West With Giraffes(31)
Inching the rig around them, I pulled into the comfort station’s lot. The buildings and log picnic benches were so new you could sniff the just-cut smell over the wind. Their big nostrils working overtime, the giraffes had their snouts high to the sky.
I stopped under a big tree near the comfort station as the drizzle got stronger and the clouds darker. The shovel army was headed our way. Quick as we could, we gave everything a once-over. I checked the rig and the Old Man eyed Girl’s splint. To me, everything seemed better than it had any right to be after that wild ride, but the Old Man wasn’t even close to smiling anymore.
By then, the rig was completely surrounded, the entire crew crowding near. Their faces sunburned and rawboned, some were dressed in khakis, some in denims, some bare-chested, some in hats, all of them toting shovels, picks, or ball-peen hammers. The Old Man motioned me to pop the top so the giraffes could nibble at the shade trees for the CCC audience. I climbed up, but before I could pop the top, the view stopped me flat. From up there, I could see over the side of the mountain where the sun was shining down on the Shenandoah Valley. It was lusher and greener than anything I’d ever seen in my Panhandle life. It was like looking at a Dust Bowl farmer’s idea of heaven. It looked like Californy.
“The top, boy,” the Old Man yelled up.
Tearing my eyes away, I threw the top back and stayed put to calm the giraffes. But I didn’t have to. Despite our big scare or maybe because of it, the giraffes were already gawking right back at the gawkers, bobbing those necks sweetly up and down.
As the crew cheered them on, I saw the flash of a camera. There stood Red. Fast as she could, she was popping in flashbulbs to brighten the drizzly gloom and switching them out for new ones from the camera bag on her shoulder.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
The young shoveling army, with a red-crested beauty near enough to touch, started crowding in close—too close, to my eyes. Jumping down, I shoved my way through the crews to stand in front of her, arms wide. I expected the crowd of boys to take exception. Instead it was Red.
“What do you think you’re doing!” she hissed.
“You said you wanted my help,” I said.
Her face was as fiery as her curls. “That wasn’t the deal—I don’t need saving!”
“Fine!” I said, stepping back, allowing the shoveling army to shove back in, swamping her so quick I couldn’t even see her.
I was about to push back in again, no matter what she said, when a siren whooped and a state trooper came rolling up on his saddle-bagged cycle. Dressed in a Mountie-style hat and hip boots, he stopped at the edge of the crowd and dismounted. The crew made way for him as he headed toward the Old Man without even glancing at the giraffes. When he passed Red, she stepped back, too, way back, which seemed strange. The trooper hat alone seemed worth a photo.
The Old Man, already talking to the trooper, was waving me to the rig. I looked back for Red. When I couldn’t find her in the crowd, something told me to look out on the road, and I looked in time to see a glimpse of the green Packard driving away.
In a few minutes, we were back on Skyline Drive, the trooper riding behind us with his lights flashing, no doubt at the request of the Old Man. After a few more switchbacks, we left the mountain drizzle behind and I breathed easier, even though I was still feeling jangled down to my core. Descending into the valley, we popped out of the mountains near a town called Luray, where the trooper gave us a nice wave and vanished back up Skyline Drive.
We stopped at the first little roadside store we saw, a small clapboard place with a single gas pump, as a mangy mountain man in a flop hat covered with leaves was tying his pack mule out front. As I steered the big rig around them, the store’s screen door slapped open. Out came a man sporting a Santa Claus beard dressed in the newest, bluest, starchiest overalls I ever saw, trailed by a towheaded kid wearing his own stiff overalls.
“I’ll be darned! You never know what’s going to pass by nowadays!” the man said, slapping his knee. “Real live giraffes! At my store!” Rushing back inside, he came back out with one of those little cardboard box cameras and took a quick picture. “That one’s going on the wall, front and center.” Putting his arm around the Old Man, he escorted him inside while the kid bounded over to gas us up.
I sat down on the truck’s running board and worked to calm my nerves. Inside, I could see the Old Man setting things on the counter, then reaching for his money and the owner waving him off. So the Old Man shook the bearded man’s hand, jotted something on a postcard, and handed it to him. Then, clutching onion gunnysacks under both arms, he came out with a soft drink in one hand and a beer in the other.
“Here’s you a sarsaparilla,” he said to me. “You’re driving. But I’m not, thank God.” Dropping the sacks, he plopped down on the running board beside me, pushed back his fedora, and took his first swig of beer.
I held off on my own swigging, though, worried the Old Man would notice my shakes. So I tried chitchat. “You send a postcard?”
He nodded.
“Who to?”
“The Boss Lady.”
“You aren’t telling her the bad stuff, are you?”
“Not until I can’t help it.” Finishing the beer, he grabbed one of the onion sacks, climbed up the rig ladder, and split the whole thing between the giraffes, like peace offerings and thank-yous, cooing giraffe-speak all the while. As the giraffes happily chomped, he came down and took a long look at Girl’s splint through the trapdoor, then eased back down by me.