Content copyright . William H. McIntyre. All rights reserved.
Ometochtli the Rabbit King
Ometo the rabbit keeper thought only the appearance of life had changed. The sandals embracing his naked feet protecting him from the roughness of the high mountain terrain, the sharp rocks, the stings of a scorpion or a cactus thorn were no different now from when Cortez arrived. He always tended 400 rabbits—no more, no less. He isolated himself on the mountainside in a miserable hut with only the warmth of a small charcoal pit and his rabbits.
“If I had a son to send north, then maybe I could have boots of leather or shoes of rubber, not just tire treads,” he said, speaking to the rabbits in their hutches.
His feet were brown, dusty and evidently impervious to the mountains’ penetrating chill. On the cold days, which were more frequent than warm ones, he wore a dark plaid wool jacket over several cotton shirts and pants. The mountains’ piercing wind kept his face, hands and feet dark and his cheeks a bright red hue, gleaming as if rouge had burnished them. When he could or when fortune allowed, he wore cast-off jeans, but he would not change his huaraches. His vestments hung loosely on his small spare frame; a formulaic mountain peasant.
“It would certainly be comfortable,” Ometo thought to himself, “if comfort meant anything.”
“Appearance and style change rapidly, without meaning and I have become like my huaraches—an anachronism, my function relegated to those with more contemporary uses,” he spoke to the unconcerned rabbits. “I only hide from the world to insure its continuity.”
“My only crime, after all, is to exist at all, because I do not obey the laws of men and many times also the laws of nature, which creates in me a sense devoid of responsibility. If I were to meet others like myself the world might crack. No one minds that I am a drunkard but this is not my crime, at least not one for which I should be persecuted.” The rabbits displayed a similarly indifferent attitude.
For his purposes, the high mountains and plateaus of the lower Sierra Madre were perfect. Sometimes he would hide among the bandits that frequented these isolated outreaches but more often he dwelled among the remote villages or ranchos, never seeing a tourist, only the occasional priest, the army or the state and federal police seeking younger men to fight forest fires, regarding him as useless. Gone were the days they actually chased outlaws, revolutionaries or fugitive campesinos. He did not require attention to survive. It was always suspicion that caused him to move. Suspicion and superstition were his main antagonists. Superstition could always be overcome with belief and obscure sentiments, but doubt was much more difficult to overcome. When any of the local inhabitants began referring to him as Brujo, or witch, he would quietly move to another region by merely employing the powers of confusion and conflicting opinion.
“History,” Ometo would lecture them, “is only a collection of heterogeneous belief compiled by syncretic scholars concerned more with the representation of what serves the present than a depiction of the past. It is an effort to incorporate augury and error to predict the future.” As he spoke, he was indolent and uncaring. Amused by the sound of his words as he peeked at the rabbits, hoping for recognition and surprised by the lack of acknowledgment, he gently rattled them to gain their attention.
“It is not that I cannot have children,” Ometo told the rabbits. “It’s just that they cause so much harm—but only to themselves… generally. They are most often fearful creatures just like you.” He poked with his stone-like hand at the hutches. The rabbits appeared unimpressed with his soft cajoling voice, multiplying according to his wishes, oblivious of his unemotional culling. “The ones that survived birth have been most inadequate,” he continued absently.
“You are all lucky not to freeze in these altitudes,” he said. “The fermented juice of the maguey brings you more than inebriation.” The rabbits’ addiction to the small amounts of alcohol he supplied as native pulque with their food and drink manifested dissimilar behavior among them, from raucous and riotous acts to the sublimely fearful and overtly stupid. “It provides you with much-needed nutrients to accompany your revelry. My children, however, desire even more attention and their behavior matches yours but on a greater scale, with wider impact. They believe that I am responsible for them and are always disappointed when they must answer for their own actions.”
When money became necessary and the rabbits became innumerable, he would take some of them to the nearest ranch or habitation and sell or barter them for his needs.
“Andale, Tepozito,” he whispered to the large calico rabbit, different from most of the others due to the green, blue and orange patches spread over a soft silky white background. The soft doe eyes looked at him with a petulant anticipation. “I know you tried to kill me but surely you must know that small things such as life and death are not important to beings like us. Harm has no meaning for you and me.” An imperceptible shiver overcame the warren he controlled. An ill-perceived threat in his words now appeared to enthrall them. “Andale, Tepozito, mi borrachito.”
“I also protect you from Tlacuache the opossum and the auto-sacrifice to which you are accustomed.” His voice was lurid with indifference. “When Tlacuache el borracho climbs into the maguey at night to filch its honey, I chase him away, and he is never penitent. When he comes back drunk from the ranchero’s bodega, I whack him with a
“What? What’s that you say, Tepozito?”
“Remorse, you say? Why should we feel remorse? Because you are dressed with such elegant finery, and I in rags? Do you feel sorrow or regret? Does my lack of ceremonial dress insult you?” The calico rabbit moved his head from side to side, trying to catch in his big ears all the questions. “You know remorse? Not I.”
“When people forget about you they will not remember any of us. That is why I collect your tears,” he lamented without sorrow. “When los campesinos or los rancheritos or los indios forget how to make pulque, then we will be ignored … or worse—forgotten. We will be remembered only as victims and that is sad. You see, Tepozito, on my legs and wrists the marks left by the chains of El Patron? Yes, I have suffered as you have, but we have survived. Years as slaves yet we still chose to be free; the marks mean nothing, as does the talk of conquest and liberation.” His reminiscences seized the attention of Tepozito.
“Yes, yes, now you understand, now you realize how well I deceived them. It is simple, really,” he said, indicating the populous valleys that spread out beneath them with a casual motion of his head.
“Ah, Tepozito, it was different when we could both walk among them…when we all walked among them. Before the conquest, before they brought us globalization. It is all the same, you know, empire and progress. You and I, though, understand the difference. We understand sacrifice. We know what respect is. We remember the rewards of the autosacrifice. With you and I, obligation is not a memory.” His voice was gentle now, his movements non-threatening. His gaze was fixed beyond them in a different moment. He prodded the coals of the fire, lost in his thoughts. The twilight signaled night’s approach, as he stoked the fire, murmuring, cooing bird-like over the coals.
He quickly opened the hutch, deftly snatching Tepozito from the safety of the others. Rushing outside, he expertly cut Tepozito’s throat with an obsidian knife, allowing the blood to flow onto the leaves of the maguey. “Sangre de conejo,” he murmured. “I am sorry, Tepozito my prince, you know that others should do this for me.”
Removing the skin, he burned the entrails in the fire, adding fuel from his dried woodpile and placing the gutted carcass on a spit to roast. He scraped and cleaned the calico skin and stretched it on one side of the fire to dry. Tomorrow he would trade it at the rancho for something bright, even plastic, perhaps even a jarita or two of pulque.
In morning’s predawn light, he started down the crooked path toward civilization, using the distant electric wire and pole as landmarks to guide him. Slung from his forehead and across his back was an ancient shawl in which he carried a large pottery piece filled with aguamiel, the sap of the maguey, and a burlap bag tied to his waist filled with cured skins and squirming rabbits.
“I have become my own high priest,” he thought to himself. “If I only had a son to send north, perhaps I could have some decent shoes.”
