West With Giraffes(52)

The logging truck driver laid on his horn.

The circus truck driver stomped on his brakes.

Bowles’s pistol jolted to the floor.

Wild Boy, God bless him, pulled his head in.

And the Packard granny slammed on her brakes. But it was too late for the circus truck to swerve behind her. The logging truck was already on us. Bowles’s driver did the only thing he could do. He swerved left, bouncing across weeds and dodging trees to land full on the railroad right-of-way. He hit the track so hard we could hear all four tires blow—pop pop pop pop—followed by the sound of the logging truck horn’s AAAAAAagngnggggggngg as the big truck roared past and gone.

Quaking down to the tip of my boots, I slowed the rig so much that the brown Packard passed us, the granny’s face white with fright, and I had no doubt mine looked the same. As the train track began mercifully veering away, I pulled myself together and geared the rig back up. The Old Man, though, was still gripping the shotgun and eyeing the road. I could barely look at him for fear of what I’d see in his face. I wanted to explain. There was a stray-dog truth behind it all, though, and how did I explain that? I barely was aware of it myself. All I could do was blurt out, “I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . .”

“Was that all of it?” he said, not looking my way.

“Yes,” I lied, unable, even then, to part with the gold piece still in my pocket.

We rode in silence for miles. Then we began seeing signs for Memphis. The Old Man, shotgun still in his lap, had yet to look my way, so I braced myself for what he’d do. I was sure I’d kissed the California ticket goodbye, but for all I knew he was planning to hand me over to a Memphis sheriff as well, and that I couldn’t let happen, still strapped with secrets of my own.

Up ahead, the MEMPHIS CITY LIMIT sign appeared.

I geared down.

“Keep driving,” the Old Man said. “Let’s get ahead of the sumbitches’ turnaround and stop this once and for all. If the darlings let us keep this pace, Little Rock’s only another four hours.”

I wasn’t quite getting it. “We’re not stopping?”

“Keep driving,” was his only reply.

That quick, I wasn’t leaving one way or the other at Memphis. Yet I still had the Old Man’s precious cargo in my lying blackguard hands. Why isn’t he yanking me from behind the wheel while he has the chance? I wondered. Was he planning some kind of Old Man justice up the road? My discombobulated young self was getting more so by the second, with four more hours ahead to ponder every awful way the day might have gone and how it would shape the days to come—including Bowles’s murderous claim at the mention of the Old Man’s name.

And if that wasn’t enough, as we passed a roadside fruit stand, out pulled a green Packard.

I glanced down at something flapping with the breeze in the Old Man’s floorboard. It was yesterday’s newspaper he’d bought in Chattanooga.

Tomorrow had turned into today.

It was my birthday.

I was eighteen.





. . . “Pops?”

Someone’s knocking on my room’s door again. This time, it jars me from these scribbles enough to make me all but jump out of my skin.

“Leave me be for the love of GOD!” I yell, patting my heart as the orderly marches right in like the rest.

Catching my breath, I pull myself off the Memphis road to take a good look at him. “You’re Black.”

“Nothing wrong with your eyes, Pops. I was told to come check on you, since you hadn’t eaten all day.”

“Who are you?” I say.

“Ah, Pops, you say that every night.”

I’m not anybody’s Pops and sure not his. But he reminds me of Seventh Son, so I don’t growl at him. “I stayed at a colored motel once,” I tell him. “It was nice.”

“O-kay,” he says.

“The giraffes liked it, too. Didn’t you, Girl?” I say toward the window.

He frowns. “You seeing an old girlfriend right now, Pops?”

“No, my friend Girl.”

“You mean your girlfriend.”

“No. Girl.” I point back over my shoulder at her.

“O-kay,” he says again, looking right through Girl like she isn’t there.

“She’s a giraffe,” I say. “You’re staring right at her. She’s in the window.”

“Pops—” He screws up his face like he doesn’t have good sense. “We’re on the fifth floor.”

“Yeah?” I pause. “Yeah.” I turn toward the window.

Girl is gone.

“Listen,” he is saying, “maybe you should take a break from whatever that is you’re doing. You’ve got to pace yourself at your age.”

My age? I look down at what I’d just wrote.

It’s my birthday.

Wait. No, it’s not.

It was.

My heart stutters again as I remember.

I’m over one hundred . . .

“If you promise not to attack the new TV, we’ll let you come down to the rec room if you want. Nothing’s worth making yourself croak, right? Pops?”

With a glance back at the empty window, I start writing again.

Faster.