Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The Indian felt the loose shifting in the calf’s body. The full flush of the muscle electric slackened the flesh of the rectum and gushed a harsh hot spurt of bloodsoft shit down the slick brown hide of the legs.

  Odus ran over from his fire, the red hot AD brand waving in the air, “Tail that bully up good Joey so he don’t start kicking up a storm and make me run this brand!”

  Jandy sheared off a patch of bristling brown hair on the Calf’s neck. Odus poised the smoking iron over the shorn spot, then twisted his wrists down, forcing the hot iron into flesh. He stuck his tongue through his teeth and bit down hard as the iron burned and seared its black imprint into meat.

  The Indian turned his face away from the wind blowing the stench of burning hair and flesh into his nostrils, he braced himself against the rump as the calf reacted to the violence and turned the full muscle of his young body against the iron bars that held him trapped and thrashed with the weight of his ribs against the stall just as Odus pulled up the brand and brushed the charred hair clean from the deep burn. “In the nick of time! It’s a perfect brand!” He banged the lever up over the calf’s head and the iron yoke clanged free, releasing the struggling calf.

  The Indian felt the strength of the brown body spring from him and he jumped back so as not to have his face kicked by the last mad fury of the flying hooves. He rested against the back of the stall. The heat was ringing in his ears and he could feel the flies biting at his cheeks. Deep in the distance a sound was coming to him, growing louder and more familiar as he slumped down to the iron plank floor of the shoot. Out before him he saw the young calf, stunned, running in zig-zags across the hot land, angry still feeling the bull in his groins, stomping the hot earth with the dead flesh of his hooves, shaking his head with violent turns against the thick air that surrounded him, against the unknown that surrounded him. The calf felt the Bull in his groins but the meat had been cut out of him, the muscle severed. He shook his head against the unknown. In the days ahead the Bull would die out of him, the feeling of power would disappear from his loins, he would grow soft and slow, he would grow fat and dull, dazed with emptiness. Then the Indian connected the sound swelling from the deep distance, it was a sound familiar, a sound he had been hearing all morning. Swarming around the trapped corral of waiting calves were the mothers, the dead weight of their thick udders swinging beneath them as their heads hooked back and they blared, bellowed and bleated against the fate of their young flesh now separated from them. The old cows cried and pleaded, the old cows knew. The Indian realized it was the sound of the mothers he had been hearing all morning, but it had been so steady, so incessant, like the constant rip of pinetree tops in a wind storm, one after the other until it becomes impossible to distinguish any single sound. The Indian saw the mother cow of the young calf who was out shaking his head against the unknown. She came running across the hard hot ground to be with him, to help him, to be next to him. The calf saw her coming, heard her close sound above all others, he turned from the white fear of pain in her bulging eyes, drove his head down low, tucked the shaft of his tail tight between his legs and ran. She was rejected but not stopped, looping awkwardly behind him, trying to lick up with the long pink meat of her tongue the blood splashing from his cut bag and dashed against his hind legs, dripping in bright red streaks all the way to his hooves.

  “Joey! Hey, isn’t that Jandy the goddamndest, soft handedest, quickest little castrator in the whole of the valley? It’s a pleasure to work beside a true craftsman, an artist,” Odus leaned into the stall, his bright red face beaming at the Indian. “Come on Joey, you can’t be tired out on the first bully, we’ve got eleven more to go,” he reached his hand in and pulled the Indian out from the confines of the shoot “Jandy, where’d you say you picked up your art?”

  The thin man was cleaning the delicate veined pearl-white testes in a clear bucket of water, pulling them through his fist to free any loose tissue, he looked up at Odus then spit at the hot ground. “Mexico. Mexico is where I picked it up.”

  I never cease to wonder at you Jandy, you could lose a finger or three if that bully flinched just at the right time.”

  “I’ve known some to lose fingers. That’s calfshit.”

  “You’re so quickhanded you don’t use any crimp like most cutters, and still you get hardly any bleeding.”

  “Don’t like crimps. Don’t like novocain neither. It’s all just fancy calfshit. You make your move and you make it right, that’s the natural way, ride or get off.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Odus knocked at the flies coming in at his sweating face. “That’s just what Garibaldi always said, ‘Ride or get off.’ Words to live by.”

  Jandy spit on the hot ground and stood up. With his hat on he was only tall as the highest plank in the small corral, “We’ve got a long morning.”

  The Indian jumped over into the corral again, thumping his hat in the air, his face lost in the brown swirl of dust the running calves kicked up. He felt a bang of pain in his knee. His leg gave out. Ever since the snakes the leg had not been right. Then the pain stopped, he couldn’t feel anything, there was no feeling, all support in the leg was gone. He slammed to the ground sending up his own heavy cloud of dust.

  “Joey, you all right in there,” Odus ran over and hopped up on the corral. “What is it, your leg giving you trouble again?”

  The Indian beat his leg with his fist until he could feel the blood pumping and humming. He stood, the shoulder of his shirt had been burned off by the fall. He slapped the flat of his hat against his pants, knocking out small puffs of dust, “No, there’s nothing wrong with my leg.”

  “You want me to come in there and give you a hand?”

  “No. There’s nothing wrong with my leg.” The calves were still circling him and he got in behind them, hooting and hollering and waving his hat until he got one out in the wooden chute.

  “Okie-doke,” Odus called. “Open her up Jandy!”

  Jandy pulled the gate up, freeing the way for the calf. But the calf stood rock still. “Heeyaawrh,” the Indian struck the cocked bone of his knee into the calf’s exposed rectum. It leaped for the opening and was stunned by the iron yoke slamming down on his neck.

  “Tail him up Birdsong. Don’t let him kick and make me take my fingers off by missing the stroke. Tail him!” Jandy shouted as he pulled his knife from the bucket and slashed the bag. The Indian rammed the base of the tail high and could feel the white flash of muscle electric vibrating in his grasp.

  “Get it all out of there Jandy, he’s a bally one!” Odus came quickly with the red hot iron held out before him. “Don’t leave him anything to play with or he’ll be so worthless horny that he’ll fuck every fence post.”

  “He’s done,” Jandy pulled his blood smeared fist out of the slashed pouch with the long cord dangling the two glistening sausage length testes clumped at the end.

  “Okie-doke Jandy, get the shears and get this little bully shaved. Joey, tail him high so I don’t run this brand on his hide,” Odus poised the hot iron over the square sheared by Jandy then rammed it down, it seared into the flesh, the stench of blowing burning hair ripped the air as the calf turned his weight away from the red iron and thrashed against the iron bars.

  “Calfshit, you run it.”

  “I know I run it Jandy!” Odus spun his head around, the fierce blue of his eyes challenging the scorn of the blank stone eyes staring into him. “You, Joey, tail this bully high. This one counts!”

  The Indian bowed both knees and brought the strength of his thighs against the calf’s flanks as he jammed the bone-stiff muscled tail straight up. He watched Odus slide his tongue between his teeth, the black flash of the flies wings beating around his face. The brand was smoking, Odus aimed it at the imperfect burn, then struck, leaning his whole body weight into the iron handle. The Indian felt the calf spring inside, the blood of its body driving away from the pain, but Odus kept his hold of flesh burning iron on its mark. The Indian p
ushed with all his weight through his thighs, he held the calf still. Odus jerked the iron up and ran his hand over the blackened hide, brushing free the charred hair. He looked at the Indian, his lips pulled way back off his false teeth so the soft pink of his gums showed in a big smile. The brand had burned true. He banged the lever up and the calf was released.

  The Indian sat watching the sun. The ground was so hot it seemed the sole source of heat. The sun had become just a bright sinking ball in the blurred sky. He no longer tried to keep the flies off. They crawled over his clothes and stuck like small knives on his hands and face. The heat had become so thick the flies didn’t even buzz. There was no sound except the heat and the open gate to the corral swinging in short piercing shrieks on its rusty hinges. Across the barbwire fence down the long black road behind the Indian the dot of a pickup truck came through the waves of heat. It grew larger, its sound coming before it in the haze until it finally passed by the corral and clanged over the metal cattle-guard then swung around so its bright white high-backed cab was to the Indian, when he turned around to face it he saw the fat red letters stamped in steel across the tailgate, FORD.

  The man behind the wheel of the pickup leaned his head out the window, the white crown of his stetson hat almost catching on the cab ceiling, his broad face was smooth and easy, the blue of his eyes poked knowingly around in the heat rising off the ground before him in blurred waves, “Birdsong, where is Odus?”

  The Indian stuck his thumb up and pointed it across the corral, “Cleaning the balls with Jandy, Mister Dixel.”

  The man slapped the flat of his hand down on the horn, stabbing out a high foreign honk in the hot air. He kept his hand pushed down until he saw the two men running around the corral, then he stopped the loud blast and swung the door of the cab open, jumping down to the hot ground. The door stayed open, its white glared in the sun, the AD painted on its side was tall as a man’s arm and blood red. “Odus, everything nailed down here?”

  “Has been for about an hour Mister Dixel”

  “You get them all cut and branded?”

  “Everyone. We’re all uptown here. When that Jandy cuts he cuts out every last bit of the bully quicker than the eye can see. He means business. They’re going to have to make room for Jandy in the Farmers’ Almanac, he’ll be listed under FAST.”

  “What about the brands? You didn’t run any of those brands did you?”

  “One or two might have been a little rusty, but we put them right.”

  “I told you to let the Indian do the branding while Jandy here cuts, your eyes are about as good as your teeth.”

  “I need Joey to tail em up, he’s the only one to hold them up good so they don’t go jumping and kicking around,” Odus curled his lips into a small smile and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand. The whole time he was talking he kept trying to see into the cab, he knew the woman was in there with the baby, but the white glare beaming off the broad window blocked her from view. “Well, it’s all uptown here Mister Dixel, everything is tied down.”

  “Good, I’ve got another job for you and the Indian. We’ve had a lot of fence snap in the winter on the Blonston field, and we still haven’t gotten to it. I’ve got six coils of wire in the back of my truck, you and the Indian can get going on it today. I want all that fence mended and laid up straight as a donkey’s hard-on. We’ve had alot of cattle on the Foral field, it’s carried them longer than I thought, the feed must be good up there, but I want to get them into the Blonston field while it still has some green left. Ben Dora will be coming to give a hand on the Blonston field so you and the Indian get right over there.”

  “Joey won’t work with Ben Dora. He never has, and he never will. Why can’t we get Jandy to go with us?”

  “Because I have another job for Jandy. Why the hell won’t the Indian work with Dora?”

  “You know he never will.”

  The man stroked the stiff edge of his silver belt buckle, the buckle was round, big as a fist with a bucking stallion etched across its surface. He ran his finger over the stallion and turned toward the pickup, not knowing the sun caught on the slick silver of the buckle and flashed out across the land. He turned back to Odus, “The hell with it then, you and the Indian go alone, Dora can go with Jandy here. Jandy, you have them ready?”

  “Right here in the bucket,” Jandy spit on the hot ground and picked up the bucket. “All twentyfour of them.”

  “They’re all cleaned up and ready to eat?”

  “Clean and not a mark on em.”

  The man took the bucket and stared into the sloshing water at the jostling mound of veined white fingerlength pieces of flesh. He pushed his hat back and smiled at the two men, “You know I love Mountain Oysters, my old dad, Abraham Dixel, got me going on them when I was just a small boy. It’s a taste a man doesn’t forget. A real delicacy. People in this country don’t go for them much, they sure do in other countries, but they’re more civilized. I remember when I was down in San Francisco at Law School. My Dad thought he could make a lawyer out of me so I would forget this valley, but ever since I was a boy I spent my summers on this ranch of ours up here, I never thought of doing anything but coming back. Did you know once my Dad was going to sell this ranch? He said there was no profit in it. It covered half the valley but it didn’t turn the profit he wanted, he only kept it long as he did for a legal tax write-off. If it hadn’t been for me there wouldn’t be any more Dixels in this valley. After ninety years there would be no more Dixels. Well I proved to him on paper I could make the ranch pay with my Appaloosas. I promised him I’d come back up here to cow country and raise the greatest Appaloosas in the world, and by God the years have passed and I’ve done it. He let me keep the ranch, told me I had to finish up down there in Law School, but he would let me keep the ranch. Well it was about that time I got married, so he came down from Reno, took me out of school and flew with me and my new bride down to Mexico for a Honeymoon. I’ll never forget what he did the first day we were there. He rented a jeep and we all drove out to a bull ranch. He told the owner he wanted his best bull for sale. The owner had sixteen brought up and my Dad kept shaking his head, he said, ‘I want your prize bull.’ So finally the owner brought out one more and my Dad shouted, ‘That’s it!’ ‘He’s very much money,’ the owner said. My Dad shouted he didn’t give a damn about that. ‘Then the bull is yours,’ the Mexican smiled. ‘He will be a great stud, Señor.’ ‘Hell man I don’t want to stud him!’ ‘Then he will be the best meat you have ever tasted, he is meat for a King.’ ‘Hell, I don’t want to eat him!’ ‘Then what do you want him for Señor?’ ‘I want his balls!’ I’ll never forget the look on the Mexican’s face when my Dad said that, it was the look of admiration a baby has for its mother. The Mexican threw open his arms and hugged my Dad, ‘Señor, you are a prince, the highest Prince of all men.’ Then the owner put an arm around me and my new bride and pointed, he watched with an absolute smile on his face as the bull was staked, roped around the legs and brought down. One of the men came at him with a knife and slashed across his eyes, the bull couldn’t see what happened next, they just whacked his whole bag off and left his huge black bulk bellowing and bleeding on the ground. The balls were big as a small woman’s breasts. They were cleaned, wrapped in damp fig leaves, then tied up in a silk scarf. The owner handed the heavy scarf to my Dad, ‘Señor, we will have the meat slaughtered and treated right, then we will send it to you.’ ‘You keep it,’ my Dad shouted. ‘I’ve got all the meat I want.’ The Mexican embraced my Dad again, the tears were full in his eyes and breaking down his cheeks. We got in the jeep and drove back over the rutted road to the hotel. That night on a silver platter my Dad had our wedding gift served.” The man fingered his silver bucking bronco as he gazed with his smooth face into the bucket of cut flesh, “You know, Mexico holds a lot of memories for me, memories and dreams. Now that I have this ranch of Appy horses built up to be the best anywhere I want to start breeding Arabians, and Mexico is the place to do
it, there’s room for a man and his horses down there, big room, room enough to hold a man’s dream ranch. This country is finished, they care more about beef flesh than horse flesh. Mexico is the place, they treat a man and his horses right down there. That’s where I want my Arabians. I won’t forget the first time I saw Arabians, it was about thirteen years ago in Africa, during the War. There had been alot of bombing, we were up in Tunisia, everything was bombed out, turned upside down, but they had managed to get the train tracks patched up. We were going from Tunis to Sfax. I remember looking out the troop train window, the land itself was all peaceful and calm, barren rolling brown hills and dust. Everyone on the train was hot and swearing, but for me it was like a homecoming, the land was just like Nevada, I couldn’t get enough of it I just gazed through that dusty window like a lost boy come home, when up out of the brown rolling hills I saw them. Their dust came first, it swirled up like a whirlwind, ‘Why hell, look at that!’ I yelled, and everybody came rushing to the windows, rubbing away at the dust on them trying to get a better look. ‘That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!’ And it was, I grew up around Appaloosa horses, but I had never seen anything like these Arabians. They came galloping across the roll of the hills like white ghosts, their large black eyes flashing, the long silken hair of their manes and tails waving like flags. ‘They’re coming right for us,’ somebody shouted. And they were. They came galloping and flashing, floating in the air, leaving swirls of dust smoking over their heads. ‘By God these horses are going to race this train!’ I had never in my life seen anything like it, if I hadn’t witnessed it myself I never would have believed it. The horses had heard the sound of the train out in the desolate area where they roamed and they had come to race this long thing that whistled and puffed, they had come to challenge the train for the pure thrill of speed. And there they were, outside my window, I was looking down on their powerful, glistening backs, their graceful heads held high like a proud bird, the wide nostrils breathing pure fire. They had come with the beauty of their speed to match the machine, they lived in that moment. Suddenly they turned off, swerved away from us. Then we saw the plane that swooped over the train and passed low above their heads. The plane banked, circling around and coming in low again over the long line of the train. We heard the high tinny rattle, even above the roar of the train we could hear it, then we saw the steady bursts of fire coming from under the plane’s wings. ‘Jesus Christ, they’re shooting at them! They’re shooting down those horses!’ Already they had begun to fall, their white bodies being ripped open by bullets and crashing into the barren ground. Only a few were left running and the plane circled short, then leveled back and seemed to be skimming the earth as it came up from behind on the last runners pouring out a steady stream of bullets before it The air in the train became very still, everyone pulled back from the windows and went to their seats. It was very quiet. Each man held to himself, nobody really looked at anybody else. I don’t remember a word being spoken until we reached the end of the line that day in Sfax. But anyway that was the first look I ever got at Arabians. It’s something a man doesn’t forget.”