West With Giraffes(49)

Sidling near, the Old Man dropped Big Papa’s gunnysack at my feet. “Give ’em to her!” he whispered. As I was giving her the first onion from the sack, I heard a whap behind me. The Old Man had let down the rig’s side, exposing Boy to the open air, and was pulling out a long, wide plank from below the rig that I didn’t even know was there, placing it like a bridge into the crate for her tall spindly legs.

He motioned me his way.

I began taking tiny steps backward, sack in hand, stuffing an onion in my pocket every few steps, and waiting for Girl to come get it. She stepped slow. But she stepped. Each time she came near, I’d give her the onion, her tongue pulling it past her lips and down that throat, while I stuffed a new one in my pocket.

We did it over and over, until we were at the rig.

I stepped up on the plank, the panel, and into the traveling crate.

There Girl stopped.

Boy began snuffling and stomping his hooves in the peat moss. Yet Girl kept swaying her neck at me like she was weighing the value of the next onion’s taste upside where she’d have to go to get it.

The onion sack was almost empty. I stepped toward her from her boxcar suite, waving the onion sack her way, then stepped back into the crate.

And she decided.

One leg, two, then three. Her bandaged leg struggled to find the last bit of plank. I could hardly watch. Then she was up on the panel, the whole of her standing on it at an angle . . . the next second would have her either going forward or back faster to the ground than anybody could stop.

I threw the rest of the onions into the peat moss and scrambled up to sit on the cross plank by Boy, one last onion in my hand.

She bent her neck forward, thrusting her long tongue into the pile, and came up with one dropped onion after another. Then her long neck rose up, up, following the scent of the last onion in my hand, until she had stepped all four legs into the peat moss.

Wild Girl was in.

Faster than seemed Old-Man possible, he had that side panel upright and clamped all by himself, dropping to the running board to catch his breath. I wanted bad to join him, but I couldn’t move. Girl had her massive head stretched across my legs. The moment the side panel was up and latched, she’d reached past me to sniff at Boy. Then, leaning her quivering body against the crate, she dropped her heavy snout into my lap and shut her eyes, and from her nostrils came the thundering whoosh of a sigh as big as Wild Girl herself. I put my hand on her shuddering head and from somewhere deep below my clamped-down insides burst a mighty fount of forgotten emotion. It was my boy-in-knickers feeling I’d allowed myself to feel—for a moment—the night after the mountains. Now, though, with Girl’s sweet head in my lap, it was rushing through every last inch of me, my heart swelling full and warm and pure and kind in a way I’d clean forgotten it could. I was lost in it, its surging tenderheartedness taking my breath clean away.

Girl opened her eyes, looking far too much like my mare’s brown-apple eyes. As the tender feeling turned into my nightmare secret’s purest pain, I lifted the lasso from around her neck and flung it deep into the cornstalks.

It took us a while to get on the road after that. Still parked in the middle of the cornfield, the rig looked no worse for wear, which was more than I could say for the rest of us. I gazed back toward the trailer camp for Red. Once again, though, she’d vanished. So I stood there still dressed only in my skivvies and boots, watching the Old Man work through the trapdoor applying all the sulfa we had left to Girl’s wound, which was now not only bloody but also covered with pus. Infection had set in. She was so worn out, she leaned against the crate and let him. He rewrapped the splint the best he could. As we held our breath, she wobbled a second and stood straight again on all four legs.

Closing the trapdoor, the Old Man sank onto the truck’s running board, only then raising a hand to check his own wound. The gash on his head had stopped bleeding but still looked as angry as the Old Man felt about it being there. Watching, I felt the full weight of Mr. Percival T. Bowles on my chest, the gold piece in my pocket burning like sin, because I hadn’t warned him. If I didn’t tell him now, I’d keep feeling like a Panhandle Judas. But what good will telling him do? He’ll leave me on the side of the road right here before Memphis, I reminded myself.

I had to say something, so I said, “Can I help clean that up?”

He didn’t answer. He looked at his gnarly hand’s fingers that didn’t quite bend and cussed them good, then fingering his gashed temple, he cussed it good, too. Whatever had happened, he wasn’t in the mood to share.

Shifting from one boot to the other, I tried again. “Girl’s going to be OK, isn’t she?”

That got him on his feet. “We’re lucky we don’t have a dead giraffe to be burying out in this gotdam cornfield. And we better hope our luck holds until we can get more sulfa, or we still might be doing it.”

I braced for what was surely coming next, a calling of the law and all the questions that’d go with that. Instead the Old Man reloaded both guns, put them back on the rack, and said, “If anybody asks, boy, I shot that rifle. You could have killed a man, and I wouldn’t wish that on you.”

I frowned, puzzled at what seemed like a questioning of my shooting skills. “I winged him,” I said. “If I’d aimed to kill him, he’d be dead.”

The Old Man’s bushy eyebrows popped high, like he didn’t know quite what to make of what I’d said. For a moment he gave me his hollow-eyed stare again, but with a flicker behind it I couldn’t quite name. “Go put your shirt and pants on,” he finally said. “Fast as you can. We got to go.”