Ill-at-ease

How usual is it for a drug-dealer to worry about the drought?  The weather here, lack of rainfall.  Small-time street dealer whose value to the man is his aptitude at ground level handling the Joes, avoiding any trouble with the law, carrying it off dependably smooth and regular. Guy sleeping rough and hanging tough not a problem, worried about the rain? Unsettled by the dry? Why for heaven's sake? For the cool it would bring? This guy never carries any brolley; the pour only a source of nuisance to him really. Yet here he is ill-at-ease, troubled, furrowed dark brow. It’s not as if his fields are parched, plantation thirsting, well run dry in the kampung. The kampung where this fella was born was cleared out decades ago. Why give a rat's, a right royal FFF and carry-on, dropping those big heavy jowls? He tells you how you as the outsider here oughta be the one to say a prayer, did he mean? put in an appeal, perform a rain-dance perchance. Sumthin he seemed to anticipate you knew how and what was stoppin ya. No kiddin, he was unhappy. Two years ago it was precisely the same, no good without the rain. Front page story on the driest March in a hundred years was about what he felt somewhere inside himself. Probably he didna hear of the farmers protesting in the Philippines shot by the cops.