Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  Captain Rex sat up on the mound of cut logs coughing blood into the sleeve of his coat as the steam flew over his head from the Engine pumping up the long lash of silver track strangled around the mountain to the summit. He could see the outline of the mountain rising from the yellowing haze, the tall trees of the downslopes slashed to stumps, exposing the roll of once hidden earth so the curves and dips of the steep draws and spurs looked in the distance like the boned ribs of an elephant lying on its side. The very top of the summit the elephant’s dying head. The train whistle blew and shattered the shadows beginning to settle on the slope. He could hear the bellowing of men driving bullteams of oxen chained to mutilated trunks of trees, the arms of their branches stripped to the bark. The oxen skidded the green weight over the raw earth of the level roadcut leading to the greased V chutes timbered down a dry creekripped canyon into the yellowing haze of the mills below. The oxen snaked the logs up to the head of the greased trough where they were unhooked to slide of their own dead weight off the mountain. The narrow gleaming rails rose higher into the brilliant green of a forest parading off an untouched spur of the summit. In the falling light the trees bled from ax wounds blazed into their hide to mark them for the steel bite of the saw that would cut them from rim to rim, crashing them back to an earth they had thrust above centuries before. The Indian saw the speckled white flow of sap bleeding the heart of its hard sugar down the trunks as the Engine steamed up into darkness, the dull yellow glow from its oil headlamp thrown out ahead onto the straight Iron Road.

  The rain began to fall on the Indian riding the Iron Road. The fire in his chest kept him warm but he pulled the big coat tight around his neck to keep the water out. The bodies of the men feeding the endless fire of the Engine glowed like ghosts in the intense white light of the boiler below him. The rain drove down against the advancing Engine, sweeping hail across the iron rails illuminated by the single eye of the headlamp. The Indian could hear the rain banging off the Engine jacket and knocking against his hat. He smelled the trees thinning. The Engine was drawing him nearer the summit into ice thickening rain. Sleet big as a fist beat down on his hat. The white smoke clouding from the Engine’s stack blew and whipped back over his head through the pounding sleet. The blood came up in his chest, strangling in his throat; it choked his dreams. The Engine was on the head of the elephant. The Indian jumped off into mud.

  “Cap!” The Fireman shouted out the cab window into the rain, “The gamblins over to the cookhouse tent. It’s the Bull Cook what’s running the show!”

  The Indian pushed through the mud, all around him rose the stumped ghosts of recently cut trees. The light from within the tent he headed for shined through the canvas walls, guiding his way between the ghosts.

  “Com’ on in Cap’n Rex, you ol crazyhead you, you ol trout from Tahoe!”

  The sudden warmth of the tent hit the sagging wetness of the Indian’s greatcoat, lifting a cloud of steam from his body. He drew his thumbless hands from the coat and held up the knotted weight of a dirty rag.

  “How much you totin tonight ol trout from Tahoe?”

  The Indian walked across the floor splintered and spiked by the calks of the booted men. He dropped the knotted rag onto the card strewn table.

  “Let see what you brung us ol trout from Tahoe.” The Logbucker opened the rag and banged the metal coins to the table, “One … three … seven gold pieces.” One eye popped up at the Indian, “Seven golden ones aint much to keep you in one hand of stud poker ol trout from Tahoe. But we’ll dump the ante down from two, to one dollar, just to cut you in ol trout.”

  The Indian scraped a chair back and sat down, holding the fists of his thumbless hands out before him.

  “Christ O Mary he do stink!” The man next to him shoved away from the Indian and pinched his blunt nose between two fingers.

  “You’ll have to forgive the Whistle Punk here Cap’n Rex,” the Log Bucker dropped the metal weight of each gold coin from one blistered hand to another. “He’s like a dog, he aint partial to Injun scents, specially you Washo. He’s been jackin up in Washington country around the Wenatchee Injuns, course they don’t have no stink since it goes and rains everyday up in that country so they gets a bath whether they want it or not. Course me, I’m different, I been around a coon’s age. I remember the days when an Injun bucko could still go into town not wearing pants. I’ve smoked a trainload of nick-o-teen and trimmed and bucked enough logs to build up the city of Frisco. I can tell you out of experience it gets awful lonely up here in these winter camps when the weather comes down on you so that you welcome the company of any talking body, no matter what its stink or race. Now you take Hair Oil Pete sitting here next o me.” He nodded to the man shuffling the cards at his side, the long black flow of his hair glistened in the smoky light of the kerosene lamp, “Hair Oil Pete is neat as a pin, fit as a fiddle. He greases his hair up with locomotive valve oil from the tallowpot every morning before breakfast to lubricate the roots. He’s the fanciest dude you’d ever hope to lay an eye on riding with his head hung out the cab window of a fast Lokey, not a hair out of place. But even as careful about his appearance as he is he can tell you neither stink nor race make no difference when a jack is lonesome.”

  “It aint only the stink!” the Whistle Punk snorted through his pinched nose. “Look there! Christ O Mary look to that! He aint got no thumbs! They look to be shot off!”

  The Indian did not move his fisted hands from the table. Hair Oil Pete dealt everyone around the table a card, face down, then looked up into the Indian’s brown face, “Black painted Ladies are wild.” He dealt around four more cards, face up.

  The Log Bucker bent the corner of his down card up to read his fate, he whipped his head around and spit a yellow gob of tobacco juice over the splintered floor, “Don’t mind the Whistle Punk none Cap’n, he’s still green around the gills. If words were manure he’d have a good crop of tomatoes. Why back in the beginning o time when I was still a boy we built the Tioga Mine Railroad in one hundred and thirty days right across the top of the Sierra Nevada. Why them granite shelves of Yosemite country was so narrow they was no wider than your foot, the mules rubbed themselves bloody on the rocks. We must a had at least nine hundred coolies workin Tioga, there was some what criticized the Road for using John Chinaman labor, said there were plenty Irishmen hanging around the Country the work could have been given to. I remember when Mister Charles Crocker himself heard that talk, he stood right up to the world and told them the dearly departed ancestors of his yellow pets had built the Great Wall of China without cheap Irish labor and the Central Pacific Railroad could damn well do the same layin iron tracks across California. You should have seen them coolies work Cap’n, they didn’t eat nothin but tea. They must a had twelve, fifteen tea-boys running up and down the lines, the hotter it got the more tea they drank, and it got plenty hot what with all the horsedrawn graders up front of them following right into the dust of a hundred powder monkeys at a time blasting a road through the Tioga granite. One hundred and thirty days it took to blast that road out of the highest Sierra down to Big Oak Flat Road, and that was one hundred and thirty days of powder monkeys blowin each other to bits, along with the horses behind them. Why I saw men not only lose their thumbs like you Cap’n, but I seen em lose their whole hands. I seen arms and legs blown ever which way. I seen one powder monkey holing some dynamite caps when his whole head was took off like a rotten pumpkin. One hundred and thirty days to build the Tioga Road from the Gold to the Railhead, Cap’n. An engineering marvel.”

  “Seems like all you Washo have hard times keeping your bodies together Cap,” Hair Oil Pete smiled the wrinkles of his forehead up into his greased hair. “Half of them Washo and halfbreeds livin in tentshacks on the edge of camp got one part or other missin. Your brother Henry’s got but one arm, then there’s that medicine man, Rattles Ruggles, was ridin a Lokey to the pigweed when the unblocked iron frogs of a coupler connecting two flat-cars pinched one of his feet clean
off to the ankle bone.”

  “How did you lose your thumbs ol trout,” the Logbucker flicked the comer of his bottom card on the table.

  “I’ll open on one,” the Indian tossed a goldpiece out before him.

  “I’ll meet that,” the Logbucker threw his own gold out. “You know, Pete’s right, I guess all the apples in the barrel are rotten. I remember back in the beginnin of time when the Company might give a few Injuns a day of work, but they was either dumb drunk or just dumb as a bunny. I remember one who had to tailoff on the green chain stackin the long cuts on skids, he stacked one cut right down on his thumbs, they swolled up bigger’n his neck. He weren’t so lucky as you Cap’n, he didn’t lose them, but he damn well wished he did when they started turning his arms green.” He whipped his head and spit on the splintered floor, “How’d you lose your thumbs Cap’n?”

  “The Bull Cook aint goin to like this Injun in the gamblin tent!” The Whistle Punk snorted through the pinched red bulge of his nose. “The Bull Cook says the rule of the camp is not halfbreeds or Injuns in the gamblin tents.”

  “Shut up and bet!” The Logbucker banged his fist on the table. “Either you’re in or you’re out. Stop stallin!”

  “But the Bull Cook…!”

  The Logbucker jammed his spiked boots into the splintered floor, “Put up or shut up!”

  The Whistle Punk’s goldpiece clinked to the table.

  “That’s more like it! Now you use a little respect for the Cap’n here. He aint like you, he aint some plain punk what blows an all-clear whistle in a loggin camp. He aint no ordinary Injun down on his uppers. He’s a boss. He’s a boss of his people. The Company hires him whenever it needs an Injun boss. You see that badge pinned on his coat,” the Logbucker pointed across the table at the silver star glinting through the smoky kerosene light. “That is a United States Peacemaker badge. Cap’n Rex has been appointed a Peacemaker of the Washo by the U.S. Government. He’s a U.S. Boss over his people.”

  The Whistle Punk twisted back in his chair, refusing to let go of his nose, “Well he’s still just like any Injun Joe to me. Look at him, he’s so poor he could put his socks on at either end. It’s a good thing the Bull Cook aint here. Besides that he looks crooked.”

  Hair Oil Pete threw his dollar to the table and cocked his chair up on the back two legs, “Hey! The old Cap does look kinda crooked, what with no thumbs, that big greatcoat with only three shiny brass buttons left out of twelve, a two-bit badge pinned to his heart and a face that looks like dried mud. Hey Bucker! How do we know he aint crooked? How do we know he’s straight!”

  The Bucker spit a gob of tobacco at the tent wall and watched it hit the canvas and slip in a weak brown streak to the splintered floor, “Is he crooked?” He choked on his own spit, “You just watch out for the ol Cap’n, you just keep a hawkeye on him. Cap’n Rex would steal Christ from the cross and then come back for the nails!”

  Hair Oil Pete dealt around another two cards, face down, “Hey Cap, how come you aint got two wives?”

  “Because my wife has not got a sister.”

  “Aint that old squaw Molly Moose your wife, Cap?”

  “She wanted me to take another wife, she got lonely all the years, she wanted someone to help with the work, so she went over to my brother because he had a wife to keep her from going lonely. But all the children that came out of her were the ones I put in, even after she had gone over to him. The children are mine.”

  “And your brother doesn’t know Cap!”

  “No.”

  “Why Cap, you old fox!”

  “Give me a drink.”

  “Pour Cap a whiskey Whistle Punk.”

  The Punk shoved a glass in front of the Indian and he drank it. He felt the heavy stir of Birds within him, the dull thud of wings in his chest, but the songs Birds sang long ago in dreams did not fly from his lips into the room. The blood came up and choked his dreams, his own coughing filling the room. He wiped the blood from his lips and put another glass of whiskey in his body, “Wives are too much work. I had myself an ugly wife, but she was too much work. She never cheated me, she only gave the gift of her woman to those she liked. But she was too much work, I was always worried if others would like her after she gave them her gift. I was always worried others would think her stupid as a woman and laugh at my back.” He took another drink.

  “You Injuns got hard times Cap.”

  “I hear all those squaws will blow you like a train whistle!” The Punk’s laughter snorting from his nose twisted him back in his chair as his hands tried to hide the swelling red face.

  “Back in the beginnin of time when I was a boy I remember when all that the squaws in these hills wore was rain, and they’d handle every jack in a crew of timberbeasts and be banging up the road the next night looking for another timber crew. These modern squaws aint up to that. They don’t even want to live in no wicki-yups the way the old ones do. Now they’re more civilized and hang around the camps hopin to get enough old thrown away canvas together to make themselves a tentshack, you don’t see no more of them tree limbs and branches wicki-yups anymore, they’ve all gone modern.”

  “They’ll blow you like a train whistle!”

  Hair Oil Pete grabbed the bottle away from the Whistle Punk and poured himself a drink, “Why don’t you shut up and keep the whole works in your mouth!”

  “No sir, these modern squaws aint up to much, I don’t see much value in them, they’re just like tobacco, no nourishment and highly injurious to health. When they go around acting civilized even an old gadget like me would pass them up, and at my age I aint particular,” the Bucker spit a weak brown gob of tobacco to the splintered floor.

  “Blow youuuuuuuu like a train whistle!” The Punk knocked the Indian in the arm, “Like a train whistle!”

  The Indian tossed the metal weight of four goldpieces to the center of the table.

  “That’s pretty steep ol trout, I only see one Ace showing on the table before you. You must not be playing with a full deck.”

  “I’m with the Bucker, you must be ridin high Cap,” Pete tossed his cards onto the table and fingered the back of his slippery neck running with grease from his hair. “That leaves you Whistle Punk, show your stuff.”

  “Like a train whistle!” The Punk tossed five gold coins on top of the Indian’s.

  The Indian held his last gold coin like a shrunken sun up to the smoky light of the kerosene lamp, then threw it onto the metal heap, “Two Aces.”

  “TOOT! TOOT! A baby is born! Four painted Ladies!” The Punk slapped the four Queens up and wrenched back on the chair snorting through his pinched nose, “TOOT-TOOT!” He jumped up, the spikes of his heavy boots pounding a jig in the splintered floor with one blistered hand cocked over the bulge of his pants between the crotch while the other hand pulled high in the air on the imaginary cord of a train whistle, “TOOT-TOOT-TOOT!” He didn’t see the man who ripped open the flap of the tent and stepped right into his dance, knocking his body bleeding from the mouth to the scarred floor.

  “He just can’t handle it, Bull Cook,” the Logbucker let his big head slide from side to side in disgust. “Nope, he just can’t handle winnin.” He spit a gob of tobacco to the splintered floor at the feet of the Punk backhanding the blood from his mouth. “He just caint handle it.”

  The Bull Cook swung the thick muscle of his neck around, the smoky light of the kerosene lamp cast down on his head, over the split of his nose pushed to one side of his face so the spokes of his eyes seemed to be shoved over to the other side of his face, “Who let the Injun in!”

  “I let the ol trout from Tahoe have a sit-down, the rains comin down niggers and wops outside.”

  “You know the rule of the camp Bucker, no halfbreeds or Injuns in the gamblin tent!”

  “You know this ol trout, Bull Cook,” the Bucker spit a prick of juice at the floor. “He’s off’n on the Compnee payroll. He’s a U.S. Peacemaker. He’s a boss.”

  “He’s a Injun redman
!”

  “Don’t make no difference nohow, Bull Cook,” Hair Oil Pete slicked a greased tuft of hair down on the side of his head. “He lost anyway.”

  The Bull Cook scooped all the cards off the table and bent them through a hard shuffle into a tight square pack, “You jacks hear this straight, a redman is only equal until his money gives out.”

  “He aint equal then!” The Whistle Punk jumped up fingering his swelling lip. “I won it all off’n him. He aint equal!”

  The Bull Cook grabbed the Indian up by the shoulders of his greatcoat, “Go on redman. Git on back to your camp of halfbreeds and Washos. Tell all those people you’re Peacemaker of there’s a new Bull of the Woods comin to this camp, he’s bringin in a whole new gang of timberbeasts. He’s not a soft touch like me, he’s a fire-breathin Injun hater. His word is Law, no Injun shacks within a mile of the camp, he don’t want no Injuns in the camp beggin. He don’t want no Injuns in the gamblin tents. He’s a new Bull in the tall timbers and as long as God is in heaven the Bull of the Woods is King.” He shoved the Indian across the splintered floor, “You’re out of money and you’re out of luck.”

  “I’m staying,” the Indian pulled off his hat. “My money says I have the right to stay.” He slipped a goldpiece from within the sweatband of the hat and placed it next to the squared deck on the table.

  The Bull Cook’s eyes burned out from the one side of his nose, “Nobody calls a bet on me redman.” He slapped five gold coins over the one and spread the deck across the table in a straight line, “Draw! High card wins!”

  The gold metal shined up into the Indian’s face, the thumbless fists of his hands did not move from the pockets of the coat. The feathered song of Birds soared in his lungs for escape and he spit blood to the floor.

  “That ol trout from Tahoe is so scared of losing his last gold buck he’s spittin blood.”