West With Giraffes(17)

In full view of my giraffe audience, I took a running leap, jumped on the back of the rig like I was hopping a freight train, and caught a slight hold as the rig rolled into the stream, my boots struggling to stay put on the splashed bumper. Somehow, when the rig bounced onto the other side, I was still attached. With every moment that passed, though, I was losing more of my grip, and it didn’t much help that the giraffes’ necks were so long they’d both bent them around to watch, Boy so close his tongue was licking my hair. I almost fell off trying to bat the snaky thing away.

As the rig entered the little sleeping town and my boots struggled to keep their toehold, I looked for something, anything, to snitch before I fell off. Nothing. As light broke, we passed the city limit sign on the other side of town, the cop car already turning around to head back. I tell you, I despaired. My grip was about to go and my boots were losing their bumper toehold. I either had to go up or was going to go down. In a matter of seconds, I’d be tumbling into the ditch and that’d be that, nothing left to do but lick my wounds as I watched the rig and my dream disappear for good. So, with no help from Boy, who continued to lick my hair, I reached high and pulled my beat-up self on top of the rig. There I lay, spread-eagle, grasping for handholds and dodging bugs as the Old Man lurched us all down the road.

Until, that is, the morning’s first rubbernecker appeared.

Stunned at the early-morning sight of giraffes on his country road, the driver swerved way too close to the rig, and the Old Man must’ve jerked the wheel the other way—because I was suddenly airborne. Bouncing once on my bad rib, then again on my side, I landed spread-eagle in the ditch, and I must’ve howled pretty loud doing it. Because next thing I knew the Old Man was in my face.

“Holy hell, boy, were you on top of the rig? You should’ve broken your fool neck! What kind of stunt were you trying to pull? No, don’t answer that.” He yanked me to my feet. “Anything busted?”

My britches were split and my knee was bloody. As the giraffes snorted at me, he ran his rough hands over my limbs. Leaving me wobbling, he retrieved the zoo doc’s kit, ripped the tear in my britches wider, and bandaged up my bloody knee, taking a little too much pleasure splashing Mercurochrome—nasty red stinging antiseptic we used to call “monkey blood”—on all my skinned-up parts, which had me yelping so loud the giraffes upped their snorting.

“You’ll live.” Pulling a dollar bill from his wallet, he flicked it at me. “Here’s a dollar. Put out your thumb,” he said, grabbing up the kit and heading toward the rig.

“You’re leaving me here?”

“Somebody’ll be along to give you a lift back to town so you can use that dollar to call your people and go home.”

“I don’t have people and I don’t have a home,” I called after him. “I want to go to Californy.”

“That’s not my problem,” he called back over his shoulder.

The giraffes were snuffling loud and jumpy, swiveling their necks back and forth between us. At the sight, I swallowed hard, squared my shoulders, and called out, “No, your problem is your bad driving is going to give the giraffes whiplash—and how’s Mrs. Benchley going to like that?”

He got a hitch in his step at the mention of this Mrs. Benchley I remembered from the telegrams. Pulling his fedora low, though, he kept walking.

And I heard myself yell, “You need a hand!”

With that dunderheaded choice of words, the Old Man stopped all right, pivoting full around to catch me staring at his gnarly hand.

“What did you just say?” he growled, shooting me the stink eye of all stink eyes, to which I wisely kept my trap shut. He threw open the driver’s door, climbed up, and cranked the motor.

It sputtered and died.

He cranked it again.

“Don’t flood it! Go easy on the pedal!” I hollered. When it rumbled to life, I yelled, “What if that hadn’t started? You need me!”

What I really, really wanted to say was that I needed them.

Grinding those gears rougher and jerking the giraffes’ necks harder, the Old Man bounced the rig back on the road. As I watched the giraffes rolling away once more, my heart dropped all the way to the Land of China.

Then the rig stopped.

The Old Man was waving me up.

I ran as fast as my bloodied knee would let me, and when I got to his door, he said, “You really good with engines? Don’t lie to me now.”

“I’m a true genius,” I lied to him.

“You got a license?”

“’Course.”

“And you can drive this thing?”

“It’s got gears and a clutch, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Let’s see. I only need you to get us to DC.”

“But . . . you’re going to Californy.”

“We are. You’re not.”

“But why DC?”

“Southern route starts there. Wasn’t stopping, but Earl the sumbitch changed that,” he answered. “We’ll be getting a new driver with their zoo’s help. That is, once the Boss Lady asks, and I don’t look forward to that chat with her. Worst of it is we’ll be hung up there for at least a day, maybe more. Every day we tarry is more dangerous for the darlings. But I got no choice,” he added, muttering another sumbitch under his breath. “When—if—you get us to DC safe, I’ll buy you a train ticket back to New York.”