After they had eaten they just sat for a while in companionable silence. It didn’t last long. Camels started getting restless, mooing and shuffling their feet. Logan cursed softly and stood up.
“As soon as I get those rain birds working, I’ll gut those two morons…” He muttered, stretching his back.
“Ow, my poor babies… Is big bad Logan going to hurt them?” Marie cooed, putting on her best effort of pouty lips and fluttering her lashes.
“Big bad Logan’s going nuts with them. And I have two more rounds to go before it’s finished for today. Don’t wait me for the supper. I’ll just grab something to eat when I get back home, okay?”
Had he known what kind of burden farming could be out in the desert he would have stayed on the road. But this had been what they both wanted. What they both needed. A place to settle down and dig in their roots. And things were looking up.
It had been slow going, but every day they had spent working together had lessened the fear in her eyes and posture. Every day spent on the field or tinkering in the shed had lessened his fears and tension.
He climbed on the trolley and grabbed the reigns of the camels. Snapped them lightly to let the animals know they could start walking.
It wasn’t usual, or even recommended to irrigate fields during daytime, but out here in the scorching inferno he had had to write his own rules about farming. So far he hadn’t managed to botch up anything completely. If they wanted to eat, he’d have to hunt. Only time of the day animals big enough to hunt came out was after sunset. He couldn’t very well sit on the trolley in the middle of the goddamned field if he intended to catch anything.
Surely he could have let Marie to take on some of the work, but she already had her hands full back at the house. Keeping them fed, clothed, and tending the small vegetable garden took most of her time. And she had taken on sewing clothes for sale as well. She had learned how to make cloth from straws that were left over after harvest. They weren’t very durable, but she made them colorful and decorated them with small trinkets they had gotten when they last time visited the settlement. At the end of the year, on market day they would be fit for a king. Not something people bought because they needed clothes, but something what they bought because it looked pretty. She could ask higher price from these articles than the ones she had made from furs and skins when she still lived with Sam. With any luck they would really be able to buy that pump and the hose he needed for the irrigation system.
“And after that I’m going to have me some camel-roast…” He grunted and smacked both animals harder with the reigns. If he as much as forgot for half a minute where he was, they stopped walking and stood there stupid, waiting that the tank on the trolley drained to the ground and made it soggy from mud, and he’d have to find that extra piece of strength to jerk it loose again.
“Goddamned… If I never see a camel again in my life, it’ll be all too soon… Move, you fucking hunched freaks before I come down there and move you!”
They would have probably gotten along just fine if they were genuinely stupid. Nobody could help if they were little slow on the uptake. But he was convinced that the camels weren’t stupid. Hairy fuckers were probably smarter than him and Marie put together. There was no other way why they could squirm loose from every trouble they had gotten in to. All they had to do was to smack their gigantic lips and flutter their eyelashes, flashing the most saddest, apologetic look to him with their moist, round eyes, and his all intentions of butchering them to where they stood disappeared. Vanished to thin air. Ug and Glug. Ug was the uglier from the pair. Glug had gotten its name soon after it had wandered to back garden where Marie had been doing laundry. She had turned her back for long enough to pin few shirts to the clothesline, and when she had turned back towards the pail camel had been drinking from it. It had finished the soapy water, smacked its lips satisfied and wandered off before she had managed to give it a good spanking.
No. He wouldn’t be able to finish them off. In a way they had become part of his family. Their babies as Marie had put it.
“Then again… Do that one more time and it’s open season for camels! I fed you fuckers this morning! It’s time to work, not to eat!” Camels raised their heads from the ground from where they had been nibbling the light grey growth of grain. Turned to look at him. Ug had the balls to spit at him.
“I’ll fucking gag you! Move!”
Camels peered him through lowered lashes, then turned to look at each other. Turned to look at him for the one last time before they straightened their long necks and started to tug the trolley forward again.
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