Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The boy slid off the horse and ran forward to yank the still kicking body up by the ears, waving it around in a circle over his head until the neck was broken. The sting of a bullet flicked by his head and he turned to see another body dropping behind him. He ran through the sage and flung the longeared body in the air, but there was no need to wring the neck, the bullet had caved through the ribbed bone, blowing a hunk of flesh out the other side. “Here they are Joe!” The boy held a dangling rabbit from each hand high over his head.

  The Indian came through the sage to him. “What sex are they?” He spread apart the white feet of the limp legs, “Two males. The males are jumping early, they usually stay down and let the females jump first. There are still four or five females right off through that rough wash, they’re getting down in there and laying low. You go give these rabbits to Sarah Dick, and stay behind me, don’t go runnin out like that.”

  “Why aren’t you leaving your rabbit belt around your waist to hitch the bodies in Joe?”

  “I can only tote seventeen rabbits on the belt, all that dead weight starts to swaying whenever I try to squeeze off a new shot and I miss as many times as I don’t That’s why I have Sarah Dick trailing behind with the belts, now you do like I told you and get these two over to her.”

  The boy ran with the rabbits and gave them up to the woman. She clamped the bodies to a belt and pressed her heels into the horse’s belly and ran him up behind the Indian, “Why don’t you stop shooting them in the heart. You’re wasting half the fur on them by shooting them there. It’s such a waste of good fur, why don’t you aim at the head?”

  The Indian slipped the brass shell of another bullet into the rifle and looked across the valley to where the white cut of snowcovered peaks in the distant east rose higher than the fumbling clouds beginning to build up enough courage to block the morning sun. “These two males just killed are skinny, but the females are all fat with fur. We’ll have enough for the Rabbit blanket. Don’t you worry about …” The rifle jumped to his shoulder as he cocked the steel in his hand and took aim.

  “Don’t shoot!” The woman reined the horse up so it knocked against his shoulder throwing him from balance. “It’s a cat! Don’t shoot!” The arrow of her arm pointed to the bare opening in the sage, a cat moved from the head-high clumps of sage branches on three legs. “It is bad luck to shoot a tough cat. He walks with only three legs. He is one of those who prowls the alfalfa fields for the wild mice. He was tough enough to survive the many blades of the mower machines that cut through the alfalfa fields. He walks on only three legs. The blades took part of his flesh, but he is no cripple. Let him pass.”

  The Indian lowered his gun to the woman’s words, she was right. He let the cat who could survive the blades in the fields of razor-turning steel pass on his own hunt He raised his rifle up again and went into the sage until another brown body got up and he shot it down.

  The Indian led the horse onto the road, walking down the hard black shell between the two straight lines of barbwire fence. The woman and the boy rode up behind him in the saddle with the swaying dead weight of the morning’s kill at their backs. The Indian pulled the horse down into the ditch when he heard the sounds of the morning give way to the high whine of a truck stirring up the distant air along the road. He kept leading the horse in the ditch as his eyes sought the precise color of the metal humped machine speeding toward him. The sharp steel clacking of a horse’s hooves came at his back, he spun around as if his own horse had broken loose and was galloping by.

  “It’s Ben Dora!” The boy swung and shouted at the Appaloosa galloping the full muscle of its flesh down the center of the road, its bloated chest pumped with air and blazing hot wind, the sharp sting of steel from the bottom of pounding hooves ringing out against the pavement. The horse swelled by them, churning and blasting the air, leaving its own current sucking behind as the man on its back stood high and bent in the stirrups, whipping the strong horseflesh beneath him. He reined the horse, jamming the cut of the bit into the soft bleeding mouth and swinging the stamping horse to its side in a blockade across the center of the road in front of the pickup riding the squeal of its brakes to a jerking stop before the horse. The woman leaned her head out of the truck, “Ben!” He spurred the horse over to her, his thick stoneflat thighs pressing against the leather of the saddle came up to the open window. He bent his head down to talk to her, the bulged muscle of his neck exposed red to the sun, the blunt instrument of his head jerked back and forth as he shouted at the woman through the window. The close cut of his hair slashing at the air like a burr as the woman shouted back. He slammed up in the saddle, throwing the wide strength of his back straight and driving his fist into the metal roof of the cab. He reined the horse and speared the heel of his boots deep into its flesh, galloping it straight up the road. The woman jammed the truck backwards, spinning the two rear wheels off into the ditch, tearing up dirt and kicking it behind her as she wheeled around and drove after the man.

  The Indian brought his slow horse back up onto the side of the road. His sister turned in the saddle and looked at the boy, “That was your Mama, Sammy, and is she going to give it to you for not being in school.”

  “She won’t care, she and my Dad and Ben are all having a big fight. She won’t care.”

  The Indian did not stop leading the horse until he came in the gate before his house, “Sam, you take Shasta around back and let her have a little drink, watch she don’t bloat herself, water brings out the pig in her.” He unhooked the dead weight of the belts from the horse and let them slide to the ground. “Go on Sam, do what I say.”

  The boy led the horse away as the Indian freed the stiffening bodies from the belts, tossing them in a high brown heap.

  “I’m going home to get Felix his lunch. Felix always comes home for lunch from the gas-station, that’s his slow time,” Sarah Dick rubbed the morning’s dirt from her hands on her long dress. “I’ll come back later and help you do the skinning.” She started walking for the road, then she turned and came back, watching her brother pile high the brown bodies, “Joe, I told Felix to tell you to come to Church services on Sunday but you weren’t there. I look every Sunday but I never see you. Don’t you like Jesus?”

  The Indian kept throwing the legstiffened bodies onto the brown mound, “You don’t have to say what you’re going to say, you have said it all before.”

  “You do not believe, Joe Birdsong. You do not believe in the Gospels, you do not believe in the Sun. You believe in the dead smell of Rabbits.”

  “I have been taught.”

  “I too have been taught, but I do not refuse to believe in Jesus. I do not refuse my own.”

  “You have been used. You have not been taught.”

  “Yes, I have been used. They used me as they wished. But I have taught myself how to believe.”

  “They teach everything. It is only what they allow you to teach yourself.”

  “You have become like them when you speak so. You are their voice. What is true to me is that beneath your skin, not your voice.”

  “You can’t expect me to believe?”

  “I can’t expect you as a woman. Only Jesus can teach what they cannot.”

  He threw the last brown body on the heap and looked into the earth colored reflection of her eyes within the heavy dark folds of her face. He remembered to the day when the honey Bee put a sting in her breast and swelled out a red welt with a prick of white pus at the tip. She was a very young sister then and her crying from the sting brought all the old people running. His father looked at the sting and called, “Joe! I want you to come and look at this!” His father fingered the swelled breast so the Sun exposed the red rising welt, “You see this Joe, Jesus did this.”

  His sister turned away and walked out on the road. He sat down on his crossed legs and slipped the knife from the leather sheath on his belt, then pulled one of the stiffened bodies from the pile and raised the blade to skin it.

  “Can I do
it too, Joe?” The boy sat before the pile watching the quick blade cut around the long hips and slice up under the thick belly fur.

  “I think you’ve got enough to do already, Sam. Look at this coming,” he pointed the blade up the road at the pickup forcing its way through the morning, the rubber of its tires skidding to a stop on the loose gravel in front of the house. “Sarah Dick told you she was going to be awful mad Sam. You better watch out for your Mama.”

  The woman was already out of the truck, leaving the door swinging open behind her as she ran over to the point of the knife still held in the air. “Sam, you get in the truck, now! Joe Birdsong, I want to talk to you. In the house.”

  The Indian led her into the house, she slammed the door shut behind her and let her body sag against the solid wood.

  “What did I do wrong Missus Dixel?”

  Her eyes sprang open, “My husband is dead!”

  “I’m sorry to hear Mam.”

  “He was shot early this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you hear a horse galloping by here early this morning? Before sunup?”

  “Yes Mam, I heard it.”

  “Did you see who was on it?”

  “No Mam, I’m sorry.”

  She pushed her back off the door, “Quit saying you’re sorry, I’m not sorry, every winter he’s off to Mexico to find his Dream Ranch, leaving me alone up here in this godawful valley. I’m sick to my belly with feeding his brats and trudging through four feet of snow to cater to a bunch of sniveling horses while he sits in Acapulco looking at pictures of ranches with a whore on each knee. Him and his Dream Ranch, him and his building up his herd of ghost horses, building up his great Arabian Ranch. He’s always wanted balls, he never gets tired of telling that stupid story about our honeymoon in Mexico when his father bought the biggest bull-balls for our dinner. When he saw me at the Cow Palace Grand Exposition he wanted the horse I was on so he bought me too. He said he was coming up here to cow country to raise the world’s greatest Appaloosa, and he says he did it. Well he didn’t do it, I did it. When he married me he said I couldn’t be anything but his ‘little gal.’ All he ever did was get me pregnant and run off to Mexico for the winter. I’m the one who raised all those Appies up, and if it wasn’t for Ben Dora helping me those horses would have died the first winter he left five years ago.”

  “Who shot him?”

  She let her body slump back against the door, “Ben would kill me if he knew I was here.”

  “Who shot your husband?”

  “Ben would just kill me.”

  “Has the Sheriff been up to the ranch?”

  “Deputy Sheriff Davies just got up there now with alot of other folks.”

  “What does Davies say?”

  “He says it was you shot my husband. He says it was you that had the motive because you weren’t hired to shoot rabbits anymore. They all say you had the motive. Ben would just kill me if he knew I was here.” She shoved herself up to him, “Listen, I know it wasn’t you. Those people are just saying that because they want you off this property so the whole valley can be sold and developed. They want you out anyway they can get you out. I know you didn’t do it, but Sheriff Davies says he is going to get you for it, he says he’s the law in this County and he’s been waiting for you to step over the line to get you, now he’s going to do it.”

  The Indian walked to his bed and grabbed an envelope, “What do they want to do this for, they’ve already got me out. Listen to this letter, ‘… said Property is in violation of the above mentioned County ordinances and is forthwith condemned as unfit for human occupation.’ ” He looked up at the woman, her slim shoulders caved in around her face. He had never seen her straight on before, holding still, not bending over a baby. Her face was beautiful and broken.

  “Please go.”

  He ran to her and shoved her shoulders back against the door, “They say my father didn’t exist!”

  She turned her head away from him so the tears streamed off the side of her face, “Please GO!”

  He released her. Her body slumped down on the door. She turned her face back up to him.

  “They’re coming.”

  He grabbed the accordion off the chair, “I’m going to take this. They say my father didn’t exist, this music says he did.” He strapped the accordion over his back.

  She moved across the room and grabbed his arm, “Please GO! They’re coming! Ben would kill me if he knew I was here!”

  He ran to the door and threw it open.

  “GO!”

  He broke into the yard, running around to the horse.

  The boy saw him from the truck and jumped down, “Joe! Where you going!”

  The Indian swung up on the horse and the boy grabbed his boot, “Take me with you! Take me with you!”

  The woman threw her arms around the boy and tried to pull him back, the tears from her face flying into his hair, “Let him go Sam! Let go!”

  The boy had one hand locked in the stirrup and the other biting into the flesh of the kicking leg, “Take me! Take me! I want to go and live like an Indian!”

  The Indian twisted around in the saddle and pointed at the brown heap of bodies, “You see that! That’s what we are! Rabbits! We’re worth nothing alive and five nickels dead!” He swung and spurred the horse, galloping across the field into the trees. Always the trees.

  The accordion slapped on his back, banging against his flesh and bruising his bone. He rode along the line of pines breaking into the valley floor, the ground beneath him beginning to go soft with water. He had to leave the trees and expose himself in the valley to come upon the place where the thick water came up in hot pools and spread the heavy scent of sulfur in the air. He rode for the hotsprings at the headwaters of the Feather River where Birds from all places gathered to drop their feathers. He crossed the blacktop highway onto the dirt road and let the horse run full out. He could see the silver dome rising before him, the sun glinting off the stretched metalskin in quick sparks. He rode straight for the glowing dome of Jandy’s trailer standing alongside the steaming sulfur pools. He reined the horse up and tied it to the trailer hitch, “Jandy!” He set the accordion down. “Jandy! I have come to the sacred waters to heal my wounds. I have come to wash away all my old hurts. I have been wounded many times. I come to the waters to immerse myself in their powerful medicine before battle.” He heard no sound from the trailer, he banged on its metal door, there was a rattling inside but no one came. He looked out at the barren land shooting its steam off from hard little mouth holes running hot streams of water over the earth. Long wooden planks were laid out into the field over the scalding flows of water, he ran out on them to a sulfur pool, the sweat of the earth rose in his nostrils, bearing its rank odor in the air. He saw the body before him, fallen across the narrow plank. “Jandy.” The body was still, the arms thrown back in the warm black mud. “Jandy? Hey Jandy!” The white handle of a pistol flashed on the barren earth. He knelt next to the slight body, the face staring up at him had half its side blown off, a straight line of steam puffed up from a mouth hole in the earth next to the head. He slid his arms under the light body to lift it, his hand coming around on the chest, popping the buttons of the shirt as he lifted, the cloth pulling away from two hard fists of breasts. He lowered the body and unbuttoned the shirt all the way down, the breasts swelled out from their points, the stomach was hairless. He looked up at the sky stacked with clouds of sulfur and laughed, “Jandy, the softhandedest little castrator in the whole of the valley.” He lifted the body in his arms and ran down the wooden plank to the waiting silver dome that said: AIRSTREAM. He kicked the door of the trailer open and the eyes of cats from everywhere stared back at him. Cats sat hunched and huddled on the bed, in the narrow sink, on the floor, from cupboards, empty boxes, rusted coffee cans. He dropped the body on the bed among the scattering cats. He slammed the door and ran back out along the planks until he came to the steaming pool, he pulled the cclothes fr
om his body and slid down between the mudslick sides. The leg twisted and pained when he had blasted the Snakes was stuck straight out in the sulfur sweet medicine of water, the healing stink rising in a cloud around him.

  At the headwaters of the Feather River where the Birds from all places drop their feathers he traveled north to west, leaving the Sierra Valley behind. He knew they were after him. They were always after him, and now he was being hunted. He kept always in the trees, searching the high trails where they had never been. But everywhere the forest blazed their mark axed into the flesh of a tree:

  This was the mark of the White. When he saw it he knew he drew close to one of their cabins, and he sought another trail where they had not been, where their mark was not upon the land and the Earth not worn clean by the passing of their animals. His rifle was without bullets, but he held it like a club as he hid in the trees, waiting for a Porcupine to leave its den in the rocks and waddle with the needle weapon of its skin into the Sun. He came at it from the trees with the club of the gun bashing in the head. He pounded the carcass with the rifle woodstock and threw the bloodied pulp onto a fire, the needled glove of skin spitting and flaming as the fat sizzled. He threw the head away and ate the charred body. He took the fire to light his tobacco. He had done well, to eat the head of his kill would make him fat and heavy, slow and quick to die. He was the hunted. He sat beneath a tree and smoked. The tobacco rose around him in a blue ring and threw back the Spirits hunting him. He was in the Mountain House, he used the power of tobacco to make him safe. He smoked the grass of the Earth. He watched the dying on the western rim of the mountains. the Sun was leaving him, it was sinking down into the Ocean. He had never seen the Ocean but he knew that to be true. Before his battle was over he was going down to San Francisco and watch the gold ball sink in the great water. His father traveled once to where the Earth ended and the Sun died into the Big Water. There at the edge of the water too bitter for drinking his father saw the Spirit of the Whites captured behind ironbars. Now the Sun dazzled in the gold of its own reflection. A Badger came out from his hole but smelled the tobacco air and hurried back into the Earth. The Crickets began to sing, and down the dark aisles of trees the Owls hollered at one another. When the Indian hears the Owl there will be a white death.