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

  He thought of other times of the day or the season when the dance of the light took place. In early October, high in the Taos mountains when the aspen shimmered, gold leaves quivered with light. Then a person felt the light impregnating the leaves and trees. Or driving down in mid-October from the Jemez Mountains through the canyon. The red cliffs of Jemez caught and held the light of the golden cottonwoods. The earth had its sacred places.

  “The ways of our ancestors were full of beauty,” don Eliseo said. “They kept close to the earth, watched the sun and moon. And when they died, their spirits remained with us, in the light, in dreams. If the kids don’t worship the ancestors, then what we created here on the Río Grande will die.”

  Sonny finished his coffee. It can’t die, he thought, I won’t let it. The thought renewed his strength.

  “Qué haces hoy?” don Eliseo asked.

  “Go out to that other world.”

  “The world of the brujos.”

  “They’re screwing around with the Zia sun.”

  “You have to fight evil.…”

  “Yes,” Sonny agreed, and they both stood. “Gracias por el café, y gracias por los Señores y las Señoras.” He gave the old man an abrazo, impulsively, something he had never done.

  The old man smiled. “You’re a good man, Sonny,” he said, returning the abrazo with strong arms, then placing his forehead against Sonny’s forehead.

  “The kiss of life,” the old man said. The energies of their souls met for a moment, and the old man’s light flooded through Sonny. He felt the old man’s strength enter his body.

  “Gracias,” Sonny whispered.

  18

  Sonny hurried back to his house, afraid tears might well in his eyes. He showered and dressed, then drove to Garcia’s Kitchen for breakfast. Garcia’s served some of the best huevos rancheros and green chile in town. Sonny liked to sit at a window booth and look out on the traffic that moved up and down Central as he ate. Old timers from la Plaza Vieja frequented Garcia’s, sat around, drank coffee, gossiped.

  The gathering of the old men was an old custom. When the villages were small along the Río Grande, the center of the community was la plaza de armas and the church. There the old Mexicanos gathered to discuss the affairs of state. Warming their bones against southern adobe walls in winter and cooling off under the shade of the alamos in summer, the discourse of the old men was an essential part of the politics that ran the village.

  Now the villages from Isleta to Bernalillo were swallowed up by the expanding city, but the men still found a place to gather to talk. In the mornings it was Garcia’s or Duran’s Pharmacy or the Village Inn Pancake House; in the afternoon they sat under the shade trees of the Old Town plaza and discussed the events of their community and of the world as they watched the tourists.

  “Hi, Sonny,” Rosa greeted him.

  “Rosa, mi amor, when are you going to give me a chance?” he asked, smiling, and took the menu from her as he sat. Rosa was vivacious, an attractive woman, short and stocky with big breasts and a big smile. Sonny could tease her, and she gave as good as she got.

  “Soon as my old man’s out of town.” She smiled and poured his coffee. “The usual?”

  Sonny nodded.

  “What’s the usual?” the woman at the table next to him asked.

  Sonny turned to look into a pair of bright blue eyes that smiled invitingly. She sat alone, wearing a bright blue summer dress, her blond hair teased up, her complexion white and smooth. Sonny guessed she was in her thirties.

  An adventuresome tourist, Sonny assumed. Her kind didn’t often stop for breakfast at Garcia’s. They usually stayed at the Sheraton where they felt “safe.” This lady was obviously out for a real taste of Alburkirk.

  “Huevos rancheros,” Sonny said.

  “That’s what I’ll have,” the blonde said to Rosa. “A ranchero with huevos.”

  Rosa bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Yes, ma’am.” She smiled, glancing at Sonny. “You want him over easy or scrambled?” she asked, and the blonde said “over easy” as Rosa hurried away to the kitchen, where Sonny knew she would burst out laughing and tell the cooks that the blonde had just ordered a rancher with balls.

  “New in town?” Sonny asked, also trying to keep from laughing.

  “We visit every summer. My husband sells kitchen equipment. We’re at the Hyatt, but that’s not real, you know what I mean?”

  From the kitchen Sonny heard a roar of laughter. Rosa had just told her story.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I love Old Town. I’m going to look around. Any suggestions?” Her blue eyes were direct, inviting. She crossed her long legs, waited.

  Sonny looked at her, felt the tug of the flesh. She was lovely and alone. She wanted suggestions.

  “Hmmmm …” he thought.

  She waited, the crossed leg swinging softly.

  “Well?”

  Sonny cleared his throat. “Oh, there’s a lot to see. Lots of shops, jewelry …” he stammered.

  “Yes, thank you.” The woman in blue nodded. “I intend to do the shops.” She broke off the conversation, sensing Sonny’s reluctance, and turned back to her newspaper.

  From where he sat, Sonny could smell her perfume. Her lips were painted candy red. A very nice-looking woman, attractive, and obviously in the mood. But not today, he thought, and tried not to kick himself too hard for turning her down. He consoled himself by looking out the window at Central Avenue and concentrating on anything but the woman in blue.

  Central was the original Highway 66, which ran east to west through the city. Before the interstate was built, old 66 had cut through Tijeras Canyon and entered the city. It ran through town before it crossed the Río Grande and climbed up the long slope of Nine-Mile Hill. There it dipped into the Rio Puerco valley, crossed the continental divide somewhere around Gallup, crossed the deserts of Arizona, and ended on the California coast. California, the land of dreams. The highway, too, was a road of dreams.

  Route 66, a road of dreams, generations of dreams crossing the nation on the mother road. During the Dust Bowl era the Okies had moved west, and Elfego Baca had stood somewhere near this very spot and watched the migration. The story was handed down the generations, how the Bisabuelo had helped an Okie family change a tire, paid for the repair, and given the man a few dollars for gas. Enough to get to Gallup.

  The people here felt sorry for the dislocated, Sonny’s father had told him. They often fed them, gave them food before they moved on to the dream of California. A few stayed. Cars broke down and some were forced to plant their dream in the Río Grande valley. Lean men and women with bony bodies and faces, trudging west to California, cars and trucks packed with all their worldly possessions, piled high, canvas water bags cooling as they hung over rearview mirrors or over the front of the radiator grill. Broke and without a dime, those who had no strength to continue on to the land of milk and honey laid down their load and learned to eat beans, chile, and tortillas.

  As they became learned in the cultural ways, some moved into the barrios, lost their prejudices against the Mexicans, started businesses in the booming downtown area, and now their grandkids were third-generation Alburquerqueans, as proud of the city as any Nuevo Mexicano.

  Blacks who worked on the railroad, the cooks and waiters of the Super Chief, had brought their families and settled along Broadway, and their community thrived. Indians from the Pueblos and Navajos from the Diné Nation moved in and out of the city, creating a cultural cloth of many colors. Newer immigrants arrived, Japanese and Southeast Asians, more Mexicans, and those who fled the wars in Central America, each lending a new color and texture of fabric to the cloth, the woof and warp took on the earth tones of a Chimayó blanket.

  The city was an intricately patterned blanket, each color representing different heritages, traditions, languages, folkways, and each struggling to remain distinct, full of pride, history, honor, and family roots. They were clannish, protective, of
ten prejudiced and bigoted. Yes, the city was full of growing pains, bound to old political oaths and allegiances, lustful, violent, murderous when the moon was wild, drunk on lost loves. At the center they were all struggling for identity.

  What will bind? What will bring us together?

  “What?” Sonny asked.

  “What you ordered,” Rosa replied, sliding the plate full of eggs, beans, potatoes, and green chile in front of him. In a small dish came the just-baked corn tortillas. “Just like you like them, hot,” she said with a smile.

  “And here’s your ranchero with huevos,” she said to the woman in blue, serving the second platter and rushing back to the kitchen.

  Rosa was devilish. Sonny smiled and looked at the blonde.

  “Looks delicious,” she said.

  “The best in town,” Sonny replied.

  “I’m glad I took a chance.” She smiled again.

  “Provecho.”

  “Provecho?”

  “It means enjoy.”

  “Oh, I intend to,” she said and ate. Sonny saw her eyes go full of tears as the first bite of hot chile burned her mouth. He expected a cry, a protest, but she only sniffed, touched her napkin to her nose and said, “Excellent.”

  She had spunk. She intended to enjoy. Sonny dug into his huevos rancheros. He ripped two smaller pieces from his tortillas, making little spoons with which to pick up the eggs, potatoes, beans, and chile. He glanced at the blonde and saw her cut gingerly with a fork into the food.

  Like this, Sonny wanted to tell her. Here in New Mexico we are so rich that we use a new spoon for each bite we take. A piece of tortilla with which we scoop up the food. But he said nothing. Let it be, he said to himself.

  He looked out the window. Across the way was Old Town, La Plaza Vieja. From this spot, or one close to it, the Mexicanos of Old Town had seen the Okies and other displaced people of the Dust Bowl era travel west to the promise of California. Elfego Baca, too, sat here with his amigos and watched the westward migration of the poor. Watched displaced farmers, factory workers, those who built railroads and highways, women with families to feed, all colors and all kinds of workers, leaving the old to create the new in California.

  Elfego Baca had also been witness to the migration west after World War II. The greatest boom the country ever experienced, the greatest change for New Mexico. The city was a migration point on the east-west road across the southern belly of the country, the oasis where travelers paused to fill their water bags and bellies.

  Change came, new colors, new sounds, new threads, and the blanket extended itself to the foothills of the Sandias to cover the houses of gringos, south into the valley to cover the homes of the old Atrisco Land Grant settlers, north into the valley where the new estates of the ricos were being built. The cloth was the new society, a green oasis with cottonwoods fed by Río Grande water.

  Sonny sniffed, blew his nose, smacked his lips, and felt the sting of the hot green chile, wiped the tears from his eyes. Great! The duende spirit of the Río Grande lived in the green chile. And in the red. Comida sin chile no es comida, his father always said.

  Heat waves danced on the hot asphalt of Central Avenue. Across the road lay Duran’s Pharmacy, which also served a hot chile verde stew with homemade tortillas. Next to it a summer-silent Manzano Day School brooded in the morning heat.

  In the Old Town Plaza the summer tourists were already arriving to buy turquoise jewelry, paintings, arts and crafts, baskets, perfumes, candles, every imaginable Nuevo Mexicano item available. They would go to the nearby restaurants to eat New Mexican food, and write home about the hot chile that “blew them out.” They would walk under the portal on the east side of the plaza and look at the handmade jewelry the vendors displayed, escaping the June heat for a moment in the shade.

  They would enter the San Felipe de Neri Church, the church of the parishioners of Old Town, take pictures in the courtyard, take pictures in the kiosk of the plaza. Although many of the old families still lived in the community, Old Town was a thriving tourist museum that catered to the visitors, sold bits and pieces of the many-colored cloth, trinkets for those who browsed through on a hot summer day.

  Frank Dominic wanted to change all this by building canals from downtown to Old Town. Sonny couldn’t picture Venetian boats rowing across Central to Old Town. Venetian boats loaded with mariachi groups serenading the tourists who came shopping? Ah, the developers had gotten out of hand.

  He looked out into the bright glare outside, and the traffic moving as if in a dream. He blew his nose again.

  “Good chile,” he said to the woman in blue. She was perspiring.

  “I love hot chile.” She smiled. “Really hot.”

  I bet, Sonny nodded, touched his napkin to his eyes. He didn’t know what was gnawing at him. Why couldn’t he tell this well-dressed and looking-for-excitement-in-funky-Alburquerque woman sitting across from him that he’d love to show her Old Town, the nooks and crannies the tourists didn’t know? Nooks and crannies, yeah.

  Because I have to see Lorenza. I promised Rita, he thought, and rose. “Enjoy yourself,” he said to the blonde.

  “I’ll try,” she whispered, blotting her lips. “Hot chile.”

  “Yeah,” he said, moving to the cash register to pay his bill.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like blondes?” Rosa whispered as she rang up the register and gave him change.

  “I’m not the right ranchero,” Sonny said lamely.

  “Pendejo,” Rosa chastised him.

  He glanced one more time at the woman. That’s life, he thought and borrowed the phone to call Lorenza. Yes, she was home and she was free. He could come by for coffee.

  He drove north on Río Grande, across the new Alameda Bridge and to Corrales. Once an agricultural community like the North Valley, the village was now a bedroom community for professionals who worked in the city. A few continued farming. There were fine apple orchards left, but more and more the place was becoming gentrified by those who could afford the prices of expensive real estate and custom-built adobe homes.

  Lorenza Villa lived in a modest adobe home at the edge of the river bosque. Sonny knew she had been married, had two kids, both grown, but he didn’t know much more. She did her thing, healing people, and kept pretty much to herself. It had been a year, Sonny guessed, since he had last seen her. He and Rita ran into her at the KiMo Theatre at a play.

  The thing Sonny always remembered about her was her eyes. They were dark, intense, no doubt the eyes of a woman who could see into other realities, but each eye seemed to belong to a different person. It wasn’t a disfigurement, she wasn’t cross-eyed, just a nuance of difference from one to the other.

  When she opened the door, she smiled and stepped out to greet him, taking his hand in hers. Her grip was firm, warm.

  “Sonny, I’m glad to see you. Come in.”

  She turned and led him into a small living area brightly done in Mexican prints and paintings. She was dressed in a white cotton gown, the edges embroidered with bright flower designs. Oaxaca, Sonny guessed. She was barefoot.

  “Siéntate,” she said, pointing to a comfortable easy chair. “Café?”

  “Gracias,” Sonny said, nodding. He watched her move to the kitchen counter, her walk graceful. She was a handsome woman, dark like Rita, long, raven-black hair falling over her shoulders, the high Indian cheekbones, full lips, full bodied. Not slim like the woman in blue. A trickster woman, Sonny figured, and a very good-looking one. Dark and lovely as a Río Grande Nefertiti. There was Moorish blood lapping at the banks of the river.

  “How’s Rita?”

  “Good. Saw her last night. She suggested—”

  “She called me.” Lorenza smiled as she returned with coffee. “She’s concerned.…”

  “Right.” Sonny relaxed. “So here I am.” He smiled at her, letting his eyes take in her beauty. What a woman, Sonny thought. But how can she help me if I feel so attracted? Try to get the cabrón out of you!
he chided himself.

  “What are you thinking?” Lorenza asked.

  He shook his head. “Nada.” He lied.

  “Sometimes talking helps,” Lorenza said and sipped her coffee.

  “Yeah. Sure. Well, to tell the truth, Rita thinks I have susto. From Gloria.…”

  “You saw her body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah,” Lorenza whispered, and Sonny felt drawn to her eyes. She was looking at him as if two different people were looking at him. Then she rose and walked to the window.

  “The morning is beautiful. I was up to see the sunrise,” she said.

  Sonny followed her gaze, and in the brush of the river bosque he caught sight of a shadow. The movement became a form, a river coyote. Two more appeared, pausing to look toward the house.

  Poised by the window, Lorenza looked like she might disappear into the shining sunlight, her white dress radiating light, her long, black hair glistening with light. Sonny wondered if she knew about don Eliseo’s Señores y Señoras de la Luz. Was she becoming one? Was that the secret of the curandera?

  “The coyotes watch over you,” she whispered.

  He was puzzled.

  “Your animal spirit,” she said, “watches over you.”

  He got up and went to stand beside her. The sun coming through the window was dazzling, and he wanted a better look at the coyotes.

  “River coyotes,” he said.

  “When the animal spirit appears, it means they come to help,” she said, turning to look at him, her eyes fixing him with a stare that held him immobile. “It implies danger.…”

  She brushed past him and he caught a scent of her perfume, deep, like the aromatic piñon tree after a rainstorm, with other pleasant herbs, perhaps manzanilla … the scent of light, the warm comforting aroma of sunlight on her body.

  Watching the coyotes, he remembered a story his father told. A man had been haunted by a coyote that came at night to prowl around the house. For months the man was allowed no sleep, and the man’s rifle was useless against the ghostly coyote. Finally he etched a cross on a bullet. He took it to the priest and had it blessed. That night he shot the coyote, and in the morning he found spots of blood. He called his neighbors, and they followed the trail of blood to the house of an old woman who lived in the hills. They found her dead from a bullet wound.