Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  “Outside of Sierraville,” the Reverend Doom took down the big hat from his head and rested its brim against the bulge of his chin. “He says he’s going to Frisco Jeens.”

  “Frisco what?”

  “Frisco Jeens, he says he’s going there.”

  “You mean Frisco City, don’t you Reverend?”

  “It’s not what I mean, it’s what he means. I don’t think he knows what he means.”

  “Who’s he belong to?”

  “You know old Abe Fixa with the dairy herd in Loyalton?”

  “Course I do. Isn’t a man in these parts hasn’t had dealings with Abe at one time or another. Abe’s been in this country since the gold was. Why, what about Abe?”

  “He’s dead. Mart Naley from the feedstore went on over to Abe’s place this morning to deliver a wagon of alfalfa, couldn’t find Abe around the house, but he did in the barn. Says Abe look to be dead more than three days. By the time I got over to the barn there was a big commotion and they had a horseblanket over Abe’s body.”

  “It’s a crime Reverend. It’s a crime Abe has passed from us. But what’s the Indian got to do with it?” There seemed to be something come into his face then, as if he made the discovery for the first time in his life that night follows day. He took a step over to the wagon and grabbed me by the arm, “Did this Indian kill Abe?”

  “No. Johnny Doc says Abe died natural. This was Abe’s boy, he got him off Frank Dora about three, four years back. He wasn’t anywhere in sight of Abe’s this morning so I went off to fetch him. When I caught up with him he was clear past Sierraville on his way to Frisco Jeens. I don’t think he knows what he’s about.”

  “Maybe Abe’s dying on him like that rattled something in his head; most likely it’s always been rattled. But I can’t see what you come so far out of your way to bring him up here for Reverend. Why didn’t you just give him back to Dora?”

  “Dora won’t have nothing to do with it. What I was thinking Sheriff, was the fact that your wife used to work for the Maidu Agency. She’s an authority on this kind of problem. Maybe your Missus could handle this Indian?”

  “It’s been four to six years since she’s had any straight dealings with Indians Reverend, but you’re welcome to go on up to the house and try her out on the subject”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “No trouble Reverend. You just go on up.”

  The house we came to was burrowed into the base of the pines along the river. There wasn’t much light making its way through the trees to the small garden set in front of the house that the Reverend walked carefully through to knock on the front door. He jerked his hat off and started knocking the dust off it before the door swung open and a woman stood there, her whole body seemed to be built in on itself and pushed down so that she didn’t even come up to the Reverend’s chest. “Missus Haag, mam,” the Reverend says very polite with the hat resting over his heart “I just come round from the Sheriff who said I’d find you at home. If I’m not interrupting your time I’d be pleased to have a few words with you.”

  “How’s your wife, Reverend?”

  “She’s doing just well, Missus Haag, the pain in her hip’s all but about gone. If you don’t mind I’d like to ask a favor of advice.”

  “That’s a crime Reverend. That’s a crime she slipped down on that hip. After something like that they’re never the same.”

  “Well Johnny Doc says it will be good as always, and I hold a faith in Johnny Doc If you have a little time I’d like to talk with you about something.”

  “I had an Aunt in Kentucky who fell on her hip like that. The Artheritis set in hard, poor thing couldn’t sleep at all during winter nights.”

  “What the problem is I have this here Indian who used to be Abe Fixa’s boy, now that Abe’s dead I’m trying to figure a home to fit the Indian into.”

  “Old Abe passed on,” the woman leaned her body toward the Reverend’s chest like it was the only thing in sight capable of holding up the heavy load she was about to let fall. “It’s a crime old Abe has passed on from us. But no one knows better than you Reverend, the Lord is merciful in all His ways.” She looked across the garden for the first time and saw me sitting high up on the wagonseat, “There’s nobody in these parts that will take that boy in Reverend. There’s nobody willing to take it on.”

  “Yes mam, I figured that, but I was thinking since you used to work for a Government Indian agency and are an authority on this kind of problem that you would have an answer of some kind.”

  “Well there is a Government place, a kind of a school for them, between Reno and Carson City. I can’t recall if they take all kinds of them, mostly Paiutes, Shoshone, maybe some Washos I think.” She stopped and looked back at me over the garden again. “Reverend,” she said in a low voice that was still easy for me to hear as she took him by the arm and pulled him through the door, “this isn’t talk meant for his ears.”

  I don’t know who the man was who took me to the school. The place we came to was called Schurtz, it was over the mountains and into Nevada. It had been night a long time when we got there. Everything was shut down and black. There was no sound in the air except for the man’s two horses hitched to the wagon, the hard sound of their breathing exploding in the silence surrounding them. The man said he wasn’t one for waking working people from their sleep so he’d be getting on and leaving me here. I jumped down off the wagon and waited for him to leave, but he didn’t right off. He leaned over and handed me a piece of paper, then whipped the horses and was gone. I stood alone and listened to the wagon clatter into the distance stretching in the direction where the stars had all twisted together and lit up the battered ridge of Desert mountains. I can’t remember how long I stood out there listening to the wagon, maybe longer than I could really hear it, maybe the faint thud I kept hearing wasn’t the pounding of horses hooves in the distance, but my own heart. There was an owl flapping at the moon from the top of the only tree in the yard, his quick squawks pecked away at the silence of the small moon over us. It made me think of my silver dollars. I jammed my hand deep in my pocket to feel the metal hardness through the sock. I still had what was mine, so I rested my body against the bottom of the tree and listened to the owl above until the whole night came down and put me to sleep. I didn’t wake until the voices flew up all around. I opened my eyes to the full sun.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “He come out of the sky.”

  “It’s not true. Bear bring him. Me see Bear with him, behind the tree Bear was. Then Bear he go way back up the mountain.”

  “No, Bear don’t. Me see him first and he got no Bear. He alone.”

  “Got no people.”

  “Where your people?”

  “You Ute?”

  “Bear kill us if we touch him.”

  “You Modoc?”

  “Go way now. Bring all us sick.”

  “Children, children, it is breakfast time. You must go to breakfast time. And what have you? What have you here?”

  I could not see the face of the woman’s voice. I could not see any of the faces of the ones who found me. The sun was aimed at me from behind their heads, blocking their faces out, the shadows of their bodies swimming before me in the brilliant morning.

  “Who are you?” Her voice came from the sun again, and with it her hand, the long fingers dropping suddenly to my knee like a bird. “What is your name?”

  “He got no name. Bear bring him. Me see Bear go way back up mountain.”

  “He must have a name children, even friends of Bear have a name. And yours?” She pressed the bone of my cocked knee. “What is your name?”

  “He won’t talk. Bear kill him if he talk.”

  “Maybe this will tell us children,” she spoke as if to hide the quick movement of her hand as it came off my knee and caught hold of the piece of paper sticking from my jacket pocket. It was the paper handed to me by the man before he whipped the horses and was gone. “Th
is is to introduce this boy,” she read, holding the paper down from the sun’s glare, “Who answers to the name of Bob, he is known as Fixa’s Bob. He has no living people. He has no home. He is Washo Indian. With respects, Missus Haag, wife of Sheriff Mack Haag. Sierra County, State of California. So children, he does have a name. His name is Bob.”

  “Me told you Bear didn’t bring him.”

  “Come Bob,” she rose and held her hand before me. “Come Bob, and eat with us.” I took her hand and stood. I could see her face now, the skin worn and scrubbed down white beneath the soft soap of countless early mornings. “You will stay with us. You are home now Bob,” her arm came around my thin boy shoulders and I saw the close blue of her eyes go out and color all the sky.

  “It good day. No cloud. No day for Bear to hurt us bad.”

  “You speak the truth Jimmie Doe. No Bear today. Today we have Bob.”

  “I will hold the hand of Bob,” a girl whose head came no higher than the waist of the woman laughed. I could feel her fingers run through mine and the smallness of her hand close on me. “I am Sally Roundhouse. I am Wind River Shoshone. Out there …” she raised my hand in hers and pointed it across the flatland spreading beneath the climbing sun. “Out there are my people. Me go to them when me have learned school. But now I eat. Come, you go eat with us.” She walked with me to the big house that was losing the skin of its white paint in dark gashes down its face. I could hear the many voices now. Not just the shouting of those that surrounded me and the small girl, but voices of laughter, coming from the open doorway. It is through there that I went and saw them. They were all brown faces here, and the black hair of their heads was thick throughout the room. The sight of me threw a wedge between their laughing voices. I stood among them in silence.

  “Children,” the woman’s voice rang clear behind me. “His name is Bob. He has come to live with us. He is our family now. He is Washo.”

  “And me too,” a boy my size by the window shouted.

  “Me too a Washo!”

  “And me,” shouted a girl.

  “And me!”

  “And me!”

  “And me also,” an old man rose from among the children. He had shrunk down with age, his face burned clean from the sun. “Come sit next to me,” he spoke. “Come sit next to Suku. To Proud Dog. Come next to Proud Dog and eat.”

  The small girl let go of my hand and I went alone to the old man, to Proud Dog. He placed a bowl with food in it on the table before me, “Sit and eat with Proud Dog.” His hand came up and rested on the skin of my neck. The hand did not force me down, it lay like a fallen leaf on my skin. I sat and ate. The old man watched me in his silence as I sunk my face down to the bowl and sucked clean all the food that had gone from me for many days. All around the talking began again, and with it the laughter of the morning. “It is not the name of a Washo. Bob is the name of a White,” Proud Dog’s words fell in my empty bowl, filling it again to the top. “How came you to the name Bob?”

  I drew my jacket sleeve across my wet mouth, wiping my lips dry of mush and answered with the words I remembered of Mister Fixa, “A man must have a name. He cannot die unless he has been. He has not been if no one knows the name he is.”

  “True words. You speak well in their language. Who gave to you those words?”

  “There were two, the man and the woman.”

  “The man and the woman would be those who brought you into this world?”

  “No, they are the ones I was taken to.”

  “The woman was your mother?”

  “She was the mother of another. She is the woman who washed clean my body.”

  “The man your father?”

  “The man was the one who gave me a name. I was nameless before him.”

  “And where is he?”

  “In the barn.”

  “And why are you not with him?”

  “He is in the barn dead.”

  “You left him?”

  “I am going to FRISCO JEENS.”

  “I do not know of what you talk.”

  “I will see him there.”

  “The man?”

  “The GO-REEL-AH. Mister Fixa said someday I could go for myself to see it in the iron bar cage.”

  “I know not of this. Mister Fixa is in the barn?”

  “Dead.”

  “And where is the barn?”

  “In the big valley.”

  “There are many big valleys.”

  “The high valley where the clouds sleep,” I drew my sleeve across my lips again, there was something in Proud Dog’s eyes that stopped my movement, the grip of their brown gaze held my hand in the air.

  “From where is that yellowbacked ring,” his voice seemed to change, as if the air had dropped away beneath the words.

  I let my hand fall to the table, the yellowbacked ring was pulling all the sun in through the windows and throwing it back up in my face, “From the hand of the old mother it came. The Whiteman on the Lake in the Sky came to her and smiled, he took the yellowstone ring from his finger and placed it in her hand. Forever they would be her friends he said. They made many trees fall. She watched them across the fence of metal thorns they had built.” As my words came the blood in my hands began to throb, the fingers burning with rhythm, waiting to guide the gliding willow, seeking the tension of pattern woven through baskets in the cold air of the white days. I brought my hands swiftly into me and locked them down with my fingers. My eyes filled with embarrassment. I looked to Proud Dog to see if he had noticed the building my hands had begun. But he had not. His head slumped to his chest, the fall of his gray hair covering his face, sheltering the silver drops that broke from his eyes and splashed in his lap. His hand came up and touched my face. He pulled me to his old body, holding me hard, I could feel the light bones shake from sobbing.

  “You are not Bob. You are not of them. You are Washo. You are son to the one they called One Arm Henry, brother to Captain Rex, both children of the great doomed hunter, Gayabuc, himself son to the leader of the Rabbit hunt, the Rabbit Chief. From those loins began you. The son Gayabuc, father to your father, was the one who made the Ancestors weep. Did the old mother tell him to you? Did the old mother, woman to Gayabuc, woman called Painted Stick, did she tell to you of what his name is? Did she tell to you Gayabuc means Come Hither! Come hither. Come yonder, and yonder still, where they eat of their own flesh, where their faces are smeared the color of the dying Sun. Where the flesh of the living heart is ripped by the teeth of them. Come hither! Come hither his name meant from a small boy, and through to the man, who saw on the shores of yonder lake with only his brother the black Goose to witness and cry out over the high trees against the claws of their hands tearing the foul meat of open whiteness to feed their bellies. Come hither and see the land our fathers trod defiled and sink away in the rotted excrement of forbidden flesh. Come hither and show your face to this stench. How does it smell this excrement of forbidden flesh? From seventy seasons distant it still burns the nostrils, frightens the Deer into death, screams the Fish from the lakes, cries the wings off the Birds. It is a smell rank with desire crumbling to dust. It is a smell that gouges blind the light of Sun from Sky. It is the rank smell of waste that feeds on itself. Once having fed on this evil meat the belly will have no other. It will demand the sacred flesh of the Earth to feed on. It will ravage the rooted flesh of the unborn. It is a craving that will not cease before the generation of your children times eighty. The waters of all the Skies will not wash clean that final outrage. And this Gayabuc witnessed, watched through the trees, through the morning, as what they devoured on yonder lake was the very sap from the tree of all his people, until their Ghosts were stolen and they did no longer exist. Not in the future, not in the past. The Ghosts did not exist. You are not Bob. You are son to son of Gayabuc. You are flesh of the one who watched, watched the Fox of the Earth released, to fill all his thoughts, stalking him through the days into his dreams, and beyond, into the lives of his own fles
h, yonder still, his people.” Proud Dog’s old eyes had lost their tears, as if the well of his heart had run dry. He spoke more quickly, with his arms locked about me, pressing the youth of my body into the hollow of his ancient bones. “Last night, in the dark, I was awake with the Moon when all the Birds were asleep and only Owl sang his hidden song. When Owl sings he sings the music of life stolen from a body of the living. When Owl sings the body of the Spirit he has stolen will fall empty on the Earth, its music gone away to the south where the dances of the Ancestors move in one song. When Owl sings a body will fall empty on the Earth. There will be a death. One will go and one will stay. Oh my Little Antelope, remember me. Remember to guard the unborn flesh of your children’s Ghost against the stench that blows out of the past from yonder lake. The stench that blows across your heart and through the trees, through the morning of all your years, and yonder still, your people. Remember the words of Owl whose song you too heard this night past. Remember the words of Owl and my song will be forever on your lips.”

  When the flowers ran yellow and red up to the Sun and the leaves swept down green over the trees Proud Dog was dead. His old bones were tucked up beneath him and he lay in a careful heap among the reeds along the stream running into the shallow lake. The children came up from the lake after soaking their heated bodies in the mud beneath its quiet waters and found Proud Dog, his eyes staring up at the Sky, his mouth cut the shape of a Bird. There was not much laughter that summer, everywhere we walked the dust slapped up beneath our bare feet and hung in the air as the Sun slid across the Sky and died behind the mountains. And my friends began and became my brothers and sisters. In the cool of the past winter’s rain-rutted ditches we sat small and touching one another as the woman with blue eyes read to us about the Presidents and the cracked bell of liberty. At night we told our own stories, stories we carried in our hearts, stories that journeyed over a thousand years of our ancestors, stories that flew from our tongues like flapping wings. We told to one another of Kota, of Frog who wanted for her husband Cottontail, who she saw hopping through the grass along the pond waving his handsome tail. “I want you for my husband,” said Kota. “I want you to live in the still water with me and eat flies. Always we will live happy.” Cottontail came over, and as he gazed at the reflection of his handsome tail in the water he spoke, “Never will I have a Frog, her belly is too soft and white, her skin is hairless and slick. I can run free and feed the day on tender green grass.” And he did, and that is why today Cottontail lives in the mountain meadows and makes his home in the rocks, while Frog has never moved from the water and spends her days hiding her white belly in mud and swimming deep in the dark pools beneath the Sky so nobody can see how ugly she is. The children repeated what they knew. Woman is bow, man is arrow. Woman is cloud. Man is thunder. We repeated all these things, and of when the waterbabies chased Bear home through the woods and he had to jump in the fire so they wouldn’t drown him. Then we listened to the story Little Hat told; he told only the one as many times as there were ears to listen, and he never let his tongue say it the same way twice because it was about Coyote when he was grown down weak with hunger and came to the camp where an old sister and her daughter were picking pinenuts. Coyote said to his stomach, “The old sister and her daughter have gathered many pinenuts, I know the way to get them. I will marry the young girl and feed all her pinenuts into my belly.” He turned around and saw that the Fish, Bullhead, had heard him. “If you help me fool this old woman and her daughter, Bullhead, you will have enough pinenuts to keep you fat in winter. All you must do is this, hide tinder the silver rock by the tree where the young girl urinates, after her water has fallen jump into her.” Bullhead waited a long time beneath the silver rock and almost forgot what he was there for, but when the young girl came and squatted by the tree he remembered and just as her water disappeared into the ground he jumped into her. When all the pinenuts were gathered into baskets the young girl said to the old sister, “I feel something inside.” “Is it bad food in your belly?” “No, it is a bigger feeling.” “A bigger feeling? Have you met with a man and come away with a child in your belly?” “It is a feeling like that. I feel sick. I must lie down.” The old sister was frightened and ran off for the doctor and met up with Coyote. “Coyote, it is good I see you! I hear you sometimes smoke and doctor!” “When I have the tobacco, which I do, but today I am sick and it hurts to move my body.” “I know you are a good man Coyote, and help those big with a child. My young girl is lying on the ground in our camp that way. I know you are a good man Coyote.” “That has been told of me,” Coyote said rising. “I am weak and it is hard to move, but when the call comes I must go. To doctor is what I like, to doctor is what I am for. You will help me ito the camp, no matter how far.” He pulled on his moccasins and took up his leather of tobacco, “I am weak from no food, if I lean on you we can go fast. I know your daughter has much food and I can eat my fill of it before I starve. I hope she is not dead before I get there.” When they came into the camp Coyote said, “I am a small doctor. I doctor people only a little, bit by bit. But I can tell you what I know, do not fear this girl’s death. I can see a young man has come to her and she is big with child.” “You are wise Coyote,” the old sister helped him sit down. “Eat with me.” When Coyote finished all the pinenuts his stomach could carry he wanted to go away and sleep, but he said, “When the child comes send for me and I will be here.” So when the time of the child came the old sister ran for Coyote, “It is time! Will the child live? I do not know who the father is!” Coyote came quickly, he found the child dead on the ground. “It is good this child is dead,” he said to his stomach. “I like to see that. Now I can feed you all the nuts.” Then he turned to the woman and commanded, “It is evil ground you stand on! You and your daughter must go far away from this place where the baby has died and never look back to your home.” The old sister and her daughter walked away and Coyote was not afraid that they would see what he was doing because they were crying. He hid the child in a pit and covered it with rocks and leaves, then made all the pinenuts into a mush and drank it from a basket until there was nothing left. He headed homeward. His thoughts were no longer concerned with the old sister.