West With Giraffes(66)

She pulled back with the strangest look I’d ever seen.

Then she threw up.





12

Across the Texas Panhandle

Hush-a-bye / Don’t you cry.

“It’s time I made a man outa you!”

“Woody Nickel, tell me what happened out there and tell me now!”

“Li’l one, who you talking to?”

Brown-apple eyes stare.

Rushing waters roar.

. . . As the air fills with bellowing, moaning, giraffe-terror caterwauls, growing louder and LOUDER and . . .

A thunderclap jerked me straight up in my wigwam’s bed, hands over my ears, a gully-washing downpour splashing in the window. Heart pounding, I slammed the window shut, cussing Aunt Beulah, hurricane-whops, guilty Dust Bowl nightmares—and whatever the hell else might be causing my mixed-up dreaming.

The door flung wide and in stomped the Old Man. Sopping all over the floor, he kept the thunder going inside the stucco teepee until he’d gotten himself into dry skivvies and pants. As quick as the rain had started, it stopped, and the Old Man stepped back outside to eye the sky.

“Looks like it’s over,” he grumped. “The sky’s clearing west.”

Dawn was breaking, so I pulled on my boots and pants and followed. I wasn’t looking at the sky, though. I was gazing three wigwams down.

The night before, after Red threw up, she’d dropped to the ground before I could think to say a thing, mumbling “I’m sorry” and rushing away. I’d called after her with the only words of comfort I could think of. “It’s OK! The giraffes’ll eat it.” Upon hearing that fool thing fly out of my mouth, I went full speechless, then she was gone, swallowed up by the dark.

But now I was hearing the same upchuck sound. There was the green Packard, parked three wigwams down.

The Old Man looked where I was looking. “Is that her spewing?”

I nodded.

He marched straight over and banged on the wigwam door nearest the Packard, already talking. “Girlie, don’t come near us if you’ve got the heaves. We don’t have time to be sick.”

The door swung wide and there stood a bald man with two sleepy towheaded boys peering out from behind him.

The Old Man scowled at them. “Who are you? Where’s the girlie?”

A mousy woman appeared behind the boys.

“What did you call my wife!” the bald man snapped.

Red’s head popped up from the other side of the Packard. Pushing her curls out of her face, she wiped at her lips . . . and, staring at those lips, I was back on top of the rig in the middle of our giraffe-surrounded kiss.

Then Red’s head disappeared again.

To the sound of another heave, the wigwam door slammed shut, and the Old Man and I headed toward the other side of the Packard where Red was once again wiping her mouth, looking miserable. She had the same man’s trench coat from Big Papa’s draped around her, like she’d been sleeping in it, and the Packard’s back door was open. One peek inside made it clear where she’d slept. Plus, being a poor farmboy who rarely changed flour-sack drawers much less my clothes, I hadn’t noticed until that very moment she’d been wearing the same clothes this whole trip—the same trousers, the same white shirt, the same everything, down to her scuffed two-tone shoes—all of it now looking rumpled and dingy in the daylight. I was beginning to understand a few things I’d been too thick to grasp before.

“I must have eaten something spoiled back down the road,” she muttered, cleaning puke from her curls. The Old Man cocked his head, staring at her left hand. She was wearing a thin gold band, which I hadn’t noticed, either.

“You better hope so,” the Old Man was saying. “Otherwise, it sounds like you’re in the family way.”

Red looked at him all but cross-eyed. “That’s not possible, I assure you.”

“Why not?” the Old Man said, nodding at her ring. “You’re married, aren’t ya?”

Grabbing a towel from inside the car to wipe her face, she snapped, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Mr. Jo—”

He cut her off. “Or maybe you’re the Virgin Mary?”

She lowered the towel to gape at him. “What did you say?”

“Or you could be a floozy,” he went on.

She was halfway to slapping him, and, heat rising up my neck, I suddenly wanted to punch him myself.

“You know what I mean,” he said next, “maybe you got a fella along the way?”

He was trying to get a rise out of her, but I didn’t know that, my brain still stuck on our kiss. I rocked back and forth on my bootheels, clenching and unclenching my fists. “Now, wait a—”

But the Old Man cut me off, too. “Shut up, boy.”

“What kind of girl do you take me for!” Red said.

“You tell me,” the Old Man said back. “Everybody knows a lady doesn’t travel alone. So I guess you’re no lady.”

She gasped. “You’ve got a lot of nerve!”

Burning with righteous fury, I was barely resisting the urge to punch him. “Now—wait just a—”

“I said shut up, boy!” He leaned into Red’s face. “Yeah, only a floozy would be on the road by herself.”