After that, sleepless and twitchy, I counted down the rest of the days and nights waiting for the giraffes to hit the road. I barely left the depot for fear I’d miss them.
Finally, the zoo doc’s truck appeared and disappeared through the gate.
It was time.
Sprinting to my raccoon hole, I squeezed under and rushed to the tall barn. The big doors were yawning wide, and there was the zoo doc’s truck. Lurking near the doc’s truck, I should have been worrying about being seen, but I’d have had to drive a cattle truck into the barn for any of them to look around, especially the Old Man. He had bigger problems. He was trying to board the giraffes and the giraffes weren’t having it.
The rig was pulled up close to the pen and the entire side of the rig’s boxcar-T contraption was open, including the top. I hadn’t seen it could do that. With swinging hinges on the bottom and latches along the top, the entire side lay down to the ground. It made the padded crates look big, wide, even inviting. Two short sloping chutes had been placed between the pen and the rig to guide the giraffes into their new traveling compartments. But those giraffes knew what a crate was, nice or not, and they sure knew what a truck was. They’d both taken two steps into the chutes, saw where they were headed, and stopped cold.
How long they’d been in the chutes I couldn’t say, but from how worn-out the Old Man looked, it had been awhile. Fidgeting with his fedora, he was sitting on his haunches in his undershirt, staring at the giraffes. The zoo doc was standing by the chutes, staring at Girl’s splint. Earl was standing by some joes in khaki work-duds, all breathing hard. The Old Man got to his feet. Looking pure frustrated, he stalked over and grabbed some rope, and he, the zoo doc, and the khaki joes tried roping the giraffes like calves to pull them in. Still, the big beasts didn’t budge, and the Old Man slid back to the ground, looking clean out of ideas.
Then Wild Girl’s nostrils started quivering, her neck stretching toward the rig compartment where I’d slept. She took a step. Then another. Sticking her big snout into the open compartment’s corner, she came up chomping. She’d found one of the onions I’d lost in the padding.
The Old Man, no fool, was back up on his boots. Grabbing the gunnysack from the cab, he began pitching onions into the boxcar suite, and lickety-split, Girl strode right into the peat moss searching for the produce. The Old Man pitched the rest into the other compartment, and there went Boy.
At that, everybody rushed in to raise both sides and latch them tight. When the two giraffes stuck their big heads out their windows, licking their lips for the last taste of their onions, the Old Man took off his hat and heaved a great sigh. Then he and the zoo doc marched toward the doc’s truck, right where I hid. I scrambled behind a barrel.
“You’re going to have to reapply the sulfa to the wound on the road,” the zoo doc was saying. “How many times depends on the roughness of the ride and how long you’re forced to ride. If you can stave off infection, she’s got a fighting chance.” He grabbed an extra black bag from the truck and popped it on the hood to show off the contents—bandages, splints, and medicine bottles—then handed it to the Old Man. “Packed this for them. With extra for the two of you.” The zoo doc shook the Old Man’s hand, got in the truck, and with a last “Good luck,” drove away.
The Old Man let the giraffes get used to their traveling boxcar suites for the rest of the day, so I settled in behind the barrel and waited through the night.
Before dawn, the Old Man threw the barn doors open. Earl was already behind the rig’s wheel, engine idling, and the giraffes’ heads were out. With a last look back, the Old Man climbed in the truck cab and the rig rolled out the doors.
Rushing to my fence squeeze-hole, I all but beat them to the front gate. Their lights flashing in the predawn dark, two New Jersey state cycle cops were waiting and escorted the giraffe rig onto the road.
I dragged the thieved cycle from under the downed oak, cranked it sputtering, spewing, backfiring to life, and, after a mighty rub of Cuz’s rabbit’s foot, I followed. Californy, here we come, I thought. With nothing between but the entire USA, sea to shining sea.
Little did I know I wasn’t the only one with plans for the giraffes, and worse, that those plans included never getting to California at all.
. . . “Hon?”
Someone’s at my door again, jangling me out of my scribbling. Before I can do a thing about it, in strides another orderly. I start to growl at him, but it’s a her. She’s flame-haired. Familiar.
Then I remember. She’s the big-boned redheaded gal I like—Rose? Rosie? Yeah, Rosie.
“You didn’t come to breakfast, hon. The chaplain will be here soon for chapel. Why don’t you let me to take you down?”
It’s Sunday morning. I never go. Which doesn’t keep them from asking. It’s a kindness in their minds to offer, seeing as each Sunday could be the last chance for us old reprobates to rectify. Today may be my last chance. But these scribbles are my rectifying. I study her face a second and then turn back to my writing pad. “I’m busy.”
“Hon, do you recognize me?” she says next.
“’Course I do,” I mutter over my shoulder.
“Oh, hon, it’s been such a long time! You used to make me play a game of dominoes and hear a story before you’d take your pills, remember?” she is saying. “I heard about the giraffes. I’m so sorry.” But then I hear her reach over and close the window.
Whirling around too fast, my wheelchair bumps the bedstead and I almost fall out. “OPEN IT—OPEN IT!”
She pushes the window back up. Wild Girl is still there. My heart starts stuttering mmmphgh again and I rub it.
Rosie notices. “I better call the nurse right now to give you a pill.”
“No! No nurses. No pills. I got to think straight to write it all down for her!”
Rosie settles her hands on her sturdy hips to look me up and down, exactly like the Old Man used to do. Pushing a graying strand of hair behind her ear, she says, “OK, but I’m staying until you calm down.”
“Suit yourself,” I say, calm as a clam, then return to my writing pad, hoping that will hush her. It does not.
“Hon, who is ‘her’? Who are you ‘writing it all down’ for?”
I don’t answer.
“Is it Augusta Red?”
I almost jerk my neck off looking around. “How do you know about Red?”
“She’s in all the stories you told me while we played dominoes. Augusta Red, the Old Man, and the giraffes. Is that what you’re writing down—your trip? But you always said it didn’t matter.”
“I was wrong,” I mumble. Calmly. And start back writing.
For a few minutes, she perches her big self on the edge of the bed. Then, hearing her get up, I watch her close the door behind her, remembering it all.
A game of dominoes and a story . . .
3
Across New Jersey and Delaware
So we hit the road.
Being on the road’s no song, though. Not if you’re a stray. There’s nothing more pitiful than a wandering creature who was never meant to be wild. By the time a stray dog showed up at our Panhandle farm, it had that scary all-is-lost look that made even my saintly Christian ma run it off. She’d never have believed she’d turn away a stray boy, though, and I know you’d want to believe you’d do the same. But there were thousands of us back then, wandering, hapless, and reckless. What if you lived by the tracks? Or the highway? What if your place got marked as the home of a kindhearted Christian or a Roosevelt bleeding heart so that you had dirty bums and feral boys knocking on your screen door night and day? Would you lock your doors and close your curtains? Would you hide your little ones in your own house? What if a tramp starts waving a straight razor or glass shard at the competition hiding in your shrubbery? Would you call the police or reach for your shotgun?
You won’t remember all that back then—and I’m glad of it. I’ve tried to forget what it was like as a stray boy heading toward Cuz. I was b
arely human after the first wretched few days, and as time went on I cared less about being so. When your shriveled stomach’s aching with hunger, you forget all about your hungry heart. And you keep on forgetting it a little each day until a stray dog has more heart or soul than you.
Then, there were the roads themselves. What we called highways were barely tolerable for transporting people much less chauffeuring giraffes. The country’s only two “transcontinental auto trails” were so singular they had names—the Lincoln and the Lee—and we weren’t near either of them. Most town-to-town roads still had little more than a gas station guy pointing you the right way or the dead-and-gone wrong. During the Hard Times, taking them any stretch at all could mean taking your life into your own hands—which I was aiming to avoid by following the giraffes.
So, while I should have been quaking at the thought of hitting the road again, I was OK as long as I could see the rig. As the sun came up, though, it began to wobble. It was as if, spooked by daylight, the giraffes didn’t know where to stand in this new fresh hell they were in, their heads popping in and out, the back of the rig swaying and rocking, one time even lifting the tires right off the road so bad I thought they might flip over and finish themselves off before we’d even got started. The Old Man, though, started screaming at Earl until the rig slowed to a crawl, the giraffes got their balance, and everything simmered down.
With that, the cycle cops started poking us down the entire length of New Jersey.
In the first burg, people were so surprised, a few sleepy neck-twisting guffaws were all anybody could muster before we were gone.
By the second, though, the people seemed to know the giraffes were coming. The rig was met by the local patrol car at the city limits. As the cops and the rig inched turtle-slow through town, I found myself in a sudden parade. Cars and bicycles fell in behind. Old men waved from stools and steps and bungalow porches. Women in housedresses stood on verandas holding up babies. Townspeople lining the sidewalks were holding up newspapers, and a boy running alongside me kept waving one in my face, so I snatched it, giving the front page a quick glance as we kept rolling. While I didn’t pay it much mind at the time, the top headline was one for the ages:
Thinking of that headline now, I get a shiver. It was talking about the Munich Agreement, a thing that sounds like something nobody would remember this side of schoolbooks, but the whole world would soon be remembering it far too well. Hitler had seized Austria and was now wanting a chunk of Czechoslovakia, promising peace if he could have it. The spooked Allies handed it right over, believing in fairy tales told by a madman. Back then, though, what was that to me on the other side of the world? Giving Adolph Hitler no thought at all, I flipped the paper over and there was the story everybody but me had already seen:
I pulled over to the curb to read it, but I didn’t get past the headline. Because, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sight that made me drop the paper and jerk my head clean around—a green Packard. There it went, right by me, with Red hanging out the window snapping pictures and the reporter behind the wheel. As we left the town behind, I kept expecting it to peel off and disappear home again, like before, but it kept following.
So now I was following it, too.
We moved on like that all morning in a sort of rhythm: farmland quiet, dumbstruck hitchhikers, small towns, local cops, sudden parades, and jubilating townies yelling the same geehaws:
“How’s the weather up there?”
“I’m seeing spots before my eyes!”
“Low bridge!”
Then, with no warning, the New Jersey cycle cops gave one last salute to the Old Man and vanished back the way they came. We were at the state line. Which was all good and fine, except the state line was a river and there wasn’t any bridge to the other side. There was a ferry. A boat. Taking us over water. And that was no small thing, considering water had tried to kill both the giraffes and me.
The Old Man didn’t look too happy about it, either. As the rig came to a stop at the landing, he hopped out and held up the line until getting some sort of satisfaction from the ferryman. He took off that grungy fedora, wiped at his brow with the back of his sleeve, and watched as the ferryman guided Earl to roll the rig on. When it came to a stop, the Old Man put his hat back on, heaved a great fume, and stepped on board himself. As other cars filled in behind, I bided my time. Then, with a rub of my rabbit’s foot, I took a deep breath and walked the cycle on.
As we pushed off, every last person on that ferry silently got out of their cars to gaze at the giraffes. The sight of those big giraffe heads stuck out their windows against the reflection of the smooth river made me go silent, too, inside and out. It was a magical thing. My rowdy young self fought the warm feeling, but I remember the moment as wondrous. We were moving across the Delaware River with giraffes and I think we could have done it without a motor. The calmest of us all seemed the giraffes themselves. Whether the river’s flow was so still they didn’t notice it was water or whether they’d made peace with their road Pullman, they were riding free and easy.
I looked around for Red, hoping she was snapping pictures of it, but the green Packard wasn’t on the ferry. Spinning around, I scanned the shoreline. There it was, still on the landing. Red and the reporter were in front of it, and my warm feeling turned into flitting fury at what I saw next.
He motioned toward the car.
She threw up her hands.
He grabbed her arm again.
She jerked it back.
He got back in the car, slammed the door, and gunned the motor, waiting for her to follow.
But she didn’t. Not at first.
Instead she turned and stared back at the giraffes.
I studied Red’s gaze as we moved farther and farther away, her face full of things I did not understand yet was desperate to remember before she vanished from sight. I was certain I’d never see her again . . . and I watched long after I could no longer make out the green of the car or the fire of her hair.
When the ferry landed on the other side, everybody made way for the giraffes and their rig, like the Old Man was the king of Siam with passing wonders to behold. As the giraffes’ heads disappeared over the riverbank, nobody moved. Under the spell of giraffes and ferries and rolling river, they stayed that way for so long I thought I’d never get off. Snaking around them all, I revved the cycle, fearing I’d lose sight of the giraffes, but there they were, those giraffe heads high, proud, and impossible to miss, and I slowed back to a calm putter.
Soon, we crossed another state line, which seemed to be coming as quick as county lines in Texas. WELCOME TO MARYLAND, the sign said. The rig slowed down even more, the road curving this way and that, with tractors, pickups, and even a horse-drawn wagon pulling in and out between us. Then the road took a sharp bend and the rig disappeared.
Next thing I heard was the sound of screeching tires . . . followed by a sickening thud and a deathly howl. My flesh crawling, I inched around that curve and what I saw made me veer for the cover of the ditch’s overgrowth. The rig was stopped dead in the middle of the road, and something big was lying by its right fender, spun halfway into the ditch. I was sure Earl had hit a hitchhiker. But it was a mangy stray dog, as big as a pony, and its bowels were hanging out of its bloody, shredded fur.
Ordering Earl to stay put, the Old Man took the rifle from the cab’s gunrack and moved toward it. He eased down by the dying dog, gun in his lap, as the dog went full into its death jerks. When the panting and jerking kept on going and going, the Old Man rose and cocked the rifle. Between one panting jerk and the next, though, the dog went still. Lowering the gun, the Old Man paused. Then, hunkering down again, he laid a hand on the dead dog’s fur and left it there, like he was offering up some sort of Old Man benediction.
As I watched, in my mind’s eye I was in the Panhandle driving Pa’s pickup as we hit something yellow and saw it tumble into the brush. Pa got out to cuss the dented fender, and I’d just taken the rifle from th
e gunrack when Pa turned his cusses on me: God-DAMN it, son! Where you going? If it’s a coyote, we shoot coyotes for being coyotes. If it’s a stray dog, we ain’t wasting a bullet on it. Stop acting like you’re still in knickers. They’re just animals!
Up ahead, the Old Man got to his feet, grabbed the cur’s leg, and dragged the carcass full off the road. The giraffes were watching, their heads out their windows. So he climbed up to give them both a pat on their necks, his giraffe-speak wafting back to me on the wind, then he crawled back in the cab and the rig moved on, vanishing around the next curve. I eased the cycle past the carcass, storing the scene away to ponder.
With the next turn of the road, though, I had bigger worries. The cycle’s gas gauge was hazarding empty and there I was without a dime or a dollar.
I kept on following. What else could I do?
With me riding on fumes and sundown on its way, we were closing in on a town called Conowingo, which sticks in my memory for more reasons than the peculiar sound of it. Trees lining the right, the road veered near a quick-moving river on the left and stayed.
Then came the signs:
ONE WAY BRIDGE, said the first one.
LOW WATER CROSSING, warned the next.
I could barely believe it. Were they really going to drive those giraffes right into the river?
From one second to the next, though, none of that mattered a whit, since that was the moment the cycle gulped, chugged, and clunked to a stop.
Pounding the clutch, I jumped up and down on the throttle like I could pump ethyl into the cycle with just my hopping, and I kept it up beyond all good sense, wearing myself clean out.
Sucking wind, I stared after the shrinking rig, realizing, like a stab to the heart, I was about to say goodbye to my California plan. It’s over, I told myself, thinking how I’d sell my soul for it not to be—and considering I hadn’t yet quite become acquainted with my soul, that was a surprising thought. So, fueled by the same do-or-die fury I’d felt on the dock, I started running, thinking I might as well die from the running than the standing and watching my flickering hope fade.
West with Giraffes: A Novel Page 4
