Chapter 3
“Mister Nut! Oh, Mister Nut! Ya gotta get me down from up here! Please? Pretty please?”
Grinning from ear to ear, Nut listened to the sound of hooves banging against the tin roof of the water tower and enjoyed a bit of quiet satisfaction. He would get Tater Blossom down from there… eventually. But right now, this was rather amusing and he was in no hurry for it to end. She was a brave one, walking right up to the very edge and peering over. Of course, if she slipped or fell, he would rescue her.
“This ain’t funny no more,” she called out. “How do I get down from here? What about breakfast? And other… stuff… that I can’t mention. Mister Nut, how do I get down? Mister Nut?”
With just a bit of magic, Nut’s tweed waistcoat was made fresh and clean. It needed pressing still, but that would have to wait for a return to civilisation. He combed his mane, made himself presentable, and wondered what breakfast might be. There’d been no instructions to come to the house for breakfast, and he wasn’t entirely certain it would be brought out for him and Miss Blossom.
“Oh, Mister Nut, please!”
“Now there’s a sight you don’t see every day.”
The sound of Hickory’s voice made Nut turn about rather suddenly, and he was quick to dispose of his grin, such as it was. Hickory was looking up at his daughter, squinting, and shaking his head from side to side. Nut saw a picnic basket on the ground, and was eager to find out what was for breakfast, but worried that he might need to explain his joke.
“Pa, help!”
“Tater, how’d you get up there?” Hickory asked with a squinty bit of curious awe.
“Go on, Miss Blossom, tell your father how you got up there.” Relieved by Hickory’s calm, curious inquiry, Nut allowed himself a good, sensible chortle.
Tater Blossom’s expression soured, and she fumed as she stared down. “Do I gotta?”
“Well, I’d like to know how you got up there,” Hickory said to his daughter.
“I walked.”
“You walked?”
“Ya, I did, Pa. I walked myself up here, but I can’t seem to walk back down.”
“She walked up there?” Hickory, now rather amused, turned his body to face Nut. “Actually, that’s a good place for my little Tater. She’s not locked away in a tower, but stuck on top of a tower is just as good.”
“Daddy, you ain’t funny!”
“I think I like this arrangement—”
“Daddy!”
“Ain’t gotta worry ‘bout colts—”
“Daddy!”
“Don’t have to worry ‘bout you sneakin’ out of the house—”
“Daddy, stop that! It ain’t funny! You ain’t funny! Ain’t nuttin’ funny ‘bout this in the slightest!”
“You and yer Ma won’t fight so much—”
“Daddy, please!”
Hickory gestured upwards at his daughter. “Lord Nut, I owe you a hearty and heartfelt thanks. Every father wants their daughter safe. You’ve granted me my wish.”
“Just Nut.”
From atop the tower, Tater Blossom snorted and whinnied, all while tossing her head about. After raising quite a ruckus, she said, “It’s so nice to see you all friendly, brought together by my entrapment. Now get me down!”
“I have other daughters, young ones. Think you could help me stash them on top of the other towers ‘round these parts?”
“Daddy, so help me, get me down!”
“Anything is possible, for a price,” Nut replied.
Hickory, his eyes bright and merry, had himself a good chuckle. “See, I had a good feeling in my gut about you, Nut. I came by before dawn to check up on you. I found you asleep, but there was no sign of Tater, so I figured she went back up to the house. Her Ma said that she’d want to sleep in her own bed. So, tell me, Nut, was she a good helper? Did she actually help?”
“I’m still up here. Is that breakfast? I’m powerful hungry!”
“Oh, she was a tremendous help,” Nut replied, honest as ever. “She’s keen-eyed.”
“Aye, she gets that from me, I think.” Ears pricked, Hickory radiated paternal pride while ignoring his daughter’s distress. The wiry earth pony sidestepped away, then backwards, and casting a sidelong glance at Nut’s journals, had himself a quick look at the drawings within. Then, turning about, he had himself a much better look, and leaned down to study the detailed sketches.
“I can’t believe you right now, Daddy!”
“Did you draw these?” Hickory asked.
“I did,” Nut replied.
“But… you don’t have an artist’s mark. How? These are incredible.”
Nut’s ears fell back into a somewhat submissive posture. “Hard work, Mister Wainwright. Lots and lots of practice. I don’t have a mark for biology either, but that is my calling.”
“But… how?” Blinking, his small eyes flinty and curious, Hickory chewed his lip for a moment as he shook his head. After his lip slipped out from between his flat, broad teeth, he asked, “How though? A pony is his mark. That’s all we are, and all we’ll ever be. I make wagon wheels and wagons. If the need arises, I can do a bit of carpentry and some plumbing, but beyond that, I’m useless. I make wagon wheels, my father makes wagon wheels, his father made wagon wheels, all of my sons got a wagon wheel mark, and so did a few of my daughters.”
“Try practicing doing something other than wagon wheels,” Nut respectfully suggested. “It’s hard to start, but this is why you practice. Invest enough time, and you can be good at anything.”
The wiry stallion’s ears splayed out sideways. “I wanted Tater to get a wagon wheel mark. She’s smart, and that’s a problem.”
“That’s a problem?” Nut asked while remaining neutral-toned.
“Yeah.” Hickory nodded. “Now a pony that’s as dumb as a stump can work in the fields all day, and be happy. They don’t get bored, and bored is bad. Bored is how you get farm accidents, and farm accidents get legs lopped off or gets an eye poked out. Bored is bad. You wanna avoid bored. A smart pony gets bored out in the field working all day, and I don’t want a three legged daughter that’s missin’ an eye. No father wants that. I have nightmares about it.”
“Daddy?”
For now, Nut said nothing.
“Now, making wheels, it’s hard work, but it’s mental work. It’s mental math. Everything has got to be just so. It’s smart work, for smart ponies. But no matter how many times I lure Tater into the woodshop, she don’t come away with no mark. I’m starting to worry and get scared. Ain’t natural for a filly her age to have no mark at all. No mark for cooking, or farming, or woodworking, or making wheels, or anything. I gotta admit, I came out this way hoping that my daughter would have herself a mark this morning, after a night of trying something new. And near as I can tell, that didn’t happen, because she’s up there begging to be let down, and she’s not telling me about her new mark. So I’m a bit disappointed.”
“My apologies—”
“Don’t be sorry, you done locked my girl away in a tower, and I’m pleased ‘bout that.”
“Daddy, yer the worst! Both of y’all are! Get me down!”
“Tater, sweetie, you don’t know how good you have it. Yer Ma can’t reach you up there.”
“Oh, Pa, she’d find a way.” Up on top of the tower, Tater Blossom stomped her hooves against the tin roof while she shook her backside from side to side. “Please, get me down before something embarrassing happens! My teeth is a-floatin’!”
Nut raised a hoof and made an apologetic gesture. “Excuse me, but I do believe that I’d better get the young lady down…”
Breakfast was oatmeal, plain, and leftovers from last night’s supper. While Nut served himself and Tater Blossom, Hickory had his nose buried in Nut’s sketchbook. The oatmeal was placed into two wooden bowls, and the leftovers on wooden plates. There was a thermos that sloshed when shook, and when opened, Nut caught a whiff of tea, some kind of strong breakfast blend.
Much to his dismay, there were no teacups. That was fine, though. Rather than say anything, or complain, he would just pour his tea into his oatmeal bowl once it was emptied, and everything would be hunky-dory. Hickory grunted, and Nut wanted to know what he was thinking. In the very bottom of the basket, wrapped in a clean, white cloth, there were a half-dozen biscuits, still warm.
Lifting one out, he bit off a hunk, and was pleased by its simple goodness.
“The detail,” Hickory said aloud.
Swallowing his bite of biscuit, Nut nodded and replied, “I spent many hours in observation last night. I only ever saw brief glimpses and obscured flashes of the curious creatures, but I was able to assemble all of the details into accurate representations. It’s just a matter of making the pieces fit together, like a puzzle. I might secure a live specimen for a more detailed drawing.”
“These are like photographs,” Hickory muttered.
“They’re not perfect.” Nut saw Tater approaching. “Like I said, I took whatever I could see at any given viewing and put the parts together. I did it to give me an idea of proportion and mass. I drew the plants and environments as well, and tried to keep everything to scale.”
“What’re these hashmarks on the bottom of this page?” Hickory asked as his daughter sat down beside him.
“Rabbits,” Nut was quick to say in response. “Last night, as I watched, nineteen rabbits were caught and eaten. And those are just the ones I witnessed. I’m sure that more bunnies met a bad end.”
When Hickory lifted his muzzle out of the notebook, his expression was thoughtful. Calculating, even. “Twenty rabbits in a night or more in just one patch. That’s a lot of crops not-eaten. We do everything but lay out poison. The wife calls it the rabbit tax. I’ve even thought about hiring griffons to do a cull, but the wife, she ain’t happy with that idea. She hates griffons, ya see. ‘Cause they eat meat.”
Using his telekinesis, Nut served Tater Blossom her breakfast.
“Mama says that anything that’ll eat meat will eat pony—”
“And that’s evil,” Hickory said, finishing his daughter’s sentence. He sighed, his small eyes narrowed, and his face vanished back inside of Nut’s notebook. “Yer mother was up half the night, going on about Nut’s evil, and she seemed to think that we’d need to arrange a wedding by morning, because he surely would take advantage of you. A part of me thinks yer Ma wanted that to happen. She’s gettin’ desperate.”
Scowling, Nut tore into his biscuit, and gave it a good thorough chewing.
“Pa, Nut was a perfect gentlepony—”
“I know.”
“—until he left me stranded up on yonder tower.”
Hickory snorted, and chuckled a bit. “That was funny.”
“Not really.” Tater Blossom lifted up her wooden bowl, clasping it between her two front hooves. “So Ma wanted me to be taken advantage of?”
“Tater, how many heats has it been?”
“Daddy!” She almost dropped her bowl and her eyes went wide as her face darkened with embarrassment. “You shush that mouth! That’s private!”
“Tater, every single one of your sisters was married after their first heat. For you, it’s been what, three? Four? Five? I don’t even know.”
“Daddy, I swear to Celestia herself, if you say one more embarrassing word, I’ll overturn this here bowl of slop right over yer head.”
“I’d let you,” Hickory replied, his words muffled by the sketchbook.
Nut swallowed his well-chewed bite of biscuit, and took another.
“Rather rude of yer Ma to leave y’alls breakfast so plain. I’m a trifle irritated with my missus at the moment.” His face obscured, Hickory sighed.
“Now I’m too mad to eat.” Setting her bowl back down on the grass, Tater Blossom bared her teeth. “Mama wantin’ me to be taken advantage of. What sort of mother wants that for her daughter, anyhow? I have half a mind to go on up to the house and cuss her out.”
“Tater, please, remember I love you when I say this, but you’ve become a mouth to feed. You skip off from work ‘cause you get bored. When was the last time you did your school work? You don’t help much around the house, ‘cept for lookin’ after your little sisters, and I’ll give ya that. Yer Ma’s patience is wearin’ thin, Tarter darlin’. You should’ve had yer own family by now, yer own house, and you should be contributin’ yer fair share. You ain’t.”
“Well, ‘scuse me if I don’t want to spend the next few decades pregnant!”
“Tater, honey, the farm needs workers. The more workers we have, the more food we make. The more food we make, the better Equestria does. We’re earth ponies, Tater. This is what we do to do our part. I ain’t trying to be mean”—he lifted his face out the notebook to look at his daughter—“I’m just trying to ‘splain to ya why yer Ma stays so mad all the time. Yer Ma feels like she’s doing ya a favour by lettin’ ya stay in school this long, but since you stopped payin’ attention to yer lessons, yer Ma feels like you’ve turned ungrateful. That you don’t appreciate the kindness you’ve been given’.”
“All Mama teaches is the Will of Almighty Celestia.” Rolling her eyes, Tater Blossom let fly a contemptuous snort. “Mama doesn’t even try to make school interestin’ no more. She don’t teach nothing worth hearing to no one. Not me, not the little ones, not nopony. No more readin’, no more writin’, and no more arithmetic. She ain’t taught the three Rs in a long, long time to nopony. She’s just goin’ through the motions. And I hate her for it!”
“Tater—”
“Well, I do! I deserve better!”
Closing the notebook, Hickory set it down with great care, sighed, and then sat there, looking troubled. Tater Blossom folded her forelegs over her barrel, ducked her head low, and sulked. Nut, though quite bothered by all of this, continued to consume his biscuits, and thought about tucking into his oatmeal, so he would have something to drink out of.
“Tater, love… lots of ponies deserve better, but we’s stuck with what we’s got. It ain’t nice, ain’t fair, ain’t fun, but it is what it is. You have to accept that. The world is the way it is, and we’re stuck living in it, even if we don’t like it. I want better for you”—Hickory made a broad sweeping gesture at everything around him—“but this is all there is. This is all I have to give you. What you see is what you get. There ain’t no more. You gotta grow up, Tater… you can’t stay a filly forever. At some point, yer Ma is gonna get fed up, and she’s gonna toss you out on your markless keister, and there won’t be nothing I can do.”
“You… you… yer just as bad as she is,” Tater spat out and she narrowed her eyes at her father. “You let her whip me and you don’t do nothin’, and I know why. You don’t want her givin’ you cold withers at night when you go to bed. You could be stickin’ up for me, but you ain’t! ‘Cause I ain’t worth it, am I? Just another mouth to feed, ain’t I? For all your sweet talk about me bein’ yer favourite, you sure don’t back it up! Worried that Ma will serve ya a cold supper?”
Before her father could reply, Tater Blossom was up on her hooves, and with her head shaking from side to side, she galloped away with her mane and tail streaming out behind her.
Saying nothing, Hickory watched her go, and Nut ate his breakfast in silence.
“I didn’t want to get married,” Hickory said while Nut ate his breakfast. “Me, I wanted to join the Guard. I wanted to wear the golden armor. But that didn’t happen. I don’t have good tendons, so my joints can be a bit too bendy. My father sat me down one fine day, and he sorted me out. There was no fixin’ what was wrong, and I wasn’t ever gonna wear that golden armor.
“I was twelve,” the wiry stallion continued. “Since I couldn’t do my duty in the Guard, since I couldn’t wear that golden armor, I decided to do my part here. I told my Pa I was ready to do my part, and he got me liquored up with moonshine, and the colt I once was got drownt. That was the end of him, and good riddance. Next day, I married Blaue. She was nine, and itchin’ to get settled. She had herself a hankerin’ for it. We got our hooves all tied together and we pulled a wagon the distance, just as expected. My tendons gave way, and I twisted my knee pretty bad, but that didn’t slow her down in the slightest. She bore all the weight of that wagon while I limped along, and when the pain was too much to bear, she wiped my tears away with her ears.
“I spent our honeymoon on my back, tryin’ not to bawl e’ery time my leg got bumped or jostled. All those dreams of being in the Guard, they died, just a little at a time. I wanted to wear the armor, and I wanted to make wagons fit for war. But what I wanted and what I got turned out to be two different things. That’s the thing, Nut… you have to make the most of what life gives you.”
In thoughtful silence, Nut listened, and did his best to appear attentive while he ate.
“Thirteen daughters. A baker’s dozen. Five sons. Twenty some-odd years of marriage. Buried two daughters, and one son. One of my sons, he got himself some kinda fever, it got real, real bad, and it stole his hearing away. Doesn’t slow him down in the woodshop. Ain’t nopony I know that can turn a lathe like he can. And he can do it from sunrise to sunset, without fail or falter.”
Hickory sighed.
“Potato Blossom… she was… she was born different. She didn’t hide ‘neath her mother like all the others. She wasn’t no fraidy-foal. Nope, she was gone, lickety-split, and she wore her mother ragged. Poor Blaue, she can walk all day, pull a heavy load, but she’s not a sprinter, and Tater made her sprint. Even pregnant, and fit to split, Tater made her mother run after her, and that little spud wouldn’t slow down for nothing. There was a big wide world to see, and little Tater was in a hurry to see as much as she could, as fast as possible. And she never shut up… she talked her mother’s ear right off. Drove her mama nuts.”
Eyes half-closed, Hickory shook his head. “I don’t know what went wrong.”
Nut thought of his own parents. They weren’t so different, really. His mother and father had married at the age of ten and eleven, with his mother being a year older. Arranged marriage, done by the family matchmakers, who treated successful pairings like a science. For his parents, marriage was just another classroom, with teachers, tutours, lessons, and homework. They were supervised and at the slightest sign of trouble, assistance was given. Detrimental behaviours were corrected before they became a problem.
When at last they were well prepared and ready, they were given space to live their lives.
So there were differences, but at the same time, it wasn’t that different. There were similarities. Common ground. Nut had a match made for him, which he’d politely declined. No pressure. No consequences. His cousin was a bit miffed, but she’d forgiven him, and they still loved one another. They were still family, that part hadn’t changed. As he ate his oatmeal, Nut found himself wondering what might have been.
He and Pod might’ve gone to university together and been study partners. Helpmates. They might have traveled together, had fun together, been young together, and when the time was right, had a foal or two together. But Pod wanted the family fortune, and the family advantage, and everything else that came with being who and what they were.
And Nut… he wanted something different.
Pod studied the reproductive sciences and she too, was a biologist.
She was a pleasant shade of green… enough so that she was sometimes called ‘Pea Pod.’ A rather musical sort, she played the trumpet. For a time, he was certain her mark would involve music, but he was wrong. One day, while attempting to draw his blood while playing doctor, a syringe and a test tube appeared. So began her love of biology.
Nut was practically a hobo. He glanced at his suitcase desk and wondered what it was that he was doing here. Why he struggled to live by his own means and get by on his own merits. When he looked at Hickory, he saw a stallion broken by time and circumstance. It was pretty awful, really, but one could not simply say such things aloud.
He was a rail-thin hobo whose tweed was more repair spell than fabric. Why, he was so busy trying to prove that he could, that he hadn’t stopped to think if he should. What had being headstrong done for him, exactly? What had he accomplished? For that matter, what would poor Tater Blossom accomplish by being stubborn and defiant?
For the first time, he felt sincere regret over declining his shared engagement with Pod.
“You have regrets,” Hickory said, and this was a statement, not a question.
“I do,” Nut admitted.
“That’s two of us,” Hickory muttered.
“I am the agent of my own destiny. No idea how I’m getting there, but I know where I need to be.” Not one for self-doubt, Nut did wonder if he was deluding himself, and this pained him. “Come Tartarus or high water, I will accomplish the fate I’ve chosen for myself.”
“But how does a pony choose a fate beyond their mark?” Hickory asked. “You have an umbrella, for Almighty Celestia’s sake. How do you go beyond that, whatever that is?”
“I push ahead.” Ears erect, Nut held his head high, a Canterlot noble to the bone. “Blindly, if need be. I don’t need the assistive push and shove of destiny, only whatever motivation I can muster up for myself. My future lies in the Gallopagos. I can’t say how or why I know, only that I have a gut feeling. Quite liberating, really. I have no mark for guidance, no star to light my way. Only skillful navigation can save me.”
Shaking his head, Hickory sighed. “I don’t get it. A pony is their mark. That mark is everything they are, and everything they ever will be. It’s like a marked path. If you leave the path, you get lost. You know what happens to lost ponies? They get ate.”
Dropping his gaze, Nut stared down into his half-finished oatmeal.
“Tater has no mark at all. No future. There is no marked path. That scares me something fierce. I’m worried that she’s gonna go astray, and get ate. What can I do? It’s not my place to give her a future… destiny does that. I keep telling the missus to be patient, and give destiny a chance to catch up to Tater, ‘cause she’s a runner. I’m sure that destiny is getting close now, and it’s probably a bit winded from a-runnin’ after her. But Tater won’t slow down, not for destiny, not for her mother, not for anything. What can I do?”
Hickory stood up, gave himself a shake, and a weak, sad smile spread over his muzzle. “I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is, Nut. When it’s about noon, I’ll bring lunch. Yer still trusted with my Spudlet, Nut. She’ll come back once I’m gone. Maybe you can talk to her. Try to set her straight. Maybe she’ll listen to you. Anyhow, I gotta be going. There’s work to be done.”
“Goodbye, Mister Wainwright.”
“Later, Nut.”
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9701660
13 in pony years is about 16 in human years in your fics right?
A just nut, indeed. But will he save Tater from her fate(r)? I hope so.
You know what? I like the father. He is a fairly sensible and good natured sort, if somewhat bogged down by the drilled in views of the life he has lived.
I’m enjoying it! I tend to prefer your more slice-of-lifey stories over the more gruesome things like eigengrau or soul thief.
i really like this so far, i want the best for Tater, i hope she gets a happy ending
and Nut is fun too, love him so far 💙
I like Nut, he's a good but.
Hopefully something pleasant befalls Princess Tater, destiny perhaps.
Completely unrelated, or tangentially so at best, but I really wonder about the mechanics of Starlight in the Weedverse when I think about destiny, cutiemarks, and Skyreach.
Anywho, looking forward to whatever next installment you put out in the weedverse, be it this story or any of the others.
what does a cutie mark mean its subject to some interpretation. An umbrella is protection from the sun and rain a shield if you will.
9702190 The values shown here weren't that uncommon even in the US at the turn of the last century and is still common in other places.
I wonder what the cutie mark crusaders would have to say if they met Hickory, what actions they make in the farm community
Tater's going to have to make a choice soon. The community is too stuck in its ways and it will eventually force her to give them what they need if she stays, and we know what that looks like. I think they could find a way to change if they wanted to, but they don't, and it would mean finding a way to adapt to modern society instead of staying disconnected, and it would be very hard to do at that. Unfortunately, if Tater wants to avoid all of the awful, backwards expectations she is facing, she's going to have to go live somewhere else. As messed up as her family situation is it is clear that she still loves them and is loved by them, but their first priority is to the community at large, not to her. It's a low choice to have to make. I know what I'd do, but she'll have to weigh her own options.
As for her mark, I have two thoughts. One is that her destiny is something that just doesn't exist here due to the limited nature of the farm. The other is that it is something to do with changing the farm or the community, possibly as a teacher or a leader of some kind. It would be nice to see her make some kind of a difference here, I'm just not sure if that's possible. It certainly isn't without more members of the community on board.
9702258
So good to see people liking a character like Hickory. Too many sons and daughters complaining, nowadays, how their parents are awfull persons that don´t understand their needs and that they know better how to live their own lifes.
I was just like that. Everything wrong was my father´s fault. ´Cause, sure, it has to be. Since I became a father myself it became so, sooooo clear why my father did the things he did.
Miss the old guy a lot those days.
Oh, great. Now I´m all emotional. I blame you, kudzu !!!!!
It's fairly funny.
Hickory is mighty interested in those drawings. I wonder if he's curious about a life beyond wagons.
That's good pest control.
Pod sounds like a nice mare, but science-hobo is an important calling, too.
Let's remember Applejack left for the city without a mark, but that's what got her coming back to the farm and getting it.
A change in scenery might do.
Spudlet is an amazing noun.