“That’s Not How It’s Pronounced!”
“Here to stop any fights from breakin’ out, Little May?”
“That depends, Auntie Keeper,” I answered, greeting her with a tip of my hat. “Are you planning on starting one?”
She and her friends giggled as they shuffled past me with the rest of the crowd. I affected a smile, as if I was only joking. Yeah, right.
Eutaw County is an interesting place, and as sheriff I have seen many strange and fearsome things. Unidentified lights sometimes move across the night sky, the cries of unknown creatures have been heard ringing out across the desert, and at least eight sites in the County are reported to be haunted. I have even seen ponies disappear right in front of me (we have a small problem with sink holes suddenly forming over abandoned mines).
But probably the strangest things I have born witness to, and the things that have frightened me the most, have been the monthly public meetings of the County Board of Supervisors.
Any gathering of the excitable citizens of Eutaw, even for the most banal of purposes, has the potential to lead to the extraordinary, and Board meetings are the worst. Perhaps I exaggerate, but if so I can be forgiven for being a little gun shy. I am a veteran of the Buffalo Casino riot of ‘08 after all. Then there was last year’s spirit summoning demonstration. And, of course, the still unexplained Great Molasses Inferno...no, the less said about that the better. I certainly don’t want to talk about it
Maybe tonight’s meeting wouldn’t end in catastrophe. There was only one item on the agenda, and it was a matter that the average pony would consider trivial. ‘Average pony’ is here defined as ‘not a resident of Eutaw County.’
The meeting’s venue had been changed from the boardroom in the County Hall to the Bird House Theater in an attempt to accommodate the crowd, and still only half of the interested ponies got inside. I did not get the impression that any of them would appreciate having their concerns called trivial.
“Evening May.” Mayor Grey Lessmane stopped on his way to the stage and greeted me. “Here to keep the peace tonight?”
“That is what I aim to do, yes, your Honor.” Mayor Lessmane held the mostly ceremonial post of mayor of North Eutaw, a village that would have been absorbed into Eutaw proper except that it gave us a second sports team for our high schoolers to play against. He held more power as the only member of the Board that nopony disliked, though that power was diluted as he was small and mild mannered and not good at getting a word in edgewise. Auntie Keeper had given him the nickname ‘Mouse’ back in elementary school and it stuck to him to this day.
“You’re a good mare, Sheriff. I have every confidence you and your deputies will keep things from getting out of hoof.”
That made one of us. Mind you, every lawpony in the county was here tonight. All four of us. It struck me as a mighty thin line holding back the chaos.
“Look, even some of the children are here,” said Grey, pointing to where Miss Shiny Apple stood with a group of her honors students. “I expect they’ll remember this night as a boring class outing.”
“Well, they’ll get to see how us adults make laws,” I noted. “But kids are resilient, and it probably won’t scar them for life.”
Grey chuckled. Why does everypony assume I’m joking? He hurried off to take his place with the rest of the Board. It was show time.
It had all begun well enough, as most disasters do. Dr. Spy Glass, a surveyor from the Royal Academy of Science had come by while scouting potential locations for a new observatory. He thought he’d found the perfect location. Our clear, dry weather gives us what astronomers call ‘good seeing’ and our location just off center from the middle of nowhere meant no light pollution. We are well served with regular rail service. We even get the occasional airship from Canterlot, to serve the military’s aerospace facility on Big Butte. In fact, the sciency types back in Canterlot are rather fond of Eutaw County. We have vast tracts of land where they can conduct dangerous experiments and we don’t mind the odd explosion now and then. The top of our second tallest butte was the ideal site for the new observatory, and Dr. Glass hurried home to set things in motion.
Unfortunately, the day before Dr. Glass arrived a wind storm had blown down the sign on the rode to the top of the butte. Dr. Glass was very diligent, and observed and recorded everything about the site that there was to observe and record. There was only one oversight. Dr. Glass never once thought to ask the name of the site.
A week ago we got a frantic telegram from the Dr. Glass, asking “It’s called WHAT?!!!”
Apparently, the good doctor had finally read the name on a map.
“Order, order!” called County Executive Gerhard Messerschmitt , pounding his gavel with great vigor. “This session of the Eutaw County Supervisors is called the order. Our first and only order of business is to debate the proposed name change of Sun Butte.”
At the mention of the name half the crowd rolled their eyes and groaned. Most of the rest stifled a titter with a hoof over their mouths. A few just laughed out loud.
This precipitated more furious gavel pounding. “Order! Order! Sergeant at Arms, bring this meeting to order!”
Big Hammer, who acted as bailiff and sergeant at arms, stepped forward and pounded the mace of office on the floor. The building shook. The great big stallion wielding a great big stick had the desired effect. The room fell silent. I knew the effect would not last, as ponies would remember that Big Hammer wouldn’t ever hurt a fly, and likely could not find a fly he could outwit enough to threaten with harm. His day job was helping out with his father’s roofing business, and his real name was Tack Hammer (which, ironically, is a small hammer).
Messerschmitt cleared his throat. “I have an opening statement. I think this entire proceeding is stupid.”
Messerschmitt had come to the County with a group of griffon settlers from East Marelin. He had been a small chick at the time, but he still managed to not lose his accent. It even became thicker when he grew agitated, and it took very little prodding for Messerschmitt to grow agitated. Before he was elected County Executive Messerschmitt was the county justice, and he had earned a reputation as a ‘hangin’judge.’
The griffon glared at the audience and adjusted his monocle. “It is pronounced ‘byoot.’ Only someone with the sense of humor of a small child would think this funny or offensive. I move we adjourn.”
There was no second to the motion.
“Very well, we shall actually go through with this farce. Dr. Glass, you seem to be at the heart of this, do you have anything to say?”
A very worried looking older unicorn in the front row stood, and nervously began to clean his glasses. “Well, as you know, the be Royal Society is very eager to build our new observatory in Eutaw County. The site is ideal, no other location we have surveyed comes close. I hurried back here from Canterlot in hopes of appealing to you about correcting the site’s one great flaw. You see, Princess Celestia has the final review of this plan. I..I simply cannot...I won’t send any paperwork to the Princess that includes a name one letter removed from a rude nickname.”
“Now, Dr. Glass, surely our Princess has the maturity to overlook this.”
“It will not be overlooked, Sir! And I do not appreciate your attempts to casually dismiss this.” The mild mannered scientist was actually losing his temper. “Princess Celestia acquired the nickname in her youth, shortly after gaining her cutie mark. She would never admit it, but this is offensive and hurtful. To submit paperwork with the name Sun...Butte on it where the Princess will see it is unthinkable.”
“It’s a disgrace! We had the chance to change this back when the build on Big Butte and we didn’t take it, and now we have this embarrassment!” This was my Auntie Keeper. She was invoking the Eutaw County corollary to Rottaler’s Rules of Order, which states ‘I am louder than you, therefore I have the floor.’
Messerschmitt sighed, and said, tiredly, “We recognize Mrs. Bee Keeper.” As if she had waited to be recognized.
“Well, it is a disgrace and an embarrassment! Half our young people and all our silly tailed tourists head up to Big Butte to get their pictures taken in front of the road sign, and they all pose the same way. They stand so you can’t see the ‘e’ on the end! It’s just disgraceful!”
“Aww, Bee, that’s just a little fun,” said Jam Canner. Supervisor Canner owned a pair of gift shops. He was also the worst dentist in western Equestria.
“You just shut, Jam, you’re part of the problem, you and your off color t-shirts!” Auntie Keeper was referring to a very popular line of shirts Canner sold, which read ‘I Like Big Butt.’ Canner insisted that the spelling was a printing error.
“A stallion’s got a right to make an honest bit, Bee.”
“I bet you already have ‘See Lovely Sun Butt’ shirts ready to be printed!”
“Order! Order! There is nothing funny about this!” The laughter of the crowd tended to contradict Messerschmitt on this point. “Ord...Oh, Dash it! Sergeant at Arms, please bring me a new gavel.”
Messerschmitt was a notorious breaker of gavels, and tonight looked likely to be a three gavel meeting. In fact, I hoped they had the forethought to have a spare table standing by.
“It’s just obscene!” cried Auntie Keeper. “And Sun Butte is even worse. It’s a deliberate insult to Princess Celestia!”
“Bee, that happens not to be the case,” said Precious Tome, the librarian and county historian. She paused to use a wing tip to brush a loose strand of gold and silver mane out of her bright purple eyes. Tome some how managed to do this every time she spoke. “The name Sun Butte predates the first arrival of ponies in Eutaw County. The buffalo named it in honor of their sun spirit before they had any contact with Equestria, and the first pony settlers here retained the name. Mind you, I believe those early settlers thought the word was spelled B-E-A-U-T. From the documents I’ve seen from that period I have to say, the spelling skills at the time were deplorable…”
“Don’t you dare try to lecture me, Dusty Tome!” shrieked Auntie Keeper. “And don’t you sass me by speaking of it as if it was ancient times! My grand parents were with those first settlers! And while I have your attention, I want to complain about your shelving policy. All the most useful books are on the top shelves. This is what you get when you put a pegasus in charge of the library…”
“Order! Order, order, order, order!!!” Messerschmitt glared, and bristled his feathers, and adjusted his monocle. “That is not on tonight’s agenda, Mrs. Keeper. Further, that is the second time you have insulted a member of the County Board tonight. One more such outburst and I will have the Sergeant at Arms remove you!”
It took heroic effort to maintain my poker face. Remove my Auntie Keeper? What scared me the most was I was pretty sure Big Hammer was dumb enough to try it.
Luckily, she responded with uncharacteristic good sense and held her tongue, though this resulted in a tremendous coughing fit. I think she had a retort along the lines of ‘You old buzzard!’ all set to go, and she was choking on it.
“Really, I continue to be amazed that we are here at all,” continued Messerschmitt. “Are we not adults? We should have the maturity to not give this potty humor a second thought.”
“I’d like to speak to that, if I may.” A young bat pony mare in the dress uniform of the Royal Guard stood and approached the stage.
“We recognize Private Marigold.”
Marigold was part of the night guard at the military aerospace center on Big Butte. She also often acted as the base’s liaison to the community. I suspect she drew this duty as she was the lowest ranking pony on base.
“Well, for the most part the County Executive is right,” said Marigold. “At least as far as Eutaw County. Ponies here are used to it, and don’t give the names a second thought. The buttes are literally just part of the landscape. But when I go home to Canterlot on leave things are very different. I have to listen to a relentless stream of jibes. It’s almost impossible to talk about work for more than three sentences before hitting a bad pun or a double entendre.”
“I am sorry that you feel you are the butt of a joke, Private, however...What?! What are you laughing at? Order, order!”
“Thank you for proving my point for me, Mr. Messerschmitt. Anyway, even when ponies pronounce it correctly I hear cracks like ‘Yep, it sure is a beaut!’ And nothing is more embarrassing than a slip of the tongue. I go to work on Big Butte every evening, and I work on Big Butte all night long. I have to say that very carefully.”
“Order! I demand order! Zis ist not funny!”
Marigold continued when there was a pause in the crowd’s laughter. “I also don’t think there’s a Guard anywhere in Equestria more eager for promotion than myself. I’m really tired of being one of Big Butte’s privates.”
“Order! Or...Arrrrg! Sergeant at Arms, another gavel!”
“I understand it’s worse for the scientists at the base. They are the top aeronautical engineers in the nation, and they keep being compared to proctologists.”
“Order! Vy are you laughing! Hammer! Where is that gavel?!”
Messerschmitt might not have thought this was funny, but the crowd begged to differ.
“I am very sorry that you are made fun of, Private Marigold,” said Precious Tome, when she could be heard over the laughter. “But surely things will be different for the staff at Sun Butte. The only humor in the name is in reference to a rude nickname that nopony ever uses.”
“Well, that’s almost true,” answered Marigold. She continued, obviously reluctantly, “No pony; be they military, civil service, or regular citizen; would laugh at that where Princess Celestia might hear of it. That is...well...there is one notable exception.”
“What? Explain yourself, Private.”
Marigold looked pained, but she took a deep breath and went on. “If Princess Luna finds out about Sun Butte she will latch on to it and milk it for all it’s worth. Her sister will never hear the end of it.”
“I’ll confirm that,” said Dr. Glass. He sounded very tired. “Ironically, at the same time that she is teasing her sister, Princess Luna’s feelings will be hurt that there is not also a Moon Butte.”
“There are features we could rename in Princess Luna’s honor,” said Tome. “However, they are all about half the height of Sun Butte.”
“Oh, dear, I think that would actually make things worse.” Dr. Glass began to clean his glasses again.
“But the Princesses are known for their great senses of humor,” said Jam Canner. “Maybe they would feel good about this if we just let them in on the joke. I know, we could send them some t-shirts as a gift…”
“Shut up, Jam!” The rest of the Board spoke in unison.
“I’m sorry, but the name is simply a deal breaker,” said Dr. Glass. “Unless it is changed, we will have to go with our second choice, inferior though it is. There is a mesa outside Appleoosa…”
He was interrupted by a collective gasp from everypony in the theater. To lose the observatory was a tragedy. To lose it to those upstarts out in Appleoosa...well, that was just intolerable!
“I am sorry that I am late,” called a great rumbling voice from the back of the theater. “I wish to address the Board.”
“We recognize Chief Tumbling Weed.”
There was a brief titter from the audience. Of course Messerschmitt recognized Chief Weed. How could you fail to recognize Chief Weed?
The huge buffalo walked up the the base of the stage. From there he still was eye to eye with the Board, who were atop the stage.
“Again, I apologize for my tardiness,” rumbled the Chief. I didn’t entirely believe him, as I we all knew about his sense of drama. The Chief was fashionably late. “I could have saved you some trouble. You can not change the name of Sun Butte.”
“What? Is your tribe going to protest the new observatory?” Messerschmitt ruffled his feathers, glared, and adjusted his monocle. I swear, the griffon practiced this move in front of a mirror.
The Chief was unmoved. “No, not at all. I have gone over the plans with our tribal elders and we think they’re excellent. As many of you know, the top of Sun Butte is sacred to our Sun Spirit. As planned, no ritual sites will be disturbed, the Sunrise and Sunset Stones will not be obscured, and I have it on the authority of our shaman that the Sun Spirit rather likes mirrors and lenses and other such shiny things. We think the plan is wonderful and we look forward to it. Our written approval is on file in the County office.”
“Then vat ist zee problem?” There was more feather ruffling, and monocle adjusting, and glaring.
“You can not change the name of Sun Butte as there is a clause forbidding this in your treaty with us. You’ve probably forgotten it, as it didn’t seem important, but I assure you it’s there. Sun Butte is named for the Sun Spirit, and changing the name would insult him. This would lead to the entire community being cursed with the Sun Spirit’s horrible wrath. We wrote the clause into the treaty to save everyone from this. You’re welcome.”
“We certainly don’t want to break our treaty,” said Grey Lessmane. “Is a renegotiation at all possible, Chief Weed?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. There are actually a few things we’d like to sit down and discuss with you ponies. There’s the possibility of expanding our casino operations, we would like the doors widened on several municipal buildings, and the library needs sturdier ladders…
“The name change, Chief?” prompted Lessmane.
“Oh, no. Absolutely not. That is simply not open for debate. I did mention the cursed with horrible wrath thing, did I not?”
“This is intolerable!” Messerschmitt reared, and spread his wings. The other board members had to duck. “First I must endure this farcical assembly because no one in this community has the maturity to rise above an idiotic buttocks joke! Now I am told that some figment of the buffalo’s imagination is dictating policy to us!”
I expected the Chief to react to this with fury. He certainly would have been justified. Chief Weed’s actually reaction was more terrifying.
“Uh oh,” muttered the Chief. He began to back away from the stage.
If the big buffalo wanted to put some distance between himself and Messerschmitt I definitely didn’t want to be there.
I waved to my deputies. This was the signal to get all the doors open and start quietly evacuating the theater.
I was pleased to see Miss Shiny Apple already had her students up and marching towards an exit.
Messerschmitt continued to rant. “I do not play make believe, and I will not pretend to be concerned about the hurt feelings of this nonexistent Sun Spirit!”
All around the theater ponies ears began to prick up and twitch. At first the sound was so faint you couldn’t even be sure if you were really hearing something. It was soon loud enough that we could all tell it was coming from high above us. Whatever it was seemed to be getting closer. Fast.
Messerschmitt did not notice. He was hopping up and down with rage, flapping his wings and waving his gavel like a club. The other board members had fled to the sides of the stage. “I vill not be dictated to by a phantom! I vill not let policy be made to please the whim of a fantasy! I vill not allow the Board of Supervisors to be mocked by a fictitious bit of hot air!”
The noise was almost loud enough to hurt your ears now. The orderly evacuation of the theater grew a little less orderly and a lot more hurried.
Still Messerschmitt failed to notice anything but his own ranting. “This ridiculous treaty has ruined everything! Vell, fine! Zee Sun Spirit can take his hurt feelings and shove zem up his butte! Vat is that infernal racket?!”
He soon got an answer. Something crashed through the ceiling and kept on going.
I thought I had gone deaf, but it was just the stunned silence that fell over the theater following the crash. Alone on the stage now, dust and bits of smashed shingles rained down softly on the County Executive. Messerschmitt looked up at the hole in the roof. He looked down, through a huge bite in the table and an even bigger hole in the floor, at the crater in the basement. He looked at the stump of his gavel, which he still clutched in his claw. The head of the gavel had been shorn off cleanly.
Chief Weed and I stepped carefully up to the edge hole in the floor and peered down. At the center of the crater was a rock the size of a foal.
“So, Chief?” I asked. “Is this an example of that horrible wrath you mentioned?”
“What? This? Oh, no.” The Chief nodded towards the hole. “This is just a subtle hint.”
Messerschmitt final found his voice again. “I move we table this discussion and adjourn.”
The rest of the Board, from their hiding places in the wings of the stage, answered in unison. “Seconded!”
Since it was obviously unanimous they didn’t bother to vote. They just ran.
No one was hurt. The Bird House Theater was even that badly damaged; a tarp over the hole in the roof and some boards on the floor and they could open tomorrow. I guess the Chief was right about this being just a hint.
The rock turned out to be just a rock. It wasn’t emitting any rays that would make a pony glow or grow tentacles or any such thing. It wasn’t even hot. I figured the authorities back in Canterlot would let us keep it.
We had until Dr. Glass’ train left the next afternoon to find a way to keep the new observatory. That was plenty of time to hold an emergency meeting, we just needed a clever plan. As luck would have it, I thought I might have one.
I found Grey Lessmane and shared my idea. “You Honor, what if we didn't rename the whole butte?”
A few months later I was looking at a sign atop the butte. “Future Site of the Royal Observatory at Sunset Cliffs.” There was no reason for Princess Celestia to ever know that this only referred to the top of the butte, or that the rest of the thing had another name.
I let Grey have the credit for the idea. It seemed fair, he had a similar idea of his own (he wanted to rename the whole thing Mount Sun, which would have been geographically incorrect). It put the old fellow in a good light, and I hoped the citizens of Eutaw would remember this come the next County Executive’s election. It would be nice to have a friend get the job.
The morning we rechristened the top of the butte began gloomy and overcast, but it turned to bright sunshine once we’d begun the ceremony. I guess that means the Sun Spirit likes the idea.
For now we have the meteorite the Sun Spirit dropped on us mounted outside the Historical Society Museum. We call it “The Sun Spirit’s Gift.” We’ll move it to just outside the Observatory’s gift shop when it’s finished.
Something that won’t be on sale in that gift shop is rude t-shirts. We passed an ordinance forbidding printed references to Sun Butte. Rumor has it that this left Jam Canner stuck with a warehouse full of bumper stickers reading “This Wagon Climbed On Top Of Sun Butte.” I personally confiscated the silk screen for a t-shirt that would have said “I Like Sun Butt, and I Cannot Lie.” I was not surprised by the misspelling.
Despite our unusual nomenclature, we in Eutaw County like to take our geography seriously. It will be nice to do so again.
Author's Note
This is a sequel to "Being Neighborly."
