West With Giraffes(71)

The Old Man was gazing down the dirt path to the left—where the carved NICKEL sign was pointing. Not a hundred yards along the ditch was my pa’s dead dirt farm. You could see it all from the church. There was the leaning, ramshackle barn. There was Pa’s broken-down Model T truck. But the Old Man wasn’t looking at either of them. He was squinting at the charred stone fireplace standing like a tombstone over little more than a piece of scorched earth.

He looked back at me, again waiting for me to explain. I knew there was nothing I could tell him to keep the rest of the questions from coming, so I couldn’t make myself say a thing.

With a last look back my way, the Old Man marched through the graveyard and crossed the ditch, heading straight for it all. There was nothing left for me to do but follow, head down, knowing the way by heart. By the time we passed the barn, I was so woozy I could barely walk. As the buzz of flies grew loud, I watched the Old Man stare down at the rifle and pistol rusting in the dirt, then move to the fireplace and the ash heap and the singed metal bedframe and the charred stove until there was nothing left to see.

Except the shallow grave beyond. The shallow, dug-up grave full of picked-clean broken bones.

I felt the ground start to spin. The buzzards and coyotes found her anyway.

The Old Man whirled around. “Tell me those are animal bones.”

I was out of time.

“BOY,” he had to yell, “what happened here?”

I could refuse to tell him. But he would ditch me for sure, wondering who he and the giraffes had been spending their days with. I wouldn’t be able to blame him a bit, since I didn’t know my own self.

So I was down to my only choice, and then all the choices would be his. He’d either believe the story I told or he wouldn’t. He’d either let me keep on to California or he’d leave me in the place I’d run from like my life depended on it, because I was sure it did. As I opened my mouth to answer, I looked behind me to drink in Boy and Girl.

That’s when I saw the water.

I couldn’t quite take it in. I’d spent my entire life not seeing water in that ditch. It was like a mirage, like I’d conjured it by saying it couldn’t be. Yet there it was . . . a trickle. And then, faster than possible, more. Much more. The ditch was a wash, filling up with water from nowhere. The land with a clock of its own didn’t care a whit about the entire life experience of a Dust Bowl boy. Stranded, invisible thunderstorms were gully-washing Panhandle dirt that couldn’t hold squat. The trooper had been right.

A flash flood was on its way.

By then, the Old Man was standing slack-jawed beside me. We looked at each other and at the trickle that had already turned into a stream, snaking back along the ditch toward the church’s graveyard oak and the giraffes peacefully nibbling at its leaves.

No flash flood can get as high as a giraffe, I told myself, trying to keep calm.

“What’s happening!” Red was standing in the dirt path hollering our way. “Where’s the water coming from? Where are the storm drains?”

“Where do you think you are, girlie, New York City?” the Old Man hollered back. “This is the gotdam High Plains edge of the gotdam screwy desert! There’s not even supposed to be water much less a gotdam storm drain!” I watched him gesturing, throwing his hands this way and that, as if he could scare the whole absurd danger away with his own thundering.

Then I was suddenly in motion.

The thing about finding yourself in the impossible-turning-possible right under your feet, you aren’t quite in control of all your faculties. I recall heading back toward the rig and the graveyard. I recall splashing through the ditch water, already ankle-deep, hearing the Old Man behind me. I recall upping my pace, gazing at the giraffes still nibbling at the leaves above graveyard crosses, as tall as tall could be. I recall yelling at Red to back the Packard down the paved road to where it veered away from the ditch—aiming to do the same for the rig and the giraffes as fast as I could.

But I have no memory of the rest of the way there. I found myself already behind the wheel, grinding the starter, stomping the clutch, and gunning it, doing the worst thing I could do. I was flooding the engine, panicking like only a Panhandle flatlander would in a flood. Because there was so much at stake in this wretched place I’d brought these towering creatures of God’s pure Eden. Not the Old Man. Me. I was the reason we were here—I had driven the hurricane giraffes from a killer ocean straight into a desert flood, and not even floating giraffe nightmares had woke me up enough to stop me.

I ground the starter this side of ruin before I could make myself stop. The water was rising in the ditch, lapping at the graveyard’s edge. Smelling the danger, the giraffes had started to stomp and shuffle. The rig was wobbling. Drown in two feet of water, that’s what the trooper had said. My common sense told me that couldn’t happen. Maybe it could to stupid eighteen-year-olds, but not to twelve-foot-tall giraffes. As I tumbled out of the cab to stare up at the giraffes, a hand clamped on to my arm and whirled me around.

“Are you hearing me!” It was the Old Man, his face flushed with new fear. “That’s not pavement,” he said, pointing down to the hardpan under the left-side tires. “The rig’s top-heavy! The water’s not the danger—it’s the surge. If rushing water jumps the wash and that hardpan goes soft and the giraffes panic—the rig could . . .” He couldn’t make himself say the next word—topple.