Rabbit Boss

by Thomas Sanchez

  The Indian leaned over and put his face close against the palm trees swaying on the glossy paper, then he stepped back and looked straight at the man with the hat, “There aint no palm trees in the Sierra Nevada.”

  “There will be.”

  “That’s correct Mister Birdsong, they will be trucked up and placed in the ground, already thirtyfive feet high. What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “It’s not what we want but what we want to give.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Money Mister Birdsong, you just give the word and our money will cascade on your head. We have enough money to cascade on the whole State of California, to cascade on the whole West.” He snapped open his own briefcase and laid some print filled papers back on top, “Would you care to sign?”

  “Sign what?”

  “Sign away your land.”

  The Indian felt the blood pumping in his ears, he went to the accordion on the chair and ran his fingers lightly over the broken mother-of-pearl, he pressed down on one key and it gave a clipped squawk, “Get out.”

  “Mister Birdsong, what we offer is reasonable and just. Don’t dam up all the money, give the word and it will cascade on your head.”

  The Indian walked to the briefcase and grabbed the papers in his fist, tearing them down the middle.

  The man opened the briefcase and took out another set of identical papers, “Would you care to sign Mister Birdsong?”

  The Indian moved to the open doorway, he leaned his head back in the heat beginning to pile up in the late morning, he took a long breath of hot air into his lungs, coming down the straight black road he could see the Deputy Sheriff’s car.

  “If you think you are not alone in trying to stop rightful and orderly economic progress in this valley you are mistaken. You are working a severe hardship on all your neighbors, there’s already considerable bad talk and ill feeling against your unreasonable stubbornness. Don’t you know you are being manipulated by two men who want this valley to remain forever an underdeveloped wasteland, two men who are enemies of what made this State of California great. Men who would rather see cows than cars when they look out their window. You will shortly find yourself standing without your friends, they will not be allowed to plunder a great vision of development. Hello Deputy Sheriff Davies …”

  The Indian turned back to the open doorway just in time to see the man with the badge pinned over his heart lean the full weight of his melon face in through the door and shut one big eye in a slow wink at the man with the briefcase on his lap, “Good morning Mister Julin, I’m sorry I wasn’t here alot sooner but I just got the call over the radio from your head office over at Tahoe and they said you might need me.”

  “Yes, Deputy Sheriff, we may. You know Mister Birdsong of course?”

  “Sure I know Joe, great deer tracker, aren’t you Joe,” he let the heavy skin of his eyelid fall down in another wink.

  “Well you may be needed here to bear public witness to what is legally about to transpire, I hope not, I hope we are all just with one another.” He turned his face back to the Indian and ran his hand through his short hair, “Just with one another Mister Birdsong. As you know from our last letter my company is offering to pay for this property of four and one half acres $42,000 a just price. I have now been authorized by Resort Mountain Land Properties to make a final offer for the sum of $59,000. Do you accept?”

  The Indian looked at the man with the badge over his heart blocking the sun in the doorway, “Get them out. They are trespassing.”

  The man with the briefcase put the papers back inside and withdrew a letter, he snapped the briefcase shut and stood up, pointing the letter out before him like a gun, “I am sorry. I was afraid you wouldn’t be reasonable. I am serving you with this legal notice.” He crossed the room and set the envelope on top of the accordion, “Sheriff, you are bearing witness to the legal presentation of this subpoena.” He looked at the Indian standing against the wall covered with photographs of bucking horses and running women, “Mister Birdsong, in case you do not read I will explain to you the precise contents of this letter. You are subpoenaed to appear at the County Court at Sierra City in two week’s time to supply legal documentation substantiating your legal ownership and title to this property. You may find this a difficult task as this property was supposedly given by the Madson family to your father in 1922, whereupon he supposedly gave it to you. If you cannot prove ownership to the Court’s legal satisfaction, title to the land will revert to the County. Good day in court Mister Birdsong.”

  The Indian pulled his hands from his pockets, he could not open them from the fists they made, he jammed them into the chest of the man standing in front of his father’s accordion, knocking him across the room into the weight of the Deputy Sheriff, he dropped the muscle of his shoulder into the man’s stomach and pushed him against the Sheriff and out the door. He grabbed the other man by his narrow necktie and flung him around toward the door.

  “Hey fella, easy, we don’t mean any harm.”

  He brought the sole of his boot flat into the man’s ass, kicking him out into the dust. The other man was just getting up from the ground spanking the dust from his pants as the Sheriff came back and tossed the melon weight of his face in through the doorway, “Birdsong, you’re in your own house here, you’re protected, but the moment you step out on the road in front you’re on County Property, and on County Property I’m the Law, and I’ll be waiting for you!”

  The man came up behind the bulk of the Sheriff, still spanking the dust from his pressed pants, “Mister Birdsong, when you go to prove your right to this property, the burden of proof will fall on your father’s first assumption of title. You will find there is no title of ownership. But more than that you will find even if there were it would be null and void. You see, your father assumed this land in 1922, that was two years before the Indians were made citizens of the United States. So your father was not a citizen when he assumed the land, and it is illegal for a non-citizen to vote or own land in America. It is the Law of the Land, you don’t have a right to own property if you’re not a citizen. Beyond that Mister Birdsong, you cannot prove you are your father’s son, you see, there is no birth certificate for your father, your father is legally a non-person.” He turned with the Sheriff and walked back to his big car. “Mister Birdsong,” he shouted before getting in, “I suggest you do your homework. Your father did not exist!”

  The road was deserted. The surrounding mountains were worn down to bare white rock and gnarled black scrub. The sky was empty. The sun was stuck solid above the thinwhite clouds. Through the blurred waves of heat beating off the straight black road came a pickup, its sound being sucked off into vastness around it. The pickup rolled to a stop at the intersection of the three black roads, an Indian jumped off the back-bed and the truck drove on, almost soundless, the only noise coming from the small stones popping beneath the heavy wheels. The Indian stood in the silence. He scraped his boot on the black asphalt to strike a sound, but there was hardly a noise. He looked up and down the roads, and saw nothing. He slapped his hands together but the muffled sound drifted off. He stood in the middle of the road and shouted, he could hear his own voice inside him, but outside he could only hear a faint echo coming up around him. He was alone where the ground had been slashed open and laid bare with all the excess of the empty sky fusing into it, forming one endless space of earth and sky. The Indian looked at the sign on the white post punched in next to the road. He ran his hand through the dusty black letters HALLELUJAH JUNCTION U.S. 395. He was on the right road. He sat on the dirt hump of the road shoulder, and waited. His eyes could see through the heat, he watched the barren black and white mountains, he thought he could hear a ringing deep in their distance, low and insistent. Then it was gone. He began pitching small stones out onto the hot black asphalt. He stopped. He heard the ringing again. It was coming out of the blur in the far canyons. The ring became
higher, whirling to a steady whine, it was coming back at him from all the stony canyons. He could feel the vibration coming through his boots. Then he jumped up and turned away from the canyons, looking way back down to where the straight black road joined the smudge of hot sky. He saw a silver glint. The glint grew larger, shining brilliantly back at him like a star, the high whine filling up all the space around him. The whine became the strained pitch of a screaming engine. He stepped back off the road. The shining silver star became a Bus, its huge metal carcass shaking the earth beneath his boots, the blunt blue front with the banner across its face RENO SPECIAL. He could see the blur of the long running silver dog painted on the side, above it the heads of people swinging around to stare out at him through small squared windows before the Bus flailed its black exhaust in the air around him, the force of its hot tailwind almost slapping him to the ground. The ground kept vibrating under his boots long after the Bus had disappeared over the horizon of the hard black road. The Indian waited for the silence to come again. He watched the sun slip in the sky and fall through the thinwhite line of clouds. He heard a slight disturbance in the air and turned around and stuck his thumb out. A pickup pulled to a stop in front of him, the dusty window rolling down and a brown face peering out from under a sweatstained straw hat, “Where you going to?”

  “Reno.”

  “You’re on the right road buddy. Get on in. Up here in front, the back is full of alfalfa bales.”

  The Indian got in the cab and it was filled with music. The tiny speaker in the dashboard pushed out a loud sound that slipped out the windows as the truck rolled down the road between the scorched black and white mountains, the bleached sky blurred in front of him. The driver reached down and turned the radio volume knob to the top. The Indian took off his hat and rubbed his head. The hot air coming through the window slapped the smile on his face as the music flowed over his body and twanged and shouted in the metal cab:

  “You got tiiiiied in with

  the wrong man

  bay-bee.

  He roped you doooooown

  and broke your

  har-art.

  You got hiiiiiitched

  on to a wiiiiiiiiild

  horse runnnnnnnnning,

  he up and left you

  crying at the

  staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart.”

  The driver threw his empty beer bottle out the open window, it crashed soundlessly on the hard road in the wake of the music. He handed the Indian two beer bottles to open. “What’s your name,” he shouted over the wailing music, taking the beer bottle and jamming its neck in his mouth.

  “Joe!”

  “Joe huh? What blood of Indian?”

  “Washo!”

  “Washo huh, no shit! I thought so! I’m half Shoshone, no shit! Name’s Jingle Balls! See that!” He waved his beer bottle out the window and pounded his horn at the one gas pump standing alone in front of a wind blasted low gray building with a red plastic windmill spinning on its roof, the silver sign painted in its hub glowed BUSY BEE BAR–SLOTS!–CARDS!–GIRLS! “We’re in Nevada now! Right over the border! That’s a famous place! They have a small airstrip on the other side, rich guys fly in from California, fuck the whores, then fly home for dinner with the wife and kids, no shit, it’s a world famous place, very expensive whores, all white girls, three of them are blonde, no shit! But hey Joe, up in Tri-County they have a better deal yet, they built this Cat-House right on the spot where three counties come together, that way if one of the counties raids them they just run over to the other side of the house. No shit! You’re in Nevada now! No shit! You ever been in Reno?”

  “No!”

  “Greatest town in the world, there’s always Big Doin’s in Reno! Reno is where we pay our dues. Gambling! A man has to gamble, no shit, I believe a dog has fleas sometimes just to forget he’s a dog. Gambling will cure what ails you. Look on up ahead. Look on up at that!” He pointed through the dusty bugs piled up on the windshield at the golden arch flared across the street:

  The truck skidded to a stop at the red light. Through the golden arch leading into the City the Indian looked straight down the neon canyon of the street. The towering layers of neon lights shone and glittered in broad daylight, giving the long shimmering street a sense of timelessness, making the sun still hung high in the sky seem a fake hot moon. The red light changed and the pickup drove through the golden arch into the blazing reality of the street. The stacked rows of gambling halls and hotels all melted together, their large brilliant fronts opening into the broad street, their red rugs running right out of the casinos over the sidewalk to the edge of the gutters clogged with waste from the herds of people swirling in and out of the vast halls and back and forth across the street through the pounding thunder of the thousands of metal slot machines churning up the millions of metal coins. “What do you think of Her?” Jingle Balls shouted, his voice wedged flat between the loud music in the cab and the roar outside.

  The Indian sucked out the rest of his beer and jammed the bottle under the seat, the flowing neon glare of white light burned its reflection in his brown eyes, “She’s Big.”

  “She’s awful Big!”

  The pickup floated in the tide of traffic, all the cars caught the swirling colors on their metal hulls, the sound of their horns honking at the molten flows of light, metal and flesh jumped in the electric air. Down the street far as the Indian could see the lightning life of neon signs higher than redwood trees scorched the day: 1000 SLOTS! PLAY PLAY PLAY! PLAY ΚΕΝΟ! GIRLS! PLAY BLACK-JACK! FREE PLAY THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE! POKER! WIN! FREE! GIRLS! PLAY! FREE! WIN!!!

  Jingle Balls stamped his boots on the floor in time to the music bleating from his radio and the horns screaming in the throbbing air, “Joe, where you goin?”

  “Out to old Indian town, my cousin Juke is there.”

  “Juke! You mean Juke the Washo?”

  “Yah sure, he lives with his folks out there.”

  “No shit! Juke is a pal of mine. I’ve spent many nights Honkey Tonkin with Juke. He’s a Honker. I’ll take you to him.”

  The pickup turned off the street toward the mountains of the Desert, the City ended as suddenly as it began, giving itself back up to the hard earth around it. The truck drove away from the tall buildings of light throbbing in the air, bumping down a back road cluttered on both sides with wheelless hulks of sun blistered automobiles, smokestacks were cut in the metal roofs, through the dusty windows children could be seen sitting on the blanket covered springs of the seats, they ate from old tin cans shiny from use, other children stood along the dusty side streets, watching for the occasional car to pass, watching out across the Desert to the mountains lost in the spotted heat of sun. The road in front of the pickup turned to dirt, more cars were propped up on wooden blocks, their wheel axles rusted and exposed to the sun. Some of the cars had small trailers next to them with tilting mailboxes in front, their glassless windows boarded over, the gay color metal siding bleached out with streaks of rotting rust scars running down the sides. Everywhere the fingers of TV aerials poked into the dim blue sky. The aerials stuck up off the wheeless cars, off the trailers, and off the few houses banged together from broken sections of highway billboards. The pickup drove through the short dusty streets and along the irrigation ditch running far into a green square distance where a rancher’s alfalfa field was being soaked. Along the ditch a few old women looked up at the passing truck, bright bandannas tied around their noses to keep out the dust, then they bent back to their work, the long cloth of their baggy dresses reaching to the ground as they cut armfuls of straight strong willows to weave their baskets. The truck came to a stop in front of one of the trailers. The two men got out and banged on the tin door.

  “Hurry up and come in!” The door flung open and they jumped in, the small woman pulling the door shut behind them. The woman looked up at them, her brown old face was shrunken, the wrinkles of her cheeks caved in two deep holes, but the liquid sparkle of her brown eyes was cl
ear as running water. “This dust is awful. Always the dust, it keeps coming into the trailer no matter what I do. I can’t hang my wash outside, the dust makes it dirtier in two minutes. I have to hang it in here,” she waved her skinny arms around at the clothes strung from sagging ropes all the way to the end of the cluttered trailer. “Well, this is better than out there. I’m sorry you boys missed Juke, he went over to Sparks to see about a job in a feedstore.”

  “Aunt Ida, I am Joe Birdsong.”

  The old woman looked at the man in the cowboy hat with the sides rolled down to the front in a point. She placed her hand on the scar of his cheek. “You are the son of Hallelujah Bob.” She wrapped her arms around the man and drew her old body up tight, laying her trembling cheek against his chest. “How are the people? How is your sister Sarah Dick?”

  “We are all good.”

  “Did you get the two dollars I sent you last Christmas?”

  “Yes Aunt Ida, Sarah Dick sends you her prayers.”

  “Joe Birdsong,” she pushed herself away and looked again into his face. “You and my Juke are the same age. Johnson and your father used to go into the Desert together, they would stay all nights and all days, eating Peyote and dancing their dreams. I remember that. I remember their dancing.” She hugged him around the waist and took his hand, “Come, Johnson will want to lay eyes on you.” She pulled him into the one other room, a television was set up on an empty fruit box, its cabinet had been stripped away and the plug was spliced into a car battery sitting on the floor. The black and white image of the television flashed before the old man sitting on the worn couch. “Johnson, this is the son of Hallelujah Bob.”