I measured again. Still too close. He had to let out a bit more on every tire.
As he was all but finished, his fingers pinching the valve stem of the tire by the flat, a two-seat roadster zoomed around the curve, swerved to miss us, and barreled on through the underpass. Having already been hit once by a swerving rubbernecker, I jumped like a spooked bullfrog, stumbling into the Old Man so hard that his fingers, still squeezing the tire’s stem, wrenched the nozzle sideways . . . and the phhhhhht sound was replaced by another sound . . . the tiniest unsettling ssssssshhhhhhh.
And it wasn’t stopping. Both of the right-side double tires were about to be flat.
For a second, we looked at each other, then the Old Man yelled, “We got to get through to even get off the road! Put their heads in!”
I wasted a full minute trying, but the usually obliging Boy wasn’t having it, much less Girl.
“Forget it!” called the Old Man as he ran to the curve, and seeing the Old Man run was a scary sight in itself. “Coast’s clear!” he yelled. “Go!”
I hopped behind the wheel, still hearing that tiny ssssssshhhhhhh.
“Down the middle—slow but quick—they need time to get their heads in,” the Old Man hollered, “but that tire’s about to go!”
With the giraffes snorting and stomping at the ruckus, I put the rig into gear and inched forward, trusting the giraffes to pull their heads out of harm’s way on their own . . . and, God love them, they did. Slow, slow, slow, we moved under the rusted old railroad bridge, the top of the rig making screech-scraw wood-scraping sounds to set your teeth on fire.
The rig was almost through—only inches left to clear—when the remaining back right tire went flat with one quick, sad phhwwmphh. We dropped to a dead stop, plugging up that underpass good.
I jumped to the ground and wiggled between the rig and the underpass wall to join the Old Man gaping at the woeful sight. Both back right tires were flat, all right. In a flash, we saw what had happened. It was the giraffes. As soon as most of the rig had cleared and it was safe to pop their heads out again, they’d done just that. At the same time. On the same side. The extra weight was too much for the single, half-deflated tire on top of what was causing that ssssssshhhhhhh sound—which, of course, now had also stopped.
At that, the Old Man whopped that poor fedora of his to the ground and stomped it flat, produced a rolling cuss I would have admired any other time, creative as sin and the length of a long spiral spit into the wind. Which is probably how it felt, too, his big plan coming right back in his face, because I knew what he was thinking. I was wanting to kick myself. When the giraffes wouldn’t let me close one side’s windows, I should have tried tricking them by closing off opposite side ones—Girl one way, Boy the other—to keep the rig balanced for the few seconds we needed it to work. Too little, too late, I latched all the windows giraffe-tight to get us balanced again, at least long enough for the Old Man to stop cussing and start figuring out what to do. In the meantime, we were stuck now in almost as much mortal peril as in the mountains. So I headed in a sprint back to the curve, since one of us had to keep cars from ramming us into a world of hurt.
The Old Man hollered me to a halt. “Get back here!”
I turned to see why, and what I saw was a fool’s folly.
Under the back axle, he’d set up the big fancy jack that came with the big fancy rig. He was going to make me start pumping it. But we had one spare, two flats, and two giraffes. Not to mention the underpass right above the last two to three inches of the rig. It wasn’t going to work. I knew it in my bones. There wasn’t a jack made that a man could pump on his own strength to raise squat with giraffes sitting on top of it over two flat tires. And there was sure no trick to make them not weigh two tons no matter where they stood.
I knew the Old Man saw what I saw, but he looked desperate, half-crazy with it. He marched over and shoved me toward the jack, ordering me to get pumping. So, I started pumping and I kept it up until I heard the Old Man whisper in a voice so spooked the memory of it can still give me the creeps.
“Uhm . . . boy . . .”
I looked where he was looking. Up on the railroad tracks stood a Black man in blue overalls. He was six and a half feet, if an inch. What got me up quick on my feet, though, wasn’t so much the sight of the man. It was the big blade he was holding. He had himself a wheat scythe, a nasty-looking farm tool I’d only seen left to rust on barn walls after cotton and tractors came to the plains. But this one wasn’t rusty. This one was shiny and sharp. Like the one Death in his flowing robe carries around in ghost stories.
Down toward the front of the rig ambled the man. When he got near, he popped the handle side of the scythe into the soft ground like the staff of Moses. For a very long moment, he stood there staring hard enough to give both me and the Old Man the willies.
“We been watching you,” he finally said.
I glanced around, not seeing any “we,” and not much wanting to.
At the sound of the booming new voice, Wild Girl’s head bopped her latched window so hard that the latch gave and the window popped open.
Moses frowned. “What kind of animals you got there?”
Before the Old Man could answer, the other latched window whapped open as well, Wild Boy wanting to see what there was to see, too, and with both giraffes on the same side again, the rig leaned, the metal groaned, and thunk. So much for the fancy jack.
Moses stared at the jack.
Then at the truck.
Then at the underpass.
Then at the tires.
Then back at us. “Got yourself in a tight spot,” he said.
“Yes,” answered the Old Man.
“Tried to let out the tires to get it under.”
“Yes,” answered the Old Man again.
“Now you’re stuck,” Moses said next.
“Yes—” repeated the Old Man, getting crankier by the second over all this stating of the obvious.
Moses nodded at the giraffes. “Don’t suppose those big fellers can come out of there.”
“No.” The Old Man’s head all but bobbed off he shook it so hard. For all we knew, Moses had some designs on the giraffes, but the truth was the rig was not a back-loading horse trailer. So, even if we wanted to, there wasn’t going to be any taking the giraffes out until it was clear of the underpass. The entire side had to come down to do any such thing.
Giving everything another once-over, Moses then said, “We can do what needs doing. But first, things gotta be put right.”
I didn’t know about the Old Man, but the sound of that did not make me glad all over.
Moses put two fingers to his lips and made a noise that was something between a crow being murdered and a robin being courted. In less than a minute, six younger, burlier copies of the man appeared. They streamed in one by one, dressed in overalls like Moses, some one-shouldered, some two, some wearing shirts, some not—all clutching farm utensils in their big mitts.
They came up close to the rig, a couple of them even reaching up to touch the giraffes without having to step up on a thing to get to them. You’d think they’d have all been chattering upon seeing giraffes, like every other living soul had so far. But they were silent as the wind, all nods of the head, hands on hips, cocks of the brow, repeating Moses’s actions without wasting a bit of breath on speech, looking at the tires, the underpass, the rig, and each other.
Then back at us.
The Old Man, meanwhile, was keeping an eye on the farm utensils in the men’s beefy fists. I could tell he was worrying which way this was about to go, his eyes darting to the shotgun on the cab’s gunrack. “Stay close,” he mumbled at me, like I could do a thing if everything went south.
“Better get the uncs, too,” Moses said next, and put his fingers to his lips again. This time the birdcall was more murder than courting, and six more burly men come out of nowhere, older than the first group, but the spitting image of each other except for the amount of hair on
their heads. Joining up with the rest, they did the very same wordless sizing up the situation, and they did it so long, both me and the Old Man were about to come right out of our skins.
Then they all turned toward the railroad track as here came another man. But this one was different. Using a hoe as a walking stick, he was white-whiskered, his overalls were starched, his blue work shirt was fresh-ironed, and, as he came to a stop by Moses, he only had eyes for the giraffes.
I’d heard of big farming families before, even known a few, but this one pretty much took the prize. Taking in the whole clan, I figured white-whiskers had to be the Big Papa, the uncs his brothers, and the rest had to be their sons, Moses being the eldest.
As Big Papa kept studying the giraffes, Moses nodded at the youngest man—all the muscle but not the height—and the son headed toward the curve to stand watch, a human roadblock if there ever was one.
Then Big Papa spoke. “We know what we can do for these towering creatures of God’s pure Eden.” As Big Papa and Moses let another moment go by without a peep, the Old Man was about to pop and I wasn’t doing much better, wondering why he wasn’t raising holy hell to hear their game plan before letting these strangers take control. But I knew why. There was only one thing to be done. Move the truck. And how that could be done without some motorized help, much less taking those giraffes out of the truck, neither of us could quite figure.
Then Moses spoke. “Put it in gear.”
I looked at the Old Man, who was already looking at me. Although it was clear as day he didn’t want to, he gave me a nod. As I got in and put the rig in gear, one thought rushed through my head: Wherever the giraffes go, I go. The idea surprised me so much it half rattled me. I got even more rattled when I glanced in my mirror.
At the curve, a green Packard was stalled sideways off the road, like it had tried to go around the roadblock son, and there stood Red in a man’s trench coat, clutching her camera, the human roadblock’s big fist clutching her arm.
“You ready?”
Moses’s voice snapped me back to the rig.
I nodded.
“Stomp it.”
The rig, like I said, had almost cleared the underpass before the tires splatted. It just hadn’t cleared enough to pull off the road. That’s what the Big Papa clan proceeded to do—push us the few inches clear and to the shoulder. It didn’t matter a lick that I was adding to the weight. I might as well have been made of feathers. It didn’t matter a lick that two of the tires were flat. Or that the road was inclining up. Or that the giraffes were moving around, popping their heads out both sides of the rig, watching the excitement. With me stomping the gas, the Big Papa clan pushed me, two giraffes, two flat tires, and the rest of the big rig into the short roll needed to get us the few feet needed to clear that underpass. When they’d groaned and grunted and heaved and hoed their last, the rig landed on the road’s narrow shoulder right beyond the bridge.
As I turned off the key, Moses whistled that robin-courting call again. The human roadblock son at the curve stepped aside to let four cars inch through the underpass, then let go of Red, who, instead of jumping into the Packard, headed straight toward us on a dead run, camera up. By the time I got out of the rig, the Old Man was standing there as slack-jawed as I’d ever seen him, with Red already there, snapping away.
The Old Man gaped at her. “Who are you?”
Red put out her hand. “Hello, Mr. Jones, I’m chronicling your story for Life magazine. Woody will vouch for me, won’t you, Woody?”
“Oh, for the love of . . .” The Old Man groaned. “You’re the one who damn near sent us over the side of the mountain! Get away, girlie!” He turned his back on her, which didn’t stop her one bit. She turned and aimed the camera at the sons and uncs. By that time, though, the human roadblock had returned, and he placed his huge hand over her camera.
Red gulped.
“Seventh Son thinks it’d be the mannerly thing to ask, missy,” Big Papa translated.
Red took a second to hear Big Papa, staring at Seventh Son’s paw on her lens. “Oh. I’m sorry. May I take your picture?” That seemed to satisfy Seventh Son, and he dropped his hand.
Moses, meanwhile, had been inspecting the deflated back tires. “You gotcha a spare,” he said. “You don’t got two. Which you need.”
The Old Man bit his tongue over more stating of the obvious. “Do you have a tire this size we could buy off you?”
Moses shook his head.
“How about a motorized pump you could haul down here for us to use to put the single spare on?” the Old Man tried next. “We’ve got to get down the road before dark.”
Again, Moses shook his head.
All out of ideas, the Old Man glanced my way. Things were not looking good.
“Sure the big fellers can’t come off?” Moses said.
The Old Man hesitated. “You still able to help if they can’t?”
Big Papa and Moses exchanged glances, then Moses nodded real slow and the whole clan turned and marched off.
The rest of us had no choice but to wait, the Old Man fuming, the giraffes snuffling, and Red working her camera, fixing knobs and turning rings like nothing else mattered, not even the fancy automobile she’d left on the side of the road. Then her head popped up. Moses reappeared carrying a single truck tire that looked as bald as he was and, behind him, the sons returned in groups. One group was carrying two long split tree trunks as big around as a man’s chest, another lugged long steel bars, and another was rolling a boulder—flat on one side, round on the other with a trunk-sized groove—landing it, flat-side down, a few yards behind the rig.
Moving in a way that spoke of them having done this many times before, the sons made a sandwich with the trunk logs and steel bars, shoved the log sandwich under the rig to straddle the back axle, then laid the other end of the log sandwich in the boulder’s groove to create the oddest makeshift seesaw you ever saw.
Then, in choir-like unison, all the sons and uncs climbed up on the end of the log sandwich sticking up in the air. The steel groaned, the logs splintered, the truck creaked, and the entire rig rose the two inches needed for Moses to switch out the two deflated tires for the rig’s spare and his own bald tire.
As Moses wiped his hands, the sons and the uncs got off the seesaw one by one, easing the giraffes and the rig to the dirt, the tires touching the ground with a bounce—and staying round. At that, all the parts of the seesaw went back the way they came in the hands that brought them, the men moving silent and solemn.
The Old Man and I were knocked dumb with this new feat of moxie and muscle. Seventh Son tapped the Old Man on the shoulder, held out his squished fedora until the Old Man took it, and then disappeared over the railroad tracks, too.
The Old Man, absently dusting off his hat, found his voice and turned toward Big Papa. “What do we owe you?”
Big Papa twirled his hoe in what I now think was a display of family pride. “Don’t want your money.”
“Well, then, how can we thank you?” the Old Man asked.
Seventh Son returned over the railroad tracks with the little girl from the shotgun shack’s window riding on his shoulder, and Big Papa broke into a smile.
“Honey Bee’d like to meet these creatures,” he said, “if you’d be of a mind.”
Honey Bee whispered into his ear.
“And Honey Bee would like to know their names,” Big Papa added.
Despite himself, I could tell the Old Man was charmed. With a glance my way, he said, “Well, Miss Honey Bee, they hadn’t told us their names yet. So why don’t you call this one Girl and the other Boy. That suit you?”
So Honey Bee got her own private audience, Seventh Son lifting her high enough for both giraffes to have a nice get-acquainted snort-fest with her.
Big Papa then said to the Old Man, “The old tire won’t get you far. We can fix both of your’n tomorrow. Getting dark. We’ll put you up. Got a growing motel concern.” He pointed to a dirt road about
thirty feet ahead, leading off toward the piney woods, another COTTAGES FOR COLOREDS sign perched by it. “Besides,” Big Papa went on, “Honey Bee’d like you to stay. And Honey Bee gets her way around here. Right, Honey Bee?”
The little girl nodded.
“After all you’ve done for us, we’d be honored to partake of your hospitality,” answered the Old Man, sticking out his hand for Big Papa to shake, which he did. Sprouting a big smile, the Old Man then headed toward the dirt road with Big Papa and Moses, turning into the charming Mr. Jones I saw with the ladies at Round’s Auto Rest.
“Best you come, too, missy,” Big Papa called over his shoulder, and Seventh Son and Honey Bee stepped Red’s way.
Red’s eyes darted between the COTTAGES FOR COLOREDS sign and Seventh Son. “Oh, uhmmm, no, thank you . . .”
But Big Papa was already gone, walking and talking with the Old Man. So, to the sound of a giggling Honey Bee, I put the rig in gear and turned on the dirt road as Seventh Son picked up the flat tires with his free hand and herded Red the same direction, her big trench coat dragging in the dust.
We were headed toward three little cottages, set apart against a nice stand of leafy maple trees along the edge of the woods—Big Papa’s motel concern. As we passed the first cottage where a shiny blue Olds sedan with old shoes tied to the bumper was parked, out stepped a Black couple dressed to the nines to gawk at the passing eyeful that was us.
West with Giraffes: A Novel Page 12
