West with Giraffes: A Novel

by Lynda Rutledge

  They’re just animals, I could hear my pa grousing, and you ain’t a boy in knickers no more.

  But they came to me on the mountain! I couldn’t stop thinking. They came—and we didn’t die!

  It was a full moon night, one of those harvest moons that light up the night so bright that you can see almost as good as day. As the giraffes reached for the branches surrounding us, I watched and listened as their nibbling slowed and their cud chewing began. I lay back on the plank between the two giraffes’ traveling rooms, everything lulling me, the giraffes near and serene, the woods hushed, the moon above big and yellow through the trees. I stared at that moon so long and peaceful that, to my shameful surprise, I must have nodded off.

  Next thing I know I was bolting straight up in the dark to the sound of splintering wood—the giraffes were kicking hard enough to fracture the crates. Something was so near they thought they had to defend themselves.

  Bracing myself, I leaned over the side. Below us was a bear. It was sniffing around the rig’s tires, and then it reared up on its hind legs and plopped its beefy paws on the side of the road Pullman.

  The giraffes had a fit. Girl kicked so hard, I was sure she cracked a hole in the wood, but the bear didn’t budge. I squinted through the shadows for something to wave or bang, gearing up to jump down and scare the bear off. Considering that this was the first time I ever laid eyes on a bear, I couldn’t quite make myself do it. As I braced to holler loud enough to scare off the furry devil before the giraffes did some real damage, I saw a flash—and everything turned blinding white-bright.

  For a second, I couldn’t see a thing, but neither could the bear. To the sound of it bumping into the camp’s trash cans, running away, I grabbed the rig to save myself from falling off. As I blinked back to sight, out strolled Red in the moonlight, popping the bulb from her camera with a krink and bouncing it in her hand until it cooled down. You’d have thought she’d just been to a tea party.

  Still blinking, I eased down to check the damage to the rig. Sure enough, it was cracked right through. The Old Man was going to love that. To avoid Red, I climbed back up to the cross plank.

  “She kicked at that bear through the wood!” Red called up in a loud whisper. “They’re OK, aren’t they?”

  As the giraffes moved near me again, I didn’t answer.

  “I’m sorry about bumping you in the mountains,” Red whispered up.

  With that, I aimed all my fearful fury from the whole day straight at her. “You about sent us over,” I hissed down. “I was doing fine!”

  “Well, don’t yell at me!” she whispered up.

  “I’m not yelling!” I whispered down.

  “Yes, you are!” she whispered back.

  We both looked toward the Old Man’s cabin at the same time.

  She sighed. “I guess I deserve to be yelled at, you’re right,” she whispered quieter. “I’m so, so sorry, Woody. Truly I am. You and the giraffes . . . you were amazing. May I come up?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she set her camera down and crawled up to straddle the cross plank, facing me, exactly like the night before, but this time I inched back, away. The giraffes crowded close, so close that their fur was brushing against our dangling legs. I could feel the warmth of their pelts against my denims, knowing that Red was feeling the same against her trousers, and I felt my fury ebb away. “I fell asleep,” I heard myself confess. “I don’t fall asleep.”

  She frowned. “What? You have to sleep.”

  I sure wasn’t going to tell her about my nightmare. So I shrugged.

  “I love sleep,” she said. “Only thing better is being awake. Really awake.”

  We sat quiet for a moment until Boy stepped back a bit, eyeing a branch he’d missed. I saw Red move, and I thought she was climbing down.

  Instead she swung her legs over and dropped right into his crate, hitting its padded floor with a thump that might as well have been upside my head, I was so dumbstruck. She’d landed knee deep in Boy’s peat moss near his hooves, inches from Girl’s splinted leg on the other side of the opening. The Old Man’s words were popping like firecrackers inside my head . . . Big don’t know from small . . . They could love you like their mama and still crush an arm or leg . . .

  “Look at all this padding, even on the walls,” Red whispered up. “This is comfier than my cabin.”

  “What are you doing?” I hissed down.

  “I only wanted to see what it was like in here for the story—and I knew he wouldn’t mind.”

  Boy was shuffling his hooves, moving away from Red, and Girl was swaying her neck like she did right before kicking the Old Man. Red was about to get it. I tried to warn her, but I couldn’t get the words out. Reaching through the opening, she placed her left hand on Girl’s flank over the same sideways heart-shaped spot I’d touched in quarantine, and reaching back to Boy with her right, she patted them both at the same time. Girl’s neck stopped its swaying and Boy’s fur shuddered with delight.

  “I’m going to Africa someday,” Red said, patting, patting. “This’ll get me there, you wait and see.” She glanced up at me. “How do I get out of here? Oh, wait.”

  She popped open the trapdoor and eased to the ground, smiling at me like she’d been patting puppies. Climbing down, I whapped the trapdoor shut, wanting bad to tell her to never, ever do that again, but what she’d just done belied any such warnings.

  “Woody, did you tell Mr. Jones who I was when I hit the rig?”

  I barely heard her. “What? No.”

  “Good. Let’s wait on introducing me . . . you know, considering all. I’ll hang on back a bit longer.” Then, with a kiss on my cheek that froze me solid, she picked up her camera and disappeared inside her cabin.

  It wasn’t near time for the Old Man to relieve me, but in no more than a minute he came lumbering up, pulling on his suspenders and squinting in the moonlight. “Half woke up a while ago. Never got full back to sleep. The darlings OK? Thought I heard a ruckus.”

  “There was a bear,” I said, standing so he couldn’t see the crack in the rig. “It ran away.”

  “A bear, eh?” he said, already grabbing his Lucky Strike pack and settling onto the rig’s running board. “He won’t come back. Go get some sleep. I’ll wake you at dawn.”

  Heading to the cabin, I told myself I’d show him the crack in the road Pullman tomorrow if he didn’t find it himself first. Right then, though, I’d had enough of that pisser of a day.

  As I closed my eyes, hoping for a bit of sleep without nightmares, I saw a flash of bear on the back of my eyelids and felt the touch of Red’s lips on my cheek. And I wondered what might be more dangerous, the bear, the giraffes, or a camera-packing redhead in britches.

  . . . “Mr. Nickel?”

  Rosie, Greasy, and the nurse are standing in my doorway.

  “May we come in?” asks the nurse.

  “Well, listen to you asking nicely,” I say, lowering my pencil.

  “I tell you his heart stopped,” Greasy is saying.

  “Daryl said you had a seizure of some kind. How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine and dandy, fit as a fiddle,” I say, glancing at Wild Girl, who’s blowing a blubbery Bronx cheer Greasy’s way.

  Greasy throws up his hands and leaves. The nurse comes over, takes my pulse, listens to my heart, and leaves, too.

  Rosie, though, doesn’t move. “OK, hon, what happened? I won’t tell.”

  I don’t answer, turning back to my writing pad. In a second, she sighs and leaves as well, giving my shoulder another squeeze as she goes.

  But then I hear dominoes and I turn to see the younger Rosie on the edge of my bed, shuffling away. A game and a story, she is saying again . . . “So what’s next? I know! We’re about to meet Moses, aren’t we?”

  My chest tightens.

  “Oh, hon . . . why are you pushing yourself so?”

  Haven’t you ever had a story you should’ve told someone before it was too late? I think, rubbing my
heart.

  You’ve told me, she says.

  No, not all—and you’re not her. “I need to tell her,” I say out loud. But I’m talking to an empty room. I glance back quick for the darling Girl. She’s still there, peacefully licking the air. So, licking my pencil tip, I get back on the road.

  8

  Into Tennessee

  At dawn, the first thing I saw as I pulled on my boots and stumbled out of the log cabin was the Old Man inspecting the rig’s splintered crack as Wild Girl stomped her displeasure. Throwing up his hands, he said, “Let’s go.”

  Squinting through the far shadows, I could see the Packard was still there. The Old Man hadn’t noticed, and as we headed out I spied Red watching from her cabin door.

  We stopped at the first roadside store we saw for gas and food. As I checked the giraffes and watched for Red, I eyed the store’s Western Union sign, wondering if he was sending that telegram for a new Memphis driver like he said. Getting gloomier by the second, I just got back behind the wheel.

  In a minute, the Old Man marched out and dropped the food sacks and a newspaper on the seat between us. As he bit into his breakfast salami, I recall looking down at the newspaper. In letters as big as my fist, it said: HITLER INVADES CZECHOSLOVAKIA: “Thus Begins Our Great German Reich.” I barely took notice. All I could think about was the telegram. Did he or didn’t he send it?

  The Old Man held out the salami. “Want a bite?”

  I shook my head.

  Taking another big bite as I pulled us onto the road, he stored it in his cheek to say, “By the way, I wired for the new driver.”

  There it was.

  “So get us there and I’ll buy you that train ticket. Anywhere you want to—”

  But I was already spewing out what I’d been practicing since the mountain store. “I had the mountain beat till we got hit! I can go the distance! I can go to Californy, swear to God I can!”

  The Old Man chuckled. “Clean the wax out of your ears, boy. I said I’ll buy you a ticket anywhere you want to go.”

  “Anywhere?”

  “You earned it,” he answered, swallowing down the last of the salami. “Even to California, if you’re so set on it.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yep. You’ll be getting there before we will.”

  That quick, I was going to California. Soon. My plan had worked. All I had to do was get to Memphis and I’d be on my way straight to the land of milk and honey.

  I felt my flickering hope flame up high as all glory.

  The next few miles were a blur. I’m surprised I didn’t run us into a ditch I was so over the moon with the Old Man’s big announcement. I wasn’t even looking back for Red. In fact, I don’t recall a thing about that part of the trip until we found ourselves in Tennessee, crossing through a nice little pass that rolled us to the other side of the Smoky Mountains, the biggest ups and downs behind us, at least of the geographical kind.

  Soon we rocked into a rhythm like the one on our first traveling day. But for me, it was as different as different could be. I wasn’t riding on a thieved cycle trying to keep up. I wasn’t working an angle or plotting my next move. I was just driving us along, blissful, the hours slipping by, the roadside stops as pretty as a picture, and the trees sheer chomping delights. We passed a horse farm, and the horses began running with us along the pasture’s long white fence, tails swishing, manes flying high. Somewhere during that stretch Wild Boy even lay down. At the next rest stop, I popped the top to find him spread across his traveling crate’s floor again, his long neck drooping over his back, defying the laws of necks.

  This time, instead of telling the Old Man, I leaned in and whispered, “Hey—”

  Unwinding his neck, Boy got to his feet, rising like a giraffe prince as if to say, What? Then he pushed by me to reach for the new trees with Girl . . . and a wave of something peculiar and bittersweet passed over me. Down the road, I glanced in my sideview mirror at the giraffes with their snouts to the wind . . . and the same feeling washed over me again. Forcing my eyes straight ahead, I pictured myself riding on that California-bound train until my flickering hope was once again aflame.

  The rest of the morning’s drive was pure traveling peace, the high point being a batch of those old Burma-Shave ads staggered on little signs as we rolled by:

  THE SAFEST RULE

  NO IFS OR BUTS

  JUST DRIVE LIKE EVERY ONE

  ELSE IS NUTS

  BURMA-SHAVE

  HE LIT A MATCH

  TO CHECK GAS TANK

  THAT’S WHY

  THEY CALL HIM

  SKINLESS FRANK

  BURMA-SHAVE

  The last one I remember because it made the Old Man bust out laughing. In fact, by the afternoon’s first stop we were all in such a good mood that Girl didn’t even kick at the Old Man when he inspected her splint.

  As we pulled back on the road, though, we heard the sound of a train in the distance and the Old Man tensed.

  The sound grew louder and louder, coming from somewhere beyond the trees. The railroad track was moving toward us again. We strained for a glimpse through the woods, and when we saw flashes of yellow and red, the Old Man cussed under his breath.

  “What kind of circus moves so much it keeps up with us?” I said.

  “The cheap, fly-by-night kind,” he said back.

  The trees thinned and I caught a glimpse of elephants in a passing cattle car, their ears sagging low. “They don’t look happy.”

  “Nothing much happy going on over there,” muttered the Old Man. He took the next moment to spit out the window, which now in memory seems as much a comment as a sudden urge to rid himself of spittle. Because the next thing he said was, “Forget the skullduggery. You’d want to bring the wrath of God down on them just for how they treat their animals.”

  For over a mile, the train paced us on the other side of the tree line until it began pulling ahead. Through the trees, we could make out the new sign on the red caboose that said CHATTANOOGA TONIGHT! as the train chugged out of sight.

  Our good mood was dashed. As the land opened up to pasture, I kept checking the giraffes in the side mirror, their road Pullman looking far too much like a cattle car. I noticed the Old Man looking back more, too, but not at the giraffes. He was glancing at the road, and he kept it up for miles. The circus train had already passed, so I couldn’t quite figure why. I checked my own side mirror, worrying he’d spied the green Packard, but the road was empty.

  Then he was pointing. “Turn off.”

  I exited us onto a gravel road that ran through a tall stand of nearby trees.

  “Pull into that grove,” he said, his voice gone odd. “And put the giraffes’ heads in.”

  So I did, and they let me, which was also mighty odd.

  We sat there for five minutes that turned into ten, watching. I started wishing for cars to whiz by to kill the boredom. I saw a glimpse of color . . . yellow . . . and red.

  A panel truck whizzed by and out of sight—the same panel truck we’d seen back in Maryland.

  I cut my eye at the Old Man, busting with questions, but his jaw was set so solid, I knew to let him be. Our nice traveling mood wasn’t only broken now, it was roadkill.

  We opened the giraffes’ windows again, and for the next couple of hours, the highway wound us through town after little town, the roadside sprinkled with advertising billboards, ones like I’D WALK A MILE FOR A CAMEL and DRINK A BITE TO EAT 10-2-4 DR. PEPPER. Even town wags calling out “How’s the weather up there?” didn’t perk us up. By late afternoon, the air had turned a tad chilly, so we rolled up our windows, and even the giraffes pulled their heads in. The stop for the night was about two hours away, the Old Man said, so we’d be done before it got any chillier, the air or the mood.

  That’s when we came to the overpass.

  And when I say overpass, I mean what was left of the overpass.

  Somebody hadn’t quite made it under. The middle section had been hit by
something harder than a giraffe head. All that was left of it was dangling pieces of concrete and wire. Below it was another big DETOUR sign, plunked down in the middle of the highway.

  The Old Man groaned. “NOW what!”

  I slowed us to a crawl and the giraffes popped their heads out to see why. The detour arrow pointed to a side road that held the promise of looping back around to the highway soon enough. The side road itself looked iffy, though. It was paved, if cracked and weedy, but it didn’t have a name or a number. All it had to mark it was a homemade sign announcing COTTAGES FOR COLOREDS with an arrow pointing the way.

  “What do I do?” I said.

  The Old Man fumed. “Take the road.”

  We went about a hundred yards fine enough, but as we took a curve, I had to stand on the brakes. In front of us was a railroad underpass, the old narrow kind where the road dips down to go under the track instead of the other way around. It looked low.

  And when I say low, I mean real low.

  Both of us could tell by eyeing the underpass that the clearance was going to be close, plus it was barely wide enough for us to pass through.

  I’d have pulled the rig off the road if there’d been a shoulder, but it was already sloping inward to pass under the railroad trestle. So I had to stop in the middle of the road, and the moment we came to a stop, I felt eyes on me. I thought it was the giraffes until I saw a whitewashed shotgun shack right by the tracks. Sitting in a small window in the roof’s eaves was a little Black girl, not more than four or five. We were so close, I could see her eyes grow wide with giraffes.

  The Old Man was talking. “Go measure the thing quick before some new fool rear-ends us.” Reaching under the seat for a big metal tape measure, he thrust it at me. I got out with it and ran, taking the tape high as soon as I was below the underpass.

  “Twelve feet eight!” I called.

  The rig was twelve foot eight—maybe higher, since tires inflate on the road.

  By the time I returned to the rig, the Old Man was standing near the front fender, staring down at the rig’s tire. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” he muttered as he took the cap off the tire’s air valve stem. The rig had single tires up front and double tires in back under the giraffes to help hold the weight and to keep the rig going if one went flat. Within seconds, he’d let a little air out of all of them, each one making a tiny, soft phhhhhht sound, that is, until he got to the last right-side double tire that had picked up a nail. The Old Man had no choice. He had to let air out of it, too—and when he did, the tire went full-out flat. After giving it a good cussing, he took a deep breath. We still had the other double tire to get us to our night stop and some gas station help—if we could only get through the underpass.