Sick Puppy

  And when the Lab suddenly leapt forward and seized the rhino's tail, it was Willie Vasquez-Washington who loudly piped: "Look at that crazy sonofabitch!"

  Palmer Stoat saw the rhinoceros spin. He saw Boodle windmilling through the air. He saw Robert Clapley shake free of Durgess and jump to his feet. And then he saw the rhino take off, his idiot dog biting at its heels. The beast vectored first one direction and then another, ascending halfway up the northernmost slope before deferring to gravity. With a resolute snort, the rhino arced back downhill toward the three groups of men, whom it might easily have mistaken for shrubbery or grazing antelopes (given the rhinoceros's notoriously poor vision). Arbitrarily it picked for an escape route the twenty-yard gap between the first two groups. The dog bayed merrily in pursuit.

  Because of the rhino's barge-like girth and laconic-looking trot, the swiftness of its advance was misjudged by both Stoat and Clapley—though not by the two guides, whose awe at the decrepit pachyderm's resurgence was outweighed by their aversion to violent death. Durgess, who anticipated the next phase of the fiasco, grimly flattened himself to the ground. Asa Lando spun on one heel and ran for the live oak. Governor Dick Artemus took the cue; dropped his gun and hit the grass ass-first. His two bodyguards dashed forward, seizing him roughly under the armpits and dragging him toward the zebra-striped truck. Meanwhile, Willie Vasquez-Washington backpedaled, snapping pictures in hasty retreat.

  And Palmer Stoat, faced with a charging African rhinoceros, raised his rifle and took aim. Exactly sixty-six feet away, Robert Clapley did the same. Both men were too adrenalized to recognize their respective vulnerabilities in the lethal geometry of a cross fire. Both were too caught up in the heart-pounding maleness of the moment to sidestep manifest disaster.

  It had been years since Stoat had shot an animal that was more or less ambulatory, and he trembled excitedly as he drew a bead on the grizzled brow of the lumbering rhino. As for Clapley, killing it would be more than a display of machismo—it would fulfill a fantasy that consumed him night and day. Through his rifle scope (laughably unnecessary at such close range), Clapley breathlessly admired the rhino's immense horn. He imagined presenting the hair-encrusted totem—upright and daunting—on a satin pillow to the twin Barbies, who would be curled up nude and perfumed and (he fervidly hoped) blond. He envisioned a grateful glow in their nearly completed faces. Next week: the chins. By Christmas: perfection.

  As the rhinoceros thundered on a straight line between them, Clapley and Stoat swung their gun barrels to lead the beast, as they would a dove on the wing. Except, of course, they were not aiming upward, but level.

  "Hold your fire!" Durgess shouted, strictly for the record.

  That night, drinking heavily at a bar in Mclntosh, neither he nor Asa Lando would be able to say which of the fools had fired first. Judging by the stereophonic roar of gunfire—and the instantaneous results—Robert Clapley and Palmer Stoat could have pulled their triggers simultaneously. Both of them completely missed the rhinoceros, naturally, and both went down very hard—Clapley, from the Weatherby's bone-jarring recoil; Stoat, from a combination of recoil and shrapnel.

  Reconstructing the split-second mishap wasn't easy but, with some help from Master Jack Daniel, Durgess and Asa Lando would conclude that Stoat's slug must have struck the trunk of the oak at the instant Clapley's slug struck Stoat's Winchester, which more or less exploded in Stoat's arms. At that point the lobbyist was not dead, although his right shoulder had been seriously pulped by splintered gun stock.

  Asa Lando would recall looking down from the tree and seeing Stoat, hatless and dazed, struggling to his knees. Likewise, Durgess would remember helping Robert Clapley to an identical position, so that the two hunters were facing each other like rival prairie dogs. But the guides well knew that Stoat wasn't staring at Clapley, and Clapley wasn't staring at Stoat—both men were scanning intently for a fresh rhinoceros corpse.

  "You missed," Durgess informed Clapley.

  "What?" Clapley's ears ringing from the gunshot.

  "Mr. Stoat missed, too," Durgess added, by way of consolation.

  "What?"

  As Durgess stood up to scout for the runaway rhino, he heard frantic shouting from high in the live oak: Asa Lando, trying to warn him. The ground under Durgess's boots began to shake—that's what he would talk about later.

  Like a damn earthquake, Asa. Could you feel it, too?

  The rhinoceros had cut back unexpectedly and now was rumbling up from behind the scattered hunting party; prey turned predator. There was no time to flee. Asa squawked from the tree. Palmer Stoat spit his broken cigar and gaped. Durgess dove for Robert Clapley but Clapley wasn't there; he was down on all fours, scrambling after his rifle. Helplessly Durgess rolled himself into a ball and waited to be crushed. Beneath him the earth was coming unsprung, a demonic trampoline.

  Durgess felt the rhinoceros blow past like a steam locomotive, wheezing and huffing. He peeked up in time to see an outstretched black shape silhouetted briefly against the creamy pink sky, and to feel Labrador toenails scuff his forehead. Durgess decided he was in no hurry to get up, a decision reinforced by the sound of Clapley shrieking.

  The guide would remember remaining motionless until hearing a man's heavy footsteps, and feeling a shadow settle over him. He would remember rocking up slowly, expecting to see Asa, but facing instead a bearded apparition with a gleaming grin and a molten red eye that might have been plucked from the skull of the devil himself.

  "We've come for the dog," the apparition said.

  While being dragged to safety, the governor lost the tender scabs on his buttocks. By the time the bodyguards got him to the Suburban, he had bled through his khaki trousers—the word shame appearing chimerically across his ass, like stigmata. If Willie Vasquez-Washington noticed, he didn't say so. He and Dick Artemus were hustled into the backseat. The FDLE agents hopped up front, locked the doors and radioed for a helicopter and ambulances.

  Riding back to the lodge, the governor looked drained and shaken, his great cliff of silver hair now a tornadic nest. He sank low in the seat. Willie Vasquez-Washington rode ramrod-straight, a fervent amazement on his face.

  "Sweet Jesus," he said. "Did you see that!"

  "Willie?"

  "Those poor fuckers."

  "Willie!"

  "Yeah?"

  "I was never here. You were never here." The governor placed a clammy hand on Willie Vasquez-Washington's knee. "Can we agree on that?"

  The vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. With his other hand he touched a button on the Nikkormat, still hanging from his neck, and set off the automatic rewind. The hum from a swarm of wasps would not have been more unsettling to Dick Artemus.

  Ruefully his eyes fell on the camera. "You got some pictures, huh?"

  Willie Vasquez-Washington nodded. "A whole roll."

  "Color or black-and-white?"

  "Oh, color."

  Dick Artemus turned and stared straight ahead. Just then, a white-tailed buck crashed out of the cabbage palms and entered the path in front of the truck. The agent who was driving stomped the accelerator and swerved expertly around the deer.

  "Nice move!" Willie Vasquez-Washington cheered, bouncing in the seat.

  The governor never flinched, never blinked.

  "Willie," he said, wearily.

  "Yeah?"

  "What is it you want?"

  Twilly Spree tried to go after McGuinn but he was chased down and tackled by Clinton Tyree, who whispered in his ear: "Let it happen, son."

  Said it with such a startling serenity that Twilly understood, finally, what sustained the man—an indefatigable faith that Nature eventually settles all scores, sets all things straight.

  So they let the dog go, then watched as the rhinoceros snorted to action. It ran halfway up the slope before turning back toward the hunting party, which dissolved in bedlam. Viewed from the bank of the knoll, the debacle unfolded with eerie, slow-m
otion inevitability—the two idiots swinging their rifles as the beleaguered rhino attempted to cut between them, a triangulated aim turning linear and deadly. And when the shots rang out, it indeed appeared that Palmer Stoat and Robert Clapley had managed to blast one another in a brainless cross fire.

  Skink and Twilly were quite surprised to see both men lever to their knees. They were somewhat less surprised to see the rhino swing around once more, this time charging blind from behind the shooters.

  Skink sucked in his breath. "Say good night, Gracie."

  Clapley was groping inanely in the grass when the rhinoceros scooped him up at a full trot. His screams carried up the slope, echoing among the caws of grumpy crows. Like a frog on a gig, Clapley frantically tried to push himself off the rhino's horn (which at forty-nine centimeters would have been considered truly a splendid prize). Furiously the animal bucked its head, tossing and goring Clapley as it ran.

  Ran directly at the injured Palmer Stoat, whose Winchester was in pieces and whose reflexes were in disarray. Stoat spastically waved one pudgy arm in an attempt to intimidate the beast (which, Skink later noted, couldn't possibly have seen him anyway; not with Robert Clapley's body impaled so obtrusively on its nose). With McGuinn nipping at its hocks, the rhinoceros—all two and one-quarter tons of it—flattened Stoat as effortlessly as a beer truck.

  Twilly and Skink waited to come down off the hill until the animal had run out of steam, and the zebra-striped Suburban carrying the governor and his bodyguards had sped away. One of the guides remained on the ground, balled up like an armadillo. Skink checked on him first, while Twilly went through the messy formality of examining Palmer Stoat. The lobbyist's eyes were open, fixed somewhere infinite and unreachable. They reminded Twilly of the glassy orbs he'd removed from Stoat's animal heads.

  The exhausted rhinoceros had returned to the shade of the live oak and collapsed to its knees. From thirty yards away, Skink and Twilly could hear the animal wheezing and see the heat rippling off its thick hide. Across the prow-like snout hung Robert Clapley, limp and contorted.

  Skink asked Twilly: "What's with the dog?"

  Once the armor-plated behemoth had quit playing runaway, McGuinn had grown bored and sniffed elsewhere for mischief: The tree. A human was up in the tree! The dog decisively stationed himself beneath the tall oak and commenced a barking fit, punctuated by the occasional lunge.

  To the man in the branches, Twilly said: "You OK up there?"

  "Pretty much. Anyway, who the hell are you?" It was the other hunting guide, the one dressed like a mechanic.

  "Nobody. We just came for the dog."

  "That's yours? You see what all he did?" The man in the tree was highly upset. "You see the holy shitstorm he caused, your damn dog!"

  "I know, I know. He's been a very bad boy."

  Twilly whistled the dinner whistle. McGuinn, having already lost track of the time of day, fell for it. Sheepishly he lowered his head, tucked his tail and sidled toward Twilly in a well-practiced pose of contrition. Twilly grabbed the leash and held on tight. He didn't want the dog to see what had happened to his former master.

  Skink ambled up and seized McGuinn in a jovial bear hug. The Labrador chomped one of Skink's cheek braids and began to tug, Skink giggling like a schoolboy.

  Twilly said, "We'd better go."

  "No, son. Not just yet."

  He got up, took out the.45 and strode purposefully toward the rhinoceros.

  "What are you doing?" Twilly called out. In the tumult he'd left his Remington up on the knoll. "Don't!"

  As Skink approached the rhinoceros, a voice from the tree inquired: "Are you fuckin' nuts?"

  "Hush up," said the former governor of Florida.

  The rhino sensed him coming and struggled to rise.

  "Easy there. Easy." Skink stepped gingerly, edging closer. His arm gradually reached out, the blue barrel of the Colt pointing squarely at the animal's brainpan—or so it appeared to Twilly, who had kept back. Morosely he wondered why Skink would kill the old rhino now; perhaps to spare it from being shot by somebody else, a cop or a game warden. Meanwhile, McGuinn bucked at the leash, thinking the opossum-smelling man had cooked up a fun new game.

  "Hey, what're you doing?" Twilly shouted again at Skink.

  The rhino's view remained obstructed by the lumpy object snagged on its horn. El Jefe could not clearly see either the silver-bearded man or the gun at its face, which was just as well, though the man had no intention of harm.

  Watching Skink's arm stiffen, Twilly braced for the clap of a gunshot. None came, for Skink didn't place the weapon to the ancient animal's brow. Instead he touched it firmly to Robert Clapley's unblinking right eye, to make absolutely sure the fucker was dead. Satisfied, he stepped back and lowered the gun. The man in the tree hopped down and scampered away. McGuinn barked indignantly, which made the rhinoceros stir once more. With a volcanic grunt and a violent head shake, it launched Robert Clapley's beanbag body, which landed in a khaki heap.

  Skink went over and poked it with a boot. Twilly saw him bend over and pick something up off the ground. Later, striding up the slope, he removed the article from his pocket and showed it to Twilly. "What do you make of this?" he asked.

  It was a voluptuous blond doll, dressed in a skimpy deerhide outfit of the style Maureen O'Sullivan wore in the old Johnny Weismuller movies. Barbie as Jane.

  "Came off Clapley," Skink reported, with a troubled frown. "A girl's doll."

  Twilly Spree nodded. "Sick world."

  30

  It was seventy-seven steps to the top of the lighthouse. He counted each one as he went up the circular stairwell. Where the steps ended stood a warped door with flaking barn-red paint and no outside knob. The former governor of Florida gave three hard raps, waited a few moments, then knocked again. Eventually he heard movement on the other side; more a shuffling than a footfall.

  "Doyle?"

  Nothing.

  "Doyle, it's me. Clint."

  He could hear his brother breathing.

  "Are you all right?"

  The only light slanting into the stone column came from a row of narrow salt-caked windows. Littering the floor from wall to wall were envelopes—hundreds of identical envelopes, yellowed and unopened. Payroll checks from the State of Florida. It had been a very long time since Clinton Tyree had seen one.

  In the shadows he noticed a crate of fresh oranges, three one-gallon water jugs and, stacked nearby like library books, two dozen boxes of Minute rice. It was rice he smelled now, cooking on the other side of the door.

  "Doyle?"

  He so wanted to lay eyes on his brother.

  "I'm not going to stay. I just need to know you're all right."

  Clinton Tyree leaned his shoulder to the wood. The door held fast. He heard more shuffling; the scrape of metal chair legs across a pine floor, the sibilant protest of a cheap cushion being sat upon, emphatically. His brother had taken a position.

  "The park rangers said there are people bringing you food. Doyle, is that true?"

  Nothing.

  "Because if there's anything you need, I'll get it for you. Groceries, medicine, whatever. Anything at all."

  Books, magazines, paintings, a VCR, a grand piano... how about a whole new life? Jesus, Clinton Tyree thought, who am I kidding here.

  He heard the chair scoot closer to the door. Then came a metallic click, like a Zippo lighter or a pocketknife being opened. Then he thought he heard a murmur.

  "Doyle?"

  Still not a word.

  "The reason I came—look, I just wanted to tell you that you never have to leave this place if you don't want. It's all been taken care of. Don't be frightened ever again, because you're safe here, OK? For as long as you want. I give you my word."

  There was another click behind the door, and then two solid footsteps. Clinton Tyree pressed a cheek to the briny wood and sensed more than heard his brother on the other side, doing the same.

  "Doyle, please," he whisp
ered. "Please."

  He heard a bolt slide, and he stepped back. The door cracked and an arm came out slowly; an old man's arm, pallid and spidered with violet veins. On the underside, between the wrist and the elbow, were faded striations of an old scar. The hand was large, but bony and raw-looking. Clinton Tyree grabbed it and squeezed with all his heart, and found his brother still strong. The pale wrist twisted back and forth against his grip, and that's when he noticed the new wound on the meat of the forearm, letters etched into flesh—I love you—blooming in droplets as bright as rose petals.

  Then Doyle Tyree snatched his hand away and closed the door in his brother's face.