West With Giraffes(38)

As Big Papa kept studying the giraffes, Moses nodded at the youngest man—all the muscle but not the height—and the son headed toward the curve to stand watch, a human roadblock if there ever was one.

Then Big Papa spoke. “We know what we can do for these towering creatures of God’s pure Eden.” As Big Papa and Moses let another moment go by without a peep, the Old Man was about to pop and I wasn’t doing much better, wondering why he wasn’t raising holy hell to hear their game plan before letting these strangers take control. But I knew why. There was only one thing to be done. Move the truck. And how that could be done without some motorized help, much less taking those giraffes out of the truck, neither of us could quite figure.

Then Moses spoke. “Put it in gear.”

I looked at the Old Man, who was already looking at me. Although it was clear as day he didn’t want to, he gave me a nod. As I got in and put the rig in gear, one thought rushed through my head: Wherever the giraffes go, I go. The idea surprised me so much it half rattled me. I got even more rattled when I glanced in my mirror.

At the curve, a green Packard was stalled sideways off the road, like it had tried to go around the roadblock son, and there stood Red in a man’s trench coat, clutching her camera, the human roadblock’s big fist clutching her arm.

“You ready?”

Moses’s voice snapped me back to the rig.

I nodded.

“Stomp it.”

The rig, like I said, had almost cleared the underpass before the tires splatted. It just hadn’t cleared enough to pull off the road. That’s what the Big Papa clan proceeded to do—push us the few inches clear and to the shoulder. It didn’t matter a lick that I was adding to the weight. I might as well have been made of feathers. It didn’t matter a lick that two of the tires were flat. Or that the road was inclining up. Or that the giraffes were moving around, popping their heads out both sides of the rig, watching the excitement. With me stomping the gas, the Big Papa clan pushed me, two giraffes, two flat tires, and the rest of the big rig into the short roll needed to get us the few feet needed to clear that underpass. When they’d groaned and grunted and heaved and hoed their last, the rig landed on the road’s narrow shoulder right beyond the bridge.

As I turned off the key, Moses whistled that robin-courting call again. The human roadblock son at the curve stepped aside to let four cars inch through the underpass, then let go of Red, who, instead of jumping into the Packard, headed straight toward us on a dead run, camera up. By the time I got out of the rig, the Old Man was standing there as slack-jawed as I’d ever seen him, with Red already there, snapping away.

The Old Man gaped at her. “Who are you?”

Red put out her hand. “Hello, Mr. Jones, I’m chronicling your story for Life magazine. Woody will vouch for me, won’t you, Woody?”

“Oh, for the love of . . .” The Old Man groaned. “You’re the one who damn near sent us over the side of the mountain! Get away, girlie!” He turned his back on her, which didn’t stop her one bit. She turned and aimed the camera at the sons and uncs. By that time, though, the human roadblock had returned, and he placed his huge hand over her camera.

Red gulped.

“Seventh Son thinks it’d be the mannerly thing to ask, missy,” Big Papa translated.

Red took a second to hear Big Papa, staring at Seventh Son’s paw on her lens. “Oh. I’m sorry. May I take your picture?” That seemed to satisfy Seventh Son, and he dropped his hand.

Moses, meanwhile, had been inspecting the deflated back tires. “You gotcha a spare,” he said. “You don’t got two. Which you need.”

The Old Man bit his tongue over more stating of the obvious. “Do you have a tire this size we could buy off you?”

Moses shook his head.

“How about a motorized pump you could haul down here for us to use to put the single spare on?” the Old Man tried next. “We’ve got to get down the road before dark.”

Again, Moses shook his head.

All out of ideas, the Old Man glanced my way. Things were not looking good.

“Sure the big fellers can’t come off?” Moses said.

The Old Man hesitated. “You still able to help if they can’t?”

Big Papa and Moses exchanged glances, then Moses nodded real slow and the whole clan turned and marched off.

The rest of us had no choice but to wait, the Old Man fuming, the giraffes snuffling, and Red working her camera, fixing knobs and turning rings like nothing else mattered, not even the fancy automobile she’d left on the side of the road. Then her head popped up. Moses reappeared carrying a single truck tire that looked as bald as he was and, behind him, the sons returned in groups. One group was carrying two long split tree trunks as big around as a man’s chest, another lugged long steel bars, and another was rolling a boulder—flat on one side, round on the other with a trunk-sized groove—landing it, flat-side down, a few yards behind the rig.

Moving in a way that spoke of them having done this many times before, the sons made a sandwich with the trunk logs and steel bars, shoved the log sandwich under the rig to straddle the back axle, then laid the other end of the log sandwich in the boulder’s groove to create the oddest makeshift seesaw you ever saw.

Then, in choir-like unison, all the sons and uncs climbed up on the end of the log sandwich sticking up in the air. The steel groaned, the logs splintered, the truck creaked, and the entire rig rose the two inches needed for Moses to switch out the two deflated tires for the rig’s spare and his own bald tire.