West With Giraffes(37)

I turned to see why, and what I saw was a fool’s folly.

Under the back axle, he’d set up the big fancy jack that came with the big fancy rig. He was going to make me start pumping it. But we had one spare, two flats, and two giraffes. Not to mention the underpass right above the last two to three inches of the rig. It wasn’t going to work. I knew it in my bones. There wasn’t a jack made that a man could pump on his own strength to raise squat with giraffes sitting on top of it over two flat tires. And there was sure no trick to make them not weigh two tons no matter where they stood.

I knew the Old Man saw what I saw, but he looked desperate, half-crazy with it. He marched over and shoved me toward the jack, ordering me to get pumping. So, I started pumping and I kept it up until I heard the Old Man whisper in a voice so spooked the memory of it can still give me the creeps.

“Uhm . . . boy . . .”

I looked where he was looking. Up on the railroad tracks stood a Black man in blue overalls. He was six and a half feet, if an inch. What got me up quick on my feet, though, wasn’t so much the sight of the man. It was the big blade he was holding. He had himself a wheat scythe, a nasty-looking farm tool I’d only seen left to rust on barn walls after cotton and tractors came to the plains. But this one wasn’t rusty. This one was shiny and sharp. Like the one Death in his flowing robe carries around in ghost stories.

Down toward the front of the rig ambled the man. When he got near, he popped the handle side of the scythe into the soft ground like the staff of Moses. For a very long moment, he stood there staring hard enough to give both me and the Old Man the willies.

“We been watching you,” he finally said.

I glanced around, not seeing any “we,” and not much wanting to.

At the sound of the booming new voice, Wild Girl’s head bopped her latched window so hard that the latch gave and the window popped open.

Moses frowned. “What kind of animals you got there?”

Before the Old Man could answer, the other latched window whapped open as well, Wild Boy wanting to see what there was to see, too, and with both giraffes on the same side again, the rig leaned, the metal groaned, and thunk. So much for the fancy jack.

Moses stared at the jack.

Then at the truck.

Then at the underpass.

Then at the tires.

Then back at us. “Got yourself in a tight spot,” he said.

“Yes,” answered the Old Man.

“Tried to let out the tires to get it under.”

“Yes,” answered the Old Man again.

“Now you’re stuck,” Moses said next.

“Yes—” repeated the Old Man, getting crankier by the second over all this stating of the obvious.

Moses nodded at the giraffes. “Don’t suppose those big fellers can come out of there.”

“No.” The Old Man’s head all but bobbed off he shook it so hard. For all we knew, Moses had some designs on the giraffes, but the truth was the rig was not a back-loading horse trailer. So, even if we wanted to, there wasn’t going to be any taking the giraffes out until it was clear of the underpass. The entire side had to come down to do any such thing.

Giving everything another once-over, Moses then said, “We can do what needs doing. But first, things gotta be put right.”

I didn’t know about the Old Man, but the sound of that did not make me glad all over.

Moses put two fingers to his lips and made a noise that was something between a crow being murdered and a robin being courted. In less than a minute, six younger, burlier copies of the man appeared. They streamed in one by one, dressed in overalls like Moses, some one-shouldered, some two, some wearing shirts, some not—all clutching farm utensils in their big mitts.

They came up close to the rig, a couple of them even reaching up to touch the giraffes without having to step up on a thing to get to them. You’d think they’d have all been chattering upon seeing giraffes, like every other living soul had so far. But they were silent as the wind, all nods of the head, hands on hips, cocks of the brow, repeating Moses’s actions without wasting a bit of breath on speech, looking at the tires, the underpass, the rig, and each other.

Then back at us.

The Old Man, meanwhile, was keeping an eye on the farm utensils in the men’s beefy fists. I could tell he was worrying which way this was about to go, his eyes darting to the shotgun on the cab’s gunrack. “Stay close,” he mumbled at me, like I could do a thing if everything went south.

“Better get the uncs, too,” Moses said next, and put his fingers to his lips again. This time the birdcall was more murder than courting, and six more burly men come out of nowhere, older than the first group, but the spitting image of each other except for the amount of hair on their heads. Joining up with the rest, they did the very same wordless sizing up the situation, and they did it so long, both me and the Old Man were about to come right out of our skins.

Then they all turned toward the railroad track as here came another man. But this one was different. Using a hoe as a walking stick, he was white-whiskered, his overalls were starched, his blue work shirt was fresh-ironed, and, as he came to a stop by Moses, he only had eyes for the giraffes.

I’d heard of big farming families before, even known a few, but this one pretty much took the prize. Taking in the whole clan, I figured white-whiskers had to be the Big Papa, the uncs his brothers, and the rest had to be their sons, Moses being the eldest.