West With Giraffes(58)

She stiffened. “What?”

“You sped up. I saw you. He said you stole the Packard.”

At that, her face fell. “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it.”

“I borrow things all the time,” I kept on. “And what I’m doing is stealing them. Did you borrow the Packard guy’s money, too, for all this traveling?”

“Don’t be fresh, Stretch,” she snapped, and then paused again. “Did Mr. Jones hear this, too?”

“Sure he did.”

Her face fell lower, but it wasn’t low enough for me.

“Are you running away to have a tryst with some gent?” I went right on.

That made her jaw drop. “What kind of question is that?”

“The deputy said you might be violating some ‘man act’ about husbands’ wives running away with other men. Are you?”

“You know good and well I’m by myself!”

Then are you somebody’s wife? I longed to say next.

But she was already waving a hand like it could dismiss the whole thing. “Lionel will get his Packard back when I’m done. He’s the one who refused to come.”

My gut did a backflip. Mr. Big Reporter? But he’s old, pushing thirty if a day.

“I have to do this story whether he likes it or not,” she was saying. “I’m trying to make us all famous! Don’t you want that?”

“You’re already doing the story.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes I am . . . but I have to have the photographs . . . It’s Life magazine! Stretch, please let’s stop. You won’t understand,” she said, moving toward the monkeys.

I didn’t understand and I needed to. Maybe the guy was as much a lout as he looked. Maybe he needed another punch in the face. I had to know, so I followed her to the monkeys. As she raised her camera, I reached over and pushed it down. “Tell me what was so bad back home that you didn’t want to stay.”

What she said next she said so quiet I almost missed it. “Home’s not the place you’re from, Woody. Home’s the place you want to be.”

I waited for her to go on. Instead, staring at the whooping, screeching caged monkeys, she said, “Do you ever think about the fact they’ll never be free again?”

“The monkeys?”

“All of them,” she said. “Even the giraffes.”

Still feeling full contrary, I said the most contrary thing I could think of. “Well, maybe they like it fine. They don’t ever miss a meal. Or have lions nipping at their heels. Or dust blizzards killing off everything they ever knew. Some of those folks right outside would probably trade places with them on the promise of such alone.”

She screwed up her face. “That’s not what I mean . . . I mean what if you had to live the rest of your life not spreading your wings?”

I was pretty sure we weren’t talking about monkeys or giraffes anymore, but didn’t care. “Giraffes don’t have wings.”

Knowing she wasn’t going to charm me this time, she sighed. “We still have a deal, don’t we?” She held out her free hand. She wanted to shake again.

I didn’t.

“Woody, please.”

I slowly put out my hand, and she moved right past to hug me, head against my chest, her camera digging into my still-hurting-like-hell rib. Then she looked up and gave me that sad, tight-lipped smile of hers. Suddenly I wanted to kiss her like I’d been imagining ever since the depot, despite all my pent-up fury—and it made my bewildered heart hurt so bad I wished I’d never laid eyes on her. So when she aimed that camera my way and clicked, its flash blinding me all over again, I welcomed it. I was blinded by her the first time I saw her, I’d been blind the whole time I’d known her, and I was blinded by her the very last time I was ever going to see her. It was almost a relief.

“You know, I better keep on seeing you down the road. We’re more than halfway, and, oh, the pictures, Woody. They’re incredible.”

I felt a kiss on my cheek and she was gone.

Blinking myself back to sight, I just stood there until I heard the sound of the freight train again, and I set my mind to catch it. Marching to the exit, I pushed my way through as the park’s streetlights came on, and bumped square into a beat cop giving the bum’s rush to a hobo.

“Sorry, sir,” said the cop—to me—and went right back to yanking the collar of the smiling hobo, who kept trying to give him a card.

Set back on my bootheels, I paused to get my balance. As the last of the exiting visitors streamed past, I was bombarded by the sights and sounds of the Hooverville straight ahead—the clamoring noise, the trash-can fires, the shelters of cardboard and huddles of tar paper. It was all I could hear and all I could see.

Above the racket, though, I thought I heard the echo of a giraffe wail. I knew that couldn’t be. The Hooverville din was far too loud to have heard any such thing.

I shook it off.

Then I heard it again.

Stepping back through the zoo entrance, past the monkeys, I inched toward the rig, sure I’d only imagined it.

As I turned back toward the exit, though, I felt a soft crunch under my boots. I seemed to be standing on what looked like oats . . . There was a trail of it coming from the direction of the buffalo pen, like something had snitched feed from a trough and scurried past. The giraffes were stomping. Looking up, I saw something crouching in the truck’s shadows. Wishing for the shotgun, I crept closer, readying for anything with claws.