West with Giraffes: A Novel

by Lynda Rutledge

  “It was around the corner from the Barnum & Bailey winter grounds,” the Old Man went on. “Soon as I could, I started sneaking in to see the elephants and the lions and tigers and monkeys.”

  “That when you started at the abattoir?” I cut in.

  “You gonna let me talk here?” he said, and went right on. “After a while, the kinkers and the roustabouts got tired of running me out, so I got chummy with the funambulists, you know—the tightrope walkers. They got me rope walking with them.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  He chortled, popping the side of the cab’s door. “I got so good, they said they’d take me with them when the circuit began. I would’ve done it, too, if one of my older brothers hadn’t hauled me back home before they hit the road. By the time I was about your age, though, I caught the consumption. The only cure for a lunger back then was to head out West. So I did. It was the making of me, I tell you what. I highly recommend it. For four years, I rode as a cowboy, punching cattle on the Colorado plains, riding night herd, living on sowbelly and sourdough biscuit, and I got my cure. I never got the elephants and the lions and tigers out of my system, though. Next circus I saw, I signed on.”

  “As a ropewalker?”

  “Naah. They didn’t have any of that. They weren’t Barnum & Bailey. Not even close. No, I only signed on to be around the animals. Before long, though, I was in a fistfight every day with some razorback who was mistreating an animal. So, before I ended up dead or in jail, I headed to San Diego and their new zoo, where I’d heard that the animals get treated better than the people. I hope to die there, I do.” He smiled so nice I hardly recognized him. “Not before we get these darlings into its gates, though. Right, boy?”

  It was a kindness the Old Man was performing, getting my mind back where it belonged, for the giraffes as well as my own moony self. It was working, maybe a little too well. We were pulling into Gila Bend, which was nothing much more than a little oasis with a well and a fountain in sight of the mountains, when I realized he hadn’t told me what I wanted to know.

  “Wait, what about your . . .” I pointed to his gnarled hand. “Was it lion taming?”

  “Well, now, that’s a whole other story.”

  That’s when we saw the elephant and the dog.

  A short, wiry man wearing a straw hat was just walking his dog and his elephant along the road.

  I was sure it was a mirage, but the Old Man saw it, too.

  The wiry man gave the dog a boost on top of the elephant, and the elephant wound his trunk back to touch the dog. Everybody was smiling, including the dog. Especially the dog. If ever I was speechless on this trip, and there were many such times, that was one of them.

  The Old Man guffawed. “I know that galoot! That’s Maroney. He’s got himself a little traveling show, going around giving rides to the children on that Asian elephant of his. I heard he came out to the desert towns for the winter.”

  “But . . . ,” I mumbled, “where’d he get an elephant?”

  “Same place anybody gets an elephant,” was how the Old Man answered. Like that explained it all. “Don’t worry. Those animals are having a good time and being treated dandy.”

  “How can you tell?” I said.

  As we watched the elephant put its trunk in the fountain to spray the wiry man and the dog, the Old Man smiled at me as if that was better than any answer he could give. Shaking his head, he glanced back at the giraffes and said, “There’s no explaining the world, boy. How you come into it. Where you find yourself. Or who your friends turn out to be—be you man or be you beast.” With that, he got out of the truck and headed toward Maroney, arms waving, already talking, and I realized he still had yet to tell me a thing about his gnarled hand.

  On we went for another hour. Until, near sunset, at the foot of the mountain pass, we pulled into the second desert motel the Old Man had pegged for us. This one was fancy. I mean fancy-fancy. It was called the Mohawk, with twelve pink stucco “cabanas” circled by palm trees that looked like they’d been hauled in complete with water and soil, all green and perky. The place was full up, big-ticket cars parked in front of every room, more fancy vehicles than my farmboy eyes had ever seen, and it was the quietest place I ever saw to be so full. I wasn’t quite sure what to think. As we pulled to a stop past the office, a ritzy couple who looked like they stepped out of a Hollywood movie was getting out of a baby-blue convertible only to disappear inside their pink cabana, ignoring us completely. Even the manager didn’t seem impressed with us, like he saw trucks full of giraffes every day. Which was fine by me since I wasn’t in a mood to share the two of them anyway.

  We headed to the motel’s far corner and started our nightly routine of feeding, watering, and tending to the giraffes . . . for the last time. I could no longer put off thinking it so.

  Soon as we finished, the Old Man was already closing his motel door behind him, antsy to get the night over so tomorrow would finally come, so I climbed on up to the open top’s cross plank, like always. Girl’s breath hit me hot and fusty, and Boy greeted me with a slobbering snuffle. Wiping giraffe spit off my face with pure pleasure, I settled in to share the sky with Boy and Girl one last time.

  It was a warm night. So, about midnight, as they started their sleep-standing, I hopped to the ground and opened their trapdoors for more air. As I stared at Boy’s hooves, I was back at Cooter’s, seeing Red crawl out from between them. I was still seeing her when I climbed back up top. Yet it wasn’t at Cooter’s. It was on the night of the bear, the night she ignored my Old Man warnings and dropped into the road Pullman to be closer to them. Trusting them to trust her.

  With Red before my eyes, I slipped down slow and easy into Boy’s crate, right by the cut-through opening between their traveling crates, until I was standing directly between them both. For a moment, I drank in their mighty selves exactly as I had back in quarantine, their tall flanks no longer smelling of ocean but of earth. Then, like Red, I stretched out my arms, until I was touching them both . . . and, at my touch, the two blessed giraffes begin to hum! They had been humming to each other back in quarantine, and now they were humming with me. The deep, rolling thrums were so mellow that, standing there touching their hides, I could feel my chest vibrating with them, their rumbling African croon echoing deep into the night and deep into my marrow. Even now, its memory is so clear and rich that I can place my hand over my old chest and feel it still. When they stopped, I might have wondered once again if it had happened at all, except for the humming deep in my bones, and I recall my young self wishing I could stand there forever between them, just another scrawny young giraffe they’d adopted on their long, strange trip to California.

  By the time the Old Man appeared out of the moonlight to relieve me, I’d forced myself back up top to keep watch over the sleeping giraffes from above. I braced for his usual questioning of my eighteen-year-old common sense.

  Instead he said, “I thought I heard a rumbling, thrumming sound a while ago.”

  I pointed at the giraffes.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

  As he sat down on the running board to light up his usual smoke, I dropped to the ground in front of him and stood there.

  “You want to stay?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “All right then, boy, all right.”

  I climbed back up to the cross plank. The giraffes stirred from their sleep-standing to watch me settle back into my sentry spot. Then they lay down . . . both of them together . . . with me and only me standing guard for lions above.

  And I thought my heart would bust.

  15

  Into California

  We left by moonlight again, right before dawn.

  By the time the sun was peeking out, we’d hit the mountains going through what they called Telegraph Pass. We did it so slow and smooth in first light that the giraffes, thank God, barely knew we’d done it.

  Popping out the other side, we rolled right into Yum
a. That was where the Old Man said we were going to cross into California on what was called the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge over the Colorado River. When it was built, it was the only place for 1,200 miles that a vehicle could cross and go—like the name said—ocean to ocean.

  From the looks of it, the river had recently done some flooding, debris littering the ground all around us, and the sight sent a small shiver down my spine. But there were more spine-shivering things to look at than that. This side of the bridge was another Hooverville of tents and tin lizzies and campfires and huddled people. I had to slow the rig to a crawl as a clump of grimy children began to run alongside us.

  “Welcome to Okie Town,” muttered the Old Man as we joined the line to cross the bridge. He was staring ahead, toward the bridge’s middle, where several California state policemen were stopping traffic. A Model T pickup was being forced to turn around. The truck was piled high with stuff barely tied down, including a mattress with half a dozen kids riding on it. When it passed, I caught a glimpse inside of a stone-faced pa and a weeping ma.

  “What just happened?” I said.

  The Old Man didn’t answer, his eyes on the drama still ahead. Between us and the troopers were only two cars—the tin lizzie with the ride-along goat that passed us in New Mexico and the shiny baby-blue convertible carrying the ritzy couple from the Mohawk.

  One of the troopers motioned up the family with the goat and started grilling them.

  “Know what he’s asking?” the Old Man muttered. “‘You got money in your pocket? You got a job?’ If the answer’s no, they don’t let you cross. They’re calling it the Bum Blockade.”

  I glanced back at the old Model T pickup as it rolled to a stop back on the Arizona side. “What if they got nowhere else to go?”

  “They stay right here.” He nodded back at the shantytown. “This close to the Okie Promised Land and not an inch more.”

  Eyeing the goat riding in the basket on the tin lizzie’s running board, the California trooper must have thought it looked like money, and he waved them by.

  Then he waved the fancy convertible through without a glance.

  We were next, and I thought we’d surely be stopping if for nothing else than the usual meet and greet with the giraffes. I even put on the brakes. But the trooper took one look at the giraffes and I guess saw money as well. Without cracking as much as a smile, he motioned us through, too.

  As the giraffes rode high over the rest of the bridge, both the goat Okies and the Hollywood couple waved back at them, all of us entering the land of milk and honey together.

  After that, things started coming at us fast.

  We saw canals and green fields and orange groves and trucks hauling workers.

  We saw more Hoovervilles set up helter-skelter.

  We saw crowds of beat-down men with farmers’ faces.

  We saw signs that said JOBLESS MEN KEEP GOING. WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN right alongside other signs that said WORKERS UNITE!

  We kept on moving.

  We passed through a tiny town called El Centro, and then, like a bit of abracadabra, the people and the signs and the towns disappeared, and we were driving through dunes high enough to be the Sahara, the sand blowing and shifting like sugar across the road. As we wound through the dunes, the Old Man pointed at an abandoned “plank road” made of wood railroad ties, warped and rotting alongside the paved highway. “Be happy you’re not driving on that,” he said. “That was once the only way across these dunes.”

  We kept on moving.

  For a while, Mexico was within spitting distance on our left. Or so the Old Man said. But I didn’t notice one bit of difference between over there and over here except the highway itself—until the road curved north and headed again for some more blasted mountains. I jerked my head toward the Old Man, who hadn’t mentioned any such thing.

  “No problem,” he promised. “It’s only a short pass with a couple of switchbacks and turnouts.”

  A sign zipped by:

  DANGER AHEAD: STEEP NARROW CLIMB

  “If a little steep,” the Old Man added. “And narrow.”

  As the road divided into one-way single lanes, he leaned back, cucumber cool. “You know how to do this and so do the darlings. On the other side is home, boy.”

  So we went into the climb, the rig giving it all it had, the giraffes and me eyeing the “Engine Overheat” areas at every turn, moving up, up, up . . . then racing like a son of a gun down, down, down, with me standing on the brakes fighting to shift into a gear low enough to slow us back near legal limits. We barreled straight past the rest stop at the bottom as the split road joined again, my stomach sliding back down my throat and the giraffes’ snouts bending back with the wind.

  That quick, we seemed to be in San Diego proper and you can bet we were met by a police escort. A dozen motorcycle cops and city patrol cars were scattered all along the city limits. When they spotted us, they circled the rig and turned on their rolling sirens, waving us to follow.

  Before my eyes could take it all in, we were seeing our first glimpse of water—the road had led us straight to the city’s bay.

  We’d made it. Ocean to ocean.

  Everywhere I looked there were coast guard cutters and tankers and navy ships, all coming and going like a picture postcard against a big, beautiful hill at the mouth of the bay. I’d never seen such a sparkly place. Instead of harbor rats and hurricanes, there were pelicans and sun and docks so gleaming they would have made Cuz itch. Both giraffes popped their snouts out to sniff at the new ocean.

  And still we kept on moving.

  The front motorcycle cop did a little circle wave in the air, then led us into a sharp turn by the bustling train station, a towering building covered in Spanish curlicues with fancy vehicles of every kind parked in front, including a shining cream-and-blue Harley that caught my eye.

  From the road, I could read the station’s big arrival and departure schedule board outside, announcing the next departure: THE SAN DIEGO & ARIZONA RAILWAY, EXPECTED ON TIME—DESTINATION EL CENTRO, YUMA, PHOENIX CONNECTING WITH ALL POINTS EAST.

  I slowed the rig to stare. Then, with a last, long glance, I pulled my eyes away from the board as we moved on.

  The Old Man noticed. “She’ll be fine, boy. For a girlie, she knows how to handle herself and any husband she’s got, I suspect.”

  Up ahead, the cycle cops passed a sign pointing to Balboa Park. Within seconds, we were following them across a tall, slender bridge straight through an archway that led us into what looked to me like a fairy-tale cobblestone plaza—where another sign waited to point the way to the San Diego Zoo.

  The Old Man could barely sit still. Pulling on his fedora, he positioned it for business with more pleasure than I’d ever seen. “Now you’re going to see the show of your life!” he crowed. “I rang up the Boss Lady when we started out this morning. She’s alerted the papers as well as the police, rousting them soon as we hung up, I bet. It’s going to be a sight, a true sight.” He pointed. “When we make that turn up ahead, all the reporters and picture-takers are going to be waiting. If the word’s spread, probably half the town. The Boss Lady already got a crane from the docks, so we’ll be hauling the darlings’ traveling suites off the rig into their big new home and opening ’em up. Then, tomorrow the rest of the town that’s not up there already will turn out. Even got a ceremony lined up. All for the darlings. We’re home, boy! Yessir, you are in for a treat!”

  That was exactly what I saw waiting around the bend—a hullabaloo the likes of which my young self had never seen. Lining the road on either side of us were people of all shapes and sizes, crowding against fancy red ropes. As the crowd roared, the front gates opened. I saw a plump woman in sensible granny shoes, schoolmarm bun, and church-lady dress coming to greet us, arms wide. I saw the camera guys begin snapping and the flashbulbs begin popping. Inside, I saw a harbor crane hovering high with men in dungarees waiting below. Rolling us to a final stop, I realized, with a last look
in my mirror at the giraffes, that I was once again just a boy, on another coast, watching a sea of dungarees studying how to get two giraffes where they needed to go—a lucky boy who somehow got to tag along for the ride in between.

  The Old Man was already grabbing for the door handle. As I sat in that cab with him for the very last moment we’d ever be doing it together, I heard the arriving San Diego & Arizona Railway train blow its horn pulling into the station, and I knew there was one more thing I had to do. “Mr. Jones . . . I’ve got to go.”

  The Old Man jerked his head around as the arriving train blew its horn again, and he saw me glance its way. At that, he fumed. “All right, boy. It’s not your brain that’s doing this thinking, but I guess it’d save me a lot of explaining to the Boss Lady that I’d rather do later than sooner.” He took out some cash from his wallet and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. “That’s enough for any round-trip ticket you need, got it?” Then he stuck out his hand. “The giraffes can hold on to their thanks until you get back. But as for me—you did a man’s job and you deserve a man’s thanks, right damn now. Shake my hand, son.”

  And I did.

  Then he gave me a shove out the cab door, which was the only kind of farewell he was willing to give and the only one I was willing to take. I’d be back in a day, after all. It wasn’t goodbye. I glanced up at the giraffes, their heads swiveling my way, and felt my heart drop into my boots. I’ll see them tomorrow, when I’m back, I told myself, then headed on a dead run toward the train station. I wasn’t much clear what I was going to do when I got to Phoenix besides find her before she left. Maybe I was going to come up with something that a full-grown man might say or do. Maybe all I wanted was to make sure she wasn’t stranded, that Lionel Abraham Lowe, Good Man, had wired the money. Or maybe it was just that after seeing the giraffes safe to the end of their trip’s story, I couldn’t rest until I knew the end of Red’s. I didn’t much know. Like always, when I didn’t know, running was what I seemed to do.