Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The Washo came up through the long shadows. They came up to where the mountains were joined together by a strong running river. They came up to where the Ghost had been that morning. The Ghosts had clawed up great patches of Earth, killed many trees and left only their dead bones in fires grown cold. Gayabuc held his hand high. The Washo behind him went still in their own tracks. They too heard the noise, it came jumping out of the trees, banging and tearing at the Earth. The Ghost was near. The Ghost was coming to eat the flesh of their Spirit. Gayabuc’s arm dropped and he ran away from the river and fell to his knees in front of the trees. The others came close behind, then saw what Gayabuc had come up to. A stake was driven deeply into the ground and from it was a chain holding the teeth of the Ghost. The stunned face of a Rabbit looked up at them from the trap. The skeleton of steel teeth had clamped down on his hind legs, snapping his bones so their jagged ends ripped through soft flesh as his body thumped and banged against the Earth trying to free itself. Gayabuc reached down and grabbed the steel teeth in his hands, pulling them open until the Rabbit was loose. He let go the teeth and their power clanged shut. The Rabbit did not move. The white of his eyes bulged up out of his head like he had been spitted and was roasting over a fire. “Little brother,” Gayabuc took the Rabbit’s neck in his hand. “The magic of the Ghost has stolen the flesh of your Spirit,” he twisted the neck until he felt the dead weight of the body pull against his hand. “Go free little brother.” He stood up, but the men had left him, they had run back to the river. He saw his brother Basa on the ground and the men had come around him. He ran up to them. Basa was breathing heavy, but his words were clear, “The Ghost travels in the dust through yonder pass. He is many. The stone-eyed beasts are everywhere. I have looked into their face and I did not die.” Gayabuc pulled Basa up by the shoulders, “We go up to the Ghost.” Basa pushed his shoulders back, his heaving chest beating the air. He looked straight into the eyes of his brother Gayabuc and saw the Fox. He spun and ran, weaving in great leaps through the yellow pine with all the men close in his trail until he broke from the pass and up onto the barren knoll. All the men fell around him, sucking at the air with their burning throats, before them in the distance a line of dust was going up around the yonder lake the river poured into. Gayabuc stood, through the dust he could see a line longer than a night of stars, a line of wild eyed beasts pulling the turning houses covered by a white cloud. Basa jumped up beside him, “There! There is the beast! I have looked into his wild stone-eyes and I did not die!” Gayabuc’s gaze went to where his brother was pointing, it was not to the line of dust in the distance, but below them, in the flat hollow at the bottom of the knoll. There it was, with its wild stone-eyes flaming up at them. Gayabuc pulled free the bow slung across his back, “We will take the Beast. They have taken the Rabbit with the skeleton of their teeth. We will steal back the Spirit of the Rabbit.” A strong hand pulled his bow down, “My son, we must leave this power, this Musege is too strong for us. The Fox of the Earth has been released, his Musege is set free on the Earth. In the meadow where the women of our children wait the work of the Rabbit is before us. We must not abuse our Brother. We have our want. We must go back to the teaching. To steal this beast will be beyond our want, we will be heavy with flesh. Our medicine will be broken.” “I go,” Gayabuc freed his bow from the hands of his father. The Man of Medicine waved the Skunk skin in the air, “We all go. The Deer thong has been passed, the Deer thong has spoken.” He raised the shell of the sacred whistle to his lips and blew a long shrill cry that darted through the trees and ripped the air above the men as they flew down the hill and took what was waiting for them. The stone tips of their arrows cut through the short hide of the beast and stuck deep within him, more arrows came at his face and bounced off the cowstone of his broad skull. The thunder of his iron hooves tore open the Earth as Gayabuc flung himself onto the ridge of the broad back, taking hold of one horn as the full swing of his knife came striking from the air into the bulged muscle of neck. The beast went down to his knees and slammed over on his side, the woodstiff arrows stuck in his sides snapping in two beneath the fall of his body. All the Washo came around and watched. The wild stone-eyes of the beast flared up at them, the quick snorts from the fists of his nostrils scattering the dust up around his head. The Washo watched. The Washo watched until all was quiet. Then they dug a deep pit and filled it with yellow pine. They started a fire up from the pit and it burned through what was left of the day and into the night. When the coals big as a man’s head breathed fire white the Washo cut the tongue free from the Beast, then cut out great chunks of beef from the side of its waiting body. The flesh was thrown on the coals and they sat around in a circle upon the ground grown almost too hot to sit on from the bright white center of the heat before them. They listened to the flesh sizzle and hugged their knees, rocking back and forth as they sat on the hot ground singing the songs Birds sang long ago that they had learned in dreams. They sang to the stars. They sang to the Ancestors, singing up Hawk in the vast blue Sky, Coyote and Bear in the forest trees. They sang up the Salmon who climb the backs of strong mountains on ladders of water, they sang up the waterbabies mewing at the bottom of the lake. When the flesh before them was cooked they took it from the white heat and ate. They ate until their bellies were sore and shot pains through them when they spread their legs and tried to urinate. They ate until they were heavy with flesh. The mounds of meat they could not eat they threw away from them. They collapsed on the hot ground, throwing out great chunks of beef. And they slept. In the time before night becomes day Gayabuc began to choke. A white heat in his belly pushed out into a ball and doubled him up, he retched. The great chunks of beef came churning up and vomited on the ground. He retched until his whole body shook, until his eyes burned with the salt of his tears and the sting of his bile drooled down his chin. He retched until his belly was empty and each convulsion brought a stiff pain to his chest. His ears filled with the sound of his own dry convulsions. He pulled to his knees. All around him he could hear the hollow retching and spitting of bile. His eyes widened at the dawn and he began to laugh. He laughed hard and long with all his body. When he stopped, the laughing still went on all around him. Everyone was laughing.

  2

  THE BLUE castrate morning flared up over the Indian’s head. The flies were everywhere in the sun, coming at his face, jabbing in a steady drone at his eyes, he kept brushing them away with a twitch of his hand. The valley went out flat around him, already its morning heat came up off the ground and hung in a low dense haze all the way to the distant rim of mountains. He could feel the sweat moving in his long hair beneath the tight warmth of his straw hat. He flipped the hat off and ran the flat of his palm back over his scalp, pressing the uncomfortable moisture the length of his bright black hair. He waved his hat in front of his face at the darting flies then set it back on his head, cocking it down over his eyes until it almost blocked the blue of the morning from his vision.

  “O.K. Joey, we’re ready!”

  He turned to the voice of the man who called his name, he could see the man through the waves of heat pushing up from the ground, crouched in front of the small rambling corral before a small blaze of sagebrush. The man had the length of a long handled brandingiron propped up on some stones so the tip of the iron rested in the flames and its brand AD burned red hot.

  “Joe, me and Jandy are ready to run the first one through if you want to hop over the fence and cut one out.”

  The Indian jumped into the small corral, the calves all skittering away from him, running along the curve of the black rail. He chased them, waving his hat and hollering as he broke into the midst of their brown bodies. He slapped at their bone humped rumps with the flat of his hat, keeping back far enough so a sudden kick wouldn’t catch him in the shins. He ran around the full circle of the corral with the calves, hooting and hollering in the fine blur of kicked up dust, slapping with his hat until he got one calf to break from the pack, he raced it away f
rom the other bodies along the high railing to the opening of a single aisle shoot. The calf ran before him, his young excited hooves carrying him with quick bolts of movement so the open shoot before him was the natural turn to make and he did. The Indian dropped the wooden gate behind the calf and it was trapped in the short shoot with another gate before it.

  “Joe,” the man kneeling next to the snapping fire came over and leaned up on the coral looking at the Indian across the trapped brown back of the calf. “These little bullys are a lot quicker than they look. But there are so few of them there isn’t a whole lot of need to get a horse in there on them just to cut out one at a time, much faster this way, but they’ll run you ragged. Hah,” he knocked the thick cloud of flies away from his face. “I don’t know why these damn little bullys always give us such a fight. You would think they know what is coming. But I know they don’t know that. Cattle are as ignorant as a dog. A dog will scratch himself into a pool of blood over one flea. I’ve seen full grown bulls rub themselves bloody on the stub of a fence post so badly they had to be put down. But a man has to understand animals, he has to always be studying them just to stay out in front because he knows that he’s just about an inch less stupid than they are. Now Garibaldi was a student of animals, some people say that’s all he knew. But Garibaldi knew the value of a fine animal. He began the great revolution with four mules and two men. Think of that, the greatest fight for liberty mankind has ever known was begun with more mules than men. But Garibaldi learned a great lesson of freedom from animals, he once said, ‘To get out of the corral you’ve got to go through the gate.’ Damn these face flies,” he slapped his cheek, mashing two black bodies against the sharp growth of two days whiskers. “Where did these face flies come from Joe, we’ve never had them in this valley before, I know over to Nevada they have them, but not us, it’s only been the last three months they’ve come.”

  The Indian slapped at the flies spinning around his head, trying to close in on his face, “I don’t know where they’re coming from Odus. But I can remember in my father’s time, during the War, these face flies came, they stayed for a few years then were gone. These will be too, in time, but now we’ve got to watch out for pink-eye, especially among these calves. These face flies will carry pink-eye around the herd faster than we can spray against it.”

  Odus leaned over and looked in the face of the trapped calf, “Well, this little bully’s eyes are clean, no sign of pink-eye yet. Wouldn’t that be just what Dixel needs though, three of his best Appy horses going bad in the legs all at once and then pink-eye with the cattle. Well Joey, men who are making fifty dollars an hour can’t be standing around talking like this. Hah.” He slapped the Indian on the shoulder, “don’t you just wish we were making that! We would be retired in three days! I’m all set on my end though, got the iron red-hot and ready. Jandy, how about you? Those knives you’ve been working on all morning got the edge on them you need?” He shouted to the small man crouched down honing two gleaming silver thin blades.

  “I’m about set,” the small man rose and carried a bucket of water over to where the calf was waiting. He dumped a bottle of alcohol into the water and sloshed it around, then carefully set the two stainless steel blades on the bottom of the bucket so they glowed up through the water like two white fish. Jandy jumped back and started slapping at his face, “These flies are calfshit!” The flies buzzed high and away from him, then held in the air above his face. He gazed up at their hard black knot, the skin of his face was smooth and expressionless, the stone of his small hard eyes blank. He spit on the hot ground, “Calfshit!”

  “Joey, you want to jump in and tail this little bully up? I’ll get the contraption wheeled up.” Odus walked over and got in his pickup truck, behind it was hitched an iron trailer-shoot twice as high as a man and the length of a full grown cow. He backed the iron shoot flush against the gate of the wooden shoot until the two formed one piece separated only by the wooden gate that held the calf trapped. Jandy pulled the tongue of the trailer off from the pickup hitch and let it slam to the ground. Odus drove the truck around to the far side of his small branding fire, then came back and kicked open the support levers on both wheels so he could jack the iron shoot down to solid ground, “This contraption was thought up by someone who was a hater of men and a bigger hater of cattle.” He smiled up at the Indian as he turned the crank of the jack, “It takes forever to rig it right and the bullys don’t like it at all, they fight it all the way, it’s just a plain torture.”

  “It’s calfshit,” Jandy took the crank from Odus and jacked the other side down. “The clean way to do it is the old way, just rope and tie them down, three men can do one calf in eight minutes.”

  Odus knocked away the flies darting at his eyes, “That’s true, but if you’re going to run through all the new bullys at springtime you can’t beat the calf-table, just run them into one of those calf-tables, slam them tight and flip the whole thing up on its side, it’s so smooth you could do anything to the bully, you could take his tonsils out if you wanted to. But Dixel is too cheap to buy a calf-table. Everything for the cattle is second best. Only those Appy horses of his get preferential treatment. All he thinks of is those horses. He’s a horse man, and I’ve never known a horse man who ever did right by cattle. O.K. Joey, jump in.”

  The Indian jumped down into the wooden shoot, grabbing hold of the calf’s tail around the base and yanking it up as he stood in close to the rump so the calf couldn’t get a kick off, “Open her Jandy!”

  Jandy slid back the wooden gate. The way before the calf was open into the V of the iron shoot. But the calf didn’t move. He stood breathing hard, staring down the iron V to the far opening, an opening just large enough to squeeze his body through, an opening to freedom. But he didn’t take the chance offered. There were too many men. It was all strange to his short life. He did what his animal blood told him. He stood his ground.

  “HeYaHH!” The Indian brought the point of his knee up like a fist into the calf’s rump. “HeYaHHH! Git Git Git HaawrHH!” He speared the calf again, driving his knee into the exposed rectum. The calf flung his head back, then shook it to both sides, knocking against the wooden plank. “HeYaHHH!” The calf slammed again to his side, his young hooves stamping at the ground before he jolted into the iron V, carrying the Indian with him as the full thrust of his body lunged toward the opening. The gate behind the calf slammed shut the moment his head rammed through the wedge of the other end and Odus sent the iron yoke above the opening clanging down on his neck. The calf tried to swing his body loose. His head was through the opening, it was free, but the weight of the iron yoke held him back, he was trapped. Odus pulled the lever chain hanging down over the yoke and sent the length of the iron V slamming up on both sides, knocking the breath from the calf as its body was pinched between the iron bars.

  “That ought to hold this little bully,” Odus pegged the lever in its slot so the calf was secure in the iron bind. “You ready Jandy?”

  Jandy brought his bucket up to the side of the shoot, “Let’s go!”

  “Joey, get that tail high!”

  The Indian pushed the tail higher, holding its full base in the grip of both hands. He could feel the tension in the brown body coming to a point in the flesh he secured between two hands. The tail was warm; it was hot. The flies spit everywhere in black darts, filling the air with their drone, landing in clumps all over the exposed calf’s face, sticking into the watery flesh around the bulging white eyes. The Indian shook his own head to drive the flies off, but the flies stung at his defenseless face. He dipped his face and dragged his cheek across his shoulder to scrape the hooked flies from his skin and he could see Jandy bringing the white fish of the stainless steel up dripping from the bucket of water.

  Jandy gazed back at the Indian, the flies coming at the blank stone of his eyes, “Tail this calfshit up Birdsong.”

  The Indian rammed the muscle of the tail even higher. Jandy quickly took the pouch hanging taut betw
een the calf’s strong legs and slashed with his stainless blade, slicing the bottom point of the sack off, exposing the white tips of the testes to the sun before he grabbed them in his fist and yanked them down, tugging them straight to the earth, pulling the string of the glistening white and purple cord that ran tight back up into the gaping sack. The Indian could feel the flash in the calf’s body, it came deep out of its bowels, raw streak of fierce muscle electric that froze the thick flesh all along the broad brown neck and loosened the meat around the tight rectum, softening its pinch-hard pucker the Indian exposed by keeping the full thrust of the tailbase rammed up.

  “Cut that Bully out of there Jandy,” Odus called from his fire. “Get out those Test-Tees!”

  Jandy squeezed the two long hard-shell pieces of flesh clenched in one fist so only their white tips were exposed from either end of his grip, he had them stretched down so they almost touched the earth and the full run of their cord went tight up into the sack where he ran his blade in high, the stainless steel feeling in the darkness of the body for the vital point, then cutting effortlessly, a quick slash. He pulled the cord out with the splash of blood over his fist.