Rabbit Boss
Page 1
THOMAS SANCHEZ’S
RABBIT BOSS
“The big themes are in Rabbit Boss … beauty of language, compassion for the downtrodden, a sense of the frontier past that carried its own seeds of destruction. Thomas Sanchez has dared to put the dream to paper.”
—Ferol Egan, San Francisco Chronicle
“A classic to rank with The Grapes of Wrath.”
—L’Express
“Illuminated by the author’s personal, searing vision … Impressive as literature, history, and sociology.”
—Library Journal
“Its missions and messages go beyond the grievances of the past to embrace the ethos of a people in the timeless, raceless search of men to transcend themselves.”
—Indianapolis Star
“Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rabbit Boss will haunt the conscience of history forever.”
—Figaro
“Compelling, mystic and mythic … what emerges is a panorama of the last 100 years in America and a savage indictment of the despoilers of the Indians and the land. A bold book.”
—Chicago News
“Rabbit Boss is beautiful, poetic, powerful. Thomas Sanchez has a dominating talent.”
—The Times (London)
“I would suspect that the author, Thomas Sanchez, a young writer of major talent, is part Indian. Only an Indian could have the insight into the poetry, the complexity of the Indian psyche, and an understanding of the Indians’ transition of cultures.”
—George Morrison, Grand Portage band of Chippewa Tribe, Minneapolis Tribune
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1989
Copyright © 1972–1973 by Thomas Sanchez
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published, in hardcover, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1973.
Portions of this book have appeared previously in Works in Progress, Oui magazine, and Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the ’70s, edited by Jack Hicks.
Acknowledgment is made to Maryland Music Corporation, a division of Muzak, for permission to reprint lines from the song “Butterfly.”
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sanchez, Thomas.
Rabbit boss / Thomas Sanchez.—1st Vintage contemporaries ed.
p. cm.—(Vintage contemporaries)
I. Title.
[PS3569.A469R3 1989]
813′.54—dc20
89-40132
Map design by Jaye Zimet
eISBN: 978-0-307-49748-2
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Book One Tikoi (My Father) Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Two Tila (My Mother) Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Three Ayusiye (Antelope Dreamer) Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Four Gumsaba (Big Time) Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Author
The Washo is a small tribe of about 500 Indians, living in the extreme Western part of Nevada, and Eastern California. They are usually a harmless people, with much less physical and mental development than the Paiutes, and more degraded morally. They are indolent, improvident, and much addicted to the vices and evil practices common in savage life. They manifest an almost uncontrollable appetite for intoxicating drinks. They are sensual and filthy, and are annually diminishing in numbers from the diseases contracted through their indulgences. A few have learned the English language and will do light work for a reasonable compensation. They spend the winter months about the villages and habitations of white men, from whom they obtain tolerable supplies of food and clothing. The spring, summer, and autumn months are spent in fishing about Washo and Tahoe lakes and the streams which flow through their country. They also gather grass seed and pine nuts, hunt rabbits, hares, and ducks. There is no suitable place for a reservation in the bounds of their territory, and, in view of their rapidly diminishing numbers and the diseases to which they are subjected, none is required.
28th ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER
OF INDIAN AFFAIRS TO
THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR
(SUPERINTENDENT PARKER, 1866)
1
THE WASHO watched. The Washo watched through the trees. The Washo watched through the trees as they ate themselves. His chin lifted, head cocked rigid to one side as he watched through the leaves, the branches, the bark. The waiting winter light fell flat on the trees, on him, on them. The light hung in the branches, caught, glistening in the dead weight of snow that bent them down. The Washo watched between these trees pierced through the snow like spears being driven back, back into the snow that was as high as two men, one standing on the other, back into the frozen Earth. In this silence he heard a sound, a sound which did not come from them, a sound that was familiar to him, a sound that rushed over him watching down the slight slope of the mountain, a sound that crashed the silence of the trees, the silence of them on the higher snow packed in the lowness of the valley along the shore of the lake, a sound that was indifferent to what he was watching, a sound indifferent to all except the pure energy of its own existence, the sound of Geese. He looked up from them who were on the lake to the power in the Sky, the power of Musege, his brothers in nature who had secret medicine, strong medicine that many times was superior to his own, medicine which he had tried to capture, imitate, kill. He watched the Power, he watched it move in the Sky, the strength of the slick feathered wings digging into the coldness of the air in a seemingly effortless attempt of moving the Birds across the tops of trees, over the scene below. He watched the Birds as they moved off, long out of imaginary bow range. They seemed to be drifting slowly as if in a dream, but this was no dream, although it seemed like one for the air was sharp like the stoneknife at his side, it was a cold which he could not remember for any other winters, although he had heard his grandfather speak of one winter so cold that the frozen trees splintered like two boulders smashed into each other. Yet it was not only this cold; something seemed to suck him down, make it difficult to breathe, to move, the only thing easy was to watch, to wait. It was much like the feeling he had once before as a younger man, as if that feeling was a preparation for this. The feeling came upon him one night as he lay asleep under his new Rabbit blanket with his two daughters and their mother that his Power had gone to another place; even the strength running deep in his bones fled. He awoke, tried to lift the softness of the blanket from his body, but could not, could not even raise his hands. He spoke loudly so that his two daughters and their mother would awake. Help me lift this blanket from us. All four tried to push together, it was of no use, they all lay back in their weakness, felt the heavy burden closing on their skin, weighting them down. In the morning when they awoke he asked if they remembered what had passed during the night. They did, but none could agree if it was true in the way of having taken place or true in the way of the dream. They did never again sleep in that gadu, even one more night. One thing he did know to be true as he watched down through the trees to the high snow by the lake shore, this was no dream. The body sprawled on the snow, split open, one of them standing over it with a hatchet hanging limp in his hand, the thickness of blood dripping slowly from the blade to the snow, each drop silently splashing red into the coldness, lightening into pink as it sought to touch all fla
kes with its warmth, its color. A boot smashed into the pinkish splotch of soiled snow, one of them bent over the body. Above the gash from the hatchet he plunged a thick knife, cut in along the heart, slashed the skin away over the ribs, leaving them exposed for an instant before he brought the butt of the knife down, breaking through. He yanked the broken bones away, once more cut in around the heart, this time freeing it, grabbing hold, the beat lingering in its firm flesh, pulsing weakly in his fist. He tugged it from its place, leaving a sucking hole, looked up around him, no one moved, their eyes tight on the meat clutched in the man’s hand, sweat and saliva dripped onto the hair growing out from the bottom of his face, crystallizing into sharp chinks of ice. His head jerked looking from one to the other. Slowly he lifted the heart to his lips, the red slipping between his white cold fingers, moving down his wrists, splashed on the cracked leather boots. He opened his mouth, the smoke of his breath spurting in the air, the teeth clamped down on the warm meat. The one with the hatchet raised it high above his head, brought it down on the sprawled, heartless body, the blade sliced cleanly through the neck as if it were a slender log, sinking deep in the snow. He picked up the head, his fingers locked in the hair of the dripping globe, and tossed it away. Released, it spun toward the lake. The others watched it float in the quiet cold of morning air, then drop, landing softly on the open whiteness; it did not roll, the eyes turned down in the coldness, buried away from them. The people fell, as if the head had severed the strings that held their bodies rigid, the claws of their hands tearing the clothes from the body beneath them, ripping into flesh. A sound exploded, seeming to shake the snow from the trees, crashing up the roll of slope where the Washo stood, stripping everything of meaning in its path, driving into him like the jagged flint of an arrowtip. He did not move, did not move as he watched, as he heard the last whimper from the jagged, shouted cry of pain from the one of them who was falling on the torn body. It was as if he were falling, falling from a cloud, his body felt hollow as it plunged, the rising Earth beating up, straight, into his face, into the face of the woman as she fell on the wet, ravaged body, her arms spread out stiff as the hands beat into the snow, digging, trying to hang onto the very coldness itself. One of them moved toward her, his entire body straining against its own weight as he forced the three long steps to come up to her, the big jacket splitting open down the middle as he reached to pull a knife tucked under his belt, its blade sparkling between the clear winter light and the whiteness of the snow, caught, glinting blindingly like the splashing rays of Sun in the water of the lake. With one hand he yanked the woman up by the hair, pulling her bloodstreaked face off the exposed body. He put the knife to her throat; the arm stiffened as if to slit open the neck of a wounded Deer. The man with the hatchet moved, one leg came up, the boot hooking with a crack under the jaw of the one with the knife, throwing him backwards into the snow, almost pitching the long knife from his hand. He raised his arm and brought the hatchet down with a rush of air. The other one rolled over, the hatchet slicing next to him, burying itself in the snow up to the handle, he jabbed with the knife a single hard stroke. The blade disappeared into the chest. The man dropped, his hand still locked around the wooden handle of the hatchet as the dead weight of his body hit the snow. The one with the knife stood up, hot breath flaring from his wide nostrils. He did notice a young boy move past him to the body, lift an ax his own height and chop fiercely at the leg.
The Washo watched them moving slowly on the snow, clumsy, like Bears in water. He had been watching silently all morning, had seen, had seen them hunched, away from each other, mouths tearing at knots of flesh, faces smeared the color of a dying Sun. He had seen through the trees. He felt a hand on his shoulder, he turned and saw his brother. For a moment he felt ashamed, ashamed that he did not hear him approach, but then, he had been watching. He looked into his face, they did not speak, he too had seen, he too knew. They left, slowly, through the snow, they made their way up the slope of the mountain to the ridge and walked in silence away from the Sun.
On the top of the ridge it was easier to walk. He felt as his Deerhide wrapped feet pulled lightly out of the deep snow with each step that this winter must surely end; and when the waters ran once more it would wash away all of what he had seen, and when the Earth around the lake had again turned up black, free of its white burden, they would be gone. These things he thought as he walked ahead of his brother, away from the Sun, towards his people, towards his home on the Big Lake in the Sky, Tahoe. As they turned off the ridge and headed down into the first valley, soft bits of snow began to fall. The Indians pulled their Rabbit blankets closer about them and walked on. They had moved steadily from where they had come, never looking back. When the snow cleared the Sun had left the Sky; they followed the Stars, they knew from the night they could continue until the next afternoon. Then they would be home.
She sat naked from the waist up on the thick mat of branches. Her bent legs settled softly into the skins. She watched out the opening of the strong galisdangal her husband had built from cut limbs of trees, stacked close and tall, lashed with strips of Beaverhide to form a circle of protection against the mountain winds. Her brown eyes sunk deep in her blunt round face appeared aware of nothing, but she was watching. She was watching out across the small bay of the Big Lake, and behind it at the white wall of mountain. She had been watching this direction many days now. First she watched for her husband, and when finally he did not come his brother was sent. Now she watched for both. It was silent this day, as had been all the days of this winter; even the trees bent in silence under the winds. The only sound she could hear was the sucking of her baby. She held the weight of its body to her breast with one crooked arm, and watched. She gazed at the mountain waiting for only one thing, its white wall a backdrop for movements in her mind. Sitting, waiting for the small black shape of her husband on the white wall, she thought of him and how when the baby had finally come out and the old lady, her mother’s cousin, had cut the cord from her body with a sharp wooden knife, his thin, hardset face cracked into smile, he placed an arrow in his bow, and shot it at the dull winter Sun. It sailed high, then fell, sticking up straight in the snow at his younger brother’s feet. He looked at the arrow, turned and walked to the Lake Tahoe. Out a short distance on the ice the men followed him, each with a half hidden grin on his face, for he had to take the ritual bath after birth in icecold water. He brought out his knife, jabbed a circle in the white hard crust, finally breaking an opening large enough for his body. He turned towards the men, but his eyes did not meet theirs; he was looking over their heads, back at the galisdangal. He knew that his young wife was watching as he loosened the rawhide string of his leather breechcloth and let it fall, then jumped into the hole, the water splashing up above his waist. The men’s laughter came like a cloudburst; laughing so hard they forgot themselves, toppled to the snow and rolled around in howling fits. His teeth began to chatter and he clenched them as he sank to his knees, his head going under water, his whole body submerged in freezing slush. As he climbed out from the hole the men found the strength to stand up and brush the snow from their almost naked bodies. He used the Deerskin breechcloth to wipe himself, then looped it back around his waist. He gently stooped, placed his knife at the rim of the hole, its thin stone blade facing inward in testimony as the traditional gift of birth for one of the men to take, then walked off. Some days later the piece of cord from the baby’s belly fell to the ground. She told her husband he must go and hunt meat, for until now he had been forbidden to eat it. When he returned there would be the happiness of the babyfeast, and all but she would fill themselves on his killings. She must fast longer, to bring the power of endurance upon the child. Before he left she touched her hand to his face and spoke of how she was sorry in her heart that the baby was in the winter and it was expected of him to hunt in the snow, how she had wished it had come like most others, when the pinenuts were being gathered. It was bad for him as husband to have to fast from meat an
d salt and not be allowed to sleep at night until the cord fell. She could bear it, she was a woman, but it was bad for a man to do without strength during the white days. She must have done something to bring the baby in the winter, she must have called down some evil upon herself. The waterfall, she thought, that must have been the evil power. But she did not tell him, she only touched his face and spoke of her grief. How it made her weep to bend his shoulders with her burdens. Before he left he tied the newly fallen umbilical cord around a stick and placed it at the right side of the child’s winnowing basket so that he would grow quickly and have a powerful right hand. Since then, every day she had gone to the place where he had buried the afterbirth of the child. She stared at the frozen Earth, could see beneath it to that part of her wrapped moistly in bark, waiting to grow again within her stomach, to become heavy with flesh, to suck at her breast, to walk the mountains and taste the spring berries between its lips. She would gaze at the spot where she knew it to be. She knew it was buried upright, and wondered if in the spring he would return to dig it up and rebury it facing down so that it would grow deep in the black Earth and bring her the power to once more give him a child.
She saw what she had been waiting for. The men outside were shouting, their voices booming out across the flatness of the Big Lake in celebration. Celebration was in her heart; she hugged the child closer to her skin and waited for the two distant figures that had appeared on the white wall to make their way down to camp.
The man with the two Eagle feathers held tightly against his head by a leather band stood watching in silence, his bare feet planted firmly in the ankle deep snow. He watched as his two youngest sons walked toward him through the forest along the shore of the Big Lake. He knew this was not right. Something was not as it should be. It was not just the fact that his son with the new boychild had been gone for more than fourteen nights’ passing; it was greater than that. He hated the power of the feelings he had, he hated them because they were mostly right, like the time the sagebrush laughed when he was young, he had been right then too. He could not understand this power he had, he did not try to, he had been deceived for many years in believing that he could unravel this. Now he only hated it. He hated this winter. Not the cold, he could suffer that, he hated its silence, its length. Each day it challenged him, and each day he grew more bitter. It was the bitterness which allowed him to meet the challenge each day, the bitterness which allowed him to survive, and it was just that which he hated, for he knew it was the winter which gave him the strength to live through each day, only so it could challenge him again the next. But he did not fight. He had learned long ago that you cannot fight, you cannot fight for you are the only one that can be killed. You must wait and watch to survive. Only in this manner advantage can be taken of the situation, by surprising it and adopting its terms. Like the winter it is not something to be killed, it is impossible to capture its power, but it can be, in a miserable way, imitated. You can learn how to make your body grow cold with the winter, how to fill your mind with the warm image of spring Sun, a woman’s flesh moving in the strong smell of a Rabbit blanket. Deceit is survival. You must look like the tree in the snow, dead and buried, but deep within the roots remain warm in hope, for spring always does come, winter always must pass, things do get better. But the old man could no longer take warmth from these thoughts. The cold had penetrated his roots, and now he met each day like the stone. The winter washed over him, it was only the fact that the winter did wash over him which held him together in bitterness.