Jemez Spring by Rudolfo Anaya Page B

of chaos, Homo sapiens had need to give form to his universe.
    We seek unity, Sonny said. He coaxed the old man into storytelling.
    That’s the promise of the Zia Stone, the old man said. The glyph on the stone forms a quincunx. Let’s say it’s like four trees at each corner, and in the middle a fountain. Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Life, Tree of Hope, Tree of Sadness and Pain. Fountain of Eden’s water. However you envision it, the quincunx is a symbol that unifies the universe. Four parts of the universe and the center. Four organs in man and his center, the soul. Four humors, the ancients said. Man corresponds to the cosmos. We are children of the universe. Stardust and earthdust. But in the beginning we also knew chaos. We are children of chaos, too. We need a center, a home, a place from where we can communicate with the gods. The ancients raised dolmens, temples, pyramids. The tops of pyramids, church spires, and mountains are closest to the spirit world. Raven wants that power. From there he rains destruction, pulls us all into the ancient sea, the chaos before the Light, before the Logos.
    King of the mountain, Sonny said.
    Yes, the old man said. Raven likes to play games. He’s a trickster. Always remember that. Shape shifter.
    What is he today?
    He’s gone high tech, the old man answered.
    I don’t get it.
    The bomb is a hoax. He’s playing at getting the politicians to play his game. You heard the mayor, there’s already a press conference planned. In the meantime he’s going to play with your head. He wants the Zia medallion.
    What does he want from the politicians?
    Power. But it’s also a game with them. He doesn’t give a damn about their power. Men used to put on the skin of animals or masks of animals to get the animal’s power, to hunt the animal. Today it’s the high-tech machines.
    So that’s where he is.
    Yes.
    And the mountain?
    It’s the beginning of the game.
    I see, Sonny said.
    He drove slowly through Bernalillo. Once a quiet hamlet on the banks of the Rio Grande where Hispano families raised corn, beans, chile, and children, the place now buzzed with fallout from Rio Rancho. Up on the West Mesa, Rio Rancho was spreading like a fire out of control, covering the sandhills with brand-new homes, from the Rio Grande all the way to the Rio Puerco.
    The aggressive Anglo world meeting the once bucolic Indo-his-pano world of the valley. A new conquest. Culture clash was real, even if the local chamber of commerce said otherwise.
    The valley used to be full of vineyards and cornfields. People from Jemez, Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Sandia, Santo Domingo went to Bernalillo to trade. Camino del Pueblo buzzed with activity. After the war everything began to change. Work for wages replaced the old barter system; neighbors no longer worked together. They went to work for the almighty dollar. To assimilate a culture you don’t go to war, you provide low interest rates. And you grab hold of city hall. Once the newcomers controlled city hall the old ways would go out the window. History records wars and conflicts, but the real colonization takes place by imposing law and language. The Americanos’ law and language were swords cleaving the land. The land was lost and traditions crumbling.
    Now the Nuevomexicanos have to build museums to teach the kids about their culture, Sonny thought as he crossed over the bridge. Below, the surging river was a sheen of light, a flood. Hundreds of acre-feet of water had been released from Cochiti Dam, and the water sang its freedom. Along the banks the bosque of bare cottonwoods had sprouted russet buds. Chica smelled the crisp air and barked.
    Sonny smiled. To enter the river’s presence was to enter a different time zone, where time turned into space. That was the magic of the land, spirit entering matter.
    Sonny knew the river. He had grown up in the South Valley, and he and his boyhood friends had spent