Traveling Companions

Master Toady was riding his turtle beneath the hot Texas sun. Two hours they'd been plodding along Hwy 29, being careful to stay far enough out of the slipstream of thundering autos so they could maintain what trifle remained of their collective sanity. Not to mention, the auto drafts had the propensity of turning Toady's pink parasol wrongside out. And no respectable Toad can deal with that. It's 92.78% about appearance when it comes to Toads.

Turtle was getting tired. He was always the one who carried the load, like some sort of turtle Sherpa, and that was getting old. His bunions were acting up and his football knee was a royal pain in the tortoise butt. But he was a player and was also receiving teamsters wages for hauling that lazy-ass Toad around. Despite the heat, it was good work if you could get it. He was humming as they plodded onward in the noonday heat.

"Wha chu humming there, Tortoise?" asked Toady.
"He ain't heavy, he's my bruvver," replied Tortoise, hoping to keep the ironic inflection from his tonality.
"I doan like it," says Toad. "Do you know any Elton John?"

Tortoise craned his supple neck back to look at that ungrateful carrion he was carrying.

"Tumbleweed Connection. I know the entire album."
"Don't like it," replied that bastard Toad.
"Where are hawks when you really need them?" It was a rhetorical question at best -- one posed by tortoises for millennium.
"What say?" asked Master Toady.
"Din't say nuthin," grumbled the turtle, contemplating suicide beneath the tires of a passing eighteen wheeler.