Free Deborah Camp by Primrose

much.”
    Zanna and Grandy watched Donny wrestle the mules. A good half hour later, the mules were finally bridled and ready to hitch to a sickle mower. That took another half an hour. The sun was well up by the time they left the stables and went to the twenty acres of alfalfa.
    A nude twenty stretched to the horizon and Grandy hated to think what Zanna might have in mind for those acres. Cotton? Shuddering, he remembered the weight of a nine-foot cotton sack pulling against his shoulders and the sting of sweat in his eyes.
    Zanna stood out of the way with Grandy as Donny prepared to mow the first row of alfalfa. The short-tempered wrangler shouted and cussed and screamed at the nervous mules. Several times he whipped off his hat and flung it to the ground in a spurt of fury. Captain and Sarge balked and stomped and tried to gallop. It was just short of a catastrophe.
    After one row was mowed, Donny tried to turn the mules in a tight circle, but they wouldn’t budge. He swore viciously and grabbed the lines to use them as a whip. Donny cocked his arm. Zanna cringed, shutting her eyes. Grandy stepped forward quickly, urgently.
    “That’s enough! I’ll take them from here.”
    Zanna opened her eyes, grateful for Grandy’s interference. She hated it when Donny lashed the mules. Just because the animals were stupid didn’t mean they should be mistreated.
    “Think you’ve got the hang of it?” Donny asked, wiping sweat from his round face with the back of his sleeves. “These beasts are as dumb as stumps.”
    “I can handle them.” Grandy took the mower handles, stepping neatly into Donny’s place behind the mules.Donny gave him the lines and Grandy looped them around the wood handles.
    “Better keep a grip on those,” Donny warned. “Them beasts will run with you.”
    “Thanks for the advice.” Grandy smiled briefly, adjusted his ill-fitting hat, then turned his full attention on the twitching mules. Their ears were laid back. Their hides quivered. They were spooked and totally confused.
    Grandy’s training came back to him as if it had been only yesterday when he’d faced the rumps of a couple of farm mules. The pungent smell of freshly mowed alfalfa took him back to Tennessee. The soft soil beneath his boots, the fragrant breeze, the hot push of the sun, all combined to nudge his memory. It was as if he’d never been away from the land. The good times back then had been when he was alone in the field with only the mules as company.
    Sarge whipped his head around to look at the new man behind the plow. Captain’s tail lifted to shoo flies. Grandy cleared his throat and began talking in the language understood by most Southern plow mules.
    “Hiyup! Hiyup, Sarge and Cap!”
    The mules’ heads came up and their ears stood stiffly at attention.
    “Whoa-haw, haw, haw!”
    The mules executed a sharp left at the end of the row, turning in a semicircle and positioning the sickle for the next row.
    “That’s good,” Grandy said in a soft voice that barely carried, but was loud enough for the animals’ sensitive ears. “Hiyup.” The mules moved forward, but Sarge listed to the left. “Gee, Sarge. Gee, gee.” Sarge edged right. “Good. Steady now. Steady,” Grandy said in a singsong voice, and the mules stepped off the row in perfect unison, their big heads moving up and down with each stride, their tails switching with contentment. The alfalfa fell with a sigh around them, releasing a cloying perfume.
    Zanna laughed with delight. She clasped her hands and brought them up under her chin as she continued to witness the miracle Grandy had wrought. Sarge and Captain marched prettily while Grandy spoke to them in a peculiar string of nonsense words.
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” Donny said, removing his hat to scratch at his white, shaggy hair. “Can you beat that? That boy’s got some kind of way with animals, don’t he?”
    “So it seems, Donny,” Zanna agreed with another laugh of pure happiness.