Shaman Winter (50 page)

“Good,” Sonny replied.

“Listen, I got an idea. You know they say the country's getting too fat. Pues, we have some Chicano heavyweights. Gordos. So why not go all the way?”

Sonny listened. Diego always had a new scheme.

“Chicano Sumo wrestlers! We feed them extra tortillas, menudo, chicharrón burritos, and we go all the way with panzones. Hey, we can compete with the Japanese!”

Sonny laughed and gave his friend a high five. “Porque no?”

“Pues, you know what César Chávez said: Sí Se Puede.”

Diego's wife, Marta, greeted Sonny with a smile and a “buenos días” as she waltzed past him, holding a tray of food above her head.

Chicano Sumo wrestlers, Sonny thought. Why not?

From the dishwasher Cyber called, “Hey Sonny, guess what? I'm thinking of joining the circus.”

“Cool.”

Rita appeared. She greeted Sonny with a kiss and a smile.

“He saw Cirque du Soleil on TV,” she said.

“Yeah, Circo de Slow-lay,” Cyber repeated.

“Du,” Sonny corrected.

“Tú?”

“No, du.”

“Me?”

“Sí, tú. Say ‘du.'”

“Do what?”

“Cirque du Soleil.”

“Yeah, circo de slow-lay.”

“Not
de
, du.”

“Do what?”

“Who's on first?” Sonny said and let it go.

Rita smiled. “I'm glad to see you,” she said and picked up Chica.

“Hey, me too,” Sonny replied.

A finely crafted silver chain hung around her neck. It held an oval silver pendant that embraced a glowing azure stone, sky-blue lapis, so polished Sonny could see his reflection in the stone.

On her wrist hung seven silver bracelets, each etched with signs of the zodiac, each blessed on a special saint's day, each hinting at a power in nature, an animal spirit.

Her eyes glistened with the water of life.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He looked into her eyes, windows into her soul. He felt complete when she gazed at him in the quiet moments of their love.

In another time, another culture, she would have been Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love. Here she was the center of his Zia Sun universe, a hard-working businesswoman with a kind and loving soul.

I'll be poetic, he thought, woo her with all the beautiful words ever written by the poets of the world, especially the poets of India who extol the woman's body as a temple.

Or Hamlet, he thought. Soft you, now, the fair Ophelia, beneath the boughs of a purple flowering tamarisk, on the banks of the quiet flowing Rio Grande, I will love you …

He ran his tongue over his lips. Her kiss had left a tinge of her red chile con carne.

“You taste good,” he said, thinking maybe the undiscovered petroglyph, the Zia Stone of ancient lore, was really the heart of the beloved, and the symbol written on it was her name. One only had to open the third eye to see it, the wisdom of gnosis, the Hindu third eye.

In the dining area the old jukebox that held only fifties records blared out Little Richard's “Good Golly Miss Molly.”

“You look beautiful,” he said.

He put his arms around her. An erotic fragrance, her own particular woman perfume that he knew so well, or a feeling, or something he couldn't identify, passed from her to him, and he held her for a fleeting moment in the aromas of the kitchen, because with Rita sex and food often came together. Arousal could be a steaming plate of huevos rancheros for breakfast, a Navajo taco or enchiladas for lunch, an organic salad for dinner, a bowl of menudo spiked with hot red chile, onions, and oregano on Sunday mornings.

“Sorry. I slept late.”

“You need the rest, mijito,” she whispered. “By the way, the mayor's here. There's something going on at Jemez. Que pasa?”

Sonny shrugged.

“They called you.”

“Yes.”

“It's Raven, isn't it?” She knit her brow.

He nodded. He couldn't just pretend he didn't know the way into the dream world, he couldn't just wish it away. Once the gift of the shaman was there, it just was. He might sit for years helping her in the restaurant, cook menudo from his mother's recipe, man the cash register, visit with the customers he knew so well—all North Valley friends. He would pretend normalcy, but sooner or later the phone would ring, a breeze would stir, a crow would call from a telephone pole, a message would come for the winter shaman and he would have to go. She knew that.

“What about the meeting in Algodones?”

“I might get back in time.”

A group of Pueblo men intent on preserving their water rights had asked Sonny to join them in Algodones. The newspapers had labeled them Green Indians because of their pro-environmental stand. All they really wanted to do was protect their ancient water rights. Those rights, once taken for granted and protected by codices going back to the Spanish entrada into New Mexico, were under attack.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Whatever the day holds.”

“I love you. My fair Ophelia,” he whispered.

She smiled. “That's a sweet thing to say.”

“I mean it.”

“I know, but doesn't Ophelia go crazy and drown herself?”

He blushed and looked down at his feet. His boots needed a shine.

“Maybe you could be my Helen of Troy.”

“Oh no. She was too beautiful. Besides, she left her husband for Paris. I would never leave you, mi amor.” She touched his cheek.

“Hey, what if I said you're my chile and beans.”

“I like that best,” she replied. “Now to work. Lorenza's not here today. She called early this morning. She might not return in time to attend the Algodones meeting.”

“Where is she?”

“She went to Las Cruces to help a friend. A writer whose friends swear the image of Pedro Infante appeared on a tortilla. You know how Elvis appears, now it's Pedro. First he was spotted in El Paso, now in Las Cruces on a tortilla they were baking for their Pedro Infante Club party. We all have our spirits, que no?”

“Yeah, we do,” Sonny agreed. “I'll take Chica.”

“I'll fix you two a lunch.”

“Great.”

He wished they could cancel everything and spend the day together in Jemez Springs. But she had to be ready. Something fragile had broken in her during the miscarriage, and that would take time to mend.

She needs time, Lorenza had told him. Right now she's just dealing with the cafe, living on the surface of the world. Her love is still there, perhaps stronger than ever. You just be ready.

“I will be—”

Rita turned. “What?”

“Nothing. I love you.”

She winked.

Sonny walked into the dining area, which was buzzing and crackling. Jemez Springs was the morning's conversation. What the hell was going on?

In a corner table sat the mayor, Fox, and a couple of his cronies from city hall, men who wore two faces.

Chicano activists called the mayor Fox because his favorite TV show were reruns of the
X-Files
. La plebe loved to nickname politicians. Once baptized the name stuck for life, and those who recognized the crafty man's politics said he played like a Zorro, so Fox it was.

Today the Fox was sniffing around Rita's Cocina.

The mayor looked at Sonny and signaled.

Yeah, Sonny thought, genetic drift. Now I'm caught in it.

3

Rita's Cocina was packed with an assortment of North Valley paisanos, including a chorus of retired elders. Los viejitos ate breakfast at Rita's then headed for the North Valley senior citizen center, their agora, to discuss the politics of the day. Today they would sit glued to the TV set, ignoring the primped-up, purple-haired comadres who tried to get them to play bingo. Instead the old codgers would watch the sketchy news they were getting from Jemez Springs. A terrorist plot in the air. They loved it. Any news was fodder for their plática.

Retired, bent, slurping their coffee, they talked, a continuous buzz, bees in a hive. “En aquellos tiempos la gente vivía en paz.” “Hoy no sabe nada la plebe.” “Chingaron bien a Saddam. Pulled down his statue. Nothing lasts.” “You know, todo se acaba.” “You got that right!”

Plática, the oral tradition of the forum, ancient as the Nuevomexicanos who first settled the Rio Grande Valley. In the shadow of the Sandia Mountain they had settled to farm, to raise sheep and kids, and to leave their bones in the penitente earth once their plática was done.

Plática was a cultural ritual, old as the Greeks at the agora, old as the Sumerians who told stories of the flood and the creation of first man and woman long before those stories were recorded by the Hebrews. Stories older than the telephone and TV. The oral tradition was alive, gone digital, buzzing through telephone wires and cell phone frequencies up and down the valley, from Taos down to Las Cruces and to Chihuahua. Down to el Valle de Tejas all the way to Brownsville where the river emptied into the gulf. Plática infused the poetic marrow of every community.

Sonny listened. The buzz roamed here and there, reminiscences of the way things used to be, world problems, the devil loose in the world, terrorism, Iraq and North Korea, the Santa Fe legislators spending their taxes, Social Security going broke, help with prescription drugs. And today, something happening in Jemez Springs.

They turned to look at Sonny.

“Buenos días te dé Dios, Sonny,” one said. Ladino greetings.

“Cuidado con los dog dreams.”

“Si los perros sueñan, entonces los gatos también.”

“Gato dreams.”

“Pussy dreams,” chortled Clyde. “Ha, ha, ha.” The oldest of the clan, rumored to be taking Viagra, at eighty.

“Entonces todo los animales sueñan.”

“Entonces la vida es un sueño.”

“I dream forty-year-old mamasotas,” Clyde said, stroking his waxed mustache.

“Forty? They run you ragged, Clyde.”

“La problema no son las mamasotas, la problema son los terrorists. Como lo que pasa en Jemez. What is it, Sonny?”

“Yeah, what's happening?”

“Pendejadas,” Sonny answered.

“Bueno, que Dios te bendiga.”

“By the way, Sonny,” one touched his arm. “We can't remember the Spanish word for oar? Tú sabes, paddles. For a boat.”

Sonny didn't know. The ancestors had been gone too long from the sea. They had no need for an oar in desert New Mexico. The words of the sea culture were forgotten, as the words of every culture are destined to be forgotten. And so they created a new language, Spanglish.

“You can say, ‘se fue en el barco con paddles.'”

“Porque no.”

“I want to know the Spanish word,” the vecino insisted. “I'm writing a poem.”

“I'll look it up in my Velasquez,” Sonny promised.

“Gracias,” they nodded and went on sipping their coffee as they talked, turning over and over the dog dream question.

Sonny paused to look around.

The cafe was packed with the workers of the City Future. Electricians on their way to wire a job. A mexicano crew of roofers, mostly men from Chihuahua, Sonny surmised, about the only workers that would do that hot, heavy work all day long. Plumbers working in the new North Valley mansions that kept sprouting like tumbleweeds. Drywall men, their pants covered with chalky dust. Painters in paint-splattered overalls, which if framed and hung on a wall would fetch de Kooning abstract art prices. A couple of Bernalillo sheriff's deputies, one a very nice-looking Chicana who smiled at Sonny. Sirena. They had attended Rio Grande High together, and Sonny had almost scored one night. Those were the heavy-duty hormone days of almost going all the way.

“Hi, Sonny,” she said. “How's your dog?”

“Still barking,” Sonny replied, returning her smile.

A few horsemen who kept stables along the river sat at a corner table, and by the window a smattering of the ubiquitous North Valley yuppie rich: attorneys, doctors, and businessmen and women who worked downtown. They ate huevos rancheros while they read the
Wall Street Journal
. Eating at Rita's Cocina was a shot of culture for the North Valley yuppies.

Republican immigrants, Sonny thought, sniffing the air, glancing at the blonde in blue who looked up and smiled.

From a corner table, a haggard-looking mayor signaled for Sonny.

Sonny sniffed again. There was no threat in the air, only the honest smells of hardworking people, paisanos. The yuppies acknowledged Sonny's presence as he walked toward the mayor's table. They knew about his exploits, considered him a hero for catching the mad scientist from Ukraine who had tried to build a nuclear weapon at Sandia Labs. And Sonny had started the “do dogs dream” controversy, and like all good baby-boomer professionals they thrived on controversy.

“Good morning, Mr. Baca,” said the blonde. She was a big-shot attorney in the biggest law firm downtown. “Is this the famous dreaming dog?”

“That's her,” Sonny replied.

“Howcuuuutydoggie, cutiecutiecutie. Here dogggieee.” She threw Chica a piece of leftover tortilla from her plate. Chica looked disdainfully at the woman. I don't take scraps from the likes of you, she snapped.

“She already ate, thanks.” Sonny moved on to the mayor's table.

Sonny knew Fox secretly supported Frank Dominic, the City Future's big tycoon who had set up a corporation to buy water rights in the state. Dominic's goal was to privatize the water rights of the entire Rio Grande Valley. The new czars weren't into oil, they were water despots. This was the same man who had proposed the city siphon off Rio Grande water, not for drinking, but to create a Venice in the city. He had a plan to build canals from Downtown to Old Town, a new image for the City Future, a casino on every corner.

“Hello, Fox,” Sonny greeted the mayor.

“Sit down,” Fox answered, scowling. He didn't like to be called Fox. He hadn't shaved in days. A random pattern of red chile spots adorned his tie.