West with Giraffes: A Novel

by Lynda Rutledge

  But my whole truth—the truth I still don’t have the grit to commit to this writing pad just yet—that truth I wasn’t telling.

  Instead I told her the story of every Dust Bowl orphan . . . that women like your ma died from dust pneumonia from too much honoring and obeying, staying through all the signs of a biblical curse, because men like your pa said to. That if you were unlucky enough to be born to such mas and pas, you were halfway to dead yourself. That the animals that kept you alive were on their way to dead, too, starving from the inside, how farmers like yourself cut open dead cows to find only dirt. How you had to endure each morning knowing you could wake to find another one laid out on the ground, needing to be put out of its misery. And how, after a while, you were half-crazy with it, realizing that all of us needed to be put out of our misery. The land was having its revenge, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and it was past time to quit even if you didn’t know what to quit to. Some folks couldn’t do it, couldn’t let go, men like your pa who didn’t know how to quit without ending up dead himself . . . which is what your pa goes and does . . . with a smoking rifle still in your grip . . . raised and aimed right at him.

  That is what I tell her. All but the rifle part. I say such a story is just one of a thousand ways you get to be an orphan in this land, a thousand ways that are all the same way. “The only thing left is to find somewhere else, somebody else, to be,” I ended, jaw set to keep it that way.

  “But, Woody . . . you’ve come right back here,” she murmured. “Why would you do that?”

  I gave her the answer I’d been giving since the hurricane. “I want to go to Californy.” With that, I glanced toward Girl and Boy chewing their cud. When I turned back to Red, her eyes were wet. She placed her hand on mine as comfort. I pulled it back, still too raw with memory. So she leaned over to hug me like she’d done in Little Rock, and I let her. Then, like hugs sometimes do, it was followed by a small peck of a kiss more comfort than caress, even if on the lips. Yet I knew nothing of such things, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because it was Augusta Red I was finally kissing and I wanted it to last—to be the first kiss to end all kisses I’d been imagining since the long nights at the depot. So, when she started to lean away, I put my hand through her curls at the back of her head to hold her there, to make the kiss mean worlds more than she ever meant it to mean, to make it mean what I wanted it to mean.

  She pulled back with the strangest look I’d ever seen.

  Then she threw up.

  12

  Across the Texas Panhandle

  Hush-a-bye / Don’t you cry.

  “It’s time I made a man outa you!”

  “Woody Nickel, tell me what happened out there and tell me now!”

  “Li’l one, who you talking to?”

  Brown-apple eyes stare.

  Rushing waters roar.

  . . . As the air fills with bellowing, moaning, giraffe-terror caterwauls, growing louder and LOUDER and . . .

  A thunderclap jerked me straight up in my wigwam’s bed, hands over my ears, a gully-washing downpour splashing in the window. Heart pounding, I slammed the window shut, cussing Aunt Beulah, hurricane-whops, guilty Dust Bowl nightmares—and whatever the hell else might be causing my mixed-up dreaming.

  The door flung wide and in stomped the Old Man. Sopping all over the floor, he kept the thunder going inside the stucco teepee until he’d gotten himself into dry skivvies and pants. As quick as the rain had started, it stopped, and the Old Man stepped back outside to eye the sky.

  “Looks like it’s over,” he grumped. “The sky’s clearing west.”

  Dawn was breaking, so I pulled on my boots and pants and followed. I wasn’t looking at the sky, though. I was gazing three wigwams down.

  The night before, after Red threw up, she’d dropped to the ground before I could think to say a thing, mumbling “I’m sorry” and rushing away. I’d called after her with the only words of comfort I could think of. “It’s OK! The giraffes’ll eat it.” Upon hearing that fool thing fly out of my mouth, I went full speechless, then she was gone, swallowed up by the dark.

  But now I was hearing the same upchuck sound. There was the green Packard, parked three wigwams down.

  The Old Man looked where I was looking. “Is that her spewing?”

  I nodded.

  He marched straight over and banged on the wigwam door nearest the Packard, already talking. “Girlie, don’t come near us if you’ve got the heaves. We don’t have time to be sick.”

  The door swung wide and there stood a bald man with two sleepy towheaded boys peering out from behind him.

  The Old Man scowled at them. “Who are you? Where’s the girlie?”

  A mousy woman appeared behind the boys.

  “What did you call my wife!” the bald man snapped.

  Red’s head popped up from the other side of the Packard. Pushing her curls out of her face, she wiped at her lips . . . and, staring at those lips, I was back on top of the rig in the middle of our giraffe-surrounded kiss.

  Then Red’s head disappeared again.

  To the sound of another heave, the wigwam door slammed shut, and the Old Man and I headed toward the other side of the Packard where Red was once again wiping her mouth, looking miserable. She had the same man’s trench coat from Big Papa’s draped around her, like she’d been sleeping in it, and the Packard’s back door was open. One peek inside made it clear where she’d slept. Plus, being a poor farmboy who rarely changed flour-sack drawers much less my clothes, I hadn’t noticed until that very moment she’d been wearing the same clothes this whole trip—the same trousers, the same white shirt, the same everything, down to her scuffed two-tone shoes—all of it now looking rumpled and dingy in the daylight. I was beginning to understand a few things I’d been too thick to grasp before.

  “I must have eaten something spoiled back down the road,” she muttered, cleaning puke from her curls. The Old Man cocked his head, staring at her left hand. She was wearing a thin gold band, which I hadn’t noticed, either.

  “You better hope so,” the Old Man was saying. “Otherwise, it sounds like you’re in the family way.”

  Red looked at him all but cross-eyed. “That’s not possible, I assure you.”

  “Why not?” the Old Man said, nodding at her ring. “You’re married, aren’t ya?”

  Grabbing a towel from inside the car to wipe her face, she snapped, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Mr. Jo—”

  He cut her off. “Or maybe you’re the Virgin Mary?”

  She lowered the towel to gape at him. “What did you say?”

  “Or you could be a floozy,” he went on.

  She was halfway to slapping him, and, heat rising up my neck, I suddenly wanted to punch him myself.

  “You know what I mean,” he said next, “maybe you got a fella along the way?”

  He was trying to get a rise out of her, but I didn’t know that, my brain still stuck on our kiss. I rocked back and forth on my bootheels, clenching and unclenching my fists. “Now, wait a—”

  But the Old Man cut me off, too. “Shut up, boy.”

  “What kind of girl do you take me for!” Red said.

  “You tell me,” the Old Man said back. “Everybody knows a lady doesn’t travel alone. So I guess you’re no lady.”

  She gasped. “You’ve got a lot of nerve!”

  Burning with righteous fury, I was barely resisting the urge to punch him. “Now—wait just a—”

  “I said shut up, boy!” He leaned into Red’s face. “Yeah, only a floozy would be on the road by herself.”

  With that, forgetting all about the Old Man’s forbearance and my own lying treacheries, I threw that punch.

  Of course, the Old Man knew it was coming. Red wasn’t the only one he was egging on. Grabbing my fist in full swing, he bellowed at Red, “Look at this—you got this boy’s head turned full around. You should be ashamed of yourself for that if nothing else!”

  He let
go and I stumbled back, landing on my shocked young ass at her feet.

  Red’s face turned so white I thought for sure she’d puke down on me. “I told you,” she said, swallowing hard. “I’m on the road by myself because I’m taking photos for Life magazine. I assure you, Mr. Jones, it’s normal vomit,” she added, pulling the trench coat tight around her like it was her lost dignity.

  “Have it your way,” the Old Man said, “but you’re done here.”

  She paused. “Are you saying I can’t follow you?”

  “I’m saying I’m onto you. I don’t know what your game is, girlie, trailing us all this way and lying the whole time. But I want you to keep the hell away from the rig and the giraffes, as of now.”

  Red went stiff. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re no Life magazine photographer.”

  I gawked at him, then back at Red.

  “Of course I am!” she said.

  I started to get up.

  “Don’t you move,” the Old Man ordered, turning back to Red. “I truly cannot abide a liar. I’m going to ask you straight out. Are you with Life magazine or not? You’d better be able to prove it.”

  I recall the way Red gulped. Like she was gulping down something more wretched than puke. I was about to find out what.

  She started talking fast. “OK, I’m not yet . . . but I will be, I promise you! I couldn’t risk you not letting me follow, because I had to get the pictures first—and I have them! They are amazing! You have no idea!”

  Then she remembered me.

  Sitting there in the dirt, gazing up at Red gazing down at me, I took in her face and then pushed it far, far away.

  “Get up,” the Old Man was saying. “Let’s go.”

  I pulled myself up, looking anywhere but at Red.

  The Old Man and I needed to take care of the giraffes and get on the road. That’s what we did without another word.

  When we left the Wigwam Auto Court, Red was nowhere in sight and I was glad of it. Considering I’d gotten this far by lying my own deceiving self, though, I couldn’t quite let her go. Instead, as I began moving through the gears, I looked over at the Old Man and said, “Maybe she can do all she’s saying.”

  At that, the Old Man pulled out a folded piece of paper from his front pocket and handed it to me. “Read it, then I don’t want to hear a thing more about her, you hear?” It was yesterday’s telegram from his Boss Lady, Mrs. Benchley, with these words on it:

  ...LIFE MAGAZINE COVERING ARRIVAL. SENDING PHOTOGRAPHER VIA AERO-PLANE...

  I read it. Then I read it again. As its full meaning sunk in, I was sore at everybody but the giraffes—sore at Red for everything all over again, sore at the Old Man for only now showing me the telegram, and sore at myself for being such a farmboy sap.

  Fifty dead-silent miles passed before I could look at the Old Man. The only reason I did, even then, was the sign up ahead:

  TEXAS STATE LINE—1 MILE

  By the time we crossed the state line, I was so light-headed I must’ve been holding my breath the full mile. The sign greeting us as we passed into my home state was as big as all get-out, like you’d expect.

  WELCOME TO THE LONE STAR STATE

  Taking deep breaths, I began aiming to be into New Mexico before nightfall. I kept thinking that if we could make it across the Panhandle with nothing bad happening that I’d be fine—that everything would be fine—all the way to California, and all that thinking made me so fidgety that the Old Man noticed.

  “Your twitching is giving me the motion sickness,” he said. “Is it the girlie or being back in Texas?”

  Corralling myself, I cut an eye his way. “Sorry I tried to sock you again.”

  “You telegraph your punch,” was all he said, looking back at the road. “You should work on that.”

  As we got deeper into the Texas Panhandle, though, I started fidgeting again. Not until we passed the abandoned road that was causing it could I stop, yet soon as we did, I let out a sigh of relief so loud it got the Old Man’s attention right back on me.

  Eyeing me, he said, “Your home anywhere near here?”

  I stiffened. There it was. He was going to make me lie to him, and we all knew what he thought of liars. Besides, I was still stinging bad from Red’s lying load of crap myself. The last thing I wanted to do was serve the Old Man a new lying load of crap of my own—especially after I’d just tried to slug him again. All I want is to get through Texas still driving the giraffes and on the Old Man’s good side, I kept thinking. That’s all I want.

  Like so many times before, though, the road forced us to forget everything but it. Traffic was downright heavy for the Texas Panhandle, something that never happened. Odder still, it came to a full stop right by a sign that said SIDEWINDER WASH. Two patrol cars were parked sideways across the concrete, and I was sure it was somehow my county sheriff come for me. But they were highway patrolmen. They were standing in the middle of the road and they were stopping all traffic, here in the middle of nowhere.

  The Old Man leaned forward, studying the sign. “I saw this on the trip coming out. The highway got finished all the way West only last year, except for some bridges over bone-dry shallow washes like this one. It shouldn’t be stalling us. The concrete goes in and out and on its way.”

  As we pulled close, one of the troopers adjusted his Stetson and headed to my window as the giraffes popped their heads out to investigate.

  “What in the Sam Hill . . . where are you taking a pair of giraffes? There’s nothing ahead but desert,” he said.

  “San Diego,” the Old Man called over me. “We don’t have the time to get stuck. Can you let us through?”

  The highway patrolman, flipping back to john-the-law mode, rested his hands on his gun belt. “Sorry, sir, no can do. You need to get off the highway. It’s closed until we see what’s going to happen with the water in the wash.”

  We both stared at the dry gully. “What water?” the Old Man said.

  “There’s a thunderhead stalled about a hundred miles up north, raining like a son of a gun. Been gully-washing the place up there for over twenty-four hours now. They’re already calling it a century storm,” the patrolman answered.

  “Did you say a hundred miles north?” the Old Man repeated.

  “That’s what I said, sir. With the topsoil gone after years of dusters, we don’t know how all that gully-washing’s going to break. So since we’ve got three washes like this in the next ten miles, we’re shutting the highway for now.”

  “But if it’s a hundred miles north it’s not going to happen in the next minute, is it?” tried the Old Man.

  “We won’t know until we know, sir.”

  The Old Man looked around at all the dry dirt and the clear sky and tried again. “We need to keep the giraffes going. We’re traveling fast as we can to keep ’em alive.”

  The trooper rested a hand on my windowsill. “Sir, I don’t think you’re comprehending the gravity of the situation. Either of you ever see a flash flood? They come out of nowhere in seconds and take trees and livestock and houses clean away. You can drown in two feet of water, swept away with it all.”

  The Old Man sized up the trooper. “That so.”

  The trooper sized up the Old Man right back. “That so.”

  “You ever see such a thing?” the Old Man said next.

  The trooper leveled his gaze. “Never saw a duster before I found myself in one. This land has a clock all its own. Out here, where you got plants that bloom once a century and varmints that stop their hearts beating when they need a break from the sun, you don’t believe in such things at the risk of your own neck,” he said, glancing up at the giraffes. “Those are some valuable necks to risk.” He turned to me. “Son, I’m sure you got the sense not to buck me, what with that prized cargo in your care. Just take these special animals on back up the highway a bit for the night. Back all the way to Muleshoe if you need to. Stay safe, until we know what’s what.”

  Then
he took a few steps back, placed both hands on his gun belt, and waited for us to obey.

  My insides were pitching a fit. We were only minutes from getting out of Texas. So I wanted to buck him, all right, as if the rig could do any such thing. Because what nobody knew but me was that on back “a bit” was the abandoned road to my pa’s farm.

  The trooper wasn’t budging, so, taking a lung-busting breath, I swerved the rig around cactus and tumbleweeds on the road’s edge, half hoping the tires would sink in the dirt, then headed back by the place I thought I’d finally put behind me forever.

  The Old Man was talking.

  “What?” I said.

  “You ever seen such a thing?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think that trooper’s been in the sun too long,” the Old Man grumbled. “We could’ve already been past it all by now. Besides, they’re giraffes. No water coming down a shallow wash is going to drown a giraffe. Not in this rig and not on pavement. We could ford a stream with the rig on pavement.” He paused to fume. “Well, we’re not going all the way back to Muleshoe. I seem to recall some dump a mile back.”

  Perking up, I agreed.

  So we pulled in to the next overnighter we saw, a run-down tourist court and campground so ratty we’d passed it the first time with barely a notice. It was already filled up with other stalled travelers. The Old Man stepped down from the rig anyway, pulling out his wallet as he went. Getting out to stretch my legs, I could see him inside the office, handing a scruffy man bill after bill from his billfold, until he was marching back to the rig.

  “OK,” he said, “we’re here for the night, hiding as best we can behind that line of pitiful-looking mesquite trees out back. They’re not even nibbling prospects for the darlings. It’ll be hay for them tonight. But I’d rather not be here for the next couple of hours until it gets dark. Considering that stinky fella inside didn’t blink taking my money, even more folks are sure to be piling in. I’m not going to let the darlings be the sideshow. Besides, we should keep a breeze going for them as long as we can. So let’s go find that gas and grub store I remember a ways back. We can waste some time filling up and getting provisions for the night cheaper than from this scalper.”