West With Giraffes
Lynda Rutledge
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
—Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921
The admirablest and fairest beast ever I sawe was a jarraff . . . prince of all the beasts.
—John Sanderson, traveler, 1595
Compiled from Sep. 23, 1938, news reports . . . In one of the few accounts ever recorded of hurricane survival at sea, the merchant marine freighter SS Robin Goodfellow rode straight into this week’s cataclysmic storm off the coast of Haiti. Witnesses describe swells blocking out the sky, fish swimming in the air, and winds whipping waves into water spouts as seamen caught on deck helplessly watched one snatch a crewman into the void. Crawling to the hold where their mates pulled them in, they had no choice but to abandon two crated Baringo giraffes to face the hurricane’s full force . . . Within minutes the ship went into a half-roll starboard and stayed that way for 6 hours of pelting waves and winds, abruptly righting itself as the hurricane passed. On deck, all seemed lost save for one battered giraffe still standing in its lashed crate, its companion’s crushed crate found in debris jammed sideways against the ship rail with only the gigantic beast’s lifeless head in view. But as the crew gathered to push the carcass overboard, the downed giraffe stirred and opened its eyes . . .
Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes . . .
—Woodrow Wilson Nickel
PROLOGUE
Woodrow Wilson Nickel died in the year 2025, on a usual day, in the usual way, at the rather unusual age of 105.
A century and a nickel.
The young VA hospital long-term care liaison assigned to dispatch his worldly possessions to survivors—which in Woodrow Wilson Nickel’s case was an ancient military footlocker and no survivors at all—stood in his vacant room. Determined to keep on schedule, she checked the time. Her job made her feel like some Gatekeeper of Things Left Behind, especially with centenarians gone long before their hearts stopped beating. They were the only ones with footlockers anymore. And old footlockers with nowhere to go were the worst, their contents full of mortal meaning departed with the departed as if she could actually see the past vanish into thin air. So she took a deep breath and opened the old trunk, expecting to find the usual musty uniforms and faded photographs.
Instead she found a giraffe.
The footlocker was full of ruled writing pads, dozens of them, stacked in bundles bound with twine. Perched on top with a yellowed newspaper article was the giraffe, a tiny antique porcelain souvenir from the San Diego Zoo. Despite herself, she smiled wistfully and picked it up. As a child, she’d seen a whole group of the tall, gentle giants at the zoo before they’d become so horribly rare.
Gently setting down the giraffe, she picked up the first batch of pads to move them aside when the top pad’s large old-man scrawl caught her eye. She eased onto the edge of the bed and read it closer:
Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes, one that didn’t kick me dead and one that saved my worthless orphan life and your worthy, precious one.
They’re both long gone. And soon I’ll be gone, which will be no great loss to be sure. But the man on the TV just said that soon there’ll be no more giraffes in the world at all, gone with the tigers and the elephants and the Old Man’s sky-blanketing pigeons. Even as I punched the screen to shut him up, I knew it could be true.
Somehow, though, I know there is still you. And there is still this story that’s yours as good as mine. If it goes extinct, too, with my old bag of bones, that’d be a crying shame—my shame. Because if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of those giraffes. And if ever I should be leaving something behind, it’s this story for them and for you.
So, here and now, before it’s too late, I am writing it all down on the chance a good soul reads these words and helps them find their way to you.
With that, the VA liaison untied the first batch and, forgetting all about her schedule, began to read . . .
. . . I’m older than dirt.
And when you’re older than dirt, you can get lost in time, in memory, even in space.
I’m inside my tiny four-wall room with the feeling that I’ve been . . . gone. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been sitting here. All night I think, since stirring from my foggy mind to find myself surrounded by other old farts staring at a fancy TV. I remember the man on the screen talking about the last giraffes on earth and rushing over in my wheelchair to punch him. I remember being pushed back here quick and a nurse bandaging my bleeding knuckles.
Then I remember an orderly making me swallow a calm-down pill I didn’t want to take.
But that’s the last time I’ll be doing that. Because right now, pencil in this shaky hand, I aim to write down one singular memory.
Fast as I can.
I could spend what I feel in my bones is my life’s last clear hours to tell you of the Dust Bowl. Or the War. Or the French peonies. Or my wives, so many wives. Or the graves, so many graves. Or the goodbyes, so many goodbyes. Those memories come and go here at the end, if they come at all anymore. But not this memory. This memory is always with me, always alive, always within reach, and always in living technicolor from deadly start to bittersweet finish, no matter how old I keep getting. And—Red, Old Man, sweet Wild Boy and Girl—oh, how I miss you.