Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  “Joey, what brings you into the big town? Going to give Felix over there a hand shining his Coke machine? Me, I’d like to help. You know I’m always willing. But I worked nineteen years for the California Department of Highways and I’m retired now, taking it easy you might want to say, or being a bum you probably would say.”

  Birdsong wanted to spit the sweet plastic taste of the chocolate wad in his mouth out on the dirt in one soft lump, but felt that would not be an answer to his friend, so he forced himself to swallow the pulp down, “Odus, could you give me a drink?”

  “Could I give you a drink. Hah. Ask the King of Spain if he would give you a Moorish castle. A drink I don’t have. A bottleful of whiskey I do have. Come my friend, let us retreat to where the panorama does not list among its more singular attributes such eye filling delights as the modern service station, which, as you and I both know, is shortly to become an ancient custom.” He led the way across the deserted pavement and into the log house that did not have one window cut into its highway side, the entire front wall was blank and barren. Birdsong looked back before going through the open door and saw Laura wedged into the open crack of the screen door, her eyes blinking in the sudden sun, but intent; an owl watching a field mouse disappear into its hole.

  Inside the long room was filled with mountains, they streamed through the great windows cut carefully into the logs of the wall which were laid securely one upon the other, the golden hard hearts from the tall trunks of once green pine. Odus stood in front of the windows, his squat body alone in the open center of glass running from floor to ceiling, connected with the mountains soaring up from the back of his house. “On that highest ridge there, you can see the sun through the trees. You can see the spaces between those tall trees. You can see the blue sky through the gaps that should be solid with growing wood. The line of trees on that ridge looks like my teeth would if I had just gone a full round with Rocky Marciano. I sit here every day, as I have for ten years, and watch the trees on that ridge get thinner and thinner. Before I die they’ll be as many trees left on that ridge as there will be hairs on my head. Some day I’ll get up, make my coffee, sit down and look out the window and see a bald mountain. Then I’ll just settle back, finish my cup of black and give up living. What on God’s earth is left after those sonofabitchin loggers have cut everything down to the bone, have deprived a forest of its function. Anyone who could stand still for one moment and look at that pitiful thin line of trees on the horizon without feeling shame, shame without crying inside at how we all have fucked the mother mountain, isn’t a whole man, that’s something Garibaldi wouldn’t have stood for, not for one second on top of one of your E-PLURIBUS-UNUM silver dollars.” He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked back and forth in front of the clear glass, his feet striking full and flat on the rough planks of the floor like he was counting off white divider-lines down the black center of some forgotten highway. “Joey,” his body stopped dead in the middle of his count and his old face was alone in front of the trees through the window with the gray eyebrows caught in a rut of skin halfway up his forehead. “Garibaldi was a goddamn saint.”

  “Whiskey.”

  “Whiskey. He loved it. Couldn’t get enough. When he came through a town like Tarracina the women would rush out and pour cupfuls of it over his boots.”

  “I’ll take it out of the bottle.”

  “No need, I have glasses, you’re uptown here, all the way uptown. Sit down there, you’re a guest. Just you sit down, push all those books to the floor and just relax in that chair.”

  Birdsong sat in the big chair with the cloth arms chewed down to the bone of wood from wear and let his weight go easy against the back, it was a strong back with a solid curve to it and it would still be standing after the rest of the chair crumbled away, it was out of respect to its strength that he didn’t put any undo stress on it, just like you never overload a strong horse, even when you know he can take it. He didn’t look out the windows at the mountain, he could see that from his own house, or from any point in the valley, except up at the northend beyond the hot springs where the hard ground turned soft beneath the feet, and then muddy where the high fat grass grew up and the thick waves of willows hid the water, sending above the marsh a milk haze which blanked the rise of the mountains. Five miles away the waters of the marsh turned into the Yuba River and cut through stone, the same kind of stone in front of him now as the best fireplace in the County, a fireplace that could heat twelve rooms of any two houses put together, and not just the one room it was intended for. It was the first thing Odus built, it took him almost the whole of a summer, the tall chimney toppled twice, Odus didn’t want any supports as he worked, he wanted the rocks to stand firm and clean as one, like they were carved from a single boulder and would take any amount of snow and wind that came blowing down off the mountain. He worked every day on the fireplace, and when in the late afternoon he would drive back to his boarding house in Truckee it would look to someone passing by that a house had burned down long ago and the only thing left standing was the fireplace. But those who thought that, had it backwards. “Build your fireplace first,” Odus told him. “That’s your heart, that’s the life of a house, and when you have yourself a fireplace, then you can go ahead and put your walls up around it and a roof over the whole thing.” The rocks of the hearth were something special. When he worked for the State on the mountain highways all the way back to the beginning he knew he was going to build that fireplace and just what kind of rocks he needed for the hearth, their shape and size and how many. When he walked along behind the oiler hard-raking mile after mile of the hotbed smooth he always had his eyes open, running red from the steam of the boiler blowing back at him from the oiler up front, his eyes touched every rock on both sides of the new hot road, testing them for a possible place in his hearth, examining their feel, and sometimes, maybe only two, three times a summer, when he found what he was looking for, when he found one that was right, one that fit into the pattern locked up in his head, he marked its position on the new road and later, in the shade of dusk, he would walk back from where the crew had ended for the day, maybe three, sometimes four miles to the place where the rock was and he’d match it again to his plan, and if it still fit he hid it down off the bed of the road, wedging it solid against the base of a sugarpine, and years later, when the base and chimney were finished and all that remained for completion was the facing rock of the hearth he drove around the mountain roads for five days in his pickup, going right to the places where he had set aside the rocks that fit into his design.

  “Here’s hoping you don’t end up like John Bigtree,” Odus handed Birdsong a glassful of whiskey and sat carefully in the only other chair in the room while he worked his false teeth out of his mouth and placed them on his lap before taking a drink, he never drank whiskey with his teeth in. A pit-boss at one of the casinoes in Reno had told him a long time ago that the worst thing in the world for false teeth is to let them come into contact with whiskey, it corrodes them and stains them clear through, soak them in vodka overnight if you want, that’s the best sterilizer known, but don’t drink whiskey with them. And since Odus didn’t like vodka he was forever taking his teeth out.

  “Who’s this John Bigtree? You’ve taught me who Garibaldi is, and the man Joe Stalin, but I don’t remember you ever mentioning John Bigtree. Maybe I wouldn’t mind ending up like him. I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it till now.” Birdsong finished his drink and set it on the floor beside him, he had to wait a while for Odus’ answer. Odus never gave a direct answer when he was drinking whiskey with his teeth out, it always took sometime for him to screw his lips down over the gums so his toothless state wouldn’t be observed as he talked, but screwing his lips down wasn’t easily accomplished as he had to serve the two purposes of not exposing himself and at the same time leaving enough space in the clamped hole of the lips to make his words at least partially comprehensible, and not just the babbling of some toothless o
ld fool. But he never trusted his lips to cover the pink of his gums and talk too, so when he finally did speak it was always with the shield of his hand wedged beneath his nose and covering the whole of his mouth so all that could be seen of the face was the heavy nose seared a turnip red from the mountain sun, pitted with the dirt of dusty new roadbeds, and the eyes above hooked open in a sudden blue by deep wrinkles. “John Bigtree,” the words came slipping from beneath the shield of his hand, “was made the most famous Indian in America in nineteen-hundred and thirteen. They’ll never be another as famous, they’ll never be another with such distinction.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Of course you’ve never heard of him, Joey,” Odus’ eyes narrowed and pulled up; in that moment, with his hand covering his mouth, he looked like a small boy restraining the beginning of a giggle that will seize his body and shake it violently in private joke. “You don’t hear of John Bigtree, you only see him, you only feel him, you only touch his face, the face of the most honored Indian of all time, the only Indian who has ever been welcomed into every American home, the only Indian who has seen the inside of every pocket, purse and wallet and has rubbed eyebrows with Presidents. He’s the guy on the nickel. It was in nineteen and thirteen they stamped his proud red face on every five-cent piece pumped out of the treasury. Woodrow Wilson even made a speech about it, that being his first year as President he felt he had to make a speech about everything, even invited old John himself on down to Washington to shake his hand for finally making it in the Whiteman world. Old John was a little afraid of going on down because he didn’t own a headdress, never had, wasn’t a real chief, and the President expected him to show up in a headdress like any decent Indian so the two chiefs could have their pictures taken shaking hands. So old John had to borrow himself a headdress off the Smithsonian Institute when he pulled into Washington. Woodrow’s speech was one of those little nervous ones he was later to become so famous for, you know he had four breakdowns before he even got to be President, he wasn’t one of your Teddy Roosevelts. Woodrow said how privileged he was to meet old John, his being a mighty chief of his people, and how John was the best of his kind, being as how he never gave any trouble and was duly rewarded by having his face stamped for posterity on the nickel, that being the ultimate tribute America had, putting your face on its money. What Woodrow actually was saying was that if all little Indian kids were good and didn’t cause the Government trouble on their reservations that someday they might end up with their face plastered across the ten dollar bill; they never would own one for sure, but their face would be riding around on them just the same. Woodrow of course left out the fact that there weren’t hardly no Indians left alive on the face of America, about as many as the buffalo. Guess he figured there’d always be an Indian around so long as there was nickels, that must have been the reason why the buffalo was put on the other side of the coin, buffalo and Indians, kill them all off and scrape up what’s left and put them together and you’ll have enough for five cents’ worth of metal. I tell you this Joey, and I don’t care who’s around to hear it, Garibaldi wouldn’t have stood for it, not for one second on top of one of your E-PLURIBUS-UNUM silver dollars. Not for one tick of the clock.”

  “I remember Wilson from school. Didn’t he start the United Nations and then was shot?”

  “League of Nations he started, for all that was worth, just a Swiss real-estate deal.”

  “Who was shot then?”

  “A lot of them was shot, about half of them should have been before they took the oath; God wasn’t about to strike them down. It was McKinley though, he’s the one was shot, great admirer of Garibaldi’s he was.”

  “I wonder if anyone will shoot this man called Ike. It couldn’t happen I think, not today in the fifties anyway, it hasn’t happened for so long a time people forget about it. Still, it’s something to wonder at. I wonder at things like that, sometimes I think I’m crazy because I do.”

  “Wonder at it? Damn you Joey, you haven’t listened one bit to all the history I’ve taught you. You don’t know a thing if you haven’t learned what history is saying to us, it says it’s all a bore, life is, because the same old things keep happening one over the other. It don’t make a Quaker’s bit of difference if this is the fifties, thirties or seventies, Ike could be shot, poisoned or strangled. There isn’t such a thing as a modern time, only old ones with different names stuck on the faces, finding a modern time is like finding out your mother is a virgin. And people never forget, there was even a bunch tried to slip over the wall and give it to old Harry S. You’re dead wrong Joey, in history, and in your own life too, if you haven’t learned things happen one over the other, like an empty barrel rolling down a hill. Garibaldi was one that learned the lesson when Mazzini called him back from exile early in 1848 in Uruguay, where he was teaching those Indians any fool can shoot a gun; you don’t have to be Catholic to pull the trigger. Mazzini called him to Milan to be a general of the people in the revolutionary army, Garibaldi knew it was only a single roll of the barrel, just a little twist, the barrel would roll over and over before the map of Italy would no longer just be a bunch of royal states that could be bartered, betrayed or sold by the Pope in Rome but would be a unified country, a full boot that could kick the ass of Europe if it so much as even thought of invading an inch of Italian soil again. Garibaldi knew the only way to survive the barrel was to keep your feet moving, to get off is to stop, to stop is to die. That’s why when years after Milan, when finally the spirit of Risorgimento had come of age like a rare wine and Garibaldi’s army was defeating every Papist backed despot who dared challenge its progress, and ended up with all of Southern Italy, and put it like a feather in Garibaldi’s hat, and the people were cutting their wrists to declare their loyalty to him and stampeding through the streets of Naples begging him to rule and old Victor Emmanuel gets wind of it and comes racing over with the Sardinian army to remind Garibaldi that there is going to be one kingdom of Italy, with one ruler, and that’s going to be him and his gang. Garibaldi, he just smiles at old Victor, gets drunk, gives about six or twelve women the honor of lying down beneath him and leaves town whistling Ave Maria.”

  “Why didn’t Garibaldi ever gang up with Stalin?”

  Odus dropped the shield of his hand and in the purity of a moment the pink of his gum shined under his lip like a pig’s belly before the hand remembered its place. “Joey! You remember most of what I taught you but you can’t get the dates straightened out in a row through your head. I told you before you’ve got to know the dates if you want to understand who you are. The dates mark off each new turn of the barrel. They signal the twist. Garibaldi was born in 1807 and died 1882, Stalin was born in 1879 and died only a few years ago. Hey, but wouldn’t they have been a team. I’ve never once thought of it before. The two great men. We wouldn’t be what we’re in today if they had joined forces. I tell you if that had happened history would be written with flowers instead of graves, it would be like Alexander the Great and Charlemagne getting together in the same time and cruising around the world, you wouldn’t have any of your Laurel and Hardy acts we’ve been getting in this century. What do you say we finish this bottle off, it’s the last one left in the house, then we can ride over to Art’s and try some of his stuff.”

  “I think I’ll read this letter I got then, if I’m not going home.”

  “You read your letter Joey, and I’ll get my teeth in.”

  Birdsong looked at the envelope for the first time; stamped boldly across the top lefthand side in raised black letters was RESORT MOUNTAIN LAND PROPERTIES, Lake Tahoe, California. Inside he found the same raised black print on top of the letter, only larger, down below it said: “Greetings, Mr. Joseph Birdsong. RESORT MOUNTAIN LAND PROPERTIES is pleased to inform you that your six and onehalf acres of mountain property which is located one and seventenths of a mile northeast of the town of Satley and is bounded on the western extremity by the Frank Richard Madson ranch, on the north
by Dixel and Son Incorporated of San Francisco, on the south by the Felix Castor acreage as mortgaged to the Bank of Reno, and at the length of the eastern boundary by California State Highway 89, is in the proposed development area of a RESORT MOUNTAIN LAND PROPERTIES vacation mobile-homes country club. The County of Sierra has assessed the real value of your property at $4,850. R.M.L.P. is prepared to negotiate for the sale of said property in the interest of further tourist development of High Sierra Mountain land and is prepared to offer the sum of $8,012 for your property rights. Please come into our central office located at 1248 South Shore, Lake Tahoe at your earliest convenience. Mr. R. Theodore Tafield has all the pertinent information and compilated folio regarding your property and will be most pleased to offer any further details. Feel free to ask his assistance. Respectfully Yours, Mr. M. O. Cownstard, President, R. M. L. P.”

  “What’s wrong Joey? You look like you’ve just got a letter declaring you’ve been excommunicated.”

  “Who are these people?” Birdsong held the letter up. “These Mountain Land people. All my life I have lived in this valley and never once have I heard of these people, and now they send a letter telling me my land is in the middle of where they want to park trailers. Who do they think they are, the Governor?”

  “Let me see it,” Odus took the letter and read only for an instant before the wrinkles around his eyes relaxed, releasing the skin back into its smooth ruts. “Christ! It’s a gimmick. A bunch of clowns from the City come up here thinking they can rob the stupid, simpleminded rancher and small landowner out of his land. Bunch of goddam Machiavellians is all. Bandits in Cadillacs. There’s your cannibals for you, cannibals in tailored sharkskin suits. They send out letters like this and expect you to come running into their office like you just won the Irish Sweepstakes, expect you to turn over your deed and give you in return half the money they promised. It must work on a lot of people though because I’ve seen this kind of thing more than this once. I guess to some it seems a dream someone would actually want to buy the land they been fighting with most of their adult lives, and even before that, just to make enough to break even so they can break their back the next year. Hell, if you and I had a dollar for every peasant who went for this robbery we would be rich men retiring to the Kremlin. What gets me though is how people can sell their land because of a letter, don’t even see the face of the man who wants to buy what’s theirs. That’s how things are done now, you don’t even see the face of the man you’re dealing with. People that don’t have any respect for their land don’t have any respect for themselves. When people say they’ll go to war and fight for their piece of this earth it isn’t that at all. What they’re really fighting for is the chance to come back and sell what’s gone up in value since they’ve been gone. There’s never been a war yet that hasn’t sooner or later sent the price of land up like a rocket. Wars are not fought over people, they’re fought over land. Hitler was the greatest real estate visionary since Caesar. People have the heart of a toad,” Odus snapped the rigid piece of paper and broke it down to a white ball in his fist. “I received a letter like this just the day before this one Joey, the words read the same insult,” he tossed the white ball into the ashes of the fireplace. “Come on, let’s get over to Art’s. I can’t drink whiskey but he’s got enough Beefeater there to float the whole Argentine Navy on, and he’ll give one round free to every one we buy.”