West With Giraffes(42)

As we drove away, what filled my side mirror was what lingers most in memory all these years since—the giraffes are stretching their necks to look at Honey Bee waving goodbye atop Seventh Son’s shoulder, with Big Papa and all the sons standing sentry, sending us safely on our way.





. . . My eyes are getting tired.

And my pencil’s getting short.

Yet I can’t stop.

I glance back at my window to see if Wild Girl’s still there.

She is, God love her. The darling giraffe reaches over and gives me a push with her big snout. “OK, OK,” I say. Sharpening my pencil, I take a deep breath and get back to this writing . . . yet I can’t help but wonder.

Are your eyes reading these words?

Has this story found the precious likes of you?

My old heart tightens again at the thought, and it’s keeping me from thinking straight. I know I’m asking questions that make no sense, but I strain to write down this next day, here almost ninety years later, and that’s a curiosity. Lord knows I’ve done plenty things more shameful after living a century. If I wrote them down, they wouldn’t even give me pause now that I’m so old. Put next to a man’s war days alone, it’s nothing but a trifle. Yet this day to come with the giraffes still cuts me deeper than makes a bit of sense. If Red’s heart was already broken, mine had barely been used, lacking in any proper language or direction, and that went double for my ruddy little soul. I can only suppose that when you’re riding with two “towering creatures of God’s pure Eden,” and you grasp the first rotten proof of your true self, you never quite forget it, no matter what you do later to make it right.

I glance back at the sweet giraffe in my window and sigh.

I’m sorry, Girl.

I still, truly, am.





9

Across Tennessee

A few peaceful hours down the road, this side of Chattanooga, we pulled into a Texaco gas station and general store surrounded by a nice grove of munching trees. The tires checked out fine, exactly like the Old Man figured. So, as soon as the man in his fancy Texaco star uniform met the giraffes and filled the tank, I pulled the rig over to let the giraffes eat and crawled back in the cab. In a minute, the Old Man returned from the store with a salami, soda pops, and a new newspaper he plopped down between us.

HITLER STILL VOWS WAR, the newspaper’s front page hollered in big black letters, and my eyes landed on the day’s date—October 10.

Tomorrow was my birthday.

I’d be eighteen.

Right then, a county deputy’s car came roaring up with its siren rolling, making the giraffes wobble and me, as usual, tense up.

“Well, whaddya know,” the paunchy old deputy said, getting out and hitching up his pants. “I sure thought the bulletin was a joke. It said to be on the lookout for a gal driving a green Packard following a truck carrying African tip-top critters. And here they are.”

I flinched.

“A bulletin, you say?” the Old Man said.

“Thassright.” Coming over to my window, the deputy propped a boot on the rig’s running board. “From all the way up in New York City. I read a lot of bulletins, but that one took the cake. Something about a runaway wife in a stolen vehicle chasing giraffes.”

“A runaway wife, you say?” the Old Man said.

I flinched again. Bad.

“Thassright. In her husband’s Packard.”

At that, I had to clench the steering wheel to keep from clenching my fists.

“And she don’t even have a license,” the deputy went on. “Could be only a spat gone halfway across the country, but don’t matter. A woman on the road alone is suspect all by herself, being as no real lady would be doing such a thing. More likely she’s having herself a nice little tryst with another gent,” he said with a righteous little sniff. “If so, we still put stock in the Mann Act around here. It being, young fella,” the old deputy said, “about the crossing of state lines by any person of the male persuasion for immoral purposes with any person of the female persuasion.” He was so close I could smell the snuff stuffed under his lip. “Yeah, my money’s on her having a sugar daddy. They always do. Especially the peaches, and from the description, she’s a real peach, a fiery redhead floozy.”

“That doesn’t make her a floozy!” my fool mouth fired off on its own.

The deputy spit snuff juice over his shoulder and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So,” he said with a dirty little leer my way, “I guess you seen her.”

I dropped my eyes, which I knew was as stupid as my blurt.

“You could say we ran into her,” said the Old Man. “Right, boy?”

I shrugged, biting my tongue.

“She alone?” asked the deputy.

“Seemed so,” said the Old Man. “She was snapping pictures, saying she was with Life magazine.” He paused. “Right, boy?”

I shrugged again. Feeling the deputy’s eyes still on me, I feared what was coming next.

“What’s your name, son?” asked the deputy.

The Old Man cut in. “His name’s Woodrow Wilson Nickel, deputy.”

“That name’s got a familiar ring to it. Have we met, Mr. Woodrow Wilson Nickel?”

I shook my head, certain now that a Panhandle bulletin had been in all his bulletin reading.