Snowball's Chance (15 page)

Also, whiskey, beer, and martinis, were popular ways
to spend one’s money. Cigarettes, too, had grown, as of late, ever so fashionable.

“It’s all about enjoying life,” Snowball would say.

So, the newcomer animals did the laundry and changed the hay, while the old-time animals worked their three-day weeks in their heated and air-conditioned carnival shacks, and spent their four-day weekends doing, well, whatever they liked. They could smoke, drink, or dream. One might even travel, if so inclined, and so fit as to foray from one’s stall. And even were one not so inclined, or so fit, there was always the possibility of putting in another window.

According to the
Trotter
, it was largely the annexing of the Foxwood and Pinchfield farms that allowed this higher standard of living. The lumber operation was quite lucrative, as was the strip-mining. The new quarry and toxic waste disposal sites also provided a steady income. As did the parking. Over 29% of Foxwood, and 38% of Pinchfield had been promptly paved over to supply parking for the growing number of visitors who arrived at the carnival with motor vehicles. (The pigs, several of whom possessed more than one vehicle, also required an expanded access to parking facilities.)

For the most part, the animals who were left behind on Foxwood and Pinchfield made for a ready supply of laborers, valet parkers, security guards, outhouse cleaners, and groundskeepers. The franchise, Duncan Dognuts, had been introduced to provide the local work forces with the required nutrients. It was fortunate their needs were limited, as their disposable income, being equal to their skills, was also limited. Really, those animals were lucky to have jobs at all. Many, who were totally useless, didn’t.

The pigs, naturally, could not allow any farming on the undeveloped portions of the two farms—because it had not been pre-approved. So the dogs were charged with keeping a constant eye on the animals that Frederick and Pilkington had deemed too worthless to relocate, as the freeloaders among them were always planting beds of carrots and radishes—heaven knows for what reason. A few of the more educated Foxwood and Pinchfield animals were permitted to take up permanent residence on Animal Fair—there was a cow with a knowledge of cheese-making, and a horse with an excellent background in military maneuvers, and several geese that could sort grain—but the unemployable undesirables … well, they were just left to whatever fate they had made for themselves. Although periodically called upon to dig out an old latrine or bury a carcass too festering to keep on display, for the most part, they were kept off in the various patches of weeds on the outskirts of the parking lots. Out of sight was really the best place for them anyway, as they were not much to look at—a few sheep who were forced to shear each other (with crude results), a gone-dry cow, a litter of snot-nosed puppies, a three-legged cat, et cetera.… After all, not everyone could have a tub. And from the way those wretched animals allowed themselves to smell, it was supposed, not everyone would want one.

Few of the fair animals could even imagine life without hot showers.

And yet, as easy as it was to find a hot shower, there did seem to be a few odd goings-on around the fair. The termites were proliferating at a rate beyond anything heretofore combated. And there were, too, the
woodpecker holes, which seemed to be everywhere. Hobart the bull, upon a visit to the carnival, suggested they might be beaver holes—though that idea was quickly proven incorrect by the
Trotter
. As for the wild onions that had sprouted in the grass lawns—well, the animals just gazed at them, and ate at the stalks off-pawdedly, and burped, and passed gas, and wondered distantly about that unpleasant whiff of onion.

And for all that, the warm sunny days still came—one after another. And the animals of Animal Fair went about their lives and labors.

And it was on one sunny summer Tuesday, not especially anything exceptional, that the lives of the animals would be changed forever.…

Their livelihoods, and even their existence, would be thrown into question—the future, so solid and impervious the day before, would become newly uncertain. It would be as if the comfortable days of the past had sought their own compensation—and where yesterday had been secure, tomorrow would be perilous.

And indeed, all was imperiled, on that Tuesday.

The ticket-takers had opened the gates of the park only a few minutes before … and the park visitors (each one a good, paying customer) sallied forth to the games, exhibits, or rides of their choice … and the park workers toted coffee and croissants to their places of occupation …

And it happened.

The Ferris Wheel was one of the major attractions of the park. Placed at the top of the second hill of the fairgrounds, the massive structure whirled with surprising speed—and from high atop, there was a spectacular view of the Twin Mills on the next hill, and the village across
the road. By the end of the day, the lines grew long, prohibitively so, but in the morning hour, anyone could meander up the short ramp, and, with his or her partner, occupy one of the dozen cabs on the wheel.

And on this morning, a crowd of Woodlands rabbits, geese and squirrels had been the first to the Ferris Wheel. And with the woolen candy salesman calling out his wares, and the warmth of the sun cutting through the dissipating mist of dawn, the Ferris Wheel made its first slow revolution—and then began accelerating. A ferret, who had explained he had acrophobia, stood with the Ferris Wheel operator, a poodle named Arthur, who had retired from jumping through flaming hoops.

“Higher, higher! Faster, faster!” chanted the ferret.

And then, in a sudden slicing motion of the paw—it all began.

It would later be argued as to whether the evil-doers had secured preplaced weaponry from a passing peanut cart, or had foiled the bloodhounds by dousing themselves and their arsenal in apple-wood oil, in order to mask any tell-tale odor. But regardless of the method that his treachery had taken, this ferret’s time had come.…

He had drawn his blade, cut the throat of Arthur the poodle, and assumed the controls of the Ferris Wheel—and before anyone could understand what was happening (was it part of the ride?) the Ferris Wheel had accelerated to its top speed. Gears ground. Sparks flew. And two pairs of squirrels were dragging paper bags through the ironwork—up to the axle that held the wheel in place. And then, in a moment horrifyingly lucid, the squirrels doused themselves with some greasy liquid, and set
themselves on fire. The bags exploded, and the Ferris Wheel was loosed—kicked from its moorings.

And the crowds of Animal Fair watched in a static horror as the wheel rolled, unstoppably, down the one hill, up the other … and towards the waiting Twin Mills.

Some of the animals on the ground were crying out in terror—and some of the animals on the Ferris Wheel were crying out as well. From the highest of the cabs, one human father was shouting down to his two sons, who had not met the height requirement, and to his wife, who had remained with the boys—

“I love you. Goodbye. I love you.”

Other voices began screaming—other bodies began running.

There was a putrid black smoke in the air—the corpses of the squirrels were now burning by their own fat. There were other animals—riding the Ferris Wheel—who were evidently part of the attack. With fanatical glee, they were shaking their fists and screeching—

“The Sugarcandy Lodestar!”

“The Sugarcandy Lodestar!”

And with that, the fair animals remembered Moses—and his Sugarcandy tales. And as they ran and took cover, they thought—perhaps therein lay some clue.

At the fair, it had been long agreed that if some fool duck or frog was so backwards as to give high-standing to Moses—well then, so be it, as the farm had Moses, and the likes of his paltry, miserable followers, well in hoof. But now, and suddenly so, Moses’s followers were returned to that lofty status that many had yet to experience in their own lifetimes. And they were elevated not just for the stressful occasion, as that was typically when
interest in Sugarcandy Mountain soared, but because those fair animals who followed Moses had some idea as to what those fool squirrels were screeching about. And even if Moses himself was nowhere to be seen, the Animal Fair followers of Moses were swift to provide his insight. Well versed in his preachings (for trials just such as this) they had immediately perceived the mistake in doctrine. It was that loathsome misinterpretation they had seen before. And as they especially hated any purveyors of this so wrongheaded notion of the Sugarcandy Lodestar—so totally at odds with the divine revelation of the Sugarcandy Mountain—they made the correction quite vehemently.

“No, no! It’s not the Sugarcandy Lodestar! It’s the Sugarcandy Mountain!”

And as they said it—the Ferris Wheel rolled into the Twin Mills.

And as they said it—each of the cabs occupied by the fanatical Woodlands animals began exploding, and burning.

The woolen candy concession stand, which had been in the path of the Ferris Wheel, was outright flattened—and in a flash, it was aflame. The thick black mulch in the air dropped everyone to the ground—to roll, to gag, to choke.

Flames of woolen candy fell from the sky. The fire stuck to fur and flesh—and those seared made a sound nobody ever wanted to hear again.

Then, the first of the Twin Mills, which had taken the brunt of the force of the Ferris Wheel … it collapsed. With a crash that shuttled several of the chickens into the
air, all that labor, all that lavished labor, was reduced to a dust—an unbreathable, black, killing dust.

In the cloud of the mills, there was no sight other than the forms of flaming animals jumping from the windows—and plummeting into the fiery rubble below.

But—it wasn’t over. More screams, more broken bodies—and one of the bumper cars had driven out of its tire-walled enclosure, and into the park. Swerving, tipping on its wheels, the car veered towards the laboratory of Thomas the goat. (Was Thomas inside?) With a mad yell, the driver of the car, a white and brown rabbit with huge, bulging, pink eyes, careened into the structure—

“The Beaver Code forever!”

The beavers! The animals realized—it was the beavers! The believers in Sugarcandy Mountain had been right! It was those crazed beavers and their stupid Lodestar! They were the ones! Even if they were nowhere to be seen—they were the ones! They were the ones, even if, now, they were embodied by only a pawful of crazed frogs, rabbits—and one elderly mole. All with big, rounded eyes, they shouted through the smoke—

“Free the village from the pigs!”

A hedgehog riding one of the horses screamed it louder than the others—

“Free the village!”

The three horses, who could only recite the alphabet to the letter B, made up the Horsey Ride, which mostly catered to juvenile animals who had visited the park with their parents. Only the occasional adult would ride the horses, who were agreeable even when they were required to bear the heavier load, as they had been allowed
to name the ride “Clover’s Horsey Ride,” after the mare who had watched over them, and loved them, even though they were dumb, when they were mere foals.

But now, they were foals no longer—they were enormous, powerful animals. And one of them had broken away. Having jumped the fence that surrounded the Horsey track, one of the three brutes was charging—running erratically through the fires. The animals were bawling desperately to the horse—trying to explain to him that the hedgehog on his back was the enemy. But that big dumb horse was galloping—and there’s no explaining anything to a big dumb horse galloping.

And if there was no stopping that charge, the only thing left to do was save the lives of any animals that might be in the path of (or a part of) that hedgehog’s target.
What is the target?
The way the horse and hedgehog ran helter-skelter, it was nearly impossible to tell if they were actually headed in any direction. But, whatever direction, whatever target, one could see that it, whatever it was, was coming up, as the hedgehog, opening his backpack (presumably packed with gunpowder), was dousing himself and the horse with kerosene poured from a thermos. He held the lighter in his paw.

It was only Benjamin the donkey who could see, or thought he could see, the hedgehog’s intentions. The pigs and goats, apparently, feared that the Jones House was the hedgehog’s target—but Benjamin saw differently. Wherever that hedgehog meant to go, that horse was taking him directly to the new barracks—Thomas Towers. A nervous horse, Benjamin knew it, would always go home.

And in that barracks, Benjamin also knew, there were
at least a hundred animals—some sleeping, some just sitting around on their four-day weekend. And among those animals, sleeping in Benjamin’s very own stall, was the love of his life, the one love of his life, the one love of his life that he had waited through youth and middle-age to find—Emerald the mathematical donkey. Emerald and her son, Kip, of whom Benjamin had also grown quite fond.

And Benjamin … who had always told the animals of the fair that they would never see how a donkey died, realized his mistake. He had said a thousand times that they would never see him die—but now, he knew, he was wrong. He had been wrong before—not to care, not to have hope—and now, he was wrong again. Donkeys lived a long long time—but for all, even a donkey, an end would come. And this, for Benjamin, was the end.

“Now,” bayed Benjamin, not so much to anyone in particular as to the world he was bidding good-bye, “You see how a donkey dies!”

Benjamin thought—

Kip and Emerald, they’re young, and I’m old. And there are other young animals in that new barn. And I know it wouldn’t have mattered to me much a year ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago—but it isn’t fair a short, cruel life gets shorter, and crueler
.

“Now you see how a donkey dies!”

And even as Benjamin issued forth those words to posterity, he was already running towards the spiny hedgehog on the rampaging cart-horse. And just as the pair erupted into flames, Benjamin’s body collided into them. And the three toppled, and burned—in a grotesque heap between the Jones House and the new
barracks. And as their blazing limbs still flimmered, and a unified pain screamed from the pile of three—those who were still alive knew that no one else would perish there.…