“Fucking crazies!” he cursed and slammed his fist into the steering wheel. She had been alive!
He pulled into the packed, graveled parking lot of Rita’s Cocina. Rita served the best Mexican food in the North Valley. Mostly locals ate there, but even the North Valley yuppies stopped by to eat Mexican food. A few people even wandered down from the Northeast Heights, Anglos who had learned to love Mexican food. They came to the valley if they thought a place was safe, Sonny knew, but tonight the North Valley was not a safe place. Tonight those who had inscribed the Zia sign around Gloria’s navel roamed the dark streets of the valley.
He got out of the truck slowly and entered the restaurant. A soft voice called his name, a hand reached out to take his. He turned to face Rita and smiled. Her love was the medicine he needed tonight.
“Querida.” He smiled and kissed her.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I know she meant a lot to you.” Rita embraced him, felt the tremor in his body. “Ven,” she said and led him to the table that was always reserved for him. “I tried calling you after the news came on the radio. I’ve been worried about you.”
“Sorry. I should have called you,” Sonny apologized as he slipped into a chair. He felt exhausted. Cold perspiration covered his forehead. The air conditioner, which on any other hot afternoon made the café a welcome haven, now made him shiver.
“It’s terrible, Sonny, terrible. She was a good woman.” She paused and looked at him. He looked drawn and pale. “Por qué?” Rita asked. “Why her?”
“No sé,” he answered. He didn’t know.
He held her hands and knew he was lucky to have her. Her black hair cascaded over her shoulders, her dark eyes shone with warmth.
Tonight she wore a bright fiesta skirt and a white blouse that revealed her soft, tanned shoulders, a tan that came from working in her garden. Her eyes were his mirror, and just now their concern reflected his distress.
She handed him a glass of water. “Drink.” She sensed what he had gone through.
“Have you eaten?”
He shook his head.
She snapped her fingers and a waitress nodded; Sonny’s special plate would be served in minutes. Rita got up and brought him a beer, then she sat across from him and held his hands. He had to talk about it.
“It was on the news,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about it. Why would they kill her? She was always helping people, and they killed her. It can happen to anyone,” she said and looked out the window at the ebb and flow on the street. “One never knows.”
Sonny nodded in agreement. “La vida no vale nada, as the song says.”
He sipped the cold beer. He hadn’t had anything to drink all day, he remembered. He looked at Rita. Yes, death could happen to anyone, anytime, he admitted, and with that he could begin to tell her the story, right up to the map on the wall and the connection he felt the case might have with the recent cattle mutilation at La Cueva. He told her about Raven and about the police chief’s cover-up of the Glass case, and she listened attentively.
His hot meal was served, a large platter of the best Mexican food in town. As he ate, he talked, and the hunger to repeat each incident of the day was as voracious as his appetite. He scooped up the beans and red chile with the tortillas and tore hungrily into the rich chunks of carne adovada, the delicate pieces of pork marinated in red chile.
He talked compulsively, recalling each detail while attacking the enchiladas with his fork. The corn tortillas laden with cheese and chile and tender chicken disappeared as he talked. He splashed red chile on the rice and on the refried beans, and he tore apart more tortillas to scoop up the food. He drank another beer and ate until he could eat no more.
He ate to cover the fear he felt, but it did no good. Gloria’s image would not let him rest. When he turned to look outside, her pale, naked body was reflected in the window.
“Qué pasa?” Rita asked, placing her hand on his.
“Nada. I’m okay. Good food, amor.”
He smiled. He had finished eating. He felt better. He was trying to feel better, to be in control of himself. He prided himself for being in control, but Gloria’s death had thrown him for a loop. Act normal, he kept telling himself. Hell, Bisabuelo Baca held off a gang of badass Texan cowboys, this you can handle.
“Panza llena, corazón contento,” he said, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He felt warm now, better. He blew his nose into the paper napkin. “God, that chile was good.”
Good enough to clean away the bad spirits, he thought. Rita’s meals always made him feel better; just looking at her made him feel better. As he calmed down, he caught a whiff of the perfume scent in the air.
“What’s that?” he sniffed.
“What?”
“Perfume. Something sweet.”
“You noticed,” Rita said, and extended her arm for him to smell her wrist. “It’s cheap, but I liked it,” she said. “Rosie Abeyta came by. She works so hard selling this stuff, I can never say no.”
A frown crossed his face. The scent of the perfume awakened the image of Gloria. A nauseating, burning acid in his stomach made Sonny wince.
“Eau de Lila,” she said.
“Lilac,” he groaned and jumped to his feet, knocking over the chair. He rushed out the back door into the alley. He reached the large trash container in time to lean over and spill the contents of his stomach. Everything came out, burning his esophagus and his sinuses, making his nose water.
Rita was right behind him. “Sonny, Sonny, amor.” She massaged his shoulders with her strong hands. “Qué pasa? Qué pasa?”
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and mouth. “Sorry,” he said through watering eyes.
“Are you sick?”
“They scented the water they used on Gloria with a lilac perfume.”
“Oh, damn,” she cursed, and led him back inside. “I’ll wash it off. That big meal didn’t help. You need something simple, tea, and rest.”
She made him sit, quickly had the table cleared and a pot of her yerba buena tea served. She went to the bathroom, washed off the perfume, and returned to find him sipping tea. His color was returning.
“Sorry about that.”
She put honey in his tea. “You need the energy.”
“I feel like a sissy,” he said and looked around, feeling self-conscious.
“Susto,” Rita said.
He looked at her. He remembered the pit bull of long ago, and the old woman who cured him. “Susto,” she had told his mother. He and his brother had been frightened, shocked.
“What do you mean?”
“You were at her deathbed. Sometimes the soul is in the room. Her death was so horrible, there was no priest or curandera to help.”
“Help?”
“When the soul is leaving the body … if it doesn’t want to leave, it can get into someone who is near.”
He looked at her. Rita knew the old traditional world of the Nuevo Mexicanos. For most common ailments she had her own house remedies, herbs and unguents. She didn’t need Freud; she knew the symbols in dreams, and she knew how the people of the valley had used folk psychiatry for centuries. She had grown up in the tradition of the last curanderas who practiced in the valley. She had learned not only the remedies, she also had the gift of seeing into the soul. But this was too much, suggesting something of Gloria’s soul had gotten into him.
“Got into me?”
She held his hands in hers. “That’s what susto is.”
“I loved her,” Sonny whispered.
Rita nodded, squeezed his hands.
He looked into her eyes and felt her warmth. The coldness he felt was his soul feeling the horror of Gloria’s death.
He had believed in evil since he was a kid. His mother took him and his brother to church. Sometimes when they played along the riverbank, he felt something unexplainable in the darkness of the bosque. La Llorona, the kids said, the weeping woman who haunted their late-night ventures.
He was a sophomore in high school when his father died, a victim of the cancer Sonny was sure was caused by the chemicals that had gotten into the groundwater of the valley, the nitrates and PCPs seeping down from the labs and the air force base into the water table. The oil companies had storage facilities in the area, and over the years oil and gas had spilled into the land. The earth was poisoned.
He had turned to Gloria for solace. After his father died, she was the only one he could talk to.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Sonny said to Rita. Something he’d been wanting to tell her for a long time, but the moment was never right. Now he had to unburden the secret.
She waited.
“It was senior week, that last week of classes. We were all running around like crazy, partying, raising hell. I got wrapped up in it, got crazy as anyone else. Then Gloria called. She wanted me to come over that night. I skipped a party and went.… She was dressed up like she was going out. Really dolled up. I don’t think I’d ever seen her more beautiful. ‘I dressed for you,’ she said. She wanted to be part of my graduation. I remember, she had lighted candles. That was the only light in her apartment.”
He paused.
“She gave me presents, shirts, ties, belts, all sorts of things. Expensive stuff. We drank champagne and she made me open every gift. Like Christmas, she kept saying. Then we danced. She wanted to dance with me, she said, just that one night, then she would give me back to my friends. We had never danced like that before. Then she kissed me, and I realized all those times we were together, we wanted each other. We made love. It was the first time I made love to a woman.”
He paused again, then continued. “It was her gift to me. She knew I’d never had a woman. Holding her, being with her that night, it’s something I can’t describe. They say a man finds himself in a woman, becomes a man, and it’s true. I felt the love of a woman for the first time … that’s what she gave me. Then she left. A few days later I got her note. She was in LA. I think it had something to do with that night. She knew we couldn’t be lovers. We were cousins. I didn’t care; I was ready to take the world apart for her. But she was gone. When she came back years later, she kept her distance. We both kept our distance. I could never give her what she gave me. Now the only thing I can do is find whoever killed her.”
He looked at Rita. Something in her eyes told him she understood. He had told her all about Angie, but never spoke much about Gloria.
“I’ll help,” she whispered.
“You’re too good,” he said.
“And you need to rest,” she replied and rose. “Take some of this tea with you.” She went to the kitchen for a thermos, poured some tea in it, and packed some tortillas and cookies. “Sip a little tea and try to nibble. You need something in your stomach.”
“What would I do without you?” He embraced and kissed her.
“You would probably get in even more trouble,” she answered, smiling. “Call me.”
“I will.” He kissed her again and went out the door into the fresh air that was finally seeping into the valley. He felt better. The tea and Rita’s understanding were good. He remembered they had made plans to go out tonight, and he almost turned back to apologize. No, he thought, she understands.
He drove home on Fourth Street and turned on the dirt road that was La Paz Lane. The quiet of the evening had settled over the old farming community. People sat out on their porches. It was a hot night, and the coolness that came from the acequias and the irrigated alfalfa fields was refreshing. The hum of the cicadas droned in the twilight.
He was not surprised to see don Eliseo sitting in a rocking chair under the tree. He had a small fire burning, embers in which he burned dry cow dung. The smoke kept away the mosquitoes.
The old alamo still stood; they hadn’t been able to bring it down. They had made a few cuts around the base of the tree, like beavers, but the tree had proved too tough. Chips of bark lay scattered on the ground.
Sonny parked his truck and got out. The steady call of the cicadas filled the descending evening. It was a pleasant sound, an integral part of summer. He walked over to the old man and sat down by him.
“Cómo ’stás, Sonny?” don Eliseo said. He was looking across his cornfield. Above them a sliver of the waxing moon, the discarded cut nail of an old bruja, shone weakly in the dull sky.
Sonny sighed and sat in the wooden chair next to don Eliseo. He breathed deep the cool air, listened to the grillos singing. Around them the last of the swallows searched for insects, then came the darting bats.
Don Eliseo rolled a cigarette while Sonny opened the thermos and poured a cup of steaming tea for the old man. “My wife,” don Eliseo said, “may her soul rest in peace, used to sit here and watch the moon come over the mountain. I used to roll her marijuana cigarettes. For her arthritis. I always had a plant or two growing in the garden. God gave us the plants to eat and use for medicine, but now they got a law against them.”
He handed Sonny the cigarette he had just rolled and began another. They sat in silence and smoked.
“On a hot day like today you can hear the corn grow,” don Eliseo liked to say. His cornfield was lush and green, three feet high, and yes, the plants groaned as they curled in for the night to sleep.
Finally don Eliseo spoke. “I feel like that old tree, Sonny. Dry, but still alive. The boys couldn’t do it, Sonny. I don’t blame them. Kids. They don’t know the land and trees anymore.” He slurped the hot tea.
Then Sonny slowly opened up and told the old man about the murder.
“Madre de Dios,” don Eliseo said, making the sign of the cross when Sonny finished. “It’s the work of the diablo.”
“It’s not the devil,” Sonny said, “it’s crazy people.”
Don Eliseo sighed. “When I was a kid, they told the story of el hombre dorado, the man made of gold. A long time ago, the people said, he came up the Río Grande looking for the fountain of youth, just like the old Españoles. He was a strange man, burning with the desire to find the fountain of youth. The man looked in all the pueblos, he talked to the medicine man, to the old men. They all tried to tell him, there is no fountain of youth. Life and death are part of the natural cycle. The cycle of our lives is like the cycle of the seasons. Death must come. To seek eternal youth is to seek that which is not natural.
“They tried to warn him. Don’t look for eternal youth. Accept nature. Evil people will come and promise you immortality, but in turn they will take your soul. ‘I don’t believe in witches,’ the man said and continued his search. He was possessed by his desire. And so evil witches came out of the darkness. ‘We will give you immortality’ they said, ‘if you give us your soul in return.’ That is real evil, when someone wants to steal your soul,” don Eliseo whispered and paused to sip his tea.
Sonny listened intently.
“A man without a soul cannot live. Oh, you can exist, but you cannot live. Once the soul is captured and taken away by those who wish you evil, you’re lost. The battle of good and evil is always for the soul. So the brujas promised the man what he wanted. They brought him gold. More gold than he had ever seen. Take this gold, they said. Gold will give you eternal youth. With this gold you can buy immortality. The man agreed. With enough gold I can live forever, he thought. He didn’t know he had lost his soul. He belonged to them.
“They coated his body with gold. That’s how he become el hombre dorado. All the people could see him coming, he was shining in the sun. But they stayed away from him. They knew he had no soul. That man still wanders the valley of the Río Grande, they say. Searching for his soul. Now there are many like him. They don’t want to plant and wait for the harvest of the earth, they think gold can buy everything. But it’s an illusion, Sonny. When you are enclosed in the gold, it’s like being in a shell. Inside it’s dark. The bad brujos block the light of los Señores y las Señoras de la Luz, they take the light which is the soul. It is the work of the devil.”
Don Elise
o paused. Something in the cornfield moved, a swirl that danced among the corn plants, and for a moment the shrill continuous hum of the cicadas ceased. A breeze stirred.
“And me?” Sonny asked.
“It was evil that killed your prima. If these evil people think you’re getting in their way they will go after you. They will offer you things, they will mislead you, put false clues in your path, send you bad dreams, try to cripple your soul. They’re dangerous, Sonny. Those who do this evil have been in the world a long time.”
Sonny shivered and drank some of the tea. “Maybe I can help with the tree,” he said and reached out and touched the scar on the tree. There was wet sap where the saw had cut into the bark.
“No, I’m going to leave it,” don Eliseo said. “I was sitting here enjoying the fresco, and I fell asleep. I had a dream: when the tree dies, I die. So let it die a natural death. It’s not the time.”
Good, Sonny thought. The trees were the ancestors of the valley, just like don Eliseo. In May the female cottonwoods were thick with the clusters of green pods, and in June the tetones ripened and exploded with cotton. Each little flower of cotton held a tiny seed, the possibility of a new tree.
Even now, the cotton from the trees along the acequia was floating in the air. As sure as the seasons renewed themselves, the cotton from the trees came like snow each June.
When he was a kid, Sonny and his friends gathered the tetones and pelted each other. They used Popsicle sticks to fling the stinging pods. It was a wonder they hadn’t blinded someone. In spring the teachers at school prayed for the tetone season to pass and prayed for school to end. When it did, the kids exchanged the school playground for the river, where they swam all summer. The green tetones exploding into cotton marked the beginning of summer, and the swimming season.
Sonny felt an itch; unconsciously he rubbed his stomach, around his navel.
Once, when he was seven, he had come unexpectedly on his mother as she stepped from the shower. She had covered her breasts and sex with the towel and stepped back into the shower, but not before he saw the ripeness of her breasts and the mound of her stomach, the small pit of her ombligo. He was not yet intrigued by the overwhelming questions that would come to him and his friends in the next few years regarding the sex of women, but he remembered her beauty. He dreamed of reaching out and touching her, but even as a child he sensed the inviolate mystery of her stomach, her womb. To touch his mother’s belly would be a violation.
Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring Page 7