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

  “Hey Sonny!” Concha called as Sonny got out of the truck. She gave him a big abrazo. “How you been, cutie?”

  “Come and have a drink,” don Toto said. Don Toto kept one of the oldest vineyards in the valley, luscious grapes that had been brought by the first settlers and cultivated for centuries in the valley. He still pressed his own grapes and made his own wine.

  “Whew, you been castrating goats, Sonny?” don Eliseo said, sniffing the air and looking toward the truck.

  “Híjola,” Concha said, scrunching her nose. “Smells awful.”

  “Somebody cut the balls off a goat and hung them on Rita’s porch,” Sonny answered and motioned to the back of the truck.

  The old man frowned. Concha made the sign of the cross.

  “What do I do?”

  “Burn them,” don Eliseo said and hobbled to the truck. “Got a flashlight?”

  Sonny took a flashlight from his glove compartment and shone it on the wet mess in the box.

  “Híjola, they smell,” don Eliseo said. He put on the gloves Sonny had used. “Mira.” He pointed. “Red hair. It was an old red goat.”

  “Brujas,” Concha whispered. “Why Rita?”

  “It’s a warning. Not for Rita,” don Eliseo said. “For Sonny.”

  “I want the cabrones who did this,” Sonny said in anger.

  “Then you need to find an old, red goat that is having trouble walking,” don Eliseo replied.

  “Yeah, but a lot of gente keep goats and sheep in their backyards,” don Toto said.

  Don Eliseo picked up the cardboard box with the mess, returned to his fire, and dropped the box into the coals. Then the gloves. “Put some wood on that, compadre. Burn away the evil.”

  Don Toto piled dry kindling on the fire and it rose quickly into a bonfire.

  “En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo,” Concha intoned.

  “It’s brujeria,” don Eliseo said.

  Sonny shook his head. No, it had to be just a cheap, dirty prank meant to frighten Rita, not a curse.

  “Brujas malas,” Concha said. They had seen the signs all summer, and just recently the strange lights in the bosque, a whining sound, and the morning after they found the burned grass in Toto’s field. Something evil had come to stalk the valley.

  Sonny rubbed his stomach. A warning, don Eliseo had said. Was it a prank? Did they plan to cut his balls off next? Or maybe they already had, symbolically, if his impotence was a curse, as don Eliseo had said.

  “Who?” Sonny asked.

  Don Eliseo’s eyes glowed in the flames as he looked at Sonny. “The same people who killed your prima. You’re getting too close.”

  Don Toto handed Sonny the bottle of homemade wine. He drank, and the sweet taste washed away the bitterness. He felt tired and angry. The hocus-pocus was unsettling.

  “Nothing we can do tonight. Get some rest,” don Eliseo said. “You need to rest, get this out of your mind.”

  “You’re right.”

  “We’ll look around for that goat,” the old man said. “If we find the goat, we find the brujas. Let us help.”

  “Sure,” Concha assured him, “we know the valley. We’ll find the cabrones who played this dirty trick.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry, Sonny,” don Toto added.

  Sonny was overcome with their kindness. They knew he was stressed out, and they were trying to help as best they could.

  “How about a ball game?” he said with a wink in gratitude. “Tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, that’s great!” Concha shouted and kissed him.

  “You sure?” Don Eliseo asked.

  “Hey, we’ve been talking about going all summer. You said I need to kick back.”

  “All right!” Don Toto gave him a high five.

  “We’ll be ready,” Concha said.

  Sonny thanked them, said good night, and walked across the street to his house. He flopped on the bed, drained of energy. There was a slight ache in his foot. He slept, but the night was full of nightmares: images of the Zia sign, which became the rising sun of Japan. Voices spoke in dialects he couldn’t understand, and a large, threatening figure of a dark raven flew down, eclipsing the sun, turning light to darkness, beating Sonny to the ground. Four dark spirits danced around him, rattling gourds and waving raven feathers. They tied him to the ground, spreading his limbs in the four directions. One cut with a scalpel, a bloody circle around his navel, then four lines. The last line went straight down to his penis, a faint pain throbbed between his legs, blood oozed, then a baby cried, protesting the pain of the circumcision, and the pale, ghostlike figure of Gloria Dominic picked up the bleeding child and cradled it in her arms.

  Sonny awoke bathed in sweat, gasping for breath. He could hear the creaking fan of the air conditioner pushing only dry, hot air through the room. Water line must be plugged. He looked at his watch. Nearly noon.

  “Santo día,” Sonny whispered, tossing aside the tangled sheets. “I slept late,” he chided himself. No, not slept, struggled through the weird nightmares. He thought of going for a jog, but he felt listless, lethargic. And besides, the sun was already hot in the noonday sky.

  He went to shower and stood underneath the cold water for some time. Then he shaved, dressed, and called Ruth Jamison. He needed to know if the Dunn and Bradstreet report on Akira Morino was ready. “Yes,” she said, “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  As Sonny drove downtown, he went over what he already knew about Morino. The Japanese high-tech industrialist had been in the city about four months. He had rented the top suite of the Hyatt, a downtown hotel. His social life was full of luncheons with leaders from the business sector, the governor, the local politicians, senators, and congressmen. Evenings he often attended social events with Her Honor, the mayor. They were seen together at City Symphony concerts, plays, lectures at the university.

  “It’s good business,” Marisa Martinez told the press. “Intel in Rio Rancho makes the chips, and we make the flat panel display for computers. It’s my job to show him what our city has to offer. We have a research center shared by the university and Sandia Labs. We can offer any new company a relationship to one of the best labs in the country. I have proposed to the city council a two-billion-dollar industrial revenue bond, a tax break on corporate state income taxes, and environmental and construction permits. We also have the state training fund. Through T-VI we can train workers faster than any other city in the country, including Rio Rancho.”

  “What about the water to run these plants?” one reporter had asked. “Intel is already drying up the water table. The people in Corrales don’t like what’s happening. Our own state engineer warned us our water table is falling. The underground supply is good only for twenty years.”

  “We have the water,” Her Honor responded. “That is, if we can talk Frank Dominic out of his crazy plan to build canals.”

  Frank Dominic had been interested in Akira Morino’s money when he first hit Alburquerque, but Dominic’s plan was to channel the Río Grande into canals that would be lined with gambling casinos. He viewed Morino’s high-tech plant as peanuts compared to his project.

  Dominic had enough pull to have a special session of the state legislature convened in May, but much to everyone’s surprise, it voted against the casino bill for the city. Conservative Republicans joined the Little Texas cowboy legislators from the southeast corner of the state in torpedoing the gambling bill. Suddenly the worm had turned on Dominic’s bandwagon. Lawsuits against Dominic’s corporation, which was buying Río Grande water rights, began to hit the courts, and Dominic’s grand plan of building a Venice on the Río Grande ground to a standstill.

  The Dunn and Bradstreet financial report did surprise Sonny. It turned out Morino was something of a maverick. He didn’t play by Japanese team rules. He was practicing takeovers of weak industries in a Japanese financial culture that didn’t prize the individualist, and the sad part was the gambles hadn’t paid off. The Japanese economy was
sliding into a recession. Akira Morino was in hot water back home.

  “Sounds like he’s on the verge of being fired by his board,” Ruth said as she put the report in front of Sonny,

  “He’s overextended,” Sonny acknowledged as he read.

  The evidence was clear, the local news reporters just hadn’t bothered to dig it up. Akira Morino was holding on by a thread as chairman of the board. He was on the verge of being forced out by his own people. That’s why he had shown up in Alburquerque, to try a grand-slam play. If he could get the city to donate the land for a new plant and bonds to build it, he could recoup his status back home. But could he deliver?

  “He did the same thing in Mexico.” Ruth pointed at the article from El Diario.

  Morino had explored financial possibilities in Mexico, but nothing had worked for him. The blurred photos showed Morino standing on the steps of Los Pinos, next to the president of Mexico. Other photos showed him at Bellas Artes, attending the Mexico City Symphony and other social events, always with an attractive woman at his side.

  “Looks like he has a taste for beautiful Mexican women, too,” Sonny said. “Thanks, Ruth, you’re an angel.” He scooped up the articles and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Are you going to the papers?” Ruth asked.

  “Not yet.” Sonny winked.

  Outside the library, Sonny sniffed the air. There was a hint of rain as clouds struggled to rise over the Sandias. A front was coming in from the south. The approaching summer monsoon season was flirting with the Río Grande valley. Perhaps out on the eastern llano the quenching rains had begun. But they needed more energy, more Gulf humidity to create the towering thundershower clouds that would spawn the summer rains.

  He dialed Rita. She was at the restaurant. She had slept peacefully. No, there was nothing out of the ordinary at home or at work.

  “How about taking another evening off?” he asked. “Come watch the Dukes. I promised don Eliseo and his gang.” She agreed.

  Then he called Howard. “Howie, baby, the Dukes are playing. Let’s take a night off.”

  “You’re on,” Howard answered. “El Gallo’s pitching.”

  “And Seattle has Maloney, the heavy bat.”

  “Sounds like mano a mano.”

  “Ladies’ night,” Sonny said.

  “Good idea. Marie’s complaining I don’t take her out often enough. Meet you at the beer counter.”

  “I’m bringing Snap, Crackle, and Pop.”

  Howard laughed. “Sounds like fun.”

  Sonny dialed his mother. “Sonny, Mando, I’m not home,” the message on the answering machine began. There was a pause, then, “Max and I are looking at houses. Come to dinner Sunday.” She sounded happy.

  “Looking at houses?” Sonny exclaimed. “She’s got a house! She doesn’t need a house!” With Max? Wasn’t she happy? He hadn’t seen her since Gloria’s funeral. Damn, I gotta see her more often, he blamed himself. Not right for a son not to visit his mother.

  He drove home, climbed to the roof, and unclogged the air conditioner’s water line. Then he begin to read through the thick file Ruth had collected on Akira Morino. When the house cooled off, he fell asleep, and when he awakened, he felt refreshed. Last night’s images had not haunted his afternoon nap.

  He showered, grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a Dukes shirt and kept telling himself that the game would be good for him. The case had ground to a standstill; his leads had all come up empty. Or was it him? Had he been beaten? Gloria’s ghost cried for revenge, but he didn’t know where to turn.

  In the meantime he felt a tiredness in his bones. He knew he needed a break. He put on the jeans and T-shirt, a light windbreaker, and instead of boots, his jogging shoes.

  Yeah, he thought as he stepped outside, this’ll do me good. Do us all good.

  “Hey, Sonny boy!” Concha called from across the street where she and Toto sat with don Eliseo. “We’re ready!”

  They came hurrying across the street. Three duendes dressed in baseball caps, don Toto wearing an old third-base glove, Concha swinging a cracked, taped Louisville Slugger, don Eliseo carrying his faded Dukes banner.

  “Órale!” Toto shouted. “Vamos a wachar los Duques!”

  “I love El Gallo,” Concha cried. “Almost as much as you.” She greeted Sonny with a kiss. “How do I look?”

  She was wearing a striped baseball shirt, something Sonny guessed she must have picked up in one of her trips to the North Fourth Goodwill store. She had touched up her bright lipstick—candy apple red, she called it—and her falsies were a little skewed to the left, but they all whistled and told her she looked great.

  “Like a Christmas tamale,” don Toto complimented her.

  “Oh, honey”—she pinched his cheek—“you’re a real horny toad.”

  Don Eliseo and don Toto helped Concha into the cab, and they jumped in the back.

  “Vamos!” they shouted as Sonny shot out of the driveway. “Ajua!”

  Last summer Sonny had taken them to a couple of games. They had bought caps, “I Love the Dukes” buttons, and pennants. Sonny enjoyed watching them have fun.

  Don Eliseo’s sons showed up once in a while to check on the old man, and sometimes they took him to Sunday dinner at their homes, but the old man really didn’t enjoy it.

  “It’s like they’re not my sons anymore,” he had confided in Sonny. “They don’t speak Spanish, they live up in the Heights, their gringa wives just don’t cook our food. No chile verde, no frijoles, nada.”

  Sonny understood. The boys had gotten educated and left the valley, married Anglo women, joined the great American dream in a Northeast Heights homogenized culture. It was happening all over, the change to an Anglo lifestyle, attention to work and green lawns on the weekend, kids in soccer or music lessons. In the process they forgot their Spanish language, grew ashamed of the old traditions, and they sure as hell didn’t farm anymore. When they looked at their father’s field of corn and vegetables, they wondered why the old man bothered.

  They stopped by Toto’s so he could refill his wine bottle, and by the time they picked up Rita, Sonny knew they were going to be late for the opening pitch. What the hell, it was summer and they were operating on Chicano time. The point was to enjoy.

  “Hi, Rita!” they called.

  “Hey Rita, how’s it going?” Concha asked, moving so Rita could sit next to Sonny. “How’s your tacos?”

  “Hot as ever.” Rita smiled.

  “Sit back here with us.” Toto leered. “We’ll show you a good time!”

  “Sorry, don Toto, but I have a date,” Rita replied. She knew don Toto’s reputation, and she handled him as courteously as possible.

  “Is Sonny scoring any points? Heard he was striking out,” Concha needled.

  “Sonny never strikes out,” Rita replied seductively moving close to Sonny and kissing him on the cheek. “Best batter in town.”

  “Híjola!” Concha shouted out the window. “Did you hear that? Batter up!”

  “My mom’s looking for a house,” he told Rita as they drove. “With Max.”

  “Good,” Rita answered.

  “Good?” He glanced at her. Leave it to the women to stick together. “She has a house.”

  “Women need to fly from their nests sometimes,” Rita suggested.

  “Leave the gallinero,” Concha added, grinning. “Especially when there’s a new gallo in town.”

  “Yeah,” Sonny mused.

  His mother flying from her nest. He hadn’t thought of the possibility. Now it was there, one more factor that he felt had to do with the dissolution of his family. Maybe she was lonely and he just hadn’t sensed it. And there was nothing he could do about it. He had called her to invite her to the game, but where else had he taken her all summer? Just to Rita’s to eat a couple of times. Did he expect her to wait for him and Mando to come around once or twice a month and be satisfied? Ah, maybe this thing with Max was for the best. He was nice enough. She needed company. />
  The June evening was perfect, shirtsleeve weather that lingered as the sun sank in the west and coolness tinged the air. The bright stadium lights illumined the eager fans. They had come to see if the Duke’s pitcher could hold the line on the Seattle batters. Howard and Marie were waiting at the beer counter.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Sonny apologized.

  “Hey no problem. We’re enjoying the beer.”

  “You know don Eliseo.…”

  “Buenas tardes.” Howard shook the old man’s hand.

  “Concha.…”

  “Hi, cutie. This your wife?”

  “Yes, this is Marie.”

  “Hey, you’re real good-looking.”

  “Morenita de mi corazón.” Toto took Marie’s hand and kissed it gallantly.

  “This is don Toto,” Sonny said.

  “Watch your wife around him,” Concha whispered to Howard. “Come on, Sonny, buy us a beer.”

  “Okay, order up,” Sonny said, and they loaded up with the large cups of beer, hot dogs, and peanuts, then went tottering down the aisle looking for their seats.

  “Down in front,” someone behind them complained as they settled noisily into their seats.

  “Up yours!” Concha replied.

  “Shh.” Don Eliseo tugged at her. “Have respeto.”

  “Respeto for gorillas? He’s probably escaped from the zoo.”

  Those around them laughed as the white-haired lady with the thick glasses and arms loaded with beer, hot dogs, and peanuts put the irate fan in his place.

  Concha waved her pennant. “Come on, Dukes! Score a touchdown!” More laughter.

  “It’s base-boll,” Toto said, slipped out his bottle of wine, and sipped. He wasn’t a beer man. Besides, his own wine suited him fine.

  “How about we go dancing after the game?” he said to Marie.