The flash flood had arrived.
I blinked and it jumped the ditch’s edge, rushing across the graveyard.
I blinked again and it was sweeping away the crosses, spreading across the dirt like it was searching for us until it was pouring over my boots.
That quick, all the ways in the world to describe moving water were happening where I stood. And because water finds what it wants, it was also filling the crumbly asphalt behind us, flowing toward the paved road’s bend away from the ditch where Red was supposed to be—but where, of course, she was not. She had stopped only halfway back and was snapping pictures. Now the water had found her, too.
The giraffes began kicking the rig, the water’s roar drowning out the Old Man’s coos. I got back behind the wheel, grinding the starter again until I heard the battery dying—and it was all I could do not to grind it dead for fear there’d be no reason not to if it didn’t start now.
Instead I crawled up with the Old Man and the giraffes, telling myself over and over, The water will stop . . . the water has to stop . . .
But it wasn’t stopping.
In fact, we could now see what the giraffes had already seen. The worst—the surge—was still coming. Debris-filled water, crap from one hundred miles away, was on us. Limbs and rocks and mud pinged the rig as the water rushed past. Then, like it fell from the sky, an entire uprooted tree appeared, bouncing off one side of the wash and back to the other, until the surge raised it up and slammed its trunk into the church, collapsing the whole rickety thing. Before we could do a thing but holler, the trunk and half the church swirled around the graveyard oak and slammed into the left side of the rig, making the Old Man lose his fedora and almost take a header into the water before I grabbed him back.
With the water forced to flow around the tree trunk jammed now against the rig, no longer was the worry how deep or how fast, but how heavy. Just like the Old Man feared, we felt the hardpan under the rig’s left tires begin to go soft.
The rig began to lean.
Scrambling to the other side, we started calling Boy and Girl to come our way. But the giraffes, caught again at the mercy of roiling water, were panicking. As the rig leaned nearer and nearer to the point of no return, from the bottom of their long throats came the bellowing, blood-boiling, giraffe-terror caterwaul.
Down the wet asphalt road, Red stood on the Packard’s hood watching. I gazed at her, longing for the next moment never to come, wishing I could stop time.
But time doesn’t stop.
The next moment came . . . and, with it, came the sound of a revving engine.
Driving straight for us was the Packard.
Speeding faster and faster, the Packard began to hydroplane along the wet pavement, water spewing up on both sides until it was right on us, seconds from crashing into the rig. Then Red jerked the wheel left, plunging the Packard between the surge and the rig, and as the water grabbed it, she jerked the wheel right, slamming that big Packard broadside against the leaning rig, wedging us tight against the surge.
By the time I’d grasped what had happened, Red had wiggled out her window and climbed up to us, as the worst of the flash flood hit. For the eternal seconds that followed, we couldn’t do a thing but watch and wonder if the rig would stay tall, if the Packard’s heft would hold, if the giraffes would stay on their feet—trying not to think about how dirt is dirt and mud is mud and rivers create mountains by rushing and roaring.
Then, quick as it came, the water was gone.
As the debris settled and the flood sounds disappeared, we sat there. The silence was crushing. Yet still we sat. We stared at the bright sunny day. We stared at the giraffes as Girl sniffed and Boy sneezed. We stared at the bent graveyard oak and the crosses strewn helter-skelter as far as we could see. The feeling was like the hurricane shock in my memory, coming down off the moment, waiting for my mind to catch up with my body. When mine did, I saw I had grabbed hold of Red, and the Old Man had grabbed us both. We untangled, easing a few inches apart, all staring down at the wedged Packard, watching water leaking from every door.
Only then must Red have remembered what she’d left behind.
With a strangled cry, she tumbled down, wrenched open the Packard’s door, and pulled out her soaked camera bag—its cameras, film rolls, and plates all tumbling into the mud—and then sank in the mud beside them and covered her face with her hands.
I eased to the ground. I didn’t know that the Packard had more chance of coming back from the dead than waterlogged film or fancy cameras. But when I sloshed over, picked up some of her film and heard the water squishing inside them, I knew it was bad. And I knew enough to leave her alone.
The Old Man, now on the ground, too, was staring back up at the giraffes, their heads hanging over the snarl of wood and metal and mud below. The rig was still leaning but the giraffes were calm, as if they knew the worst of the lions were gone.
I went down on my haunches and dug into the mud near one of the rig’s tires. The hardpan was dry not three inches down. If we could get the rig started and the giraffes upright, I was pretty sure we could pull out.
Meanwhile, the Old Man had unjammed Girl’s trapdoor to check her bloodied bandage. When he saw that the wound had only been scraped, he gently placed his hand over the bandage and left it there a moment, heaving a great sigh.
Next, I opened the truck hood to check the motor. When we saw it was dry, I placed a hand on the engine and heaved a sigh of my own.
Red, though, was still sitting by the Packard, staring at her soaked cameras and film. As the Old Man went looking for his fedora, I moved near, hoping she’d look up. When she didn’t, I stepped around her. Eyeing the blown tires and what looked like a bent axle, I lifted the Packard’s crushed hood as far as I could. The motor was drenched. I tried starting it anyway, but it wouldn’t even click over. The truck, being flooded with gas, not water, would start if I waited long enough, but the Packard was done.
So, taking the keys, I looked in the car for a suitcase. All I found, though, was the man’s trench coat she’d been wearing, the pockets stuffed with hairbrush, toothbrush, a wrapped bar of soap—and her notepad. I opened it. She’d written most of it with a fountain pen, and the water had turned it all into smeared lines of blue. The only thing left readable was what she’d written in pencil long ago—her list on the last page:
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
- Pay Woody back
I stared hard at what had been added—me—and what was crossed out, feeling the beating of her broken heart at Big Papa’s and knowing the list now for what it truly was. If I’d had a pencil I’d have crossed out the last one without hesitating. Slipping it back into the trench coat’s pocket, I folded the coat and turned toward Red, who was still sitting in the mud. I started to say something to her. Yet what was there to say? I placed the trench coat in the cab and gazed around for the Old Man. About two hundred feet down the wash, he’d found his hat stuck to a wooden cross and was whopping it against his pant leg to dry.
After that, for a good long while, we went around gathering broken boards to put under the tires for traction, gathering far more than we’d need to give both the rig and Red more time. As the afternoon sun began to set, I got up the courage to try the truck’s ignition. On the first try, I pumped the pedal too hard. It gurgled and died. I let off. When I tried again, it gurgled once, twice, and then roared to life. Back in my right mind, I popped it quick into neutral and revved it a few minutes to make sure it wouldn’t die on us again. The Old Man actually smiled.
Before we could go anywhere, though, we had t
o right the rig, moving it away from both the Packard and the wedged tree trunk, which meant getting the giraffes to help. The Old Man, onions in hand, crawled up the right side and asked the giraffes to come get them. When the giraffes did, I called down for Red to move. But I might as well have been talking to the mud. So, with one eye on Red, and the other on the Old Man and the giraffes, I put the big rig into gear, screeching metal against metal away from the Packard, and metal against wood away from the uprooted tree trunk, until the rig was free and all four tires were back on the asphalt.
With that, the Old Man patted and stroked the giraffes, now shuffling upright and looking mighty happy about it. Then he climbed down to inspect the damage. The rig was bunged up and battered, with a crack full down the tree-trunk-smashed side. But it would get down the road.
“We’ve got to go,” he said, cutting an eye at Red.
With the engine idling, I climbed out and went over to Red, who still had yet to move. I shoved all the ruined cameras and film back in the soggy bag, stuffed it with the folded-up trench coat in the truck cab, and went back to Red, grabbing her hand and closing the Packard keys inside it. “We have to go. We’ve got the giraffes,” I said as tender as I could muster. “We’ll get you somebody to haul the Packard somewhere, if you want. Right now, though, you’ve got to come with us.”
She let me help her to her feet. Keys clenched in her fist, she paused for a moment to take a last look at the drowned, smashed Packard, then she tossed the keys in the open window and climbed into the truck.
As we drove back down the asphalt, the Old Man and I eyed the flood’s havoc. By the time we got back to the highway, though, there was nothing to see. The flash flood had followed the wash away from the road, no doubt toward the washes of the closed highways west.
Red, though, still silent, had looked nowhere but straight ahead until we eased onto the highway, headed back to the run-down tourist court. Then she said, “Mr. Jones, would you be kind enough to drop me at the next city’s train station?”
With a look as close to gentle as I’d ever expect to see on Mr. Riley Jones, the Old Man said yes.
As the sun set, we pulled into the auto court, surely looking like a pack of drowned rats with a couple of hitchhiking giraffes. None of us were in the mood to make new friends, so the Old Man decided it best to close the road Pullman’s windows before making our way to the scraggly line of mesquite trees, hoping the giraffes were tired enough to oblige—and they were.
Every type of vehicle you could think of was parked around the little circular drive of the auto court—motorcycles, trailers, fancy sedans, long-haul trucks. Most everyone had already turned in early, considering we’d all been forced into this overnight stay. The only people we ended up seeing were the ones camping near the edge of the property where we’d be parking—some Okie families, their old Model T Fords packed high with belongings and family members, huddled together around their makeshift campfires.
The Old Man had hopped out at the office to throw some more money at the owner for dry towels and blankets. By the time he returned, arms full, I had parked us as good as I could behind the scraggly trees and was opening the top for the giraffes. Hopping down to grab the blankets, I turned to hand one to Red.
She was gone.
For the rest of the evening, under the cover of dark, we tended to the giraffes. The trapdoors, warped because of the flood, took some elbow grease to open and even more to get closed again. But the tending in between was pure pleasure, especially hearing Girl kick at the Old Man as he tried replacing the bloodied bandage with a clean one. “Get me some more onions, will ya!” he grumbled. “We got to end this day, swear to God.”
After the giraffes were chewing their cud like it was any another day, we decided we’d leave the top open through the night for the giraffes, and the Old Man went to talk to the manager about the Packard before we took turns sleeping in the truck cab for the night. As I watched him pass the first of the makeshift campfires, I recognized the Okies from last night’s Wigwam Auto Court, and I noticed what the Old Man didn’t. Sitting with them, wrapped in a homemade quilt, was Red. The granny had wrapped Red in one of their blankets, strung a clothesline, and hung up her clothes to dry and was sitting by her at the fire. I grabbed up her soggy camera bag and folded-up trench coat, and headed that way.
The granny waved me over. “You OK, dearie?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
With a smile, the granny left us alone as I eased down beside Red, placing the camera bag and coat at her feet. She didn’t touch either. She sat there staring at the campfire, her face chalk white like she’d upchucked again. After all we’d been through, I was surprised I wasn’t puking myself.
“The Old Man is talking to the manager about the Packard,” I told her. “We’ll be leaving before dawn. We’ll take you where you want.”
When she didn’t respond, I fumbled around for more words. I wanted to say what neither the Old Man nor I knew how to say. I wanted to thank her for plowing her Packard into the flood to save the giraffes and our own hides. I wanted to say I was sorry it meant the loss of all her film and the dreams wrapped around them.
Instead I heard myself asking what my clueless young self most wanted to know. After everything she’d risked to get this far—the lies she’d told, the customs she’d flouted, the husband she disobeyed, the laws she’d stretched––I blurted, “Why did you do it?”
She shot me a glare that could’ve turned fire into ice. “How could you ask that?”
This time I knew to keep my mouth shut.
She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the giraffes. “May I go see them?”
The Old Man was already asleep and snoring in the cab, but I wouldn’t have cared if he wasn’t. I stood up and so did she, the quilt wrapped tight around her. When we got to the rig, ready to climb up, she dropped the quilt, even though she had nothing on but her unmentionables, and just like her trousers, this was my first time to see such a sight in real life. I never saw my own ma in her bra holding up her massive bosoms, much less wearing only her drawers. But now, seeing Red not caring a whit about herself, it was all I could do to not pull her to me—not for what I was seeing, but for reasons I had no words for, ones that had more to do with how she must be feeling. That was another first for me.
I helped her climb up to the top again, grabbing a towel for her to sit on. Girl came over close, happy to see her, sniffing at her unmentionables, then Boy came up to do the same, but easier, sweeter, snuffling at her hair.
The next moment I have studied in my mind through the years, and the feeling from it has always remained the same. Red leaned over them both, her wild curls falling over her face, letting the giraffes nibble at them as if she was cherishing each little snuffle and nip from the two. It seemed like a thank-you she was offering the giraffes . . . and a goodbye.
I felt it so strong that I even said so at the time. “We’ll see you tomorrow. This is not goodbye or anything.”
She didn’t answer. Instead she reached out to touch Boy and Girl one more time and then climbed down, wrapped the quilt tight around her, and went back to the Okies’ fire.
The granny sat down beside her, offering her something in a tin cup to sip. As Red began to talk to the old woman, I was too far away to hear, but I knew what she was saying. I watched as she told the women about the whole day, nodding toward the rig. I watched as the ma with the baby in her arms joined them. I watched as Red coughed, then opened her quilt and took the granny’s hand, placing it over her heart exactly as she had done with mine. I watched as the granny moved her hand from Red’s heart to her stomach. Then I saw Red glance quickly toward the baby.
And I knew what the Old Man had guessed about Red was true.
From the looks of it, now so did she.
13
Into New Mexico
Our plan was to leave in the dark right before dawn to avoid the other stalled travelers, deciding we’d tend the giraffes down t
he road. But when we were ready, there was no sign of Red.
“I can’t find her . . . ,” I whispered to the Old Man as I ran back to the rig, trying not to wake anyone else at the place. “The Okie granny told me she disappeared as soon as her clothes got dry by the fire. Her camera bag’s still over there, though. There’s no place else to look.”
“Maybe she’s changed her mind or decided to wait for the Packard,” the Old Man whispered back, climbing into the passenger seat. “Or maybe she’s gotten new help that isn’t us. Wouldn’t blame her, would you? My guess is she doesn’t want to be found. Probably best to leave her be.” He pointed back at the rig. “Close up the top.”
“We can’t just leave.”
He propped an elbow on the open window and sighed down at me. “All I know is she’s not here and we’ve got to go, boy. We’ve got the darlings.”
So quietly I closed the top, the giraffes barely noticing in the dark. Climbing down to the ground, I took one last full-circle look around the auto court. Then I got behind the wheel and took us off slow, glancing back every few seconds until we were long out of sight, not wanting to believe this was goodbye. Things didn’t feel right, I recall thinking, as if yesterday wasn’t finished with us even with a new dawn on its way. There was only one thing I knew for certain. However much I looked, there’d be no green Packard in my sideview mirror ever again.
As dawn broke, we drove over the three low wash places in the highway pavement, exactly like the trooper described. We took all three in first gear, the flood debris far worse than at Pa’s farm. A crew had already cleared the highway lanes, but there was still some water in all of them. So, pavement or not, it didn’t do much for my nerves as we splashed through them. Crossing each wash, the rig wobbled and I had to force it straight. The last one was the worst. The giraffes, their heads still inside their windows, were bouncing around more than usual, banging against the sides, the whole battered rig shaking bad.
“Should we stop?” I asked the Old Man.
West with Giraffes: A Novel Page 23
