Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The Indian could no longer hear the stars. The insistent crack of their voices calling him ceased. He raised his arms and felt no broken bones. He pulled up and waited to feel a pain coming from some broken part of his body, but there was none. The fall from the wagon had not harmed him. He buttoned his pants and remembered the bottle. He nudged his boot in the clumps of sagebrush around him lit up by the Moon. The tip of the boot struck something soft, it was the blanket, he picked it up and it was dry. He still held the hope the bottle had not shattered in the fall. He unrolled the blanket and found the bottle unharmed in the center, the glass smooth and shining in the Moonlight, the weight of its liquid cool in his hands. His fist gripped the bottle’s slim neck as he uncorked it and drank. He spread the blanket beneath him and sat on his folded legs. The heat of the whiskey raced in his body and woke the Birds sleeping in his chest, their ancient song flooding from his wet lips into the open night. He sang and drank and sang and drank until the bottle was empty and his head wouldn’t hold still in his hands. He saw through his closed eyes the stars trying to speak to him with their fierce light. He saw the place where the Eagles fly and he laid the woman out beneath the blanket of stones. He saw the people following Blue Breast to the lake in the lowlands. And he saw the white face of the woman in the tent wagon with the gray dress that covered the length of her body. Her white face was like a cloud with the Sun shining through and she gave him a cloth to tie around his waist and keep his legs warm. He came to her everyday with a Fish he had speared in the still waters and she would take it from him and hold its wet body in her gentle hands. Then she would speak, her voice was soft like the tingle of small bells hanging from the back of the wagon. She spoke everyday to him when he would bring a Fish. For every Fish he brought she taught him a word of her tongue and he took it away with him in his memory. He learned that her name for him was you. The cloth she had given him to tie about his waist was called pants. Before her face covered with red stinging sores which puffed up yellow and she died he had many words deep in his memory from her. It was during the cold of the long white days when the baskets of stored pinenuts finally were empty that the people chose him to go and ask for food from the Whites with the words the woman taught him. He saw the times he would stand in the heart of the white houses where the blackiron fire of the stove hummed with heat. He would say, “The baskets are empty, the Sky is empty, the people starve.” Then they would look at him a long time with the string belt of his pants tied around his waist and the worn Rabbit blanket pulled over his hunched shoulders. They would always give him something to carry back to the people. They told him there was only something for the people because they were not Paiutes, because the Washo shared their land with the Whites. But here was not always something for the people in the days ahead and he would return with nothing except the words he had learned. He would repeat slowly what had been told to him, that the people were no longer to take Fish from the lake with nets. The people were to move all their shelters to the far shore. The people were not to leave their shelters after the Sun died. If the people did these things they could stay at the winter lake and live off what the Whites could no longer use. The people listened to these words he spoke and followed what they said, but they no longer came close to him with their hearts. The words the woman had taught him had become a power, a power the people did not trust. He himself did not trust the words, but they were tied in his memory. He could not forget them, they held a power he did not understand, for when the Whites wanted something from the people, or had a new way for them to follow, they always came to him because he held the power of two tongues. They gave him a name of power. They called him a leader. They called him a Captain. They called him Captain Rex. But his people never recognized a power in one man to lead all the days of their lives. The Washo had no leaders. So he knew not what to do with this power. He could not kill a Bird from the Sky with it. He could not charm the Antelope into the corral with it. He knew not how to use it. But he had it. The whiskey he drank made him forget many things, but not the power of the White tongue. Within him lived the power of the White tongue and the ancient power of the songs the Birds sang long ago that he had learned in dreams. The two powers fought in his blood. When he drank whiskey the song of the Birds became too strong to hold in his heart and escaped from his throat. He could do nothing but let his voice sing their power.

  The morning on the burntland came up quickly. The Sun shot over the far rolling hills and caught the night by surprise, its sudden light waking the Indian. In the clear dawn he could see the high wall of the Sierra mountains towering up green from the burntland. He knew he was close to the town of Genoa and slung the long roll of the blanket over his shoulder as he followed the flat of the road in a straight line before him. The clumps of sage stung the clear air with dry perfume and he smelled the jackass Rabbits as they ran out in all directions from the sound of his boots slapping in the dust filled ruts of the road. He walked in the direction of the rising Sun. Far back on the road he could see a low white cloud and soon he heard the rumble and constant thud of a wagon with the high disconnected shouts of men rising above it. The wagon drew closer and the cloud of dust streaking out along behind it died before reaching the Sky. The mules came up behind him, the slamming muscular jerk of their bodies tearing at the peace of the road before them. He could see through the roll of dust flayed up by the spinning wheels the two men sitting high on the boarded seat. The one holding the slack of the reins fisted in his hand whipped head around and flashed his eyes down at the Indian in the flying dust, then turned his head again, his shout of “HIEYAAWRH!” jammed the driving force of the mules faster and the wagon was by. The Indian could see through the swirl of dust the empty water barrels slamming together in the back of the wagon. He waited until the white dust settled down around him and the noise thinned into blue air before following up the road in the rut of the wheels.

  The Sun hung straight above his head when he walked into the town called Genoa. He knew the town from before when the Mormons were there and said his people were the first of the great lost Tribe that had broken from the chains of ice in the frozen north. The Mormons told the people that if they let their bodies be covered with the water of the living stream they would be born into the Kingdom Upon The Earth. The years of the people would all be green, their bodies stronger than any poison, and the man called Jesus would come to them and walk among them and give to each the power to strike the stone. Some of the people went into the living waters to be reborn. Others journeyed over to the great Salt Lake to the house where the Jesus was supposed to appear. But the Jesus did not come and the days of the people were long with weakness in their bones. The people forgot the words that had been told them and no longer looked for the Jesus to come from the north. He had known the town then, when it was called Mormon Station, and he knew it before when there were no stages coming down to it from the mountains to change their teams of panting beasts and continue out across the flatland and over the burnt hills where the stream of silver was being bored from the Earth in Virginia City. He knew it before when there was nothing but the Rabbits running across the bare ground into the waiting nets of the people. Now there were no Rabbits as he walked down the planked boardwalk of the street. There were only the many stores and gambling halls fitted close together, forming a gray wall against the continuous slam of dust that rose up from the wagons in the heat. He felt the pouch of metal coins the Railroad boss had given him for following the Iron Road the yellowmen built. The pouch was heavy in his pocket. He took it into a high ceilinged saloon and emptied five of the gold coins on the hard polish of the counter. He could see from the corner of his eye the tender slap down his newspaper and stare at him without moving. But he kept his own gaze on the goldframed mirror in front of him, reflecting his brown face with the deep eyes fixed on the scar of his cheek. He saw the tender move and reached instinctively to scoop the coins back into the pouch. He knew what the tender was going to say, no spirits f
or Injuns, but before he could slip the pouch back in his jacket the tender cracked his open palm on the counter, “What’s your poison Chief?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “Whiskey is fire in your eye Chief.”

  “Whiskey.”

  “Bottle or glass?”

  “Bottle.”

  “Bottle it is Chief,” the tender swiped the inside of a clear glass and set it with a full bottle on the counter. “That’ll cost you five dollars American from your jeans.”

  He dumped the pouch out on the counter and watched as the tender counted out the number of coins that added up to the price.

  “What you got such a heavy jacket on for Chief,” the tender jammed his elbows down on the counter and propped his face in his hands.

  “It’s the middle of summertime and you’re bundled up like an Alabama nigger. What’s wrong, you got the rheumatiz from too much booze, or you got frostbite on your pecker?”

  He didn’t know what the tender’s face was trying to tell him, he just kept looking past him at the mirror until the first words that fit together he said right out, “I keep my jacket on all the time.” The words just hung before him and did not move. He poured his first glass of whiskey and gulped it down, then looked back at the mirror.

  “Washo aint yah?” the tender kept his head propped up, just moving his lips.

  “Washo. I am Washo,” he took another drink and bowed his head.

  “Aint too many of you bucks left around these parts is there Chief. I mean you Washo don’t get shot out of the saddle like the Paiute. You Washo like to die in bed with one hand on your pecker and the other around a bottle of firewater. What I mean to say is Chief, you Washo don’t got no Paiute blood in you, it’s mostly Digger blood, ain’t it Chief. I mean the Paiute whooped you Washo pretty bad before we whites even got here, didn’t they Chief? You got nothing to say do you? No sabe, huh Chief? You bucks no sabe nothing except how to ask for whiskey. You bucks don’t ever say a word cept whiskey.”

  The Indian heard it before, this talk, and he knew what it meant. He tried to keep his hand steady as he poured out the next glass, but most of the whiskey splattered in bright pools on the polished counter, when he finally got enough of it in the glass he drank it down and turned to leave. The tender grabbed his arm and pulled him back up against the counter.

  “What’s wrong Chief? You paid your Injun price for your firewater and you leave half of it in the bottle. What made you want to hop up on the water wagon so quick? You trying to imply my whiskey is not good enough for your red belly?” The tender poured the Indian another glass. “Drink up Chief.”

  He took the glass and drank, then banged it back down on the counter. Before he could turn around the tender had it filled up again. He took the glass and pressed it to his lips, then quickly set it down and turned for the door just as its two panels swung open and a crowd of men pushed through behind a tall man in a low black hat. The man stopped, spread his arms, the crowd behind him stood still, the blue of his eyes lit up his face under the low brim of his hat as he grabbed the lapels of his long black coat in his fists.

  “You know what we’re going to do?” The man’s words addressed the whole room and found their mark in the center of the Indian’s pale face.

  “Yah, what is it we’re going to do to him Reverend Jake,” a voice from the crowd behind him demanded.

  “Yah, tell him what it is we do to his kind!”

  “We’re going to cut his ears off!”

  “WaHooo! That’s damn well what we’re going to do alright Rev’rend!” A couple of hats from the crowd were thrown up to the ceiling.

  “We’re going to cut his ears off and bleed all the devil liquor right out of the red body of this Paiute!”

  “That’s the truth of it! Bleed the devil Paiute dry!”

  “He aint Paiute, Rev’rend Jake,” the tender smiled. “He’s Washo.”

  “Washo,” the Reverend Jake locked the blue of his eyes on the Indian. “Then we’re going to cut the ears off this Washo red devil!”

  “Washo aint got no devil in him Rev’ren,” a man called from the crowd. “Washos is nothin but Diggers! Root Diggers! They aint like the Paiute and Shoshone, they won’t fight. They’re like John Chinaman, all they got in them is squaw blood! Squaw blood and a rabbit heart!”

  “Squaw blood is rabbit blood! They run like the rabbit when there’s trouble!”

  “You look here!” The Reverend Jake swung around and showed the fierce blue light of his eyes to the crowd, “Red devils is red devils. They’re all the same. Get a little liquor in them and they’ll sneak up in the night and cut the top of your head off. My brother Dan was leading twelve wagons along the Pit River when the red devils tied him to a tree and shot arrows into him, killed the lot, children, women and men in an unGodly act. The red devils burned the wagons and ate the horses. I’m telling you there aint no white woman safe in her bed at night long as there is just one inebriate red devil walking the streets of any civilized town.”