Rhino Ranch

  Duane shook his head.

  “Half the people in this town hate my guts already, just because I’m prosperous,” he told her. “I worked pretty hard for forty years in order to get prosperous, but the crowd at the Kwik-Sack don’t remember that.”

  “Some of them are too young to know it, Duane,” Honor said.

  “True,” Duane said. “But if I start ordering the townfolks around I’ll soon be in real trouble.”

  Honor had showered and was wrapped in one of Duane’s bathrobes.

  “I think you’re in real trouble anyway,” she said. “But the trouble you’re in is with yourself. Certain levels of luxury bother you, right?”

  “I guess they do,” he said.

  “Well, there’s really nothing wrong in flying a fish, or a chef, from Europe, if you’ve got the money,” she said. “K.K. has the money.

  “There’s nothing bad about serving snail’s eggs,” she went on. “It’s just boring. The bronzino was good, though, didn’t you think—that fish in the pastry shell?”

  “It was good,” Duane admitted. “But Bobby Lee and I could have caught her something just as tasty not twenty miles from here.”

  Honor looked at him silently for a moment.

  “You’re right—you certainly shouldn’t take K.K.’s job. You’ve got a class problem. I think I’ll jump in the pool and take a quick swim, if you don’t mind.”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Actually I did notice it, when I was your shrink,” she said, when she came back from her swim. “But that was the least of your problems then and I don’t remember addressing it. Of course at that time Angie was probably the only member of the upper class you’d ever seen, and except when we raided your garden you didn’t see much of her.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me—come on. I’m just a middle-class girl from Vernon, Texas.”

  “Well,” Duane said.

  “Well what?”

  “What about your girlfriends? If you spend your whole life, nearly, with upper-class girlfriends, don’t that make you upper-class—I don’t really know what upper-class is.”

  “I think you’re right, honey,” Honor said. “I sort of snuck into the upper class by fucking. Perceptive of you to see it.

  “Of course I am well educated,” she added.

  Duane said nothing.

  19

  BOBBY LEE TOOK the news of their nonemployment hard.

  “No big salary,” he said.

  “It’s me that’s out of work,” Duane said. “For all I know she’d still be happy to hire you.”

  “Not in a month of Sundays, she wouldn’t,” Bobby Lee said. “I’m just a workingman.”

  “So am I,” Duane reminded him. “I was the boss for a while but if I worked for K.K. I wouldn’t be the boss.”

  Bobby Lee thought about it.

  “Well, she did hire me once,” he mentioned. “She hired me and Boyd and after us it all went downhill.”

  “I think she’ll not only hire you again, this time it’ll be for more money.

  “Besides I think one other person has turned her down, and that’s Boyd. He says he can get all the work he wants being arena director at these little rodeos around here.

  “It’s not exactly cowboying, but it’s pretty close,” Duane said.

  “Actually K.K.’s the bossiest person I’ve ever met,” Bobby Lee said. “She should just stay around and do the bossing herself.

  “And mind Hondo—that old Ranger is fading fast.”

  “Yes, and it may be that we’ve been unfair to the man,” Duane said. “He had a big reputation once—I ’spect he must have done something to deserve it. But that doesn’t explain K.K. marrying him just as he was fading out.”

  “Maybe that shrink in your guest room could explain it,” Bobby said.

  “I don’t know—at one time Honor helped me get back to my right self, more or less. But she doesn’t exactly explain things—she just describes them in a smart way.”

  “She got you to read that book that I can’t get through ten pages of,” Bobby Lee reminded him. “And she got you to go to Egypt, and you’re not exactly what I’d call a traveling man.”

  After that, conversation lapsed, but two days later Bobby Lee was once again head security adviser at the Rhino Ranch. He got a bit of a raise, to boot, but there was one little drawback: he had to wear a uniform, and it itched.

  20

  HONOR CARMICHAEL DROVE off alone and made her land deal with Mike and Tommy, giving them two scrubby sections just north of their deli. Soon it was overrun with scrawny yearlings purchased for them by a cattle buyer with a big appetite for Asian-style barbecued pork.

  That night Honor and Duane went to dinner again at the penthouse of what had been the old Mitchell Hotel. This time Yves had secured some crayfish (crawdads to the locals) and also some Kobe beef. Duane had eaten Kobe beef several times before: Annie Cameron had approved of it and served it now and then in their home in Arizona. What he didn’t agree was that it was somehow better than well-fattened Texas beef.

  “I agree with that,” K.K. said. “But I’m breaking Yves in here and I think I should let him cook what he’s familiar with for a while. He’ll come around to local produce—all the good chefs do—but right now he doesn’t know what the local produce is, or where to find it.

  “Give him time,” she said.

  “You should start up your garden again,” Honor said. “Then Yves would have all the local produce he needs.”

  “What garden?” K.K. asked.

  “It’s one I planted as a memorial to my wife the year she got killed.”

  “He’s too modest—it was a world-class garden,” Honor assured her. “It was nearly an acre and it was free to the public too. Poor people could come as often as they wanted to.”

  “Maybe I will start it up again,” Duane said. “Though it’s a little too late for this year.”

  On the walk home Duane didn’t look toward the Kwik-Sack. He didn’t want to know who was there.

  21

  THE NEXT MORNING, having decided once again that walking would be his primary mode of locomotion, he strode briskly off toward the post office.

  On his way he happened to see a small dejected man sitting on the curb near where the old theater had been. The small man was smoking, but slowly and wearily. He was unshaven, with at least a three-day growth of stubble.

  The small man was Yves, the chef.

  “Hello,” Duane said, to be polite.

  “Hi,” Yves said.

  Duane walked on, got his mail and returned. Yves was still sitting there. He still smoked, and he still looked unhappy.

  “Hungry?” Duane asked.

  Yves looked surprised.

  “Why yes, I am hungry,” Yves said.

  “I live four blocks down the street,” Duane said. “Be happy to cook you breakfast. There won’t be any snail’s eggs, but my neighbor keeps chickens and I can probably snitch an egg or two and we can scramble them up.

  “And I’ve got some pretty good German sausage, from the little German community down the road. Don’t know if they’ll meet your standard.”

  Yves smiled, for the first time.

  “I’m licking my lips,” he said, in perfect English. “Anything you don’t have to fly in sounds good to me.”

  He got up and the two strolled along the empty street to Duane’s house.

  Out of his chef’s uniform Duane found the chef to be a friendly young man.

  “Where do you hail from?” he asked.

  “L.A., but I’ve lived all over,” Yves said.

  He watched carefully as Duane scrambled four large brown eggs, added a tomato and some good onions, and offered Yves a beer to wash it down with.

  “Good,” Yves said when he had cleaned his plate. “Thank you for rescuing me from the hell of post–Chez Panisse-ism.”

  “Before breakfast you didn’t look too happy,” Duane remarked.

  ??
?She fired me,” Yves said. “I was better off cooking for that old queen I was cooking for on the Riviera. I don’t think she means to chauffeur me back to the airport, either. I guess I need a taxi—does this town have a taxi?”

  “No, but don’t worry—I’m a man of leisure and I have two daughters that live fairly close to that airport. I can drop you off and visit my daughters.

  “Now my grandson would insist on hitchhiking, but you look like you could use a ride.”

  Yves grinned. “I’m pretty good at hitchhiking myself—I really don’t want to put you out.”

  “It wouldn’t be putting me out—it’d be giving me something to do,” Duane said.

  “And we might even be able to eat a little North Fort Worth barbecue on the way,” he added.

  “Deal,” Yves said. “Let’s go. I’ve got my passport and enough money to get me anywhere in the world. If we go back to the hotel that old Texas Ranger might shoot me.”

  “He wouldn’t do that, but she might,” Duane said.

  “Should we wash dishes?”

  “I think the dishes can wait,” Duane said. “I don’t know K.K. very well but I think she might be about to get her dander up.”

  “It’s up,” Yves said. “I’ll treat you to the barbecue. That was a perfect breakfast.”

  22

  “I COOKED ON K.K.’S ranch a few times,” Yves confided, as they were finishing the ribs and brisket in a dim eatery in North Fort Worth.

  “It was like feeding dinosaurs,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Yves said again, when Duane dropped him at Terminal C at D/FW. “If Thalia was your town instead of K.K.’s I might have learned to like it.”

  “Only natives really thrive in Thalia—if anybody thrives,” Duane said, and drove off.

  He rethought his initial resolution to go visit his daughters, and just went home. He was old and his daughters just middle-aged. Why not train them to come see him? After all, their idol K.K. Slater lived there, though, somehow, K.K. had not bothered to invite either of them to her penthouse dinners.

  Probably she just didn’t consider them weighty enough in financial-social terms to bother with except in the most limited way.

  “Don’t ever forget something about the very rich—there’s an aspect they share with the very poor,” Honor told him once.

  She looked at him to see if he wanted to guess, but he didn’t.

  He waited.

  “They’re mean,” she said. “They’re bred to unrealistic expections, which in high and low alike provokes bad behavior. Hemingway discovered how mean Alice B. Toklas was to Gertrude Stein, but no one ever discovered how mean Angie and Liz were to me.”

  He reflected on the comment as he drove home, changing highways at the last minute so as to visit Moore Drilling’s offices in Wichita Falls. He was hoping Dal might be free, but she wasn’t free and he felt silly waiting, when it was clear that he had no reason to be there except to chat with her.

  When he left he decided to stop by the Asia Wonder Deli and have a spring roll or two. To his surprise Tommy had a cast on his arm.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Tommy very bad cowboy,” Mike informed him. “Fall off his horse twelve times.”

  “And only broke one arm?”

  “Didn’t break it falling,” Tommy said. “Horse kick me and that’s how this arm broke.”

  Boyd Cotton walked in in time to hear that part of the conversation.

  “He got too close to that sorrel filly of mine,” he said.

  “How’s it coming with the Scottish cattle you’re supposed to be handling?” Duane asked.

  “I never thought I’d see a quadruped dumber than the nilgai, or more boring; but that was before I tried Scottish cattle,” Boyd said. “They’re fine cattle, but they are just plain reluctant to move. Whatever place they find themselves stopped at is good enough for them. They can eat all the grass right down to the roots and they still won’t move.”

  “Does K.K. ever come around?” Duane asked.

  “Not if she can help it and particularly not if she knows I’m there.”

  “That surprises me,” Duane said. “I thought you were the one person around here K.K. fully approved of.”

  “That was true at first,” Boyd acknowledged. “But then she noticed my independent attitude, and our relations suffered a change.”

  “How’d you know that your independent attitude was the problem?” Duane asked.

  Boyd just looked at him, and secured himself a little more pork barbecue.

  “I withdraw the question,” Duane said. “I helped one of her slaves escape this morning. She may not care for my attitude that much.”

  Later, driving home, Duane began to feel sorry for having spoken harshly of K.K. Slater. Boyd Cotton, whom K.K. clearly respected, had been rather harsh also. But why? K.K. had not done anything bad to either of them. If there was anyone in the North Texas projects she didn’t treat as help, it would surely be Boyd, and after Boyd, himself.

  She was no more to blame for being born rich than the watchers in the Kwik-Sack parking lot were for being born poor, or being brought up ignorant.

  At least K.K. hadn’t heard them being harsh—it was some consolation, but not much.

  23

  FEELING VERY MUCH at loose ends Duane drove home. As he was walking to his back door he heard sounds from the pool and went to see what was what. To his surprise K.K. Slater was the swimmer. She was swimming purposely the length of the pool time after time. She wore goggles and a bathing cap. When she saw Duane she swam to the edge of the pool and ripped off her bathing cap.

  “I hate bathing caps,” she said. “It’s not as if my hair was anything to write home about anyway.”

  Duane had supposed K.K. might be annoyed with him for having spirited away Yves but she wasn’t.

  “It was nice of you to take the little diva to the airport,” she said, climbing out of the pool. She wore an old-fashioned, one-piece bathing suit.

  “He didn’t seem like he was going to make the adjustment to North Texas life.”

  “It doesn’t seem like I am, either,” K.K. said. “My lap pool leaked, which is why I took a chance and borrowed your pool. I’ve been spoiled by my own help—I mean my native South Texas help. I have a lap pool at home and it’s never leaked. One virtue I can’t claim is patience. I want things to work like they’re supposed to work, damnit!

  “Is that too much to ask?” she said.

  “Yes,” Duane said.

  K.K. stared at him for a moment and then agreed.

  “You’re right—nothing’s perfect on this planet,” she said, “though Boyd Cotton’s number-one quarter horse comes pretty close.

  “Do you have even a spark of sexual interest in me?” she asked.

  “K.K., I’m so far over the hill that I can’t remember what the hill felt like,” he said.

  “Hondo and I have what the French call a mariage blanc,” she said. “I suppose the whole town knows that. The old boy’s ridden his last ride, if you want to be nice about it.

  “When Hondo was young he saved my father’s life twice in desperate situations—that border has always been wild,” she said. “I promised Daddy I’d always look after Hondo, and I have. His balls are in his abdomen, you know.”

  Duane was stunned. “They’re where?” he asked.

  K.K. seemed unaware that her news was a kind of bombshell.

  “I don’t know the whole story, but Hondo got a bad disease in Mexico once, which meant that his balls had to be stitched into his abdomen. Fortunately he had already sired his family by then.”

  She gathered up her towels and got ready to depart.

  “Use the pool anytime,” Duane said.

  “I will, but I still want my damn lap pool to stop leaking,” she said.

  24

  BOBBY LEE BAXTER, who had had both testicular cancer, losing one ball in the process, and also a daring penile implant that he liked to talk about when he
could find anyone who would listen, was riveted by the news of Hondo Honda’s problem.

  “I’ve heard of that disease—it’s one reason I stay out of Old Mexico,” he said. “They say your balls get as big as grapefruits.”

  “But, Bobby, there’s hormones now—if you was to lose your other ball you get by on hormones and probably do fine.”

  “Hormones might make me grow tits,” Bobby said.

  “Could you imagine me with tits?” he asked.

  “Even if I could I’d rather not,” Duane admitted.

  “It was you brought up Hondo and his problems,” Bobby reminded him.

  “Yes, and I bitterly regret it,” Duane said.

  25

  UNDER PRESSURE FROM virtually everyone he knew, Duane finally broke down and got a cell phone, one of those with a little holster that he could clip to his belt.

  The first person to call him on it was the person who had called him most often, over the years: Bobby Lee Baxter.

  “I didn’t believe you’d really answer,” Bobby Lee said. “I consider you the last holdout, and now you ain’t held out.”

  “You’re no one to talk—you were the first person I knew to get a cell phone.”

  “Yeah but I was in the hunt, and you wasn’t,” Bobby said.

  “I still like phone booths better, but there’s very damn few left,” Duane said. “The cell phone’s killed the phone booth.”

  “Be old-fashioned if you want to,” Bobby said. “I’ve gotten quite a few pieces of ass thanks to the cell phone.”

  “How many?” Duane asked. He was determined to pin his friend down.

  “At least two,” Bobby claimed.

  Duane unclipped his cell phone and its holster and put it on the table in the cabin, where he had been spending a lot of time.

  It was three days before the cell phone rang and when it did ring it was Dal.

  “Mr. Moore, are you feeling bad?”she asked.

  “Not particularly, but then I’ve been at the cabin for three days.”