West With Giraffes(12)
With that, the cycle cops started poking us down the entire length of New Jersey.
In the first burg, people were so surprised, a few sleepy neck-twisting guffaws were all anybody could muster before we were gone.
By the second, though, the people seemed to know the giraffes were coming. The rig was met by the local patrol car at the city limits. As the cops and the rig inched turtle-slow through town, I found myself in a sudden parade. Cars and bicycles fell in behind. Old men waved from stools and steps and bungalow porches. Women in housedresses stood on verandas holding up babies. Townspeople lining the sidewalks were holding up newspapers, and a boy running alongside me kept waving one in my face, so I snatched it, giving the front page a quick glance as we kept rolling. While I didn’t pay it much mind at the time, the top headline was one for the ages:
Thinking of that headline now, I get a shiver. It was talking about the Munich Agreement, a thing that sounds like something nobody would remember this side of schoolbooks, but the whole world would soon be remembering it far too well. Hitler had seized Austria and was now wanting a chunk of Czechoslovakia, promising peace if he could have it. The spooked Allies handed it right over, believing in fairy tales told by a madman. Back then, though, what was that to me on the other side of the world? Giving Adolph Hitler no thought at all, I flipped the paper over and there was the story everybody but me had already seen:
I pulled over to the curb to read it, but I didn’t get past the headline. Because, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sight that made me drop the paper and jerk my head clean around—a green Packard. There it went, right by me, with Red hanging out the window snapping pictures and the reporter behind the wheel. As we left the town behind, I kept expecting it to peel off and disappear home again, like before, but it kept following.
So now I was following it, too.
We moved on like that all morning in a sort of rhythm: farmland quiet, dumbstruck hitchhikers, small towns, local cops, sudden parades, and jubilating townies yelling the same geehaws:
“How’s the weather up there?”
“I’m seeing spots before my eyes!”
“Low bridge!”
Then, with no warning, the New Jersey cycle cops gave one last salute to the Old Man and vanished back the way they came. We were at the state line. Which was all good and fine, except the state line was a river and there wasn’t any bridge to the other side. There was a ferry. A boat. Taking us over water. And that was no small thing, considering water had tried to kill both the giraffes and me.
The Old Man didn’t look too happy about it, either. As the rig came to a stop at the landing, he hopped out and held up the line until getting some sort of satisfaction from the ferryman. He took off that grungy fedora, wiped at his brow with the back of his sleeve, and watched as the ferryman guided Earl to roll the rig on. When it came to a stop, the Old Man put his hat back on, heaved a great fume, and stepped on board himself. As other cars filled in behind, I bided my time. Then, with a rub of my rabbit’s foot, I took a deep breath and walked the cycle on.
As we pushed off, every last person on that ferry silently got out of their cars to gaze at the giraffes. The sight of those big giraffe heads stuck out their windows against the reflection of the smooth river made me go silent, too, inside and out. It was a magical thing. My rowdy young self fought the warm feeling, but I remember the moment as wondrous. We were moving across the Delaware River with giraffes and I think we could have done it without a motor. The calmest of us all seemed the giraffes themselves. Whether the river’s flow was so still they didn’t notice it was water or whether they’d made peace with their road Pullman, they were riding free and easy.
I looked around for Red, hoping she was snapping pictures of it, but the green Packard wasn’t on the ferry. Spinning around, I scanned the shoreline. There it was, still on the landing. Red and the reporter were in front of it, and my warm feeling turned into flitting fury at what I saw next.
He motioned toward the car.
She threw up her hands.
He grabbed her arm again.
She jerked it back.
He got back in the car, slammed the door, and gunned the motor, waiting for her to follow.
But she didn’t. Not at first.
Instead she turned and stared back at the giraffes.
I studied Red’s gaze as we moved farther and farther away, her face full of things I did not understand yet was desperate to remember before she vanished from sight. I was certain I’d never see her again . . . and I watched long after I could no longer make out the green of the car or the fire of her hair.
When the ferry landed on the other side, everybody made way for the giraffes and their rig, like the Old Man was the king of Siam with passing wonders to behold. As the giraffes’ heads disappeared over the riverbank, nobody moved. Under the spell of giraffes and ferries and rolling river, they stayed that way for so long I thought I’d never get off. Snaking around them all, I revved the cycle, fearing I’d lose sight of the giraffes, but there they were, those giraffe heads high, proud, and impossible to miss, and I slowed back to a calm putter.
Soon, we crossed another state line, which seemed to be coming as quick as county lines in Texas. WELCOME TO MARYLAND, the sign said. The rig slowed down even more, the road curving this way and that, with tractors, pickups, and even a horse-drawn wagon pulling in and out between us. Then the road took a sharp bend and the rig disappeared.