“Try not to worry about it,” she whispered, but she knew that telling a man like Sonny not to worry about impotency, momentary as it might be, was like talking to the wind. “You need rest.”
“I’ll rest.”
“Promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
Rita laughed. Sonny hadn’t lasted a month in the scouts.
He drove home and listened to messages on the answering machine, then he slipped out of his clothes and tried to sleep. For a long time he listened to the drone of the grillos in the trees, the dream-time music of summer locusts. He dozed in and out, disturbed by his restless thoughts. Just before dawn he finally slipped deeper into sleep, and images of a large black bird haunted the visions. Raven feathers swirling in a dark wind, a dust devil, the kind that swept across the llano on hot days, remolinos del diablo, the old people said. The devil riding in the whirlwind. He raised his right hand, crossing his thumb over his first finger in the form of a cross. The giant, dark bird covered the sun for an instant, then there was an explosion and the shape of a luminous mushroom cloud rising in the sky.
He started, groaned, limped to the window, raised the blind, and looked across the dirt road. In the mother-of-pearl light before sunrise, don Eliseo was standing in the middle of his cornfield. The young corn plants were three feet high and growing inches each day. Don Eliseo stood among the plants to greet the morning sun, waiting for los Señores y las Señoras de la Luz to come with the sunrise, flooding the valley with light, nourishing both corn and old man.
Don Eliseo rose every morning before sunrise to greet the sun. Each morning he turned toward the east and bowed respectfully as the sun rose over the mountain, asking the sun to bless all of life.
Sonny looked into the gray sky. Wisps of clouds raced towards the Sandias, mauve stripes, strings of rosy pearls. There was some humidity in the air, the signs of the premonsoon low pressure. Dew clung to the grass and the corn plants. Moisture beginning to push up from Mexico, enough to tinge the air and tantalize those who prayed for rain.
The day would be hot and brassy. The rainy season of summer was approaching, but the anvil-shaped, dark-bellied clouds of rain had not yet begun to gather over the Sandias in the afternoons. Until the rains came, the clouds were stingy, virgin rain clouds whose blessing never touched the earth, clouds that dissipated under the intense June sun.
Stress, he thought, stress. He didn’t need to see Lorenza Villa, he needed rest. A steady diet. Vitamins. A megadose of C. Cod-liver oil.
“Don Eliseo!” Sonny called out the window. “Buenos días le de Dios.”
“Hey, Sonny, how’s it hanging?” the old man called back.
How in the hell did he know? Sonny thought, smiling weakly to himself.
“Ven a tomar café,” don Eliseo called, and he moved from the cornfield toward his tree. A large pot of coffee was brewing on the coals of the barbecue grill, the strong aroma wafting through the neighborhood. Don Eliseo made coffee the old-fashioned way, just dropped handfuls of grounds right into the boiling water and let it simmer. It was the strongest and best coffee Sonny ever had. During the morning neighbors stopped by to visit with the old man and taste the coffee.
Under the cottonwood stood a wood crate, his rocking chair, and two extra chairs for don Toto and doña Concha.
Sonny slipped on his jeans. The scalpel Dorothy had given him still rested on the dresser. He had to get it to Howard and find out if the dry stains were human blood, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
Shirtless and barefoot, he walked across the street to greet the old man. Don Eliseo had watered the grass in his front yard and the yellow rosebushes that hugged the adobe walls of his house. Rosas de Castilla, the small yellow roses first brought by the Españoles up the Río Grande valley.
“The rosas are blooming,” Sonny said.
“Those bushes have been here since I can remember,” don Eliseo said as Sonny limped to a chair. “Smell the earth, Sonny. In the morning, before the sun rises, you can smell the earth. Es la aroma de la madre tierra.”
Sonny inhaled. The morning before the sun rose was the most refreshing coolness he knew; it was pure and deep. The green of don Eliseo’s garden filled his nostrils.
“Why up so early?”
“Bad dreams,” Sonny said with a shrug, sat and sipped at the strong coffee.
“I watered your grass yesterday,” don Eliseo said. “Sun would have burned it.”
“Gracias.” Sonny nodded. He had been too busy to care for the small patch of green around his front door.
“Your landlord only comes for the rent money. What does he care about the grass? Ay, and no sign of rain.”
June was as dry as vengeance. In the trees the cicadas that had hummed all night were silent. Don Eliseo’s yard, with its garden of corn, flowers, trees, and bushes, was an oasis of coolness. Like his ancestors before him, he watered from the acequia, the irrigation canal that ran along the back of his property.
Yes, here it was cool, as was the river valley, but the heat of the day would evaporate even that freshness when the sun rose.
It would be the kind of day that drove roofers to drinking. Plenty of flat roofs on the adobe homes of the city, but on days without rain there were no leaks, and no leaks meant none of the emergency calls they loved to get on rainy days. They grew morose, gathered in bars to console each other, drank too much, looked to the sky, and prayed for rain. Then the rains would come and they’d get the calls, but they couldn’t work while it was raining, so they drank some more.
“Sad men,” Sonny said.
“Qué?”
“Just thinking.… No rain.”
“There’s a dance over at Sandia Pueblo. Dance for rain.”
“Don Eliseo, can I ask you a personal question?” Sonny said, changing the subject.
“Sure, Sonny. What are friends for?”
Sonny cleared his throat. How in the hell did one ask questions like this? “Did you ever have any trouble with your wife?”
“No.” Don Eliseo shook his head. “She was a good woman. Que descanse en paz.”
“I mean, about making el amor, you know—”
“Oh, I was pretty good at that, Sonny. In my day. It’s part of nature. A man is like a rooster. Once he learns to mount the chicken, he needs it every day. You know, we never ask the chicken about all this. When I got older and I was no good at that business anymore, my wife said ‘Gracias a Dios.’ Sometimes we learn our lessons too late, qué no?”
“But when you were the young rooster, you always—”
“Came through? Never failed, Sonny. A man adds up fifty years of mounting the chicken, a half-century, Sonny. That’s a lot of practice. Pero todo se acaba,” he added sadly. “If you throw me in the river, I can probably still swim, but if you throw me with the chickens, forget it.”
“What about someone like me?”
“You?” Don Eliseo cocked his head and looked at Sonny. “You got Rita, what more do you want?” Don Eliseo studied Sonny’s worried look.
Sonny looked down at the ground, and it dawned on the old man.
“With Rita?” don Eliseo said incredulously.
Sonny nodded glumly. He wanted to say it wasn’t his fault.
“Híjola, Sonny, with Rita? Maybe I better give you a few lessons.” He chuckled and slapped his thigh. Sonny’s look told don Eliseo it wasn’t funny. He sipped his coffee. “I don’t mean to laugh, Sonny. It happens. You’re working too hard.”
“It’s something else.…”
“But you don’t believe in the brujas,” don Eliseo reminded him. “In the old days if a woman wanted to make sure the man only paid attention to her nest, she took a little of his hair from his private parts down there to a bruja. That hair can hold or turn a man any way the woman wants. Le hacia un mal.”
“Cast a spell?”
“Sí. A curse, Sonny. Maybe they put a curse on you.”
“Who?”
“Th
e same ones who killed your prima.”
He didn’t believe in spells. “Only you believe in brujas, don Eliseo.”
“I’ve seen enough to believe,” the old man answered. “I saw a curandera cure a primo once. The man vomited up a ball of hair. The witch had taken a little of his hair and put the curse. The man was dying until la curandera lifted the curse. There’s good witches and bad ones, as in all things. The world is good and evil. All the brujos I know here in the valley and up in the Indian pueblos, they’re good people. Curanderos. They have the power to help people. It’s the bad ones who hurt people.”
“What do they want?”
“They want you,” don Eliseo said, and Sonny followed the old man’s stare and looked at his bare stomach. He had been scratching softly around his belly button. He saw the faint, pink outline of a circle around his navel. He was a marked man.
“Why me?”
“Maybe you’re getting too close.”
“Someone took a shot at me,” he said, and told don Eliseo about his adventure at La Cueva. Then he turned back to the subject foremost in his thoughts, his lack of performance with Rita.
“Is there anything I can take?” he asked the old man. “Vitamins? Maybe some of those herbs you grow in your garden?”
Don Eliseo shook his head. “Sonny, you’re too involved. Take a few days off and go fishing with Rita up in the Jemez. A day’s rest and Rita will take care of everything else.” He pointed to the newspaper on the crate. “I’ve been following the case. Page one, every day, the Zia murder. Did you ever talk to the brother?”
“Turco?” Sonny shook his head. “There’s a big dope deal coming down, so he’s hiding.”
Fishing, he thought, that’s how I should have spent my weekend. A day on the cool stream of the Jemez, and a fat rainbow trout hooked and fighting him, and later a lounge chair and a beer as the trout sizzled in the skillet. Fish were supposed to be good for the energy he needed.
“The papers mention the housekeeper.…”
“I talked to her,” Sonny said. He told don Eliseo about talking to Veronica and then the surprise at meeting her at Raven’s place in the mountain.
“She’s a strange woman,” don Eliseo replied. “She came to Ranchitos a few years ago. You know how Concha goes to visit the new people who move in; she knows everyone. But the woman wouldn’t talk to her. The rumors we hear are that this Veronica and her friends read the minds of people.”
Doña Concha knew Fourth Street better than most. She spent her days wandering the streets and acequia paths from Alameda to Los Ranchos, as far south as Los Griegos.
“Psychics?” Sonny asked.
“Psychics?” The old man looked puzzled. “Brujas,” he said.
Sonny looked down at the faint rash on his stomach. It was just his imagination that the rash formed a round circle. He had to get rid of that kind of thinking. Thinking they could put the sign of the Zia on him played into their hands. Yeah, but there it was, pink and itching.
“Mira,” don Eliseo said. “Es tiempo de los Señores y las Señoras.”
The first rays of the sun peeked over Sandia Crest, filling the valley with a dazzling light. Dawn shadows scattered as the brightness exploded.
A stillness filled the air as the first moments of scintillating light filled the valley, then the leaves of the cottonwoods quivered as the playful light came racing across the treetops and dropped to glisten on the leaves of corn. The entire valley seemed to fill with a presence, something Sonny thought he could reach out and touch.
“Los Señores y las Señoras,” Sonny whispered and held his breath.
The old man had told him about the Lords and Ladies of the Light who came with the sun, but Sonny had never been up early enough to share the event with don Eliseo. Now as the dance of light sparkled on the dew and the green plants, he felt the magical moment.
“Sí,” don Eliseo replied. “Grandfather Sun is rising to bless all of life, and he sends los Señores and las Señoras down to earth. See how they come dancing across the treetops, on the corn, on the chile plants, everywhere.…”
For a moment Sonny thought he could, like don Eliseo, see the brilliant, tall, and handsome Lords and Ladies of Light, who came as sun rays over the mountain to fill everything with light.
“Bendición,” Don Eliseo said, closing his eyes and turning directly to the strong light so the brilliance bathed his face. This was his moment of prayer. As the sun came over the mountain, don Eliseo greeted it, asking its blessing for all of life. He opened his soul to receive the light.
“Beautiful,” Sonny agreed, and he and the old man sat quietly.
It’s a dance, Sonny thought, a swift dance of light that descended on them. Like the first day on earth, the sun creating life, the sun sending its emissaries to touch every living thing. It lasted only moments, and yet in those moments a transformation took place. Light replaced darkness.
Don Eliseo said his simple prayer. “Tata Dios, Sol que eres nuestro abuelo, bendición a todo lo que vive.”
“You pray to the Señores y Señoras?” Sonny asked.
“Yes, just as I pray to the kachinas and the santos. When my wife was alive, I went to church with her. Every Sunday we went to mass together. You know what I found out? In all those fifty years of going to church, not a single priest ever knew about los Señores y las Señoras de la Luz. Old priests, young priests, they came and went at our parish, but not one knew about this. They knew about Tata Dios, but they didn’t understand that Grandfather Sun is the giver of life. The light enters our soul and gives us clarity.”
The sun had cleared the crest of the mountain now, fully risen, and the play of light reached a climax that created the essence of a living presence around them.
“See the light shining on the leaves of the alamos, the maize, the grass, my wife’s roses. Everything they touch is alive!”
It took Sonny’s breath. Sitting by the old man as the sun rose was magical. It was real. Sonny could see the Lords and Ladies, see the forms of light that even now made everything shimmer with movement and light.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“Sure,” don Eliseo said. “The Cristo is a Señor de la Luz.”
Sonny thought he hadn’t heard correctly. “Qué?”
“The light fills a man up and it makes him a cristo. We can become like the Cristo.…”
Become a Señor de la Luz, Sonny thought, become godlike.
He looked across the field of corn, where the dance of light continued. The old man saw the Cristo in the sun, he saw the kachinas of the pueblos and the santos of the church.
Sonny felt the infusion of energy into the plants, the leaves soaking in the light, the penetration of the energy into the roots. It warmed his bare chest, his face, his arms. If he learned the way of his abuelos, he was sure the light would enter his soul. He remembered a prayer from childhood.
“My mother used to pray: Quién llena esta casa de luz? Jesús. Quién la llena de alegria? María. Que claro se ve, teniendo en el corazón, a Jesús, María, y José.… Something like that.”
“The prayer is to fill the house with light,” don Eliseo said. “Every day one opens the window and doors and fills the house with the new light of day. Allow the Señores y Señoras de la Luz to also enter your soul.”
The old man was describing his spiritual path. The prayers to the Lords and Ladies of the Light were so old that now only the medicine men in the Indian pueblos remembered them. And don Eliseo.
The old man opened his soul to the light, and the light filled his soul with clarity. It was there, trembling just beneath the old man’s skin and bones, the essence of don Eliseo’s soul.
Becoming God, Sonny thought. The Lords and Ladies of Light weren’t just an abstract thought in don Eliseo’s mind, they were real.
“Light,” the old man whispered, “that’s all there is. The light brings clarity.”
“Yes,” Sonny agreed. At that moment, when the dance of the
dazzling, shimmering Lords and Ladies of Light was at its strongest, there was clarity. His mind was clear, at rest, absorbing light, communing with something primal in the universe, connecting to the first moment of light in the darkness of the cosmos.
“In the beginning was the chispa, the spark of imagination,” don Eliseo intoned, his weathered, wrinkled face golden with light. “The chispa came to the womb of Madre Noche, the womb of time. The first light was born, male and female, and it was good.”
“But what about evil?”
“It is an eternal struggle. On the one side the clarity of the Señores y Señoras de la Luz, on the other side the violence which destroys. Don’t let yourself be trapped by darkness, Sonny. Pray to the Señores y Señoras de la Luz. Let the light fill your soul.”
Sonny leaned back in the chair and breathed deeply. He closed his eyes and let the sunlight shine on him. The light penetrated, a soft luminous ball glowed in his chest, extended to his navel, enveloped him. His thoughts became dreams and memories. He didn’t know how long the meditation lasted, he didn’t care. He only knew that his soul had opened to receive the light. If there was anything sacred on Earth, it had washed over him. Then it was gone, and Sonny turned to look at the old man. A beatific smile filled his wrinkled face.
“How about another cup of coffee?” the old man said.
“Maybe it’s this strong coffee you brew that makes us see things,” Sonny joked.
“Maybe.” Don Eliseo nodded and poured them fresh coffee. “But when you feel the Señores and Señoras de la Luz come to bless life, you don’t need anything else. When I was young, I used to do the peyote ceremony with my compadres at the pueblo. But when I got on the Path of the Sun, I found I didn’t need the guidance of Señor Peyote. You only need to open your soul.”
“The kids should know this,” Sonny said. “They don’t need drugs. Just being in the beauty of the new day is getting high, qué no?”
Don Eliseo nodded. “Our children have lost the way.”
Sonny agreed. The children had lost the way. He had lost the way. But there was still time to recover. The old people like don Eliseo were still alive, still keeping the universe in balance. They had so much to share.
Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring Page 20