West With Giraffes(75)
She didn’t answer. Instead she reached out to touch Boy and Girl one more time and then climbed down, wrapped the quilt tight around her, and went back to the Okies’ fire.
The granny sat down beside her, offering her something in a tin cup to sip. As Red began to talk to the old woman, I was too far away to hear, but I knew what she was saying. I watched as she told the women about the whole day, nodding toward the rig. I watched as the ma with the baby in her arms joined them. I watched as Red coughed, then opened her quilt and took the granny’s hand, placing it over her heart exactly as she had done with mine. I watched as the granny moved her hand from Red’s heart to her stomach. Then I saw Red glance quickly toward the baby.
And I knew what the Old Man had guessed about Red was true.
From the looks of it, now so did she.
13
Into New Mexico
Our plan was to leave in the dark right before dawn to avoid the other stalled travelers, deciding we’d tend the giraffes down the road. But when we were ready, there was no sign of Red.
“I can’t find her . . . ,” I whispered to the Old Man as I ran back to the rig, trying not to wake anyone else at the place. “The Okie granny told me she disappeared as soon as her clothes got dry by the fire. Her camera bag’s still over there, though. There’s no place else to look.”
“Maybe she’s changed her mind or decided to wait for the Packard,” the Old Man whispered back, climbing into the passenger seat. “Or maybe she’s gotten new help that isn’t us. Wouldn’t blame her, would you? My guess is she doesn’t want to be found. Probably best to leave her be.” He pointed back at the rig. “Close up the top.”
“We can’t just leave.”
He propped an elbow on the open window and sighed down at me. “All I know is she’s not here and we’ve got to go, boy. We’ve got the darlings.”
So quietly I closed the top, the giraffes barely noticing in the dark. Climbing down to the ground, I took one last full-circle look around the auto court. Then I got behind the wheel and took us off slow, glancing back every few seconds until we were long out of sight, not wanting to believe this was goodbye. Things didn’t feel right, I recall thinking, as if yesterday wasn’t finished with us even with a new dawn on its way. There was only one thing I knew for certain. However much I looked, there’d be no green Packard in my sideview mirror ever again.
As dawn broke, we drove over the three low wash places in the highway pavement, exactly like the trooper described. We took all three in first gear, the flood debris far worse than at Pa’s farm. A crew had already cleared the highway lanes, but there was still some water in all of them. So, pavement or not, it didn’t do much for my nerves as we splashed through them. Crossing each wash, the rig wobbled and I had to force it straight. The last one was the worst. The giraffes, their heads still inside their windows, were bouncing around more than usual, banging against the sides, the whole battered rig shaking bad.
“Should we stop?” I asked the Old Man.
He shook his head. “Let’s get past all this.”
We crossed the state line, once and for all out of Texas. Within another mile, we were already into the scrubby hills of New Mexico that wanted to be full-out desert but weren’t quite ready to do it yet. The sun was almost up. We needed to be looking for a place to pull over and take care of the giraffes. But I was only half seeing anything at all, still thinking about Red. And the flood. And the farm. I guess the Old Man was doing the same, because he looked at me and said, “I think I need to hear what happened out at your pa’s farm.”
My eyes landed on a passing Joshua tree, sprouting arms toward heaven. I was out of time again, and this time there’d be no flash flood to save me.
Ever since running toward Cuz’s, I’d been rehearsing a good lie, fearing that what happened would find me no matter where I went. Yet, after the flash flood, I wanted more than ever to stay with the giraffes, to see them safe to California even more than getting my own hide there. I didn’t know which would keep me driving—the lie or the truth. You can carry around a heavy load only for so long, though, before you’ve got to set it down, and that goes double if you’re only eighteen.
So I took a deep breath, squeezed the wheel tight, and told the Old Man the truth.
“We were about to put my ma in the ground,” I began. “Only a burial, me and Pa, at the church graveyard by my dead baby sister . . .”
We didn’t have money for a real funeral, I tell him, and there was nobody to come anyway, the rest of Arcadia either dead from dust lung themselves or lit out along with the ginner, who was the closest thing to a preacher the tiny church had. As Ma got sicker, I kept thinking we’d pack up and go, too, but we never did. We had nothing left. Less than nothing. So all we could do for Ma was swaddle her as best we could, Pa pulling wood off the barn to make her a pine box. With our truck broke down again, we were planning to hitch our old mare to the wagon and pull Ma to the graveyard. We’d set Ma and her pine box in the wagon, put on our best Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, and then Pa had gone to get the mare.
When he doesn’t come back, I go looking for him and I find him on the far side of the barn, standing over the mare. She was the last animal we still had, the pigs and chickens all eaten when the last crop failed and the cow dying in the last dust storm. I figure she’s dead, too.