My father is in a special room. No bars. Jane sits beside him. A thick woolly blanket is pulled up to his chest. It’s more like one of the blankets from up in the village than any of the soft, silky ones the Hoots would have. He looks terrible, grayish-green, even with all that red-brown from the sun. Dark circles under his eyes, and his nose seems bigger than usual, a lot. And his face, bonier than ever. He’s a lot thinner, too. How did he get so thin so fast? Has it been that long? Can you get that thin in just a week or so?
And then I see. . . . And then I see. . . .
I can’t breathe. It’s like that time before, blackness closing in from the sides until there’s just a little hole of light, only this time I’m not getting choked. I have to sit down. I’m going to throw up. I flop down, so fast I bump my head on the edge of the bed. And then Jane is beside me. “Lie back,” she says. She washes my face with the cold water she has there for my father. I can smell him on the towel.
“It’s all right.” My father whispers it. Then Jane says it, too—louder, as if for him, like she always does when he has trouble speaking.
But it’s not all right. My father . . . maybe he’s not The-Present-Ruler-Of-Us-All, but he’s a Ruler . . . one of the rulers of us Sams and Sues. And . . . but. . . . Legs are what we live by. They’re our main worth. Our only worth. And he’s lost a leg.
Practically every other thing that happens seems to be because of me, but I never asked for any of this. I didn’t ever want to be rescued. I never even asked to have a father, especially not an important one.
“Jane, is that because of me?”
“Of course not. Why would you say that?”
“Bob said my father got upset because of me.”
“That isn’t your fault.”
My father groans a long, growling groan.
“Am I like Little Master? Am I supposed to take over for my father? I don’t know how.”
“Charley!” She lifts me so I’m half in her lap. She kisses my forehead. It’s as if I was my father. “Oh, dear. What’ll we do with him?”
My father reaches down so his hand is on my shoulder. “It’s all . . . right. I’m. . . .” He not only can’t get his tongue and lips around the words, but he sounds out of breath, too. “ . . . in charge. In charge, I . . . Bob and the others. . . .”
Bob squats next to us. “I’m in charge,” he says. “Couldn’t you see that?”
Then my father sees my feet. All of a sudden he’s got the strength to sit up. He starts to get out of bed. He’s as afraid of my hobbles as I was, and yet he’s lost a whole leg.
“Get those things off him.”
His voice is, all of a sudden, so strong.
Bob jumps up to hold him down. They get into a kind of fight and Bob wins.
My father lies back and groans. It seems like it’s more for me than for himself. But what are hobbles compared to no leg at all? No leg ever?
I push Jane away and shuffle myself to the sink, and I do throw up. I didn’t want her to, but Jane comes and holds my forehead. After, I collapse again, on the floor by the sink.
Nobody says much for a long time. Bob and Jane just sit there. Jane beside me, and Bob, his arm on my father’s shoulder as if still holding my father down just in case he tries to get up again. My father closes his eyes every now and then, but mostly he watches me. Stares. I never did like it when he did that, but I don’t mind it so much now. Then he starts talking nonsense. He can’t get his mouth around the words. I know how that feels now . . . exactly.
He’s getting upset. “Kindness is . . . that which. . . .” Groan. “What . . . what!” and then, “Bright Spot. Bright, Bright . . . Spot.”
Jane leans over, her arm across his shoulders. “I’m here, and Charley’s here. He’s all right. Charley’s all right.”
I would have liked to hear what he wanted to say about what kindness is.
Jane says, “Kiss him,” and I do, on his cheek, but I don’t think he even knows it. He feels greasy, and he smells funny.
Bob hangs on to my arm all the way back, as if he thinks I’m going to try to run away. I hadn’t thought of it till he held me so tight, but where would I go? And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere without Little Master. I don’t even want to think about myself out somewhere alone. Could we both escape? Where is Little Master? How could I find him?
But I don’t ask Bob that. I ask him how my father lost his leg. He says, “Those poles can cut you in two when they’re turned up.” Then I ask him why my father cares so much about me. “He goes crazy every time he sees me in trouble. He’d rather my hobbles were off than have his leg back.”
“One of these days, you’ll understand.”
I hate when people say that. Do they think I’m still a child? I’d have a mustache by now if they hadn’t shaved me. Besides, it’s just an excuse not to tell me things.
But then he does go on. “Heron and I had terrible, terrible times, both of us. Have you any idea how it feels to have spikes inside your mouth all day long? Have you any idea what solitary is like for herd animals like primates?”
“But he goes off by himself all the time—as if he can’t stand people anymore.”
“I think sometimes he can’t stand himself. That’s what makes him do that. I don’t know, he’s. . . . But about you, I think. . . . He had nothing and never had anybody. . . . And then you’re so like him. When he saves you, he’s saving himself.”
He’s not finishing half the things he starts to say, but I don’t ask any more.
As soon as I get back in my cell, I start to shake. I try to tell Lily about my father, but I can’t. I can’t get any farther than the word “leg.” We reach out and hold tips of fingers. Lily has tears in her eyes, too, just from seeing tears in mine. I am in love. I hang on to her fingers for as long as I can stand the reaching.
Little Master comes. Finally! He dismounts halfway down the hall and walks in on his own. He doesn’t wobble at all anymore. He’s even better at it than before. For sure he’s been practicing by himself. Lily can’t believe it. Her eyes look big as Hoots’ eyes. Of course, not that big, but sort of.
He sends his mount away. I guess he knows how I feel about seeing him anywhere near a different Sam, let alone on one. He clicks down the bars. They fall in a scramble, and he comes in—struts in. He doesn’t look at all like Hoots do when they try to walk. They always lean forward with their big hands out to the sides for balance. He perches on the edge of my cot, lifts his legs and hugs his knees. Compared to our legs, his are thin and short for his body, but they look like real legs now, not strings.
He’s got a ring or two on each finger and three or four earrings up and down his ears. He makes a little jingling sound when he moves. It’s going to be hard for him to stroke or pat with all those rings on.
I’m so stunned to see him here, and all in new, shiny whites, I don’t know what to do. I say, “You, you, you,” like the Hoots always do.
And he says, “Me,” which they hardly ever say. And then, after a minute while we just look at each other, he says, “I heard about your father.”
Then he sees my hobbles. He looks almost as shocked as my father was . . . as I was, though I’m pretty used to them now, and I’ve gotten used to hopping myself around. I’m pretty good at it.
For a minute he can’t say anything. Then: “My sturdy. My steady.” His ears flop down beside his cheeks.
Tears come to my eyes, too, partly because I thought . . . well, I knew he couldn’t have, but I wasn’t sure if he’d forgotten all about me. But I’m not . . . not, not, not, going to fall on the rug again and spend the whole afternoon like I did before.
I sit on the cot beside him. We sit close . . . touching. . . . Just sit. He looks as if he wants to give me a lick or some pats, but he doesn’t.
Finally I say, “I thought you’d left me for good.”
“Never! I’ve learned all about your primate love. In one lesson. It’s what I feel for you.”
I sa
y, “I feel that, too.”
Then his ears perk up, straight up and towards me. “You bucked him off!”
He’s as happy about it as Bob was.
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours and mine. No other. Only yours and mine.”
“But when you said no, to my yes? What was that about?”
“They were trying to make you think they’d given over. They always do that, give up and give over. Like The-Recently-Past-Ruler-Of-Us-All said, the doors of the treats and the doors of the arenas. They knew you’d like to keep racing. (You would, too. You’re like us in that.) They’d let you oversee the races and run in them, even let you keep your prizes for yourself, but it would just look like freedom.”
“How come you know so much about it?”
“I was there with your father, too, remember? I listened. He didn’t convince you, but he convinced me. He was right about false freedoms. He wanted to open the doors of all the land, not just the doors of the snacks, but it’s going to be hard to tell when and if they surrender. That’s why I was yelling no.”
“Even the way you talk is more like us Sams and Sues than a Hoot.”
“I’m half of one thing. Without you, I’m only half. Even though I can walk on my own, I’m still just a part. You’re just half, too, you know, can’t hear, can’t smell, can’t see all the way around.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not.” To prove it, I show him the butterfly hair clip and introduce Lily, which I forgot to do before. “She’s a somebody. She’s my Suefriend.”
He looks at me as if he’s about to say, “That’s the wrong kind of love and against the law.” I can see it on his face, but before he can say it, I say, “Things have changed.”
“You have, too.”
“I never knew one of the . . . one of them. Never really knew one of those, before Lily.”
“Now that I’m The-Present-Ruler-Of-Us-All . . . Munificent, Magnanimous. . . .”
“Are you? Really? Already? That’s wonderful.”
“It’s a trick—like everything they do. Without trickery they’d never have gotten anywhere.”
“But kindness has always been the Hoots’ best policy. Maybe it’s kindness made him give over to you.”
“Of course . . . of course we Hoots are always kind, and we want all our Sues and Sams to be healthy and comfortable, just look at this prison, except. . . . I don’t know what kindness is anymore. You can’t leave things out. Like give half a kindness.”
“I don’t mind half a kindness.”
“Half a kindness is what we’ve been giving you primates all along.”
“I like it that way.”
“That’s not what your father likes.”
Lily has been quiet all this time, as if, like most of us, she’s a little worried about a Hoot being right in here with me, but now she says, “Half a kindness? I only got about an eighth of a kindness, if that. Once I got poled because I went to help an old Sue they were poling. I was the kind one.” She’s just like me when I tried to help Sunrise.
Lily said she worked in the lettuce patches on the hottest days and got heat stroke lots more than once. This is what my baby sister will have to go through unless things change. I never did think much about babies, but I’d kind of like to see what my sister looks like. She could even look like me, just not breed true, is all. They don’t always have to look like Lily, halfway between just about everything. But it’s odd how I’ve gotten used to Lily. I like how she looks.
“The-Recently-Past-Ruler-Of-Us-All could be ruling me, and I wouldn’t even know it,” Little Master says. “Remember when he and I went back alone into that cubby? Number one, he said Hoots can never turn burrows over to Sams and Sues, and not even domes, because most of you can’t stand to be in them. You throw up. (That’s true. And I heard that you did throw up.) Number two, he said did you Sams and Sues want us all to kill ourselves? Number three, he said we can’t live without you, but I told him we can. I said, ‘Look at me,’ and I ran around the cubby, and not just once or twice. Ran! Then he said, ‘Who will clean and cook and work the fields? Lower primates can’t do it. We tried that a long time ago.’ But I cleaned. Remember? Up at the village? When you had to clean, I did, too. I helped with everything you had to do. We planted things together. You, then me, then you, then me, then you. I liked it. I told him that.
“Number four, he said he might be my mother. Most probably was, depending on which womb of the seven that might have held me.
“I will see eye-to-eye with your father, not with my mother. Mine has been naked ever since he took off his clothes. He gave me all his jewels. It’s supposed to be a sign. I told him I take my signs and signals from you. I didn’t tell him about the airplanes, but I told him you had secrets.”
“What I want is the freedom to love,” I say. It just pops out by itself, and I feel embarrassed afterwards. It looks like I embarrassed Lily, too.
“That’s what I want,” Little Master says. “And for the two of us, trotting over the mountains, eating berries, stepping aside for rattlesnakes, sleeping curled up together as if womb mates. . . . What if we went right now?”
I guess I’m not as civilized as I thought I was, because that’s exactly what I want. He’d be my eyes and ears and nose, my sense of time and place and bad weather coming.
“Can you get us out of here? We’ll take Lily. I promised her I’d take her to the village. We’ll pick up your doll on the way and my mom’s picture.”
Now Little Master’s ears are swiveling all over the place forwards and back, and Lily looks just as happy.
“I’ll bring the butterfly,” I say, “And my father’s letter.”
Then the white wires spring back in place all by themselves. I guess somebody hears everything we say. Or maybe they listen because Little Master is here. I guess Blue Bob isn’t the only one in charge.
Little Master’s ears droop. “There,” he says. “I told you. I can’t do a single thing I really want.” He sounds like a baby again.
“It’s nice that you’re in here with me, though.”
“I wonder when they’re going to let me out?”
“Stay.”
“I can’t be much help in here.”
It doesn’t take long. I’d have liked it longer and so would he. It’s just like what happened with Sunrise, first the ring of metal heels on the cement floor of the hall, three guards on their big Seattle mounts. Their eyes are starey like my father’s. They look beyond us, as if they don’t want to see what they’re doing. That’s what gives them that crazy look they all have.
I’m just standing there, and they push me and pole me anyway. Lily is yelling, “Stop!” But Little Master is squatting on the bed in the leap-and-choke pose, and nobody, not even the Hoot guards, dares to get close to him. Those strong legs of his make him look entirely different from any other Hoot. Nobody knows how far he can leap now. I don’t even know myself.
“You will back off,” Little Master says. “You will leave this Sam alone. You will bring my mount, and I will come willingly, but you will not hurt this Sam and this Sue.”
Usually his talk is more like us than Hoots, but not this time.
They back off. The mount comes . . . another slicked-up champion Seattle, of course. Little Master gives me a look. He doesn’t dare show anything, and I don’t, either. He quits his leap-and-choke pose, takes off one of his earrings and one of his rings, and throws them on my bed, then says, “Go, go, go,” and they go.
When they’re gone, Lily says, “He’s the best of them I ever saw.”
I take the earring he threw on the bed. It’s a long, dangly one of a leaping mount. Little Master knows how much I like those. I hand it and the ring to Lily. “Now I have something to give you.”
“He wanted you to have those, and he’s your special friend.”
“How about then I keep the butterfly clip for a while
and you keep these for a while. Does the ring fit? Their fingers are so long and thin.”
But it does. Hers are thin, too.
She says she’ll wear the earring on a string around her wrist so she can see it. “It looks exactly like you.”
Bob comes back. He makes the white wires fall and shuffles himself right in and sits on my bed. He can’t look at me. He leans over, elbows on knees, hands over his face. It’s bad news. He can’t tell me, but I guess it.
I sit beside him, not too close, but he moves over and grabs me, hard, clutches my head to his chest, holds me too tight, and starts to cry. Why do these big, strong Seattles cry all the time? I don’t know what to feel. I never do when this happens. I just have to wait till they stop. I don’t feel anything. Except squeezed. Then I think, but I need my father. Then I think, do I have to do something? And what is it? Is everything up to me now? And then I think, I can’t do it.
After a while, Bob lets me go. “So,” he says, “it’s done.” Then he looks at me, as if it’s a question. I don’t know what he needs for me to be saying. If I’m supposed to cry, I can’t do it right now. I’m not doing anything right, but he’s not doing things right, either, because he hasn’t even told me my father’s dead. What if he isn’t? What if he’s just lost his other leg? Or maybe it’s somebody else that’s dead.
“If I just had my legs back in shape. If only . . . if only. . . .” He stops right in the middle for about a whole minute, then, “My mother always told me there’s no such thing as, if only.” He and my father are so old and so big you wouldn’t think they’d ever be remembering their mothers.
“Your father was. . . . There’s no one like him. You will be, but now there’s no one.” He turns away and collapses over on my bed, his head right on my pillow. But at least he’s not holding me this time. I hope he’ll stop crying pretty soon. I can’t think when he does that. I can’t even really realize my father’s dead.
The Mount Page 18
