Rabbit Boss
Page 52
All these things Medicine Maggie taught to him. He remembered the hole, plenty of wildgrub even when snow is high. He strapped the accordion to his back and propped the blunt end of the spear under his arm for a crutch. Gardnerville was over the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada, he had to go through the high mountans of California, but there were many Washo where he was going, and a hole full of wildgrub. He could travel through the snowsheds that covered the curving railroad tracks cut through the high mountains. The lean meat of the Rabbit was starving his body. He traveled west to east until he reached the railroad track in high places covered by snowsheds hanging along the cliffs of the mountain. He went out of the day into the narrow dark tunnel sinking before him. The air turned from cold to ice, strangling the blood of his body, but he went on in the tunnel, hobbling always forward on his crutch to the light shafting through a distant chink in the snowburied sheds. He walked into silence. The light before him faded and he walked in total darkness, he was in the heart of the mountain. He could hear the ice flow of water running in the mountain’s vein. There was no light at the front or the back of him. He no longer knew if he was walking the right way or if he had turned in the darkness. There was no way in and no way out. He didn’t know if he was coming or going. The only real thing was the weight of the accordion bending his shoulders and the white swelling growing and filling his body like a flower. He stopped. The juices of the mountain flowed. How loud they were. Like an engine. How their stillness roared. He saw the prick of a light beam shoot through a chink in the distance. He hobbled toward the white light. But it was moving. The light was coming to him. The juices of the mountain he heard flowing and ticking with a roar was the machine pumping of a train. He was in the snow tunnel with a train. The pinprick of light began to waver as it became defined, the sound of a thousand iron wheels speeding their tonnage along the narrow track vibrated the wood of the tunnel, shaking the Earth beneath his feet, its deafening fury dominating everything right to the mountain’s heart. He felt to see if there was enough room for the train to pass between him and the wall. He didn’t know if the wind current of speeding steel would suck him into its path. He banged with the spear at the boarded wall, he couldn’t tell if he was banging on the open side of the tunnel or banging into the sheer rock of the mountain. The eye of the train bore down on him, the thousand wheels beating and clattering against the iron track. He kicked at the wall and threw his body into it, the boards wrenching away from their nails, splintering open before his body. He broke into light and tumbled out onto snow. The weight of the accordion strapped to his back carrying him helplessly down the slope, tumbling and kicking him over before his body wedged against a tree. Always the trees. He was alive. In the distance the blue of a lake swelled up at him. He was on the shore of yonder lake, the lake they call Donner. He felt beneath him. It was Earth. The shelter of the tree had warmed out around the trunk, melting the snow back. He watched through the trees growing down to the lake, isolated splotches of black Earth showed through the white burden. The white days were ending. Before the green plants came up he would cut tender boughs from the trees and scatter their green food along the receding snowline for the Deer to feed on, then he would again Hunt. He went down to the lake, the white swelling filled his body, he did not know if he was alive or dreaming. He dragged the accordion behind him over the white burden. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. The straps slipped down from his hand and he walked away from the accordion on the white snow. He twisted and fell, rolling to the shore of the lake. The water was warmer than the Earth, the sluggish ice floes breaking apart their weight that during the meanest white days had pressed down on the small Fish, squeezing them to the bottom and breaking their backs. He watched the broken bodies of small Fish floating to the icy surface. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. He was on the shore of Dormer Lake. He watched at the place where his Ancestors had first watched the White Ghost eat of his own flesh. His Ancestors from that day thought the Whiteman a flesheater. And he was. The Musege of the Whiteman was the meanest power of all, stronger than all the Bears of the Mountain Home. Stronger than all the hearts of all the running Animals. The Whiteman was a cannibal. A flesheater. He ate the Spirit flesh of the Indian. He ate the Spirit flesh of his Brother. He ate the Spirit flesh of the Earth. He led the wild beasts who devoured the Earth. Of all the Hunters his medicine was strongest. He killed all the Birds out of the Sky and fished up all the Fish out of the waters. He tore the hide from the mountains and stole the power from the rivers. The White beast was a flesheater. The Ghost of the Fox was released from the Earth. The Ancestors had spoken true. The flesheater always devours his own children. The flesheater eats himself.
The Indian sank to his knees on the shore of Donner Lake. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. The white swelling filled his body and bruised his heart. Woman was cloud. Man was thunder. He grasped the timbered flesh between his legs in the roots of his fingers. He dreamed of Animals running, Birds flying, Fish swimming, Women loving, he dreamed of all Earth going green. He bent over and tried to connect his stiffened flesh to Earth, but the hot timber in the root of his hand jammed into the ice of the white burden. The singing power of Birds ripped through trees, flames of flapping feathers in branchtops, the wind of their wings becomes air and is gone.
3
CAPTAIN REX stood riding the flatbed car of the train coughing blood. The hot air from the pumping iron wheels slapping his face as he watched the rocky ground flash by. The songs Birds sang long ago tried to push up through his mouth full of blood, the ancestry of their music rising deep within his body, whistling through his head, seeking to burst their rhythm from his burning chest and fill all open space between mountains. He wiped his bloodstained lips on his coat, the screeching steamwhistle blowing up front of the bulky slamming cars. He looked off down to the blue blade of the river slicing through the canyon while the trapped feathered songs he had learned in dreams struggled in his flaming blood. The train roared him along the river and down into the valley. The smoke it threw up from its stack clouded in the Sky, mixing with the spiraling burnoff from the lumber mills crowded down to the river’s racing edge. The odor of wet lumber from the dammed millponds came up to him. Across the valley towering black monsters of slash incinerators trailed off their slowburning smoky waste into the air cut heavy with the scent of green pine. White blasts of steam billowed out from the churning friction of the braking iron wheels as the momentum of the train slowed. The brown faces of his people were everywhere. All along the track in straight lines far as his eye could see were the Washo. The men in dark hats and vests, the women with their long dresses sweeping the earth, their backs bent in silence as they piled high the logs of softwood cut to feed the endless fire in the iron belly of the Train Engines. They did not look up as the train rolled slowly between them toward the black slash towers. They paid no attention to the one Indian who sat with his large body hunched alone in the middle of the flatbed car. From deep in his face he watched their every move through squinted eyes while the ancient songs of Birds screamed from the trapped depths of his body. The Indian who rode on the train remembered seeing those same lines of his people going out over twelvefoot high snow to cut the exposed tops of softwood trees to feed the endless fire of the Engines during winter. The people were being paid to kill the trees. The train slowed, passing through mountains of sawdust surrounding the logjammed millponds. The color of the Sun was lost in the smoldering air green with the scent of pine. The ponderous iron wheels beneath the Indian spun and hissed as the brakes up ahead were put against the momentum. The Yard callboy ran along the slow rolling flatbed car waving his gray cap at the Indian, shouting through the yellowing haze choking the air around him, almost obscuring the high stacked roughcuts of lumber squared off into the distance farther than the eye could see.
“Cappin Rex!” The callboy grabbed onto the flatbed’s iron handhold and was pulled along to a jolting halt as the Engine shuddered to a w
hite steaming stop down the line of flatbeds loaded with giant saprunning bodies of cut pine trunks. “Captain Rex! Did you hear the news! A big woodburning three-truck Shay tanker’s been busted all to kingdom come! Have ye heard about it yet Cappin!” The callboy clung to the side of the flatbed as he rubbed the clear running snot from his nose. “A big twelve wheeler Shay Engine she was Cappin, Soda Tom was engineering, course he’s dead now. Soda Tom was snaking long drags of logs up the Blueboy timber pike on the Pacific slope. He was supposed to doublehead that load up the pike but he said his Shay Lokey was strong enough to do the work of two Engines. It could of been any of us what got it with him. He was rolling a pretty tough load of drags up the pike, pounding that steam donkey Engine of his for all she was worth, he was battlin up the last switchback, twisting and snaking a forest load of drags around along behind him when of a sudden he comes up on the summit and roaring down t-other side of the loggin pike. That big twelve wheeling Lokey of his was snortin like a volcano, shootin down the shining rails like a lead log in a fastwater flume. Soda Tom was supposed to stop fifteen miles down the pike at a takeoff landing by the river where the logs are supposed to be floated and tied into booms and jammed to the mill. Well that steam donkey came ranting and barking down that pike right by the takeoff landing blowing sparks bigger than a cat’s head out the diamond stack. All the Brakies were burning their hands off wheeling the brakestaffs to slow the Lokey down, they didn’t have no wooden brake clubs to use, they wielded iron hickies, but even they was like using a blanket to catch a hurricane. Soda Tom knew he was coming onto a new rail spur just put in through dense timber. There had been a rain, which he knew might have loosened any number of fell trees and jammed them over the new track. But he was going to ride her down. All the brakechains was broke but the Brakies were all sticking to their posts at the brakestaffs, they were all riding the Lokey down. Soda Tom big holed the hot air and hosed her over, but she was impossible to blow off. The steam pumped a hundred feet over their heads as they rode helpless onto the new spur and headed straight into the forest weight of a Redwood older than Christ, blasting the side off the smokebox and shooting flying fire into the surrounding trees. The tender was jackknifed up agin the boiler head, the Brakies went down under the wheels, Sam Hensen the Fireman was thrown clean out of sight into the woods. The Company sent up the Bull Wrecker, but the whole world was burning down around them. Smouldering stumps and snags were rolling down onto the red hot rails as the Wrecking Lokey stormed into the forest fire to save the men of the rails who had rode their Lokey down. It were a wasted trip though, there weren’t nothing to salvage. Soda Tom was still breathin. They steamed their way back out up to the Doc at the railhead, but it was too late. The Lokey had made Tom pay his dues, the steam had scalded his lungs out. Did ye hear about it Cappin!”
The Indian jumped off the flatbed and looked into the yellowing haze, “I heard the story, it’s been told 500 miles up the line.”
“Goddogit!” The boy jammed two fingers into his dripping nostrils, “I thought I’d be the first told it to you.”
“Who’s got a Lokey going up by the gamblin tents?”
“Dutchie’s got one I think, if the weather holds, pulling out about now, he’ll climb up on Mexican Pike to Elephant Head.”
“That’s the one I want. I’ve been riding these rails so long this time I’ve forgotten how to deal cards.” He started walking through the hulking stacks of roughcut lumber, but the callboy was quick to grab hold of his long coat.
“Cappin! You haven’t told me what you seen on the circuit. The Brass Hat wants the report, the Brass Hat says no Lokey of his is going to end up like Soda Tom’s. The Brass Hat says he aint about to waste time sending men to wrestle kinked chokers in the big woods. So what did ye see Cappin?”
“Nothing but rusty rails.”
“No washouts or railrips?”
“All the Iron Road is where it should be. This bunk I rode in on has a wobble in the back truck. They didn’t have the tools to fix it on the road so I rode it in. It feels like the axle, not the wheel.”
The callboy ran along behind him, “That’s just what the Brass Hat wants to know. The Brass Hat is a mean one and if I don’t bring back a report on every circuit he hits me up alongside the ear.”
The callboy disappeared into the yellowing haze and the Indian wove his way through the ghost stacks of wood, following to the hiss of white steam blowing off from between iron wheels and clouding back over the highblack polished jacket of a shaking Engine.
“Hey Cap,” a sweating face hung out the cab window behind the boiler and shouted through the hissing steam. “You want a hitch on my steam donkey! All the gamblins up on Mexican Pike. Those boys up there would sure like to steal all your Injun coins off you! I’ve just got to stoke some more pine billets then we’re up the pike to Elephant Head and catch up a load of sawlogs on this drag of bunks I’m totin! Get on board Cap!”