Rhino Ranch

  “No need to do that,” he said. “Probably everyone ought to welcome the chance to spend the night in Ralls, Texas, once in their life.”

  There was a shabby motel nearby, a windburned place that catered mostly to the transient youth of the oil patch. Its rooms were not luxurious.

  Fortunately there was a package store just across the street, where they were able to purchase a fifth of Wild Turkey. The motel called itself the Roughnecker’s Lodge. The air conditioners in the rooms were stuttery, barely blunting the heat, so they each took a chair and sat outside, where they drank the whiskey out of very thin plastic glasses.

  “What do you think of this Double Aught business, Duane?” K.K. asked.

  “I got no theories,” Duane admitted.

  Actually he was more curious about K.K. and Boyd Cotton. When she hauled Boyd off to Seymour had they done anything other than eat a good steak? Somehow he doubted it.

  “You’re right that it’s flat in this country,” she said, watching the endless stream of trucks traveling east on Highway 82.

  “We weighed Double Aught several times,” she said. “He weighed nearly five thousand pounds, which means that he had a presence in time and space. Maybe this bad dream will pass and we’ll find him in the morning.”

  “It’s flat here, but the canyons off the Caprock aren’t far,” he said. “He could probably hide pretty well down in the breaks.”

  K.K. stood up and put her chair back in her room.

  “’Night, Duane,” she said.

  Next morning the friendly crop duster rode with them as they hunted Double Aught in the breaks of the Caprock. They didn’t find him. K.K. Slater looked more and more depressed.

  78

  DUANE PICKED A vasectomist out of the Yellow Pages. He first considered getting one in Fort Worth, so nobody in Thalia would find out, but then he decided that was cowardly, as well as inconvenient. He was a single man who had lived in Thalia almost all his life. People had talked about him when he was young, when he was middle-aged and now that he was old. His only real contribution to the life of Thalia was his entertainment value.

  “That’s right, it’s your duty to have people talk about your vasectomy,” Bobby Lee pointed out.

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s nothing else to talk about,” Bobby said, “and there won’t be until football season comes around.”

  “Bobby, our football team hasn’t won a game in three years,” he mentioned. “Why talk about it?”

  “That will change,” Bobby Lee said. “Some team will come along someday that’s worse than us and we’ll win a game. Just have your vasectomy.”

  The doctor Duane chose, Dr. Jerome Germyn, was a bald man of about thirty who clearly did not like being bald. The evidence for this was the three hair transplants he had had, none of which had resulted in extensive hair.

  One slicked-down implant was blond, another brunette, and a final one red and spiky, creating an unusual appearance, to say the least.

  “You can ask about my hair,” Dr. Germyn said. “Everybody wants to but mainly they manage to suppress their curiosity. Weird hair, or lack of it, is just something I’ve learned to live with.”

  Duane just shrugged.

  “I expect you think I’m a little old to be worrying about this kind of thing,” he said.

  “Oh, no, not a bit,” Dr. Germyn said. “Yesterday I snipped an old fellow who claimed to be ninety-one. His kids had grown up to be addicts and criminals. He just didn’t want any more.”

  “Did he have a girlfriend?”

  “You bet he had a girlfriend. He couldn’t talk about anything else. His girlfriend was in her fifties but with these new fertility drugs anything can happen.

  “This process takes about twenty minutes,” he went on. “Then you need to go home and take it easy for a week. Wait about three weeks before you try sex. Your erectile function should be fine.”

  “What if it isn’t—can I sue you?” Duane asked.

  “Sure, if you want to feel like a fool in the courtroom. Most judges have problems of their own. They don’t welcome lawsuits from old guys who can’t manage to get a hard-on.”

  “I was joking, Doctor.”

  “My hair is really my problem,” Dr. Germyn said, just before breaking into tears. His cry was violent but brief.

  “Sorry,” he said, when his tears subsided. “In my case hair is destiny. If I had abundant hair I might be a brain surgeon, instead of performing little snips on people who want sex but not babies. Of course, I might well have been a terrible brain surgeon. If you fuck up a vasectomy it’s no big deal but if you fuck up brain surgery that’s serious business.”

  Duane suddenly realized he didn’t really want Dr. Germyn to do his vasectomy, but the realization came so late that he couldn’t wiggle out of it. Dr Germyn did the snip, wrote him out a prescription and that was that.

  79

  DUANE DECIDED TO recuperate from his vasectomy at the big house, rather than the cabin. He felt a little queasy, as the doctor had said he might, but was otherwise okay.

  He left Casey a message and then thought he might doze for a bit—then it turned out to be four hours, and when the phone woke him it was merely Dr. Germyn’s assistant, asking if he was okay.

  He left Casey another message, and then, idle, drove out to the Rhino Ranch, where Bobby Lee was fighting his migraines with a bottle of Stoli. He had finally adjusted to vodka.

  Since he himself was the hero of a much more dramatic story—his penile implant—he could muster little interest in Duane’s humble vasectomy. In fact his tone was so brusque that Duane felt a little ticked off.

  “You may have a penile implant but I can’t tell that you’re using it much,” he said. “Soon as I heal I plan to use my vasectomy night and day.”

  “Let’s change the subject,” Bobby Lee suggested. “You know old Boyd’s out there somewhere. He thinks there’s hanky-panky going on and he thinks it’s only happening at night.”

  “Oh, meth you mean?”

  “No,” Bobby Lee said. “I think he’s thinking about sabotage or something—hanky-panky her brothers might be doing.

  “Boyd takes his Winchester and his .45 when he goes out,” Bobby Lee said. “He’s never done that before in his life, that I know of.”

  “Boyd’s got pretty good judgment,” Duane mentioned. “If he thinks he needs a saddle gun he probably does.”

  “Besides that the Texas Ranger’s showing up tomorrow.”

  “Hondo Honda? Why?”

  “I’m more or less the chief operating officer of this station, and yet I don’t know why.”

  “At least you’ve got gainful employment, which is more than I can claim.”

  “By God, you’re right,” Bobby said.

  80

  THE MINUTE DUANE walked up to Casey Kincaid’s apartment—or what had until recently been Casey’s apartment, he knew what he was going to find: an empty apartment.

  His brand-new vasectomy was not yet quite healed—it had been undertaken so that he might enjoy a pregnancy-free sex life with Casey Kincaid.

  Standing outside her darkened apartment he realized that Casey had never really had the slightest intention of having normal sex with him.

  He was so shocked by the magnitude of her deception that he had to grasp the handrail by the stairs for a moment; when he admitted to the truth—that Casey was gone—he was so shaken that he continued to hold the handrail tightly as he went back downstairs.

  “Old,” he told Bobby Lee, once the dreadful secret had been revealed. They were on the tower.

  “I’m old,” Duane repeated.

  “It ain’t so much age as it is bad judgment,” Bobby said.

  “That’s harshly put, Bobby—which doesn’t mean it ain’t true.”

  “Here come Dale and Roy,” Bobby said, meaning K.K. and Texas Ranger Hondo Honda, who were loping in from their inspection tour.

  “That damn fool can barely ride,” Duane
observed of Texas Ranger Hondo. “I’m surprised Boyd loaned him his second-best horse.”

  Just then the fax machine in the little office on the tower began to emit a fax.

  “It’ll be a sighting,” Duane told him. “Somebody thinks they’ve seen Double Aught. Where is he this time?”

  “Shiprock, New Mexico,” Bobby Lee said, “I got laid there once.”

  Hondo Honda had his trademark rifle, with his trademark fringed scabbard. The two riders dismounted by the little corral. Boyd Cotton, who had been napping in his pickup, strolled over and reclaimed his second-best horse.

  “Boyd’s losing patience with this rhino business,” Bobby Lee said. “He likes cowboying better.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Duane asked.

  Bobby Lee looked at his friend.

  “You ain’t the kingpin anymore, Duane,” he said. “I wouldn’t be telling too many people about what happened with your vasectomy.”

  “I won’t,” Duane assured him.

  81

  ABOUT A MONTH after Duane’s surgery, Double Aught came back to the Rhino Ranch. Duane looked out the window of his house one evening and saw the rhino standing in his garden. He had done some damage to the greens, but had so far spared the cucumbers.

  “Now you’ve messed up my garden—Dal may be right about you,” he said.

  He went back inside and called the local motel, where Hondo Honda happened to be staying while he investigated hanky-panky at Rhino Ranch.

  “Hondo, the big boy is back,” Duane said. “You might want to let K.K. know.”

  “I’ll be right out, cowboy,” Hondo said.

  “I never cowboyed a day in my life,” Duane reminded him.

  “It’s just a habit I got into and can’t get out of,” Hondo admitted. “I call far too many old boys cowboys, even though I know most of them couldn’t find a cow in a week.”

  “Well, Boyd Cotton’s still here, and he can find a cow anytime he needs to find one,” Duane said.

  Just then Duane saw Double Aught trot off toward the nearby highway.

  “You’d better come, he’s on the move,” Duane said.

  Hondo then hung up.

  82

  YEARS WERE TO pass before the citizens of Thalia achieved any consensus as to what happened next. As with everything involving the black rhinos—as well as most things that happened in ordinary life—opinion in Thalia was often divided. Willy Moore, who had probably read more books than the fifteen hundred citizens of Thalia put together, said there was a book called Seven Types of Ambiguity and that if the critic ever visited Thalia he’d change his title to Fifteen Hundred Types of Ambiguity—but that was just a case of Willy parading his extensive reading.

  There were only three eyewitnesses to what occurred on the road by Duane’s house that evening: Duane himself, Texas Ranger Hondo Honda and a black rhino known as Double Aught.

  Summonded by Duane, Hondo in his patrol car came smoking up the road a little too fast and when he sensed trouble coming hit his brakes and skidded to within a yard or two of Double Aught. It was dusk and the Ranger may not have seen the rhino too clearly, and, by the same token, the rhino may not have seen the patrol car too clearly, either. Nonetheless, the rhino concluded that he was under attack so he counterattacked, smashing the front windshield with his big horn. Then he backed up and made a run at the car, smashing in the driver’s side door.

  Duane knew by then that Hondo was in serious trouble, so he ran around to the passenger side of the car to try and pull him out.

  Hondo seemed to be trying to get his Winchester out of its famed fringed scabbard, a line of action Duane tried to discourage.

  “Forget your damn gun, crawl out the window and do it quick,” Duane yelled.

  The recommendation fell on deaf ears, because Double Aught started rolling the police car over and over, flipping it easily with his big horn.

  Hondo took Duane’s advice and stopped trying to free his rifle, at the same time firing wildly with his handgun.

  Duane by this time had reversed his opinion: from his perspective Hondo was probably safer in the car than out.

  Hondo shared that opinion: he gave up trying to get out but still fired off his handgun willy-nilly until the revolver was empty.

  Soon the rhino rolled the patrol car into the middle of a fairly large highway. It seemed to Duane that he might have called Hondo into a situation that he might well not survive—he remembered being told by the small Asian woman Dal that Double Aught was not his friend. Nor, clearly, was he the friend of Ranger Honda.

  Dal was right, Duane was pretty sure. Double Aught wasn’t really any human’s friend—and Dal had known this, although she had never seen Double Aught, who tired of his sport and went trotting off down the highway that led to the red light and the center of town. While Duane watched, he passed under the red light and passed on into the night.

  And into legend. Despite thousands of sightings, Double Aught was never verifiably seen again.

  This time Duane was glad to see him go.

  83

  HONDO HONDA EMERGED from his mushed patrol car with nothing worse than a skinned nose—or so it seemed at first.

  Lights began to come on, up and down the route that Double Aught had taken after he tired of playing with Hondo’s patrol car.

  Soon crowds gathered around the patrol car and its semilegendary owner. Hondo was in the process of reloading his revolver.

  “I don’t know why you shot your own gun off six times,” Duane said.

  “Thought I might get lucky and kill the big son of a bitch,” Hondo said.

  Eventually nearly a hundred citizens gathered around to look at the mashed patrol car, and several truckers stopped to see what was going on. It was not long before Duane began to detect a negative current of opinion among the old ladies in their bathrobes and their husbands in shoulderless T-shirts.

  The tone, Duane felt sure, spelled trouble for Rhino Enterprises.

  “That big bastard ruint a perfectly good patrol car,” one man said.

  “Who told them they could bring these ugly suckers here anyway?” another asked.

  “Whoa,” Duane said. “The City Council voted unanimously to give all the help we can to Rhino Enterprises. You’re on the City Council, Tom. I don’t remember you abstaining, much less arguing against the measure.”

  “I was probably drunk and anyway who made you the big cheese, Duane?” Tom said.

  “I’m not a big cheese but I am a citizen,” Duane said. “Everybody I know was for the Rhino Ranch, including Bobby Lee Baxter—and as you all know Bobby Lee ain’t for much.”

  Hondo happened to wander under a streetlight and Duane noticed something slick on his pants leg. On closer inspection the substance turned out to be blood.

  But worse was to come. Duane saw what looked like the handle of a pocketknife protruding from Hondo’s side, just below the hip.

  Hondo Honda, who nearly always looked serene, lost his serene look when he saw the handle of his pocketknife protruding from his side.

  “Maybe I better let you run me to the ER over in Wichita, cowboy,” he said. “I was cleaning my fingernails when that call came and somehow I plumb forgot about the knife—I must have forgot to close the blade.”

  Just then Bobby Lee showed up in the company Range Rover. News of the commotion had reached the North Tower. Hondo was eased in the back seat, Duane with him—some lady had loaned them a towel to stop the bleeding with.

  “Step on it, Bobby,” Duane said.

  Bobby stepped on it.

  “I finally get a chance to see if these suckers will run a hundred and sixty, like they claim.”

  Nine minutes later Hondo was admitted to the ER in Wichita Falls.

  “Five more minutes and this man wouldn’t have made it,” the young doctor said. “And he’s not out of danger yet. Whom do we call if he starts slipping away?”

  “K.K. Slater, I guess?” Duane said.

  “Phone numbe
r?”

  Both were stumped. Neither knew K.K. Slater’s phone number.

  “I can probably find it when we get back to the tower,” Bobby said. “I work for the lady, I must have her phone number somewhere.”

  “Please give me something when you can,” the doctor said.

  “The patient probably knows it,” Duane said. He scribbled down his own various phone numbers, and they left.

  “I can’t believe you let yourself get skunked by the likes of Casey Kincaid,” Bobby Lee said, as they rode home at a sedate clip.

  “I don’t think I’m going to want to be talking about subjects like that for a while,” Duane said.

  “At least she was beautiful, you can’t deny that,” he added.

  “If you don’t smarten up where girls are concerned, your dick is never likely to rise again.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Duane said.

  84

  DUANE MET K.K. at the little company airstrip not much after dawn. Fortunately her phone number had been in the company computer.

  Hondo was still in the intensive care unit.

  “I wish I could say he’s critical but stable,” the young doctor said. “But the truth is he’s just critical. He’s not out of the woods.”

  “No offense, but would a better hospital help his chances?” K.K. asked.

  “Of course,” the doctor said.

  An hour later Hondo Honda was being medevaced to Methodist Hospital in Houston.

  K.K. Slater cried when he was taken off and continued to drip tears throughout a difficult day.

  The tears surprised Duane. He realized he had not quite understood her attachment to Ranger Honda.

  K.K. picked up on Duane’s puzzlement at once.

  “I know, he’s a figure of fun now,” she said. “He’s a caricature of himself—as Hemingway became. But there was greatness there once as there was with Hemingway.”

  “I see,” Duane said.

  “No, you really can’t,” K.K. said. “You would have to have seen him in his prime, when he was handsome as a god and everything a Texas Ranger ought to be. No thicket too thick, no bandit too fierce for Hondo to take on. He arrested half the drug lords along the border, at a time when our border with Mexico was one of the most dangerous places on earth.