Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The wind goes along the river. Wind river blows water through the Sky. Moving far north to west the Indian traveled away from the Sunrise, dragging the Horse up the rock slope. “Come on Shasta! You can girl! Just one peak after this!” The Horse banged to its knees and struggled in the rocks, the worn steel of its hooves slipping on stone. The roar of the river blew in the air. The swirling current tore through the canyon below. The Snake came up rattling, the coiled muscle of its body striking at the Horse, the odd balance of its flailing body falling back into the stones then striking again before the rock hurled by the Indian splattered its cold blood on stone. He got the Horse moving again, back down the rockslide, but it went down on its side by the running water of the river, bellowing hollow breaths from its bloated ribs. The Indian searched the steep banks for parsnip. Mosquitoes came up from the bottom of water and bit him. He could hear the Horse sobbing along the bank and brought to it the leaves of parsnip, their roots dripping with Earth. He dried the leaves over the smoke of a fire then stirred them with water and rubbed the flaking medicine in the horse’s poisoned body. He was in the highest of mountains, the surrounding peaks gathered in black clouds over his head. He took out his tobacco and used it, the smoke whirling off the redembered tip at the threatening Sky beating thunder over rock mountains. He waved his fist at the Sky, “You better stop all this noise! You better stop! If not I’ll be dead!” The rain did not come but the Horse grew weaker. All around him the wind whirled and danced the purpletopped spruce trees that grew alone in the distance. He went up to the spruce trees. The gray Squirrels were cutting the green cones from tops, dropping them to the ground and eating off the tips of the scales. The green cones littered the Earth and he talked to the Squirrels. He asked his Brother to stop stripping the trees. But Squirrel could not hear him, the Sky shook the Earth with the sonic boom from a silver dart jetting in a pure white trail beyond reach of the mountans. He went back down to the Horse and it was alive, but the bones poked through its thin hide. He took the Horse’s lead and again made his way up the rock slope, the weight of the accordion strapped across his back bent the muscles of his shoulders as he dragged the Horse up to the mountaintop. Down the other side below them the timber bloomed in an unbroken line of forest. He took the Horse down into the trees and sought tender grass that raised its green arms to the Sun. The Horse stood bellowing the hollow life from its ribs as it ate the grass and vomited up, then ate the vomit. He was in the highest of mountains, at night the Sky swelled up black and the stars blinked like baby fists beating the darkness. He ate the soft flower plant of deerweed and the manzanita berries. At night he had the dream. He dreamed of Lizard. The dream of Lizard in the rocks means there will be a Hunt. He was Lizard. He lived alone with himself and petted the hide of the Horse rubbed raw on rocks in high places. The sharp mountains had worn holes and tears in his clothes, the wind came in and blew against his skin. His heart began to get tired, but it is bad luck to feel your heart. He wanted the longlegged Spiders to stretch over all the rivers so he could pass. He was always kind to Spiders, he did not know when he might need them. Crow wings sucked in the air over his head. The Animals have their own language and he put his ear against the trunks of trees to hear them talk. He ate berry soup and thickened it with Rabbit droppings. He let a handful of loose dirt shake from his palm to see which direction the wind was blowing. It was time to travel west to south, the Deer were fat. He went into lower mountains where there were no trees where there should be. He traveled through the ghost trunks of trees. He traveled where trees were scarred with fire wounds, the hard white pus of sugar sap beaded down their blackened sides. He traveled where there were trees that lived off fire, the heat exploding the seeds from their cones across the Earth. He traveled where flocks of Sheep have fed off the mountains, preying on all green things. He saw them bleating through the canyons, slicing every wild plant beneath the blades of their passing hooves. He watched this Musege, the beast of the whiteman turned loose to break all green arms to the Sun, swill every root, tear the hide off every stalk. From where he stood he could see the tamed power of Sheep swirling through the valleys. He could see the white flocks driven down the mountains to the railheads where they fouled the water, got into boxcars and rolled off to be slaughtered.

  Memdewi was fat. Deer was fat His father had told him all the old bucks who lived in the mountains were smarter than people. Now he was the hunted who was hunting. He left the Horse by water and went into a high place where the wind carried his Indian scent off the Earth. He had no bullets for the rifle. He made the stoneblade of a knife and lashed it to a cedar pole. He waited with this spear where the signs of Deer were everywhere on the ground. He prepared himself to kill, and waited. He watched over the rocks through the trees where a full-grown mule Deer approached. The buck came young and light on his feet, the four points of his antlers tilted against the Sun, his body strange in the air, as if he was running from the scent of man, but the Indian knew he was in a higher place than the buck, there could not be the smell of a man to strange the animal. He waited for the buck to draw to a closer moment. The buck skittered over the rocks, then froze, the disturbed air of the pulsating lungs beating beneath the bright redbrown hide. The Indian jumped from the rocks, the balance of the spear gripped in both hands. He hurled the stone point at the pounding chest. The strict ears of the buck flicked back and he was gone, the force of the spear slicing through emptiness, clattering on the rocks as the echoed sound of a high powered rifle slammed in the air. The Indian spun around and looked down the mountain at the men aiming the scope of their rifle barrels straight up at him. The rocks at his feet flew up and scattered in splintered points as lead slammed into them, the distant thud of rifle shots broke out all over the mountainside. His instinct carried him up the steep slope on his hands and knees, the jagged rocks cutting through the holes of his boots to flesh. The lead pumping into stone around him ricocheted and tore through his leg, the sudden jolt throwing him to the rocks. He dug into stone, his hands carving out a place for his body. He clung like a Lizard to the rocks, hearing only the blood jumping from his heart to his head. He waited to die. The sonic boom of a jet broke the air over his head. Then there was silence on the mountain. He could feel the sparks going off in his leg as air hit blood. He heard the sobbing of his own breath beating on stone. He pushed himself up from his hole and looked down the mountain. It was deserted. But through the bottom break in the beginning treeline he saw one of the riflemen still running, the flash of his red hat blazing brilliant before it disappeared into the trees. The Indian ripped his pant leg open, the lead had passed through his flesh, missing the bone. He bound the bleeding with a cloth around his leg, it was the same leg he had wounded when he was hired to kill the Snakes where they slept. He stood up, the leg was sound under him, he scrambled back down over the rocks to find his spear. It was lying in the stones where the Deer had fled, its blade broken, the rocks around stained with blood. It was not his blood. It was the blood of his Brother. The buck had been wounded by the riflemen. He heard his laughter going over the sharp rocks and down the mountain. The riflemen were not shooting at him. They were shooting at the buck. He remembered the flash of the red hat blazing brilliant before it disappeared into the trees. Deerhunters. The laughter came back up the mountain at him. Then stopped. He searched the red stains for a sign, there was not much. The Deer could run for miles. He started a fire with the deadened windblown needles of scrubpine, then mixed his saliva with the Deer blood splattered on a stone. He set the stone on the smoking pineneedles and waited patiently for the heat to burn the stone free of stains. It was time. He rose to go to his Brother. His Brother did not know he was coming. A wounded Deer that does not have its life hunted will forget his fear and stop his running quickly. After a short distance his stiffening muscles will lock his body and drop him to the ground, his heart stunned from loss of blood. The Indian came up to Memdewi leaning on the crutch of his spear, he looked down at his Brother who was
dead or dying, bright blood bubbles of air frothing from his mouth and nose. “I will treat your Spirit with respect, Brother.” He took the broken blade of the spear and cut into the body. “I will honor your flesh. I will not take you in excess. To do so is to die, your Spirit will come back and break my medicine.” He skinned the hide from the downed beast and hefted the life of the flesh onto his shoulders. “I will not take you in excess. I will leave that which my stomach cannot hold for Coyote. He will come soon. I go my Brother.” He made his way on the crutch back to the Horse in the trees of the high riverland. The Horse had strengthened his Spirit on the long grasses. He filled the bags of Deer intestines with water, strapped the burden of the accordion to his back and rode away from the river.

  He was in the Mountain House with his Brothers. They were all being hunted. He traveled to Blue Lake where the mountain Quail flew into the clear blue surface of the water thinking it was endless Sky, breaking their necks on the bone hard surface. He made camp on the shore and waited for the afternoon winds to blow the fresh kill of a dead floating Bird over the waters to him. He rubbed the grease drippings of the Quails mixed with ashes into the wound of his leg to keep the white swelling down. He leaned back in the trees and played the accordion out over clear waters. He played the songs his father had sung long ago. He leaned back in the trees and used tobacco as he squeezed music over the lake. His father had the dream of the Antelope and died. The Antelope was a great magician. The man his father was like Ayas the sharp footed Antelope. His Brother the Antelope had long ago been hunted out of the high Sierra, he too was long ago dead. His father had met the Jesus. He had used tobacco with the Messiah who walked among the Fisheaters on the shores of Pyramid Lake. His father stood at the Messiah’s side when the people came around him from all over the land and paid one dollar just to shake his hand. All this he knew was in the music he squeezed out over the lake, his hands playing over the rainbows of mother-of-pearl keys, the yellow stonebacked ring glowing up in his eye like a Sun. Sometimes when a man died and his Spirit went away south the people would throw all his goods of the Earth into his house and burn it down. When the Spirit of his father had gone south he moved into his shack so the people couldn’t burn it. He inherited the Earthly goods of his father: the yellow stonebacked ring, the accordion, and outside the shack, the battered metal of a FORD. In his last days his father would go into the FORD at dusk, he would roll up all the windows and drive out across the valley one mile east, the FORD spluttering down the road at only four miles an hour, then he would turn one mile north, one mile west, and come home the last mile south. Every night at dusk he would make the slow trip and in the valley the people in the ranch houses he passed would shake their heads, some would say, ‘There goes crazy Indian Bob,’ others, just by seeing him drive by, would know what time it was and set their clocks to him. After his father’s Spirit went south he sold the FORD to buy a Horse to hunt down the Rabbit. He had to drive the FORD into Truckee to get enough dollars for it to buy the Horse. He rose along through the trees, the FORD steaming up the Truckee Summit and headed down toward Stampede Reservoir, the dusk out the rolled up windows was beginning to settle down through the points of the pines and he heard the man on the radio tell him, “Welcome to the Bach Hour. For the next solid hour on radio ΚΕΝΟ of RENO you will hear only the beautiful sounds of the world’s greatest composer, Johann Sebastian Bach.” As the shrill notes of a fugue punched up from Earth the point of every pinetree outside the car window he understood the medicine of his father’s nightly drive to the four sacred directions. It took his father exactly the one hour of the music to travel to all points of the Earth. He remembered back to his father traveling out in the dusk of the valley with all the windows rolled up, he now knew that locked within the moving metal of the FORD his father traveled with the power of a music stronger than most Birds. The windows rolled up on the FORD protected his power from the ears of others, sheltered him from the shame of being caught listening to the uncommon. His father had never taught him how to squeeze the power of this music from the accordion, he kept its medicine hidden to the last.

  The mountains shouted rain. With the first storm he headed down from the high mountains with all the Deer. The storm washed over his skin, coming in the holes of his clothes, but it healed his body, easing the hard joints, cooling the white swelling in his leg and firming his loose teeth. He went down from the lake, he needed a spring that didn’t freeze over by which to make his camp for the long white days. He crossed the red dirt of logging roads that were broken with chuckholes bigger than a man’s head and studded with the furred carcasses of gray Squirrels run into Earth under truckloads of slaughtered trees. He traveled in forests of ghost trees cut through the heart. The Whiteman had come with the power of his chainsaw, he could tear the hide off a tree as old as the rivers and slice through its flesh in minutes. He stood on the spur of a mesa and looked down to where the Whiteman had cut the river. A band of concrete across the full current robbed the power of great waters. Everywhere now he saw the mark of the White beast on the mountain heart of the land. The White beast came with his Musege to the Mountain House. He tore the scalps off the high mountans, blasting with stolen water for gold metal. He was blind to the Earth and blasted great peaks to stone rubble, he choked the life from breathing streams with mud and silt. He moved mountains for bags of gold dust. He left his mark everywhere. Now the mountains shouted rain. He was struck through with beauty. The howling Dogstar in the Sky sang the Indian’s voice as he ran after it.

  When the gold water of his body peed into the Earth he watched the fall of its brilliant yellow pebbles. A smell had grown up between his legs. Whenever he touched himself the smell came up strong on his hand, he could not wipe it off. At first the smell offended him, but then he longed to have it always in his nostrils, it was a sweet yellow smell of dark Earth. He traveled with this smell growing on his body from west to south, the wind blowing through all the holes in his clothes as the rocks cut the leather of the boots from his feet. With the buckskin of the Deer he made a leather apron slit down the sides and strapped around the waist with a Deermuscle belt. He pounded strips of dampened bark into strings and wove himself sandals. He heard the call of one Duck over a pond and the snow began to fall. The timbered forests slept by day and he traveled through them searching a place where water always flows. The Crickets stopped singing in the cold night and he didn’t know the warm places to sleep. The white burden settled on the mountains and buried the scarred Earth. The white burden came down so heavy on the pines it bowed their giant tops over almost to the hidden ground. If it was a strong tree it would survive the burden until it melted from its branches. When released it will never stand straight again. If the white burden uses all its power it will break a tree in two. There were no shadows in the mountains, only the dull white light. His black hair grew down his back, he tied it in two braids and hung a Hawk feather from the tip to protect him against the white cold. The Horse could not go far in the deep snow, its body had grown empty of food. He followed the First Star of the night, the lone light going across the Sky. The sign of the Rabbit Hunter. The Chief of all Rabbits moved across the hard crust of the white burden pulling the staggering Horse behind him, the Rabbit Boss traveled to where water always flowed with the burden of the accordion crossed on his back. He heard the sound of machines. He came high on the white skin of the ice and looked down on the heart of the mountain split open, the blade of a concrete freeway laid through it. He led the Horse down onto the freeway and pulled its exhausted body along behind him on the black pavement half covered by snow. He walked in darkness, with only the distant Star of the Rabbit Hunter to guide him. He heard the labor of a truck grinding up the summit, its huge rubber tires bound in chains. He ran the Horse into the high snowbank, hiding behind its white hide. The ice blast of wind passed over him. The light of the truck illuminating the vast billboards hung out on both side of the freeway:

  USE ELECTRIC

  I
N RENO ITS HARRAH’S

  SUPPORT CALIFORNIA BEEF

  50 MILES TO HARRAH’S CLUB

  EAT GAS EAT GAS EAT GAS

  HARRAH’S CLUB OR BUST!!!

  He pulled the Horse back out onto the freeway. The Horse staggered behind him and fell across the pavement. He tried to pull it up from the iced pavement. If it was going to die he was going to eat it. There was still some flesh left on the white bones. He tugged on the rope. The Horse was shaking. He kicked it in the stomach. It did not move, the white body was shaking all over. He could hear the distant engine of another truck coming up through the ice bound air. He jerked on the rope, trying to tug the shaking body off the road, it wouldn’t move. The sound of the truck pounded the air behind him. He lifted the spear over his head and drove the broken blade through the Horse’s neck. He flung the spear into the Horse’s side and tore out hunks of flesh. The truck roared up behind him, throwing the white light from its strong headbeams across his body as he tossed the living flesh over his shoulders and scrambled up the ice bank, dragging the accordion through the snow behind him. He heard the honking horn of the truck as the momentum of its weight carried it over the carcass of the Horse.

  The white swelling of his leg grew and the cold wind cracked the skin of his face. The blood in his hands and feet was blinded with cold. He huddled in the trees, pressing his face into the cutting bark to feel the warm sting of blood. He huddled and wept as the cold wind blew across the white burden. The flesh of the Horse had loosened in his bowels and run down his legs. He watched from the trees until he saw the thick white furred Rabbits pad across the snow on broad feet. He ran out and clubbed the Rabbits, then ripped the white fur from them and ate of their flesh. He feasted on Rabbit. He found a hole a small Bear had given up to sleep in and there he dreamed of Honowah. He dreamed of the fiery snowplant. He dreamed of the snowplant growing straight from the white burden that stopped the blood of all other living things, sprouting up in a blaze of color, a survivor, its roots in black Earth, growing. The Rabbit was killing him, its lean flesh loosened his gut and he spit blood. The lean flesh of Rabbit was robbing the strength of his body. To eat only the flesh of Rabbit is to die. It is the way of the people. It is what the Hunters know. Rabbit meat alone will strangle the belly and choke the heart. He was dying of Rabbit starvation. The skin of his face cracked from the cold, it split like bark and rutted with scars. He roasted the lean carcasses of six Rabbits over his fire to get enough grease drippings to mix with black soot and paint his face against the ice of the air. He drew bold black streaks down his face and went out on the snow to club more Rabbits. He pissed a pale yellow stream into the snow crust, it pricked a fingerhole in the ice, he watched helplessly as the steam of his own body rose from the hole and disappeared in the air. A clap of thunder broke through the trees and slapped the heart of the mountains. He turned his savage painted face to the Sky and watched the jet streaking a white line beyond the reach of mountaintops. He felt the pain in his leg, the swelling was spreading, shooting off sparks then putting the whole side of his body to sleep. He rubbed himself with ashes, but the white pus kept growing. He sat in the cave and tried to make his cold fingers work on the accordion and he remembered what his mother, Medicine Maggie, had taught him. Sitting him in the lap of her big steaming brown body when he was a small boy she taught him woman was cloud, man was thunder. She told him of how Weasel created the Earth and Coyote created the Indians. She told him of the two sisters living at the Big Waters of Lake Tahoe who had all the wildgrass seeds and pinemush they could want, they had a Fish House stuffed with Trout and Frogs. Every night they would go to sleep gorged with Fish. There was an old man who lived on the otherside of Tahoe who had nothing. He would come to the sisters and beg for a skin to keep him warm, not even something to eat, just a skin to keep warm. The sisters had so many skins piled around their house their feet never touched the ground, but they gave the old man nothing. They sent him away laughing at his back, then one cooked up a bunch of Fish and the other wove a willow basket with a beautiful design in it. That night they lay down to sleep under a great pine and looked up and saw many stars. “I like that one up there,” the old sister said. “I think I’ll catch him, he looks so good. See him? That bigeyed one over there.” “Of course I see him,” the other sister cried. “I saw him first. That bigeyed one is mine. Oh how I would like to go up there right now and suck the Sun from his mouth and blow all his light across the Sky!” “No you can’t! No you can’t! I won’t let you! He’s mine! How would you like it if I got him between my legs and never let him go! I would if I could. I would eat his thunder!” They laughed and went to sleep with the stars twinkling overhead. That night the bigeyed Starman cut a hole in the Sky and came down to Earth and took the two sleeping sisters back up with him. When the sisters awoke the bigeyed Starman took off the bands of fragrant herbs hanging around their heads and washed the good smell of Earth from their faces. He called his uncle the Moon over and had him put the single blanket of a Rabbit Robe over all their shoulders so they were married. Then the two sisters fought over who should sleep under the Rabbit Robe with the Starman. They were very angry. But he took them both under the Rabbit Robe and when they awoke they both had Starbabies and the old man who had nothing down on the lake was lying between them. “Where is the bigeyed Starman?” they yelled. The old man laughed and said he had become the Starman to get himself two young wives who had everything. The women were so angry they had been tricked they refused to cook their new husband any Antelope meat. They packed up some dry Fish for themselves and went out for a week digging up wild potatoes with sharp sticks. They came back home and boiled up all their potatoes in baskets and ate them. They did not give any to their new husband and the Starbabies. The Starbabies cried and ran off to their uncle the Moon, old Moon got very angry, he took up his big knife and went running across the clouds. The whole Sky trembled, the people on Earth said it was thundering, old Moon came tramping up and grabbed the two sisters by the long hair, shaking them until they were almost dead, then he cut a hole in the Sky with his big knife and hurled them through it. Down Down Down they went, banging into the Earth with so much force their bodies made a deep hole. That hole is over by Gardnerville. In that hole Indians can always find plenty of wildgrub, wildwheat, wildpotatoes, wildcorn, there is always plenty. Even when the snow is on the ground there is always plenty in this hole. All this happened before White people came. But it is true.