“Frisco Jeens.”
“What do you mean, Frisco Jeens.” You’re old enough to talk sensible, you must be at least nineteen. In two more years you can vote. Ah hell, no you can’t, Indians aint got the right to vote, Indians aint citizens of this country. You can be damn good and sure you’re better off not voting anyways since it’s Coolidge they’d get you to vote for. Somebody ought to shoot that stuffed bird.” He cocked his thumb and pointed it over the seat, the back of the car was filled with boxes of apples, “All Coolidge ever gave the farmer was worms in their apples. I have to cart these all the way to Sacramento just to get a nickel a pound for them. Times is hard. You Indians aint the only ones roughing it these days. Now you explain all this stuff about Frisco Jeens.”
My fist covered the sock full of money in my pocket. I could feel the sharp edges of the coins biting my flesh. “Mister Fixa. Mister Fixa told me Frisco Jeens was in an iron bar cage where he can’t hurt nobody. Mister Fixa said someday I could go for myself to see if what he said was true. Now I’m going. All the people are dead or dying. I’m going to see if Frisco Jeens is behind bars.” He put his look on me and screwed it down hard on my eyes, “You’re just talking Indian riddles. I can’t make a nickel’s worth of sense out of you. Just what in hell is Frisco Jeens?”
I turned away from his look and saw through the window the brown barren hills cover the Earth to the curve of the horizon, “A Go-reel-ah.”
His laughter banged out in the car, cutting through the heavy smell of apples and pushing out the windows. “My God,” he choked, slapping my knee. “You Indians are funnier than a nigger!”
EATS! The high squarebacked car pulled off the road in among the trucks parked around the small shack with the big sign soaring over its roof EATS! I got down from the car among the trucks and the man leaned his head out of the window and shouted over the stuttering of his engine, “This is your last truck stop before San Francisco. You just hook a ride here and they’ll roll you right into the big city.” The car jerked out on the road, “Hey,” he called back. “Tell em about your Go-reel-ah. Hah. They’ll love that one so much they’ll roll you right across the water to Hawaii!”
I could smell the food coming out of the shack. Strong smells of potatoes and gravy. I felt my sock full of money. But I did not go in. I sat against one of the trucks, putting my back up to the big wheel and closing my eyes to the world.
The boot nudged my leg. “Get on up. What do you think my truck is, the Cozy Cottage Motel?” The man stared down at me over the rise of his belly, the plastic sunvisor strapped over his eyes cast a money green glow on his entire face. I couldn’t see his eyes. “Where do you think you’re goin?”
“Frisco Jeens.”
“You’ll never get to Frisco City in a truck, you can only go as far as the Oakland side across the bay from Frisco, then take the ferry boat over to Frisco City. You might as well get up in my truck then, I aint got all day to get to Oakland myself.”
I climbed up and he swung the truck out into the highway, the rough surface bouncing his big body up and down on the hard seat, throwing the glow from the sunvisor over his face in different shades of green light. He turned to me as his hands held locked to the steering wheel. I couldn’t see his eyes. “You know what I got in the back? You know what my load is? I’ll tell you what I’m hauling since you asked. Lettuce. The worst job in California is picking lettuce. I wouldn’t pick fucking lettuce in this State for no amount of pay, no how. Picking fucking lettuce is wetback work. It’s my job to truck this fucking lettuce. I’ve been trucking lettuce up and down this haul seven years and I’ll keep on trucking this fucking lettuce down this same road as long as people keep on eating like fucking rabbits.”
I turned around in my seat and hung my head out the window, behind I could see the stacks of packed crates roped down tight on the flatbed of the truck, flapping green leaves poked out from between the wooden slats waving in the wind.
“Hey!” I could feel him poking me in the back. I turned around and looked at him, but I couldn’t see his eyes. “Hey are you Mexican?”
“Washo.”
“What is that? Indian or something?” He rolled the window down and spit into the wind. “Aint too many of your kind left is there kid.”
I saw the water, it went out big with the Sun slapping its face. It looked black. I tried to peer into it. It was thick with salt. It was not clear like the high water of the mountains. It was heavy and secret. The boat scudded over its surface like a Turtle dragging itself through mud. I hid in among crates of lettuce, tomatoes and corn stacked high on the deck, drinking of their Earth fragrance and pressing my face to the green leaves as the OAKLAND TERMINAL sign on the far shore behind me seemed to sink in the water. Across the bay the white buildings of San Francisco leaned off the sharp hills into clouds. When the ferry bumped up along the dock I made a fist over the sock full of money in my pocket and jumped down into the City. I made my way off the docks and felt the hard ground beneath my feet. They had covered the Earth with stone. I saw it! The buildings went up and threw their shadows down on the people walking in the hard streets. I saw it! There, along a broad building was the face bigger than the heads of ten men. It grinned out at the people in the shadows with its fierce mouth cut like the blade of a knife. The blare of its wild stonehard eyes burned like fire and trapped me. Beneath the hunched hair of its hulking shoulders was painted CAN’T BUST EM! FRISCO JEENS! Mister Fixa had spoken the truth about him. He does live in Frisco City. I saw his painted face everywhere. I turned a corner and he would be grinning down from a high wall. The only place his face did not follow me was into the streets of the yellowmen. In the streets of yellowmen there were no faces painted on the walls. In the streets of the yellowmen there were no white faces. The smell of Fish came into the streets and I found my way into a cellar where there were many bodies sweating. A yellowman came to me in silken robes with a long knot of black hair tucked under his collar. He bowed at my presence. I pulled the sock from my pocket and dumped the silver dollars out on a table, “My people are all dead or dying. I have come from the mountains growing small to see the great Animal spirit of the Whites. I have come to see the bad medicine FRISCO JEENS. I have come to see the Go-reel-ah behind bars. I have nothing left.” The yellowman smiled as he bent low before me and took my money into his silken robes. He led the descent further down into living levels below the street above. He brought me into the bowels of his Dragon.
The sweat-damp taste of smoke ran its fingers up my nostrils and laid me out beneath the low ceiling of a hundred knife cut bodies of soft Fish swimming in dark wood. The burning eyes of incense waved around me, revealing layers of bunks carved like caskets into the surrounding walls. Burning eyes of incense glowed from each bunk as I watched the yellow chests heave, their bodies rising to meet the Cloud of smoke sucked from bubbling waters. I took the stem of the long pipe into my mouth and drank of the Cloud, letting my head fall back into the soft field. I could see my dark hand clutching the yellow wrist of the man in silken robes. I spoke to him with my bruised tongue, “My people are all dead or dying. The people stand in high places everywhere. There is a fire in my heart.” His teeth glowed above me, his words breathed through the smoke, “Chi Wen. Chi Wen. He will dampen the fire of your hot body, only this Dragon will offer you power to enshroud the fire in the soul. The fever is below. The water is above.” He held a green stone-eyed clay image of a Dragon to my face, incense burned in its mouth, it burned the odor of a thousand Birds. I turned from it to the Tree of Heaven, to the Sacred Piñon Tree growing across the rolling hills from the heart of the people. Everything was calm. It was Gumsaba. The Big Time. Everything was plenty. There were no wants. No needs. No wind blew. I curled myself around the Sacred Tree and slept. I woke to the sound of laughing. The Piñon Tree shook with laughter and slid me from its trunk. Streaming down its sides to the broad base was on the one side water, on the other, blood. “What river will you follow Ayas my Antelope?�
�� The Tree spoke through laughter. “Will you follow the River of Water or the River of Blood? Choose your course my Antelope.” I walked to the Tree and ran my hands through the clear water streaming down its side, “I choose Water.” The Tree laughed again and pulled me to its heart, “Ayas, my Antelope, Water is good, you are a man of Peace.” There was no wind. I saw Deer coming up from the South whispering, “Ayas, don’t kill my baby any more. Bury your best baskets in graves. Do not kill Lizards or Snakes without reason.” The rain fell through her words as blood dripped from my nose. She went away to the South. Walking slowly with her whitetail to me. “Ayas, Water is good. You are a man of Peace.”
There were many days when the Sun did not touch my body. I lived in the belly of the Dragon and cooked the Opium Cloud until a yellowman with the white finger of a beard pointing down from his chin came to me and spoke into my eyes, “You are not a dark Spirit. You are Indian. I know.” He put a hand beneath his robes and brought forth a leather pouch and emptied it into his open hand. “I know. I have been to your mountains. I have worked your waters. From your rivers I have taken these precious stones.” The brilliant gold nuggets burned in his palm, he closed a fist of thin fingers over them. “You have nothing left. I know of what you search, this great animal Spirit of the Whites. I know of the place where this bad medicine is behind bars.” He opened his fist to reveal the gold stones again. “I have taken these precious stones from your waters. Now I will give you something precious.” He led me up from the den of Opium eaters to the crowded streets paved with stone, we traveled in a big wagon pulled by horses along a straight iron track that ended where the Sun died into the great Salt Water. There at the edge of the Sea he showed me a cage among many caged animal Spirits. A sign hung in front of the iron bars, TROGLODYTES GORILLA. To me the words were hollow, only the truth of Mister Fixa’s words filled my ears as I clutched the iron bars and peered into the black skin-soft face staring back at me.
I got on the Iron Road and headed east. I headed back for the mountains, but when the door of the boxcar rolled open I saw nothing but flat land that ran right over the edge of the Earth. The man standing before me reached up a hand to pull me down, “Welcome to Omaha Nebraska, redman, you now owe the Union Pacific Railroad one-hundred dollars American for a firstclass ticket from sunny California to groundhog Omaha. Bet you didn’t know when you jumped this freight train two thousand miles ago that you had a firstclass accommodation, but you Indians always put up in the best of hotels, like barns and boxcars. You can go with Mister Jeremy Dole here over to the stockyards where you have four months doing six days a week, twelve hours a day at the sweet labor of working in the feedlots until you’ve paid your debt to the Railroad. Or, Mister Dole can walk you right by the stockyards to the jailhouse. Take your pick.”
“How far is it to the California and Nevada border?”
“Oh, let’s see,” he scatched the roll of skin under his chin. “I’d say seventeen hundred miles by rail.”
I looked out over the flat land. “I will work for you. Then I will go to the mountains.”
“Thought you’d see it my way. Now you get along. There’s seven hours more work in this day before chow, and you could use it. You look hungry as a horse.”
Hungry Horse is what they called me. During the days I would watch the boxcars roll in off the flat land filled with cattle, their brown frightened bodies packed together, then turned into the tight chutes and herded into large pens, their damp noses pushing against one another, having only room in the crowded space to eat and raise their heads, bleating hollow sounds into the air before they were run up the concrete gangways and hit in the head with the blunt steel of a sledgehammer, their soft throats slit to drain all the thumping life from them, their brown bodies hoisted off the floor on hooks and slaughtered. The stink of rotting flesh soared in the air. My dreams were boiling blood. The nights filled with bleating cries. The days filled with dying brown bodies. On the seventh day of the week we were allowed to rest. One day was set aside to silence the sound of doomed flesh. One day was set aside to silence the smell of decayed meat. On the seventh day of the week a wagon was sent to carry us into town to hear the word of Jesus. I went. I saw this Jesus dead up on a cross, nails driven through his flesh. The sight of him brought the smells of the stockyards into the bare meeting hall, the stink of bumping brown bodies rose in my nostrils as we were told this Jesus was whipped bloody and had a crown of thorns puncture his head before he was spiked up on a cross at the top of a mountain. I put my hands into my pockets and dug the nails of my fingers into my own flesh as the Word was spoken of how this Jesus sweat blood praying for my soul. My spit turned to salt and I choked back the bile rising in my belly as the Word spoke of a soldier’s spear rammed into the gut of the crucified Jesus.
Jesus was on my back. Monday mornings I would think of what the Word spoke, that behold, Jesus comes as a thief to steal your soul, blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked. The blind bumping bodies bleated around me for mercy. Their souls hung from meathooks. Jesus was trying to take me captive. Jesus was trying to run me down. I was empty with thirst and hunger. The scum of decayed flesh coated my bruised tongue. Jesus was trying to steal my salvation. I couldn’t eat, sleep or work. I ran away from the cries of the slaughter house. Night fell down on its face as I was still searching through the strange streets to find where the Word of Jesus was spoken. When I saw the door before me I ran up the steps and grasped the iron ring knocker in both hands, banging it against solid wood. I heard the footsteps coming from the emptiness within. The door swung open and the man who preached the Word peered out. “Yes my boy?” He held the door pinned back with his foot. I yelled into the crack. “Jesus is trying to steal my soul!” “Get down on your knees and beg forgiveness.” “Jesus is a thief!” “You are a sinner. You walk naked. We all see your shame. Pray for your salvation.” “Jesus wants all of me. I’m going to run from him. I’m going to beat him!” My words screamed in the street and he put his head farther through the door, his chin was smooth as a woman’s elbow. I wanted to reach up and touch it. He spoke, “Even the Devil will tell you Boy, you can’t damn Jesus unless you believe in Him.”
I was sitting on the curb with my whiskey. Jesus said to take heed lest your hearts be overcharged with drunkenness. My head throbbed between my two hands like a heart, it roared with the knowledge that all things shall come to pass. Jesus was going to come back and dwell on the face of the whole Earth. Jesus was coming back a second time to get us all. A man sat down next to me and read the label of the bottle clutched in my hands, “I.W. HARPER. That’s good whiskey, oils the joints and puts hair on the baby. But I got something better, something that will cure the Devil that ails you. Run all the Demons right out of your brain. Pump you up and blow you out. Leave you clean as a green blade of grass after a spring rain. Try this on …” I took the smooth green bottle he offered, yanked the cork and drank. “Well sir,” he nudged my arm. “Isn’t it all I touted it to be?” I couldn’t talk. The fire of what he gave me robbed my voice and spun the heart of my head around so fast I thought it would bang my face into the cement sidewalk. “That sir is strong medicine. Prepared and bottled by the Crater Chemical Company of Cincinnati, sold in only two stores west of the Snake River, a natural root medicine blended with only the finest herbs, the exact ingredients is locked in a strong box, kept in a bank, and guarded by two armed men in downtown Cincinnati, but I can tell you straight it’s strictly botanical. Some of its curing power consists of an ounce or three of dry ground cascara, polk root, senna, wildcherry and mandrake. It is a quick laxative and a natural cure. It sells for a popular price. One eaglefaced American dollar. Now sir, how do you like it?”
I felt my words fanned up by the flames in my chest and choking from my throat, “It’s … it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
He smiled and pulled me up by the arm, my legs started bucking and jerking beneath me, knocking me against him for
support. He guided me down the street, “Now tell me sir, what kind of Indian are you?”
“Washo.”
“Then California and Nevada is your home. You have strayed far. What is it you want most from this life sir?”
I stopped him, looked around to see if anyone passing was trying to overhear me and whispered in his ear, “To get my soul back to the high mountains.”
“What are your names sir? I’ve never met an Indian yet who didn’t have at least three names.”
“I am Ayusiye, the Antelope Walker, I am the Antelope Dreamer. I am Bob, a good strong name. I am here in Omaha called Hungry Horse.”
“And you want sir only to return to your beloved mountains?”
“Only that can save my soul.”
He pushed me away at arms length, the people swarmed by us. He held me up strongly by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, “Chief Hungry Horse, you’re on your way.”
Rabbit Boss Page 45
