The Mount Read online

  I’m a Seattle. We’re the best for size and strength, though we’re not as fast as the Tennessees. I want to be a good Seattle. I want to be the best there is.

  Back at the old place over my stall, it said, SMILEY, and under that, OUT OF MERRY MARY. Will make a strong puller, long-distance trotter, and a good stud. They wrote it in our writing and in theirs. I can read them both.

  I’ll be free to stand for any Seattle girls. I might even get my choice.

  I didn’t call my dam Merry Mary. I called her mom. I wish they’d brought her along, though I know I’m too old for having my mother with me. She knew things would be a lot better for me here, but she didn’t like to see me leave even so. She wouldn’t let go of me until they took a pole to her. I’ll bet she has a scar. If I ever see an old Sue with a scar across her face, I’ll know it’s my mom.

  My father’s picture is in my registration booklet along with mom’s. He was the Sam, Beauty, out of the Sue, Susie Q II Too. Tutu for short. She was a famous endurance racer. There’s nobody hasn’t heard of Tutu.

  I’d like to meet my father someday. I wonder if he still looks like his picture? (I wonder if my nose will get long, too. It’s a little bit long already.) At least up to the time of that picture they hadn’t had his fixed. I hope they don’t do that. How will I know him without his nose? His hair is black and shiny and combed nice and neat for the picture. He’s almost naked so as to show his conformation. I wonder what he usually wears? Probably, since he’s special, something shiny.

  I look at his picture a lot. I wonder if I’ll ever get to meet him. He’s kind of ugly, but at least he looks different from most Sams, even Seattles. I might know him even if they fix his nose.

  First I got here, I tried not doing anything, not getting up and not going out to the gym and the arena. I wasn’t sick or tired, I just didn’t want to do it, and I wondered what would happen. There’s some books here I never saw before. One is about a war that was us against us. I could hardly believe in it, but there were real pictures. There’s another about all sorts of animals. I wanted to lie here and read.

  I learned, pretty quick, not to ever, ever, ever do that again. And after the poling, I got a kindly talking-to with lots of pats. They took me up over the arena, up where they usually sit, and one of them told me how even they have to work all the time, a lot harder than we ever do, and how they get up earlier (they have to feed us, don’t they?), before any of them eats. And don’t I want to be a good, hard-working Seattle? They depend on me. So now I hitch myself to the go-round all by myself. Now none of them has to wake me up in the morning or corner me to catch me. (That used to be one of my games. It was fun.)

  They keep saying we’re the really free ones. They keep saying, “Where would we be without you faithful, sure-footed steadys?” And then they flap their ears (which is their laugh) because they’re so happy about having us. It’s easy to see, where would they be? In their houses they have to scoot around on little stools. I wouldn’t like that at all. We really are the lucky ones.

  Sometimes my new Little Master loves me so much he licks me all over my cheeks and ears. Nibbles, too. The big one tells him, “We don’t do that.” But my little one does it anyway.

  They train us, me and my little one, at the same time. “Tight but light,” the big one says to him. “Remember your hand strength.”

  Our trainer sits on a high stool and watches. He carries a pole long enough to reach the whole round pen. Then he starts to yell—at my Little Master, even though he’s His Excellent Excellency About-To-Be-The-Ruler-Of-Us-All.

  “Look! Look! Remember every Sam can tell which way to turn by your own head movements. Poke him! Poke! Poke! Far side! If you got poked in one side, which way would you move? Give him a pat. He’s done well. But never pat for no good reason.”

  I get tired of hearing the exact same thing every day, but my Little Master has to learn. They yell at him a lot more than they yell at me. They always say if the rider is good then the mount is good.

  My Little Master, The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All, His Excellent Excellency, is still too young to be masterful. He’s so young and little he doesn’t understand big words, and he can’t say much more than, “Go, go, go,” and, “Bad boy. Good boy.”

  He almost falls off lots of times and sometimes does. He’s so awkward, pulls on me and pricks me. Young as he is, they let him wear needles. “Don’t you realize how that hurts?” our trainer says. Then he pricks His Excellent Excellency really hard with his own needles. (They don’t cry like we do, they just droop their ears and tails.)

  Sometimes The-Future-Master pulls my head around hard and leans the wrong way by mistake and makes me fall, too. I’m supposed to not fall, no matter that it’s his fault. When I fall, I get a poling.

  “See what you made me do?” our trainer says. To me. “Now you’ll have another scar. We’ll have to paint over that when we show you.”

  But every now and then we, His Excellent Excellency and I, get a playtime together. We play guess where and guess again where, and I run up and down and lean low so he can see where a thing might be. I hear his ears flap right next to mine. That’s his giggle. Sometimes I do a kind of lope that bounces him. Sometimes I twist us around until we’re both dizzy. He flaps and flaps. Then we get to sit on the grassy bank and rest together and he pats me. I’m not allowed to pat him back or I would. Except they prefer strokes. It’s us primates that pat and like pats.

  I don’t want to hurt His Excellent Excellency, Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All. I would save him from harm. I keep wondering how I can prove that to them. I’m so tired at quit-time I don’t read much anymore. What I do is daydream about how I might find a way to rescue him some day to prove to them how I feel.

  Even though my mom isn’t here, there’s nice things about this new place. We’re out in the country—because of fresh, clean air for The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All, and they say it’s just as much for me. I need good clean air, too. The mount of The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All is just as important as The-Future-Master himself.

  I can see the mountains and the forest from my paddock. Some pretty close. I wonder if they’ll ever let us go there. Excellent Excellency would like it, too. I don’t dare ask them, but at playtime I dare ask him if he wants to go and he says, “Oh yes, go, go, go,” and flaps his ears like anything.

  “We’ll go,” I say.

  “There!” he says, and points with his fingers all spread out as if to grab hold of the forest. I pretend to bite them and then he pretends to choke me.

  Then I say, “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “My real person name is Charley. Isn’t that funny? And guess what? We call all of you Hoots. I suppose because of that big ho you do, so I’m a Sam and you’re a Hoot.”

  He flaps his ears and gives a ho, which we can’t begin to imitate even when we try but that their babies can do from when they’re first born. He’s so close I have to hold my ears until it’s over.

  I didn’t think they bothered listening to us at playtime. And we didn’t mean anything real, but they take a pole to both of us. We look at each other because neither of us knows what it’s about. Is it because I called him a Hoot and he let me? Or because I said we’d go to the forest and he wanted to, which how could we without a grownup of one of them with us? Or is it because he’s not supposed to give a ho unless there’s a good reason for it and it’s half my fault that he did it?

  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 n
obody 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.

  Then Sunrise gets poled. I didn’t think they’d do it to somebody so old. They always say how they take such good care of us even after we’re too old to work anymore. I try to get in front so the poling will be on me instead, but one of the Hoots poles me away. He’s riding the biggest Seattle I ever saw. I look up into the Seattle’s blue, blue eyes, but I don’t know what I see there. He looks crazy. At first I think sparks will fly out as if his eyes were the white wires. There’s hate in him, nothing but, but I can’t tell if it’s for me or who?

  Then a Hoot puts handcuffs on Sunrise and forces a bit into her mouth (first she fights it, but then it looks as if it hurts more to resist than to take it) and one of them gets on her shoulders and rides her away. I want to hug her and hang onto her like my mother did to me, but the big Seattle and that Hoot riding him keep me back. I keep yelling, “Sunrise,” over and over. (I wouldn’t call her Margaret in front of Hoots. Nobody ever said not to, but I wouldn’t anyway.)

  I fall to my knees the minute they’re gone—the minute that crazy Sam and his Hoot let me go. They’re the last to leave. I put my head down on the cement floor. I don’t cry. But then I hear whistling not far away. It’s “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” And after that, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I do know the beginnings of those songs, I don’t know exactly what they mean, but I know they’re telling me that even though I’m alone, I’m not alone. Their whistling makes me cry—for Sunrise and for my real mom, too. If Sunrise is gone for good, there’s nobody who cares about me. Except His Excellent Excellency. I know he does. Otherwise my whole life all day long is getting yelled at. His is, too.

  I finally get up and get into bed. I don’t go get my evening snack, I just collapse there and have bad dreams where scraps of everything that happened happen over and over.

  The next morning an even older Seattle comes in to look after me. She doesn’t talk at all. I don’t think she can, because she writes out her name for me, Bonnie Blue Bonnet. Her white hair is yellowish. She has to have a cane even here in our paddock. I know nothing is her fault, but I hate her anyway.

  When I go out for practice, I feel like telling my Little Master everything that happened, but I know he can’t do anything about it, and I know he might not understand. Well, he would understand—he’s the only one who would—but they might hear.

  It’s nice to have his lick, though. It makes my tears come. He licks all the more (he must like the taste) and he gives me lots of pats even though our trainer says, “Stop it,” about a dozen times and threatens with his pole. His Excellent Excellency licks my tears off so fast I don’t think our trainer notices them. Does my Little Master know about tears? I’ll bet he does. He knows lots of things automatically.

  So tears come and go, off and on, almost all day as we practice. Afterwards, I feel all cried-out. It’s good I do, because I won’t cry in front of Bonnie Blue Bonnet no matter how much I feel like it. And I will never, ever call her by name. By any name.

  Her cooking isn’t as good as Sunrise’s anyway. I knew it wouldn’t be just by looking at her. It doesn’t matter, because I can’t imagine ever being hungry again. I wonder how long she has to be here? I’d rather be alone and just eat dry cakes. They’re supposed to have everything you need. At that old place that was mostly what we ate all the time.

  I let Bonnie Blue Bonnet have the rocking chair. I go in my stall (again I wish I had a door). I think about that Sam’s eyes—the way he looked at me so scary. Then I think about Sunrise. I wonder what they do with old Sues when they take them away like that? Then I think about my Little Master. I know where he lives, because it’s a special big house with a golden flag on top. You can see it from the arena fence. His Excellent Excellency is proud of it. He points and
says, “Mine.” If it were mine, I’d be proud of it, too. What if I crossed the white wire now, and, if I wasn’t too stung by it, what if I went to my Little Master’s house? What if I told him about Sunrise? Except he’s not the master of anybody right now, hardly even of me.

  Then I stop thinking and listen. It’s so quiet. I’ve never heard it so quiet before. What does that mean! Then I think how I’m not sure I remember the whistles for anything. I can’t ask Bonnie Blue Bonnet. She can’t talk and I’ll bet she can’t even whistle. Her mouth is too puckered up already.

  Then I hear a signal. I’m sure it is one, but it’s one of the ones Sunrise didn’t think I was old enough to know about.

  I wait. I don’t move. But nothing happens. I keep on waiting, but I’m so tired from crying all day . . . well, I wasn’t really crying, just those tears kept coming down . . . and I was thinking so hard and then waiting . . . . I fall asleep without meaning to.

  Suddenly yelling and yelling. I jump up and look out. They come. Out from the forest. Down from the mountains. Yelling. Hordes and hordes and hordes! Savages. But us. . . . Us! They’re killing and killing. . . . Really killing, dragging Hoots out of their houses, beating on them. Even the Tame ones of us that live here are joining with the bad Wild ones. Everybody’s jumping over the wires and nothing’s happening to them. The sparks are turned off. Bonnie Blue Bonnet grabs my hand and tries to make me jump, too, but I don’t want to be like all the others.

  Everything is confused, big clouds of dust fly up—into the moonlight. Some of my kind have poles. That’s not allowed.