West With Giraffes(33)
They’re just animals, I could hear my pa grousing, and you ain’t a boy in knickers no more.
But they came to me on the mountain! I couldn’t stop thinking. They came—and we didn’t die!
It was a full moon night, one of those harvest moons that light up the night so bright that you can see almost as good as day. As the giraffes reached for the branches surrounding us, I watched and listened as their nibbling slowed and their cud chewing began. I lay back on the plank between the two giraffes’ traveling rooms, everything lulling me, the giraffes near and serene, the woods hushed, the moon above big and yellow through the trees. I stared at that moon so long and peaceful that, to my shameful surprise, I must have nodded off.
Next thing I know I was bolting straight up in the dark to the sound of splintering wood—the giraffes were kicking hard enough to fracture the crates. Something was so near they thought they had to defend themselves.
Bracing myself, I leaned over the side. Below us was a bear. It was sniffing around the rig’s tires, and then it reared up on its hind legs and plopped its beefy paws on the side of the road Pullman.
The giraffes had a fit. Girl kicked so hard, I was sure she cracked a hole in the wood, but the bear didn’t budge. I squinted through the shadows for something to wave or bang, gearing up to jump down and scare the bear off. Considering that this was the first time I ever laid eyes on a bear, I couldn’t quite make myself do it. As I braced to holler loud enough to scare off the furry devil before the giraffes did some real damage, I saw a flash—and everything turned blinding white-bright.
For a second, I couldn’t see a thing, but neither could the bear. To the sound of it bumping into the camp’s trash cans, running away, I grabbed the rig to save myself from falling off. As I blinked back to sight, out strolled Red in the moonlight, popping the bulb from her camera with a krink and bouncing it in her hand until it cooled down. You’d have thought she’d just been to a tea party.
Still blinking, I eased down to check the damage to the rig. Sure enough, it was cracked right through. The Old Man was going to love that. To avoid Red, I climbed back up to the cross plank.
“She kicked at that bear through the wood!” Red called up in a loud whisper. “They’re OK, aren’t they?”
As the giraffes moved near me again, I didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry about bumping you in the mountains,” Red whispered up.
With that, I aimed all my fearful fury from the whole day straight at her. “You about sent us over,” I hissed down. “I was doing fine!”
“Well, don’t yell at me!” she whispered up.
“I’m not yelling!” I whispered down.
“Yes, you are!” she whispered back.
We both looked toward the Old Man’s cabin at the same time.
She sighed. “I guess I deserve to be yelled at, you’re right,” she whispered quieter. “I’m so, so sorry, Woody. Truly I am. You and the giraffes . . . you were amazing. May I come up?”
Not waiting for an answer, she set her camera down and crawled up to straddle the cross plank, facing me, exactly like the night before, but this time I inched back, away. The giraffes crowded close, so close that their fur was brushing against our dangling legs. I could feel the warmth of their pelts against my denims, knowing that Red was feeling the same against her trousers, and I felt my fury ebb away. “I fell asleep,” I heard myself confess. “I don’t fall asleep.”
She frowned. “What? You have to sleep.”
I sure wasn’t going to tell her about my nightmare. So I shrugged.
“I love sleep,” she said. “Only thing better is being awake. Really awake.”
We sat quiet for a moment until Boy stepped back a bit, eyeing a branch he’d missed. I saw Red move, and I thought she was climbing down.
Instead she swung her legs over and dropped right into his crate, hitting its padded floor with a thump that might as well have been upside my head, I was so dumbstruck. She’d landed knee deep in Boy’s peat moss near his hooves, inches from Girl’s splinted leg on the other side of the opening. The Old Man’s words were popping like firecrackers inside my head . . . Big don’t know from small . . . They could love you like their mama and still crush an arm or leg . . .
“Look at all this padding, even on the walls,” Red whispered up. “This is comfier than my cabin.”
“What are you doing?” I hissed down.
“I only wanted to see what it was like in here for the story—and I knew he wouldn’t mind.”
Boy was shuffling his hooves, moving away from Red, and Girl was swaying her neck like she did right before kicking the Old Man. Red was about to get it. I tried to warn her, but I couldn’t get the words out. Reaching through the opening, she placed her left hand on Girl’s flank over the same sideways heart-shaped spot I’d touched in quarantine, and reaching back to Boy with her right, she patted them both at the same time. Girl’s neck stopped its swaying and Boy’s fur shuddered with delight.
“I’m going to Africa someday,” Red said, patting, patting. “This’ll get me there, you wait and see.” She glanced up at me. “How do I get out of here? Oh, wait.”
She popped open the trapdoor and eased to the ground, smiling at me like she’d been patting puppies. Climbing down, I whapped the trapdoor shut, wanting bad to tell her to never, ever do that again, but what she’d just done belied any such warnings.