Rhino Ranch

  “Willy?” Honor guessed.

  “That’s right, Willy, my favorite grandson.”

  There was a silence.

  “Helping Willy’s a good enough reason to go home,” Honor said. “Didn’t you buy your big house back?”

  “I did, it was Dickie’s idea,” Duane said. “We did it mainly to protect the property from a drug dealer that wanted to use it as his warehouse.”

  “I only met Willy once, but he seemed like a great kid,” Honor said. “Go home and be there in case he needs you.”

  Duane thought for a minute—the conversation had taken a surprising tack. Willy was growing up fast, and it would be fun to spend more time with him.

  “You’re never really through with your home, Duane,” Honor said. “You sort of can’t be.”

  “I wonder if Annie knows that,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything about her upbringing but the tendency of the rich is to keep on the move. It unsettles their kids, who often grow up feeling they had no real home.

  “If I were still a shrink I’d advise that you and I have a few sessions together. I want to hear more about why you feel marginal,” Honor said.

  “It’s the best word I can think of.”

  “Here’s another word you might consider: old,” she said. “Many aging people feel marginal, to some degree. For decades they’re at the center of things, and then one day they’re not. They slip over to the sidelines. They become marginal, and next thing you know they’re old.”

  They didn’t talk much longer. As usual, though, Honor Carmichael had told him something that felt true.

  5

  BOYD COTTON WAS generally held to be the best all-round cowboy in the Thalia region, a distinction he had held for almost sixty years. He had one or two peers among local cowboys, but no superiors.

  In any local roundup, if he was available, he did the roping—the premier job. He had always been willing to head into the thorniest thicket, to bring out the wildest and wooliest cattle.

  Boyd lived alone in a small, seldom painted frame house that stood on what had been his grandparents’ homestead. A time or two he had attempted to lease a hundred acres or so and run a few steers of his own, but mainly, all his life, he had lived on freelance cowboying, a day here, two days there.

  But, as ranching slowly died, Boyd found it harder and harder to get work. Often he hauled his quarter horse a hundred miles each way, in order to get a day’s cowboying.

  Much as he loved cowboying, Boyd Cotton did not delude himself about its future—or lack of it. When Rhino Enterprises showed up and offered him a job, he took it at once, and became, for the first time in his life, a salaried man.

  Bobby Lee Baxter, who had always been a salaried man—mostly for Moore Drilling—signed up with Rhino Enterprises the same day as Boyd.

  In that part of Texas cowboys and oil people had never mixed particularly well. The cowboys were mounted men when possible, and considered themselves lords of the earth, whereas working on a drilling platform soon drove any innate haughtiness out of a man. Oil workers ended their days covered in oil and mud; many of them were never entirely clean.

  Still, since they were—before the twins arrived—the only local employees of Rhino Enterprises, Bobby Lee and Boyd edged into friendship. One day they were high on their platform, contemplating lunch, when a line of trucks loaded with white pipe began to bump through the cattle guard. The truck drivers waved at Boyd and Bobby, and continued on west with their loads.

  “Thirty-eight miles of rhino-proof fence she’s planning to build,” Bobby Lee said. “How many of them big mean rhinos will fit inside thirty-eight miles of fence?”

  “When the XIT Ranch existed it had six thousand miles of fence,” Boyd reminded him. He enjoyed surprising Bobby Lee with a statistic now and then.

  “Yeah, but that was just little scratchy barbed wire,” Bobby Lee countered. “It would barely keep in yearlings. This fence they’re about to build is supposed to withstand the charge of a bull elephant.”

  “The day there’s a charging bull elephant anywhere in these parts is the day I immigrate to Montana,” Boyd said. “I once saw a Hereford bull knock over a cattle truck, since which I’ve done my best to avoid any of the larger species when they’re angry.

  “Ever slept with a millionairess?” he asked—it was an abrupt change of subject.

  “Not only have I never slept with a millionairess,” Bobby Lee said, “I’ve never slept with a woman who wasn’t several hundred dollars in debt, which of course she expected me to take care of for her.”

  Boyd didn’t respond.

  “And being the generous soul women seem to know me to be, I always do take care of it, ever damn time.”

  Boyd Cotton continued to hold his peace.

  “And then what happened?” Bobby Lee continued before answering his own question. “Two of the women ran off with hardened criminals, and the third had the bad manners to shoot me in the stomach, which brought me to the very brink of death.”

  “I may have been wise to mainly stick to horses,” Boyd observed.

  6

  NOT LONG BEFORE Rhino Ranch began to take shape, Duane, on his son, Dickie’s, advice, bought a section of land on a low bluff near the Little Wichita River. Though too small an acreage to run cattle on, it did have a hay shed and a small set of pens. Boyd Cotton kept his two quarter horses on the property. Boyd was still much in demand as an arena director at many local rodeos. If any of the bucking stock got fractious, Boyd could be depended on to move them smoothly out of the arena.

  The property was adjacent to another section across the small river. Duane’s little frame cabin stood atop a low hill. A decade ago Duane had launched his one-man clean-up crusade against mess and litter along the dirt roads around Thalia from his cabin. Ever since, he had occasionally used the cabin as a refuge in times of inner struggle. For a while he horrified his family and everyone else in the town by parking his pickup and walking everywhere. Then he horrified his kin even more by going into therapy with Honor Carmichael, who made him read Proust and indicated that a bicycle was a handy way to get around.

  Buying back his big house to protect it from drug dealers seemed only half right to Duane, though he knew that the local constabulary was hard put even to protect themselves from the same danger. But buying the land below the little bluff seemed entirely fitting. If worst came to worst he could live in his old cabin, or build another on the bluff across the creek.

  At times, Duane liked to fish, though at other times fishing bored him. His usual fishing buddy, Bobby Lee, mainly went fishing in order to escape the scorn of whatever mean woman he was hooked up with at the time.

  At home in Patagonia, Annie was packing to take her longest trip yet, to Tajikistan, where, soon, the distant country would open the longest pipeline in the world, the event Annie was going to help celebrate. She had halfheartedly asked him to go with her on this trip and when he declined she got angry.

  “I don’t go to places whose name I can’t spell,” he said lightly.

  “Bullshit,” Annie said. “You went to Egypt because fucking Honor Carmichael told you to!”

  “But I can spell Egypt,” he said. It didn’t help—despite the fact that he was often jealous himself, he had a tendency to forget about jealousy.

  Annie stomped off and no more was said about him visiting Tajikistan. But the night before she left they made love successfully.

  “It was because you let me have those two lamb chops for dinner,” he said, but Annie had faded into postcoital sleep and didn’t answer.

  The next morning Duane dropped Annie at the Tucson airport and, a day later, caught his own plane to Dallas/Fort Worth. While he was waiting for his luggage he called Bobby Lee.

  “Think the Rhino Ranch could spare you for a night or two of bass fishing?” he asked.

  “Why, sure,” Bobby said. “We’re only riding herd—at least Boyd is—on fifteen rhinos so far. A lot of pipe arriv
ed the other day, which might be a good sign.”

  On his way home Duane detoured through North Fort Worth and ate a hefty platter of good North Fort Worth barbecue; it made up for a lot of egg whites.

  7

  WHEN DUANE PULLED up to his big house in Thalia, two men in expensive-looking three-piece suits were waiting for him. A black SUV with “Rhino Enterprises” painted on the side was parked by the garage.

  “Well, if you’re Duane Moore, then I guess we didn’t miss you, after all,” the taller man said.

  “You came close, though,” Duane said. “If I had stopped in Jacksboro for a milk shake, like I usually do, I wouldn’t be here yet. As it is I’m here but I don’t know why you need to see me.”

  The tall man handed him a nicely designed Rhino Enterprises business card.

  “There’s a long version, sir, but the short version is that Rhino Enterprises wants to buy your house,” the stockier of the two men said.

  “I’ve no interest in selling you my house—or anybody my house,” Duane said. He knew the two were land men—he had dealt with hundreds like them while he was running his oil company. Land men were by nature aggressive. He didn’t hold it against them but he didn’t intend to let it delay him, either.

  “Besides that, I’ve traveled a long way and am in a hurry to get off on a fishing trip,” he said. “Meeting’s over.”

  “We work for K.K. Slater,” the tall man said. “K.K.’s philosophy is that everything’s for sale. It’s kind of a working principle for her.”

  “I guess I’m the exception that proves the rule, because my house isn’t for sale,” Duane said. “I’m afraid your boss will just have to live with that.”

  “We’re also interested in that section of land you bought on the Little Wichita River,” the stubby fellow said.

  “That’s also not for sale and now I’m going to pick up a few lures and go fishing,” Duane said.

  He unlocked his house and went in, leaving the two land men standing on his patio. By the time he washed his face and began to collect his tackle the land men in the black SUV were gone.

  8

  THOUGH HE HAD vanquished the land men easily enough this time, Duane knew that the rodeo wasn’t over. A new force had come into the county, a force so rich that its representatives assumed they could just keep raising the financial ante until they got what they wanted.

  A call to his son, Dickie, did nothing to dilute that impession.

  “Sure, they came here first,” Dickie told him. “Burton and Norm—the tall one’s Burton but the shrewd one is Norm. They’d be happy to have your house but what they really want is that section by the river—tourists could sit on that little bluff and watch the rhinos at play just across the road.”

  “Yeah, but there’s one hundred and twenty thousand acres across the road,” Duane pointed out. “What if the rhinos don’t want to stand around and be gawked at?”

  “I expect they’re counting on Boyd Cotton or somebody to sort of ease a few rhinos over by the paying guests,” Dickie said.

  “Well, Boyd could probably manage that,” Duane admitted.

  “That’s not what Norm actually said, it’s just my deduction,” Dickie said. “They’re going to build a world-class veterinarian facility somewhere on the property—a place you could take a sick hippo, if you had one.”

  “A sick hippo—this is making me dizzy,” Duane said.

  Dickie chuckled. “It’s making the whole county dizzy,” he said. “There used to just be millionaires to contend with, but now there’s billionaires, Daddy—nearly a thousand of them in America and probably more than that in Russia.”

  Duane let that soak in.

  “Have you met K.K. Slater yet?” he asked.

  “I sure have,” Dickie said. “And I do think she’s serious about wanting to save the black rhino.

  “Other than that, I don’t know what to think,” Dickie admitted. “Good luck with the fishing.”

  9

  WHILE BOBBY LEE was gathering up his fishing gear, a task that took longer than it should have because Bobby couldn’t immediately find his lure box or the one dozer cap that he thought brought him good luck, Duane considered calling Tajikistan, where Annie was, but he wasn’t sure he had the time difference right and the last thing he wanted to do was wake up his very likely jet-lagged wife.

  So he compromised, as he had so often lately: he called Honor Carmichael.

  “We’re not having phone sex, not now and not ever,” Honor said, with a chuckle.

  “I wouldn’t even know how to start phone sex,” Duane said. In fact the idea shocked him.

  “You barely know how to do real sex, either,” Honor said, lightly.

  “Do you know K.K. Slater?” he asked—Honor was the only person he knew, other than his wife, who might move in billionairess circles of the sort K.K. Slater probably moved in.

  “I saw her at a polo match once, but that was at least twenty years ago,” Honor said. “Of course I read about that Save-the-Rhino project she’s doing somewhere in your part of the country. Is it really happening?”

  “Seems to be,” Duane said. “Bobby Lee works for her and so does a cowboy I know.”

  “You’re using me like the Social Register,” she added.

  “That’s because you’re the only person I know who’s in a Social Register,” he said.

  “Not so. Both your daughters are in the Dallas Social Register—I keep a copy handy because my gifted girlfriend sells a painting in Dallas, now and then.

  “Being in the Social Register is not exactly a crime,” Honor said.

  “I don’t really understand why there needs to be a Social Register, much less why my daughters are in one,” he admitted.

  “Have you met K.K. yet?” Honor asked.

  “No, but she tried to buy my house, and also a little piece of land I own out by the Rhino Ranch,” he told her.

  “I see,” Honor said.

  “See what?”

  “She wants something you own, and you won’t sell,” Honor said.

  “Correct.”

  “Well, this might be interesting,” Honor said.

  10

  DUANE AND BOBBY LEE, having been fishing buddies for more than thirty years, were well used to one another’s behavior in a boat. In the main their ways were quiet ways. Conversation would be minimal for long stretches, and sometimes it didn’t occur at all. When Bobby Lee was in a rowdy mood he went to honky-tonks, not lakes. In honky-tonks there were like to be women who might appreciate his wit, when he could summon any.

  Duane considered that he lacked even a smudge of rowdiness—at least various women had mentioned this lack to him.

  Neither man applied himself very seriously at first to the serious sport of bass fishing. Thus it came as a huge shock to both of them when Bobby Lee hooked a large bass and brought it into the boat.

  Bobby Lee was so stunned by his achievement that he was, for a time, speechless. The fish tipped the scale at sixteen pounds.

  “This has got to be the luckiest day of my life, unless you count the day that mean Odessa woman shot me,” he said finally.

  “What’s so lucky about being shot by a mean Odessa woman?” Duane asked.

  “She didn’t hit no vital organs, that’s what,” Bobby Lee reminded him.

  The rest of the day was spent exhibiting Bobby Lee’s great catch to the little community of Possum Kingdom, where the lake was, and the larger community of Graham, a town nearby. Newspapers from as far away as Olney sent photographers, and television crews from two local stations soon showed up.

  The reaction of the press left little doubt that big bass were newsworthy in the Possum Kingdom area.

  To all these celebrants Bobby Lee was courtesy itself, while remaining modest to a fault. Duane put up with this hubbub mainly because, for once, he got to see his lifelong friend take on a kind of shine. It was the shine of the successful man, and Duane was really happy to see it because for much of his
life Bobby Lee had exhibited the resignation of the defeated man. Or, when he didn’t actually look defeated, he wore the grim look of a man who was barely holding his own.

  At one point Duane left Bobby Lee to his happy audience and rowed across the lake, where he caught two three-pounders and a gar. Hooking a gar was always a nuisance, but Duane had hooked many in his time and knew how to get rid of it.

  The record sixteen-pounder got taken to a taxidermist, and, later, Duane and Bobby Lee made a meal off the two three-pounders Duane had caught.

  “I guess this means you’re going to be the envy of the bass fishing world,” Duane said. “Next thing you know they’ll be inviting you to Caracas and other places where they have these fancy fishing competitions.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t ncessarily be bad,” Bobby said. “Maybe I’ll find me a fiery little Latina.”

  “They say Latinas have a lot of spice,” he added. “There’s none too much spice to be found around Thalia, these days.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are Latinas closer than Caracas,” Duane reminded him.

  “The whole Midwest is filling up with Latinas,” Duane said.

  “Right, and the Southwest was already full to the brim,” Bobby Lee said. “It’s a wonder I ain’t already married a Latina, if you stop and think about it.”

  They sat in silence for a while. They had cooked the bass over a little campfire at the edge of the lake. While they watched, a heron landed, and the frogs began to croak.

  “Some women have gentler qualities,” Duane mentioned—he didn’t know why.

  Bobby Lee didn’t answer, but he continued to shine. After all, he had caught his record bass.

  11

  A FEW DAYS BEFORE Duane was due to fly back to Arizona to meet Annie on her return, he decided to address himself to a problem that had long vexed him. It involved two corner post holes on the set of pens he owned north of Thalia. The corner posts had initially been set by Dickie, when he was a recovering drug addict, and neither was correctly set. They looked like two small Leaning Towers of Pisa, a reproach to Moore discipline, at least as Duane practiced it. The time had come to reset those posts.