West With Giraffes(64)
By late afternoon, the birds had been with us so long they seemed like passengers hitching a ride on our journey.
Until, without a bit of warning, a bend in the road took them away.
They were gone.
The land emptied back to ugly and barren so fast, I all but got the bends. Forced to once again stare at nothing but dead Okie-land, my mood flipped into a flat-out brood that even glimpses of the giraffes couldn’t fix. Glancing at the Old Man, who was himself looking way too brooding, all I could think about were those passenger pigeons from the Old Man’s Hawkeye story with flocks so huge they’d black out the sky—until they were blasted clean off the face of the earth. Extinction was a word nobody much used back then. As a boy who barely escaped that dead prairie landscape alive, though, I pondered it while we rode on, thinking about all the frontier folks with their blunderbusses who wondered where the pigeons went—like the Okie pas and mas with their plows who wondered where the soil went.
In the years to come, as the War took over the world and the prospect of going extinct ourselves, by our own hands, became a thing we were forced to ponder, I’d find myself thinking back to that moment of the vanishing murmur, feeling a soul-weary loss beyond explaining. That day, though, it was only an odd traveling melancholy without a name, a feeling as drizzly as the rain still spitting at us from above.
In that way, we drove until we were almost out of Oklahoma. The Old Man broke the silence by announcing we’d stop for the night at the next auto court that had the tiniest bit of trees.
About an hour from the Texas state line we spied the Wigwam Trading Post Auto Court & Campsite with stucco teepee-shaped rooms set apart like an Indian village. The nice line of tall planted trees along the back fence sold it to the Old Man, though, who was surely the last person on earth who’d ever spend the night in a plaster room shaped like a teepee. But for the giraffes, that’s exactly what we were about to do.
At the sight of us, the owner and his wife came scooting out of the office and trading post, the owner whooping with delight and the wife waving souvenir paper Indian headdresses—two for us, two for the giraffes—which the Old Man declined for us all. Soon, the rig was settled back by the trees. Staying there that night with us were only a couple of well-scrubbed traveling families in nice automobiles whose kids thought they’d hit the jackpot with teepees and giraffes. Plus, in the campsite area beyond where we parked, there was one big Okie family who’d pitched a tent, their belongings strapped down over their old Model T.
As dusk fell, the Old Man and I tended to the giraffes. We checked Boy and Girl for any lingering giraffe ear, nose, and throat problems and got covered with new giraffe spit for the trouble. Girl was so tired out that she barely snuffled when the Old Man checked her bandage. So, to lift the giraffes’ spirits, we let the new crop of giraffe admirers from around the teepee village come close, allowing Girl and Boy to have fun leaning to lick on the kids’ faces and lop off the men’s hats. Even the Okie family couldn’t resist. First came the ma with a baby in her arms, and next the granny who had her menfolk unload her rocking chair and haul it over for her to sit and watch. The Old Man, almost smiling, even let the children feed the giraffes some onions.
As all the parents corralled their children and their granny either inside their plaster teepees or back to their campsite, a green Packard pulled up a few wigwams down, sending the Old Man’s good mood south. I thought I was finally going to hear the tirade percolating since Chattanooga. Instead he turned to me and said, “We need to talk about the Boss Lady’s last telegram. Right now, though, I got to wire a reply.” Then he headed back toward the office.
The sky had cleared a bit, the dust gone, the clouds high and patchy, racing past the stars. With a trading post handy, the Old Man cooked us a hot meal of beans and cornbread over a firepit not far from the giraffes. Despite myself, considering the ups and downs of that Oklahoma day, I felt untroubled, the way clean air and a full stomach can make you forget about all your problems for a while. The Old Man must have felt the same, since whatever he wanted to talk about didn’t come up. That was fine by me. Dousing the firepit, he headed to our wigwam with his usual promise to relieve me. So I climbed up top to straddle the cross plank between Girl and Boy for the pleasure of their company as they settled into their cud chewing. The only light was the reflection from the Okie family’s campfire across the way, and it made everything all but glow.
That is, until I heard Red below.
“Woody?” she said, stifling a cough. “May I come up?”
Untroubled no more, I wanted to say no. Instead I nodded, if prickly. Hitching up those trousers, she climbed up to my perch and straddled the cross plank, facing me. I eased back, away from her, like I’d done the night after the mountains. She noticed. Girl greeted her and then returned to her cud chewing, but Boy snuffled up close.
Red reached out to stroke his jaw, then had to stifle another cough. “I cannot get the dust out of my nose,” she mumbled. In the scant light from the Okie campfire, she looked at me and my “prairie face” the same way she did at Big Papa’s. “Tell me your story, Woody,” she tried. “Please. I truly want to hear it.”
I didn’t say a word and she knew full well why.
“OK,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Ask me anything. I promise I’ll answer.”
So I set my jaw and said, “Are you married?”