West With Giraffes(26)
“We keep this strictly business,” she said again, still shaking my hand.
“OK.”
“Strictly,” she repeated.
“OK.”
“I don’t need to be saved or protected,” she went on.
“OK,” I repeated.
“So we have a deal,” she said one more time, and we stopped shaking. Or I should say she did.
We stood there in the dying light coming from the campfire and I felt her leave-taking coming on strong. “My name’s Woody,” I said. I didn’t tell her my last name for fear she’d laugh like the Old Man.
“Mine’s Augusta.”
“Augie?” I said, remembering what the reporter called her.
“Only one person calls me that, only to vex me,” she answered, smiling that tight-lipped smile again. With that, she headed toward her hut, her curls bouncing like they were as alive as she was, and my heart split in two. “I’ll see you down the road, Woody,” she said over her shoulder.
I wanted to say something a Driver of Giraffes might say, something Clark Gable might say. Instead I called after her, “My last name’s Nickel.”
She glanced back. “Drive safely, Woody Nickel.” And she didn’t laugh.
I watched until the dark swallowed her up. Stoking the campfire, I sat down to keep watch for another couple of hours, my mind full of girly trousers and fancy magazines and Paris and old paintings and giraffes floating down to earth. The time flew by. I even thought I heard the giraffes humming again, like I’d dreamed back in quarantine. When I walked over close to listen, I heard only the wind whistling through the trees, so I went back to the fire and my big thoughts.
The Old Man appeared from the dark as the fire was nothing but embers and the stars had shifted without my notice. “Time for you to sleep, boy. Close the top before you go,” he said, already stirring the fire back to life.
5
Asleep
Inside the Auto Rest hut, still feeling the warmth of Red’s body pressed to my aching ribs, I found myself back at the depot in my mind, imagining our kiss to end all kisses safely happening just in my head. Instead of it keeping me awake, though, I went fast to sleep, the first real sleep since the quarantine night inside the rig. I was walking across France with Girl, leading her by a halter like I used to do with my mare, then . . .
Hush-a-bye Don’t you cry Go to sleep, little baby.
When you wake You shall have All the pretty little horses.
“Li’l one, who you talking to?”
Brown-apple eyes stare.
“Woody Nickel, tell me what happened out there and tell me now!”
I knew I was inside my familiar Panhandle nightmare . . . until I hear a train in the distance and I’m standing in bright sunlight by a cornfield . . . as a giraffe bursts from the dried stalks, careening and crashing, to the sound of lassos whipping the air . . .
Falling out of the hut’s bed, I threw myself out the door.
It was still dark.
The Old Man, sitting on the rig’s running board, got up at the sight of me in my skivvies appearing out of nowhere, barefoot and big-eyed. Trying not to think of Aunt Beulah, I slid against the truck, full awake. I told the Old Man I was staying. He scowled. “Well, you’re not doing it in your drawers.”
So, after I came back fully dressed, the Old Man headed for the hut to sleep the few hours until sunrise, leaving me with the giraffes and my cornfield worries to greet the dawn. I sat on that running board and stared wide-eyed into the country dark, as deep a dark as I’d ever seen. At first light, I moved toward the field beyond the camp area, expecting a cornfield and a train track. There was nothing but pines. I’d never been happier to see a bunch of trees.
Not until that moment did I remember Red. I looked back at her hut. The Packard was gone.
6
To Washington, DC
Memories stick to things. Out of nowhere, something finds your nose, ears, or eyes and you’re on the other side of the country or world or in a whole other decade, being kissed by a doe-eyed beauty or punched by a drunken pal. You’ve got no control over it, none at all. One whiff of dust whenever they clean my room and I’m back in the Panhandle staring down a brown blizzard. One glimpse of pink peonies and I’m back in WWII France, standing over a fresh battlefield grave.
And one howl of a rolling old police siren and I am back in the moment I’m driving the rig smack into Washington, DC, seconds from a nervous retch.
Just an hour before, as we tended to the giraffes preparing to leave Round’s Roadside Auto Rest, the Old Man kept to himself whatever thoughts he had about my peculiar behavior during the night, and I was glad of it. Because as soon as we got back on the road, we started seeing signs for DC one right after the other. When we saw one that said WASHINGTON DC 3 MILES, we spotted the city ahead—and in the middle was something big and pointy. It was the Washington Monument. Of course, I didn’t know that and I wasn’t about to ask the Old Man. He was already fidgeting that fedora of his, but before I could wonder why, I knew. The highway had widened to an extra lane on both sides and cars completely surrounded us. That’s when a police car, with that siren a’rolling, whizzed past on the shoulder so fast that I jerked the wheel and threw the Old Man into the dashboard, his fedora flying to the floor. Cussing, he grabbed it up in time to be thrown against the door as the giraffes rocked the rig. Clenching the steering wheel, I thought I might retch as I grasped the full reality of what I had talked my way into—I was driving two colossal African beasts right into big-city traffic.