West With Giraffes(82)
For the rest of that day traveling down the length of New Mexico, we barely saw another soul. One Okie family came up behind us, their old Model T stuffed to the gills. The tin lizzie even had a basket strapped to its running board with a goat in it. As they passed, they didn’t seem a bit surprised at seeing giraffes. Why would they? They were already riding on dreams. They waved, all wearing big Californy-bound smiles. Even the goat. It made me melancholy, but nowhere near as bad as the furniture peppering the roadside like a relic trail of the Hard Times. We started seeing such things—a chifforobe, a broken rocker, a lamp, and the like—Dust Bowlers’ worldly goods either fallen off or dumped when they got too much to carry. It would be that way for the rest of the trip.
At each stop with a phone booth, Red went in to call again. I figured she was trying to remind the guy he was a good enough man to wire her ticket money to El Paso. Each time, though, she returned looking more and more unhappy, and I didn’t have the gumption to pry. Yet we were getting closer and closer to El Paso. Soon we were on the outskirts of Las Cruces where the Old Man said there would be a Y in the road, one way leading south to El Paso, the other way headed west to Phoenix and California.
When we spotted the Y, the Old Man motioned me to pull over before we detoured, and as I got out to check the giraffes, Red grabbed my sleeve.
“Woody,” she whispered, “I need to tell you something.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I never made those calls,” she confessed, wringing her hands. “I tried to. But I couldn’t talk to him yet . . . and I still can’t.” Dropping her hands into her lap, she stared straight at me. “So now I’ve got to convince Mr. Jones to drop me at the Phoenix station tomorrow instead. Do you think he’ll agree? I’ll call Lionel on the way. Cross my heart. I only need a little more time . . .” Her face said she wasn’t lying this time, but who was I to say?
The Old Man slipped back into the truck cab and turned to Red. “The detour to the El Paso train station is that way. We’ll be there in less than an hour.”
She breathed in, raised her chin, and said, “Mr. Jones, I’d be much obliged to you if—”
“She needs to take the train from Phoenix, and there’s no detour for that, right?” I cut in, giving him the eye.
The Old Man had been busting a gut to be nice, so I was praying he wasn’t going to launch into his whole “not abiding a liar” spiel, if he suspected such.
Instead he said, “I’ll pay for your ticket from here. Least I can do.”
Neither of us was expecting that.
“That’s very kind, Mr. Jones,” she said quick. “I’m certain, though, the money will be waiting at Phoenix. Truly.”
I was giving the Old Man the eye so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if my eyeball had popped right out. But he nodded, giving me the eye right back.
So we took the Y toward Phoenix, heading into the deep desert. We still weren’t talking much, except for my apologies every time I sideswiped Red’s leg shifting gears. Red, though, didn’t seem to notice, a far-off look taking over her eyes that I’d seen before. It was the same look she had at the quarantine station, sitting alone in the Packard and staring toward its front gate. Before everything.
At dusk, we pulled into a place the Old Man had chosen on the way out. It was not an auto court. It was a “motel,” a newfangled place that wasn’t much more than a strip of rooms with a space to park your car between each room, but they were fronted by a little oasis with real palm trees, and we had the place to ourselves. Parking the rig on the desert dirt a few yards past the end, we took the room right by it, and the Old Man sprang for the room next to us for Red. Thanking him for his kindness again, she went in, glancing back at me with those hazel eyes as she closed the door.
The Old Man went to tend the giraffes, but I kept standing there until I heard him calling me to help. By the time I’d blinked away Red’s glance and caught up to him, he was already checking the Girl’s bandaged splint. He looked so relieved I figured she had to be doing OK, but I wasn’t sure until he stepped up the rig’s ladder to the open top to pat the Girl, who was already contentedly chewing her cud. Then, without another word, he came down and headed to the motel room, leaving me the first shift, as usual, with the giraffes. Instead of climbing up the rig, though, I found myself at Red’s door, heart pounding, feeling a pining I couldn’t quite name, much less handle. Every tingling, yearning muscle of my eighteen-year-old body wished for something I didn’t have the courage to ask for.
Not until I heard the sound of coyote howls in the hills was I able to move—and it was back to the giraffes.
Heart in my throat, I climbed up the rig. Breathing deep to calm down, I eased onto the cross plank between the darlings while they went about their cud chewing, taking passing whiffs at the sudden cool change in the air with nightfall as well as every inch of me. I must have smelled like part of the desert. Maybe that night, I was. The moon wasn’t out yet and the sky was something to see. The dark of the desert you’d think would be total on a moonless night. It isn’t. Everything is shades. Maybe because there is so much of nothing between you and the horizon, the stars shine brighter and bounce off what is there more. The stars were so clear I decided to look around for Red’s giraffe constellation since we were close to the Mexican sky where it was supposed to be easiest to spy, and I felt less heavy just in the looking.