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Mouse sheepishly grinned at him and rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry about that, but if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it’ll take very long to fix it up again.”
“It better not,” Grant scolded him. “It’s only two days to the show.”
“Then you gentlemen are part of the thunder tract?” Ben guessed.
Mouse sat up a little straighter and lifted his chin. “We’re only the best of the builders.”
“The less said about the racing part, the better. . .” Grant grumbled.
Ben lifted his chin slightly and furrowed his brow. “I haven’t seen a thunder race in quite a few years. It still takes place in the emperor’s horse training track, doesn’t it?”
Chase nodded. “That’s right. We’ve entered the car-”
“Bashful,” Mouse spoke up.”
“I told you weren’t not calling it that,” Grant snapped.
“Why do you want to call it Bashful?” I asked my carriage companion.
“Because it’s as quiet as a shy lady,” he pointed out as he folded his arms over his puffed-out chest. “And that’s all thanks to my latest invention. We’ll make a fortune selling these cars to all those same women. You know the kind, the ones that don’t want to be heard.”
“Are most cars-I mean, thunders, that loud?” I wondered.
“Haven’t you seen one?” Chase asked me.
There it was again, that situation where I was a fish out of water. “I, um, don’t live near any of the tract areas.”
“No wonder you didn’t know who we were,” Grant spoke up as he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “As for your question, they’re very noisy.”
Chase stuck a finger in his ear and winced as he rubbed it exuberantly. “Painfully so.”
Mouse’s eyes widened and he shot up. He began patting himself furiously all over with both hands. “Wait a minute! It’s not here!”
Everything came to a standstill as we all watched him furiously beat himself.
“What’s not here?” I asked him.
“My lucky piece of wood!” he shouted as he turned his pockets inside out. Bits of twine, metal washers, and lint fell out, but no wood. “I must’ve lost it in the seat! We have to go back to get it!”
Grant scoffed. “Like hell we are. It hasn’t done you much good since you picked it up in the barnyard two years ago.”
“But it has!” Mouse insisted as he continued his furious search. “I’d be dead without it!”
“You’ll be dead if we have to go back for it,” Chase snapped.
Mouse’s face fell. “Come on, fellas, it’ll only take a minute. Besides, you know we need it for what’s coming up.”
Grant rolled his eyes. “And if I go back for it you’ll shut up for the rest of the day?”
Mouse crossed a finger over his chest in the shape of a cross. “I swear on the stone that I will!”
Grant sighed but turned his steed back down the road. “Alright. I’ll be right back.”
He galloped away, leaving a sheepish Mouse at my side and an irritated Chase glaring at his comrade. “You and your damned foolishness,” he scolded him.
Mouse winced. “Oh, come on, it isn’t that foolish. I mean, you haven’t changed your underwear yet, have you?”
Chase’s cheeks glowed red and his hands that held the reins shook a little. “That’s not what you’re supposed to bring up in polite company!”
