West With Giraffes(13)

Next thing I heard was the sound of screeching tires . . . followed by a sickening thud and a deathly howl. My flesh crawling, I inched around that curve and what I saw made me veer for the cover of the ditch’s overgrowth. The rig was stopped dead in the middle of the road, and something big was lying by its right fender, spun halfway into the ditch. I was sure Earl had hit a hitchhiker. But it was a mangy stray dog, as big as a pony, and its bowels were hanging out of its bloody, shredded fur.

Ordering Earl to stay put, the Old Man took the rifle from the cab’s gunrack and moved toward it. He eased down by the dying dog, gun in his lap, as the dog went full into its death jerks. When the panting and jerking kept on going and going, the Old Man rose and cocked the rifle. Between one panting jerk and the next, though, the dog went still. Lowering the gun, the Old Man paused. Then, hunkering down again, he laid a hand on the dead dog’s fur and left it there, like he was offering up some sort of Old Man benediction.

As I watched, in my mind’s eye I was in the Panhandle driving Pa’s pickup as we hit something yellow and saw it tumble into the brush. Pa got out to cuss the dented fender, and I’d just taken the rifle from the gunrack when Pa turned his cusses on me: God-DAMN it, son! Where you going? If it’s a coyote, we shoot coyotes for being coyotes. If it’s a stray dog, we ain’t wasting a bullet on it. Stop acting like you’re still in knickers. They’re just animals!

Up ahead, the Old Man got to his feet, grabbed the cur’s leg, and dragged the carcass full off the road. The giraffes were watching, their heads out their windows. So he climbed up to give them both a pat on their necks, his giraffe-speak wafting back to me on the wind, then he crawled back in the cab and the rig moved on, vanishing around the next curve. I eased the cycle past the carcass, storing the scene away to ponder.

With the next turn of the road, though, I had bigger worries. The cycle’s gas gauge was hazarding empty and there I was without a dime or a dollar.

I kept on following. What else could I do?

With me riding on fumes and sundown on its way, we were closing in on a town called Conowingo, which sticks in my memory for more reasons than the peculiar sound of it. Trees lining the right, the road veered near a quick-moving river on the left and stayed.

Then came the signs:

ONE WAY BRIDGE, said the first one.

LOW WATER CROSSING, warned the next.

I could barely believe it. Were they really going to drive those giraffes right into the river?

From one second to the next, though, none of that mattered a whit, since that was the moment the cycle gulped, chugged, and clunked to a stop.

Pounding the clutch, I jumped up and down on the throttle like I could pump ethyl into the cycle with just my hopping, and I kept it up beyond all good sense, wearing myself clean out.

Sucking wind, I stared after the shrinking rig, realizing, like a stab to the heart, I was about to say goodbye to my California plan. It’s over, I told myself, thinking how I’d sell my soul for it not to be—and considering I hadn’t yet quite become acquainted with my soul, that was a surprising thought. So, fueled by the same do-or-die fury I’d felt on the dock, I started running, thinking I might as well die from the running than the standing and watching my flickering hope fade.

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.