Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  “Captain Pigweed is killing the life within! Captain Pigweed is killing the life of the woman! Captain Pigweed is killing the life of the people. His bad medicine sucks the Spirit and feeds the White wegaleyo!” Doctor Toad tried to sweep away the leeches squirming and sucking across the woman’s belly. Captain Rex threw the greatcoat over her, then locked his thumbless fists around the screaming man’s head.

  “Musege! White beast! Drunken beast!” One Arm Henry came spitting and coughing to his feet with the stone blade of his hatchet striking for his brother’s back.

  The old sisters wailed and screamed around the woman, “Look! Look!”

  The fire in One Arm Henry’s chest caved his body in, the hatchet blow missing Captain Rex, the power of its cold stone splintering to pieces as it struck the frozen ground.

  “LOOK! LOOK!” The old sisters pointed and wailed as the throbbing stomach of the woman pushed up the dead body of the baby from beneath the greatcoat.

  “Excuse us Ghost, we mean you no harm, we did not shoot the wegaleyo of the Whites into you. Please don’t travel back and give us dreams. Go away. Do not bother us. Leave the world and do not bother the living,” Rattles Ruggles placed the body of the baby in the stump of a tree, the people stood on the frozen ground and chanted his words.

  “We do not want to offend you, oh Ghost. We know it is the way to burn you up so you can travel faster south to the happy place where the Ancestors play games, gamble with sticks and bones, where there are always dances. We know it is the way to burn you up and put what is left of your bones into a fast flowing creek so they may go faster south and be with your Spirit. But the fires have all grown cold and there is no Sun. We do not wish to offend you that the skin of Bear could not cloak you as you travel faster south. Bear has stronger power than the people, and we are too weak from no blood to outsmart him. But we will cry for you for three months. When the fires flame again we will mix ashes and put grease to our faces, we will not wash for a year, old sisters and old brothers will cut their hair off. We will make a proper house of the dead for you so you will not travel back and give us a dream that will kill us. Excuse us Ghost, we mean you no harm. We have treated you as the others around you.”

  Rattles Ruggles waved his arm through the hollowed stumps of the logged trees where brown frozen bodies were placed in death, “We have treated you as others. All of these people around you have already traveled south. They have spit up their life blood and died out of this world. Please tell them we do not say bad things about them. Please tell them we do not mention their names. Please tell them not to come back and give us dreams. You will be in good company Ghost. Someday all the people will be in good company. We do not know how much longer we can live on this Earth covered with its white burden. All our children are dead or dying. We are the last. The blood of our bodies is coming out and spilling on the white Earth.

  The people all lay dead or dying on the frozen ground. There were no more Rabbit blankets to huddle under, there were no more Rabbit blankets to eat. There was no more Sun. The people were all dying away from Captain Rex. In the darkness he could feel the shuddering body of Walking Shoes’ woman on the frozen Earth next to him. He rolled her over, clutching her body with his thumbless hands. Her breasts were cold, his face fumbled among them, his old mouth sucking at the nipples, trying to draw the life milk into him. He squeezed her to him with his thumbless hands and sucked until he felt a warm flow between his lips. He heard the shouting and noise outside. The people were coming to stone him. The people had all come up and voted equally, every man had his own voice heard. Every man said Captain Pigweed uses bad medicine. Captain Pigweed tries to poison his people. Captain Pigweed is a bad doctor. But the people were not outside. The people were dying away around him. Their flesh rotting on the frozen ground. Their stink rising around him. He heard the stunning sound of the Bull Cook’s guthammer, it rattled the blades of ice hanging from the trees. The canvas flaps of the shack shuddered beneath a liquid weight sloshed down their sides, throwing the smell of kerosene up all around him.

  “Get those barbedwire concertinas up around every shack! Don’t leave no way for them to run out!” The Bull Cook’s voice rose above the shouting and sounds of heavy boots running on snow.

  “The Bull of the Woods is coming! The Bull of the Woods!”

  “You jacks shut up and let the Bull talk! Here he is!”

  “Gents, Johnny Doc says all these Injuns are infested with the T-burculur. Johnny Doc says if one Injun so much as breathes in your face you’re a dead man. Gents, the only thing that will stop this Injun epidemic is fire. Every Injun in every shack around every lumber camp and town is being burned to the ground. Only fire can burn out the Injun fever. Now I don’t like to do this anymore than you gents, but what can we do? Are we not the gents that’s been feeding and clothing these painted savages since we discovered this land? Aren’t we the gents that’s been teaching them the Christian way? Gents, I say this: Can the civilized world ask any more of us? Now light up those torches. Get your rifles ready for them to come running out. It’s going to get hotter than hell in there. Shoot at a thing that wears skin! Burn the Injun plague away!”

  Captain Rex could hear the soft thudding of torches striking the canvas sides, the flames ripping off into air, sending smoke across the frozen ground, the crackling blaze beat against the smoke like wings. Deep within the pumping blood choking at his throat he heard the feathered songs Birds sang long ago that he had learned in dreams. The songs bled from his nose and through his ears, escaping into smoke as the blaze of the fire whipped high and burned the white snow clean from the Earth.

  4

  MY HEART is Big as a Cloud.

  I scream like a Bird. I bellow like a Buffalo. I bleed like melting snow. The Messiah has come. Christ has returned to Earth. He is walking on a dead land. A land sunk to the heart. Guarded over only by memory. Defended in battle of dreams. The Christ has returned to love up all the hearts buried in the ground. All Indian bodies will grow young again. He will tame the wild bugs. Soothe the small Birds. Milk the stars. The Christ comes the second time. He is not the false prophet. He is rising up all the people across the land. He has had a vision over the Desert horizon. Trees of thorn higher than men grow all around him. Piles of smoke rise in a Sacred Cloud from his stonepipe. There is a hope in my heart. The Spirit is approaching. How close he comes on a Cloud. I hold out my hands toward him and cry. He sings my name as I run after it. The Sky herself is clear. The wind blows his words over the whole Earth. He sings my name. Hallelujah. Hallelujah Bob. He sings my name.

  “Hallelujah Bob. You are the one the Whites call Hallelujah Bob. You have sat here with the Christ on the Desert covered with snow and used tobacco. I have waited your journey. I have walked along the shores of Pyramid Lake among the Fisheaters. I have returned the second coming. I am the Messiah. I am Wovoka. I am Wovoka, the son of the prophet Tavibo. I am the Christ. Listen, Washo. Listen. Can you hear it through the ground? Listen with your heart. The Earth is weeping. The sacred Earth weeps. All the dead bodies are piling up in the Earth. Can you hear the place where crying begins? The Earth is crying like a Crow. The Earth has come. It is rising. All the dead hearts shall walk again. The grandmothers will break the knives and bows. We shall grow as one Nation. We shall live on One Road. All people are painted different colors. Indians are in high places everywhere. Stand upon the Earth. Stand in high places everywhere. Stand ready. Use paint. When Crow calls you will see him.”

  The vision clouded around the Christ. I tried to see his face through my flowing tears, but the light shining from under the black brim of his tall sombrero blinded me so all I could see was smoke flowing from his lips. He crossed the stonepipe over his left to me.

  “You are the one the Whites call Hallelujah Bob. I have been waiting your coming. I have sent for you. I am waiting for all my children. Eleven are coming from a far land. I have been waiting your coming. You have been preaching the One Road. You have be
en going about doing good. I know all in you. You have been saved. I know of your Ancestors. The blood of your blood saw the Whites eat of their own flesh on yonder lake, Donner. Captain Rex gambled the money of the people away and lost his way in a blizzard, he came into a cabin and slept, when he awoke white bodies were lying dead all around him with the blood they had coughed up splattered on their clothes. He took their White death back to the people, that was the year all the Washo were burned to the ground at Elephant Head, one was saved, Ayas, the Antelope, who was sent into the valley of clouds to warm his sightless grandmother who wove flowing streams into her baskets. Ayas, who lived among the Whites and was saved by his people to live in a sacred manner on the shores of the Big Lake of the Sky, Tahoe. Ayas, who fished the small streams leading into the Big Lake and watched the Whites go out on the Sky of bluewater with nets, dragging up tons of flashing Tahoe Trout everyday. Ayas, who watched Memdewi wade out into the mouth of a stream feeding the Big Lake, building a stone Fish House to trap the Sacred Trout, then rising from the water to catch the bullet from a White gun in his heart, his dripping brown body splashing into the water, his red blood going all out on the Big Lake as the people were disbanded across the land. I can see into all the days past. I can see into all the days coming. Along the Big Lake of the Sky your son shall walk in a new Rabbit robe. Sparkling his image on the quiet waters. The forest shall grow thick and free. The Birds return. The fences fall. In their shadow the openness will find its home once more. These things shall pass in your time. All things shall pass. There will be many smokes. Listen closely the one they call Hallelujah Bob, you have been saved so that you may hear my words. You are the end of the beginning. In the beginning Indians of all Nations came unto me. They came from a wilderness of boulders, from windy rivers, from small lakes scattered over flatland. They came from where the Moon shines on little grasses and said, ‘Messiah, call up all the wild game, call up all the Birds and Mice, call up all the Fish. Teach us how to braid our good long hair so that we may dance the people up. Dance our birth. Messiah, if you dance the souls will come back. Give us our land to walk on.’ They came on the Iron Road from all Nations to me. They all came. The Fisheaters, the Buffaloeaters, the Duckshooters, the Beaverhunters, the Rootdiggers. The men came up and paid one dollar to shake my hand, young girls opened the blouse of their bodies and asked me to feel their breasts. From over the whole Earth Indians were coming. I said the bow was your Mother. The knife is your Father. Do not dance with arrows. Do not sing bad songs. Do not break the Road. Keep a clean heart and walk straight Do not let women touch rifles. These things I told each one. But they said to me White Owl flies in willows where Mice live. They said they wanted me to paint the power of a Red Owl to shield them while they danced up the Ghost of all Indians. They sought me out walking on the shores of the Pyramid Lake, ‘Messiah, what did you see the day the Sun died? What did you dream the day the gold fingers of the Sun slipped from the Earth?’ I stood on a high rock and answered to everyone a man, ‘I have been dreaming since I was fourteen when my father the prophet Tavibo went away south. I want to show you my dreams. I do not know if I am still dreaming or the dream has left me. Sit down. Listen. I have dreamt about bullets and guns. We will see if I dream true.’ I dug a hole in the ground and placed the metal of six bullets in its dust. ‘If the bullets melt down I have dreamed true.’ I took four smokes and used them, when the last cigarette was burned down I called up a young boy, ‘See if I have dreamed true my child. What do you find in the hole?’ The bullets had melted down flat and fit in the palm of the young boy as he lifted them as witness to the people. The people came closer and watched as I melted powder. ‘What will it turn into?’ they called. ‘Water!’ And they watched as rivers of powder turned to water flowed from them. ‘He dreams true. He dreams true!’ They came from all across the land, the Elk-eaters, the Salmoneaters, the Batcatchers. ‘Go and wait along the river,’ I spoke softly to them. They went to Walker River and I brought a rifle among them. ‘I am the true Messiah. The Sun lives. Shoot me in the heart. He who walks the Road of the Ghost cannot die.’ One of the Buffaloeaters took the rifle and aimed it at my heart. The people were silent. The wind going through the Buffaloeater’s headfeathers was singing as he took aim. ‘Fire!’ ‘I can’t make it go off!’ ‘Shoot me!’ ‘The trigger is stuck!’ ‘Pull as hard as you can!’ ‘It’s stuck!’ ‘Here,’ I came to him. ‘Give me the gun!’ I took the rifle, pointed it at the Sky and pulled the trigger. The bullet banged out and echoed across the land. ‘The dreamer dreams true!’ The people shouted. ‘He who walks on the Road of the Ghost cannot die! Follow the Milky Way, it is the Road of the Ghost. Dance away the white burden from the Earth! Let the people stand in high places everywhere! Let the people see heart to heart. Their souls kiss. Give the souls land to walk on! Sing your song O Christ! Charm the flesh off the Spirit. There is a hope in our hearts. Sing the people up from death! We are too cold to die. Our ears bleed. Our tongues are bruised. Our mouths are swollen from eating lies. The Whiteman’s Road is the Thieves’ Road. Where the Whiteman walks the Buffalo Bulls no longer walk. Where the Whiteman walks the rivers run dry and the trees fall. Where the Whiteman walks men turn their hearts against one another. The days are falling. We are sick with a white swelling. We spit the blasted blood of our hearts on a land gone lame with murderous grace. They have locked us off the land. The land is the heart. To lose touch with the land is to lose touch with the heart. We lock our hearts to the land. We see heart to heart with our Brothers. We walk arm in arm across the land. The Native Ghost returns. Dawn strikes swift as a rattling Snake!’ I sat down and wept, the Sky was swollen and the people were singing up the Ghost across the land, they could not hear the words I was calling, they could not see the trees growing from my face, they could not feel the stones they stepped on, they could not see that more than one kind of Animal flies, the white blown tears blinded them. They danced their hearts on the heart of the land. They sang all the people up. All across this land sunk to the heart Indian people listened to the songs that grew from my dreams. They sang through their hearts in one voice, ‘All the people are going up! Your Sister above is painted. Your Brother above is painted. All the people are rising up. The Buffalo Bull, they cut off his feet. The Buffalo Bull, they cut off his head. He is rising. He gets up again! He gets up! His hooves are drumming against Earth! The Earth shakes! He who wears the Shirt of the Ghost will live forever. Bullets pass through his heart. The Earth is shaking. Indians cannot die. We will free all the rivers!’ ”

  The Christ took the stem of the stonepipe to his lips, the blue clouds rising off his body and circling over his head like a Hawk, “Now the songs are lost, the dances dead, the fires grown cold, the ceremonies swallowed up. The White bullets went through the hearts at Wounded Knee and the hearts thrown in a hole to be buried in frozen Earth. What grows from that frozen Earth is for all people to live with. The hearts that danced at Wounded Knee were crazybrave. But you cannot chop thunder with an ax. I have given the people Magpie feathers again to wear on their heads. What I preached was a good River. When at first I liked the Whites I gave them fruit. The Whites are very close, we can always feel their power. But all days are one. People and Animals are one. The Road going is the road coming. One day is all days. To free our land from the White burden we must free our hearts. We must make our own hearts clean before we cleanse the hearts of all men. This is what I dreamed the day the Sun died. This is what I preached. But after the slaughtered hearts were buried at Wounded Knee the people came from across the land, the Cactuseaters, the Snakeshakers, the Dogeaters. They cried out to kill the Messiah. They cried Wovoka was a false prophet. They cried if the Christ danced again he would dance the hearts of Wounded Knee up and they would kill him. I stood on a high rock and said, ‘You want to accuse me just like Jesus was accused. You want to crucify me just like Jesus was crucified. But I am not Jesus. I am the Spirit of Jesus. You cannot kill the Spirit of Jesus. He lives in all men. He is the
end of the beginning.’ ”

  The Christ rose in a cloud of tobacco. Standing he was shorter than I saw him to be. Swelling beneath the high black sombrero his body worn heavy with age hung on the horizon like a bell. His arms helpless to his sides as if weighted by snow, “Come with me Washo. Come with me the one they call Hallelujah Bob. Come and dance the last dance with me. Then I will go away into the Sky. When I am finished on this Earth I will go higher up into the Sky. We are Brothers, Washo. The Washo and Paiutes are Brothers. We have been apart too long. That is why we have not walked the Straight Road. That is why we have walked the forked path. That is the White swelling in our hearts. Until our hearts are free of fear and suspicion we are not clean. We can go up and stand in high places everywhere. But if our hearts are not clean the people will not see us. If the people cannot see us they will journey without direction. That is what I teach. A clean heart. We must free ourselves of the White burden. The Whiteman made us hate the Yellowman. If it had not been for our trees, always our trees, the Whiteman could not have mined the gold and silver veins from the arms of our Mother Earth. The Whiteman needed our trees to fire their Engines, to build their Iron Road and stab their mines into our Mother’s flesh. The Whiteman sent the Yellowman into our Sacred Piñon groves to cut the trees. The Whiteman tried to get the Indian to cut the trees, but the Indian would not cut down his own life. So for many years we have hated the Yellowman. That hate has been a White swelling in our hearts. But it is the Whiteman who killed our trees. It is the Whiteman who killed our collecting grounds. The Whiteman killed off the wildgrasses, he sent his great stone-eyed beasts snorting and stamping and spoiling across our land, cutting the roots of all green growing from Earth until the Antelope were dead, the Buffalo were dead, the Deer were dead. The old Animals slipped from their grazing Earth and died behind fences. The power of the Whiteman and his tame beasts is One. It is the same Musege. It has the same end. The Whiteman yanked the silver and gold veins from the Earth and killed the trees. His beasts ate over the seeds and plants, stripped the Earth of all living things. The Whiteman tricked us. He put mountains between our hearts. He made us betray our Brothers. The Whiteman gave us a dream of hate. We had to get rid of it, or learn how to use it. To refuse their dream was to die. The Whiteman kept trying to give us a dream that all Brothers do not walk the Earth equal. The Whiteman tricked us into receiving his dream. Our hearts were unclean and the Earth threw us up dying. But before the Whiteman’s Road was before us to travel, Nations waded across rivers to battle their Brothers. So when the Whiteman Road came between us our wings were all broken, the boundaries of the Earth small. The people looked at the White Road and made many smokes, they talked and sang the old songs, but their wings were broken, their hearts were swelling White and were too heavy to fly to high places. So when they met the Whiteman approaching they received his dream. They fought one among each other and all against all. Every victory was a defeat. To free our land from the White burden we must free our hearts. Until we can walk one into another’s heart as equals every victory is defeat. This is what I dream. This is what I preach. Come. Take my hand Washo. Walk over the land to dance in a circle. Too long the mountains have grown between the Paiute and Washo. Love flows thicker than blood. As the Whites came our Ancestors fought one against the other, the Paiute and the Washo beat their hearts one against another and died on the land they tried to win. They stood locked in battle, Brothers under the skin, the Paiute coming up victorious, never again would the Horses dance for the Washo. The Paiute forbid the Washo men to ride and the women to weave magic into their baskets. The Paiute painted the rocks along the river where the Washo could not pass from his Mountain House. The Washo gathered in a circle around their lake camp of Tahoe and ate Fish while the Paiutes slung Antelopes over their shoulders and rode across the flatland as the White Road came with a fury out of the east and drove between Brothers divided. Brothers weakened and sick from killing their own hearts, they had chopped the branches from their own Tree. Every victory is defeat. Come Washo. Take my hand and we will dance up the Ghosts. Join hands and we will move in a circle, we will move in the Nänigükwa, in the Circle Dance. The day the Sun died he fell from the heart of the Sky herself. A lance through his golden body. All was darkness. There was stillness before birth. The Earth belonged to none. Everyday was one. All People and Animals were together. I was carried into the Sky. Indians stood in high places everywhere. The people danced their birth. They sang up the land going green. I saw the Straight Road open before me and rode the painted Ghost pony to Earth to teach the Dance of the Ghost to all Indians. I wanted to cleanse the hearts of all men. The first ones I wanted to give the vision of the Ghost to was my Brother the Washo. My Brother who saw the Whites eat of their own flesh on the shores of yonder lake Donner. All the Washo were dead or dying. Soon they would be gone from the Earth and no one would know of their going. I wanted to give the Washo a vision. I wanted to see the Sacred Piñon Tree grow with all its limbs strong to the Sun. Of all the Indians, I gave the vision of the Sacred Cactus to the Washo first. I gave the vision of Peyote to my Brother who saw the Whiteman eat of his own flesh. I gave the vision to the Washo so he would cleanse his heart. I gave the vision so he would survive. When the Whiteman first came over the mountains to this country the Ghost of the Washo was still running strong through the land. The Whiteman called all of this country of Nevada, Washo. I led the Washo down the Peyote Road of the Ghost first because of all the hearts broken beneath the fury of the white wheels coming out of the east the Washo were the first to watch the end of the beginning on the shores of yonder lake, Donner. The Washo were the first to see the coming of the Flesheaters. The Washo were the first to die away from the land. The Washo watched the Spirit flesh of the Earth devoured. Come, the one they call Hallelujah Bob. Come and eat the Sacred Cactus. Come Ayas, Antelope. It is the end of the beginning. Join hands and lock hearts.”