Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  “Hah, little Petey’s one on top of you there Linda, he’s got you this time,” Ted pushed his stool back, all the years of hooking bales and hefting them on and off trucks had stretched his body like taffy and left his hands dangling somewhere around his knees, but his brain still connected to the hands and he swooped the little dog up and held him gentle for a moment in the air like a new laid egg before he spread the hind legs wide and rotated the dog around so everyone could see.

  “That’s the most goddamdest unnatural thing I’ve ever seen.” Odus gulped the rest of his drink, the two icecubes passing down his throat in one slow lump, almost choking him to death before he could spit everything out. “That dog’s not any monk, he’s a goddam eunuch!”

  “I’m not going to look, Ted,” Linda jabbed a hand over her eyes, the tips of the fingers flashing a hard painted pearl white. “Please. Please put him down.”

  “You’re looking at a through and through thoroughbred miniature poodle,” Ted set the dog next to its bowl and continued over the sucking noise of the delicate mouth. “That’s the only way the kennel lady over to Quincy would sell him to me, they’re all cut like that unless they’re special to be bred. This keeps them clean and the seed from being misdirected, you won’t see any of your halfmutt poodles trotting the roads around, that’s for sure, that’s for sure.” He cupped the dog’s head in his hand. “Petey here couldn’t be a monk nohow,” the voice coming out of the center of his thin face seemed to be trying to persuade someone who was not there, someone who had left a long time ago. “Petey couldn’t be a monk because he’s not Catholic. My wife was though, she doesn’t feel that pain in her leg anymore since we buried her over to Saint Mark’s graveyard in Truckee. She was a good believer that woman, all the way to the otherside of her death. Saint Christopher’s medal she snapped on the rearview mirror in the cab of my truck is still there. I remember the day she put it on. Course,” he released the dog’s head from the caress of his palm, “I pasted one of those signs across the dash below it: DEAR SAINT CHRISTOPHER, IF I CRASH GOIN’ 77, SAVE ME A PIECE IN HEAVEN.” He scratched the dog’s stomach and looked somewhere in between the glass bank of bottles shining before him, “Save me a piece in heaven.”

  “Joe. Joe,” Linda leaned forward and waved down the counter like she was trying to flag down the only car on a desert road. “Would you please push R-12 just for me, it’s a new song we just got in by a guy called Andy Williams, he’s much better than Perry Como, and already it’s my favorite, my special. Art will give you the money.” Birdsong swung off his stool and felt the woman’s eyes going all over his back and into his black hair as he ran his finger over the glowing plastic of the R’s until he found 12 and punched the button. “I’ve got change.” He turned around and the record dropped. “I’ll play it.”

  I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

  YOU DRIVE-A ME WILD

  I’M CRAZY ABOUT YOU

  YOU BUTT-TA-FLIE

  “Let me give you another drink,” Art clapped two fresh icecubes in the glass and glanced over the bottle as he poured. “On the house.”

  Birdsong looked at the smile caught on the little man’s face like a kite in a tree. And drank.

  “They’ll arrest you for that, Linda,” Odus called into the music. “They’ll throw a net over you and haul you into jail for contributing to those who already collected.”

  “Odus, you get on out here and dance with me. You’ve been letting ladies dance by themselfs all your life,” she spun her body around in the middle of the floor, the large silk flowers on her dress spilling over her body as she took two steps out and two steps in, the reflection of the flowing beer from the signs foaming over her face, washing her down in a dull gold glow.

  Ted moved with a slow stride, just one step, cocking his straw hat down over his face like his head was going to blow off, and slipped his hand in among the flowers around the bouncing waist.

  “Here’s a man for you,” Linda looked only once over to the bar then found herself somewhere against the narrow body in front of her.

  “I said they would arrest you Linda. We’ve got the fastest law in the State,” Odus pointed his drink at the door, one eye squinting its aim at the badge pinned like a shining silver flower over the heart of the brown shirt. “Now he’s here to do it.”

  “Now who’s here to do what to who and what’s the reason for?”

  “Sheriff Davies,” Linda pulled herself off the thin body and rushed over to the big man at the door, snaking a white arm through his and leading him up to the bar like a bride presenting her groom to the altar.

  “What’s it going to be Sheriff,” Art fired himself down his slot and took the offering his wife presented him. “The regular?”

  “If you don’t give me the regular Art,” the man leaned the full melon weight of his face over the bar and shut one big eye in a slow wink, “I’d like to know the reason why.”

  “One big Burgie is what the man wants,” the words shouted out of Art’s face like notes from a bugle and almost before they were said the bottle of beer was on the counter running foam out of its top like blood from a hatcheted chicken’s neck.

  “Damn,” the Sheriff picked the bottle up in the slab of his hand as if it was a brown sausage, poked it in his mouth and slammed it back down, “it’s something like this makes a man’s day worthwhile!”

  “You work too hard, Sheriff,” Linda leaned on the hunk of his shoulder encased in the crisp brown shirt. “Only you and Sheriff Hadley to keep the peace in this whole valley, it’s not fair on you. All you men in this valley work too hard. I’ve never in my life seen men work so hard. Poor Ted over here works ten, twelve hours a day, hardly a moment’s rest.”

  The big man leveled the steel of his eyes at the woman hanging on his shoulder, “That’s what a man’s put on this earth for, Linda. That’s all he’s got he can give. If he works hard and lives clean that’s the Christian thing to do. Don’t you never forget the idle shop is the devil’s playground.”

  “Amen to that,” Ted motioned for Art to fill up his dog’s bowl again.

  “But that’s not saying the Sheriff and me can’t use some help. You’re right there when you say it’s only him and me, his Deputy Sheriff, that keeps the folks in line for the whole valley, the whole county even. The Highway Patrol helps us out some though, when the going gets a little too rough. But me and Sheriff Hadley try to get the folks to vote the money for a new man to take some of the heavy load off us, but the folks keep voting it down regular. I got no complaint though. It’s a rewarding job.”

  “I’d vote for your new man next time around,” Ted offered. “But it don’t look like I’ll be living here much longer. I got a letter just this morning from a big outfit over to Tahoe wants to buy up my whole place for some sort of trailer grounds. I think if they buy it I’ll retire and move down to Placerville so the winter up here can’t raise so much hell with my shoulder anymore.”

  Art’s body snapped like a rubberband in his slot and shot him down in front of Ted. The letter he had been waiting for to offer him the chance to sell out had arrived but an error had been made, it was sent to the wrong person. This had never happened to Art and for the first time in his life he seriously doubted the fidelity of the United States Post Office. “What do you mean you received a letter offering you the chance to sell out? Are you sure they didn’t make a mistake and deliver you the wrong letter?”

  “That’s right,” Linda moved in on Ted and she and Art had his thin body sandwiched between them. “Are you certain it was addressed to you?”

  “Hell yes I’m sure,” Ted was trying to look at both of them at once, not quite aware of what it was they wanted of him. “The P.O. don’t never make mistakes.”

  “Ted’s right, Art. Me and Joey received the exact same letter, said just about the same thing. As a matter of fact Joey got his just this very morning, it was from Resort Mountain Land Properties.”

  “That’s the outfit Odus, they’re the ones want to
buy me up whole, that’s for sure, that’s for sure.”

  For the moment Art was stranded in his slot, there had been a mistake made or a trick played, somewhere along the line the scheme of California real-estate had dealt him out, the mouth in his face fell through the dying moment out of its smile, the worms of the two lips pressed white, gave a little wiggle like they had been hooked, Art sincerely wondered how the machine of California land could function without his small part fit properly in the engine, and it was as if the hook through his lips was jerked from above, pulling his mouth back into the customery rut on his face, for the wonder of it all was that it was impossible for him to be dealt out, he had never asked to be dealt in, but being a landowner he was a lifelong partner in the game, and the smile cemented on his face never betrayed his hand, he moved with the grace of an old cow in a loading shoot down his slot behind the counter and showed the smile to Odus and Birdsong, “Why don’t you men let me sport the next round.”

  “Dammit Art,” Odus pushed his empty glass forward. “People are going to start calling you a Communist the way you run this bar.”

  “I’ve heard of R.M.L.P., they own most of the land around Tahoe, but I’ve never heard of them buying land over this far north.”

  “Well you’ve heard of it now,” Odus picked up his glass and rattled the ice. “You can be dead right about it just as my name is O-d-u-s, Oh-DUS.”

  “I don’t think Art doesn’t believe you Odus,” the Sheriff had another one of his logical encounters with two thoughts bumping up against one another in his mind and bouncing out his mouth. “But I think what he’s gettin at is that Ted’s property is way over on the other side of the valley in Loyalton and yours and Birdsong’s here is on the west side in Satley, now that makes a distance of thirteen miles by highway and eight and a half straight across by cattle roads, now it don’t take one of your county assayers to figure up that it’s plain impractical for some outfit to build a trailer grounds eight and a half miles long. Why hell, the Golden Gate Bridge in ’Frisco ain’t even that long.”

  Art set a fresh glass of beer in front of the Sheriff to show his thanks, for without knowing it he had explained the mistake to him, restored his respect for the United States Post Office and confirmed his faith in California land. This thinking side of the Sheriff had never really exposed itself to Art before, it was as if every morning when the Sheriff strapped on his leather holster and cinched it tight around the meat of his hips he unstrapped any ability to think of matters not directly related to the job of keeping the people from harming themselves, and the only numbers he carried around up in his head all day long were the amounts of the fines attached to the speed zones which were constantly being broken and taxed all the Sheriff’s coordinated skill in turning on his siren, flashing his red lights and hounding the offending car to the side of the road. But lately the Sheriff had not been cinching his holster so tight in the morning and certain loose ends were being carried about by him during the day without his knowledge, this was the first time Art had caught complete sight of one, and he was grateful for it. His respect for the man could never be from this point on simply one of authority, “This one’s on the house Sheriff.” His smile was in full bloom as he watched the Sheriff’s adam’s apple hook at the air as he sucked the bottle dry. “A man whose job demands as much mental concentration as yours deserves his due.”

  “That reminds me,” the Sheriff jumped off his stool like a boxer who has just heard his bell. “I’m on official County business. I come over to this side of the valley to get Ben Dora, he’s got a court date in Downieville this afternoon and I thought I’d drive him over being as how he’s already missed twice, seems that new Highway Patrol hot-shot roaming this territory gave Ben seven tickets in one month, four for drunk, now the judge wants to pull his license and compound his truck for the fines. I thought I’d go over and explain things to the judge, you boys know Ben needs that truck to get around to the ranches to do his work. It just won’t do for him to lose it, not with the six kids to support, and Dolly too. I went by his place and Dolly says she don’t know exactly which ranch he’s working today but I may be able to catch him here. Any of you boys seen Dora?”

  “He usually comes in here about an hour ago,” Art swiped up the splashes of foam left from the Sheriff’s beer. “But it doesn’t look like he’s coming today.”

  “What about you Odus, you seen him? You haven’t huh. Ted, you know where he is?”

  “Well Sheriff, I dumped a load of clover over to Dixel’s ranch about six this morning and I heard something about Dora’s fencin’ on the Johnson field. Maybe you’ll find him there.”

  “I’ll give it a try, Ted. Birdsong, how’s that knee of yours? Ralph tells me you banged it around pretty good when the two of you was dynamitin’ snakes up at Horsetail this winter. Can you get around on it okay?”

  “It’s no bother.”

  “That’s just good then. You be able to guide this weekend for our bow-hunt? Same pay as usual.”

  Birdsong looked at the big man with the melon face planted deeply on the slab of his body, the eyes beneath the felt hat pulled even with the weight of the puffed ears had clouds floating through them, white balls passing into the infinity of sky, devoured in the vacuous blue, “I’ve guided every year. I don’t see the difference between this one and the last. But I thought the hunt was always in fall. It don’t make much sense. They’ll all be with fawns.”

  “Special benefit this year. We’re trying to get up money for the Little League, uniforms and all, the works.”

  “Damn if that ain’t the best charity yet I heard of for the hunt,” Ted’s thin face worked its way into an admiring glance at the Sheriff, he was always the first in line to shake the hand of a generous man. “We’ll beat hell out of Truckee, and with the ball playin’ kids we got in this valley we’ll whoop hell out of Reno too, we’ll show them, that’s for sure. Who’s selling tickets, Sheriff?”

  “Art here’s handling all our money affairs this year.”

  “Hell Art, why didn’t you say you had that batch of tickets? I ain’t missed a hunt in years, just you ask the Sheriff. You don’t even have the sign up or nothin’.”

  “We haven’t had any need for a sign the way people have been rushing in here to get their hands on a ticket before they’re all gone. I only have a few left.”

  “Well you just give old Ted one, you ain’t cuttin’ me out that easy. Here’s my fifteen bucks.”

  “Price has gone up, twenty-five this year. It’s a popular event.”

  “Well here’s my twenty-five then. Nobody’s going to be one up on me, old Ted’s always been a sport.”

  “What about you Odus,” the Sheriff stopped his body at the door. “You think those legs of yours can hold you a long enough time to get a shot?”

  Odus pulled himself up on the stool and read his words off straight at the man with the silver badget pinned over his heart, “I’ve only been on a hunt once, once was enough, it should be for any man with red blood pumping through his body and oxygen in his brain. It’s a senseless slaughter and those involved in it should know better, they’ve all been to war. Veterans of Foreign Wars they call themselves, it seems to me they couldn’t wait to bring the war back with them. You’ve already cut down all the goddam trees, now you’ve got to make war on what animals are left, got to slaughter their bodies for some kind of private pleasure it gives you in your pants. I’ve seen the real thing. I don’t forget. Walking these highways up here for fifteen years with the mountain sun in my face couldn’t burn out what I’ve seen. I wouldn’t give 250 to be one of the full grown men prowling around the forest waiting the chance to stick his arrow through living flesh. And for what? For food? Hell no. Your bellies are already so packed with beef you can’t carve extra notches in your belts fast enough. And you aren’t going up there to hunt them out just so you can outfit a bunch of kids in gray striped flannel. You’re going up there because you lost it and you’re trying to get it b
ack. You can’t stay away. It’s a dirty goddam sacrilege, and that’s the first and last name for it.”

  “Odus you old bastard, you get better at that speech every year,” the head of melon swung around on its body, the laughter bubbling from its cut of mouth. “Poor little Bambi. All the poor little Bambis.”

  Somewhere over the rim of the western mountains the sun died into the ocean. He had never seen the ocean but he knew that to be true. Before he would die he was going down to San Francisco and watch the gold ball sink in the water, slip from sight like a burning ship. He promised himself that every evening when the setting sun threw the last blaze of its color into the valley and the mountains blinked like a rosebright candle was being held up to their faces. The rabbit always held its ears stiff at this time of day, the firm flesh trembling in anticipation as if it knew the death was coming, the day would end. He liked the rabbit most at dusk, because it was then completely alert to the quiet dying around it and knew that part of its life was sinking with the sun. He would push the door back and outside the fields opened up across the valley, burning into darkness. The rabbit moved its body in front of the empty square space until it was alone with nothing before it except the freedom of the fields and buzzing waves of cricket chirps lulling evening into a special silence. He could see the color of the dying sun on the rabbit’s fur as it sat in front of the door until there was nothing left before it except the night with its head spinning full of stars, then the rabbit’s body would relax, the ears would slump a little, giving themselves over to the night and it would turn its back to the door and hop up on his lap, laying its ears straight back as his hand moved over its body, rubbing its nose against the skin of his hand, sniffing the green odor of alfalfa he had fed the horse earlier. And it was at this time he would celebrate the rabbit’s choice of freedom and take up the black leather accordion his father had given him and run his fingers over the cracked worn glimmer of the mother of pearl finger-presses, squeezing the notes of SHE’LL BE COMIN’ ROUND THE MOUNTAIN out the open door into the night. The rabbit sensed his joy and rubbed itself like a cat against his leg as the boot tapped out its time on the floor. It was the song his father liked to play best and once he started playing it no one could get him to stop. The accordion belonged to his father’s younger brother who played it with the determination of a mute speaking with notes. The brother he knew at least fifty songs and the words to half as many. Some said he was good enough to even play at dances. His father said he did, he himself was there and saw it, his brother stood for five and a half hours straight squeezing the music out of his black box and calling his songs to the dancers on the floor; in the end he lost five pounds of sweat and his shirt stuck like glue where the straps of the instrument hung with their full weight on his body, the people came up and clapped for him, one man even gave him a silver dollar. After that he got on a ship and sailed over to France where he fought in the First War until his face was blown right off his head. It was when his father got the letter from the Government with the gold heart and purple ribbon on it that he strapped the accordion on his own back and refused for five years to take it off. He even wore it in the rain and the water beaded on the mother of pearl finger-presses and when the sun came out they shined like the moon. His father got to be pretty good himself on the instrument and one time he played thirty different songs straight through on a two dollar bet. There wasn’t a man alive who his father wouldn’t play a song for. All a person had to say was, Hallelujah Bob, since you got your music box with you why don’t you play YOU’RE THE ONE I CARE FOR, or OLD JOE CLARK, or THE ARKANSAS TRAVELER, and he always did and sometimes they would give him money for it. He got money too when he would go to the ranch houses during the day, working his way around the valley, and the women would ask him to step right into the kitchen and they would set their children up before him and ask him to play and the children would laugh and clap their hands, then he would play a slow one, usually GOOD NIGHT IRENE, and the woman would fold her hands down into the lap of her dress and sometimes the tears from her eyes would drop slow off her face and all the children would cry and she would make him play four fast ones that would take everyone’s breath away and then end with WRECK OF THE NUMBER NINE before she would let him go. When his son was born he took the instrument from his back and set the load next to his bed. The weight of the accordion had twisted his thin shoulders in almost under his chin and threw his head forward when he was thinking so his gaze was always fixed on his feet. The straps that had constantly rubbed his skin slashed a red X across the back he could never straighten and forced him to walk with a stoop, his feet pressed flat and wide before him as if he were still supporting the burden. Sometimes Birdsong would play SHE’LL BE COMIN’ ROUND THE MOUNTAIN until the stars out the door washed their fire into the silver sky and the birds preparing for sun cut black wings in the waiting air. When he saw the sun he stopped. Across the valley the first stroke of light broke over the top of the mountains, laying a gold finger through a crack in the black wall, a mother blindly caressing the face of her child. He saw a field owl drop from the sky and hook into the grass, firing the squawk of a kill from its beak. The day had begun. The paved road in front of his house grew blacker the brighter the sun became, until it was distinct, deserted, piercing off in silence two directions at once, its arched back slick with wet of morning, its belly slammed into the dirt from tons of steel that had passed over it. The sound of bells grew out of the air, coming down the morning distance of the road. The sharp metal sound slapped the silence and behind came the cows, moving in single file, their bodies aimed down the ditch until they passed, one by one, crossing his boxed field of vision through the open door, linked together in a common sway of flesh, the rhythm of their heaving hide drummed by flies ancient in the blur of days marching through fields, bladders heavy with water, bags swelled with waste, never ceasing to flood the earth at their feet, heads bowed patiently to the metal clang of bells hung from their necks. When the last cow disappeared beyond his door there was nothing left but the fields, flat in the morning light, sunk from the weight of growth and beasts; and the fields were gone, yielding to the horse before him, gray in the ascending sun slashing light through the length of moving legs, the girl mounted on top, the flesh of her legs molded to the gray sides, the swell of her thighs flattened against the hide of the broad back, she turned and saw him, watching, her hands asleep, tangled in the mane, the skin of her blond face slack in her gaze, her eyes not regarding him, seeing only another fence post, a tree, a house, a doorway with a man inside, she turned away to the sound of the bells in the lead, unaware of her own movement; the hair falling away down her back in knots like a windswirled field of wheat quivered as the short blanket slipped from her shoulder and hooked on the curve of breast and he could see that she had been beaten again, her skin swelled raw, lashed around the neck and slashed in thick welts off her shoulder and down her back beneath the blanket that was the only thing the pain would allow to cover her body. He got up and stood in the open doorway, already she was beyond him, being pulled behind in the rhythm of the cows, and he felt his voice come up in his throat, trying to find some way to escape, to call her name, to touch with words the swaying back, disappearing along the straight black thrust of the road, but the name died in the tight pocket of his mouth, the lips never opening. He walked out into the morning. The sun had burned the damp fields dry, breaking the odor loose from the earth and flaring it in his nostrils, smothering everything, like the falling wheat of her hair covering the blanket on her back.