The children grew heavier the more I watched them. Their little thighs puffed up, their backsides ballooning, their disproportionate heads leaden as their fingers chubby and exploring reached for the ponies’ ears, and they kicked their sides as if they were really guiding them. They pulled at the mane of hair that hung down over the eyes and buried their noses into it, or cocked their heads lovingly embracing the animal’s neck to give their parents a big smile.
And the axle went around creaking and groaning, screeching through the hoots of the children and the rusty spokes of the wheels hitched up to the car that seated six. And the carousel music tried to drown the children’s hoots, the imagined neighs, the whinnying, tried to drown the communicative pawing with dazzling curvets. The children saw the horse’s teeth bared permanently, felt the froth flinging from the mouth, imagined long lines of saliva extended by the swift movements of the head, imagined plaster necks of chestnut and dapple gray, rosy muzzles, the shiniest white underbellies, the silver manes flowing in the ocean breeze; the ponies themselves freely galloping on the beach with the scud of the waves at their backs. And the children’s thoughts returned to the days of solitary knights-errant perched high on their mounts fighting off Saracens. The horses caparisoned in gold and silver with tiny mirrors, and their own metal armor gently jingling up and down, lightening the children despite their weight and oversized bodies with the stuff of dreams.
Did the parents too imagine plaster reinforced with steel, and colors richly glazed, and did they hear the bells that shook with the reins? And were they themselves not perched for a moment atop the horses in place of their children going up and down as the carousel turned and pumped as they caught glances of themselves in mirrors past, or tearing off to some urgency that their children now silent on the pony only betrayed the secret nature of? Could that have been what raced through their own minds as they forked over the few hundred pesetas for the ride?
And the children cried “giddyap, giddyap,” and pulled the bridles and kicked the little bellies. And of course the animals couldn’t move any faster but proceeded at the same slow mechanical pace bound to the rhythm of the music as they pulled the little ones around and around as the spokes of the wheel and the shafts of wood permitted. Two ponies in tandem, three alone, and a bigger one for the cart; the gilded chariot for the little Romans. Gladiators on their way to fight the lions the tawny sands on a hot afternoon suggested.
Did everyone give up such thoughts when the whole thing stopped? When the one refractory pony who periodically made everything come to a halt pawed some communication to the operator who only whacked him on the hindquarters. Did the parents see plaster fall off and stomped into dust? Or imagine some rust in the steel showing? A stirrup loose? Again and again the one refractory pony had to be wheedled, coaxed, pulled by the bridle. Did the parents see instead an oil can in the operator’s hand for the little pony’s joints to get him moving? Or were they already mumbling under their breath that the carousel was too old, out of date?
Did they think even the froth from his little mouth was for realism’s sake? Jets of saliva squirted out for authenticity. The operator labored, pushed, pulled to show that even the most refractory mount had to be goaded on occasion. And he even switched the animal’s backside with his crop to lend more credibility to the ride. For there were princesses waiting to be rescued, battles to be fought, towers to be stormed, whole cities to be besieged, and wide deserts to be crossed.
When the one pony stopped and his front legs buckled the shafts of wood could have had something to do with it, the buckles that measured his walk; it could have been mechanical error, not pony fault. For the shafts would have broken the legs if the pony had broken into a gallop, or stepped out of turn.
It could have simply been that he lost heart tied to the spokes of the wheel that took him around the same circle day and night. Even mechanical ponies with hearts of steel get tired, rust, no matter how many children thought they were given enough water and fed oats. Everything can’t go according to little boys’ and girls’, or their parents’, plans. Or was it none of the purely physical things, but that even plaster animals can be temperamental, and even the most iron, mettlesome heart could break? Perhaps too the same images that fled across the children’s and parents’ faces were observed by the pony, and he too would have preferred to be off running on the beach, or in the interior chasing windmills, than bound to a wheel and shafts that turned to the short whips of an operator who made money on the dreams that the smallest Shetlands just because of their unique size by some trick of nature were eminently able to fulfill.
I walked away refusing to believe the parents thought the little shackled ponies real. No, they must have had more imagination than that.
Richard Krause has had three collections of fiction published titled Studies in Insignificance (Livingston Press 2003), The Horror of the Ordinary (Unsolicited Press 2019), and Crawl Space & Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability (Unsolicited Press 2021). He has also have three collections of epigrams published. Krause lived for nine years in Japan and drove a taxi for five years in NYC. He currently lives in Kentucky where he is retired from teaching at a community college.
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