West with Giraffes: A Novel

by Lynda Rutledge

  And I wasn’t about to drop that produce.

  To my left, waist high, was one of the contraption rig’s trapdoors. Juggling the goober’s food, I gave it a yank and, to my young shock, it opened. So I dove inside, landing in a mound of peat moss, produce falling everywhere. With no time to shut the trapdoor behind me, I waited to be yanked out by my ears, my heart pumping wild.

  But nothing happened. Hearing the Old Man’s sweet giraffe-cooing, I eased the trapdoor shut. In a moment, his boots shuffled past again, his snores started back up, and my heart slowed. Wolfing down all the produce I could find, I leaned my bunged-up bones back into the padding to rest a minute before trying to sneak out again. Instead my eyes closed on their own—there was no fighting it—that day of days had its way.

  And as I fell into the sleep of the dead, I was sure I was already dreaming because I thought I heard the giraffes humming to each other. It was a low, purring, rumbling thhhhhhrummmm . . . and it was as soothing as the Old Man’s giraffe-speak.

  . . . “Morning, sunshine! Time for breakfast.”

  Someone’s busting through the door behind me and it jolts me from these scribbles so hard my heart jumps.

  Rubbing my chest, I start to yell GO AWAY at the orderly when out of the corner of my eye I see Wild Girl—her long neck has reached in my fifth-floor window and she’s blowing a snuffling spitball my way. Gaping at the impossible wonder of her, I feel the same clutch around my heart on first spying her and Boy down the dock, and I’m glad to still be alive to feel it again.

  “I heard you were a bad boy last night. Punching the TV? My goodness!” the orderly is saying, standing there in his starchy whites. “And now you’re late for breakfast.” It’s an orderly I do not like. He’s greasy-haired like Earl the driver and talks to me like I’m simple, his voice as irritating as crotch itch. He’s only inches from Wild Girl and I worry he’ll spook her.

  “Not going,” I say quick.

  He grabs my wheelchair handles. “Sure you are. C’mon.”

  I grab the desk. “I can’t go, I’m too—” busy, I try to say, but my heart stutters mmmphgh and I almost drop my pencil.

  Greasy steps back. “OK, OK.”

  Clutching the blessed wooden thing, I glance at Wild Girl, who is shooting me the stink eye. “Don’t give me that look,” I wheeze. “I’m not stopping, I swear. I’m going to tell her the whole thing,” I say, writing this down. “See, Girl?”

  “What girl?” Greasy says as I scribble. “Who you talking to, sunshine?”

  Another orderly pokes his nose in from the hall. “That shriveled-up beanpole busted the TV?” he whispers to Greasy, thinking I can’t hear.

  “Yeah, and now he’s talking to a dead girl,” whispers Greasy.

  “You gonna report it?” whispers Hall Voice.

  “Nah. We’d be reporting them all,” whispers Greasy.

  “Just shoot me if I get that old,” Hall Voice goes on. “I tell you one thing, you don’t want him so worked up he checks out on your shift. It’s gross. One did it to me yesterday. Hey, what’s he doing now? He’s writing like a fool on fire over there . . . wait, he’s not writing down what I just said, is he?”

  “You bet I am!” I say, scribbling faster.

  “Now, now, sunshine,” croons Greasy, “we’re leaving, OK?”

  “And shut the door!” I yell. “I’m stuck in the rig and we’ve got to hit the road!”

  2

  In Athenia

  Hush-a-bye / Don’t you cry / Go to sleep, little baby.

  Brown-apple eyes stare . . . the rifle fires . . .

  “Woody Nickel, tell me what happened out there and tell me now!”

  The next morning, angry voices jerked me out of the nightmare dogging me every time I fell asleep since leaving home.

  “Slow down on the apples and sweet onions, Earl!”

  “But I swear I ain’t et more’n my share, Mr. Jones!”

  “Who else’s been eating them? The giraffes?”

  I sat up dazed and bug-eyed, until I remembered where I was and why. Light was streaming in the trap window above me. I’d slept the whole night. Groaning, I fell back into the peat moss padding. Unless I made a run for it, my sorry hide was stuck inside the rig’s traveling giraffe crate for the whole day.

  There were worse places, though, for a Dust Bowl boy to be stuck. It was dry and so was I for the first time in two days. So, shaking the peat moss out of my pants, I took my first good look around. The contraption was less a big crate than a boxcar suite, a fancy Pullman car for giraffes, with a wide slit between the sides for the giraffes to see each other. Railriders would never leave a boxcar so nice. The crate’s walls were so padded with plump burlap and the floors piled so high with moss that I knew I’d be doing worse in any hurricane shelter, or in the back of Cuz’s boathouse—hell, even in my shack of a farmhouse back home, what with the constant wind blowing through the slats to drive even a saint insane.

  Climbing up on the two-by-four bracing the crate’s wall, I cracked open one of the trap windows enough to see the giraffe pen. The giraffes were standing with their necks touching again. Earl had schlupped over with full water buckets, and while Wild Boy was as mellow as milk, Wild Girl seemed to have a burr up her butt enough for both of them. Because, to my delight, when he stepped in the pen to set down the buckets, she charged him. He scrambled out so fast he landed flat on his back. Then, grumbling at Earl, the Old Man entered the pen and inched around Girl’s back leg to check the bandaged splint. The zoo doc had wrapped it good, maybe too good, because Girl’s long neck started swaying, left, right, left, right, and when the Old Man touched the splint, she raised that hurt back leg and kicked sideways—

  WHOP

  —whacking the Old Man’s thigh so hard, it sent him and his fedora flying.

  I cringed. Giraffes kick. That could’ve been me the night before. A kicking mule can kill or cripple a man for life, much less a kicking two-ton giraffe, so I expected the Old Man to either be dead or wishing he was. While a mule has one kicking gear, though, the giraffe seemed to have plenty of gears to express its displeasure that weren’t so deadly. Because instead of being dead or worse, the Old Man was grabbing his hat and scrambling out of the pen. If a mule kicked Pa, Pa’d let him have it with an ax handle. Not the Old Man. He didn’t even utter a harsh word toward the giraffe.

  The driver skittered over to help, but the Old Man waved him away, like he got kicked by a giraffe every day. “I need to send a telegram,” he grunted, popping the fedora back on his head. Then, trying not to limp, he headed for the barn doors.

  Hearing the barn doors’ squawk, I knew it was my chance to go. But then I felt the rig jostle and I peeked out. Earl was standing on the running board again, reaching into the truck cab. He came out with a flask. He took a mighty swig, then stashed it back in his hiding place. When I heard him flop down on the cot out of sight, I eased open the trapdoor and crawled out backward, searching for the ground . . .

  . . . just as the squawk of those blasted barn doors filled the air.

  And I met the Old Man.

  “WHAT the––!”

  As my boots hit the dirt, I felt him grab my arm, and I did what I always did when I got grabbed. I threw a punch. The Old Man saw it coming and slapped it away. So I did the only thing left to do—I rushed right at him, knocking us both on the ground.

  Scrambling up, I ran out the barn doors to the sound of him bawling out “Earl!” at the top of his lungs.

  At my raccoon hole, I slid under and ran until I couldn’t see the quarantine station anymore. Then I leaned on a broken tree trunk to catch my breath and think. Following the giraffes to California wasn’t going to be a cinch any longer. The Old Man had seen me. I was at a loss for what to do, so I started walking, the sort of aimless kind of walking that drifting, vacant-eyed joes did back in the Hard Times, putting one foot in front of the other, over and over, until I wandered into a country store and tried snitching a loaf of bread.
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  “I saw that, you piece of road trash!” the grocer hollered, grabbing my shirt and ripping it clean off my back at the door, sending the bread flying into a puddle. I kept moving. But not before scooping up that muddy loaf.

  “That’s it!” yelled the grocer. “I’m calling the sheriff to clear your kind out again!”

  With the word sheriff thundering in my ears, I stuffed both cheeks with soggy bread and ran until I felt safe. Feeling as low as a snake, my bony chest now bare to the wind except for my holey undershirt, I wandered into a tramp camp near a side track as a freight train was passing by—and I knew this was what the grocer meant when he said “your kind.” Gulping down the last of the filthy bread, I watched a tramp running for a boxcar already full of railriders, high-stepping to keep from being dragged under, and my stray-dog future hit me in the face. Who was I fooling thinking I could buck it?

  Yet I couldn’t shake the longing for milk and honey the Californy-bound giraffes had given me, and I felt my flickering hope turn flaming do-or-die. That’s what the tiniest speck of hope did to you back then. Got you making plans and dreaming dreams in the face of a fool’s folly that hung on a couple of giraffes. You clutched it, nursed it, kept it safe and warm, because that was the only difference between you and the vacant-eyed joes aimlessly walking, dead before their time.

  So, soon I found my way back to the deserted depot in front of the quarantine station’s gate, where nothing had changed at all, including the hurricane-whopped cow. Even my thieved cycle was where I’d hid it behind the big toppled oak.

  What I didn’t expect was the green Packard.

  Red and the duded-up reporter were stopped exactly where I’d last seen them. I snuck within a few feet of them again, crouching behind the oak. They were standing by the Packard, and I didn’t much like the way he was talking to her.

  “Lionel Abraham Lowe—Life magazine!” she was saying as she reloaded her camera.

  “For the love of God, will you shut up about it? Now let’s go. I did you a favor driving you out here again. But no more.”

  “You know I can’t drive,” she answered, lifting her camera, “and I have to have more. It’s Life magazine!”

  “Augie, I’ve got to go!”

  When she didn’t stop, the reporter did something I couldn’t abide—he grabbed her arm. Before I knew I was even doing it, I’d run over and punched him.

  Howling, he fell back against the Packard, grabbing his nose. “You! You’re going to jail, you little shit!” he sputtered. “Augusta, take his picture and then get the guard to call the cops!”

  Red, though, was staring at me still standing there staring back, fists up. I was so besotted with her, I’d punched but forgotten to run.

  “Dammit, my shirt’s ruined!” the reporter moaned, whipping out a handkerchief to staunch the blood. “Augie, I said snap this sonuvabitch!”

  But instead of taking my picture, she mouthed Go!

  And I finally remembered to run.

  As I waited for the giraffes to hit the road, I spent the afternoons snitching food from anybody but the country grocer, and I spent the nights huddled on the deserted depot’s platform fighting off sleep for fear of my nightmare. Since leaving home, the hours awake in the dark alone with my thoughts hadn’t been much better than my haunted sleep. My mind would wander back to the sights of my family’s graves and the sounds of my ma’s and baby sister’s gasps as the dust pneumonia slowly strangled them dead. There was no waking up from that.

  Lying under the stars that first night at the depot, though, I wasn’t seeing graves and hearing death rattles. I was seeing the wondrous sights and sounds of Red and the giraffes. Even then, I knew I was probably better off never seeing Red again since I’d punched the reporter. Telling myself it was to protect my Californy plan, though, I wished I could visit the giraffes. As I lay there thinking about it, sleepless but less lonely, I kept feeling them snuffling my hair and nibbling at my pocket, unaware the giraffes were already working their giraffe magic on me far beyond my orphaned-boy scheme for them.

  By the next afternoon, I’d swiped a shirt from a clothesline to fend off nightly skeeters before I returned to the depot. Once there, the time passed slow. I swatted flies and shifted with the wind as the bloated cow ripened. I watched the guard chew and spit. I watched trucks come and go. That was it.

  Until Red appeared. Alone—and driving. Badly.

  Bouncing that fancy Packard over the tracks, she jerked to a grinding halt, all but stripping the gears. For the longest time, she stared toward the gate with a far-off look, not even taking a picture, and I drank in the fiery sight of her doing it, my insides turning to mush with each red curl she pushed off her face.

  When she finally got out to take photos by the gate, I found myself peeking in the Packard’s open window. I’d have said I was scrounging for food if caught, but that wasn’t why. I wanted more. More of her. I’d have been happy with only a whiff of her eau de toilette in the air, but there on the seat was a brand-new notepad.

  When she drove away without noticing it was gone, I hunkered down, notepad in hand, beside the tree trunk and opened it. Stuck inside the front page was a fresh news clipping, written by Lionel Abraham Lowe, “Mr. Big Reporter”:

  The next page was filled with her scribbled notes:

  Hurricane sea survival miracle . . . Manhattan floods afire . . . Cycle cops . . . NY and NJ.

  Normal truck . . . custom-built bed.

  Putrid bloated cow . . . guernsey.

  Bronx Zoo vet . . . why?

  Tall, gaunt, battered, handsome boy with a nice uppercut . . . who?

  First CA giraffes. First female zoo director.

  First USA cross-country. Lincoln or Lee Highway . . . how?

  12 days to figure.

  Red had mentioned me. Even better, she’d called me handsome—nobody’d ever done that before. Hoping for more, I turned the page, but there was nothing else until the very last page, where she’d started a list:

  THINGS I’M DOING BEFORE I DIE

  - Meet:

  - Margaret Bourke-White

  - Amelia Earhart

  - Eleanor Roosevelt

  - Belle Benchley

  - Touch a giraffe

  - See the world, starting with Africa

  - Speak French

  - Learn to drive

  - Have a daughter

  - See my photos in Life magazine

  It looked like what people nowadays call a bucket list, as in things to do before kicking the bucket. I’d soon find out, though, that was not the half of it.

  The next day she came back, and when she wasn’t looking, I dropped the notepad back into the Packard window. Her smile when she found it was pure glory.

  After that, waiting for her to appear kept me at the depot as much as waiting on the giraffes. The daily sight of her turned my depot nights fighting off nightmares and dark Panhandle memories into hours of recalling her instead. I’d start with her hair, memorizing every fiery curl. I’d study the memory of her smile, the widow’s peak on her forehead, each freckle on her nose, the curve of her face and figure, savoring every little detail from silky white shirt to tailored trousers and two-tone shoes, even the camera she clutched like a lover, until I’d stop and drown for a while in the memory of her hazel-eyed gaze. Then, as the nights wore on, I began imagining how I might kiss her. Besotted as I was, I wasn’t fool enough to think I’d ever kiss Red for real. For all I knew I’d never get that close to her again. Yet I whiled away untroubled hours working on it all—how I’d place my hand on the back of those flaming curls. How I’d lace my fingers through their thick strands. How I’d either come in slow and sweet and tender or sweep her up planting a big one on her, fearless and lusty, like a full-grown man. I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s warming up a scribbling old man right now as I remember the remembering. And when I’d feel myself getting sleepy huddled there on the depot’s platform, I’d start over.

  But nobody can ru
n from sleep forever. After a few nights, despite all my efforts, I nodded off—and the familiar old nightmare came.

  Hush-a-bye / Don’t you cry / Go to sleep, little baby.

  “It’s time I made a man outa you!”

  “Woody Nickel, tell me what happened out there and tell me now!”

  Brown-apple eyes stare . . . the rifle fires . . .

  and rushing waters roar . . .

  . . . “Li’l one, who you talking to?”

  Bolting to my feet, I started pacing. I could still hear the parts of the nightmare I’d come to know too well—my ma singing, my pa yelling, and my rifle firing, surprised like always not to feel the county sheriff yanking me off the Muleshoe train. This time, though, in the same old nightmare there was something new.

  And it shook me up good.

  There’s a family story my ma loved to tell, how as a toddler I kept slipping from my slatboard crib only to be found in the barn with the mare, jabbering away. “Li’l one, who you talking to?” my ma’d say. When I’d point to the mare, she’d sweep me up singing the hush-a-bye lullaby. Other times she’d find me jabbering out near the prairie high grass, and when she’d say, “Li’l one, who you talking to?” I’d point to the edge of the high grass where there’d be a rabbit or a lizard or a field rat scuttling away. But when my naptime jabbering started being about things beyond my ken, like the preacher coming or a storm brewing or the rooster croaking, Pa’s jaw muscles would quiver as Ma praised Jesus, calling it the gift of second sight just like her aunt Beulah, who talked to the birds. So Pa set about breaking me of it.

  That’s all it ever was, only a story Ma’d tell . . . until I was blown speechless by the dust only to be whopped senseless by a hurricane and found myself pacing the deserted depot. Because not only had I just heard Ma’s Li’l one question, but I’d also heard rushing water—and if there’s one thing we didn’t have in the Panhandle it was water, rushing or otherwise. So, as I paced, bug-eyed over sudden thoughts of Aunt Beulah and her second sight, I swore to never sleep again. Not even thoughts of the giraffes or kissing Red could calm me.