“My father respected him,” she added, “and he didn’t respect just any old boy with a badge.”
They drove for a while.
“Hondo was my first crush—I was maybe nine.”
Then her voice broke and she sobbed openly for a while. Duane handed her a Kleenex.
“If he lives I’ll take him to the ranch and make him head of security or something,” she said. “I don’t want him embarrassing himself like this.”
“The townspeople are up in arms now,” Duane informed her. “Double Aught rolled that patrol car almost fifty yards. Some of the old-timers are pretty hot—but that was coming anyway.”
“Maybe I should call the PR people,” she said.
“You can call them, but it won’t do any good—in fact it will make matters worse.”
“Why would it make them worse?”
“From the local point of view that would just mean more Yankees telling them what to do.”
“Yankee—I’m not a Yankee and neither are the PR people!
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “After all that we’ve tried to do around here, the locals still think we’re Yankees?”
“It doesn’t matter where you’re really from,” he said. “If you ain’t from here you’re a Yankee, and that’s that.”
“What a fucking stupid mind-set,” K.K. said.
“You’re right about that,” he said.
85
TO MAKE MATTERS worse the large black rhino known as Double Aught trotted out of Thalia and rose into myth.
His treatment of the famous Texas Ranger Hondo Honda outraged the whole state. Gun shops between Amarillo and Laredo immediately sold out of high-caliber rifles. The hunt was on; but the hunt was fruitless. Several amateur hunters, while sighting in their rifles, had their shoulders broken by the recoil of the big guns.
Soon the state bristled with so many overpowered weapons that the governor had to issue an appeal for calm.
Hondo Honda recovered from his accidentally self-inflicted wound and joined in the appeal for calm. He even admitted that he had approached Double Aught too hastily.
“If you don’t spook him I doubt he’d hurt a flea,” he said.
Flea or no flea, many posses were organized and many hunts launched. All were in vain. Everybody expected Double Aught to reappear when the circumstances suited him.
“He’ll come trotting up someday, like he always has,” Bobby Lee said.
This time he was wrong.
Another shipment of sixteen rhinos was ready in Africa, but K.K. had the mission delayed. Something was weird at the Rhino but neither K.K. nor any of her experts knew what.
And, as Duane had predicted, the townspeople of Thalia convinced themselves that they had had enough.
86
DESPITE THE INCREASINGLY vociferous local opposition to the Rhino Ranch, K.K. Slater persisted. She brought the sixteen new rhinos in, and then another, smaller batch. Nearly sixty rhinos came to live on the rolling plains of Texas.
The City Council turned against K.K. but they proved to be the weaker entity. K.K. had a great ranch, and a billion dollars. She did not intend to be muscled aside.
Hondo Honda, gaunt now but still possessing his Winchester, came frequently and stood beside K.K. It being a dry year, several bulldozers were put to work, plowing fire guards. Bobby Lee was put in charge of security operations.
K.K. came so often that it set tongues wagging, mainly because she stayed at Duane’s house when she came. Duane himself was often at his cabin during these visits, though he and K.K. usually ran into each other somewhere. The summer passed, then the fall, and still nothing had been seen of Double Aught.
Then the economy began to slide. Many of the expensive big game rifles were sold back to the gun shops where they had been purchased in the first place; though some of these shops were broke themselves, and soon found it necesary to close.
One day a major film producer came to K.K. with the idea of making a film called The Legend of Double Aught. In the film Double Aught would be an endearing old beast who was merely homesick for his home in Kenya. A major star would play a kindly shaman who arranged a spiritual transport of some kind: Double Aught would be whisked through the clouds back to his original home. A marketing plan was set in place—the major fast food chains would be filled with little rhino toys.
Unfortunately for the film, the producer was killed in a freak accident in New Mexico while he was participating in an illegal steer roping. He had been a cowboy star once and could actually rope—in this case fatally, when his horse fell on him.
From time to time Duane visited the offices of Moore Drilling. Once he happened by while Dal was not on her computer—on impulse he asked if she would go to dinner with him.
“There is no food in this town, Mr. Moore,” Dal said, with a little smile.
“Hard to argue with that,” Duane said. “I just thought I’d ask.”
“I have not said no,” Dal said, with her brief but delightful smile. “I want to eat with you. I am often lonely and I know you must often be lonely too. I want you to come to my room. If you allow me I will cook you a good meal.”
“Consider yourself allowed,” Duane said.
87
WHEN DAL ASKED Duane if he would like to have a meal in her room, he assumed he meant in her apartment. But when he finally managed to find the place he discovered that it was only a room, and that it was not in a nice or even safe part of town. Dal’s salary was larger than Annie’s had been, and yet Annie’s apartment had been in the best apartment building in town.
Dal’s room contained a small table, a minute cooking range and a pallet that must have been her bed.
“I am not strict,” Dal said. “But it would be most proper if you remove your shoes.”
Duane had no problem with removing his shoes, but sitting cross-legged, as Dal easily did, did not come easily. His joints were no longer fully cooperative, but he slowly eased himself down.
“Are you all right, sir?” she asked, as she watched him awkwardly get down.
“I’m fine, and you don’t have to call me sir,” he said.
He saw that his remark vexed Dal a little—he saw something in her gaze that surprised him.
“I said something wrong—I just don’t know what.”
Dal’s look softened just a bit, as she put a bowl of very good-smelling soup in front of him. Then she got herself a bowl and sat down.
“I must call you sir,” she said. “You are older than my father, and I work for your son. We Cambodians are a formal people, and much sorrow has made us even more formal. We do not offer friendship quickly, and sometimes we never offer it, Mr. Moore.”
“This is good soup, formal or not formal,” he said.
“Yes, but you must not change the subject, sir,” Dal said. “What two people call one another is a serious matter, particularly a man and a woman. If we share correct matters someday we may be friends,” Dal said. “Then I can use your name, but for now I must call you sir.”
Duane nodded. In fact he agreed. He had been casual in the wrong way.
Dal went on to feed him a delicious curry, the hottest he had ever eaten—in fact he could barely accept it.
“I can make it less hot,” she said, but he shook his head.
“I want to eat it the way you eat it,” Duane said.
“Okay, now I know.”
After the excellent meal Duane asked Dal why she lived in the place she lived.
“It is what I can afford,” she said, looking down.
Duane studied her. He didn’t want to make any more mistakes.
“I thought Dickie paid you well,” he said.
“He does, but I only keep a little,” she told him. “I send most of the money home—I have a large family, many brothers and sisters, many nieces and nephews. Without what I send they would be very poor, and suffer very much.”
Duane felt a fool. Of course he should have known that
. Most of the illegals who worked for Moore Drilling did exactly the same. They sent most of their money home.
“I have good siblings,” Dal said. “I am happy to help them and I would be unhappy if I didn’t.”
“Sorry, I should have figured that out,” he said. “But even so I worry about your safety in this place.”
Dal looked at him solemnly.
“I lived in Cambodia, sir,” she said. “You do not need to worry about me.”
88
FOR A FEW WEEKS, it seemed, America became obsessed with the disappearance of Double Aught. Bobby Lee, as manager of the tower, suffered the most aggravation from this obsession. Reporters, both from print and television, assembled almost daily to get an update on the news, which was no news. The big rhino was gone.
“If I’d known talking to the media was going to be part of my job, I’d have passed on the job,” Bobby said.
“Maybe Double Aught fell in a sinkhole and got swallowed up,” Duane mentioned. After all, sinkholes did occur. Moore Drilling had once lost a pickup to one.
“He weighs five thousand pounds,” Bobby Lee said. “It would have to be a helluva sinkhole.
“The latest theory is mass hypnosis,” Bobby Lee reported. “The people who sponsor it believe that Double Aught is the devil and he hypnotized America just to be mean.”
Across the road a pickup stopped and some longhairs who once would have been called hippies set up a table and began to unload rhino souvenirs of various kinds.
“Who’s that?” Duane asked.
“Some harmless little dope-heads,” Bobby Lee said. “They sell rhino T-shirts and dozer caps and shit. They’re polite enough and this is a country of free enterprise.”
“I thought that was what K.K. planned to do for Rhino Enterprises?”
“Yep, but she don’t seem to have got it off the ground,” Bobby Lee said. “And if there could be a more boring job than the one I have it would be selling T-shirts and dozer caps beside a road almost no one ever travels, in a part of Texas most people would rather avoid.”
They strolled down and introduced themselves to the young people, who were setting the table and propping up a shed. The young women looked to be about twenty-five—both were skinny, and their nipples were visible beneath their T-shirts—and were just the kind of women Bobby Lee had spent much of his life chasing.
One of the men—boys really—wore a mashed-up straw hat. The other, who was about to pump up some balloons, had lost a front tooth somewhere along the way, but seemed friendly.
“I’m Quentin,” he said. “And this is Thomas, Belle and Jane.”
“Howdy,” Duane said. “Hoping to do some business selling balloons?”
“Sure, it beats working,” Quentin said.
Then he looked at his companions a moment.
“We’re not really interested in the rhinos,” he said. “The truth is we’re Satanists and all this shit we’re selling is Satan-related. We’re setting up here hoping the rhinos would bring a little extra traffic along this road.”
“Satanists—I don’t think I ever seen one even,” Bobby Lee said.
“Well, now you’ve seen four,” Jane told him brashly. “And you can take it or leave it.”
“Oh, calm down, Jane—don’t be rude to the locals, who happen to be neighbors,” Quentin said. “And if they happen to be interested in the devil they’re welcome to come to our church.”
“You have a church of Satanism?” Duane asked, astonished.
“It’s over in Olney,” Thomas said. “It’s modest at the moment—actually it’s just my home. But we’re hoping to get a building of our own pretty soon. Give them some literature, Belle.”
“I been accused of being the devil plenty of times,” Bobby Lee admitted. “But I never expected to run into somebody who actually worships him.”
While they were chatting three pickups stopped. In no time Belle and Jane sold seven T-shirts with the devil on them.
“Bobby, they’re not only here, they’re doing business,” Duane said.
“Makes you dizzy, don’t it,” Bobby Lee said. He found himself wondering if Jane had a boyfriend.
Duane knew the look on his friend’s face.
“Are you getting ready to ask Jane for a date, or something?” Duane said.
“I could do worse,” Bobby Lee said. “In fact I mostly have done worse.”
89
I HEAR YOU’RE DATING my replacement,” Annie said, without preamble, early one morning.
“No, Dal doesn’t date anybody,” Duane told her. “She cooked me one meal, is all, and anyway I thought you were involved with some gentleman who plays cricket.”
“That’s over, such as it was,” Annie said. “I’d like it better if you weren’t dating my replacement.”
“We’re not dating,” Duane insisted. “I figured you’d accuse me of dating K.K. Slater, who stays at my house pretty often when she’s up here on business.”
“I did hear that,” Annie said. “I suppose both rumors could be true.”
“Both are false,” he said. “I did make a fool of myself, but that was with Casey Kincaid. But she shipped out for a busier place and since then I’ve just been batching.”
“I probably shouldn’t have divorced you,” Annie said. “Despite some quirks you’re nicer than most men. I wonder if it’s final yet.” Then she hung up.
Duane was inexpert at the new business of call indexing, though he made an effort. The number that finally came up was from the 310 area, which he knew was Los Angeles.
But when he called the number he got a message saying that the call was blocked.
What he did know was that he didn’t want Annie back.
It was several months before she called again, by which time she seemed to have forgotten that he was nicer than most men.
PART II
1
DAL’S TRYING to persuade me to go to college,” Duane said to Honor Carmichael, who was as silenced by the remark as he had been when Dal suggested it.
“I can barely spell,” he said, as if that fact alone would render him ineligible for college.
“That’s not much of an impediment,” Honor said. “Just get a computer with spell-check on it. You’ll have to acquire some computer literacy, of course, and the computer will help you with the spelling.
“So maybe your friend Dal is right. She’s beginning to sound like a woman of substance, unlike your recent wife.”
“Dal doesn’t usually make suggestions unless they’re good ones,” Duane said.
“I’d like to meet her, next time I’m in Texas,” Honor said.
“Why would you be in Texas?”
“Because my lover is in Houston, at M.D. Anderson—the cancer hospital.”
“What kind of cancer?”
“Leukemia—the deadly kind,” Honor said. “When she goes I might come and see you, like I did when Angie Cohen died. Except there won’t be any sex this time.”
Duane was silent.
“You should go to college, Duane,” she said. “There’s something called continuing education which is popular in colleges now. It’s chiefly designed to stimulate older people—it teaches them stuff they’ve never had time to learn.”
“What I never had time to learn would fill a barn,” Duane said. “I was so busy being an oilman that I didn’t even realize how little I knew. Whatever I’ve learned has mostly come after that day when I got out of my pickup and started walking.”
“And you met me and I made you read Proust,” Honor said. “I don’t know how much you got out of it but it certainly couldn’t have hurt you.”
“What should I study?”
“Send me a curriculum and maybe I can advise you,” she said. “And while we’re waiting you might consult Dal.”
“I think I’ll do that,” Duane said.
2
WHEN BOBBY LEE heard that Duane was planning to enroll in a continuing education program at Midwestern State Universit
y in Wichita Falls, he immediately became so angry and jealous that the tips of his ears turned red.
“All my life you’ve been lording it over me, Duane,” he said. “And once you get a college degree you’ll be fucking intolerable.”
Neither Bobby Lee nor Boyd Cotton still worked for Rhino Enterprises. K.K. Slater severed her connection with the project. A team of South Africans arrived and did their best to turn the Rhino Ranch into an impressive game preserve.
They built three bungalows to live in, and eventually got the rhino population up to seventy-nine animals. They had as little to do with the people of Thalia as possible. Once in a while the South Africans would hit the country-western bars in Wichita Falls and pick fights with cowboys, roughnecks or airmen. Sometimes they won the fights and sometimes they didn’t, but their effect on local affairs was minimal.
Bobby Lee had found a lucrative pumping job and had no regrets about leaving the Rhino Ranch.
Across the road the Satanists hung on for a while, but they didn’t like the South Africans, who didn’t like them, either, so eventually the Satanists moved to Olney, where they bought a small store and turned it into a church, near the air tractor factory. Other than the air tractor factory the two most newsworthy things in Olney were the Satanists and a one-arm dove hunt held every fall.
Efforts by the Baptists to run them out failed, as did a brief assault Bobby Lee made on the virtue of the young Satanist named Jane.
When Duane saw how upset Bobby Lee was by the news of his intention to go to college, he immediately asked Bobby Lee to go with him and take a few classes too.
“Go back to school? Me?” Bobby Lee said. He had not expected such a radical offer from his old friend Duane.