West With Giraffes(7)

And I wasn’t about to drop that produce.

To my left, waist high, was one of the contraption rig’s trapdoors. Juggling the goober’s food, I gave it a yank and, to my young shock, it opened. So I dove inside, landing in a mound of peat moss, produce falling everywhere. With no time to shut the trapdoor behind me, I waited to be yanked out by my ears, my heart pumping wild.

But nothing happened. Hearing the Old Man’s sweet giraffe-cooing, I eased the trapdoor shut. In a moment, his boots shuffled past again, his snores started back up, and my heart slowed. Wolfing down all the produce I could find, I leaned my bunged-up bones back into the padding to rest a minute before trying to sneak out again. Instead my eyes closed on their own—there was no fighting it—that day of days had its way.

And as I fell into the sleep of the dead, I was sure I was already dreaming because I thought I heard the giraffes humming to each other. It was a low, purring, rumbling thhhhhhrummmm . . . and it was as soothing as the Old Man’s giraffe-speak.





. . . “Morning, sunshine! Time for breakfast.”

Someone’s busting through the door behind me and it jolts me from these scribbles so hard my heart jumps.

Rubbing my chest, I start to yell GO AWAY at the orderly when out of the corner of my eye I see Wild Girl—her long neck has reached in my fifth-floor window and she’s blowing a snuffling spitball my way. Gaping at the impossible wonder of her, I feel the same clutch around my heart on first spying her and Boy down the dock, and I’m glad to still be alive to feel it again.

“I heard you were a bad boy last night. Punching the TV? My goodness!” the orderly is saying, standing there in his starchy whites. “And now you’re late for breakfast.” It’s an orderly I do not like. He’s greasy-haired like Earl the driver and talks to me like I’m simple, his voice as irritating as crotch itch. He’s only inches from Wild Girl and I worry he’ll spook her.

“Not going,” I say quick.

He grabs my wheelchair handles. “Sure you are. C’mon.”

I grab the desk. “I can’t go, I’m too—” busy, I try to say, but my heart stutters mmmphgh and I almost drop my pencil.

Greasy steps back. “OK, OK.”

Clutching the blessed wooden thing, I glance at Wild Girl, who is shooting me the stink eye. “Don’t give me that look,” I wheeze. “I’m not stopping, I swear. I’m going to tell her the whole thing,” I say, writing this down. “See, Girl?”

“What girl?” Greasy says as I scribble. “Who you talking to, sunshine?”

Another orderly pokes his nose in from the hall. “That shriveled-up beanpole busted the TV?” he whispers to Greasy, thinking I can’t hear.

“Yeah, and now he’s talking to a dead girl,” whispers Greasy.

“You gonna report it?” whispers Hall Voice.

“Nah. We’d be reporting them all,” whispers Greasy.

“Just shoot me if I get that old,” Hall Voice goes on. “I tell you one thing, you don’t want him so worked up he checks out on your shift. It’s gross. One did it to me yesterday. Hey, what’s he doing now? He’s writing like a fool on fire over there . . . wait, he’s not writing down what I just said, is he?”

“You bet I am!” I say, scribbling faster.

“Now, now, sunshine,” croons Greasy, “we’re leaving, OK?”

“And shut the door!” I yell. “I’m stuck in the rig and we’ve got to hit the road!”





2

In Athenia

Hush-a-bye Don’t you cry Go to sleep, little baby.

Brown-apple eyes stare . . . the rifle fires . . .

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

The next morning, angry voices jerked me out of the nightmare dogging me every time I fell asleep since leaving home.

“Slow down on the apples and sweet onions, Earl!”

“But I swear I ain’t et more’n my share, Mr. Jones!”

“Who else’s been eating them? The giraffes?”

I sat up dazed and bug-eyed, until I remembered where I was and why. Light was streaming in the trap window above me. I’d slept the whole night. Groaning, I fell back into the peat moss padding. Unless I made a run for it, my sorry hide was stuck inside the rig’s traveling giraffe crate for the whole day.

There were worse places, though, for a Dust Bowl boy to be stuck. It was dry and so was I for the first time in two days. So, shaking the peat moss out of my pants, I took my first good look around. The contraption was less a big crate than a boxcar suite, a fancy Pullman car for giraffes, with a wide slit between the sides for the giraffes to see each other. Railriders would never leave a boxcar so nice. The crate’s walls were so padded with plump burlap and the floors piled so high with moss that I knew I’d be doing worse in any hurricane shelter, or in the back of Cuz’s boathouse—hell, even in my shack of a farmhouse back home, what with the constant wind blowing through the slats to drive even a saint insane.

Climbing up on the two-by-four bracing the crate’s wall, I cracked open one of the trap windows enough to see the giraffe pen. The giraffes were standing with their necks touching again. Earl had schlupped over with full water buckets, and while Wild Boy was as mellow as milk, Wild Girl seemed to have a burr up her butt enough for both of them. Because, to my delight, when he stepped in the pen to set down the buckets, she charged him. He scrambled out so fast he landed flat on his back. Then, grumbling at Earl, the Old Man entered the pen and inched around Girl’s back leg to check the bandaged splint. The zoo doc had wrapped it good, maybe too good, because Girl’s long neck started swaying, left, right, left, right, and when the Old Man touched the splint, she raised that hurt back leg and kicked sideways—