West With Giraffes(73)

Only then must Red have remembered what she’d left behind.

With a strangled cry, she tumbled down, wrenched open the Packard’s door, and pulled out her soaked camera bag—its cameras, film rolls, and plates all tumbling into the mud—and then sank in the mud beside them and covered her face with her hands.

I eased to the ground. I didn’t know that the Packard had more chance of coming back from the dead than waterlogged film or fancy cameras. But when I sloshed over, picked up some of her film and heard the water squishing inside them, I knew it was bad. And I knew enough to leave her alone.

The Old Man, now on the ground, too, was staring back up at the giraffes, their heads hanging over the snarl of wood and metal and mud below. The rig was still leaning but the giraffes were calm, as if they knew the worst of the lions were gone.

I went down on my haunches and dug into the mud near one of the rig’s tires. The hardpan was dry not three inches down. If we could get the rig started and the giraffes upright, I was pretty sure we could pull out.

Meanwhile, the Old Man had unjammed Girl’s trapdoor to check her bloodied bandage. When he saw that the wound had only been scraped, he gently placed his hand over the bandage and left it there a moment, heaving a great sigh.

Next, I opened the truck hood to check the motor. When we saw it was dry, I placed a hand on the engine and heaved a sigh of my own.

Red, though, was still sitting by the Packard, staring at her soaked cameras and film. As the Old Man went looking for his fedora, I moved near, hoping she’d look up. When she didn’t, I stepped around her. Eyeing the blown tires and what looked like a bent axle, I lifted the Packard’s crushed hood as far as I could. The motor was drenched. I tried starting it anyway, but it wouldn’t even click over. The truck, being flooded with gas, not water, would start if I waited long enough, but the Packard was done.

So, taking the keys, I looked in the car for a suitcase. All I found, though, was the man’s trench coat she’d been wearing, the pockets stuffed with hairbrush, toothbrush, a wrapped bar of soap—and her notepad. I opened it. She’d written most of it with a fountain pen, and the water had turned it all into smeared lines of blue. The only thing left readable was what she’d written in pencil long ago—her list on the last page:

THINGS I’M DOING BEFORE I DIE

-Meet:

- Margaret Bourke-White

- Amelia Earhart

- Eleanor Roosevelt

- Belle Benchley

- Touch a giraffe

- See the world, starting with Africa

- Speak French

- Learn to drive

- Have a daughter

- See my photos in Life magazine

- Pay Woody back

I stared hard at what had been added—me—and what was crossed out, feeling the beating of her broken heart at Big Papa’s and knowing the list now for what it truly was. If I’d had a pencil I’d have crossed out the last one without hesitating. Slipping it back into the trench coat’s pocket, I folded the coat and turned toward Red, who was still sitting in the mud. I started to say something to her. Yet what was there to say? I placed the trench coat in the cab and gazed around for the Old Man. About two hundred feet down the wash, he’d found his hat stuck to a wooden cross and was whopping it against his pant leg to dry.

After that, for a good long while, we went around gathering broken boards to put under the tires for traction, gathering far more than we’d need to give both the rig and Red more time. As the afternoon sun began to set, I got up the courage to try the truck’s ignition. On the first try, I pumped the pedal too hard. It gurgled and died. I let off. When I tried again, it gurgled once, twice, and then roared to life. Back in my right mind, I popped it quick into neutral and revved it a few minutes to make sure it wouldn’t die on us again. The Old Man actually smiled.

Before we could go anywhere, though, we had to right the rig, moving it away from both the Packard and the wedged tree trunk, which meant getting the giraffes to help. The Old Man, onions in hand, crawled up the right side and asked the giraffes to come get them. When the giraffes did, I called down for Red to move. But I might as well have been talking to the mud. So, with one eye on Red, and the other on the Old Man and the giraffes, I put the big rig into gear, screeching metal against metal away from the Packard, and metal against wood away from the uprooted tree trunk, until the rig was free and all four tires were back on the asphalt.

With that, the Old Man patted and stroked the giraffes, now shuffling upright and looking mighty happy about it. Then he climbed down to inspect the damage. The rig was bunged up and battered, with a crack full down the tree-trunk-smashed side. But it would get down the road.

“We’ve got to go,” he said, cutting an eye at Red.

With the engine idling, I climbed out and went over to Red, who still had yet to move. I shoved all the ruined cameras and film back in the soggy bag, stuffed it with the folded-up trench coat in the truck cab, and went back to Red, grabbing her hand and closing the Packard keys inside it. “We have to go. We’ve got the giraffes,” I said as tender as I could muster. “We’ll get you somebody to haul the Packard somewhere, if you want. Right now, though, you’ve got to come with us.”

She let me help her to her feet. Keys clenched in her fist, she paused for a moment to take a last look at the drowned, smashed Packard, then she tossed the keys in the open window and climbed into the truck.