West With Giraffes(92)

In a minute, I was standing in the presence of Mrs. Belle Benchley, the famous Zoo Lady. She still looked so much like the schoolmarm at the zoo entrance back that October day in ’38 with her arms stretched wide for the giraffes, I felt a rush of feeling that almost bowled me over. She was coming out of her little office behind the boiler room when we walked right up.

“Guess who this is!” Cyrus beamed. “This here is Riley’s boy he talked so much about. Mr. Woody Nickel.”

“Well!” She stuck out her hand to shake. “How do you do? How do you do!” We had the nicest chat you’d ever want to have, until the phone jangled behind her and she disappeared back inside.

Cyrus walked me back through the zoo to send me on my way. Before I left, though, I wanted to ask one more thing about the Old Man if I could make myself do it.

“Don’t take this wrong . . . ,” I started up, fumbling for the words. “But back in his circus days, did Mr. Jones ever get in a scrap over some animal cruelty with a man . . . dying?” It was as close I could come to the fat cat’s murderous name-calling.

At that, Cyrus’s face went sober. This is what he said a touch too quick in my memory: “Nope, never heard that. Wouldn’t put it past him when it came to animals, but you could probably say the same about most of us here if push came to shove.” He cocked his head my way. “Besides, everybody deserves a second chance. He sure gave one to a certain Dust Bowl young’un, didn’t he?” He patted me on the shoulder. “Did he ever tell you why he did?”

I shook my head.

“He said ‘the darlings’ told him to.” With a sly grin that seemed more for the Old Man than me, Cyrus turned to go. “Don’t be a stranger, ya hear?” he called back. “He loved telling stories about your ride, and Lofty and Patches will always be glad to see you.”

Lofty and Patches. I went to correct him but stopped short, knowing it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered except they were alive and so was I. Red was gone and so was the Old Man, but I still had the giraffes—and because I did, I also had Red and the Old Man. It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years. As I headed back to the giraffes, I knew I was never letting the Old Man’s darlings far out of my sight again. I was in California and I was with the giraffes. That was as much of a Promised Land—or home—I figured I’d ever need.

So I got a job at the city cemetery. After all, I had an aptitude. On the way out West, I kept thinking I’d hit up the Old Man to be a keeper, maybe even for Boy and Girl. Mrs. Benchley, though, had saved the jobs of all the zoo’s keepers who joined the Armed Services during the war, to give back to them on their return. Plus, within a month, a disk in my back gave way. One too many graves dug, I suppose. So, the job I ended up with was a graveyard night watchman, a position you might find surprising, considering the dead don’t usually need much watching. But it suited me fine, sleep still not being something I was ever good at, the War making it worse. To pass the long nights, I took to reading those books the Old Man loved, the ones by “Mr. Fenimore Cooper,” and while their old-fashioned words could come close to putting even me to sleep, the best Hawkeye parts were dog-eared glory. And soon I had a routine, spending my nights at work and my days at the zoo. Every morning I’d get off as the zoo was opening. I’d grab a salami, some bread, and a pocketful of onions. Then, using one of the Old Man’s wooden nickels, I’d have breakfast with my friends the giraffes, thinking about the Old Man and wishing the magnificent ol’ bastard could join us. Sometimes, Mrs. Benchley herself would stroll by and sit down beside me to watch the giraffes. Before too long, the keepers even started calling me Giraffe Man. Which was fine by me. Fine, indeed.

As the years went by, life slowly became the ordinary thing it was always meant to be. I tried to be a good man, which surely would have surprised the piss out of the boy I was back at Cuz’s. I never passed up the chance to feed a stray dog or cat or stray anything that passed my way, and I never trusted a soul who didn’t like animals. I loved some respectable women and some not so much. I married three, all redheads, you might not be surprised to hear, and I outlived them all. The closest I had to a child of my own was a grown stepdaughter, gone now, too, who once gave me a plaque that said “Time spent with animals is added to your life,” joking how I’d live to be a hundred, if that isn’t a kicker.

But the truth is I kept up my relationships with Girl and Boy better than I did any human, family having become a word without boundaries for me. I made sure they never wanted for onions, leaning in for Boy’s slobbery hello and to pat Girl’s spot in the shape of a sideways heart. I watched them thrive in all the love coming their way, feeling it as full as if it were my own. I saw how their lives lived among us did exactly what the Old Man said they would, making all who met them more alive to this world’s natural wonders most people would never know or care about any other way. Before they were gone, I even got to see them running free in a farm-like park the zoo built out in the desert with a herd of their own making, along with some from other zoos—a “tower” of giraffes, they call it, if you can beat that.

As for what the Old Man said about animals knowing the secret of life? While there were moments I thought they just might speak, his darlings never shared a secret with me in so many words. It didn’t take me long to grasp, though, that in all the time I was spending in their presence—reveling in their company like the Old Man did, seeing the world through their serene sky-high eyes like Red did, and sensing creation through two “towering creatures of God’s pure Eden” like Big Papa did—I had found me a secret to life, and it was the secret to a good life. Maybe that’s what the Old Man meant for me all along.