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 s
omething 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.
Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring Page 140