West With Giraffes(78)

“What?”

“That’s what you said back in Tennessee,” the Old Man answered. “‘I winged him,’ you said. ‘If I’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead.’” As if that was enough for the Old Man, he looked back at the road and said, “That’s your first story, but it doesn’t have to be your only story. That’s up to you.”

What he was going to say next I’ll never know, because right then the rig wobbled so bad it felt like the tires lifted off the road. Then it did it again, this time knocking us both off our seats. We both jerked around to look back at the road Pullman at the same time.

“There!” the Old Man pointed. “Pull in.”

Up ahead was a dusty, weathered sign.

COOTER’S

GAS. WATER. FOOD.

DESERT ANIMALS COME SEE

The place was set back from the road and we had too much on our minds to give it a once-over. As we got close, though, it started looking bad. Except for the water cistern on stilts, the building was ramshackle, its roof already half caved in. I rolled the rig toward the gas pumps. They were both broken and had been for a long time, so I pulled on past them and stopped.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” the Old Man said. “Let’s check the giraffes and get going.”

The giraffes were pushing their heads out their windows and pulling them right back in, making noises I’d never heard before. It sounded like one of them was going to kick a hole in the trapdoor, it was rattling so hard.

Hustling back to open the warped trapdoors, I glanced toward the far side of the tumbledown building and froze at what I saw.

A bear. A mountain lion. A raccoon. Rattlesnakes.

All in cages.

In the glaring red-dirt sun . . .

“Howdy, strangers!” came a high-pitched voice from beyond the cages. Out stepped the shortest, hairiest, most googly-eyed, leathery geezer I’d ever seen—one eye milky and one not exactly looking our way. “Welcome to Cooter’s,” he said, picking up a stick and poking the animals.

“Stop that!” the Old Man yelled.

“Just trying to get ’em to put on a show for you,” the milky-eyed coot said, still poking. “You’re the first customers I’ve had in a coon’s age.”

“You’re killing them like this,” he said, waving at the cages set out in the sun.

“Oh yeah? What do you know?”

“I work at a real zoo!” the Old Man spit out. Then, with a glance back at the rig, he sucked in his fury and pulled out his wallet. “We only need to check on our giraffes. We’ll pay you for the trouble and be on our way.”

“Hot diggity-dang, I was right!” the man crowed, rushing over to grab the money from the Old Man. “When I saw you drive in, I said to myself, ‘Cooter, that truck’s got a load of giraffes.’ But I wanted to make sure you saw them too before I said anything. Didn’t want you to think I was crazy. Hold on.”

He disappeared inside the building.

Remembering the rest of my Little Rock nightmare, I scrambled for the truck’s gunrack as out came the man with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun.

“No, no, leave those be,” said the man, aiming both barrels at me. Skittering over, he grabbed both the Old Man’s rifle and shotgun off the rack and flung them deep into the scrub, the shotgun skidding all but to the road.

“What the—what is wrong with you?” the Old Man roared. “I just gave you money! You want more? What the hell do you want?”

“Whaddya think I want, mister real zoo,” he snapped. “I want them giraffes. Still, I’m a reasonable man. You got two. I’ll take one. That way we’ll both be happy.”

The Old Man gave the desert coot a look that should have sent him straight to hell. “I’m not giving you a giraffe! You’re not going to shoot us. You’d be hanged and you know it.”

Then Cooter smiled a smile that still can make me cringe now almost ninety years later. Because the next thing he said was this: “True enough. But nobody’s going to hang me for shooting critters, and a giraffe’s a critter. So if you don’t choose, mister, I’ll shoot one and feed it to the critters I already got.” At that, the crazy geezer banged on the rig until both giraffes popped their heads out again, so he could point the sawed-off shotgun at them. “Boom!” he shouted. “Boom, boom!”

The Old Man was ready to tear the man’s head off, and the old coot knew it, swiveling the gun his way. “Perhaps this moment calls for a demonstration,” he said. He backed up to the row of cages and shot the caged raccoon dead, the shotgun pellets splattering guts all over the cage.

“Got-dam!” howled the Old Man.

The coot narrowed his gaze. “You know, I’ve been mighty profane myself in this life, but I don’t think I’m tolerating any blasphemy in my establishment since God’s being good to ol’ Cooter today. So you watch your language. That goes double for your young’un toting that devil mark on his neck,” he said, waving the gun at my birthmark. “I’ll be taking one of your critters now. I’ll give you a moment to decide.”

“Now wait—” pleaded the Old Man.

“Mister, I can do this all day. Nothing to me.” The coot opened a cage holding nothing but jackrabbits, grabbed one by the scruff, and dropped it in the top of the mountain lion’s cage. At that, my leftover fury burst into full flame. Because I knew what we were about to hear. A jackrabbit’s scream sounds exactly like a human baby if the kill isn’t quick. I’d become a crack shot by the time I was ten to avoid ever hearing it again. As the mountain lion ate the rabbit alive, its entrails hanging from the cougar’s teeth, the jackrabbit’s screams filled the air. The shrieks went on and on and on, and the part of me still holding together after telling my story came undone. I lunged for the sawed-off coot and found myself instead facedown in the dirt. The Old Man had tripped me before the coot blew me full of buckshot. Under the Old Man’s glare, I pulled myself up, the air filled now only with Cooter’s cackling.