West With Giraffes(86)
“Well, now, that’s a whole other story.”
That’s when we saw the elephant and the dog.
A short, wiry man wearing a straw hat was just walking his dog and his elephant along the road.
I was sure it was a mirage, but the Old Man saw it, too.
The wiry man gave the dog a boost on top of the elephant, and the elephant wound his trunk back to touch the dog. Everybody was smiling, including the dog. Especially the dog. If ever I was speechless on this trip, and there were many such times, that was one of them.
The Old Man guffawed. “I know that galoot! That’s Maroney. He’s got himself a little traveling show, going around giving rides to the children on that Asian elephant of his. I heard he came out to the desert towns for the winter.”
“But . . . ,” I mumbled, “where’d he get an elephant?”
“Same place anybody gets an elephant,” was how the Old Man answered. Like that explained it all. “Don’t worry. Those animals are having a good time and being treated dandy.”
“How can you tell?” I said.
As we watched the elephant put its trunk in the fountain to spray the wiry man and the dog, the Old Man smiled at me as if that was better than any answer he could give. Shaking his head, he glanced back at the giraffes and said, “There’s no explaining the world, boy. How you come into it. Where you find yourself. Or who your friends turn out to be—be you man or be you beast.” With that, he got out of the truck and headed toward Maroney, arms waving, already talking, and I realized he still had yet to tell me a thing about his gnarled hand.
On we went for another hour. Until, near sunset, at the foot of the mountain pass, we pulled into the second desert motel the Old Man had pegged for us. This one was fancy. I mean fancy-fancy. It was called the Mohawk, with twelve pink stucco “cabanas” circled by palm trees that looked like they’d been hauled in complete with water and soil, all green and perky. The place was full up, big-ticket cars parked in front of every room, more fancy vehicles than my farmboy eyes had ever seen, and it was the quietest place I ever saw to be so full. I wasn’t quite sure what to think. As we pulled to a stop past the office, a ritzy couple who looked like they stepped out of a Hollywood movie was getting out of a baby-blue convertible only to disappear inside their pink cabana, ignoring us completely. Even the manager didn’t seem impressed with us, like he saw trucks full of giraffes every day. Which was fine by me since I wasn’t in a mood to share the two of them anyway.
We headed to the motel’s far corner and started our nightly routine of feeding, watering, and tending to the giraffes . . . for the last time. I could no longer put off thinking it so.
Soon as we finished, the Old Man was already closing his motel door behind him, antsy to get the night over so tomorrow would finally come, so I climbed on up to the open top’s cross plank, like always. Girl’s breath hit me hot and fusty, and Boy greeted me with a slobbering snuffle. Wiping giraffe spit off my face with pure pleasure, I settled in to share the sky with Boy and Girl one last time.
It was a warm night. So, about midnight, as they started their sleep-standing, I hopped to the ground and opened their trapdoors for more air. As I stared at Boy’s hooves, I was back at Cooter’s, seeing Red crawl out from between them. I was still seeing her when I climbed back up top. Yet it wasn’t at Cooter’s. It was on the night of the bear, the night she ignored my Old Man warnings and dropped into the road Pullman to be closer to them. Trusting them to trust her.
With Red before my eyes, I slipped down slow and easy into Boy’s crate, right by the cut-through opening between their traveling crates, until I was standing directly between them both. For a moment, I drank in their mighty selves exactly as I had back in quarantine, their tall flanks no longer smelling of ocean but of earth. Then, like Red, I stretched out my arms, until I was touching them both . . . and, at my touch, the two blessed giraffes begin to hum! They had been humming to each other back in quarantine, and now they were humming with me. The deep, rolling thrums were so mellow that, standing there touching their hides, I could feel my chest vibrating with them, their rumbling African croon echoing deep into the night and deep into my marrow. Even now, its memory is so clear and rich that I can place my hand over my old chest and feel it still. When they stopped, I might have wondered once again if it had happened at all, except for the humming deep in my bones, and I recall my young self wishing I could stand there forever between them, just another scrawny young giraffe they’d adopted on their long, strange trip to California.
By the time the Old Man appeared out of the moonlight to relieve me, I’d forced myself back up top to keep watch over the sleeping giraffes from above. I braced for his usual questioning of my eighteen-year-old common sense.
Instead he said, “I thought I heard a rumbling, thrumming sound a while ago.”
I pointed at the giraffes.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
As he sat down on the running board to light up his usual smoke, I dropped to the ground in front of him and stood there.
“You want to stay?” he said.
I nodded.
“All right then, boy, all right.”
I climbed back up to the cross plank. The giraffes stirred from their sleep-standing to watch me settle back into my sentry spot. Then they lay down . . . both of them together . . . with me and only me standing guard for lions above.