West With Giraffes(43)
“He’s named after a president. Maybe that’s it,” the Old Man cut in again. “Deputy, he’s been driving us for days and he’s doing a fine job.”
“Still. Maybe I should take a look at his license while I’m here. Let’s see it, son.”
At that very moment, though, what did I see coming up the road but a green Packard—and behind the wheel was a flash of red curls. I tried hard not to look. God knows I tried. But look I did. And when I did, so did the deputy.
“What the . . . Was that the floozy?” The paunchy old deputy whirled around so fast he all but fell on his fanny as the Packard sped up and vanished around the bend. “Stay here! Don’t y’all move!” he croaked back at us, scrambling to his cruiser and peeling out after Red.
“Like piss we are,” the Old Man said. “Let’s go.” As I hustled us onto the road, the Old Man kept giving me his hollow-eyed stare. “Is there something you need to tell me about this girlie?”
I shook my head a bit too quick and a bit too hard.
While I didn’t know a thing about Red when it came right down to it, I was acting like I was guilty of knowing something, but the something I knew was more about me. I wouldn’t have cared if she’d robbed a bank, since I wasn’t but two steps from doing something like that myself. I wouldn’t have cared if she was a runaway, because I might have been one myself if Ma and Pa hadn’t died first. But a wife? That I cared about. Even more, God help me, than the dying heart part. Yet I heard myself say, “You going to turn her in if she shows up again?”
“I’ve had many a pretty woman turn my head, so I know what you’re feeling,” he answered. “We’ve got enough troubles, boy, so yeah. I will. If the girlie’s not lying about herself, she’ll be fine. And if she is, we’ll be finer without—” But the Old Man never finished the thought, erupting with one of his long-string cusses loud enough to make me jump right out of my skin. He was gaping past me. The highway was passing the railyards, and in the field between the highway and the tracks was the circus, packing up after its Chattanooga show. There’d be no hiding the giraffes this time. Not thirty yards from us, two men were hanging the new sign on the red caboose: MUSCLE SHOALS TONIGHT!
While the Old Man saw only the circus, I couldn’t take my eyes off the railyard. It was where I’d first jumped a freight after my ma’s Mason jar money played out on my way to Cuz. Wandering around that station scrounging food and trying to figure out what to do, I’d bumped into railriders about my age. Back then, thousands and thousands of them were hopping freights right along with the hoboes and tramps. I can still hear one of them talking it up: It’s freedom, pally! Plows and cows are for suckers! So I’d joined up with them, and that’s exactly what it felt like to my farmboy self. Freedom. We were now so close to the circus, though, try as I might I couldn’t ignore the vile racket—animals roaring, creatures caterwauling, men bellowing, whips snapping.
“Speed up!” the Old Man yelled.
As I did, though, the paunchy deputy appeared heading back our way, motioning us to pull over.
As I rolled us onto the shoulder, I thought the Old Man was going to bust. We were straight across from the gut-wrenching din, the elephant cattle cars not a stone’s throw away.
Steering the cruiser up close, the deputy hollered, “Did you see her? Did the floozy double back?”
We shook our heads.
“Stay put this time! Don’t move a lick!” Spinning the cruiser around, off he went again.
So this time we stayed, getting more and more miserable as the bellowing, wailing, and whip-snapping got louder and harder and rougher—until the Old Man came unglued. “Look how those sumbitches are treating their elephants!” he yelled.
I didn’t want to look. God knows I didn’t want to. But I did, and then I couldn’t look away. The elephants, trumpeting loud and wretched, were being prodded onto the cattle car by workers with pointed poles.
“You know what circus people call those magnificent creatures? They call them rubber cows!” the Old Man sputtered. “See those poles they keep poking their ‘rubber cows’ with? They’re called bullhooks with three-inch barbed spikes! There are places on an elephant you can stick that spike to make them feel bad-bad pain, and in cheap outfits like this one, there are always measly little men who get sick pleasure out of finding those places.” Then his voice dropped low, deadly. “To the point you wish elephants were like lions, ripping and reaping . . . to the point it can tear at your heart when they don’t . . . to the point that anybody with a heart can only watch a measly little man using a hook with pleasure until it’s a matter of time before anybody with a heart is going to give him a taste of that bullhook in his own measly, miserable hide.” Before I had a chance to think about what I’d just heard, he said, “Nossir, that right there is the kind of shady outfit that might decide to acquire a couple of giraffes the easy way. To hell with that deputy—get us outa here!”
And it dawned on my thickheaded self how the Old Man knew all this. He’d worked for a circus, maybe even run off to join one as a kid. As I sped us out of the railyard, I was so sure of it I almost asked. He was still glaring at the elephants, thinking thoughts I didn’t want to hear, full of circus things I didn’t want to know, and I was already feeling more than I could stand over nightmares and dying hearts and runaway wives. So much so that when I spied a handful of tramps and railriders running to hop a slow-rolling freight train, I was wishing I was hopping it, too, being anywhere but here.