Jemez Spring

by Rudolfo Anaya

  Naomi had returned home and found the pueblo again, the circle of her people, and the man she loved. With luck, she might have etched her final revelation onto the fat, round belly of one of her pots, a marriage bowl molded from Jemez Mountain clay on whose shiny surface would be etched the same signs engraved on the Zia Stone. That’s how close she had come to understanding what life was all about, the knowledge of the old ones who said you don’t have to travel the world to understand the soul’s journey and how it came to have the face of your flesh.

  Beneath the good times and the journey into the world of white people, there beat in her heart a silent message from the past. This is Mother Earth, this is Father Sky, this is the Sacred Water, here in our circle we keep the ceremonies of harmony.

  If justice be trusted, Augie would get his when the whole mess was exposed. Dominic would need a scapegoat. The water cartel would expose him, throw him to the mercy of the court as they tried to save themselves. Or, more likely, he would be made to disappear, a victim of the cartel. And by the time the water rights battle got into the courts it would be too late. The thirsty would be paying through the nose.

  But those who dreamed of stealing water would find that they could not carry water in their cupped hands, nor in contracts written on paper. The ink would run. The waters of the Rio Grande would find their own natural course, flow south into the desert, and finally into the sea where they would be healed of contaminants. That is why Prajna said the river was the Ganges. The flow of water cleanses itself of human pollution and finally heals itself, if only the daily poisoning can be stopped.

  The law was not all bad, unless you happened to be a poor Black man or a Chicano in LA. In the end one had to trust the good cops would get Augie first, and to save his skin he would give up the plot. In the end the media could cry all it wanted to about the great New Mexico conspiracy to privatize water, and most citizens, not paying attention to the cry, would go on using water as if the tap would never go dry. Swimming pools, golf courses, manicured lawns in the desert country where nature had long ago contrived a more thrifty plan when it came to water.

  The plot was complex and Raven was at its center. That’s why Sonny hurried up Central to Tamara’s.

  But Raven was Raven, and he would stop and peck here and there, mess with things at the fiesta, get some people too drunk to drive and increase the DWI carnage on the highways and byways, provide dope for others, a gun here or there, a fatal shooting, always looking for a way to turn the fiesta sour. In moments like this his mind didn’t focus on the bigger picture. He would forget the bomb on the mountain simply to stop and play, for never let it be forgotten, he is at heart a trickster. His friends would say, the Ultimate Trickster. And tricksters sometimes play rough.

  By now the wise know that getting to Raven is never by walking in a straight line. The heart has no straight lines, only burdensome twists and turns, which those not so wise call emotions. Sonny knew Raven had a history linking him back to Cain, who was not so much a character in that murderous drama as he was a deep dread in the heart. Call that dark emotion Cain, or call it chaos.

  “Hey, Sonny, come and have some fun!” a woman shouted, spilling white wine from her crumpled Dixie cup as she grabbed his arm.

  Sonny recognized Soledad, an artist, with a gaggle of her friends, artistas, all dressed in revealing summer dresses, for spring is not a season in New Mexico, but a wind, or a series of duststorms, and suddenly the days go from mild winter to summer, a turning point as was happening that eventful day.

  And why always good-looking women? Perhaps it was cast in the runes, the alphabet of desire. After all, Alburquerque was a city full of good-looking women. And art. The booths and galleries were replete with world-class art. Never mind Santa Fe, Burque was a whirlwind of creativity, sucking into its center stupendous, hardworking, front-line artists.

  “We’re selling artwork to send some Chicanitas to college,” Soledad said. “Have a glass of wine. Where’s Rita? Hey, mujeres, look who’s here, Sonny Baca!”

  “Sonny Baca!” They flocked around him, artistas. Delilah, Maria Baca, Liz, Bernadette, Anita from Taos, and Valentina, a curandera.

  “She started a curandera college, don’t you know.”

  “Our roots,” Valentina teased, “so we train curanderas, sweat lodges, holistic osha, all the hierbas our grandmothers used when we got sick. Potato slices soaked in vinegar or the tags from tobacco sacks on your temples for a headache. Maybe something for your eye, Sonny.”

  “Hijo, that’s quite a bruise.”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Is the bomb going to make all this passé?” one asked, pushing herself in Sonny’s face, a young Chicanita, muy güerita, who had studied French at the university, and she had learned to use her bounty to its fullest.

  “It could,” Sonny stammered, realizing reality wasn’t meshing with reality.

  “Hey, let’s paint Sonny’s portrait and auction the painting!” Amy Cordova suggested.

  “Or auction Sonny,” the güerita said, staring Sonny in the eye, a devilish look for one so young.

  “I can’t stay,” Sonny made an excuse, “gotta see a man—adios.” He turned, waved, and they all shouted “Bye, Bye, Sonny,” their voices hanging in the air like a siren’s call.

  Ah, Sonny Baca, don’t you know. Large-hipped, big-bosomed, ample women will be your downfall. Risen from the sea they come on land to populate nations. Never mind the culture or color, these are the mothers of mankind; from their sea-wombs stream the men they call sons, lovers, husbands.

  Thinking the old man had spoken, Sonny looked around. No, it wasn’t the old man joking as he was wont, it was another voice.

  Why my downfall? asked Sonny. I admire big women.

  Because you must fall down, deep into the miracle of Rita before you can know yourself. You must enter, it has been said, the flesh, as you have entered the yoni of the mountain. Then you will rise again, washed in the sea-blood, a new man.

  A new man, he thought, touching his swollen eyelid. He glanced back at the artistas, who waved at him. Gifted women who could give Frida Kahlo a run for her money. Such beauty and talent. And now one of them lay dead in the back room of a dark bar.

  For a moment the artistas had shocked him back into the reality of life. Beauty abounded, and beauty was even at that moment being created. But the voices came to tempt him, as they often did in times of great pressure. It wasn’t just the old man who spoke to Sonny. There were others. Ancestors. Old friends. Voices in the breeze.

  But he didn’t have the time to listen and respond. He had to get to Raven. He was fixed on that.

  He pushed against the revelers who packed the street. Around him subliminal instincts were rising to the surface, and the Spring Arts Crawl was turning into an ancient spring bacchanal. Lust and desire floated in the air. Nature, torn loose from her mooring, was having a rip-roaring time, Pan was the god of the moment, frolic was in the air.

  A Spring Tide swept through the City Future and washed away the dormant dreams of winter.

  A matachines dance troupe came up the street, fiddle and guitar jigging. Sonny recognized the Bernalillo group. Off to the right a booth where santeros sold their bultos and santos. Pueblo people sold pots and storyteller dolls, fry bread, piñon. Navajos sold jewelry. An old weather-beaten farmer sat stoically nearby, advertising an ephah of last year’s bean crop from the Estancia Valley. Some were selling last year’s ristras from Hatch, last season’s apples from Velarde, and in the midst of the melee, Sonny saw more spirits.

  His neck hair tickled; he felt a shiver. What was happening to him? He was losing time. The clues were clear. Raven at the movies. Raven at Tamara’s. Raven carrying on at the Hispanic Cultural Center. He had to move faster, but the press of the crowd hemmed him in. Or was it the thought of holding Naomi’s dead body only minutes ago?

  A troupe appeared. At first he thought they were actors celebrating old times in Alburquerque. They looked
so real he could smell the cologne on the men and the rich perfumes on the women. But no, these were no thespians; these were ethereal characters from the city’s past, spirits walking among the crowd and enjoying the day just as any living person might.

  Sonny recognized Clyde Tingley and his wife, Carrie, sharp in 1940s proper dress, smiling and strolling down the avenue as they might have walked when they were alive. And Elfego Baca, Sonny’s great-grandfather, El Bisabuelo of his dreams, cane in one hand and a gorgeous First Street prostitute laced around the other. He was the one who spoke of large-hipped, big-bosomed women.

  “Abuelo—” Sonny stammered.

  El Bisabuelo winked and said, Don’t lose it, Sonny. Don’t let the Baca name down. Honor above all things. That’s our heritage, mi’jo.

  Then he walked on, smiling cordially and nodding handsomely at the Tingleys. Other spirits from the city’s past followed.

  Dick Bills, saddlebags full of beans and jerky; and Mike London, who used to run wrestling matches; Miguel Otero, a former governor handing out “Vote for Me” cards to paisanos who came from Plaza Vieja to join the party. Tom Popejoy, the educator; Dennis Chávez, the famous senator from New Mexico; Erna Fergusson, the writer; Ernie Pyle, the World War II reporter; George Maloof; Julian Garcia; professors from UNM; Uli; and others. All as natural as could be.

  Quite a show, the old man said.

  Where the devil have you been? asked Sonny.

  Around.

  What the hell’s going on?

  A party. The old man laughed.

  I’m losing it, Sonny stammered.

  Why? Because some of these departed folks show up at the fiesta? Hey, everybody loves a fiesta. Besides, you’ve seen your Bisabuelo before.

  Yeah, but in my dreams.

  The biggest mistake those sico-ologists make is to separate dream from reality, the old man said, quite sure of himself, acknowledging his spiritual compadres. La vida es un sueño, y los sueños sueño son.

  Sonny shook his head. Why here?

  Why not? This is their city. They lived here, created its history, became memorable in the spirit of the city. Just be thankful you have no Nero or Caligula.

  Sonny nodded. He had been trained by the old man to be a shaman, to enter the world of dreams as the principal actor, because a shaman cannot be tossed around in a dream, he goes there for a purpose, to help whoever is in need, so maybe something had stuck to him during all those long hours of initiation. He had learned to create his own dream and enter the door of the dream, and he had seen Andres Vaca, one of his 1592 grandfathers, and his Bisabuelo Elfego Baca, and Billy the Kid, Stephen Watts Kearny, the sonofabitch, and Popé, the leader of the Pueblo Revolution against the Nuevomexicano Españoles. He had met four of his own great-great-grandmothers at the origins of New Mexico history.

  So why should he doubt, now, the depth of the old man’s teaching. The world was full of what some would call magic, but for the ancestors, visiting the place where they once lived was as natural as prayer. So why call it magic, or worse, the “mystical” experience? No, it was as natural as apple pie. The spirits did not go away, as the old man said, and they loved a fiesta.

  “Joven!” someone called. “Ephebus!”

  Sonny turned.

  “Aquí! Aquí!”

  Someone dressed as a Cirque du Soleil clown was calling him into the movie house at the corner of Central and Second Street.

  “Come on in, but don’t lose hope,” the clown said, and disappeared into the theatre.

  A large group had gathered outside, clamoring to get in, eager to be part of the movie playing inside, a remake of the old classic Salt of the Earth, the story of Mexican miners in the Silver City area who had the guts to strike for better wages and housing conditions. These were no Wobblies, no trained union activists, just oppressed Mexican miners and their wives whose humanity was being driven into the copperish dust of the open-pit mine. Theirs was a cry of Huelga!

  The crowd was not drawn to the story but to the technology. Something called laser projection, far beyond digital or holograms, it was the first true reality film. A series of well-placed laser machines projected the story’s images onto an ionized central stage. The characters, projections of congruent light, actually came alive. 3-D. They became players on a stage.

  The moviegoer could step right into the center of the action. The union sympathizers could join the miners in huelga, the far right could join the repressive owners. The images evoked in the moviegoers the most primal instinct, the desire to change the outcome of the story.

  Science had finally taken the image from its flat surface and made it whole. And he who could control and manipulate images could control the masses. Ancient cavemen knew that. The hunter painted the image of the hairy mammoth on the wall of the cave, then went out and killed the beast. That was the history of the species.

  Raven had said, See you at the movies. He was waiting.

  Sonny pushed past the mass of kids with spiked, psychedelic hairdos and leather outfits, smoking, gabbing about the philosophy of life, never having read a philosophy book. The girls in very short shorts, the guys in leather jackets with glistening steel studs and chains, all thought themselves artists but they practiced no art, unless it was the art of acting bored with life. Today they would identify with the striking miners and feel socially responsible, even though in ordinary life they had never marched for a good cause.

  Sonny searched his wallet, found a twenty-dollar bill, paid the gum-chewing, red-haired girl for a ticket, and entered.

  He smelled the dark. Yes, Raven was near. But why here? Did the miner’s story have something to do his challenge? It didn’t make sense.

  He’s theatrical, the old man warned. Patron saint of theater. A ham, a misguided actor. That’s the role of the trickster, to act out the story. To suck you into his story.

  That’s where I want to be, Sonny replied. He moved toward the stage. Other dark figures milled around him.

  “Raven!” he called.

  The machines around the stage buzzed. Pale blue lights subdued the darkness, allowed some light. The movie was starting.

  Sonny looked at his hands. They had turned blue.

  Was he now only an image projected onto empty, ionized space in which the laser projection reintegrated itself and came alive? Some in the audience walked into the middle of the action. The moviegoer had finally achieved godlike status, become a prime mover who could change the course of the actors’ lives.

  Repressed emotions flowered on the stage. Lonely hearts could fall in love with the hero. The sociopaths could beat up the minor characters and murder the major characters.

  Somewhere in the outer edges of the action Raven laughed. Hullabaloo! he called.

  “Raven!” Sonny called again. He reached out to touch one of the actors. The woman flinched. She had not expected Sonny’s touch. It wasn’t in her script.

  Sonny jerked back. He had not expected to feel flesh when his mind told him that the images being projected were composed of light.

  He had never backed away from an encounter with Raven, but right then he felt he had fallen into a game that was more than he expected. Raven was in charge again. Raven the director. And Sonny? A petty player on the stage, one to be manipulated by the unfolding story.

  Anthrax and smallpox, dirty nuclear bombs, flying airplanes into public buildings, and other atrocities aimed at the destruction of civilization had not worked. But enough images with their latent chaotic message could garble the nervous system. This was clear to Sonny as the audience in the darkened theater dove into the action and disappeared in the void.

  Like a dream. But entering the dream without a guide could prove extremely dangerous.

  Sonny! Raven called from the middle of his fantasy. Come on in.

  Sonny turned and faced Raven. Handsome as the devil on Sunday at church, he presented an imposing figure. The women flocked into his new, light-based reality, thinking they were the anima to his a
nimus, and he the answer to their bewildering dreams. The young men, those lost long ago to the chaos of the world, entered to be warriors at his side.

  20

  On either side of Raven stood two lovely girls dressed in satin white with lace fringes, white gloves, and vaporous veils on heads so innocent and lovely they brought tears to a man’s eyes. Each girl held a prayer book in one hand; in the other hung a white mother-of-pearl rosary. They were obviously dressed for their First Holy Communion, and they looked up at Sonny with such longing that their gaze tore through Sonny’s heart, deep into his soul, which expressed its grief with a deep sigh, a sigh that startled those waiting to jump into the laser-projected reality.

  What has he seen? people whispered. And why does he tremble and grow pale?

  My daughters! Sonny cried, a cry that came like the roar of a tiger that had just seen its mate burned alive by hunters who cared naught for transubstantiation, and what that might mean to a person’s endlessly wandering soul.

  The cry, loud and painful, echoed in the darkened movie house, its reverberations swayed the quantum particles of light, and even Raven’s triumphant face for a moment reflected dread.

  Sonny had finally seen the images of the two spirits lifted from Rita’s womb, two daughters he would have raised, taken to school and on trips to the sacred ceremonies and magic mountains of the state, playful girls who would run to hug and kiss him after an afternoon of splashing in the water of the river, the Ganges that flowed through the valley, two who would sing and dance into young womanhood, with all the pain and joy that meant. Two to play piano and guitar, hear the cuentos of the ancestors, pray to saint and kachina alike, learn the old ways, and grow to bless his middle years. Two whose future he would watch unfold, even as his hair turned gray and he, abuelito, stooped to pick up his grandchildren.

  Two dressed in the innocence of Communion white.

  Naomi had pointed the way, prophesying the egg in the water would reveal the daughters who stole his heart. Now it was up to him to take them back.