Chapter 29: Riders on the Storm
As they ran through the doors, Naomi saw Clara in her disguise, a smile on her face. Naomi had only a second to smile too, when she heard Clara yell from behind her, “Go, Naomi!” Then, the sound of hooves was everywhere.
Ahead, the chute went on forever. Naomi didn’t know where she was going, but she knew the mare had been down this road before.
She felt Sammy shift, and she looked back. The horses followed with brown, white, and gray manes flowing back to the entrance.
“Almost there,” Sammy shouted.
“How can you tell?” she shouted back.
“Can hear it,” he shouted. The stampede sounded like water filling a glass. The mare slowed to a trot. They reached the end and gypsies sprang from a gaping hole. One shouted, “We can open the doors, but we can’t stop all the white people.”
The next room was a huge holding pen for the horses. The floors were waffled metal where Naomi figured any “paste” could be collected. White people carried ropes and whips. The mare stiffened.
“Come on,” Naomi said. “Almost there.” As she said it, white people approached. They didn’t notice disguised gypsies scuttling around and grappling with the far door. The other horses were so close to Naomi’s mare they rubbed her flanks. They whinnied, and the white people threw their lariats.
“Go,” Sammy yelled, and the mare took off. Whips cracked the air. One hit Sammy and he cussed. A lariat encircled Naomi’s chest. “Keep going,” Sammy yelled, and the mare ran through the door. The lariat yanked, and Naomi was nearly torn from the mare. Sammy grabbed the rope with one hand, and with a powerful tug, pulled the other end free from the white person, who fell under the horses. Sammy bundled the rope hand over hand and removed the lariat from Naomi. He draped it over the mare’s back and Naomi pinned it with her leg.
The next room had more horses. They raised their heads from troughs when Naomi, Sammy, and the mare entered. The mare brushed their rumps as she went down the middle. Naomi peeked over to see the wadded vegetables, dried wheat, and honey the horses ate. Horse poop covered the floor and she was surprised to see that the poop looked a lot like the mash the horses ate.
“Thought it would smell worse,” Sammy said.
“Smells like paste,” Naomi pointed out.
“Never eat that again,” he said.
Some horses whinnied and others just fell in like soldiers. Gypsies opened a door at the end of the room.
One of the gypsies shouted, “We’re going into the production floor. There are lots of white people working.”
A buzz filled the air, and Naomi recognized the production room she had seen two days ago. Now that she was actually inside the room, it seemed more frantic. Machines towered over everything else, pumping and squiggling like giant larva. Patrolled by the white people, the room looked like a colony of ants exposed from under an upturned rock. The machines were very close together, their levers and wheels scissoring the spaces separating them. The white people did not notice the intruders. An eerie consolation, they kept punching buttons and stroking dials as if their lives depended on it.
Naomi yelled above the mechanical din, “Where?”
The gypsy pointed. Naomi could not see very far past the machines. The mare walked slowly now, eying the white people, ears tight as pulled thread. Naomi held her breath, praying those people stayed put.
“Duck!” Sammy pushed Naomi as a plunger shot from the machine with a breezy whoosh in her ears, nearly smashing her head.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “You know what this one does?”
“Reckon it cleans paste,” he said. “Filtering, maybe.”
They passed the first machine, from which tubes snaked everywhere.
“What are those?” Naomi asked Sammy, pointing to the tubes.
“They move paste from one machine to the next,” he said.
“Figures,” Naomi said.
The next machine looked like a centipede with its belly up, legs scratching the air.
“I think this gives it texture. Those things,” he said, indicating the legs, “pound the kinks out.”
“Gross,” said Naomi, thinking of the horse poop on the production floor. How someone would think to feed that to people was beyond her. Where money is involved, it seemed the paste company would consider doing anything, no matter how badly it hurt people.
The machines ended. The mare stepped into empty space where pipes ran to huge silos on either side of the room.
“Paste vats, I guess,” said Sammy. Much larger pipes came out of the silos, snaking down to the floor, where a trough was filled with tubes. The trough, deeper than a man is tall and as wide as a creek bed, had walkways running next to it.
“That’s a lot of horse poop,” Sammy said.
Before Naomi knew what happened, the mare bucked. Naomi turned to see the mare’s legs smash a white person. The person buckled but still stood. Sammy slipped, but stayed on the horse. Naomi gripped the reins, clenching her legs around the mare. The mare bucked again, and Naomi felt Sammy slipping, but he somehow stayed on. There was a huge crash and the white person lay against a pipe. The mare skittered.
“Hold on!” Naomi shouted. A hiss erupted from the pipe where the person had smashed into it and blossoms of paste sprayed into the air. Sammy shouted, “No!” as the pipe exploded with a loud boom. Paste puked out, carrying the person into the trough. The mare slipped. Sammy slid off the horse.
“Sammy!” Naomi yelled. The mare found her footing, and scampered forward. Sammy bobbed in the trough, stuck like a bug. “Sammy!”
He managed to crawl towards the walkway. Part of the silo cracked off, spewing more paste, covering Sammy.
“Sammy!” she yelled again. He’s going to drown, she thought. The stream became a river. She looked back to see the paste blocking her exit. The gypsy appeared and pushed horses onto the parallel walkway. The gypsy shouted, “You can’t come back this way.”
Sammy was nowhere to be seen. Oh please, she thought, don’t drown. Oh, God, she thought. Where is he?
Time seemed to stop. Sammy was drowning, and she could not stop it. No. She would not let this stupid paste factory take him away.
Naomi screamed, “Sammy!” Her throat was swollen with rage. “Sammy!”
Something appeared farther down the trough, a white bubble. “Sammy!” she screamed, the sheer force of her voice tearing at the back of her throat.
The bubble popped and Sammy surfaced, face up, gasping for air. He flipped around and sank. Again he surfaced, fighting to keep his head up. His face was pale with terror.
Naomi grabbed the lariat she had tucked under her leg. She found the loop and swung it above her head. Sammy went under. Naomi clicked her heels against the mare, who took off. Naomi, her eyes glued to the spot where Sammy disappeared, spun the lariat above her head in a slow arc. It was if she could smell when Sammy would bob to the surface. Her heart pounded one, two, three, and just as the mare passed where she thought Sammy was, she flung the rope out over the paste river. Sammy breached the white skin. The rope fell around his outstretched hand. Naomi yanked. The mare skidded to a halt and the rope cinched home. Naomi pulled hand over hand. Sammy turned in the paste, face up, finally floating as she dragged him to the walkway. He turned over, gripping the side of the walkway, eyes filled with paste. Naomi slid off the mare, grabbed Sammy’s arm, and with all her strength, pulled him, panting, into her arms.
Sammy coughed, hacking up paste.
“There you go,” she said. Naomi brushed the paste from his face.
“I thought I was a goner.”
“Nah,” she said. “I knew I could get you.”
He smiled up at her. “My savior,” he said.
“Hey!” a gypsy yelled from the trough’s other side. “I’ll get these out,” he said. “You two have to clear the turbines. Hurry! The paste will flood the factory
.”
Naomi helped Sammy to his feet. The paste river was creeping up, threatening to breach its banks. Breathing a deep sigh, she turned to the mare. She stroked the horse’s bangs. “It’s okay. We’re nearly done.” In her heart, she hoped that was true.
“Can you ride?” she asked Sammy.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Okay,” she said, and leapt belly first onto the mare. She took Sammy’s hand. He squirmed up. The mare hopped. “Whoa, girl,” she said, patting her till she settled.
Sammy pointed toward the far walkway where the rush of horses thinned. The gypsy was nowhere to be seen. “You think that’s all of them?” Sammy said.
“There’s a lot,” she said. “But I think they got all the ones from the field.”
The paste spilled onto the walkway. “Come on,” he said. “I ain’t going in again.”
A sound of wrenching metal drowned out the hoof beats. Naomi looked back to see the side of the silo burst in half, releasing an ocean of paste.
“Go!” Sammy yelled. Naomi leaned forward. The mare ran to the far door. Naomi looked back to see the paste coming. She prayed they would reach the door before the paste overtook them. They would reach it in twenty yards, ten, five. Naomi yanked the reins left. The whole world spun and the mare rolled beneath her like an extension of her body. Sammy leaned into her, folding over with the momentum of the turn. They went through the door, turned, and the mare slammed sideways into the wall. Pain shot up Naomi’s side, but she didn’t have time to worry. Paste collided with the wall behind them. “Hah,” she yelled, and the mare took off again.
They ran through in a long hallway filled with open doors, each with “TURBINE” written over them. Ahead, through the closest door, Naomi saw horses inside the turbine room swirling on the moving floor. Naomi steered the mare there.
The mare galloped right onto the whirring turbine floor, releasing a great whinny. The other horses whinnied back, and without wasting a second, the mare joined the other horses and ran a full circle on the swirling floor, then she ran back into the hallway. The others followed. As they shot from the room, the river of paste spilled in, flowing down the crack between the turbine and the floor.
“It’s going to blow,” Sammy said.
They ran through the hallway with open doors on all sides. Horses ran out of each room as Naomi, Sammy, and the mare galloped by. As they neared the end of the long hallway Naomi turned back and saw blue sparks, but the mare ran on.
The mare came to a fork in the hallway.
“Left,” Sammy yelled. “The right will take us back to the field.”
But even without Sammy’s suggestion, the horses went left on their own, sensing freedom there.
White people hauling paste filled the corridor. Horses knocked into the canisters, driving frightened white people against the walls. The lights flickered.
The mare burst into a garage where people loaded paste into delivery trucks. White people watched the horses run through. As the mare rushed past, two of the people looked up at Naomi, their faces lit in pure joy as they recognized freedom rushing by.
The mare ran from the garage and out of the factory. The other horses followed like a bursting dam.
“Down there,” Sammy yelled. Naomi looked, and saw a ribbon of horses rushing towards the lights of Endless Ranches.
The mare stopped, her breath peppering the night while white people scurried.
Naomi smelled the rancid stench of paste in the air. “It’s burning,” she said.
“Good riddance,” Sammy said.
Naomi turned and looked at Sammy.
“What do you suppose happens now?” she asked. Sammy looked at her without conviction.
“Start farming, I reckon.”
Naomi nodded.
Sammy shouted, “There’s Clara.” Naomi’s heart leapt when she saw Clara shouting orders. The gypsies lead a gigantic band of white people. Now that they were free, the white people didn’t seem to need their light visors. Naomi thought that in the end, it must be a matter of motivation.
Clara saw them. “Naomi! Sammy!” she shouted. “You’re here.”
“You doubted?” Sammy said.
“Not for a second,” she said, her face glowing with a smile. “I thought you’d be in the town by now,” she continued, concerned now. “You got to get the horses away. It’s too dangerous here. The turbines are filled with paste and the whole factory is going to explode.”
Naomi yelled, “What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll meet you there,” Clara yelled. “Just get these horses safe.”