Jemez Spring (28 page)

The city prospered as the newcomers gave of their sweat and muscle. Now the city belonged to many cultures, many ethnic groups, many languages, and that gave a new sense of vibrancy and joy to the desert polis, new colors, nuevas idiomas in the air, new songs over the radio, the colorful call of Chihuahuanses laborers building walls, the roughneck call of workers as they completed the Big I, the interchange that had become the city's symbol.

There where interstate 1-25 met 1-40, a Zia sign had been created. Seen from the air the two roads met and formed a center, a circle from which radiated four lines, roads to eternity. Those who journeyed into the city were flung out from its center to settle with their heavy loads in one of the four quadrants of the burgeoning city: NW, SW, NE, SE. Points from the compass became points in the heart. Home.

The four quadrants reflected the four spaces of the universe, the four ages of life, four humors, four corners of the heart, all as it had been since the city fathers laid a square grid on the city, a quincunx dormant in their souls.

A prophet of the land had declared that each person keeps seven seals, each to be broken as revelations of life at a particular time and place. Each person is destined to break open those seals in one of the four quadrants of life. When the fourth is broken the soul enters the center of the quincunx, the zenith and nadir, the heaven or hell of old legends.

The riddle of the Sphinx, the prophet said, was no riddle at all. It was a giving up of the ego. Only thus could the psyche enter the center.

And so the immigrants settled in the City Future, and learned a sad part of the story, which is also part of the American dream. They learned that every city demands that the newcomer leave his old culture behind, discard it like an old coat. Leave your past behind and become American. Adopt the new image, the American way, a way of life copyrighted and owned by tradition, also by those who hold power. “America: Love it or Leave it” became a new burden, a polis pressure. Either speak the common language and learn the common ways or live on the margin. And Americans hate the margin, the border, the sense of not fitting, and so those who wished to become good citizens made a god of conformity.

Great cities resist this homogenizing of their immigrants, and that is part of their greatness. Such cities thrive on diversity, an ethno-and biodiversity. Great cities remain multicultural. Could the City Future resist the pressure to homogenize the diversity that fed it? Could the children of the immigrants keep the language of their ancestors and their traditional ways? Why were the old ceremonies attended by politicians only when they were on the stump, only when they needed votes?

On Saturday summer nights the city celebrated its ethnic communities at festivals in the city hall mall. When it was Greek night, the denizens of the city went to eat Greek food and hear Greek music. Theme song from
Zorba
.

Some complained. “We found the tub, but we didn't find Diogenes.” The Greek philosophers were missing, consigned to menus in a few Greek restaurants around town.

Few could say
we sail with the tide
in Greek.

Was the journey from Ilium so long and torturous they had forgotten their language?

In consolation, the following Saturday nights Hispanics were celebrated, then Germans, then Indians, on and on. Diversity offered in coffee spoons.

The equinox day was multicultural, for there was a sense in the air that if one perished everyone would perish. Singing, dancing, raising steins of cold beer, chewing on fat hamburgers, bean burritos laden with green chile, tacos and tamales steaming hot, Greek salads, Chinese egg rolls, Thai sweet and sour, chutney, you name it, the city was on a roll and hungry, because it wasn't every day the rank and file got an afternoon off from work.

“Viva la bomba!” someone shouted and a loud hurrah went up from a nearby table of revelers.

They were cheering the bomb? Yeah, cheering the cause of their release from work, the cause of their merriment.

Only in Alburquerque, Sonny thought, as the cheer went up again, “Viva la bomba!”

The leader, obviously an out-of-work actor who spent all day bemoaning his outward state because of the few roles available to a fading baritone, and because funding for the arts had hit an all-time low, jumped up and bellowed to the tune of
La Bamba
. “Para explotar la bomba, se necesita una poca de mota! Bomba, bomba …”

Others joined in, forming a snake-like line, dancing, swaying hips, a human rope winding down the street, singing and laughing.

Sonny had to smile. Was this the way to face the inevitability of possible death by nuclear fire? Not with a whimper but a fiesta? Why not? Fiesta and ceremony were at the heart of all the cultures of the city. Any excuse for a fiesta. “Mi hija made First Holy Communion.” “Pues, let's have a fiesta.” “Confirmation.” “Let's party!” “Mi hijo graduated from high school.” “Let's boogie!” “I wrecked my truck.” “Sorry, compadre, so let's drown our sorrows con una fiestecita.”

Marriage, a new baby, a matanza, Bar-mitzvah. A Lobo win. Halloween. A mass for the dead. Whatever, let's party!

Even death was celebrated with a fiesta, beer cooling in the coffin of the deceased if it was a hot summer day. After all, one needs to turn personal prayer and grief into community ritual, as the old priests of the clan and the cave had discovered long ago. Praying without ceremony was okay for hermits or monks who preferred to live alone with their thoughts of God, but the community needed ritual to complement each person's story. In short, the people needed fiestas.

And who was drawn to the fiesta? Why, every conceivable angel and devil, which is why Sonny was stalking brother Raven down the main avenue of the City Future. Raven was probably just steps ahead of him. But was it Raven's shadow that had appeared in the dust-streaked window of Woody's Nest? Or Augie's? Naomi knew too much, Augie had said. She knew the names of the conspirators, Dominic's cronies. The net to capture the water rights of the world had been cast wide and deep.

Sonny opened his hand, revealing the four black feathers he had taken from Naomi's side, and with a curse he tossed them in the gutter where they might be trampled into the dust and spilled beer.

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.