Rhino Ranch

  “Our computers are down,” Dal said. “They are down all over Texas. I thought of you and was thinking we could go eat at that place run by those weird Sri Lankans—if you would like to. They say the computers will be down for three hours—so we would have time.”

  “I would just love to,” Duane said. “I hoped to talk to you the other day but you were too busy.”

  “I know—I knew you needed me but I had to do my job,” she said. “I had to pay attention to the sands.

  “I would like to help you now, if it is not too late,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Duane said. “It is not too late.”

  26

  THEY AGREED TO meet at the Asia Wonder Deli. Duane got there first but Dal soon arrived driving one of the company’s pickups—an old one, much dented. She drove with confidence, though, and was wearing a conical hat to protect herself from the fierce sun.

  At the deli she first ordered tea, smiling at Mike, who liked her.

  Duane asked for iced tea, which caused Dal to wrinkle her nose.

  “Tea is drunk all over the world,” she said. “Most places it is served hot, which brings out the flavor. Yet you Texans drink it iced. I don’t know why.”

  “I was raised drinking it cold,” Duane said. “I was grown before I knew about hot tea.”

  They secured one of the tiny tables and Mike and Tommy plied Dal with their finest delicacies.

  “Are those rhinos still around?” Dal asked.

  “They’re around but they try to keep them away from the roads,” Duane said.

  “It was a mistake to bring those animals here,” Dal said, very firmly. “The sooner they are all dead the better.”

  “Well, the whole point of bringing them here was to keep them from being all dead, which I guess would happen pretty soon if we’d left them in Africa.”

  “If I were free and did not need to work I would take you as far from those animals as I could,” she said. “I felt yesterday, when I was working, that you needed me. Many would need me if I let them, but since my husband was killed I have pushed away these men who need me. But I don’t want to push you away. I want to help you in my modest way.”

  “You have helped me,” he said. “You have.

  “And I’d like to help you too—I’d like for Dickie to provide you with a better pickup, for one thing.”

  Dal put her hand on his.

  “This is not about pickups, Mr. Moore,” she said. “Yesterday when I was busy I felt you pulling at me. You didn’t interrupt, but I felt you pulling anyway. But today the computers are down. I can try to help.”

  “Would you live with me?” Duane asked, to his own surprise. “You could have your own wing of the house. This wouldn’t involve sex, if you didn’t need it to. I know how hard you work, but we could eat together, maybe. Of course if you had to work late I’d understand. I’ve worked late a lot, myself.”

  There was a pause. Dal looked at him a long time, but pleasantly. But she did not make an immediate reply to his request.

  “I see now,” she said. “I didn’t know you were so lonely.”

  Just then her cell phone rang—it was Dickie.

  “They’re coming up,” he said. “The computers, I mean?”

  Dal immediately rose.

  “Think about it—and I’m going to see that you get a better pickup.”

  “No—I like my little beat-up pickup,” Dal said. “You men always focus on the wrong things.”

  She squeezed his hand though, and then left, leaving his question unanswered.

  When he thought back on the conversation it embarrassed him a little that he had asked a woman he barely knew to live with him. And yet she had not been offended by the request. Once he was alone again he realized that Dal had called one thing right. He was lonely. When he got back to the big house he watched the Tennis Channel for a while—and he was still lonely.

  27

  ONCE HE HAD had enough of tennis—the U.S. Open was on—he walked out in his garden to get a tomato. He stood for a while, enjoying the starlight. When he got back to his kitchen he noticed that his message light was blinking. The message was from Dal and asked him to call her as soon as he could.

  “I am a late-hours person,” she said in her message. “You won’t wake me.”

  Duane called her back immediately.

  “Howdy,” he said, a little nervously.

  “Oh, now you play the cowboy,” Dal said lightly. “You are no more a cowboy than those silly Sri Lankans—I think they are probably Bangladeshis anyway. They work too hard to be Sri Lankans. I think they called themselves Sri Lankans because it sounds more Oriental. And who would know?”

  “Well, not me,” Duane said.

  “I see you have a hard time coming to the point,” she said. “You asked me to live with you and I accept. I can come tonight, if you wish. I have very little—just my few clothes. So, yes or no, should I come?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Come but be careful on the roads.”

  “Dickie will not be very happy with my decision,” she said. “I will need a few computer hookups—will you ask him to do that for me?”

  “I sure will—I doubt he’ll mind.”

  “You are wrong about that,” Dal said. “But I don’t think he’ll fire me—I make him too much money.”

  “He won’t fire you, I’ll see to that,” Duane said. “I still have some influence with the company.”

  “You don’t have much,” Dal said.

  Duane thought about it and realized Dal was probably right. He hung up and went back outside. The night was brilliantly starlit.

  In thirty minutes Dal in the beat-up pickup swung into his driveway. Duane helped her carry her few things into his house.

  She inspected her room—it had once been the master bedroom and she seemed to like it.

  “Plenty of wall space to put in the computers,” she said. “Thank you for this—now we are buddies, right?”

  “Right.”

  “This way neither of us will be quite so lonely,” she said, and closed her door.

  28

  THE NEXT MORNING Dal left early—before first light—Duane had just walked out to his garden, intending to do some weeding. Dal gave a friendly toot on her horn and was gone.

  He had a saddle shed and a little pasture west of his house—the small pasture was about ten acres. At the moment he was allowing Hondo Honda to leave his aging quarter horse there, since it was in easy walking distance of the Mitchell Hotel where Hondo lived.

  Dal’s taillights were just a red spot in the distance when Hondo himself came striding along. He moved a good deal more briskly than he had been moving lately. In five minutes he had caught his horse and saddled up. Duane had slept poorly—the dramatic move he and Dal had just made was much on his mind. So far Dal and Hondo both were outperforming him.

  Hondo had lifted the horse’s left front leg and was giving the hoof a critical examination.

  “Need to get this old pony shod pretty soon,” Hondo said.

  “What brings you out so early?” Duane asked.

  “Just felt like a trot,” Hondo said. “K.K.’s off to Dallas, to one of them dern meetings.

  “Said she’d be back for supper,” he added.

  He started out of the driveway and then turned once more to Duane.

  “Tell her not to worry none about her Texas Ranger,” he said. “She’ll always be my little bride.”

  Then he trotted off down the highway toward the Rhino Ranch.

  To Duane’s mind Hondo looked snappier than he had ever looked. He stood watching, quietly surprised as the sun lifted above the horizon.

  Pretty soon Bobby Lee’s pickup appeared, headed in the other direction from Hondo. When their trajectories narrowed for a second Bobby Lee waved at Hondo and Hondo waved at him. Duane stood and waited until Bobby Lee pulled up.

  “Hondo’s looking chipper, for a change,” Duane observed.

  “It could be good eating and re
gular sex,” Bobby Lee suggested.

  “Somehow I doubt it’s regular sex,” Duane said.

  He told Bobby about Dal moving in.

  “I hope Dickie won’t be too upset,” Duane said.

  “Dickie would only mind if it affected Dal’s work and it won’t,” Bobby said. “Your girls will have a fit though.

  “They won’t want a gook sleepin’ in their mama’s bed.”

  “Their mother’s bed was sold ten years ago, at least,” Duane reminded him. “Other people lived in the house for a while. They both know that.”

  Just then Bobby Lee’s cell phone rang. He contemplated ignoring it, and then answered. After all a rhino might be on a rampage. The Hartman brothers were once again his backup squad, and it was one of them who called.

  “He what—no way!” he said, profoundly shocked.

  “What?” Duane asked.

  “Hondo just hung himself, that’s what. Climbed to the top of the tower, tied a rope to a pipe, put his head in the noose and jumped.”

  “And nobody tried to stop him?” Duane said, deeply shocked himself.

  “Dub or Bub stop a Texas Ranger?” Bobby said. “That’ll be the day.”

  Duane got in the pickup and they raced to the North Tower, where, sure enough, Hondo Honda was hanging from a rope. The drop had almost torn his head off. His rifle, in its scabbard, lay on the ground below him.

  Pickups full of oilfield workers or cowboys began to stop—several already lined the roads.

  “He dropped his rifle—he’d hate that if he knew it,” Bobby Lee said.

  29

  THE TEXAS RANGER known as Hondo Honda, whose real name was George Brody, was buried with some ceremony in the cemetery of his hometown of Cuero, in South Texas. At the last minute it was decided not to bury his famous scabbarded rifle with him—it was given, instead, to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, in Waco. The Hall of Fame got his pistol too. All that went into the coffin with him were his spurs and his Texas Ranger badge.

  K.K. Slater, his bride of a few weeks, flew her own plane to the funeral. She asked Duane to come. She plainly was grieving, so he went to support her.

  Sixteen serving Texas Rangers were at the funeral. The governor had meant to attend, but chucked at the last minute. An aide came and read a special commendation from the governor and the state legislature. Hondo’s old quarter horse had been brought to Cuero, and was formally unsaddled for the last time—K.K. was putting him out to pasture once he had played his part in the historic funeral. Hondo’s first wife had not been able to make it but his three sons were there, all looking uncomfortable in their suits.

  There was talk of a twenty-one-gun salute, but with only sixteen Rangers able to make it that plan was abandoned.

  K.K. and Duane were driven back to the tiny airport by one of the Rangers.

  “As a courtesty to you I won’t start getting drunk until we land,” she said to Duane.

  There were tears on her cheeks.

  “Not much of a record, for me,” she said. “I marry for the first time at fifty-two and my husband hangs himself a month later.”

  “Just before he rode off he said you were his ‘little bride,’” Duane told her.

  “Hondo loved clichés, as you may have noticed,” she said. “Nevertheless I’ll mourn him forever. When he was young he was the most handsome man in the world, and the bravest.”

  In a little while they landed, flying out of a red sunset that made the whole plain seem fiery.

  Bobby Lee met them and drove them into town. Duane mentioned to K.K. that Dal had moved in to live with him as a companion.

  K.K. looked startled—Duane realized that she had probably never met Dal, or even heard of her. She was one of many workers.

  If K.K. felt personally slighted by the news she didn’t show it. When she asked where Dal was from he said Cambodia.

  “Dickie works her hard,” he added.

  “I wonder why you have such a thing for these young analysts,” she said.

  “Dal’s not real young,” he said. “She’s in her forties, somewhere.”

  “However old she is your daughters are going to hate it,” she said.

  Then she went into the hotel where she lived.

  “See, I told you,” Bobby Lee said.

  “Well, if it’s a problem, it’s my problem,” Duane said.

  30

  THE TROUBLE CAME in a phone call, both sisters on the line. Nellie was the most irate. Julie had a tendency to sulk during crises.

  “She only wants your money, Daddy, otherwise she wouldn’t be sleeping with an old man like you,” Nellie said, not quietly. “She’s just a little gold digger like Annie Cameron.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” Duane said. “In the first place Annie Cameron was richer than all of us put together. She has her problems but she doesn’t need to gold-dig.

  “Beside which,” he went on, “Dal makes extremely good money. She doesn’t need to gold-dig, either.

  “And in the third place Dal and I are not lovers, but we’re both old enough to need a little quiet companionship now and then.”

  “Baloney,” Julie said. “Why would you bring her here unless you wanted to fuck her?”

  “I didn’t bring her here, Dickie did—and I have to say I don’t like your tone.”

  “I don’t want her sleeping in our mother’s bed,” Nellie said.

  “Be hard for her to do that since your mother’s bed got sold more than ten years ago.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “And I particularly don’t like it that you’re talking trash about a decent woman you’ve never met.”

  “We’re just trying to protect you, Daddy,” Julie said. “You’ve always been a kind of a sucker when it comes to women.”

  “And that includes your mother?”

  “You all were real young then,” Nellie said.

  “Keep in mind that I asked her to move in and I didn’t do it immediately,” he said. “The fact is I need her, not as a lover but as a friend. And I have to say I’m very disappointed in both of you. I’d like it better if you were at least mannerly.”

  “This isn’t about manners, Daddy,” Julie said.

  “Everything is about manners, Julie,” he said. “And until both of you grow up and apologize I don’t want to see either one of you around here.”

  “Well,” Nellie said, in a shocked tone.

  “I mean it,” Duane said, and hung up.

  31

  THE NEWS THAT Duane Moore had banished his daughters from his big house spread through Thalia in maybe an hour. It might be that the news traveled faster because neither of the Moore girls had ever been popular. Even as little girls they were judged to be snooty. Marrying rich urban husbands didn’t improve matters, even when both of the marriages failed. One of the girls became a nun, briefly; the other became a lesbian, also briefly. The few who bothered to assign blame for the girls’ snotty behavior blamed Karla, their mother, now dead many years.

  “That Karla, she was a wild one—should have paid more attention to those kids,” was a comment frequently heard. It was heard at the bank, the filling station, the post office or the Kwik-Sack, the normal channels through which public opinion flowed, as it had all Duane’s life.

  When Dal learned that Duane had banished his daughters, mainly on her account, she seemed to take it in stride.

  “In their minds I have taken their father,” she said. “I am not surprised that they resent me.

  “Still, they do not seem very grown-up,” she added.

  “That’s the problem, they’re not.”

  “I like living with you,” Dal said. “But maybe it was a mistake.”

  “It was no mistake—we get along, don’t we? I suggested it. I want to live with you.”

  They were having tea—hot—on his deck. It was well after sundown, but the redwood planks were still hot from the day’s sun.

  “I think Annie Cameron wants you back,” Dal sa
id. “She is very jealous of me. She thinks everything should be hers.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “She thinks everything should be hers—while she wants it, that is.”

  “Life is not consistent, Duane,” Dal said—she had finally dropped the “Mr. Moore.”

  She got up to put the teapot back on the counter when Duane’s phone rang.

  “Fucking her yet?” Annie asked.

  “You’re as rude as my daughters,” he said.

  “Well, she’s got my husband and she’s got my job,” Annie said. “Don’t mind if I am rude.”

  “You left your husband and you quit your job,” he reminded her. “And these things happened long before Dal arrived. I’m going to tell you what I told my daughters—leave me alone if you can’t be more polite.”

  “You didn’t answer my question—are you fucking her yet?”

  Duane hung up.

  32

  K.K. USUALLY ASKED Duane to breakfast at her penthouse. Dal would long since have been at work. She left his house at three-fifteen and was hard at work by three-thirty.

  K.K. frequently made breakfast herself, usually steak and eggs and hash browns, with Duane contributing a couple of tomatoes.

  Duane enjoyed his breakfasts with K.K., and it was not lost on the citizens of Thalia that he was breakfasting with one woman and dining with another.

  Often he and K.K. sat together, looking off to the horizons, under a bright clear sky.

  “I ought to get back to work but I can’t get Hondo off my mind—poor man.”

  “Karla just died in a simple accident but I was a long time getting over her—if I have,” he said.

  “I’ve had a skimpy sex life and now here I am fifty-two,” K.K. said. “I’m not particularly good-looking but I am very rich.”

  “Is that much of a help?”

  “Means I could buy a stud,” she said. “But I never seem to get around to it.”

  “There’s probably an answer but I don’t know it,” he said.

  “I hear the people think you have an Asian mistress,” she said.