At the second cottage, Moses deposited Red, leaving her clutching her camera on the tiny porch.
Then, heading toward the third cottage set farther back, we passed a Y in the dirt road leading to a two-story whitewashed house with a barn twice as big as the house. The Old Man motioned me to wait as everybody but me and the giraffes trekked down to them. In a few minutes, Moses and the Old Man returned, and as I rolled the rig to the third cottage, the Old Man hopped on the passenger-side running board, opened the door, got in, and started talking fast: “It occurred to me that some Texas farmboys might take exception to staying overnight at these good people’s colored motel. Would that be you?”
I shook my head.
“Would you tell me if you were?”
I shook my head again.
“Good. Wouldn’t want to hear it. I still want you staying with the rig. The sons want to take turns watching through the night, and I’m sure not saying no. He sent ‘Second Son’ over, he said, for the first watch. But you’re staying with the giraffes. I told ’em it’s your job.”
“That’s why a son’s standing there with his scythe?” I nodded toward Second Son—so I assumed—already standing by a massive maple as I pulled to a stop.
“That’s why,” the Old Man said as he got out. “You can sleep in the truck cab. If anything goes awry, things’ll be hard enough to explain to the Boss Lady without adding any undue amount of explaining. So stay put. Now, Miz Annie Mae and the daughters-in-law are cooking up a feast the likes of which I’ve never seen,” he added, cocking his head toward the big house. “And we’re getting the bounty, me up there and you out here.”
By the time I’d parked the rig past the third cottage, popped the top, and finished watering the giraffes, here came the Old Man and Miz Annie Mae’s vittles carried on a platter by Seventh Son, Honey Bee still riding on his shoulders. He set the platter on the rig’s hood and went to fetch Red.
While Red took pictures of Honey Bee feeding the giraffes pancakes, I got to feast on food so good it was almost worth being stranded to get it. It was a bounty, all right. When Red put down her camera, she gobbled even faster than me. As we finished, pretty much licking the plates clean, the giraffes started nibbling at the trees, and Honey Bee held out the last pancake to me, which I’m ashamed to say I gobbled up, too. As the sun set, Honey Bee and Seventh Son turned to go, herding Red to the second cottage as they went. The giraffes were contentedly chewing their cud, and the Old Man, picking his teeth and looking mighty contented himself, moseyed toward the third cottage to turn in, too.
So, as night fell, there we were—me and the giraffes—parked in a colored motel in the middle of Almighty Nowhere. With a last glance back at Second Son standing in the tree shadows, I closed up the top and said good night to Girl and Boy. With my stomach as stuffed and happy as it had ever been in my entire life, I felt myself getting drowsy despite being stuck in a truck in the woods with a man holding a sharp blade nearby. Rolling up the windows against the chill, I stretched out on the cab’s bench seat and was allowing myself to drift nicely into well-fed slumber when the passenger door handle rattled.
Bolting straight up, I watched the handle turn and the door swing wide.
There was Red landing on the bench seat beside me, still wearing that big trench coat.
Breathing hard, she locked the door and rested her hand over her heart. “I decided to come see you and the giraffes . . . if that’s OK.” Glancing around like she was looking for signs of the Old Man, she added, “You are staying out here for a while, right?”
“All night,” I said.
She perked up. “All night?”
I nodded.
Patting her chest, she cut her eyes back at the outline of Second Son standing guard with his scythe in the moonlight. Then she reached over and locked my door. “I . . . haven’t been around Negroes much. Have you?”
I glanced at Second Son, not knowing how to answer. Fact was I’d never seen a Black person until I was riding the rails on my way to Cuz. If there were any in my corner of the Panhandle, I didn’t know where, which to my mind made them smarter than all the White people I knew. That didn’t mean they’d be welcome, especially during the Hard Times with so many folks out of work who needed somebody to be faring worse than them.
The sound of Red patting her chest harder pulled me out of my thoughts . . . She was still trying to catch her breath. “You scared?” I said.
She shook her head, mad at the thought. She still wasn’t breathing right. I started to apologize, thinking I’d riled her, but then she ran clean out of breath. Hand clutching her chest, she was gasping—short, desperate, hollow gasps, the kind I hadn’t heard since hearing my ma’s and baby sister’s dust lungs. It scared me so bad I couldn’t move, frozen by sounds I thought I’d never hear again.
Her gasps slowed, then stopped. Pushing her hair out of her face, she heaved a huge sigh and collapsed against the seat.
I gaped at her.
“I get a little winded sometimes,” she said.
I kept gaping. I wasn’t over what I’d witnessed.
So Red sighed again and said, “My heart’s broken.”
I knew she wasn’t talking about being lovelorn, and I felt a sense of dread. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s really broken.”
I leaned away. “That’s not funny.”
“You’re telling me,” she mumbled.
I didn’t know what to think, much less do, and I must have looked it. Because she grabbed my hand and placed it over her heart. On top of her silky shirt. Over her soft, round breast.
“Rheumatic fever. When I was a baby,” she was saying. “It sort of flops instead of beats. Feel it?”
The last thing I was feeling was her heartbeat. “What?” I mumbled.
“My heart. Do you feel it?”
I forced myself to focus, waiting for the heartbeat to come. It didn’t. And now all my focus was on waiting for it. When the heartbeat came, it was . . . beat-beat . . . beat . . . beat-beat-beat . . . pause . . . beat . . . pause . . . pause . . . pause . . . pause . . . beat.
It scared me so bad I wanted to grab her breast tighter, as if I could force her heart to beat right. “You saying it could just stop?” I choked out. “You could die?”
“Maybe.” She gave me that tight-lipped smile of hers. “But probably not tonight.”
Suddenly angry without a clue why, I pulled my hand away. “Then what are you doing way out here?”
Cocking her head, she quietly said, “Woody, haven’t you ever wanted something so bad you had to do it or die trying?”
I knew that I had. I’d thought as much not two days ago.
But this was different.
She was gazing toward the rig. “Did you know giraffes in the wild only live about twenty-five years at the most? Their hearts give out too quick, I guess, pumping up and down that neck. They’re truly blessed not knowing it, but oh, those sky-high eyes of theirs. They’ve seen the world.”
My ears still full of her sputtering heart, I seemed to have lost all good sense. She was talking again. “What?”
“I said, wasn’t that something yesterday at the mountain work camp?” She was changing the subject, finished talking about the fact she could die right then, right there, like we’d been chatting about the weather. “Such fun. It was a corps of Woodys! I felt like Margaret Bourke-White more than ever. Have you seen her Dust Bowl photos? Oh, Stretch, you could be in them with that face of yours.” With that, she leaned over and cupped my jaws with her hands. This time, I was sure she was about to kiss me on the lips. Instead she trained her whole being on my prairie face like she was taking a photo with her eyes. I was as stunned as if I’d been buckshot. I’d never been looked at this way, and sure not in moonlight. At the time I had no idea what kind of look it was. Now I know it was fueled by the “love of mankind.” But like any seventeen-year-old boy, especially one already roiling with too much feeling, I mistook it as personal
as the tingling that was rushing from my cupped face to south of my belt buckle. Feeling myself blush at the whole confusing thing, I thanked God Almighty it was too dark for her to see.
“How did you get here, Woody?” she was murmuring. “How’d you survive the Dust Bowl plus a hurricane and come to be driving the giraffes?” When I didn’t answer, she smiled and dropped her hands. “Well, I’m lucky you did. I didn’t know who I could trust on the road, but I trust you, Woody Nickel.” She glanced the giraffes’ way. “I guess we can’t go visit them tonight. I miss them.” Resting her head back against her window, she sighed and closed her eyes.
From where I sat behind the wheel, I could see nothing out her window except Second Son’s shadow in the tree-filtered moonlight. I could see Red, though, the shadows nicely giving me that. I watched her for what seemed a long time, and when I opened my mouth to speak to her, I realized I’d never used her real name. Red? I almost said.
“Augusta?” I whispered instead, the word feeling peculiar on my tongue.
All I heard was her slow, steady breathing. She was asleep. Right at that moment, I wanted to kiss her myself. I wanted to pull her to me, place my hand on those flaming curls, and kiss her like a full-grown man, as if somehow my kiss to end all kisses I’d been practicing since the depot could fix everything. But then Red curled up like a dead bug across the bench seat, her red ringlets flopping onto my leg. I went still as death, straining to hear her breathe. When I couldn’t, I put my finger under her nose to feel her breath. When I still couldn’t, I panicked, reaching through her curls to touch her neck, waiting for the throb of her heartbeat. Still nothing. It wasn’t beating . . . then it was. Then it wasn’t again. Each time it skipped a beat, I didn’t breathe myself until I felt the next beat. I did it again and again and again. For the longest time, I didn’t twitch a muscle. I must have worn myself down and finally conked out. Because next thing I know instead of worrying over hearing the sound of Red’s last breath, I hear my ma calling to me—
“Li’l one, who you talking to?”
. . . Then I’m sprinting across my pa’s dirt farm in broad daylight, the dirt turning into a cornfield under my boots.
. . . I see giraffe heads above the stalks.
. . . I hear the roar of rushing water.
. . . And I hear the blast of a rifle’s report—my rifle—echoing on and on until it turns into a little girl’s giggle.
I jerked awake to find Seventh Son and Honey Bee staring at me through my window. It was dawn and Red was gone.
My heart thumping wild, I tumbled out of the truck. Seventh Son, rolling an eye toward Red’s cottage, smiled at me, an unsettling sight on its own. Pushing by them, I opened the trapdoors and got busy tending to the giraffes, who were stamping a little, like they were wondering where I’d been. I filled their water pails, shoved them in the trapdoors, then crawled up and popped the top for them to reach for the trees.
Balancing there, I could barely move under the weight of my thoughts. Bad enough my cornfield nightmare was back, but I was still stirred up over Red. And I don’t mean the kind of stir any boy feels when a red-crested beauty places his hand on top of her heaving breast. I mean the kind of stir from feeling Red’s off-kilter heart. From hearing her gasp so much like Ma had through dust lungs to final death rattle. From seeing the spark of life fade from Ma’s eyes, the only eyes that ever looked at me with pure affection.
Until Augusta Red’s.
I didn’t snap out of it until I heard someone talking below.
“C’mon down, boy.”
The Old Man was standing below holding a gunnysack.
“Let the darlings nibble,” he called up. “They fixed the tires, daylight’s burning, and if you’re up there looking for the girlie, she’s already gone.”
At that, feeling myself about to damn blush, I forced my mind off Red and eased to the ground.
“Come get some of Miz Annie Mae’s sausage, grits, and gravy,” he said as one of the sons shoved a full plate of vittles on top of the truck’s hood. “I already thanked them for the fine night’s rest. You should do it, too, if you get a chance. Show your good manners.” He opened the truck’s door and plunked the sack inside. “Mr. Jackson’s giving us some traveling onions from his garden for our ‘towering creatures of God’s pure Eden.’”
“Mr. Jackson?” I said.
“That’s our host’s name, boy. You don’t look too good. Eat. That’ll fix you up.”
So I ate, and the comfort of Miz Annie Mae’s food calmed me all the way down.
As the giraffes kept nibbling at the trees, the entire Big Papa clan showed up, led by Moses toting two perfect-looking tires. Setting up the seesaw again, they had those tires on the wheels so fast it didn’t even take the giraffes’ minds off their breakfast.
As Honey Bee’s uncs finished up, I felt her eyes on me again. When I looked down, there she was, standing inches from my ankles. She gave me a giggle and grabbed my skinny legs.
Chortling, the Old Man slapped me on the back. “She must think you’re a giraffe, what with that neck spot of your own,” he said, nodding at my birthmark. “That right, Honey Bee?” Honey Bee nodded as Seventh Son raised her up for one last chat with the real giraffes.
Then the Old Man and I crawled into our seats, the giraffes popped their heads out their windows, and we started rolling toward the detour road with Big Papa’s whole clan parading behind.
As we drove away, what filled my side mirror was what lingers most in memory all these years since—the giraffes are stretching their necks to look at Honey Bee waving goodbye atop Seventh Son’s shoulder, with Big Papa and all the sons standing sentry, sending us safely on our way.
. . . My eyes are getting tired.
And my pencil’s getting short.
Yet I can’t stop.
I glance back at my window to see if Wild Girl’s still there.
She is, God love her. The darling giraffe reaches over and gives me a push with her big snout. “OK, OK,” I say. Sharpening my pencil, I take a deep breath and get back to this writing . . . yet I can’t help but wonder.
Are your eyes reading these words?
Has this story found the precious likes of you?
My old heart tightens again at the thought, and it’s keeping me from thinking straight. I know I’m asking questions that make no sense, but I strain to write down this next day, here almost ninety years later, and that’s a curiosity. Lord knows I’ve done plenty things more shameful after living a century. If I wrote them down, they wouldn’t even give me pause now that I’m so old. Put next to a man’s war days alone, it’s nothing but a trifle. Yet this day to come with the giraffes still cuts me deeper than makes a bit of sense. If Red’s heart was already broken, mine had barely been used, lacking in any proper language or direction, and that went double for my ruddy little soul. I can only suppose that when you’re riding with two “towering creatures of God’s pure Eden,” and you grasp the first rotten proof of your true self, you never quite forget it, no matter what you do later to make it right.
I glance back at the sweet giraffe in my window and sigh.
I’m sorry, Girl.
I still, truly, am.
9
Across Tennessee
A few peaceful hours down the road, this side of Chattanooga, we pulled into a Texaco gas station and general store surrounded by a nice grove of munching trees. The tires checked out fine, exactly like the Old Man figured. So, as soon as the man in his fancy Texaco star uniform met the giraffes and filled the tank, I pulled the rig over to let the giraffes eat and crawled back in the cab. In a minute, the Old Man returned from the store with a salami, soda pops, and a new newspaper he plopped down between us.
HITLER STILL VOWS WAR, the newspaper’s front page hollered in big black letters, and my eyes landed on the day’s date—October 10.
Tomorrow was my birthday.
I’d be eighteen.
Right then, a county deputy’s car came
roaring up with its siren rolling, making the giraffes wobble and me, as usual, tense up.
“Well, whaddya know,” the paunchy old deputy said, getting out and hitching up his pants. “I sure thought the bulletin was a joke. It said to be on the lookout for a gal driving a green Packard following a truck carrying African tip-top critters. And here they are.”
I flinched.
“A bulletin, you say?” the Old Man said.
“Thassright.” Coming over to my window, the deputy propped a boot on the rig’s running board. “From all the way up in New York City. I read a lot of bulletins, but that one took the cake. Something about a runaway wife in a stolen vehicle chasing giraffes.”
“A runaway wife, you say?” the Old Man said.
I flinched again. Bad.
“Thassright. In her husband’s Packard.”
At that, I had to clench the steering wheel to keep from clenching my fists.
“And she don’t even have a license,” the deputy went on. “Could be only a spat gone halfway across the country, but don’t matter. A woman on the road alone is suspect all by herself, being as no real lady would be doing such a thing. More likely she’s having herself a nice little tryst with another gent,” he said with a righteous little sniff. “If so, we still put stock in the Mann Act around here. It being, young fella,” the old deputy said, “about the crossing of state lines by any person of the male persuasion for immoral purposes with any person of the female persuasion.” He was so close I could smell the snuff stuffed under his lip. “Yeah, my money’s on her having a sugar daddy. They always do. Especially the peaches, and from the description, she’s a real peach, a fiery redhead floozy.”
“That doesn’t make her a floozy!” my fool mouth fired off on its own.
The deputy spit snuff juice over his shoulder and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So,” he said with a dirty little leer my way, “I guess you seen her.”
I dropped my eyes, which I knew was as stupid as my blurt.
“You could say we ran into her,” said the Old Man. “Right, boy?”
West with Giraffes: A Novel Page 13