West with Giraffes: A Novel

by Lynda Rutledge

  But then, this side of the bridge, the rig slowed to a crawl and I began to wonder if I had bargained away my worthless thieving soul. Because the rig disappeared into the trees past a sign that said,

  AUTO CAMP & CABINS

  TURN HERE

  Sprinting back to the cycle, I started pushing the dead machine toward the sign, my heart pumping so hard I was gulping air.

  By the time I made it to the entrance, the rig was idling by the office that also doubled as an eight-stool lunch counter serving up supper from the looks of the backsides parked on the stools.

  Hustling out of sight, I saw the Old Man and the manager appear from inside. As the manager pointed the way, they rolled the giraffes toward the last of a handful of tiny cabins, each barely big enough for a bed, parking the road Pullman under a spreading sycamore tree. I pushed the motorcycle through the underbrush and crept behind a boulder to watch the Old Man open the rig’s top and the giraffes’ big snouts stretch to nibble at the sycamore.

  In mid-nibble, though, both giraffes turned their quivering snouts my way—like they’d gotten a whiff of my ripe young self on the wind. I ducked out of sight, but when I looked back, they were still doing it. Wild Girl’s snout was even swaying, like she was jockeying for a better smell. I was so sure they were going to give me away, I ducked full behind the boulder and stayed there until I heard the trapdoors flop open and the Old Man order Earl to water the giraffes. I could see the giraffes’ hooves through the trapdoors. The driver shoved in Wild Boy’s water bucket with no problem. But when he shoved in Girl’s, her hoof popped his arm hard enough to make him cuss and stumble back, which pleased me greatly.

  Then, determined to check that bandaged splint, the Old Man went into his own dance with Wild Girl. He waited until her splinted fetlock was near the opening, then reached in. She kicked. He dodged, she kicked again, and he plunked down on the running board to glare at Earl, who was standing so far away he was halfway to me.

  That’s when the manager marched up with a pile of hamburgers from the lunch counter and brought everybody with him. Trailing behind came all the diners, including the driver of a shiny dairy truck parked near the road who offered up jugs of fresh milk to go with the burgers. The hamburger smell was making me crazy, so I pulled out a pilfered potato and ate it raw to keep from doing anything stupid. When the manager shooed everybody away, I knew the whole county was about to hear what was parked at the camp. As the sun went on down, the giraffes kept nibbling from the sycamore, but with each change of the breeze, they were still turning their sniffing snouts toward me. So I stayed put until the only light was from the office lamp pole streaming through the trees.

  Peeking out, I saw the Old Man wave Earl to the cabin, ease down on the truck’s running board, and pat himself a cigarette from a Lucky Strike pack. That he could afford store-bought smokes, instead of rolling his own, was an impressive sight for my farmboy eyes. As he flicked open his Zippo and lit up, I decided everybody in California must be as rich as a Rockefeller, which made me ache all the more to keep on following. I eyed that dairy truck, dreaming of milk if not honey, and I took another bite of my potato, picking sweet grapes from a Californy vine in my mind. Finding a mossy soft spot against the boulder, I settled in to watch as the Old Man smoked one Lucky after the other, lighting the new one from the butt of the old. As always, I wasn’t about to let myself fall asleep if I could help it, so I stayed up hour after hour with the Old Man, spending the time plotting how I could keep following them.

  Since I wasn’t much good at planning ahead, my ideas stunk . . . I could use the gas pump out front, but I’d have to first find a dime or a dollar in somebody else’s pocket. I could snitch another vehicle, but the snitch-worthy ones were already gone. The only other vehicle at the camp was the dairy truck, which would fill my stomach but wasn’t exactly prime thieving material. The later it got, the more desperate and stupid my ideas got. When I was seriously considering jumping on the back of the rig like I’d jump a freight train, I gave up.

  By and by, the Old Man woke Earl for his watch, ordered him to close the rig’s top, and then disappeared inside the cabin. Putting a chaw of tobacco in his jaw, Earl slicked back his hair with both hands. Then, forgetting all about closing the top, he did what I feared he’d do. With a last look back at the Old Man’s cabin, he pulled out the hidden flask and started tippling, swigging right past that tobacco juice, a combination only a souser could love. When he parked himself on the running board, both giraffes poked their heads out their windows, took one look down at Earl, and pulled their heads right back in. But not before Girl quivered her big nostrils one last time my way.

  For the next hour, I watched Earl tipple and spit until he was leaning his lolling head against the rig’s door. The only thing keeping him upright was his tobacco juice making him hack and cough—which might have been his goober plan.

  Finally, when he slumped over sideways, I thought I heard sniggering somewhere beyond the rig. That got me up on my boots. From the shadows, three yahoos appeared, one of them with enough meat on his bones to make two of me, another one in nothing but overalls, and the third one a pipsqueak with a pudding-bowl haircut. After nudging Earl’s slumped lump, which upped the yahoos’ sniggering, the jumbo one rapped a knuckle on the road Pullman. Both trap windows flew open and out came the giraffes’ heads. Taking one look at the yahoos, the giraffes had the good sense to pull their heads back in, like they’d done with Earl. So the pipsqueak decided to climb up the rig to look in the windows at them. With a leg up from the jumbo yahoo, there he went. The pipsqueak kept climbing while the other yahoos kept sniggering.

  Then everything went bad.

  Real bad.

  The giraffes began stomping and snorting and shaking the rig so much the pipsqueak fell off and then got right back on.

  That’s when I saw what the pipsqueak saw and what the giraffes already knew . . . the top was still open. The pipsqueak was headed straight for it.

  Still hearing Pa’s voice in my head on top of survival lessons from the road, I stood there in the dark, clenching and unclenching my fists. I was a rowdy of the sneaky coyote variety. Even when my temper got the best of me, I never did more than punch and run, and never more than one guy at a time.

  As the pipsqueak climbed, he whopped the rig again. With that, the giraffes shoved their heads out their windows to stare my way with eyes terrified and pleading.

  Then the pipsqueak hit the top.

  What happened next all but defeats my poor powers to relate. Having nowhere to go, nothing to kick, and no one to defend them, the giraffes must have thought all was lost. Because from them came a caterwaul so bone-chilling I still despair at its memory. People say giraffes don’t make sounds. But I’m here to tell you they do—and this one was a moaning, bellowing, wailing piece of giraffe-terror that surely had met the hurricane itself. It was a sound only the lion at their throats must hear. I put my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help—the sound was vibrating in my chest, making me feel the giraffes’ terror as if it were my own. I couldn’t take it a second more. Before I even knew I was doing it, I’d sprinted to the rig, dodged jumbo, punched overalls, and, with a flying leap, grabbed at the pipsqueak’s leg. The two on the ground then grabbed my legs and spread them like a wishbone. But as they were about to make a wish, the giraffes rocked the rig and the pipsqueak fell in.

  Next thing I heard over the giraffe’s caterwaul was a lot of giraffe-kicking and pipsqueak-howling—followed by a sound I’d heard a thousand times before. The click-clack of a cranking shotgun.

  There stood the Old Man in his skivvies, shotgun up.

  The pipsqueak popped from the top like a bottle rocket, the yahoos scrambled for the cover of the trees, and I dove back behind my boulder just as the shotgun blast echoed through the woods, stunning everything silent, including, to my deep relief, the giraffe-terror caterwaul.

  Hearing the Old Man reloading, I forced myself to look. The rig was still rocki
ng, the giraffes snuffling and stomping, and the Old Man had the shotgun stuck halfway up Earl’s nose.

  “Where the hell were you!” the Old Man yelled.

  “Right here . . . ,” Earl sputtered. “You see me.”

  “I smell you, too, you sumbitch. You been tippling!” Swinging the shotgun under an arm, the Old Man found Earl’s flask. I thought he might smack Earl with it. Instead he pitched it into the dark. “The only thing I abide less than a liar and a thief is a boozer.”

  Earl got wobbly to his feet. “I ain’t drunk! I can hold my liquor. Stack of Bibles!”

  “Sit back down,” the Old Man ordered.

  Earl sat back down.

  “If anything happens to the giraffes because of your tippling, I swear to God I’ll shoot you full of holes. Then I’ll let Mrs. Benchley have a crack at ya,” the Old Man said. “You hear me!”

  Earl nodded, not moving a muscle except to look longingly after his lost flask.

  Shotgun under an arm, the Old Man climbed up the rig’s side to coo his giraffe-speak until the giraffes calmed all the way down. Closing the top himself, he eased to the ground. “We might as well get going before any more native sons show up,” he said to Earl, who still hadn’t moved. “Water ’em while I get my pants on and use the phone to call the town cop. That is, if you think you can drive. If not, you better get that way fast or I’ll turn you over to the copper quicker’n you can say Jack Robinson, buddy boy.” With that, shotgun still in hand, he tromped back to the cabin.

  At the mention of cops, Earl began muttering. He looked scared sober enough now. A shotgun in your face can do that. But he proved he was no such thing. Still grumbling, he got up and looked around for the water bucket. When he couldn’t find it, he opened Girl’s trapdoor, stuck his nose in, and . . .

  WHOP

  . . . there went Earl, landing spread-eagle on the ground, blood trickling out his snoot and into his ears.

  The Old Man came running back, shotgun once again up, and then he saw Earl. Fuming, he stared down at his driver lying there looking mighty dead. He nudged him with his boot. Earl didn’t move. So the Old Man parked his gun against the rig, picked up Girl’s water bucket perched in its rightful place by the water jugs, filled it from a nearby water pump, and threw the contents on Earl.

  And the goober came back to life.

  Both hands over his mangled nose, Earl staggered to his feet to howl and stomp and cuss all at the same time. “That giraffe tried to kill me!” he bawled, blood seeping through his fingers. “It b-broke my nose!”

  The Old Man glanced at the open trapdoor. “Well, what the hell was your nose doing in there? Jesus-Joseph-Mary, what kind of rummy idiot did I hire on?” he said, picking up the shotgun. “Get yourself cleaned up. We got to go.”

  “But I’m seeing double—”

  “No, you’re not.” The Old Man leveled his gaze. “You’ve got to drive this rig. You know full well I can’t, and we don’t have a minute to lose if we want a chance to get the female there alive. You heard the doc.”

  “But that giraffe wants to kill me!” Earl howled.

  “She’s not gonna kill you,” the Old Man groused. “She’d have cracked your skull like a nut if she really wanted to. You’ve seen what she does to me and I’m still standing.”

  “No, I quit!” moaned Earl.

  The Old Man whirled that shotgun up like a six-shooter. “We’re on the road, you sodden sumbitch. You’re not leaving us in the lurch. Now shut your trap.”

  Earl shut his trap.

  “Sit your worthless ass back down.”

  Earl sat his worthless ass back down.

  The Old Man lowered his gun. “I’ll get you coffee and some bandages. You’ll be fine or wish you were. You’re driving. We’ve got no choice.”

  Then he stalked off toward the office.

  Down by the road, a truck’s headlights came on. It was the dairy truck, readying to head out. As it roared to life, Earl’s head whipped around, and with one hand still over his bloody nose, he headed straight for it. Faster than you’d ever think a kicked, bloodied, half-drunk goober could move, he threw the passenger door wide and hopped in just as it was rolling onto the road headed back the way we came. It happened so fast, I don’t think I could have caught him even if I’d wanted to, which I surely did not.

  From the office came the Old Man, hands full of coffee and bandages, shotgun parked under an arm. As he got closer, he stared at where Earl was supposed to be, not quite believing he wasn’t there. Hearing the dairy truck’s passenger door slam as it pulled onto the road, he must have put two and two together. Dropping the coffee and bandages, he ran toward the road, half aiming the shotgun at the disappearing truck.

  I was sure the next thing I’d hear was another shotgun blast. The Old Man, though, stopped. And stared. Shotgun dangling. It was like the sight of his driver vanishing was registering in inches. When it hit home full, he spit and sputtered at the road as if anger alone could conjure Earl back in front of him again. He began to pace, dirt clods flying, shouting words to turn the black air blue—“sorry shit-faced sodden sumbitch” being the repeatable of the lot—until he marched back to the rig, sank down on the running board, dropped the shotgun in the dirt, and put his head in his hands.

  He sat that way for a long time. Then, picking up the gun, he got to his feet, straightened his spine, and headed toward the cabin.

  Busting with a new idea, I made a beeline for the rig. With Wild Boy and Girl watching, I hopped on the running board and stuck my head in the cab’s window to study the rig’s gearbox, hard and long. Too long. When I jumped back to the ground, the Old Man and his raised shotgun were waiting.

  I threw up my hands. “DON’T SHOOT!” I yelped, which even scared me since it was the first thing I’d said out loud since cussing and kicking Cuz. “I’m not with those yahoos! It’s me. Remember—from quarantine?”

  Lowering the shotgun, he squinted at the sight I surely was, standing there in my raggedy clothes caked with dried quarantine mud.

  “What the . . . ,” the Old Man managed. “Are you following us?” He moved that shotgun to his other hand, and I saw why he couldn’t drive. The gnarly hand I’d noticed back at the dock was his right hand. His gear hand. So I blurted out my new and mighty idea that was still forming even as it was coming out of my mouth. “I can do it,” I blurted. “You can’t go all the way by yourself with Wild Boy and Girl.”

  “Who?”

  “The giraffes—I can drive you to Californy.”

  At that, he raised one of his bushy eyebrows so high I thought it’d take flight. “Who the hell asked you? And what the hell makes you think I’d want you?”

  I nodded toward the road. “Because your driver just left you in a lurch, that’s why. Mister, I can flat drive circles around any man alive, hand to God. I don’t much sleep, I’m not a yahoo, and I sure don’t booze. You can trust me.”

  “Trust you? I don’t even know you!” The Old Man looked my raggedy self up and down, pausing at my rope-tied hand-me-down britches barely covering the tops of my boots. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” I lied. “I can drive anything that moves, and I’m a genius with engines, I am.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re a genius with giraffes, too?” the Old Man said.

  I stuck out my chin. “Better than your driver.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  I eased my hand into my pocket. “For starters, I know not to poke my nose near an animal’s hooves,” I lied again, having done exactly that fetching Cuz’s rabbit’s foot, which at that moment I was rubbing bald.

  The Old Man looked past me. “How did you get here?”

  “Motorcycle.” I nodded to the cycle in the shadows.

  He squinted. “Is that yours? I cannot abide a thief or a liar.”

  “I got it, don’t I?” I answered, proving myself both.

  A patrol car pulled up under the office’s light pole, and I
stepped back into the shadows.

  The Old Man noticed.

  “Enough,” he growled. Stuffing the gun under his arm again, he marched to my thieved cycle, reached in, and ripped out a handful of wires, then marched back to the rig. “If I see you again I got a lawman in every town I can hand you over to. I’m guessing you don’t want that. And, Jesus-Joseph-Mary, were you raised in a barn? Take a bath! There’s a river right there. The smell coming off you is stinging my eyes.” Climbing behind the wheel, he stashed the gun back on the rack. Then, pulling that beat-up fedora low over his brow, he ground every last gear until he found one that worked, bouncing and jerking the rig and the giraffes onto the road.

  Slipping to the ground, I stared at the dangling wires on my out-of-gas cycle, clean out of gas myself. Because there wasn’t going to be any fixing that motorcycle. Least not by me. I didn’t know a thing about engines beyond kick-starting the occasional thieveable cycle. I would have told the Old Man I could raise the dead if I thought it would’ve kept me on the road with them. And my big idea about driving the rig? I believed, in the way only a young fool can, that the part about driving anything with wheels was bona fide. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t driven anything bigger than my pa’s worn-out Model T truck. And never mind that the farthest I’d ever driven it was the twenty miles into town on a Panhandle highway so straight a nearsighted granny could do it. I wasn’t through with my California dreaming, though, and while I didn’t know it at the time, neither were the giraffes through with me.

  Salvation of any stripe is a matter of degrees.

  So there I sat on my backside by that useless cycle, listening to the Old Man grinding those gears in the distance. When one of those grinds lasted a full minute, I got light-headed from wincing—and I found myself off my ass and back to doing-or-dying. Where the liar in me had failed, the thief in me hadn’t, but it didn’t have a chance if I didn’t keep moving. Once again I was on a dead run in cowboy boots, stomping hard to catch up to a couple of giraffes, and to my pure surprise, I was gaining on them. It was still country dark, the deep kind right before dawn. I could see the town cop’s lights flashing on the other side of the low water bridge. But the rig’s lights were still on this side. The Old Man was hesitating. In the rig’s headlights, I could see the water running over the bridge, which wasn’t much more than a big chunk of reinforced concrete dropped into the stream. The giraffes, heads out, were rocking the rig, surely skittish over the sound of the water—until they got the new whiff of me. Both those necks swung around to watch as I clomped toward them as fast as my boots would go. I was only a few steps away when the Old Man put it in gear. I eyed the water and eyed the back of the rig, desperate. And when you’re desperate, you’ll try even your most desperate plan.