West With Giraffes(80)

Her gaze jerked to meet mine. She knew.

Right then, though—as if the giraffes knew, too—both Boy and Girl reared up at the very same time, banging the traveling crates so hard that Red lost her footing, a shriek knocked out of her as she fell.

And at the sound of Red’s own caterwaul, Boy did the one thing we never thought he’d do.

The blessed beast kicked.

His hoof thwacked Cooter’s skull with a sick, hollow pop.

The gun went off, spraying the air.

The geezer crumpled to the dirt, blood oozing from an ear, and I stood stunned over him, both hands still clenching the gun.

The Old Man careened into view, rifle up. “That was a fool stunt—both of ya!” he wheezed. “The giraffe saved both your worthless hides!”

Watching Red get to her feet, I shuddered at what I’d almost done. Then I looked down at Cooter, who was very, very still.

“Is he dead?” I mumbled.

The Old Man pried the coot’s gun from my grip. “Don’t know. Don’t care,” he said.

That’s when we heard the water. The sawed-off shotgun’s blast had hit the cistern up on stilts, and water was spewing from the puncture holes. The Old Man scowled up at the emptying water tank without a bit of surprise.

“Are you calling the sheriff?” I asked for the second time that day.

The Old Man turned full around to gape at me, like I was the one with the sun-fried brain. “You want to hang around to make friends with the local law enforcement?” he bellowed. “What about the darlings? You even thinking about them in this civic duty? What do you think they’ll do with the Boy? It won’t matter a good gotdam he saved us from a nutcase. He’s still an animal and that sumbitch’s still something they’d call human. We’d be stalled here for weeks. Even if they don’t order him put down, that could kill the both of them all by itself. No! Nossir! They’re going to San Diego. Right. Damn. Now.” He set both firearms on the truck’s hood, reached in the window for his fedora, and stalked off.

“Where’re you going?” I called after him.

“One more thing needs doing!”

Shoving the fedora on his head, he headed out to retrieve his shotgun from the roadside scrub, then marched past us to the animals and opened every cage, one by one. The jackrabbits and the bear ran for the hills without looking back. Even the rattlesnakes went slithering off. The mountain lion, sated with fresh rabbit, still licking the blood on his whiskers, was a different story. It watched the Old Man with cold eyes, studying him as it leaped to the ground from his cage. The Old Man fired his shotgun in the air, and the mountain lion slipped into the scrub.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, coming our way.

I kept staring at the coot’s sprawled body. “What if the mountain lion comes back?”

“I say let him,” the Old Man snapped, then must have thought better of it, because he grabbed Cooter by a leg and began to pull. I grabbed the other. The Old Man, though, wasn’t heading to the building. We dragged him to the bear cage, stuffed him in by the bear’s half-full water bucket, and slammed it shut.

“Now move, before I throw the raccoon’s carcass in there with him,” the Old Man said, marching toward the rig. “If he’s alive, he can get his sorry self out. If he’s dead, he’ll rot in one piece. He doesn’t deserve to be an animal’s supper.”

The giraffes were still stomping and snorting. The Old Man put the guns back on the truck cab’s rack, then flung the coot’s sawed-off shotgun deep into the scrub, and we all got in. With Red sitting between us, we headed toward the highway as the spray from the water tank’s holes turned the dirt into its own muddy lake. Straight ahead was the DESERT ANIMALS COME SEE sign. I aimed the rig right at it, flattened it into kindling, then turned us onto the road west.

For two miles, the only sound in the cab was me repeating a soft “Sorry” as I kept brushing up against Red’s trouser legs to change gears. I felt like I was moving through molasses, my body having yet to catch up with my brain. I wasn’t alone. Red’s hands started to shake, and she began to sniffle, then the dam busted wide.

“Stop,” she begged. “Stop, please—”

Up ahead was a dusty rest area of stone picnic tables overlooking a small outcropping. Pulling in quick, I hustled out of her way. Red stumbled over to a table, and she didn’t just cry, she sobbed. The Old Man averted his gaze, but I couldn’t take my eyes away until, running her hands through her hair, she stopped, and I felt a reckoning of my own coming on strong.

We tried giving the giraffes water. They wouldn’t drink. Climbing up, the Old Man opened the top and began cooing his giraffe-speak, stroking the giraffes as best he could, so I climbed up and started stroking, too. Leaning over the giraffes, though, I had to work to keep my own balance, feeling wobbly inside and out. I was waiting for the sky to fall, for the sirens to sound, for something to happen as big as the feelings still rolling through me after dodging the crazy coot’s worst.

“Is it over?” I mumbled, looking back down the road. “Is that the end of it?”

“You think you always get to know the end of a story?” the Old Man said. His voice faltered, giving away his own Old Man shakes. “Most times you’re lucky if you get your ending. If this is our ending, it’s a gotdam happy one.”