The thirty-three sheep fill the dirt road like fog. Fog with a mass. A car honks at the sheep. A stiff, short honk. Like the person inside is angry but doesn’t want to scare the sheep. The honk doesn’t scare the sheep. If it did, it would not matter. The sheep will not, would not, move; they like paths. A third of the sheep turn their head’s to look at the sound. A lazy, instinctual response.
Pluto knows we are all a shepherd of something. They wonder what he must be a shepherd of. And why he is shepherding so fast. He must have lost a lot of what he is guiding–hastiness loses flocks.
Pluto stops walking. Stands in place. Lets the car stroll by them until they are next to the driver’s window. They match the car’s pace (this is easy, the sheep have lulled the car into a crawl). He looks like a city boy. Fine, clean suit. Hair slick from gel and not rain or grease. Pluto grins, amused and not caring to hide it.
“Are my sheep slowing you? Where must you go that you must go there so fast?”
sheep. dozens of them. countless smears of white gone gray in the dusk.
the herd is an expanse that runs as thick and wool-y as clouds sitting low on a mountain. yes, except this isn’t a mountain. this is a back-road. the place, here and now, is very much the outskirts of the city, the outskirts of the countryside, meaning: there are no farmlands. not here. there are no other cars, either, and yet-- and yet!-- here he sits, two miles into antsville ( sheepsville? ) with no end in sight. it’s not common. he’s halfway to another staccato honk when their leader bends their spine to loom at his open window.
the laugh he offers is as clipped as his horn.
‘ they certainly aren’t getting me anywhere. ’
he is, at the least, polite enough to keep his eyes on the congested roadway as he speaks. can’t afford any red on his ledger, see. his conscience, either. ( ah, he does have a heart. the gossip columns would be scandalized by the notion, as would his mother, too, perhaps. half the continent, actually, while we’re at it. ) he brakes gently at the sharp, sudden step in from a sheep at his left headlight. his fingers tighten tellingly, agitatedly against the wheel.
he doesn’t quite answer the question. ‘ where is it that they must go so slow? ’
it’s common knowledge, this (or so he’s believed thus far): ‘ don’t they know the left lane is for burning rubber? they seem more liable to freezing the damn stuff. ’
