Jemez Spring

by Rudolfo Anaya

  The sun was the symbol and the source of the universal light, and New Mexicans were a people of the light. The old people understood light was time, and time was to be shared with family and friends.

  The curves of the road entering Jemez Springs are low-rider territory, Sonny thought. That’s why he was thinking about the South Valley homies. Good friends, good times. The old houses of the village spoke of a time gone by, a history those who hurried would never know.

  But Sonny felt the urgency to get to the Bath House and talk to Augie. What Naomi had told him made sense. Raven had returned and was up to dirty business. But a bomb on the Valle Grande? An Al Qaeda prisoner? A dead governor? How in the hell did it all tie together? Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was the unraveling of Sonny’s world that Raven was after on the first day of spring. The path had already taken many turns. Perhaps it was just about to take more, all plotted by Raven.

  Now something else was ticking in his thoughts, what Naomi said, about his stolen heart. Yes, he felt the vacuum, the emptiness. Not because Rita could not yet lie at his side—he could wait; it was her well-being that mattered to him—but because something he couldn’t name had been lost deep inside, in recesses even he could not enter, and therefore could not know. If his heart was stolen, who had it?

  In his dreams he heard the whispers of lost souls, voices he couldn’t identify. Like the ancient mariner with the albatross tied around his neck, he felt the weight of the dreams. Try as he might, he had not been able to enter those dreams.

  “What next?” he asked Naomi.

  “Depends on Augie—” She paused. “I don’t know what he wants.”

  “You need a ride back?”

  “Bear will come for me. I’m his girl now.”

  She looked at him. It was obvious he was hurting, and she might be able to help.

  “You want to know who stole your heart?”

  Sonny shrugged. It wasn’t like him to ask for help, but she had touched the sense of loss he felt in his dreams. She also knew something of the shaman way.

  “You have a place here?” she asked.

  He pointed to a cabin by the river. “The one with the apple trees.”

  “I’ll wait there. If that’s okay.”

  “Sure. Its open.”

  “Be careful with Augie,” she said. “He’s as deep in this as anyone.”

  Sonny nodded. A sense of relief made his shoulders relax. Maybe there was a reason she had come back into his life. Maybe she had come to help.

  The old village homes always reminded Sonny of a time past, a village he had known in another life, perhaps the small towns south of Isleta, villages he had visited with his grandfather as a child, villages where his grandfather knew the people: Los Lentes, Los Lunas, Tome, Peralta, Los Chavez, Casa Colorada, Jarales, Las Nutrias, Sabinal, La Joya. La Joya, his mother’s birthplace. The history of Rio Abajo was written in the blood and sweat of the Mexicanos and genízaros of those pueblos.

  Each village in the state lay comforted and enveloped in its own mystique, its own history, its own ambience of time, space, and people interacting. The movement of the sun and its light transformed each town’s geography into sacred space, a circle the people called home. That’s what drew tourists to the state, a feeling of old-world tranquility, villages caught in a time warp.

  The Mexicanos had learned from the Pueblo Indians by attending their fiestas. The early Hispanos learned the languages of the vecinos: Tiwa, Towa, Keres, Apache, Navajo. The Pueblos learned Spanish, and thus business was conducted. Young Hispanos going to a dance at the pueblo liked to flirt with the young Inditas, and it helped if they knew the language.

  The women learned herbs and remedies the Pueblos had been using for hundreds of years. A bruja could pierce a man’s knee with a stone. It helped if the bruja’s victim knew a little Keres so he could get the help of a medicine man. Only he could pull out the stone and make the patient well.

  The Catholicism of Spain with all its mystery entered the circle of the Pueblos. The statues of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the saints became ancestors to be venerated. During feast days the Pueblo men erected a choza, an arbor of green branches. Placed in the plaza during the summer dances, the choza protected the altar on which were placed the statues of La Virgen and the pueblo’s patron saint. Elders sat in folding chairs on either side of the altar. The dancers and guests entered to pay their respects to the santo and to sprinkle corn meal.

  Both the Pueblo way and the Catholic way were paths of the sacred, for as long as men and women could pray and believe in its efficacy, dance, beat the drums, and sing, the ceremonial song of life would continue.

  That’s the way it was in Jemez Springs where the whispering of the spirits on the mesas flowed down the imposing cliffs to greet the whispering waters of the river, the Jemez River, no more than a creek by foreign measure, but a river to the natives, a blessing of life-giving water washing down from the high peaks, flowing from waters that could not be seen.

  The East Fork headwaters bubbled up from the Valles Caldera, the vast sunken valley of the collapsed volcano. That stream met the San Antonio Creek and became the Jemez River. All rivers, big and small, take their life from the waters that cannot be seen but in time became visible, and thus spirit moved into matter and renewed the life of the paisanos.

  The morning sun shone radiant on the face of the west cliff. This was the time of the Lords and Ladies of the Light, the dancing streams of light fathered by the Zia Sun. Los Señores y Señoras de la Luz descended to bless the earth.

  In the afternoon the setting sun christened the carmine face of the east mesa. Sonny had sat many an afternoon watching the evening light awaken the kachinas that lined the cliffside, images cut by the centuries into the rock face. Light and water and time flowed through the narrow valley, and it was all he needed to know of the beauty of the Universal Creation.

  On the “dog dream” phenomenon the village was split into factions, the believers and nonbelievers. The Zen Center had held a symposium in its new building. The Zen of Dog Dreams. Mostly believers from California had attended. The others preferred to discuss the question over a cold beer at Los Ojos Cantina.

  Today the sense of time flowing into the canyon was disrupted by the presence of police cars. Sonny stopped at the roadblock, and a state cop peered in.

  “Sonny Baca?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Drive into the Bath House parking lot. Check in with Captain Martinez. He’s expecting you.”

  Sonny nodded and drove on, waving at JoJo on the road, then turning into the village plaza. He parked in front of the library. The Bath House was cordoned off as a police scene. A village crowd had gathered at the yellow tape. Sonny took note of the state police helicopter parked in the open space beyond.

  He picked up Chica, and he and Naomi made their way through the crowd. Friends in the crowd called hello. The Merheges, Dave and Fran, Ron and Dee, Melvin and Noni. The latter had been his vecinos since he bought the house in Jemez Springs, and in New Mexico a good vecino ranked right up there with familia. You could be a padrino, have good compadres, marry off your best friend, baptize a baby, and thus spread the roots of the compadre/comadre relationships, extend la familia, and thus be content to call many your primos. But compadres drifted, sometimes moved far away to work, following the old dream to sunny California, or Denver, or the burgeoning cities of the Arizona desert. On the other hand, a good vecino lived next door, the friendship priceless. Melvin had been that for Sonny, teaching him by example the village ways, always lending a helping hand.

  Sonny waved back, gave the thumbs-up signal. An irritated Augie Martinez was waiting at the Bath House door.

  “Let them through!” he called to the officer at the police tape. The young man smiled and lifted the ribbon for Sonny and Naomi to pass.

  “About time,” he said. “I see you brought a friend.”

  Augie had played football for Santa Fe High, Sonny remembered. A straig
ht arrow who once turned in his teammates for breaking curfew. After that the kids called him Rata.

  Sonny nodded at the television vans parked along the road. “I see you have company.”

  “Goddamn news media. I haven’t told them anything. I heard one of the stations is flying in a cameraman. They plan to parachute him into the Valle. In the meantime, you’re it. Come inside.”

  He led them into the Bath House. People had been using the hot mineral water of the nearby spring for centuries. Those in pain or those just looking for pleasure could soak in the tubs filled with super-hot water.

  Sonny knew the healing power in the water. He had spent three months in a wheelchair, crippled by Stammer’s electric charge, and when he regained the use of his legs he had headed for the hot springs of the mountain.

  He spent cold January afternoons up at Spence Spring sitting in the warm water gurgling out of the ojito, the mist rising in winter evenings as snow fell softly and coated the towering ponderosa pines. January slipped into February and more and more bare-breasted ladies and their beer-drinking friends began to show up. Sonny shied away from the boisterous crowds that flocked to the spring. He preferred being alone. He could find the solitude he sought by using the Bath House. The springs of the mountain were free, but they grew busier and louder as the warm spring weather canopied the mountain. He had to pay to use the tubs in the Bath House, but here he soaked in silence, allowing the water to go deep into the muscles and nerves, unwinding the stiffness from those months in the wheelchair.

  L’agua cura, the old people used to say. Water cures. Con el favor de Dios, l’agua cura.

  The reception room was empty. “You wait here,” Augie ordered Naomi.

  She shrugged, sat in a chair, and picked up a magazine. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said to Sonny.

  Augie spun around, glared at her, then waved her off.

  “What the hell does she know?” he said as he led Sonny down the steps into the room that held the cubicles, a concrete bathtub in each.

  “We haven’t let the news media in,” Augie said, pulling aside the curtain of one of the cubicles. Sonny peered in. The man in the tub was a mass of wrinkled flesh, a large dark bruise over his right eye.

  Sonny winced. “How long has he been in the water?”

  “The Crime Lab people will tell us. I guess since around twelve A.M.”

  Sonny looked at the floor. “He was dragged in.”

  “I figure,” Augie replied.

  Sonny nodded. So the governor hadn’t come to take a hot bath. Somebody planned his death.

  “Where did you last see him?”

  “At the bar. I left Los Ojos at around ten. He stayed. There were five university professors, foreigners, at the bar. He got to talking to them. Books, stuff like that.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “At Los Ojos.”

  “Foreigners in Jemez Springs?”

  “They’re visiting with Ben Chávez. The writer. He’s got a house down the road. They study his work. And Momaday. They love the whole Indian/Chicano thing.”

  “Thing,” Sonny whispered. So the writers and the cultures they wrote about were things.

  “Have you talked to them?”

  “Yeah. They don’t know diddley.”

  “Who found the governor?”

  “The receptionist. She called the village marshal and he called me. I have her in custody—just so she doesn’t talk.”

  “What time?”

  “Around nine.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Look, Sonny, you let me ask the questions. Right now only a few of us know the governor’s dead, and it stays that way till I talk to my superiors.”

  “Superiors?”

  “The chief—Ah, he’s out of town. On his way back. In the meantime I’m in charge.”

  Sonny nodded. Augie hadn’t meant the chief when he said superiors. So who was he reporting to?

  “We don’t want panic. The news people already know there’s something on the mountain. Some Indians were up there, doing some kind of ceremony or other. They came down and spread the word.”

  Bear knew. At Red Rocks he, or one of his friends, had mentioned a bomb. Bear and Naomi knew a lot.

  “Look, people are going to panic. I have instructions not to release news of the governor’s death until—you know, one thing at a time.”

  Who killed the governor? Sonny wondered. Why? In the face of death it was best to be philosophical. If possible.

  He looked at the wrinkled body floating in the water.

  “He looks like one of those wrinkled Chinese dogs. What are they called?”

  “Shar Pei.”

  “Shard Pee?”

  “No, Shar—”

  “Never mind. Why did you leave him in the water?”

  “Our forensics unit broke down in La Cueva. He can’t be moved until they get here.”

  “Yeah, but he’s just cooking away.”

  The pink-fleshed governor looked well done. His fish eyes stared up at the ceiling where the mineral-laced humidity in the room gathered in globules, droplets that from time to time splashed down. Sonny dipped a finger into the water. It was still warm. Had someone been running the hot water from time to time to keep the governor cooking?

  “Don’t look like the governor—”

  “It’s him all right.”

  Sonny peered again then at the patch of pubic fur, which swayed like seaweed, revealing with each gentle roll a small, shrunken stub.

  “Small. Maybe because it’s shriveled?”

  “I never paid attention.”

  “How does a guy with such a small, you know, get to be governor?”

  “Money.”

  “Money talks.”

  “Yeah. Besides, they don’t measure your private parts when you run for office.”

  “So, what do you have?”

  “This.” Augie pointed at the small shelf on the wall, which held four raven feathers. Raven’s calling card.

  “Raven.”

  “That’s why we called you. He leaves the four feathers, doesn’t he?”

  Sonny nodded.

  “There’s four more up at the Thing on the Valle.”

  Why would Raven murder the governor? Create chaos in state government? Hardly. State government was always in chaos. A few would miss the governor, but the karmic wheel of the bureaucrats would go on grinding, the lieutenant governor, someone no one ever remembered, would have a few months in the limelight, and the poor would go on being taxed.

  “This is going to be a gold mine for the village,” Augie said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Damn, Sonny. The business association can get a lot of mileage out of this. Think of the publicity this is going to give Jemez Springs. They can run newspaper ads, plaster billboards on the highway. This is bigger than Fort Sumner bragging Billy the Kid is buried there. Visitors, the curious, the psychotic, and the sick would come to bathe in the Governor’s Tub. Yeah, call it the Governor’s Tub.”

  And the university will offer a political science class on the effects of a governor drowning while in office, thought Sonny. A folklorist would suggest La Llorona killed the governor, and several Ph.D. dissertations would be written on the crying woman’s pathological hatred of male authority figures.

  “We haven’t had a governor killed in office in a long time,” Augie continued.

  “Not since Governor Bent,” Sonny said. In 1847 Indians from Taos Pueblo and Mexicans still loyal to Mexico had attacked the governor and killed him. The gringo occupation had not come without resistance from the natives.

  “Believe me, the death of a governor by drowning in a tub in a small town in New Mexico could be very lucrative. Maybe they can get Momaday to write a melodrama. He lives down the street.”

  Sonny stepped back and looked around the room. He walked past the other tubs to the end. Everything appeared in place.

  In this society even death can
be lucrative, the old man said.

  I thought you were asleep?

  The commotion woke me.

  You agreeing with Augie?

  Ni tonto. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him.

  And Raven?

  Why would Raven kill the governor?

  “Yeah,” Sonny cleared his throat. “Why?”

  “What?”

  Sonny looked at Augie. “What if it was an accident? He’s had a few drinks, comes in to take a bath, trips …”

  “Then why the four feathers? The chief agrees. It’s Raven.”

  “Why would the governor come into the Bath House with Raven?”

  “Naomi. He had the hots for Naomi.”

  “You think—”

  “Hell, Sonny, things will play out. If she was in on this it’s just a matter of time. Look, she’s been running around with a group of Indians—they call themselves Green Indians. Preserving their water rights and all that. Bunch of troublemakers is what they are.”

  Sonny shook his head. Naomi was worldly wise, but she sure as hell wasn’t into luring the governor to his death.

  “Who else was at the bar last night?”

  “Local yokels. But around closing time only the professors were left.”

  “Let’s talk to them.”

  “Ah, they don’t know shit. The real prize is the Al Qaeda operative I’ve got prisoner. That’s a feather in my cap.”

  “Have you questioned him?”

  “I’ll let the FBI do that. Put two and two together, Sonny. Raven needs hired guns. He hires the Al Qaeda to kill the governor—”

  “Why would the governor trust someone he doesn’t know?”

  “I think the terrorist offered information on the plot to wipe out Los Alamos. The governor followed him here where Raven was waiting. Equals four.”

  No, not four, not yet, Sonny thought.

  Right, the old man cautioned Sonny.

  “Where’s the town marshal now?”

  “He’s pissed off. I took over and put a clamp on everything. Nothing gets out unless I say so.”

  Sonny felt an irritation creeping into his bloodstream. He turned and walked back into the reception area.