The Mount
Chapter Two
They usually tell us what’s wrong and give us a long talking-to, but this time they don’t. After our poling, his Excellent Excellency and I sit beside the round pen and hold hands. Hoots always like to hold hands, especially the little ones. I have tears and he’s all droopy, but we don’t dare ask anything.
After that we get a couple of rest days, but I don’t know why the rest or the poling.
I’m living in a big paddock now with a Seattle female. Her name is Sunrise. She’s too old to do much but cook for me. She doesn’t wear shorts, she wears longs. I guess nobody cares what her legs look like anymore. We have a kitchen and we each have a stall of our own and there’s a sitting place out in front with a rocking chair. No walls. We’re kept in by just one little white wire. That’s all it takes. The Hoots can hear, or maybe feel, if it’s turned on or not, but we can’t.
The white wire is turned off exactly long enough for me to hurry back to my paddock if I trot. They like everything done fast. They say there’s only so much time and then we die, so do we want to waste it? But I’d like to know what’s so important about hurrying back to your paddock?
When I first came, I thought to try and jump it to see what would happen, but then I thought, maybe later when I really want to go someplace. I already had had enough trouble with staying in bed and not doing anything that other time.
These are my first rest days since I got here. I sit out front in our rocking chair and watch the others of us work on themselves. I grew up in a Seattle center, so I haven’t seen much but Seattles before, but here there are other kinds of us. I sit and watch those thin ones practice on their speeds. They’re so odd. I don’t like the looks of any of them. They’re the sprinters, so they can’t be bad if they can go fast. But I’m better than fast. What good is fast when you can’t carry heavy loads?
I’m glad I’ll never have to be mated with any so thin and with little stick legs. But they wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to. Those are the Tennessees. The very shortest distance runners are the Candy/Rex Tennessees. The best of them all come from that single Sam and Sue combination.
I rest and watch and that old Sue, Sunrise, brings me oranges and milk and oatmeal cakes. I get all I want of anything she has in our kitchen. I’m supposed to grow. She’s stooped over now, but she used to be bigger. I’m not only taller than she is now, but she says I’m already taller than she used to be.
Mostly she calls me Smiley, but when she comforts me after a poling—like now—she calls me Charley. (Sunrise’s person name is Margaret. But I kind of like Sunrise. She’s the one who’s always smiling. And she hugs a lot and gives lots of pats.) She teaches me things, too. Secrets. She taught me the whistle for danger, and for be quiet and hold still, another for run, and another for hide. She thought it was important that I know those, but she says I’m too young for any other secrets. Maybe I am, because look how I told things to His Excellent Excellency, except I won’t ever do that again, even to him.
I know tunes of old songs mean things, too, though I mostly don’t know what. They never say the words that go with the tunes. All they have to do is whistle the first few bars, never the whole thing, and every grownup knows. Love songs are secret, too, because we’re not supposed to be in love.
After our couple of days’ rest, my Little Master and I go back to practice and everything is like it always is. Then one day I trot into my paddock and I hear whistling that’s not the same as the usual. Somebody several paddocks away is whistling like anything—a tune I never heard before. It’s not danger or hide or run or anything I know about, and it doesn’t seem like one tune, but a lot of them stuck together.
Sunrise says, “That’s Molly.” So it’s a Sue, not a Sam. Then, for a minute, maybe longer, our white wire turns blue and spits sparks all over our front porch. They hurt. Sunrise grabs me and puts her body between the sparks and me just as if she was my own real mom and as if I wasn’t taller than she is.
“They’re warning us,” Sunrise says, still hugging me.
I say, “I hope my little Excellent Excellency is all right.”
Sunrise lets go of me. “Yours!” she says, then she says, “I guarantee there are no sparks on His Excellent Excellency, The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All.” She says his whole title, but I can tell it’s not out of respect.
I say, “Good,” and go into my stall. I wish there was a door to it.
Next evening Sunrise is the one who whistles. Then the sparks come again and I know she made them happen. She shouldn’t have done that. I should have stopped her.
Then, at the end of the day, right after she serves me my evening meal, Hoots come. Three of them on big Seattles like us. Those Seattles have different tack. Bits in their mouths and cheek-pieces that have spikes. Their shoes are peculiar and make them seem taller than they already are.
