Morning Routine
Admiral Biscuit
She always woke up before her twin brother.
He said that was because she was born first.
She poked his shoulder to wake him up, then headed downstairs to start making coffee. Swanky wouldn’t get out of bed until he smelled the coffee even though she knew he was awake: she’d heard him grumble under his breath.
It was good to have a morning routine. Mersey opened the dampers on the stove and tossed in a fresh log. She set the percolator on top of the stove and scooped the grounds into the brew basket like she always did. Water came next, poured over the grounds to get them ready to brew.
While she waited for the coffee to start going, she ran a brush through her mane. She could curry her coat, too, but didn’t bother. The harness would just mess it up again. Currying was an evening task. She wasn’t vain enough to worry about some sleep matting in her coat.
Swishing her tail didn’t get all the snags out; she was still brushing it into order when she heard hoofbeats echoing on the staircase. A moment later, Flash Lock stepped into the kitchen, her mane and coat also mussed from sleep. Working ponies weren’t vain ponies.
“Morning, Mersey.”
She nodded in reply and went back to work on her tail.
Flash would make breakfast, oats for her and then something else for Swanky and herself. Neither of them ate oats very often, which was silly: a good day started with oats.
As the percolator began burbling, a heavy set of hoofsteps sounded on the stairs; Swanky had finally roused. His mane was tossuled and his fur was clumped, and Mersey was ready with a brush. She had to look after her brother.
•••
Flash made eggs and Mersey sneaked a few off Swanky’s plate, just a couple bites. She had her own small mug of coffee too. She didn’t really like the taste: acidic and bitter. But it made her feel alert and perky. Too much and she got nervous, started shifting around on her hooves. A few sips were plenty.
Flash and Swanky chatted about the load and the weather and what traffic might be like on the canal, and Mersey listened to them talk. Then breakfast was over, and they disappeared through the connecting door to the warehouse to start loading the boat.
Meresey yawned as she collected the dishes, and piled them into the washbasin. She plunged them into the warm, soapy water and scrubbed them vigorously with her washcloth, getting all the little scraps of food off. Washing dishes was calming work, and a proper bookend to a meal.
Once they were all arranged in the drying rack, she slipped into the adjoining tack room. It was time to put on her harness. First she inspected it, making sure all the straps and traces were in good condition. Other ponies had broken their harnesses before, and she’d seen plenty along the canal and around the city which were ready to break. When she and Swanky got their first pass-me-down harnesses, her father had told them that if they took good care of their equipment it would last a lifetime and never let them down. While that obviously wasn’t true of a foal’s harness that would be outgrown, their eventual adult harnesses ought to last forever.
Getting into it was the final part of the morning routine, a chance to both do a familiar task and to mentally prepare herself for the day’s work. She’d looked outside and read the newspaper already, she knew what the weather was supposed to be. She could see how the canal was running from her bedroom window, and she’d gauged coal barge traffic from what had gone past since she woke.
There wouldn’t be any passengers riding on their barge today. Sometimes there were, and she had mixed feelings about them. Having a routine was good, and passengers changed that routine. Cargo was quiet and stayed where it was put; passengers wandered around and got in the way and talked too much.
•••
Sometimes passers-by made fun of her or Swanky, sometimes they said that towing a barge was no skill at all, that it was slow and plodding and she’d just put her head down and ignore them. Knowing when to pull and when to let the barge drift, knowing how to anticipate stops and let the barge coast neatly into a lock or a basin, that had taken her months to learn. Every time she got it wrong, she knew Flash was frustrated: messing up made more work for both Flash and for herself. If there were other bargees around, mistakes provided plenty of opportunity for light-hearted ribbing. At first she’d been frustrated and offended by the casual insults tossed about, then she’d gotten used to them and would just ignore them. She was learning. Nopony plowed a straight furrow their first time, either.
Those days were long past; water under the hull. Now she was a veteran, honed by years of experience; by the time their barge reached the tunnel, she already knew how it was going to handle.
It wasn’t like hauling a plow on the farm, or even a wagon. Everything changed every day. Even the algae that grew on the hull made a difference: it made the barge feel sluggish. Every six moons, she hauled it into a dry lock and the three of them set it on blocks and spent all day scraping the bottom.
It wasn’t a pleasant task, but it was a good change of routine, and it was nice to see the bottom of the barge sparking clean at the end of a long day.
Back on the farm, equipment had gotten maintenance on regular schedules. That was the way to make sure that everything was still working, and to spot little problems before they became big problems.
•••
Sometimes they went past Stroudwater, far enough up the canal to see coal loading docks. She’d watched towponies haul a barge into position and then stand there until it was loaded, then pull it out only to be replaced by another a few minutes later.
They didn’t have a crane with a lever to dump a cargo in their barge; the three of them worked to load it, rolling barrels down the gangway or carrying boxes on their backs. For sacks, they used the clever wooden panniers Flash had: a quartet of hooks to hang the sacks on, braced so they wouldn’t fall off even though there was no belly band.
Mersey helped load, and since she pulled for the first leg Flash would cut her off when the barge was almost full. Enough time to use the privy—another side effect of morning coffee—and then put on her harness and hitch herself to the barge.
The routine didn’t always go to plan, but on days when it did, she was just starting to fasten the towrope to her harness as Flash and Swanky tugged the gangway off the barge.
Swanky always pulled on the bow rope to get the barge moving, giving her a little help even if she didn’t need it. Everything fell into place as she felt the harness tighten against her shoulders, as she felt the resistance of the barge against her, as her hooves dug into the towpath. Pulling a plow was hard work since the soil fought back. Water didn’t; once she overcame its initial resistance and got the boat moving, the work got much easier.
She turned her head, making sure that all the lines had been cast off. Not that she didn’t trust Flash and Swanky to do it, but one of the lines might get snagged. She’d gotten plow harnesses caught up when she was a filly, and the barge had more lines than the plow had traces.
Everything was clear. Flash had a tangle of rope beside her and a hoof on the tiller, while Swanky was coiling the bow-rope on the deck, not in a neat spiral like on pleasure boats that valued appearance over convenience, but instead in a handy loose bundle that could quickly be tossed ashore as the need arose.
Mersey turned her head forward and concentrated on her task, pacing her steps to align with the reluctant pull of the barge behind and the surges in the tow rope. It always took a moment for things to align, for her to get in pace with it, and then everything would lock in—she’d know how the barge felt, how the rope stretched and pulled back, how the minute current in the canal was running.
As it grudgingly sped up, so did she, establishing an easy walking pace she could keep up for hours, the resistance of the barge fading away as it gained momentum. The barge settled into its track as Flash gave the tiller one gentle push—a moment of resistance as the bow tried to counteract its crosswise cut before settling down on its appointed course, and now there was nothing but the towpath in front of her, a familiar route.
It wasn’t far to the tunnel—and then they’d be out of the city. Out where the air was fresher and the sun brighter, where she didn’t have to constantly hear all the noises of traffic and trains and industrial equipment. Having a house and warehouse in the heart of the commercial district, right next to the canal, was convenient for hauling loads in and out; if she’d had to stay there every day she would have quit. There were some ponies who just towed barges around Manehattan, and she didn’t understand them at all.
•••
Swanky stopped the boat near the mouth of the tunnel, and got out to hang a lantern on her harness. Sometimes there wasn’t traffic in the tunnel and they didn’t have to stop, and he’d trot down the towpath to put it on her. At first she’d liked it, since it gave her assurance that the path didn’t suddenly just drop off into the water. Now that she was familiar with the tunnel, it was just a minor annoyance, but a routine annoyance.
Just like locks—in an ideal world, the canal would be flat and level forever, and she could tow the boat all day without ever having to stop, without ever having to close and open gates. That was the one thing she missed the most from the farm: she could put on her plow and then just work without stopping until the field was all plowed.
Two coal barges came through heading downstream and then it was their turn. She took the slack out of the line and set her hooves as the line stretched and pulled back, the elasticity pulling the boat free from its mooring. It took her a few steps to match the pace, and then she was in time with the surges from the line, and then there weren’t any as she crossed through the cut stone portal and into the tunnel.
The air inside the tunnel was cool and musty, and it always seemed the same no matter what the air in Manehattan was like. She didn’t like the smell, but at the same time it was familiar, and a buffer between the city and the country.
Mersey kept her head down, not because she needed to see the path in the dim light of the crystal lamp, but because the ceiling was stupidly low and she was a big mare. She’d banged her head on it a few times, places where the roof of the tunnel had settled or else the ponies excavating it had gotten lazy.
•••
To her mind, the trip didn’t really start until they were on the other side of the tunnel, out of the sounds and smells of the city and into a proper canal.
By her estimation, they were the first barge out of Manehattan—she hadn’t seen any pass their warehouse, and only Hucknell had a dock between them and the tunnel. They weren’t usually early risers; while they occasionally towed supplies out of Manehattan, mostly it was strings of empty coal barges bound for the mines which arrived when they got there and not a moment before.
The cluster of early morning Manehattan-bound traffic meant that the lower gates would be set for them, unless there was a barge in the locks already.
As she got closer, she saw that the gates were closed. It was still too far to see if the lower paddles were open, and too far to feel the current . . . but as they got close, she spotted a towpony trotting to the gate wheels, and a few minutes later felt the gentle tug of current on the barge.
There was always competition for the locks, and it was best to be ready to get in before the barge that was in the locks could leave, assuring themselves a spot. While it was polite to let rising traffic into the lock before closing the gates, some companies tried to run the water up with the lock empty if they had other company traffic behind them, speeding their loads and slowing everypony else down.
The colliers rarely did; there was no real competition to get coal to Manehattan faster than the other barges. As long as it got there before the yards were empty, that was good enough.
There was no way to know how many boats were in the locks, not until the gate opened. She slowed her pace; she knew how fast the water in every lock lowered, and how much clearance would be required for outbound barges. She knew it was easier to keep her boat in motion rather than let it stop and have to get it moving again—if the barge stopped, Flash would help push to get it underway, and every time she did, Mersey felt like she’d failed. A good trip was one where the barge only had to stop inside the locks, although those trips were really rare.
Mersey felt the towline slack across her back, and then dip into the water as the barge coasted. She didn’t like it when the rope got wet, but not everypony locked through at the same pace. She hadn’t recognized the towpony at the gate and had no idea how quickly she’d get her boat out.
She heard Swanky behind her, the solid thump as his hooves landed on shore, and then he trotted past, up the slope to the top of the gates. He glanced down into the lock, nodded at Mersey, then made his way across the top of the downstream gate.
He’d barely crossed before the gate started to swing open, and she picked up her pace. It was easy with no pull on the rope.
The outflow from the lock gates swooshed past and a moment later caught the barge, slowing it even further. That was a disruption in the sounds of the canal, but a known one, an expected one. Her brother hadn’t signaled her that there was a boat on their side, so she started walking again, feeling as the rope came back out of the canal, hearing the droplets of water being squeezed out as it pulled tight, feeling the drag as the barge came under tow again.
A few shouts came from the lock, towpony and bargee preparing to get underway. The gates were nearly open, and the tossed towrope snaked out almost as quickly as the towpony made her way to the path. She caught it in her teeth then fumbled it as she tried to hook it to her harness.
Different companies had different ideas on the towrope. Some thought it was best to have a short rope, which meant that the towponies had to unhook themselves to work the locks. Others preferred long ropes, letting their towponies run around while staying hooked up. A few locks wouldn't allow it, the stairs were in the wrong place.
Flash liked a long rope. She said it was easier to shorten it when needed than to lengthen it. That had been a strange departure from pulling farm implements which always followed close to her rump, but Mersey had gotten used to it. Barges responded slowly anyway, so the extra rope wasn’t a hindrance.
She watched as the towpony finally got the towrope hooked on her harness and started pulling the slack out; the bargee pushed against the upper gates to help the barge get moving.
If it was still in the locks when Flash’s barge was in, they’d help push it the rest of the way out. Everypony on the canals helped each other, though sometimes begrudgingly. It was the only way to keep traffic moving. Swanky was watching, and he’d go down and lend a hoof if needed, but she got the rope on before he had to.
Their barge was gliding into place as the opposing towpony fetched up against the end of her line and skidded on her hooves before regaining her footing.
Mersey could sympathize; she still remembered the first time that had happened to her.