Chapter 25: Life in the Field
“I’m sure both of you have a lot of questions.” Adelaide said. “Some I can answer and others I can’t. In some cases it is not my place to speak.” Adelaide rose from her desk. She stepped into green shoes, and took a set of binoculars, which Naomi had not noticed among the ribbons, off the wall. They left the house. “This way,” Adelaide said.
The Grove had changed in the few moments they’d been inside. Adelaide said, “Everyone is getting ready.”
“Ready for what?” Sammy asked.
“Ready for the end. For the new beginning,” Adelaide said.
“What’s happening?” Naomi said.
“You’ve arrived,” said Adelaide. “And though I didn’t know it, I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
They passed a garden. Naomi jumped back as soon as she saw it. “Don’t worry,” Adelaide said. “Nobody’s under there. This is our herb garden.”
“Herbs?”
“For seasoning,” Sammy said.
They went through a door and up stairs that grew darker as they climbed.
Adelaide said, “Hold on.”
She scratched at something above her. Something clicked. A seam opened. Light flooded in. They went up until they found themselves standing in the open air, underneath a great tree. Tall and knotty, its branches crooked outward over a yellow field. To the left stood the white house Naomi had seen from the greenhouse. Behind that, hundreds of horses seemed to swim within a great rectangular fence. Like a foaming ocean, they moved in waves. To the right rose the paste factory like a sleeping giant. Sun glanced off the glass dome. The space between the paste factory and the tree was covered in long golden grass.
Adelaide said, “Sammy, do you recognize this?”
“It’s wheat,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“You can make bread out of it,” Sammy said.
“That’s right,” Adelaide said. “We have all we need to survive growing right out of this land, just a mile south of town.” She pointed to a place to the left, beyond the horses. “There’s a river over there with all the water we’ll ever need to grow food. We just need to free the horses.”
Naomi said, “If the horses are just right there, why haven’t you rescued them already?”
Adelaide looked at Naomi and began her story.
“After the horses were gone, the farmers and the gypsies tried to find them, but they truly seemed to have disappeared. When the paste factory first arrived, it was a boon for the town, but then it started stealing the horses from everyone. It turns out that the factory kept the horses under the glass dome so no one could find them. As the horses disappeared, it got harder and harder for the farmers to get water to the crops. And at harvest time what little the farmers could grow was hard to get to market.
“But then the paste company was putting the food markets out of business by selling paste, and without the farmers buying supplies, the hardware store went out of business, too. Then the bank went broke and the town’s economy collapsed. All that was left for the townspeople was to work in the paste factory, the Pastery, or other businesses based on the new industry of paste. People got angry. The government tried to stop the factory but soon those in the government who didn’t like the factory lost in the elections, and the ones that did what the company wanted won.
“The farmers fought back, stopping paste shipments and breaking the delivery trucks, so the factory burned the farms in the middle of the night. The farmers were forced into Farmer’s Market and the gypsies were rounded up. Many were turned into white people.
“After a while, the gypsies built their underground home in the shadow of the paste factory. Eventually, the factory moved the horses from the dome into the field behind the governor’s mansion.”
Sammy said, “Couldn’t you steal the horses from the field?”
“We tried,” Adelaide said. “Years ago, my brother, Joseph, was in charge of freeing the horses. In the dome, the horses bred like wildfire and the factory abused them so they got wild.
“Joseph snuck into the field with a band of gypsies, but when they breached the fence the horses were scared out of their minds. They stampeded and the gypsies were run down. Those who weren’t killed got captured. That was almost fifteen years ago. Since that day, we have recovered a few who were Pastified, but we’ve never found my brother.”
“That’s awful,” Naomi said.
“It was the darkest time,” said Adelaide. “The townspeople were all but white people themselves, having grown slow on paste and television. Though, I hardly blame them. Often people try to ignore injustice as long as it doesn’t interfere with what they think is their way of life. Unfortunately for them, the company broke their spirit. No one is happy with how things are, but no one knows how to change things either.
“Some things have changed. The governor went to war in Oklahoma under a lie. He convinced Town Hall that it threatened the Endless Ranches way of life. We sent soldiers to fight, but now it seems that the war was just a way for the paste company to steal horses from another state. Though there are more horses in Endless Ranches now than ever, the paste company is using the war to raise paste prices.”
Sammy said, “The whole thing is rigged.”
“It is,” Adelaide agreed. “I had hoped people would get angry and change things. But they haven’t. They are too numb because of the paste. It hardly matters. We have you now, Naomi.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Naomi asked.
“What Joseph told you in your dream,” said Adelaide. “You’re going to rescue the horses, and me and Sammy here, we’re going to help you set them free.”
“Why me?” Naomi asked. “I’m just a kid.”
“I think you know better than that,” Adelaide replied. “Your father was a horse speaker, one of a proud line of horse trainers. That T-shirt is his legacy.”
“Why can’t my mom do it?” Naomi said. “Isn’t she the legacy too?”
Adelaide said, “It doesn’t work like that. Jessica knows she doesn’t have the touch of the horse speaker. That’s why she gave the shirt to you.”
“I don’t understand,” Naomi said, growing frustrated with all this talk. Until yesterday she had never even seen a horse. “How am I supposed to know what to do?”
“I believe it will come to you. Your father was gifted with horses. This ability has been passed down to you.”
“How can you know that?” Naomi said. “I didn’t even know my father.” As she said it, Naomi thought she might cry. Sammy must have seen the look on her face. He touched her arm above her shoulder and she held it in.
Adelaide replied, “Well, I knew your father and he had a confidence you don’t see very often. It’s not something I can explain, but I get the same feeling from you.”
“But what if I can’t figure out what to do?” Naomi certainly did not feel confident.
Adelaide said, “Look, Naomi. I know you’re scared. We’re all scared, and we’re all confused. We wonder why the paste company hurt so many people, so many horses. We wonder why the government lets them make money from our pain. We wonder why they send our sons and daughters to die in war. But we use that fear and that confusion to help us take action. We fight slowly, rescuing people, searching out friends in a corrupt government, forging alliances with farmers who don’t hate us. Until now we really had no hope against the company. Now that you’re here, there is a way we can take the horses back. You can help us.”
Adelaide bent down on one knee, taking Naomi’s hands in her own. “Naomi,” she said, “You may not believe you can free the horses but you can. Please trust me. Though I can’t explain it,” Adelaide raised her hand to Naomi’s face, brushing her hair back and resting her hand on Naomi’s neck, “you mean more to me than you can know. You have to believe I would never ask you to do something I didn’t think you could do.”
Naomi could feel that Adelaide cared for her, though she co
uldn’t say quite why. What a weird feeling, she thought, to be loved by someone she just met.
“I think I can do it,” Naomi said. “Will you help, Sammy?”
He nodded.
Adelaide stood. “Now, let me show you what we’re doing.”
She held the binoculars to Naomi.
“You see where the factory meets the dome?” she asked.
Sammy said, “We passed through there.”
“Yes,” said Adelaide. Naomi put the binoculars to her eyes and the factory jumped into view. Adelaide continued, “Look through the glass dome, to the opposite side of the factory. Do you see that gray wall behind there?”
Naomi looked. Behind the dome, obscured by the light glinting from the glass, she could make out a wall shaped like paper folded into a fan. “That wall covers a chute that leads past the governor’s mansion all the way to the horse pen.” Naomi swept the binoculars along the fence. As the fence moved away from the factory, it seemed to evaporate in the grass.
Sammy noticed too, saying, “It disappears.”
“Not quite.” Adelaide said, “It goes underground as it runs to the field, then opens again inside the pen, like the mouth of a rainspout.”
Sammy asked, “That’s how they get the horses to the factory?”
“Exactly,” said Adelaide. “There are actually two chutes. They use one to take the horses in and one to take them out.”
Naomi saw a small road from the dome to the mansion. Another road ran from the governor’s mansion along the close side of the dome and around the factory, where Naomi lost view of it somewhere among the factory works.
She handed the binoculars to Sammy.
Adelaide said, “Did you see what happened to them in the turbine?”
Sammy said, “They ran until they couldn’t run anymore.”
Adelaide said, “The horses that can’t run any more are brought back out through the chutes. If they can walk.”
“What do you mean, ‘if they can walk’?” said Naomi.
Adelaide said, “Horses are built for running, but their legs are fragile. When they fall many break their legs. When a horse breaks a leg, it takes a very long time to heal, and there is no way to keep them from trying to walk around. The only thing to do is put them down.”
Sammy said, “A lot of horses get hurt in there, don’t they?”
Adelaide said, “Yes.”
“Uh,” Naomi said.
“When they’re hurt, they get pasted,” said Adelaide.
“Along with the horse poop,” Sammy said.
“Along with a lot of things,” Adelaide said. “They were going to paste you two if they caught you. They still will.”
Naomi turned her face toward Adelaide. She was unsure if Adelaide told her the truth, that she could sway the horses, but she had to try. “What’s the plan?”
A wry smile crossed Adelaide’s face. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“Sure,” Naomi said. “How could I do that after everything that’s happened?”
“Okay,” said Adelaide. “Both chutes have access to the two main factory areas: paste production and electrical. White people bring horses in shifts. First the horses are taken to the feeding room, where they eat a mash of vegetables, grain, and honey. Here the horses produce the raw materials for paste.”
“You mean poop,” said Sammy.
“Right,” said Adelaide, “they poop. The poop goes to the production pools for bleaching, then fortification, reduction, and packaging.”
“Fortification?” Naomi asked.
“Pastification Level Two. Where the paste is made pastier,” Adelaide said.
“That’s how they control us,” Sammy said. He seemed different now. Resolute. Like the winter tree in the wind, he had nothing left to lose. Naomi felt a new, different kind of pride for her friend.
“Once the paste is harvested, the horses go to the turbines, and the turbines never stop,” Adelaide continued.
“And the televisions trick them into believing everything is normal,” Naomi said.
“The televisions trick everybody into believing things are normal,” Adelaide said. “From the turbines, the healthy horses are sent back to pasture through one of the chutes. The injured horses are taken to production and pasted.”
“I get all that,” Naomi said. “But where do we come in?”
“We can’t just walk up to the pen,” Adelaide said. “The fence is electrified, along with the ground surrounding it. That meets a second, smaller fence. In the past we breached the fences and even created a bridge over the electrified ground, but the horses were afraid to go near it. Even if they would have gone near the fence, they didn’t trust us. When we went in white people came from the dome. They’re not fast, but there were a lot of them.”
“Did they catch you?” Sammy asked.
“They’re easy to evade, but some gypsies got caught,” Adelaide said. “We were able to save gypsies if they went to Pastification.”
“And if they didn’t go to Pastification?” Naomi asked.
“We don’t know,” Adelaide said.
“Pastified,” Sammy said.
“Did my dad get pastified?” Naomi asked.
“We don’t know,” Adelaide said. “We have hope that he was not.”
“What difference does Naomi make?” Sammy said. “I mean, why’s it so different now?”
“The difference is,” Adelaide said, “Naomi can let the horses know we won’t hurt them.”
Then Adelaide did a surprising thing. She sat among the wheat, so that it nearly covered her. Legs crossed, she plucked a wheat stalk and pulled the leaves back from the wheat head, dropping them in the breeze. “Your father taught me that horses can be the most gentle of beasts. Kind, playful. Like any person, they have their tempers and their grudges, but that too makes them great. Each one has a personality. They just need a safe place to live and plenty of grass.
“You may not know what to do now, but when you are with them, it will come to you naturally, like Joseph came to you in your dream.” She pulled another leaf from the stalk, dropped it, and watched it tumble as it fell. Her words touched Naomi.
Adelaide continued, “Do you believe me, Sammy?”
Sammy nodded. “She’s pretty amazing.”
Adelaide let the wheat stalk drop in the breeze. She said, “You’ll dress as white people, and we will take you to the governor’s mansion.”
“So it will be just Sammy and me?” Naomi asked.
“Too many people will draw attention, and any more than just the two of you will be sure to set off the horses.”
“Why the governor’s mansion?” Sammy asked.
“Our governor fancies himself a cowboy,” Adelaide said.
“What’s a cowboy?” Naomi asked.
“Someone who thinks they know a little about horses,” Adelaide said. “There’s a porch outside of the governor’s office that leads right down to the pen.”
“That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” Sammy said.
“The governor’s a coward, so he never goes down there,” Adelaide said with a smile.
“What’s the point then?” Sammy said.
“What’s the point, indeed,” Adelaide said as she stood. “Clara should be ready for you two. The rescue begins at dusk.”
“Why dusk?” Naomi asked.
“Because it is pretty,” Adelaide said matter-of-factly. “And white people fall asleep when it’s dark.” She gestured to the door in the ground. Sammy went down, followed by Naomi. The sunlight disappeared from the chute as Adelaide shut and locked the hatch.