West With Giraffes(62)

But Red sure did. “What’s going on over there?”

“Oh, they’re having themselves an all-day community sing,” the bow-tied attendant said. “Mostly the Jesus-jumpers. You know, the Holiness crowd. I wish it was the Baptists. Now, they can sing, and they don’t use them jangle-banging tambourines.”

Red’s face lit up.

Just then, it began to drizzle.

A lady near the tent’s opening warbled, “Rain!” and half the crowd came out to see.

“Praise Jesus!”

“What a blessing!”

One soprano thought it worth a few high shout-outs.

That’s when the lady near the opening saw us. “Brothers and sisters—look!”

As the rest of the crowd streamed out to gape at the giraffes, the singing died off. For a moment, the only sounds were the wind and the last little tinkles of a tambourine. Then the rain started coming down in a heavy pitter-patter.

“It’s a sign!” somebody hollered.

Two different groups broke into two different songs. Somebody started singing a favorite gospel song . . . “I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away . . .” while a second bunch burst into another standby . . . “Oh, come to the church in the wildwood . . .” The racket sounded like dueling tambourines on top of a mess of screeching cats. While the song leader broke a sweat trying to get the singers on the same song, the giraffes craned their necks toward the rumpus, their ears swiveling back and forth almost in rhythm with the tambourines.

As the crowd started holy dancing over to serenade the giraffes, mouths wide to catch either the rain or the ear of the Lord, the Old Man came out of the store across the highway. Arms full of supplies, he had a look on his face that said he was wondering what fresh hell was this.

“Want me to try putting the giraffes’ heads in?” I asked over the din as he hustled toward us.

“You think they’re going to let you with all that caterwaulin’?”

Jumping into the cab, we rolled up the windows as the singers crowded near. Red was snapping pictures in the middle of it all, and at the sight of her, the Old Man’s face went as dark as Black Sunday.

“Did you call the law on her?” I said.

He gave me a look like he’d forgotten all about it, like something else was on his mind.

That gave me pause. “You get a telegram?”

He motioned toward the road. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s go.”

I started the rig and, over the engine rumbling, the song leader waved his arms and hollered, “Page 351, brothers and sisters! Let’s send them off proper!”

At that, the singers and the tambourines went silent, the mood turning sweet and light and angel-chorus bright. In four-part harmony, they began to sing the most perfect hymn for that singular moment that could ever be. I’d heard it all my life. Yet only then did I hear the words’ meaning:

All creatures of our God and King

Lift up your voice and with us sing

Allelluia

Allelluia

Even I had to admit it sounded beautiful.

For a mile, the Old Man and I rode in blessed silence, the giraffes looking back like they’d acquired a taste for gospel singing, with the windshield wipers slapping time. In another mile, the green Packard was back in my sideview mirror, and I didn’t relax until she slowed and disappeared from view again as we passed through Comanche.

Five miles past, the spattering rain stopped and we rolled down the windows.

In another five, you couldn’t tell it had rained at all. The dust was kicking up again, the grit in the air bad enough to leave a mark on my skin, making me pull in my elbow from the window, so it was surely getting into the giraffes’ eyes and nose. We had to try putting their heads in, so we stopped at a wide crossroads. An old-timer with more wrinkles than skin was sitting at the stop sign in a tin lizzie pickup with more rust than paint.

“You got giraffes in that thang!” he guffawed. “You putting those big heads of theirs in because of the dust?”

I nodded, then got to it, and the giraffes, having had enough, let me.

The old-timer was still talking. “First sign of dust in quite a while. Might get worse fore it gets better,” he called to us as we pulled away. “But rain’s coming. You can feel it.”

We drove like that for a few miles slow and steady, the wind dying down a bit, which made the dust still lingering in the air all the more worrisome.

The giraffes began to cough.

Even now, the thought of it can still make my skin crawl. It was a sandpaper on stone kind of sound, half moan, half rattle, and all bad. By then, even the Old Man and I were coughing with the windows up.

Feeling the rising panic of a Dust Bowl boy who knew a cough was like an invitation to a funeral, I pulled over.

“What are you doing?” the Old Man said, coughing into his fist.

I grabbed up the jar of Vaseline I’d added to our supplies at the sound of my pa’s rain curse—it was my ma’s answer to the dust storm’s worst. Whether the giraffes would even let me try it, I hadn’t a clue, but I had to try. With the Old Man following, I climbed up, opened the top, and slopped every bit of the Vaseline in that jar all over those cantaloupe-sized nostrils, wishing I had more. As the Old Man and I stroked their necks and cooed giraffe-speak, their throats moved in ripples like small convulsions . . . until the sandpaper-scratch sound slowed. Less dust was getting in those big snout holes of theirs. Still, I feared it was too little, too late.