take it easy, Sonny stopped himself. What the hell’s gotten into you. You’re arguing with yourself. Try to focus. Think of Gloria. It’s for her you’re doing this. Did Gloria’s murder have anything to do with that bigger battle taking shape in the corridors of power? With Frank’s desire to be mayor? What did Gloria know?

  As Sonny pulled in front of Dominic’s place, he counted a dozen cars parked in the driveway. So the sonofabitch is finally home, Sonny thought, and he’s got company. Again. As he walked to the door, he noticed the license plates. The white Volvo sported a New Mexico license plate in back and a U.S. senator vanity plate in front. The blue Toyota Land Cruiser plate announced it belonged to a congressman. The Washington politicos were in town, and Dominic was entertaining them.

  Sonny felt a sour taste in his mouth as he rang the doorbell and waited. How could he be so tormented by Gloria’s ghost, and Dominic be back to business as usual?

  A woman appeared, a housekeeper. She looked at dusty sweaty Sonny and noticed the bruise on his face but said nothing. She nodded for him to enter the large foyer, then she disappeared, and moments later Dominic appeared. When he saw Sonny, a shadow of irritation crossed his face.

  “What do you want?” he said coldly.

  “I gotta talk to you,” Sonny replied. He felt grimy in front of the impeccably attired Dominic.

  Dominic shook his head in disgust. “I have company.” He motioned toward the patio, where his guests were gathered.

  “We have to talk,” Sonny repeated, and he pushed by Domin
ic and walked into the living area. Sonny glanced at the patio, at the senators, the governor and his wife, other business leaders Sonny didn’t recognize.

  “Somebody shot at me today.”

  Dominic’s brow furrowed. He looked closely at Sonny. “Where?”

  “Up in the Sandias.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Looking into Gloria’s death.”

  Dominic’s eyes flashed with anger. “I told you to stay out of—” He paused. “You think I …” A slow, long-practiced smile crept across his face. “If I wanted you shot, you wouldn’t be standing here.”

  Sonny nodded. Yeah, the sonofabitch had a point.

  “Where were you that night?”

  “When Gloria was murdered?” Dominic pondered his answer, a grin filled his face, and he said, “I was with another woman. Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear? Now you have it.”

  “Who?” Sonny asked.

  Dominic laughed. “You’re playing detective, getting shot at, and you don’t know that?”

  “No, I don’t know! But I sure as hell can find out!”

  Dominic glanced at the patio, and Sonny followed his gaze. The blonde he had seen the night Morino visited Dominic stood talking to the governor.

  Now he placed her. He should have recognized her; he’d seen her pictures in enough newspaper articles. Jerry Anderson’s daughter. Anderson had developed Sandia East Estates and the Four Hills Piñon Ridge against the side of the Sandia Mountains. He had pumped enough money into the last election to elect a Republican governor, and when the electric utility had been nearly bankrupted by its president, Anderson had been drafted by the new board to get it back on its feet. What Frank Dominic was to downtown, Jerry Anderson was to uptown.

  His wife, Cheryl Whitson Anderson, was English. Jerry had met her in England, liked her sense of class, and married her. She turned out to be about as boring as an English breakfast as far as Alburquerqueans were concerned, all accent and no salsa. They had one daughter, Ashley, a beautiful young thing, a city debutante. Everybody knew her. She had been homecoming queen at the university, outgoing as her father, a young woman who had beauty and wealth. She was everything the mother wasn’t.