She doesn’t answer. She just hangs on to us tight.
There’s thunder and lightning, too. I worry about the guards with all that metal on their feet. My father taught me to throw down any Hoot pole and anything metal I had. I worry about my father. What will we. . . . What will everybody do if my father doesn’t come back?
The storm lasts about the usual for a hail storm. Can’t be more than a few minutes, though it feels long.
After it blows on by, nobody moves. We untangle ourselves from ourselves a bit and lift our heads.
There’s not a single sign of life, but everything’s all scrubbed and pink and shiny, with little piles of hail here and there, in hollows, and around the edges of things.
Jane is looking around at everything. I ask her, “Are you all bruised up?”
She says, “You know, I always thought of this as mine. Even the mountains in the distance. Even places I’ve never been. I always had pennyroyal in my top buttonhole to smell as I walked.” Then she says, “Smell. The Hoots always say they can smell the sun. I wonder if this now is how it smells.”
“What about my father?”
“I hope it’s as pretty as this and smells this good where he is.”
We stand up. There’s no sign of anybody. The light is all pinkish and luminous. Jane . . . she’s already kind of pinkish, what with her hair and her freckles: Now she glows. For a minute I see her as my father must see her. For a minute being too-thin looks pretty good.
Then I see the guards’ mounts getting up and wandering back to the trail. I can see even they are admiring how everything looks.
“I’ve spent my whole life climbing and picking flowers,” Jane says. “Wind and hail or anything. Your father needs to wander around like I did. I had all, all, all these mountains to be free in, while he was in a paddock all his life, even as a baby.”
“Well, I was, too.”
“Oh, Charley, I’m so sorry.” She turns from the view and tries to hug me but, just in time, I squat for Little Master to mount.
“I liked it. Lots of times I wish I was back there with my mother. You don’t know anything about it.”
At least she has the sense to say, “I know I don’t. I was seven when I was rescued.”
“You call this . . . all this right now, climbing and climbing all the time and then hail and everything, rescued?”
All she says is, “But look! Look!”
I guess I really don’t know how it was for my father any more than she does, because, if his mother was Tutu, she had to be off racing or training. And when she was there, I’ll bet she was all tired out. My mom was there all the time. I don’t know what it would be like to not have your mom around.
We get back on the trail, Jane leading as before, but I walk with the three younger mounts. I feel funny with Little Master on me. It’s scary. They could hurt him. But this is very, very important. I want to ask the one who hit me if he’ll teach me how to fight.
First he says, “You’re crazy,” and then he says, “Why, so you can beat me up?”
“No. I promise not to.”
“You couldn’t anyway.” He makes a sound, kind of as if spitting. I’ve heard that sound a few times before. Always about the Hoots. It means they’re nothing, worthless. Then he clears his throat at me and does spit. All the things Merry Mary told me not to do. So did Sunrise. And I never do them.
I want to say . . . I should say, and for his own good, you’re not supposed to do that, but no sense in getting into another fight now, when I know I’d lose. And I want to get on his good side.
“Well, will you? Will you teach me?”
The trail narrows and I have to walk behind him. Then it broadens out right where the view of the village is. For a long time we haven’t been able to see the farthest mountains. We had to get over this last rise first. All of a sudden, there they are. As the mounts come around the corner, they gasp, or even shout, and stop, and the others bump into them. I remember how I felt when I first saw the valley with the snow-capped mountains behind it—far as you can see, snow-capped mountains. I’m even impressed all over again. I almost shout myself.
Everybody spreads out and sits down to rest and look. Little Master dismounts and wobbles up on one of the rocks (all by himself!) to be even higher. The view is so good nobody talks about it. Nobody even says, “Look.” It’s as if it’s fragile and talking would spoil it—as if they want to hang on to the feeling of the very first sight of it as long as they can.
Then I hear, right by my ear, a nasty, spitting whisper. “What do you have that’ll make it worth my while?”
First I think. I don’t have much except that silver bit, which I doubt he’d want. It might be his anyway. Then I start to answer that I have to think, but my voice does one of those jumpy, yodelly kind of things, and I stop right in the middle. I don’t like to talk much myself these days because my voice does funny things. I wish I knew my real age. Just because my teeth looked eleven-years-old back then doesn’t mean I might not be twelve or even thirteen. And that was months ago. Anyway, I guess I know a little bit about how it feels not to get your words out when you want to.
“And what about that Hoot of yours? I wouldn’t mind teaching you both. Give him to me and I’ll teach you anything you want.”
I’m just about to have another losing fight when a runner comes up the trail from behind us. It’s that same runner that I met at the pond. He remembers me right away and comes straight to me as though I was important. He sits beside me first thing and starts drinking from his canteen. But he spits out the first batch and then drinks again. Everybody gets up and gathers around us. He doesn’t talk at all, just blows for a few minutes. And looks at the view. Then he tells me he found Merry Mary. And I say, “Where? Can I go there?”
But he’s not running all the way up here just to give me that news, though at first I thought so. The real news is for my father. He looks around for him and forgets about me. Then he tells us that Hoot guards have locked up thousands of Sams and Sues. Some they’ve marched off to the East. All the towns around here are either empty or completely closed off with shock wires.
“Because of Heron,” he says. He grins at me and punches me hard on the shoulder, as if this is the best news he could ever tell me. “Because of your father!”
It sounds as if it’s exactly the way it used to be when they first landed and took over. Now they’ll have to do it all over again. It’s all our fault. Things were nicely settled down. Everybody was happy. Everybody had a job to do that suited them, Seattles for strength, Tennessees for speed, the old and lame ones cooking and cleaning and farming. . . . We all worked together. There were plenty of really, really, really good things to eat. How can you be even a little bit civilized without Sams and Sues keeping at their jobs like they’re supposed to?
That young mount is still right beside me. “I’ll bet your Hoot friends are singing their usual tunes. Kindness is the best policy—as long as it’s behind the wires.”
Why does he always have to lean so close and spit when he talks?
There’s no point in waiting for my father here. There’s nothing to do except go on to the village and wait for him. I don’t see why he’s so important. What does he ever do? Except run off whenever he feels like it, right in the middle of the most important things?
We start down into the beautiful valley. It’s not so steep now, and on this side of the pass it’s different: Greener, bigger trees, different kinds of flowers, lots more animals. Little things skitter away as we come. Jays squawk.
Jane knows the name of all the flowers, but all she knows are Sam and Sue names, not Hoot names. I wonder which is more sensible to try to learn? I don’t want to waste time with a lot of useless words. And why does everything have to have a name, anyway? Down to the smallest piece of the smallest flower? Even ones you can hardly see?
This time I walk near the front again with Jane and the runner. I want to ask about my mother, and I want to get away
from the mount, but he walks beside me. Does he want to torment us, or what? I must be a lot of fun for him. I’ll bet he’d like me to pick another fight. And at first I wanted to like him the best.
I don’t want to ask about my mother in front of him. It’ll just prove more things about me that I’d rather he didn’t know. But he heard the runner. He makes that spitting noise again, right in my ear, and says, “We don’t have mothers.”
I wish my father would come back.
That runner has news from all over, and he asks Jane things, too. He wants to know all about what happened here so he can tell about it to other places. He likes that there are twenty-one big Seattles willing to fight. He’s going to tell that all over. He has a miniature pole and his big knife. He says, would you believe it, these small poles are our invention? He says Hoots don’t think we were capable of inventions of this sort. He says they’re in for a surprise.
I wonder what it’s like being a runner. You’d get to wear a camouflage suit and racing shoes and a big Hoot kind of hat. You could go everywhere and hear things and see sights. Do a lot of good, too. Bring messages. Help people find each other. Tell people who died. Seattles could do it.
I walk as close to him as I can, but so does the mount. He wants to hear, too. I don’t care what he thinks. I’ll ask about Merry Mary, anyway. I have a mother and I care about her and I don’t care who knows it.
“Well, what about Merry Mary?”
“Normally she could be rescued fairly easily because that’s a lax, badly-run place, but she’s in a special enclosure now, right next to the Hoot warrens. They’re upset with her because she has a new baby, but it’s not a Seattle and not even a half- Tennessee. They don’t know how that happened. They suspect she fell in love.”
Love!
I stop. I go kind of numb. I don’t want to hear any more about it. I have to think. I wait till almost everybody goes by, but that mount stays right with me. How can I think with him around? I don’t want to fight—well, I do, except not right now—but I don’t know if I can keep myself from it. Anyway, I don’t care if I get beat up or not.
He’s just a little bit behind me and I start to trip—a lot of times. My left toe keeps hitting my right heel over and over. I finally figure out he’s doing it. He just touches my left heel with his toe . . . just enough and just at exactly the right time to push my toe into my heel. I can see how that’s a good trick when you have to march in ranks all day long and get bored.
The minute he sees that I know he’s doing it, he really trips me. I go down, hard. Little Master goes flying. That’s rare for a Hoot. They’re so fast and hold on so tight. But this time it’s a good thing. He goes right into a mountain currant bush instead of down on the rocks with me.
One part of me wants to come up fighting, but the other part of me is too stunned and hurt. I have to wait a few minutes before I can even begin to get up. Some of the mounts stop beside me. Since those older ones don’t talk much, they kind of tip their heads slanty-wise and raise their eyebrows. I know what they mean, which is, am I all right?
I let a couple of them help me up. They won’t touch Little Master, though. One says, “Leave ’im. Starve ’im.” He has almost as many scars as my father.
The young mount makes that spitting sound again. More than the sound, he spits—towards me. It hits my shoe. Then he goes on ahead with the others. Those guards’ mounts don’t have any manners at all.
I wait till everybody goes by and then I help Little Master out of that bush. He’s not hurt except for a lot of scratches. He’s so droopy—ears down by his cheeks—he’s crying. We’re both shaky. We sit on a rock. We’re going to lag way behind on purpose. We can’t get lost. Most of the time you can see where you’re supposed to end up.
No wonder everybody says guards’ mounts are the worst of any of us. I’m glad I behaved myself back then when I first came to Little Master, though I was disappointed that I only had a baby to be my host. That was before I knew that was the best way . . . to begin us together and train us together from the beginning.
We go on, but slowly. After a bit, Little Master says, “Your mother was bad.”
“I know that.”
“We don’t love that way, so we never make love mistakes that get us into trouble.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“She should have known better.”
“She did. I know she did.”
But what I really know is, she didn’t. She was as bad as my father. Worse. With her it wasn’t even with a Tennessee, which means it has to have been with a nothing. What else is there? Doesn’t she care anything at all about good strong legs? About being the best there is?
I keep having to change my mind about everything, and now even about my mother. How can you change your mind about your mother? That should be the one set-forever thing. But what if it’s not her fault? She’d better have good reasons.
“She didn’t know any better, or she wouldn’t have done it.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it. I have to think.” But I’m not going to think.
“You wouldn’t love that way, would you?”
“Of course not.”
What if Merry Mary gets rescued? Then that baby will be with her.
We’re way behind everybody now. Little Master is happy about that. He rests his cheek right next to mine like he usually does. “I knew you wouldn’t,” he says and starts to sing. I punch out at nothing as we walk: One, two; one, two. Really fast. I need to practice.
All of a sudden Little Master says, “Stop! Listen!”
I stop.
“Duck us down behind these rocks. Quickly, quickly. Duck!”
Then I hear it, too. It sounds like a thunderstorm, and what good is ducking? But I trust Little Master to know more than I do. Then I see it. A great cloud of dust coming down the mountain. I make sure Little Master has his head behind where mine is.
I always think of the boulders on the trail as having come down a long time ago, but here they come now, though mostly small stuff, right over us, bouncing stones, some big, but mostly gravel and sand. We can’t breathe. We’re inside dust. If we’d been walking any faster, we’d have been away from this big boulder we’re behind, and we’d be dead.
When it starts to die down—which takes a long time—we look out and up, pebbles still bouncing down on us and so much dust we can’t see—it’s in our nose, in our teeth. . . . But then there’s a shadow shape. Big and dark. Sliding down in a swirl of dust. It stops and stands, right in the middle of the trail. It’s still too dusty to see very well, but it’s got to be a bear. It’s too big for anything else.
. . . Except . . . it’s my father—rode the avalanche down. Like it was a mount. He must have. Like a big avalanche god. Jane said these mountains all seemed to belong to her, but I don’t think so. Maybe my father didn’t grow up with any of it, but it belongs to him. He doesn’t ever look right, except next to a mountain or a pile of rocks. He must have started this slide in the first place and then rode it down.
He turns and sees us. There’s a light breeze and the dust is blowing off, down the trail behind him. He’s looking at us just the way I must be looking at him. Like: Where did you come from?
“Charley!”
Then, “What are you doing here? Are you all right?” (He’s so upset he can talk pretty much perfectly.) And then, “You’re all right.” He says that three times.
We just stand there. We don’t know what to do, even my father. Then Little Master gives me a kick as if to remind me: Do something. He seldom has to kick me, usually just squeezes a bit. Even so, I’m used to moving forward when he does it. I move to my father. He grabs me.
“Charley!”
And there I am, flat up against all that dust and grit and gravel and smelly sweat.
“Charley!”
Stuck right into his hairy chest, practically under his arm, my cheek . . . my ear . . . as if grinding into sandpaper. I’m goin
g to suffocate. I start to pull away, but then I see he’s crying. It’s kind of hard to tell for sure. First I think it’s his sweat dripping down on me, but then I know it’s not, and he’s breathing in a shaky way.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t like it. I don’t want a grownup to cry, and I don’t want somebody that big and strong to do it. But I stay there anyway. I can’t move. I feel all stiff and kind of stuck. It’s as if my mind wants me to get away fast, but my body won’t go.
He hangs on to me for a lot too long. All through it I’m waiting and waiting. . . . Finally he lets me go, turns away, and doesn’t look at me. I guess he embarrassed himself. Or maybe he can see how I wish he hadn’t done that.
For sure those were tears. I see the clean spots on his cheeks.
We all three sit on the same rock Little Master and I hid behind. My father takes out his canteen and gives us each a drink. Then he wipes our faces. He doesn’t bother with his own and he doesn’t drink but one sip. Then we just sit and breathe for a while . . . spit out dust . . . pick it from the corners of our eyes. . . .
I glance at him and I see even worse than Wild and uncivilized. Except even Little Master looks Wild, which Hoots never do. Who ever heard of a Wild Hoot? But I can’t stop thinking how my father came down in that cloud of dust, rode the avalanche, and how some day I could do that, too.
We start back towards the village, but it’s a lot slower than before, what with all this landslide in the way. We have to climb down over the debris. Some of those rocks are huge, but most are small. We struggle along behind my father. He’s not going very fast himself, but faster than we are. Little Master doesn’t sing. He can see what a hard time I’m having, so he tries to help me with balancing. He says, “Tell him to slow down,” but I say, “No!”
We go on and on without any rests at all. I think my father forgot about us. I’m slipping and sliding and going as fast as I can. It’s even worse than straight up. It starts getting to be twilight and he hasn’t stopped yet. Little Master says, “Tell him you need a rest.” He’s looking out for his mount just as he should. But I say, “No!”
The Mount Page 12
