I Grew My Boobs in China (47 page)

“I’m going to go catch a camel. What does it look like?”

“You’ll never be able to,” she replied.

“I can at least try!”

“REALLY?! Okay. This’ll be awesome!” In a flash, Bree was at my side.

“Go that way, and I’ll come in from the other side,” Bree commanded. We ran at them with outstretched arms to make ourselves appear bigger and more intimidating. She approached them from one direction as I came at them from the other in an effort to trap them into nonexistent corners, but they didn’t seem to be falling for it. Mom’s curiosity got the better of her, and she came out to assess our chances. She wasn’t long in delivering her verdict, putting her hands on her hips as she turned and left with an emphatic, “Oh, yah. Right! There’s no way, but good luck, anyway.”

The camels’ hides were splotchy: thick and fluffy in parts, bare and bristly in others. Their legs looked like those you see on some dinosaurs, and their feet had only two toes protruding from big, squishy pads. They seemed to be unwilling to expend any more energy than necessary so didn’t flee outright, but they did maintain just enough distance to avoid us. It was as if they were teasing us, and somehow knew we would never be able to outrun or outsmart them. Their big feet seemed awkward beneath lanky bodies, yet they moved surprisingly swiftly across the hot ground. As they circled around us, their heads bouncing loosely on their narrow shoulders, they appeared to be laughing at us.
They are deliberately humiliating us. Mom was right. We’ll never catch one.

We eventually had to give up, with the herd still mocking us only metres away. Future had returned from his scouting expedition and was walking towards us when we headed back to the car, a long towing strap bundled under his arm, “What are you doing? Coming to join us?” we joked.

“Yah. I catch camel.”

“No way!”

“I is professional. I know it camels!” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at that. I’d heard it before. I had difficulty envisioning how his attempts could be any different than ours, but he proceeded to hurl the strap at the closest unsuspecting camel with everything he had. Time after time, it either didn’t reach the intended target or merely bounced off harmlessly.

Future was about to give up when one ran right past him and his strong Mongolian spirit took over. He instinctively chucked the strap as he held tightly to the other end.

“Now rope should falling down, tangle in the legs,” Future explained as the strap landed perfectly between the humps and then swung around and fell into place. We held our breath, smiling broadly as the rope got tangled up in its hind legs, leaving the camel no choice but to stop. Future hastily bent over to untie his shoelaces and knot them together. Easing in beside the camel, he patted its side. He moved closer and soothingly whispered, “Sook, sook, sook.” The camel’s cheeks were puffed out and it foamed at the mouth excessively, like a kid who’d used half a tube of toothpaste while brushing. Confidently reaching for the nose peg, Future fastened his shoelace to the forked stick.

He calmed the beast for a few more moments with gentle pats and whispers before leaving me to hold the laces while he untangled the tow rope from the camel’s back legs, wound it carefully around his arm, and then slung it jauntily over his shoulder. Together, we led the extremely unhappy camel back to the van, feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

Bree and I marvelled over what the simplest things could be used for in the middle of the desert. “This kind of thing only happens in movies,” Bree was saying, “like the one where---” The next thing I heard was a loud OOMPH as she flew off her feet. The camel’s leg swung out to the side and roundhouse kicked her right in the stomach, sending her soaring through the air. It happened amazingly quickly and quietly; one second she was there, the next, she was doubled over on her bum in the sand.

She sprang back to her feet, somehow unharmed, and laughed, “I just got SMOKED by a camel in Mongolia. That’s awesome!” Luckily, the wide, round surface of the camel’s padded foot dispersed the intensity of the impact, and she was not so much hurt as she was surprised by the kick.

The others’ voices carried on the light wind as we drew nearer to the van. “Let’s look on the bright side. It’s a lot cooler today than it has been.” Mom looked up from her daypack where her thermometer hung on a carabineer clip. “How lucky is that?”

Ammon reflexively picked his up and said, “Yah, it’s only 35°C (95°F) today.” Given that the temperature had been ranging from 40–50°C (104–122°F), this was a distinct improvement. Remembering Future’s reaction when we’d first read those extreme temperatures made me giggle even now, during this time of uncertainty.

“What?! No! Let me see. How hot?? Fifty! I cannot believe. This my first time ever so hot! Oh my, I cannot believe. Jesus! How can you do this?” Future was always jokingly blaming our misfortunes on Ammon/Jesus.

Reflecting, I regretfully came to terms with what Future’s reaction said about him. He was a brilliant man with a calm, cool, and collected approach to life, but he was a city boy. His skill as a doctor couldn’t prevent death if there wasn’t food to eat; his knowledge of languages couldn’t rescue us from a wreck when there was no one to communicate with; nor could his beautiful, operatic voice sooth our nerves under such extreme circumstances.
Then again, he did catch us this camel!
I thought, smiling over at him leading the foaming camel by his shoelaces.

Mom and Ammon were still discussing the weather, there being little else to talk about at this point. “The cooler temperature will at least buy us some--- Wait! WHAT is
that?!”
Ammon shouted. I loved seeing the effect our entrance had on him.

“A camel,” I answered casually as we strutted proudly into their midst.

“Yah, I can
see
that! But what the heck are you going to do with it? EAT it?!”

“No! Of course not!” I was caught off guard for a second by the thought of killing this animal that promised to save our sorry butts.

“Pull. Pull,” Future started to explain.

“It’s going to pull us to safety,” I said, clarifying what Future was trying to tell Ammon.

Ammon laughed so hard he almost fell over. “And how is this fat thing gonna do that? I mean, geez, did you
have
to catch the one pregnant camel in the bunch??”

“HE’S not pregnant!” I declared about the admittedly rather large-bellied creature.

“Well, he sure isn’t happy at any rate! It looks like he swallowed a can of shaving cream, he’s foaming so much!” Mom commented.

But this fuming camel was about to become our personal tow truck! Once the tow strap was wrapped around the camel’s two humps in a figure eight, we tied the other end to the front bumper. Ammon and Bree manned the rear bumper; Mom was again in the driver’s seat, this time with very clear directions; and Future and I tended to the camel. We desperately tried to motivate our “engine” by smacking him on the bum with a flip-flop and dragging him forward. Despite his many squeals and groans, he grudgingly and tortuously pulled the van. I was grateful that he was at least polite enough not to spit on us. I’d heard that camels were prone to some nasty spitting behaviour, but if a camel doesn’t resort to spitting under these circumstances, when would be a justified time?
One more long-held belief bit the dust that day.

We made it all of 30m (98ft) over the next twenty minutes, when Future stated the obvious. “Enough. Is too heavy! Is better I go. I ride camel, bring help.” He shouted “Down! Down!” as he tugged on the shoelace in his first effort to mount the beast. The camel’s head bobbed up and down like a slinky toy as he pulled, and he wasn’t one bit closer to getting him to lie down.

He tried soothing him first, clucking “Sook, sook, sook, sook” as he patted him and tugged gently. He tried sudden outbursts of “SOOK SOOK SOOK!!” Running around to the creature’s side, he pushed his back end down, but the camel only reached around to bite him. It was man against beast, and man was losing. Future leapt here and there, pushing and pulling and tugging like a Nintendo character to absolutely no avail. When he tried to climb onto the camel from the roof of the van, we knew it was game over.

“Is impossible,” he said as he led the camel over to secure it to a tiny shrub, but no one heard him because, by this time, the rest of us had migrated back to the van to come up with a plan B.

Chapter 40

Stranded

“I must walk. Little Savannah, you have paper and pen?” Future smiled at me as he asked, as if I really was his baby sister. I pulled my daypack from beneath the seat and reached in for the two things that I always kept immediately accessible.

He took his time crafting a beautifully written Cyrillic “help/rescue” note for anyone who might come by. Despite the fact that none of us could read his note, we derived a lot of comfort from it somehow. He handed the paper to Ammon as the leader. Trusting that he’d done all he could for us, Future took his leave, saying, “Give to anyone who come. I am come back with help.”

“WAIT!” Mom stopped him when she noticed his empty hands. Searching around a bit first, she held the last of our water out to him. “Here, take it.”

“No, no. There is only that. I am okay. You keep,” he insisted.

Her motherly instincts compelled her to try again, “Future, we’ll be fine. What about you? You need water if you’re without shade and using energy, especially in that wind.”

He simply shook his head, “No, Mama. You can no doubt me, I am okay. You take for family.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Mom asked one last time. This time he didn’t respond; he simply smiled like he always did and leaned over me in the van to flick the headphones glued to Bree’s ears. He smiled and waved his fingers inches from her face to say goodbye.

“Bye Future! Good luck,” she said, and he turned to go on his way. I heard the sound of his crunching footsteps on the desert fading, and held my breath to listen for as long as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So. What’s the verdict, then?” I asked, turning to Ammon.

“Yah. What did you two find out when you went scouting earlier?” Mom asked.

“Let’s just say that, if you look out as far as you can see in any direction,” he stopped, mulling over his next words, “you don’t see much of anything.”

“Meaning?” Bree dared him to continue.

“Meaning that, this could potentially be very ...” he paused, resting his foot on the door ledge to move in closer to make his announcement. Then he delayed a while longer, resting his elbow on his thigh and chin on his fist. After wiggling his bristly jaw side to side waiting for the right moment and rehearsing exactly how best to tell us what we needed to know, he asked, “Okay, fine. Do you want the good, the bad, or the not-so-good news first?”

“Just tell us the good news,” mom said, always preferring to see the positive side of any situation.

“Well---” he began.

“WAIT! The bad news. Definitely the bad news first,” I interrupted, not wanting to wait another second to find out if we were as doomed as I suspected we were.

“If you just shut your mouth, you’ll find out sooner,” Ammon snapped, then continued, “Okay. Well then, the not-so-good news is this.” He decided to start in the middle, something he’d always thought to be a sound strategy when dealing with women. He scanned the van’s interior and reached under the bench when he’d spotted the tip of a blue lid. “We only have this much water,” he said as he presented the half-empty, litre bottle of water. There was no point in trying to pretend; the fact of the matter was, it
was
half empty, and we really could have used the other half.

“What’s the good news, then?” I asked, deciding that the bad news didn’t make me feel any better.

“The good news is that there are some gers out there.”

“Well okay, then,” I stifled a sigh of relief.

“The bad news is,” he carried on, careful not to miss a beat, as if there was any chance we might lose interest in what he had to tell us, “they’re pretty far away and there’s no guarantee someone is there. Even if there is, well, we’re kind of stuck in a low spot here.” Future had promised, when he volunteered to be our search and rescue hero, “I find you again. I can this place remember. You do not worried.” Now Ammon, the seasoned traveller and still our fearless leader, seemed to think that might not be possible. Our morale, which was none too high to begin with, slipped even more. “As soon as you clear that little hill, we’re completely out of sight. Who’s to say if it’s even possible to find the car again out here? So. There you have it.” He looked around soberly, as if waiting for hands to be raised in the classroom.

“So where are the gers?” Mom asked, trying to calculate our odds.

“And how many are there?” Bree put in.

“Let’s just say, one ger is off in the distance that way,” he said, leaning slightly out the door to point us in the right direction, “and there are two gers that are further away out in that direction,” turning the other way completely. Our view was blocked by rugged hills anyway, so we were left to imagine just what “further away” meant.

“And he went off in the closer direction?” Mom half-asked, half-stated.

“Yah,” he agreed.

“How far was the closest one, would you say?” I asked.

“Well, if you stand at the top of that hill, it looks to be about this far,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart. This was an effective way to convey distance out here. “And the two out there must be about,” he began opening and closing his fingers, prolonging it to consider his newest information.

“Oh, c’mon Ammon. You’re killing us,” I protested.

“Hey, you asked,” he retaliated, showing he was in control if we wanted answers.

“Okay, so how big then?” I gave in, playing his game.

“About this big.” With that he abruptly pinched his fingers together.

“So, it’s basically nonexistent?” I collapsed.