West With Giraffes(5)
At the Ninth Avenue elevated, a man riding with the flatbed jumped from the truck, pole in hand, brushed back a sizzling live wire, and measured the clearance.
“Eighth of an inch,” he yelled back. The flatbed slipped slowly under.
The rig moved on to the next one a few blocks down. Again the pole man jumped out. “Fourth of an inch,” he called back.
Another couple of blocks—
“Half!”
On we went, this way and that, edging up through the city, minutes turning into hours. The East River was still flooding the nearby streets, and a factory was ablaze in between, so the cop kept us west. We skimmed Central Park, dozens of woebegone folks and wide-eyed ragamuffins gaping at the passing giraffes from under soaked boards and walkways as if watching a dream. On we still went, until the George Washington Bridge was straight ahead. The cop was leading us to New Jersey. I panicked. I couldn’t run over a bridge.
Across the street, I saw a joe hop off a motorcycle outside a storefront and rush inside, pointing back at the giraffes, the machine sliding to the puddled pavement like it was a two-bit bicycle. It had barely hit the ground before I found my legs wrapped around it. With one eye on that motorcycle cop, I pumped that electric horse twice, skidded left then right like some bucking bronco—and held on.
By the time I caught up with the giraffes on the bridge, half a dozen reporter cars appeared out of nowhere, sandwiching in around me, their camera guys hanging out the windows, flashbulbs flashing against the gloomy skies.
On the other side, two New Jersey cycle cops took up the escort, dodging the storm’s flotsam and jetsam, until the two big rigs bumped over a track by a deserted depot and stopped in front of a gated sign: US QUARANTINE. Behind the gate were gabled tin-roofed brick barns spread out as far as the eye could see. We were at the federal quarantine station, where animals shipped into the country were inspected, from cows and horses to camels and oxen, and now, giraffes.
As the guard waved the two big trucks through, the reporters swarmed the gate. I stopped by a massive uprooted oak near the road and had barely turned off the cycle before they’d all rushed back to their cars, except for a fancy green Packard bumping to a stop behind me. A reporter in suit and tie with a fedora cocked just right got out of the driver’s side and headed for the guard hut.
“Wait here,” he called up to his camera guy, who was crawling up on the Packard’s hood. And the sight seared itself whole and perfect in my eyes, it’s sparkling so fresh even now in my old man’s memory—because the camera guy was a camera gal.
Much younger than the duded-up reporter, she had red curls all over her head, a fiery halo of raging waves she surely battled into submission every morning, and she was wearing trousers—the first woman I’d ever seen doing so in real life. There she stood, snapping pictures on the Packard’s hood in her white girly shirt, two-tone shoes, and two-legged trousers. And there I stood, feeling like I’d been hurricane-walloped again. If it wasn’t love at first sight, it was sure something painfully akin to it.
“Oh, hello, Stretch. Are you here for the giraffes, too?” Red said, looking down at me with eyes that about knocked me out on their own. They were hazel and I must have moved closer in their sway. Because as she snapped a picture, she popped a flashbulb bright enough to blind a blind man—and me.
“Lionel! Come quick!” I heard her yell.
“Hey! Get away from her!” the reporter yelled, shoving me as I blinked back to sight. Stumbling, I scrambled away.
“What’d you do that for!” I heard her say as I ducked behind the downed oak. “I only thought you’d want to talk to him for the story, Mr. Big Reporter!”
“For God’s sake, Augie, that kid’s nothing but a tramping punk who’d slit your throat for chump change. Don’t be naive—he was looking at you,” the reporter said back. “Let’s go. The guard said the giraffes are quarantined for twelve days. I’ve got all I need, and you’ve got time to get all you need without entertaining vagrants.”
A minute later, they were gone. The cops were gone. The giraffes were gone. And I was miles from anywhere I knew, with night coming on, clueless for what to do next.
I stowed the cycle behind the toppled oak, and I crouched down to watch and wait near a cow carcass. Just as I’d had all I could take of the skeeters feasting on my hide, the gray panel zoo truck jolted to a stop at the gate. As the guard waved the stubby zoo doc through, I started worrying whether the lame giraffe had stayed tall. I decided to see for myself.
Spying where a raccoon had burrowed under the fence, I squeezed under. Mud caked down my backside, I hustled toward the biggest, tallest barn as the zoo truck, the empty harbor flatbed, and some joes in khaki work-duds were leaving. I peeked inside. The barn was full of shadows, its walls lined with haystacks. On the left was a cot, in the middle was the rig, and on the right was a sky-high wire pen holding both giraffes. The splinted girl giraffe had stayed tall. Finally out of their crates, they were facing each other, necks touching, scooched so close you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Like they couldn’t much believe they were alive and were circling the wagons to keep it that way.
The Old Man—Mr. Riley Jones, according to the telegram—was nowhere to be seen, but the driver had grabbed a big juicy apple from the truck’s cab and was leaning against the rig eating it. I watched him chomp it down to nothing, then pitch the core into the hay, and I marked the spot. I hadn’t eaten since before the hurricane, so even an apple core covered with goober spit could soon start looking good. During the Hard Times, being hungry was a basic state of being, least for most folks I knew. After the dust killed off the livestock, Dust Bowlers were eating prairie dogs and rattlesnakes and making soup from tumbleweeds. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, that’s all life is—you’re nothing but a feral thing chasing your hunger every minute of the day.