West With Giraffes(79)

Until we heard the sound of a muffled wretch.

“Don’t shoot . . . ,” came a whimper from inside the rig.

“That a woman?” The coot whirled around. “You got a woman in there, too? Let’s see!”

I yanked open Boy’s warped trapdoor. There was Red, huddled under the giraffe’s legs.

The Old Man groaned.

Cooter cackled louder. “You made the woman ride in the back! I always wanted to do that!”

As Red crawled out, batting straw off her face, a leering Cooter sidled up close. “Now that you’ve got her trained, maybe we can make a bargain for her and the giraffe,” he said, circling his gun muzzle around her breast.

Red pushed the barrel away and tried moving toward us, but he poked her to a halt and went right back to pawing her with that gun. Watching that and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it, my leftover fury flamed even higher, as high as the morning I shot Pa. A moment before, with the jackrabbit screaming me clean out of my mind, the coot could have gone right ahead and shot me and I wouldn’t have cared a lick since I’d already have pounded his sawed-off ass to a mighty-fulfilling pulp. Now, standing there watching him grope Red with that gun, I was back to thinking the same daft thing. It must have been written all over my face, because suddenly the Old Man was standing close and talking loud.

“We’ve got to tell him, boy—it’s the right thing to do,” he boomed, giving me the eye. Turning to the coot, he pointed at Girl. “This one’s hurt.”

Cooter squinted, pointing the gun at the Old Man. “I don’t want no hurt giraffe. Let me see.”

As Red rushed out of reach, the Old Man yanked open Girl’s trapdoor, then stepped back.

“You get back, too, the other way,” the coot said to me, and waited until I did.

The trapdoor was shoulder-high for the Old Man and me. The coot’s head, though, was right at the opening, Girl’s shuffling front legs only inches away.

“See it?” the Old Man coaxed Cooter. “On the back leg. You got to look close.”

Gun still cocked at the Old Man, Cooter stuck his nose into the opening exactly like Earl had done the night of the yahoos. His face was almost in the Girl’s range when he pulled his head back out. “Hold on.” He turned his good eye to the Old Man. “Does it kick? You’d like that, wouldn’t ya?”

Smooth as buttermilk, the Old Man said, “Animals don’t kick with their front legs. Everybody knows that.”

“Oh yeah,” said Cooter, leaning back in.

The Old Man and I held our breaths, waiting for him to get close enough for the Girl to kick and save us.

The coot did.

Girl, though, did not. Watching us wild-eyed from above, she stomped and shuffled and snorted and swayed.

But she didn’t kick.

Cooter pulled his head out. “Waaiit a second. Why’d you tell me that? You doing the ol’ switcheroo? If you’re telling me this one’s hurt, maybe it’s the other that’s hurt. Or you could be telling me this one’s hurt, so I’ll think it’s the other’n, when it’s really this one’s that hurt and the other one that’s not. Ha! Nice try.” He waggled the shotgun my way. “Let me see the other’n.”

The Old Man could barely look at me. We both knew the easy way out was gone. Boy had never kicked anybody.

It was then that I knew this was going to end bad. I could not let that happen. Not after hurricanes and mountains and bears and fat cats and flash floods—let alone reliving the worst day of my life. Cooter leaned into Boy’s open trapdoor, this time aiming the gun up at Boy, and even seeing that did not stop me. Because when you’re eighteen, burning with furies from within, there is a moment when you cannot count the cost a second more.

I lunged for the gun.

Hovering over the shrimp, one hand on the barrel and the other clenched around the old coot’s grip, my young self was cocksure I could yank it free.

Yet I wasn’t quite doing it.

The shriveled peewee didn’t weigh a hundred pounds, and he was fighting like Lucifer himself had pitched in. I was still shoulder-high to the trapdoor. Cooter’s head was still leaning in the opening, and the gun muzzle was still aimed up at Boy. I glanced back for help, but the Old Man had run for one of his flung firearms, and I could barely see Red out of the corner of my eye. The rig began rocking fierce, and it was all I could do to hold the coot’s gun steady. The giraffes were panicking, banging the crates, kicking the cracked wood, rearing up the sides . . . until up from Boy’s throat came the beginnings of the horrible giraffe-terror caterwaul.

Hearing that, Red did the one thing she should never have done.

She lunged for the gun, too.

Grabbing the only place left to grab, she clamped onto the ends of the short barrels and pulled, trying to help get them off Boy. The three of us were smashed against the rocking rig, pulling, yanking, twisting, until, from one second to the next, the gun wasn’t pointing at Boy—it was pointing at Red. The coot had somehow swiveled and used our own strength against us to jam the sawed-off muzzle into Red’s ribs.

All the blood in my body rushed to my head, because I knew that with one jerk of his trigger finger, Red was gone. No one comes back from a gut wound like that. Not back then. Not in the middle of nowhere. Even if she tried to let go and run, the gun would go off before she could get out of its way. Red’s slow, brutal death would be the cost I thought I could no longer count.