“What do you mean by that Frank?”
“I mean they’ve been back again.”
“Shit.”
“There were three of them this time.”
“Did you say you would?”
The deeplined smile sagged on the man’s face and his clear eyes widened with a sharp expression of pain, “Odus, for Christ’s sake!”
“It was Mountain Resort Properties then?”
“Who the hell else. They said everybody in the valley is chomping at the bit to sign away everything he owns on the dotted line. They say everyone is awful mad because there are only three who won’t sign, won’t even answer their letters. Me, you, and Joe here. Just the three holding out.”
“What about Dixel? I thought they had quit on this valley because Dixel wouldn’t give up his Appaloosa ranch.”
“They say Dixel is going to move it all down to Mexico. He’ll sign like the rest.”
“He’s the one they were after, he didn’t say a goddamn word to me and Joey about it. What did they offer you?”
“Twohundred and fiftytwo thousand for the three hundred acres, about seven times what it’s worth.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘You see that gun on the wall over there, if any one of you so much as passes in again through the gate by the barn I’ll blow your heads off and toss the bodies out on the dump.’ ”
“What’d they say to that?”
“They said, ‘Four hundred thousand!’ ”
“Shit.”
“I took the gun down off the wall and aimed it at their faces, then told them a school lesson. I told them my people started back from the beginning in this valley and I’d be damned if I saw all they worked for turned into a tourist resort. I’d be damned if I’d sell my cattle. I’d be damned if I’d sell my ranch for a resort community. And they’d be damned dead if they weren’t in their car and five miles down the road before I counted to two.”
Odus’ old eyes looked up at the deep lines in Frank’s face and he let out a heavy breath through his nostrils, “I guess they’ll be coming after me and Joey next.”
“I guess.”
Odus squeezed Frank’s arm, “They can’t get the valley Frank, not if the three of us hold on. They can’t steal it.”
“They said if they couldn’t buy us out there were ways, very legal ways.”
“Shit.”
The weather in California had always been good to Art. Lately the weather had been so good that the little smile painted on his face floated up above his head like a red balloon for all to see. Art was a true believer in the California weather, and true believers are always rewarded. Art’s wife Linda sat high up on her barstool, the smile that floated off Art’s face fit right onto her own face easy as a cork in a bottle, everytime she took a sip of her rum and Coke her back got a little stiffer and her smile a little bigger. She kept her eyes expertly fixed on the huge window across the room that shot back a perfect reflection of her body so she could watch her fingers at work as her hands patted and shaped the sprayed strands of reddish twisted hair piled on top of her head like an awkward bird. “My Arty is a little genius. Didn’t I always say my Arty was a genius, Ted?”
The tall man next to her plopped the cherry of his old fashioned into the mouth of his begging poodle perching with its mouth open on the glass shine of the bar counter like a furry seal, “Yes, Linda, I always agreed with you. Art is a Southern Californian, and Southern Californians are born speculators. I always said Art would do it. Here’s to you Art.” The tall man raised his glass high to the little man crouched behind the bar in a thin snowwhite T-shirt, hugging his naked shoulders warm in front of the cold wind from his expensive airconditioner. “Here’s to the Southern California boy who knows his California,” the tall man raised his drink even higher as Art’s smile was going crazy on his face, beaming and flashing like the painted glass bathing beauties on the pinball machine in the corner. “Here’s iron in your pants, Art.” The tall man threw his head back and shot his drink down, his bony adam’s apple making one big jolt, up and down, as the liquid poured in his throat.
“Yes Ted, here is to my little genius, my little artsy arty Arty. The man I love,” she raised her glass to her reflection in the window across the room and saluted. Behind her reflection three men climbed out of a pickup, a tractor pulled in behind them, marring her reflection. She set her drink on the bar and shouted at the men as they came through the door, “You boys hurry up and close the door behind you now, we don’t want any flies in here. Hurry up now, we’re nice and cool and we don’t want any flies.”
“What will it be boys,” Art glided down his slot behind the bar, the smile on his face outshining the brilliant mirrored wall of glass bottles at his back.
“Whiskey and beer chaser down the line. I’m buying,” Frank slapped his billfold on the counter.
Art snapped back up his slot, “Four shots and four beers on the House. Coming up!”
“I said I’m buying,” Frank shoved his billfold down to Art.
“On the House,” Art came floating back, pushing his smile in the face of each man as he placed a drink before him.
“What’s going on? Whose birthday?”
“My Arty’s a genius, isn’t he Ted.”
“The grand speculator.”
“What do you mean, spec-cue-later?” Frank rolled the whiskey around in his mouth and swallowed it.
“That’s right Ted,” Linda slipped her bare arm around the tall man’s neck, “you tell them.”
“Our Art’s from Southern California. He knows how to invest his money. He’s rich.”
Frank gulped the foaming head off his beer, “Just what in hell do you mean?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” Art gazed out through the window framed by bright electric beer signs pulsating green waterfalls and blue clouds. “O.K. what is it,” Frank finished his beer and pushed the empty glass before him, watching the thin layer of foam around the inside collapse to the bottom.
“We’ve sold out!” The high pierce of Linda’s voice rang out like a shot. “We’ve sold out to Mountain Resort Properties!” The frayed ends of her red hair buzzed in the light of the beer signs.
Odus shoved both his empty glasses far away and leaned over the bar to the beaming face that floated up like a balloon off the short body, “How much Art?”
“One hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. Double what I figure it’s worth.”
“Shit.”
As the other three men walked out of the bar and got in the pickup Frank took eight one dollar bills from his wallet and dropped them to the glass shine of the counter. “Here Art, you’re used to being paid double for nothing.” He walked over and swung the door wide open, letting the flies buzz through behind him, and climbed up on the metal seat of the tractor, setting off the engine with a roar. The tractor went one way down the road, and the pickup went the other, skinning a black track off its tires as it slammed to a stop in front of the high backed “Regular” pump of the gas station. The man in the starched white shirt and pants did not turn around when he heard the truck come in. He continued running his soft rag into the bloodred shine of the Coke machine, making wide careful passes over the top and down the front. The blast of the horn from the pickup shot into his back and he turned around with a look of surprise on his face as if the truck had been dropped from heaven. The thick rubber soles of his shoes shuffled him over to the truck, the sun shone full on the red cloth badge sewn over his heart: FELIX—IT’S A PLEASURE. He came up to the driver and saluted, “Felix, it’s a pleasure to serve you. Sorry to make you wait, business has been booming.”
“Cut it out Felix, just fill it with regular. I’ve got to get Jandy home and me and Joey have to drive out to the Blonston field and get busy laying up some fence.”
Felix turned the crank of the gas pump and jammed the nozzle of the hose into the truck’s tank, “How bout I check the oil for you Odus?”
“No
, just gas. We’re in a hurry. We’ve still got enough day to do a whole side of the field.”
Felix leaned up against the vibrating pump, nudging his shoulder contentedly under the whirring numbers in the small glass box registering the cost, “Hey Joe, I finally got my brand new SNACKETTE machine over from Reno. It’s stocked full up with peanuts, Lifesavers and candy-bars, no need to go across to Mary at the store now, this SNACKETTE even gives change. I’ve already had a big run on it, people come in here and can’t get enough of it. Too bad though, I just got it and now I’ll be selling the station in a few weeks. But what do you know, I’ll be getting enough money to put three SNACKETTES in my next station.”
“You going to sell it for sure?” Odus looked down at him.
“For sure. You’ll have to be getting your gas out of this valley pretty soon. I’m going to open up a new station over to Lake Tahoe, big future over there, gas stations are big business, some people have made fortunes.” He jerked the dripping nozzle out of the tank and racked it up against the pump, “That’s three bucks and two-bits you owe me Odus. Hey Joe, you change your mind on selling yet? I’m willing to give you five thousand,”
The Indian looked out the window at the man in the white uniform, he looked him over from top to bottom, then shook his head.
“Well you should sell to me, everybody’s got to sell sooner or later. We should keep it all in the family. Hey, I almost forgot, your sister Sarah Dick wants you to be sure and be over to the house on time for dinner this Sunday, Jonny and Minnie Scissons from Loyalton will be there this time.”
“Here’s your money Felix,” Odus turned his engine on.
“Hey wait a minute, why don’t you men try out my SNACKETTE?”
“We’re in a hurry Felix.”
“No, hey, just wait, I’ll go get something out of it. I’ve got a key, no charge, just to show you how good it is,” he ran over to the large bright white machine and fumbled before it with his bunch of keys tied from his belt loop by a silver retractable band. He finally got one of the keys in and swung open the glass door of the machine exposing its rows of goods to the sun. He slipped out a candy bar, peeling its orange wrapper down the finger of chocolate as he brought it over to the truck. “Hey, try this one out!” He handed it up through the window. “What does it taste like?”
Odus looked down at him, his old bushy eyebrows pinned high up in the wrinkles of his forehead like a gray butterfly.
“How do you like it? What does it taste like?”
“Shit.”
The heat was flamed off the ground by the late afternoon wind. The Indian took his hat off and ran his fingers through the limp black hair, the muscles in his hands throbbed. The sweat dripping down his forehead stung at the corner of his eyes as he looked down the long line of tight barbwire fence going straight out of sight before him in the blunt hot air. He watched Odus urinate on the parched ground. The old man zippered his pants and came over to him, walking with a swagger of fatigue from his sore body, “You know Joey, laying up fence is the hardest job on a ranch. I guess whenever you put walls up on the land it fights you for it, but fencin somehow is the most rewarding job, it takes your whole body to get a fence up right, it’s just your body, the barbed metal strands and the land. I take fencin personal, you can’t ever do a good enough job, can’t never lay one up too straight. That’s what I like about using timber posts. Timber is hard as hell to wrestle around, but you put one in right, as right as right can be, and it will last forever, when it rots out it will even rot out standing up straight, as straight as can be. I’ve seen fence posts old as ninety years still standing, that’s twenty years older than me. But the men who could do that are all gone or dying. Today everybody is using metal-stake posts, you can whack one down in a minute, post a mile square in a good morning, but they’ll never last as long as a good timber post. Never. Nope, you can’t ever put a fence up too straight. Did I ever tell you about the time me and Frank put up a fence eight strands high because he had a jumper. This was no ordinary jumper, it was a little heifer, graceful as a ballerina she was, she must have been born half horse, she jumped over everything Frank had, there wasn’t a fence could hold her, finally we put eight strands around a field but she sailed over. I remember it was when I first came to the valley, nineteen years ago, it was the first fence I ever put up. Well your father Bob was alive then, those were the days he had religion, Hallelujah Bob he was called, he was so holy he would separate the cock from the hen on the Sabbath. Well he came driving by in that old FORD of his, the one he bought used off the reporter over to Loyalton. He came rolling by this high fence we were working on and calls out, ‘What you buildin?’ Frank answers he’s got a jumper and he’s going to build something to hold her. Well Bob just smiled, but we could tell he was laughing all over inside. ‘You put a tire around her neck and go to Church this Sunday. She’ll never jump again.’ Well Frank thought Bob was crazy, but he did it, he’d do anything for his cattle, and he was damned tired of spending all his time rounding this little heifer. Sure enough he got a tire around her neck and rigged it to stay on, then went to Church. When he came back from Church she was in the field he had left her. She never jumped again, and Frank never missed a Sunday of church going. I remember Bob died soon after that. I was the one who found him. He had that dog with him, the one that belonged to his first wife, the dog was dead too, they both had been dead seven or eight days. Sometimes after that I’d pass by Frank’s and see the white faced heifer way out in the field grazing along with a big fat automobile tire around her neck, she wore it until the day she was slaughtered. I found out later that was an old trick Bob must have picked up when he was young and working the Nevada ranches, but a cow will never jump over anything it doesn’t think it can’t fit through, and with a tire around the neck it didn’t think it could go through the barn door. But Frank never missed a Sunday of church going.” Odus unzippered his pants and urinated again, “I don’t know what it is, but the older I get the quicker whiskey goes through me, I’ve got to drink two bottles at once, one to stay in me while the other is pissing out. But I can hold my spirits; not like some in this valley, not like Dora. What the hell is wrong with that Dixel anyway, he knows you don’t work with Dora, he’s always known that. But he’s afraid of Dora, they’re all afraid of Dora, they need their law to protect them, if they don’t have that they are afraid. There’s no law in this valley, you’re lucky to see a Highway Patrol twice a month, and the Sheriff, if someone burns your house down and you call for him or his Deputy they won’t show up till the ashes are cold. Dixel’s like all the rest, his money makes him no different, he’s afraid of Dora. That’s why he keeps hiring him, so as not to cross him. You remember just last spring Dora was fencin with Timmy, drinking beer, he and Timmy got into it so Dora put a knife in his gut and walked around him. That kind of thing stops me inside. So what happens? Timmy goes to the hospital and Dora goes before the Judge in Sierra City and the Judge is so afraid he fines Dora fifty bucks for disturbing the peace and sets him loose. That Dora’s no good Joey, beats his wife, beats his kids, beats his dog. He’s like one of those killer bulls they have over in Spain, they’re so stupid they have to hand-guide them to their target. All balls and no brains. Garibaldi knew how to handle a man like that, execute him. He did it all the time. The only smart execution for Ben Dora is a stick, grab hold of one and beat his head off. You don’t want to skin your hands by knocking his face out Never skin your hands Joey. I don’t know what’s in Dixel’s head to think you would work with Dora. And what’s this stuff about you not shooting rabbits for him anymore? First time I heard about it. He’s crazy if he thinks some new machine will keep his fields clean of rabbits as good as you. You’ve been rabbit boss in this valley ever since you were a boy, your father was rabbit boss to the ranches when I came here. Dixel has no right. He has no right People here are all getting crazy. Selling off the past Selling off the land like it was theirs to sell. What this country needs is a good five
dollar Garibaldi, that’s the only thing that could save it, and who do they have as their President, as their leader? Ike!” He pulled the thick leather gloves on again and jammed the heavy nippers in his back pocket, “Let’s get back at it Joey, men who are making eighty dollars an hour can’t just stand around talking.” He laughed far inside of himself and drew his arm across the sweat of his forehead. “Let’s get at it, there’s still light.”
The new wires they strung were taut, glistening silver and sharp in the distance, as the Indian strung them he could feel them vibrate in his hands through the leather gloves. His hands had become a detached part of him, a hard tool that worked with its own blind knowledge, the pain in the muscled steel of the fingers was distant and comforting, like the feel of a sunwarmed hammerhead. The Indian worked hard with the sweat swelling the long hair beneath his hat. He worked with his back bent, he worked next to Odus. There was no need for words, their gloved hands moved and pulled and cut and signaled at the end of their bodies’ ache. The long strands of wire vibrated and hummed, the heat burned the sound out of them, they sang all the way down the long line. The Indian thought of what Jandy said to him as he got out of the pickup. Jandy lived where the steam came up from the ground, where the thick water came up in hot pools and spread the heavy scent of sulfur in the air. Jandy lived at this hotsprings in a silver trailer, it was a beautiful trailer, the thick dust on its arched back could not hide its graceful silver glow. The Indian had never been in the trailer. In the summer other trailers like it would come, but the people who lived in them could never be seen. At night they would slip unnoticed into the healing power of the hot steam and sulfur water. Sometimes they would stay for a few days, sometimes for months. Living at night, hidden in the day, and suddenly they would disappear, vanished. Jandy’s was the only trailer always at the hot springs. It was his home. In the winter the snow would slip down off the tight stretched metal skin of the trailer leaving it clean, the trailer could be seen glinting in the cold sun for miles like a religious dome, and behind it, in the flat white, the steam shot up in straight lines from the small geyser holes of the hot springs. Across the back of the trailer was stenciled a black name, it was a name that sang in the Indian’s mind, a name he envied, a name he wished he had: AIRSTREAM. When Odus’ pickup pulled in behind the trailer to drop Jandy off the Indian could see the name through the dusty windshield strung across the silver bulged back: AIRSTREAM. He watched the letters as Jandy’s voice came back to him, “Birdsong, you’re covered with calfshit.” He had not thought of what Jandy said, he had just heard it. Now with the wires singing through his hands he thought of it. He was covered with calfshit. The morning had been long, he had held the tails of the calves clamped up, his body pressed into theirs as the power was cut from them. He remembered letting go of their tails. He remembered the release. As if flesh was being torn from his own body. As if a burden had been taken from him. He was covered with the shit of fear, it was all he had left. It was not new to him, it was not important, he did not notice it. Now he thought about it, he did not think about the stink that came up off the front of his clothes in the heat, he thought of that morning, of the mothers running behind the cut calves trying to lick their hind legs free of blood, as if a clean hide would make everything right, make everything as it was before the morning began, make everything as it should be. But it wouldn’t, it was done, they were cut, it was over. The calves ran off into a different morning. The Indian heard them singing in the wire, he smiled as he worked, all along the line the sunhot wires were humming to him, the longer he worked the more the wires sang and stung in the waves of heat, singing through his hands in a high distant pitch, like a car deep in the distance coming up the hill, the dazzling white fingers of its headlights searching out the road before it, and it came closer, became very near in the night. He lay hidden and very young, his fourteen year old body flattened in the bushes as the headbeams of the car struck the darkness before him into light. The car halted at the clearing, its engine still running. He could smell the rise of dust the tires tore off the long road to the top of the mountain, the hot dust rising into the damp edge of night filled his nostrils. The engine of the car was cut. The headbeams were left on, their long brilliant poles of light exploding into the tall pine trees surrounding the clearing. He heard the laughter coming softly through the falling dust caught in the thrust of light. The car doors opened and the laughter filled the clearing. He must stay hidden. He was the protector. He could see Hallelujah Bob now, he could see this man who was his father. He could see his young girl cousin, the flash of her white tennis shoes churning up the dust as she walked. He knew his sister was in the backseat of the car with the old woman. He could hear the old woman’s loud voice, her laughter went higher than all the others. Hallelujah Bob opened the trunk and took out his hatchet, he too was talking loudly now, every word he spoke could be heard, “We don’t have to chop much wood for this. Just small fires we will make. Two years ago Toby Riddle drove his daughter up the mountain before the Dance of the Girl to light the fire of his daughter, to signal her time of the Woman to all those waiting below. Toby Riddle built his fires in the old way, four separate fires burning high. I did not see them but I heard of what happened. The fire lookout on Beckwourth Peak saw the flames leaping into the sky, he called down the alarm and up the road came every firefighting machine in the valley. Toby Riddle’s daughter was so frightened at what was coming at them she ran off into the woods. When they finally reached Toby Riddle they hosed down his fires. He tried to explain it was the old way. But they arrested him for being the drunk. Locked him up and fined him for being the fire bug. The Dance of the Girl never went forward that night. It never went forward ever. So we will be careful. We will be sly. We will build our four fires in the old way. We will just build them smaller.” The old woman shouted at him from the car window as he began chopping piles of wood, “Chop only green wood, green wood is the old way, its smoke will be thick and rise straight for the girl so she will have a long life, a straight long life.” Hallelujah Bob kept up his own talking as he skinned the low green branches from trees, “Toby Riddle’s daughter never had the Dance. There are few Dances now. There was the time when they were many. When I was the small boy the mother of my father’s father told me of her Dance. She told me of how she became the woman. All these things Painted Stick told to me when I was the small boy, before she died. She had been alone then, living in the old way, in the galisdangal, far in the middle of the valley. All of the people were at the lumber mills in Elephant Head in that time, they had followed the path of the mills for what would come to them, they had followed to survive. They were all there, the people, the few that were left from the old ways. One Arm Henry was there, he that was my father, and his brother who had medicine of the White tongue and was a big boss, Captain Rex. But they did not keep me with them into the winter. They sent me far into the valley to Painted Stick. Her eyes had gone old, almost colorless, but I remember the magic of her fingers. I remember the medicine of her baskets. She wove her magic all through the long white days. Her words spoke through the signs woven into her baskets. She told of the time she became the Woman. She spoke of the fence at the Lake in the Sky, at Tahoe, and of the yellowback ring that had been passed to her in friendship. The people thought she would die during the winter, and they wanted to protect her. I was sent to protect her last words. I was sent to watch the magic of her fingers. I was sent to watch the last of the old ways die. I was the young boy and Painted Stick died away from me while I slept. I was not awake to keep her last fire going. I was not awake to watch. But what was left of the old ways was dying everywhere off the land, the people who had gathered at Elephant Head to survive the winter were of the last. They died out of the old way with the sickness of the Whites spreading in their lungs. Their lungs were on fire. The last of the people in those days became dead or dying. The life was being choked from them by the sickness of the Whites, by the T-burkulur. Then they were all dead. T
he Whites threw kerosene onto the shacks with the bodies of the people piling up inside. And the shacks went up in flame, burning the snow free of the Earth in wide circles. Then the Whites rode out to burn all the Indian peoples. They rode their Horses into the valley of the clouds and out to the middle where I waited next to Painted Stick with the old ways dead in her. Their Horses shook the Earth and they came all around the galisdangal. They came running in with bandannas tied across their noses, one threw me over his shoulders like an empty sack. They threw blazing torches onto the galisdangal. The old way was burned to the ground. They rode me off to a ranch and I was locked in an empty grain shed until they took me out right before I died and washed my skin with soap.” Hallelujah Bob had all the green wood built into short piles. “There, that should burn straight But Toby Riddle’s daughter didn’t Dance into the Woman.” The old woman laughed loud through the car window, from where he was hiding he could see her open the door. She helped his sister out. His sister stood in the beams of the headlights, the brilliant slash of white covered her breasts and thighs. She was not naked like the old ways his father had spoken of, she wore a brassiere and panties, their foreign whiteness clashed against her skin. She held the sacred staff cut from the water birch tree tightly in her hand, but it did not have the red ochre band coiling brightly down the length of its freshly peeled hard wood, it did not have the red band, it was not a painted stick. The old woman put her arm around the girl and squeezed her bare shoulders. The thick wrinkle around the old woman’s big laughing mouth pulled her lips back and exposed the places where her teeth used to be. “Listen to him girl, listen to him talk, this man Hallelujah Bob, this man he talks just like a man. Oh he talks about Toby Riddle’s daughter did not have the Dance of the Girl into the Woman. What he doesn’t know is,” the old woman leaned her face down to the girl, the hot breath rushing out of her old mouth, “what this man doesn’t know is Toby Riddle’s daughter had already become the Woman. She had become the Woman long before that night. What this man doesn’t know is she was made the woman by at least three different men.” The laughter rolled out of the old woman so hard it was shaking the young girl she had her arm locked around. “Oh listen to this man talk. I know. I am the Woman. You are becoming the Woman. You will know. I am older than him. He is young, he is only sixtyfive. I remember the old ways. I remember the days when only women were allowed on the mountain of the fires. There would be a man to wrestle the crooked smoke straight into the Sky, but he was hidden, he was not seen. There was only the girl going into the Woman, an old sister was her guide, the younger girl who was to be raced down the mountain. Now the father drives the girl up the mountain. The old way is gone. The girl comes into the Woman in only one day. She does not go without meat. She does not fast. She does not turn her eyes from men. She does not sleep her dying girl body on warm ashes. She does not cut her hair. The strong staff she carries to keep her back straight through a long life is not painted with the sacred coil of red ochre. Your stick is not painted. But we know you will become the Woman.” Hallelujah Bob put his cigarette lighter to the mound of dried twigs beneath a pile of green wood and flicked his thumb down, striking a flame into the kindling, “Old woman, the old ways are gone. The old ways are gone or dying.” He held his lighter to the other piles so its flame caught in the twigs and burned into green wood. “It is done.” He rose and placed the lighter carefully into his pocket and turned to the car, his eye caught a shadow of a shape on the edge of light thrown out from the headbeams, the shape was low and close down in the bushes, it had gone unnoticed by the old woman. It was his son Joe. His son had done what was told him. He was hidden. He could protect his sister. The old ways were gone. The new ways were uncertain. The old woman did not know. He got in the car and slammed the door behind him. The fires were all going. The green wood was burning. The old woman sat against a tree and moaned softly to the four fires in front of the girl, “Oh flame, burn away all dirt that falls from this girl’s First Season. Oh flame, burn burn burn. We wait here flame. We wait at the door to the Sky for your wise sign. Give us your sign. Give us.…! Give…! !” Her old voice wailed. It struck at the black sky overhead. There were people in the thrust of the headlights before the girl. Men. Running through the trees, their heavy white bodies swaggering, the thick hard leather of their boots tearing the earth up as they came pounding between the streaming white smoke of the fires, their strong breath beating out of their chests as they screamed into the night, “FUCK HER!”
Rabbit Boss Page 35
