“They’ve got hand-pump garden sprayers up at the ranch,” said Galen, slowly, as if the thought was just occurring to him. “We could borrow those. Take a break from digging tomorrow, and spray instead. Then we’ll get some black garbage bags from the supply hut and maybe take a trip to the dump on Friday, sothose bags aren’t just sitting around.” He looked at his team, but they were already smiling. “How does that sound?”
Toby was practically jumping up and down, giddy with the idea of using an ordinary garden sprayer, and Galen had a moment of giddiness himself.This is working. I can do this!But then Toby bumped into Owen, and the two of them started grappling, pushing against the table, and sending pretzels flying.
He pulled Toby one direction, and thankfully Bede pulled Owen the other direction.
“You guys need to stop fighting,” said Galen, as he eased his laptop away from the edge of the table.
“You and Bede fight,” said Toby.
“Yeah, like all the time,” Owen chimed in. “Just today, in fact.”
“Well, we shouldn’t have been,” said Galen, just at the same time that Bede said, “We kissed and made up, so it’s all good.”
The laugh escaped him, and though it jarred his nose, it felt good, and his smile at Bede came without notice, and the returning smile from Bede was warm and genuine.
Distracting himself, Galen tucked his laptop under his arm like a fussy librarian with a precious book.
“I’m going to put this away,” he said. “You guys are at leisure until dinner.”
Quickly walking away before they could stop him, Galen practically trotted to his tent.
There, he dug for his small travel bottle of Tylenol and socked back three with a swallow of water, the last of it, from his water bottle. Maybe he should get some of that arnica-whatever-it-was, like Royce had suggested, because his forehead felt sore, like the Tylenol couldn’t touch it.
Right before dinner, he scurried to the first aid hut and dug in the drawer for the tube of arnica.
After squinting at the tiny print on the label, he carefully spread some along his forehead and the bridge of his nose, and told himself he wasn’t imagining the almost immediate effects. Sure, his forehead still hurt, but when he touched it, it wasn’t quite as sore.
In line for the buffet in the mess tent for dinner, he scooted right up to stand behind Bede. Who, he realized, this close up and facing away, was a half a head taller than Galen and, beneath his shirt, was muscled all up and down. Not that Galen was staring.
“Hey,” he said, tugging on Bede’s sleeve.
Bede whirled around as though Galen was an unknown threat, but when he saw it was Galen, his stance relaxed.
“Got to be careful doing that,” said Bede. At Galen’s confused expression, he added, “I got all these reflexes.”
“From prison or before?” asked Galen, unable to stop himself.
“My whole life,” said Bede with a sigh.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Galen said.
“You weren’t,” said Bede. “Don’t worry about it.”
Dinner was a quiet affair, as the heat seemed to be getting to everybody, and there wasn’t a campfire, either.
It wasn’t any cooler on Thursday, as the sun was blazing through the trees with no clouds in sight and no wind to stir the air. Galen could finally say that he knew what being in an oven felt like. At least his team had hats to shade them, and they had the ice chest of water close at hand.
Galen made sure his team was wearing gloves, himself included, to pack up the pulled knapweed into black garbage bags. It made a nice break to do that instead of dig in the dirt, even if the edges of knapweed prickled on his skin when the sleeve of his shirt pulled up. And it was even fun to toss the bags into the back of one of the silver trucks, and to pile in.
As Galen drove up the switchbacks, doing his best to ignore the solid masculine form of Bede in the passenger seat, with the window open and his arm resting there, shirtsleeve rolled up, Toby leaned forward from the back seat.
“Do we get to stop at Starbucks?” he asked loudly in Galen’s ear.
“I believe I have enough money for pup cups,” he said.
He tried to hide his grin, but after Bede threw back his head and laughed out loud, blue eyes sparkling as he glanced at Galen, Galen didn’t bother to hide it.
Maybe there was a way to balance being a nice guy with being a boss who kept his team on target. It did seem he was going in the right direction, but perhaps he should pull Gabe aside and have a quick chat about it, get some advice.
