West with Giraffes: A Novel
Page 10
I reached into my pocket to rub Cuz’s lucky rabbit’s foot. It wasn’t there . . . I’d left it back in the pocket of my old pants along with the Old Man’s dollar. I almost told the Old Man, but I clamped my mouth good and shut. I’d have sooner gone off that mountain than let him hear me hanging our future on a rabbit’s foot. Instead I said, “Open.”
“All right then,” he said. “You ready?”
So, without the help of Cuz’s lucky rabbit’s foot, I turned us onto Skyline Drive. At the tunnel’s lip, I took a deep breath, fearing it’d be the last good inhale I’d take for quite a while. I turned on the rig’s headlights and we entered the black hole, the pinpoint light at the other end of the tunnel all we could see. Edging slow and steady, we moved into the dark, hugging the center stripe, the giraffes riding fine, the darkness quieting them nicely. A car entered from the other end, popping on its own headlights. I felt the giraffes jolt. The headlights grew bigger and bigger . . . until the car passed with a swish, and I swear I heard us all sigh as one.
Finally, we were out the other side, but we didn’t have more than a second to enjoy it. Just like the Old Man warned, the road went straight into a curve. Worse, we were in the outside lane with only stacked-log guardrails between us and the valley below. Pulling hard at that wheel, I wanted to fess up I was a big, fat, whopping liar and he was a fool to have trusted me one whit. But it was too late. We were into it. Deadly quick, I learned what a switchback was—we were swerving back and forth and back again, all around that lumpy mountain. I hugged the middle stripe, trying to ignore the little crosses decorating the shoulder of the road, knowing each one was a body that didn’t make it, and I’d have wagered not a one of them had a load of jittery giraffes. With each curve I was feeling us sway. Because what do you do with that much weight going around a bend? You lean. Especially if you happen to be a giraffe. The more they leaned and the more I struggled through gear after gear, the more I pictured us taking flight off the back of one of those switches, with the Old Man’s screaming regrets the last thing I ever heard. I slowed down. The speed limit signs quoted fifteen miles per hour as the government’s best bet for safe curve-taking speed. We weren’t even going ten, with me trying out gear after gear, feeling for the one to right us—then I found it—I did. It was working—we took the next switchback fine and the next one even finer. I was already imagining the praise the Old Man would be heaping on me the moment we were down, when I heard the sound of a sputtering motor coming up behind.
Before I could do a thing about it, a car appeared in my side mirror . . . a green Packard.
It couldn’t have been doing fifteen.
But that was faster than ten.
And . . .
BAMMM.
The Packard popped the back of the rig, throwing us forward and jostling both giraffes to the wrong side of the rig—the valley side. Out the Old Man’s side mirror, I could see their heads peering clean over the drop-off. The whole groaning rig was leaning about as far as it could without toppling clean over.
“STOP-STOP!” he screamed.
I threw on the brakes. It made the giraffes right themselves slightly, but not enough. They were panicking. The rig started teetering, hanging over the drop-off, with nothing between them and thin air but a railing built for cars.
Behind us, Red threw open the Packard’s door and started to jump out.
“You want to get us all KILLED? Stay in the car!” the Old Man hollered back at her, pushing me out the door. “Climb up the side and call the giraffes toward you while I get us moving!” he ordered, jumping behind the wheel.
“But shouldn’t you . . . ?”
“Hurry! You know she’s not happy with me! Just lean toward the mountain and talk ’em your way! There’s a turnout around the bend—we’re almost there, but you got to right them or we won’t even make it that far!”
It was the first time I’d seen the Old Man scared, so I moved quick. Climbing up, I leaned as far back as I could on the mountain side of the teetering rig and started calling to the giraffes without a single onion to help. Waving my free arm back my way, I used all the animal calls I knew, which were little more than chicken tsk-tsking and horse clucking, while the Old Man gunned the gas. But the rig kept teetering and the giraffes kept panicking—their big eyes wide with terror, their big bodies telling them to stampede, to run. I tried the Old Man’s giraffe-speak, but my voice was brittle. The rig lurched worse. As the Old Man gunned it harder, I lost my grip and had to grab it back, the terror in the giraffes’ brown-apple eyes now my terror. Then I was no longer giraffe-speaking, I was begging, wailing, pleading—please, please, trust me, oh please-please-please-please—COME TO ME—please.
“COME!”
And they did.
Their tonnage shifted, jerking the rig back straight, away from the free-falling death of us all.
If I could’ve let go of the rig, I’d have hugged both their titanic heads. But all I could do was hold on as the Old Man lurched us forward again, clearing the switchback and heading around the bend.
At the scenic overlook, barely wide enough for the rig itself, the Old Man jolted us to a stop, tumbling out of the driver’s seat to catch his breath. I tumbled to the ground, too, but rushed to the overlook, my bladder having all the excitement it could hold. The second I got the job done and was struggling with my new, stiff denim buttons, the Packard inched by.
I stared at Red staring back at me until she was out of sight.
“Let’s go!” The Old Man was already back in the passenger seat. “I got to check that splint, but not here.”
Hustling behind the wheel, I eased the rig back on the road. It wasn’t over. Not only were we still climbing, it had begun to drizzle.
The Old Man was talking fast. “There’s a clearing between the peaks with a comfort station and a big lot. Two maybe three switchbacks and we’re there . . .”
Running through the gears as smooth and slow as I could on the slickening road, I took the first switchback, and then the second, catching a glimpse of the clearing.
As we made the next turn, though, lining both sides of the road’s narrow shoulders was an army of shovelers. At the sight, the Old Man popped the dashboard with his hand loud enough to make me jump. He was smiling. “God A’mighty—it’s the CCC! The WPA practically built the zoo!”
The shovelers were a Civilian Conservation Corps crew, he said, part of FDR’s Hard Times program, like the Works Progress Administration that put out-of-work men to building things all across the country. The road crew, not much older than me, were putting down stones and logs, smoothing the edges of the entrance into the station, where another group was clearing trees and putting down dirt, their shovels flashing in the handful of sunbeams streaming into the clearing through the clouds. Traffic was being stopped the other way to let them work, but the signaler wasn’t doing much signaling, as he was too busy gaping at the giraffes. Soon, so was the entire road crew. When they caught sight of our cargo, the shovels stopped in a sort of wave as, one by one, the boys elbowed their neighbors, gasps rippling down the line.
Inching the rig around them, I pulled into the comfort station’s lot. The buildings and log picnic benches were so new you could sniff the just-cut smell over the wind. Their big nostrils working overtime, the giraffes had their snouts high to the sky.
I stopped under a big tree near the comfort station as the drizzle got stronger and the clouds darker. The shovel army was headed our way. Quick as we could, we gave everything a once-over. I checked the rig and the Old Man eyed Girl’s splint. To me, everything seemed better than it had any right to be after that wild ride, but the Old Man wasn’t even close to smiling anymore.
By then, the rig was completely surrounded, the entire crew crowding near. Their faces sunburned and rawboned, some were dressed in khakis, some in denims, some bare-chested, some in hats, all of them toting shovels, picks, or ball-peen hammers. The Old Man motioned me to pop the top so the giraffes could nibble a
t the shade trees for the CCC audience. I climbed up, but before I could pop the top, the view stopped me flat. From up there, I could see over the side of the mountain where the sun was shining down on the Shenandoah Valley. It was lusher and greener than anything I’d ever seen in my Panhandle life. It was like looking at a Dust Bowl farmer’s idea of heaven. It looked like Californy.
“The top, boy,” the Old Man yelled up.
Tearing my eyes away, I threw the top back and stayed put to calm the giraffes. But I didn’t have to. Despite our big scare or maybe because of it, the giraffes were already gawking right back at the gawkers, bobbing those necks sweetly up and down.
As the crew cheered them on, I saw the flash of a camera. There stood Red. Fast as she could, she was popping in flashbulbs to brighten the drizzly gloom and switching them out for new ones from the camera bag on her shoulder.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
The young shoveling army, with a red-crested beauty near enough to touch, started crowding in close—too close, to my eyes. Jumping down, I shoved my way through the crews to stand in front of her, arms wide. I expected the crowd of boys to take exception. Instead it was Red.
“What do you think you’re doing!” she hissed.
“You said you wanted my help,” I said.
Her face was as fiery as her curls. “That wasn’t the deal—I don’t need saving!”
“Fine!” I said, stepping back, allowing the shoveling army to shove back in, swamping her so quick I couldn’t even see her.
I was about to push back in again, no matter what she said, when a siren whooped and a state trooper came rolling up on his saddle-bagged cycle. Dressed in a Mountie-style hat and hip boots, he stopped at the edge of the crowd and dismounted. The crew made way for him as he headed toward the Old Man without even glancing at the giraffes. When he passed Red, she stepped back, too, way back, which seemed strange. The trooper hat alone seemed worth a photo.
The Old Man, already talking to the trooper, was waving me to the rig. I looked back for Red. When I couldn’t find her in the crowd, something told me to look out on the road, and I looked in time to see a glimpse of the green Packard driving away.
In a few minutes, we were back on Skyline Drive, the trooper riding behind us with his lights flashing, no doubt at the request of the Old Man. After a few more switchbacks, we left the mountain drizzle behind and I breathed easier, even though I was still feeling jangled down to my core. Descending into the valley, we popped out of the mountains near a town called Luray, where the trooper gave us a nice wave and vanished back up Skyline Drive.
We stopped at the first little roadside store we saw, a small clapboard place with a single gas pump, as a mangy mountain man in a flop hat covered with leaves was tying his pack mule out front. As I steered the big rig around them, the store’s screen door slapped open. Out came a man sporting a Santa Claus beard dressed in the newest, bluest, starchiest overalls I ever saw, trailed by a towheaded kid wearing his own stiff overalls.
“I’ll be darned! You never know what’s going to pass by nowadays!” the man said, slapping his knee. “Real live gi-raffes! At my store!” Rushing back inside, he came back out with one of those little cardboard box cameras and took a quick picture. “That one’s going on the wall, front and center.” Putting his arm around the Old Man, he escorted him inside while the kid bounded over to gas us up.
I sat down on the truck’s running board and worked to calm my nerves. Inside, I could see the Old Man setting things on the counter, then reaching for his money and the owner waving him off. So the Old Man shook the bearded man’s hand, jotted something on a postcard, and handed it to him. Then, clutching onion gunnysacks under both arms, he came out with a soft drink in one hand and a beer in the other.
“Here’s you a sarsaparilla,” he said to me. “You’re driving. But I’m not, thank God.” Dropping the sacks, he plopped down on the running board beside me, pushed back his fedora, and took his first swig of beer.
I held off on my own swigging, though, worried the Old Man would notice my shakes. So I tried chitchat. “You send a postcard?”
He nodded.
“Who to?”
“The Boss Lady.”
“You aren’t telling her the bad stuff, are you?”
“Not until I can’t help it.” Finishing the beer, he grabbed one of the onion sacks, climbed up the rig ladder, and split the whole thing between the giraffes, like peace offerings and thank-yous, cooing giraffe-speak all the while. As the giraffes happily chomped, he came down and took a long look at Girl’s splint through the trapdoor, then eased back down by me.
“Her leg OK?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead he said, “You did good, boy, but no offense, this was my mistake. I should never have asked it of you. I wasn’t expecting that gotdam detour . . . yet if we had turned back . . .” He paused, cutting himself off. “For sure now, I’ll be seeing about getting an experienced man in Memphis for the rest of the way.”
Jitters or not, that almost had me loudly taking exception. It wasn’t me that almost sent us over the side—it was Red and her Packard. I was doing fine before that bump. Once you get that close to going off a mountain, though, I guess you only remember the scare, even if you’re the Old Man.
He could change his mind again, I told myself as I watched the mountain man trudge from the store. After all, I thought, taking a deep breath, what can happen now that’d be worse than almost falling off a mountain?
As if in answer to a young fool’s thought, the mangy man yowled.
“Gimme back my hat!”
He was hollering at Wild Girl. Her long neck, stuck full out her window, was moving in jerky, unnatural ways, and from her throat came a sound so horrid the memory can make my skin crawl even now—she was gagging.
The hat was stuck.
The Old Man got quick to his boots as the store’s owner came running out. “Damn your eyes, Phineas, it thought that twig hat of yours was a tree!”
I was on my feet by then, but all I could do was stare at that gyrating neck, hardly believing what I was seeing. She was fighting for her breath, flailing wild, unable to pull herself back in her window to get her neck straight.
Grabbing the gas pump’s water hose, the Old Man turned it on full force and, climbing quick up by Girl, tried to aim the water hose down her throat. “Steady the hose!” he hollered down. I grabbed the back end, and the Old Man shoved the hose past her tongue—the hose water flowing like a mighty river down her massive craw and flooding right back up like a spouting geyser, hat and all.
Girl gave a mighty sneeze and went back to chewing her cud.
The mountain man grabbed his upchucked hat and went back to his mule.
The Old Man climbed down and the store owner turned off the water.
And me—with a death grip still on that hose, I dropped back to the running board, soaked and gulping.
“Huh,” mumbled the store owner, surveying the mess. “You’d think it would’ve gone down, not come back up. Wouldn’t ya?”
Plopping down beside me, the Old Man heaved a great sigh, then got right back to his feet. I got up, too, thinking we were moving on. Instead he shuffled toward the store. “You get the darlings ready,” he muttered. “I’m having me another beer.”
A few miles ahead, we connected back up with the Lee Highway again. For the next hour, we glided through scenery that I wished I was more in the mood to enjoy—forest on one side and glory-green valley views on the other. I still hadn’t quite beat my jitters, though, so when the Old Man had me pull into a log cabin camp nestled in the forest along the highway, I was glad of it. We had it to ourselves from the lonesome look of the place, and after the usual happy ogling by the camp manager, we began our giraffe-tending. But this time it felt different. The Old Man stared at Girl’s splint even longer than he did at the store, and I could see why. The wound was oozing through the bandaged splint. The rough ride had banged it up bad enough to bleed.
Stuffing the black bag behind the cab’s seat, the Old Man pushed his fedora back and gazed blankly at the setting sun. “Handle the rest, will you, boy?” he mumbled, and trudged to the cabin without another word.
So I climbed up the side ladder far enough to throw open the top. The sight of the giraffes standing safe in their traveling suites should have soothed my nerves. But when they moved toward me like they’d done on the mountain, the moment came flooding back . . . I’m on the switchback . . . Red hits us, jolting the giraffes toward the drop-off . . . I’m hanging off the side, begging-pleading-praying for their towering selves to hear me . . . to trust me . . .
To come to me . . .
Away from free fall . . .
I was safely clutching the side of a parked rig, yet I was quaking in my boots, the way that almost sailing off a mountain can rattle a person to the bone when the near-death truth of it sinks in. I forced myself to breathe until I could loosen my grip on the rig. But instead of climbing down, I crawled up to the open top. I needed the air, I needed the sky, and I needed the company, even if I couldn’t admit it. I sat down, straddling the cross plank like I’d done the night before with Red. This time, though, the giraffes weren’t bumping me for onions. They moved as close as they could to me, the way they had to each other their first night in quarantine. Like they were circling the wagons around me. Surrounded by such colossals, I should have felt shaky and small, yet their mammoth presence made me feel big, and calm, and sweetly safe in a way hard to describe and even harder to resist. I knew better. Yet I found myself overcome with feelings for them that I couldn’t hold back.