American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [88]
“Get up, you lazybones, and get me a stone!” Gramp sang out to George and me when we were out at the ranch, to get us out of bed and into the morning. We’d scramble out and find one quickly, about the size of a mango, and run back to the house, knowing we’d hunt that day. Doc dropped the stone into the bottom of a large pot, rattled in some beans and a ham bone, added water, and left it to cook.
Learning to shoot was the first order of business when Doc took us out to Rattlesnake Pass. “You can’t live on this land and not learn how to handle a rifle,” he’d tell us. “I don’t care if you’re knee-high to a grasshopper. There are snakes out here. Bears. Wolves. And by my sights, you two look like juicy little morsels. You need to learn about guns.” At first we shot cans on the fence or potatoes set out on the brush. But soon we learned to fit the butt of a .22 into a shoulder, line up the crosshairs, finger the trigger, feel the ping, and see our bullets twig to their targets like qosqos to black light.
Doc killed deer. We killed rabbits. Doc killed antelope. We killed sage hen. Running after them through the brush as they warbled and lumbered away, eyeing us with alarm. When we were done, we would drag the carcasses onto the pickup truck for the ride back to the house. The beans would be waiting for us, fragrant and steamy, cooked evenly through by the stone. But we wouldn’t be allowed to sit down to them until all the animals were clean.
Doc taught us as equals, and taught us well. We knew to shoot heads, kill quick. We knew to snap necks, be sure. He had taught us to skin our game, chuckling at us when we crept away pale and green. But it was cousin Nub who taught me how to gut a sage hen and cut fast to a butcher’s fortitude. Slit the throat so it bleeds to the ground. Grab the hen by the anus and pull. Take her wings and swing ‘til the guts fly. Pluck her to pink-butt tender.
“You’re the only one around here who ain’t flat-out bats,” Nub told me one day. “Course, you’re still young and all. You could go any minute.” He’d stick out his tongue and roll his eyes until I screeched with delight.
“Reckon I’m takin’ a big shine to you,” he’d say. He’d lift me up and set me down on the long fence at the edge of Doc’s land and listen to me talk a blue streak about the power of my qosqo and Peru’s pishtacos and the spirits in the trees. Then he’d yelp and pound his knees with his hands. Whether it was my accent or my tales about ghosts that amused him, I never knew, but the more he’d laugh, the more I’d perform: louder, faster, scarier. Then I’d sit back and survey his face.
Nub was almost golden, openly handsome, honey hair hanging down into his eyes. He was slim-hipped, slim-chested, with eyes that flashed up hot.
“Should I tell you some more?” I asked him. “About the Danish man with the worms in his head?”
“Yip. I’d like to hear that one. You’ve got the damnedest stories I ever heard, tyke.”
“Do you think I talk funny, Nub? You think I’m a foreigner?” I was remembering the large woman on the Pullman train, the old man who had growled at us in Rawlins, every gringo that raised his eyebrows when George and I walked into the shops, chattering.
“Naw, Cousin, sure don’t. I git what you’re saying fine. But tell you what. This’ll prove to me that you’re not.” Nub mounted the fence beside me, reached into his pocket, pulled out a pouch, and grinned. “Here.” He thrust it under my chin.
I looked down at the pungent brown strands in the bag. “Tobacco,” I said. “I know what that is.”
“Have some.” I looked up at his face. He was serious. “Go on, girl, take a hit.”
“Sure