West With Giraffes(84)

But it lulled, that day. No people to speak of, no trouble to bear.

It was a day of no lions.

We had left an hour before dawn again. By the time we were watching the moon set on one side of us and the sun rise on the other, we’d all fallen into a moving bit of peace. I’d felt a sliver of that peaceful feeling after we’d made it through the mountains. This time, though, it was long and lingering and soul-soothing deep. It seems now like the closest thing to praying I’d ever done. When I’d lived a little longer and heard people talking about such things, calling it by spiritual names, I’d want to scoff but couldn’t. In the years ahead, through the War and beyond, it was this quiet day moving through the unmoving land with Boy and Girl and the Old Man and Red that I returned to when I needed it most. Like the jolting joy of giraffes amid the traveling bird wave, its peace passed any understanding, any attempt at words. You only get a few of those in your whole life if you’re lucky, and some only get one. If that be true, this was my one. When I remember it, I’m not eighteen in the memory. I am whatever age its comfort came to me, be it 33 or 103, and I am driving us all, through the timeless red desert, headed nowhere in particular, just someplace good. Together.

We stopped twice that morning, once this side of Silver City and once more near Globe, long enough to water the giraffes and stretch our legs. We did it without more than two words between us, the lull was so deep. Not even the train track in the distance trailing us all day wrecked my lull. It should have shook up all sorts of fretful thoughts of murdered bums and raggedy boys and fat-cat pocket fortunes, not to mention the twenty-dollar gold piece still tarnishing the inside of my pants pocket. But it didn’t. Despite those things happening to the Dust Bowl boy I was only days before, I didn’t feel much like that boy anymore.

Red had finally called Mr. Big Reporter at Silver City. “Lionel . . . ,” I heard her say as she closed the phone booth door. I didn’t eavesdrop. Didn’t have to. I could make out what was happening by watching her from a ways off. It was the same high-volume talk I’d heard them have back in New Jersey, if now one-sided, until she got to the news that’d shut any man right up. Then she leaned on the back of the wooden phone booth, and it seemed neither of them said a thing for a long time.

She came back to the rig saying he promised to wire the money to Phoenix for her train ticket before the end of the day. There was no reason not to trust the louse since she hadn’t called him until that moment. But of course, I still didn’t. As we pulled up to Phoenix’s big fancy train station, peaceful was the last thing I was feeling. This was only a drop-off, the Old Man had made plain. We still had several hours of daylight left and the Old Man wanted to keep going, San Diego less than a day away, so I stopped the rig right in front of the station and hopped out to make way for her. The Old Man showed his manners by getting out, too.

Red stepped down and collected herself.

“Thank you, Mr. Jones,” she said, straightening her clothes, hair, spine.

“Goodbye, Mrs. . . . ,” he said back, stumbling again over what to call her. He also seemed to be struggling to say something else. In my memory, I like to think it a thank-you of some sort or even an apology, but it was probably neither. Whatever it was, it didn’t come. All he could muster was a tip of that fedora. With a glance my way, he then turned to deal with the crowd already ogling the giraffes, who were already happily ogling them back.

I walked her to the big arrivals and departures board outside the station doors. That day’s streamliner, the only East Coast–connecting train, had already left, and there wouldn’t be another until the same time tomorrow. The telegraph office where any wired money would be waiting was inside the station, though, and the Old Man was already waving me back.

I started to walk inside with her anyway.

She stopped me. “No, Woody, you’re not going in with me.”

“But you’ve got to stay all night and you’ve got no cash,” I said. “What if the money’s not there before the wire place closes? What if you need to take Mr. Jones up on his offer?”

“It will be,” she said, “and I won’t. Don’t worry.”

Then she touched her stomach, and that made me ask what I had no business asking. “What’re you going to do?”

“I’ll wait,” she said.

“No, I mean . . .” I didn’t know how to say what I meant. “Your heart.”

Flashes of something sad and tough passed over her face. “Ah, Stretch, I made that up. Never trust a woman who wants to meet your giraffe.” She was lying. I saw it plain. Just when she was leaving, I could tell. “I’m still going to be the next Margaret Bourke-White. You wait and see,” she went on, offering up that tiny tight-lipped smile.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the twenty-dollar gold piece and held it out.

“No.” She shook her head so hard her curls bounced.

Grabbing her hand, I pushed the twenty-dollar piece into it, and I took my time being sure it was square in her palm and a longer time to let go as her fingers closed around it.

There was that tight-lipped smile again. “I don’t know when I can pay you back.”

“Don’t want it back,” I said. “Not mine. Not Mr. Jones’s, either.”

“Oh,” she said, as if she figured I’d snitched it. Which I deserved.