Rhino Ranch

  “I could go get some steaks,” Duane offered.

  “I’m not a vegetarian but I don’t think I could trust any steak sold in Thalia,” Willy said.

  “That’s probably a sound principle,” Duane admitted.

  “Was that tall woman the one who’s saving the rhinos?” Willy asked.

  “That’s the one,” Duane said. “Your mother and your aunt are on her board.”

  “Yeah but they’re so desperate for attention they’ll be on any dopey board,” Willy said.

  “Maybe you should be on it?” Duane suggested. “Most boards could profit from a little effort from you.”

  “I’m too busy thinking,” Willy said.

  “About what?”

  “Oh, the nature of reality, I guess,” Willy said. “It’s a large subject.

  “I’m thinking of going to Norway,” he added. “That’s where Wittgenstein went, when he really needed to think. All I need is a table, a chair, a cot and some light.”

  Willy was flushed a little, with the excitement of it all.

  “I know where there’s an empty cabin a lot closer than Norway,” Duane mentioned.

  “You mean your old cabin?” Willy asked.

  Duane nodded. “It might need a little patching up, but it’s yours whenever you want it.”

  Willy considered the notion.

  “Norway’s cold,” he said. “I don’t do too well with cold. Maybe I will try the cabin, if you really meant it. It’s pretty hard to think around Mom and her bracelets.

  “I’m hungry,” he added. “Is there safe food anywhere around here?”

  “Seymour,” Duane said. “About forty miles. I try to eat a steak there every time I come home.”

  “I wonder if the cold was important to Wittgenstein,” Willy said. “Maybe it made thinking seem more pure.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Duane admitted.

  “Okay, off to Seymour,” Willy said.

  17

  FOR MOST OF the drive to Seymour, Willy was on his cell phone, talking to his girlfriend. The steak, when they got to the little café in Seymour, was as good as ever—so good that they both had two. Willy had the twenty-four-ounce T-bone.

  On the way back to Thalia they passed the North Gate. Duane honked but nobody waved.

  Willy’s cell phone rang again—Willy asked Duane if it was okay to answer it and Duane nodded.

  “It’s my teacher,” Willy said. “I can’t imagine why he’s calling.”

  Willy, who had been comatose from all the steak, suddenly sat up straighter and looked stunned.

  “I did!” he said. “For real? This is not a joke?”

  Duane could tell from his voice that Willy was really excited.

  “Oh my God, Dr. Jones—this is just the greatest!” Willy said.

  Duane didn’t know what his grandson was excited about, but he did know that the radiance that had suddenly come into his face was the radiance of success—it was the sort of radiance that came into Bobby Lee’s face when he caught the big bass.

  If there were prizes to win Willy usually won them, but at the moment it seemed to Duane that he had carried off a really big prize.

  “I’m going to be a Rhodes Scholar, isn’t that great!” Willy said, when he hung up.

  Duane was not sure what a Rhodes Scholar actually did, though he remembered that President Clinton had been one.

  “It’s great if you say so,” Duane said. “You look pretty happy.”

  “It means I get to go to England and study at Oxford for two years. I can study philosophy right there where Wittgenstein taught.”

  “You sure seem to put a lot of stock in this fellow Wittgenstein,” Duane said.

  “I do—he was so great,” Willy said. “And my teacher Dr. Jones is great too.”

  “I bet your mama is going to be real happy when she hears this,” Duane said.

  Willy considered that statement for a moment.

  “It’s hard to say about Mom—real hard to say,” he told his grandfather.

  “But you know what, Grandpa? If she doesn’t like it it’s her problem—I’m Oxford-bound.

  “That’s her problem,” he said again.

  18

  ONCE BACK AT the house, Willy disappeared into his old bedroom to tell his girlfriend the great news.

  Duane called Honor Carmichael to tell her Willy’s great news, but Honor was traveling and he only got her message machine. He would have called Annie, his wife, but she was still traveling and he wasn’t exactly sure what time zone she might be in. Annie never liked being awakened and Duane decided not to take that chance.

  In the past year or so he had come to like vodka. Annie’s father, Cecil Cameron, on the only time he and Duane had met, spent a long time explaining to Duane how to make a vodka martini. It was the one piece of information Cecil Cameron had chosen to pass on to his son-in-law.

  Duane made himself one and also made Willy one, in celebration of his prize—of course Willy might be on the phone for hours, so his celebration might have to be postponed.

  While Duane was idly watching Letterman the phone rang: it was Annie.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t be up,” Annie said. From the tone of her voice Duane knew that something was wrong.

  “I wouldn’t be except that Willy’s here and he just learned that he won a Rhodes Scholarship—he’s burning up the wires, telling his friends.”

  “Congratulate him for me when you see him,” Annie said. “It’s not surprising that he won a Rhodes. Willy’s the one real winner in your family. Tell him I’m very proud of him.”

  “I’ll do it, where are you?” he asked—from the choked way she was speaking he knew something was really wrong.

  “Munich, but it’s irrelevant,” Annie said. “I’ve fallen in love with a Frenchman and I’m going to live with him now.”

  “I see,” Duane said, though he knew it was an inadequate thing to say, given the gravity of the message he was receiving.

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Duane, I know this is terrible but it is what it is,” Annie said. “I feel too guilty to face you. Let’s just let the lawyers handle it, okay?”

  She waited, as he sat silent.

  “Handle what?” he asked, before he realized what Annie meant.

  “Our divorce—I’d like it if we could just break clean,” she said.

  “I guess we can try,” he said.

  “Thanks, Duane,” Annie said as she hung up.

  19

  DUANE TURNED OFF Letterman. He considered making a pitcher of vodka martinis and decided against it. He couldn’t avoid being sad—or, for the moment at least, shocked—but he could avoid being drunk, and he did avoid it. He sat on the couch, in the darkness, not weeping or anything—just feeling sort of blank. Annie had fallen in love with a Frenchman, and that was that. She wasn’t going, she was already gone. Let the lawyers do it, and, soon enough, the lawyers would.

  When Willy came in, still flushed from his triumph, the first thing he told Duane was that he would need to take a rain check on the cabin, since he’d be living in Oxford, England, soon.

  “It’s the perfect cabin, though,” Willy said. “I might stay there for a while when I come back.”

  “I may move into it myself, while you’re gone,” Duane said. “Annie just called from Munich to say she wanted a divorce.”

  “Uh-oh,” Willy said. “I guess I should have warned you about her.”

  Duane was surprised.

  “How would you have known to warn me?” he asked.

  “I grew up in the most rich-rich cul-de-sac in Dallas,” Willy said. “It’s a good place to learn about rich girls.”

  After that they watched a little TV.

  20

  WILLY SEEMED TO realize that all he could do for his grandfather was be there. In a while he went to bed. Duane continued to sit on the couch, and continued to feel blank. An observer might have felt that he was letting the news soa
k in, but the observer would have been wrong. Annie’s decision soaked in immediately, perhaps because, deep down, he had been expecting it all along. In a way that was hard to put his finger on, she had never been there anyway—not really, not at the deepest level.

  His first wife, Karla, even when she was not speaking to him, was nevertheless there, in a way that Annie Cameron had never been. Had the lack been his or hers? Was Annie, perhaps, just unable to really be there, as Karla had been?

  If so the Frenchman she was currently in love with would someday get the kind of call that he had just got.

  Around two A.M. Duane stretched out on the big, comfortable couch and attempted to doze, but could not drop off. He finally dozed, but not for long. At dawn he got up and made coffee. In time Willy came down looking fresh and managed to find a quart of orange juice in the fridge, all of which he drank. Then he was ready to go.

  “I could have someone drive you back to Dallas,” Duane said, but Willy politely rejected the offer.

  “I’ll just hitchhike,” he said. “I’m good at it.”

  They hugged and Willy left, with nothing but a Wittgenstein book in his pocket. Duane watched him go. When he came to the highway, which was only two blocks from Duane’s house, a truck with a welding rig on it stopped for him immediately. Willy waved at his grandfather and then was gone.

  Willy had not said another word about Annie Cameron. The fact that Duane had a grandson who probably knew more about women than he did was a little disconcerting. His involvement with women stretched all the way back to his high school crush on the beauty queen and actress Jacy Farrell, and encompassed Karla, Jenny Marlow, cranky old Ruth Popper, and Honor Carmichael. And then Annie. He had nine grandchildren, of whom Willy was obviously the best and the brightest. Had he managed to do all this while remaining ignorant of some basic attributes of the human female?

  It was a thought to ponder and, Duane soon concluded, he didn’t have much to do but ponder it.

  21

  AFTER A MONTH of nights on their high perch on the Rhino Ranch, Bobby Lee and Boyd began to discover a few things they had in common, one being a fondness for whiskey. Their nocturnal duties had so far been light to the point of tedium. So far the most noteworthy action occurred when the old rhino they called Double Aught wanted to scratch his butt on the pipes that supported their tower. This produced a moment or two of mutual anxiety, but Double Aught wandered off and the tower didn’t fall.

  “Think he could knock this tower over if he really wanted to?” Bobby Lee asked.

  “Yes,” Boyd said, reaching for the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label they were sharing.

  “What are we going to do?” Bobby Lee asked. “It’s like waiting for goddamn Moby-Dick to rise.”

  Soon they ran out of scotch and found that they had nothing left but vodka. Boyd took the bottle but could not read the label.

  “Where’d this come from?” he asked.

  Before Bobby Lee could answer, Double Aught snorted.

  Bobby Lee and Boyd looked around—in a minute they spotted a dim, dusk-hidden figure walking toward them on the dirt road that led north, into meth dealer land.

  “It’s Duane,” Bobby Lee said. “Look at him. He’s walking again, like he used to back when he was losing his mind.”

  Boyd remembered that Duane had parked his pickup for a while and walked everywhere, but, at the time, he had not known Duane well enough to know much about the state of his mind.

  “I guess he’s headed for that old cabin he used to live in,” Bobby Lee said.

  “I don’t know where he’s headed but it would be better if he doesn’t stir up Double Aught,” Boyd said.

  Double Aught was still close enough to the tower for both of them to see that the old bull had pricked up his ears.

  “What the hell are you doing, you fool!” Bobby Lee yelled, when Duane was in hearing distance. “You might spook this old rhino and if you do he might knock this tower over.”

  Double Aught, though, after his first snort, did not seem spooked.

  “That would be your problem, not mine,” Duane pointed out.

  Boyd Cotton kept his eye on the rhino, who no longer seemed spooked. In his opinion Bobby Lee’s yelling had more of a negative effect than Duane Moore’s walking. He tried a mouthful of the vodka but spat it out. If Bobby Lee was feeling jangled it might be because of the vodka, rather than the rhino.

  “I’m in the mood for a night in my cabin,” Duane said. “I’ll see you boys tomorrow.”

  He walked on along the darkened road. When he had gone about half a mile beyond the tower he became aware of a presence nearby—and it was a large presence.

  The moon was full, and had just risen. It cast a bright glow over the mesquite flats around him.

  The presence, as he had suspected, was Double Aught. “Howdy,” Duane said, and kept walking, with Double Aught, across the road, keeping roughly abreast.

  When Duane turned onto his property he saw that Double Aught was just standing there, watching.

  “Thanks for the company,” Duane said.

  That night he slept well.

  While cooking himself some bacon and eggs the next morning, he remembered that a rhino called Double Aught had accompanied him home.

  He left his cooking for a moment to step outside and have a look around. The rhino Double Aught was nowhere to be seen.

  22

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER trouble came to the Rhino Ranch. Two good old boys from Durango, Colorado, were driving through on their way to the Gulf, where they had high-paying jobs on an offshore drilling rig.

  As they neared Thalia they saw a rhinoceros standing by the road. Both had their deer rifles in the pickup—they quickly loaded up and shot the rhino dead. One of them remembered that rhino horns were supposed to be valuable, so they hurried over to one of the Wal-Marts in Wichita Falls and bought a chain saw. They hurried back to the site of the kill and proceeded to saw off the horn.

  Alert on their tower, Bobby Lee and Boyd heard the sound of the saw. They had heard the shot too but supposed it was just somebody shooting a coyote, or poaching a deer. They at once called in all the law enforcement they could locate, got their rifles and soon apprehended the two Coloradans as they were preparing to drive on to the Gulf. The bloody rhino horn was in the back of the pickup, as well as the new chain saw. The two men, whose names were Lonnie and Damon, were highly indignant at being rudely addressed by an old cowboy and his skinny sidekick, both of whom were armed with more powerful rifles than either of them possessed.

  “Hell, it’s a free country, ain’t it?” Lonnie said. “Who says there’s a law against killing a damn rhino?”

  “We say it,” Boyd replied, in a tone that took the two poachers aback. “That was Aught Six you killed. He was our youngest bull, and he’s just been here three weeks.”

  “I don’t care how long he’s been here,” Damon said. “Who’s gonna miss a chance to shoot a rhino?”

  But soon an impressive number of police cars, patrol cars, Game and Fish cars began to clog the country road. Lonnie and Damon were soon in handcuffs; they had been informed, to their shock, that they could be facing serious jail time. Offshore riches were not likely to be theirs, anytime soon.

  And the gene pool for the African black rhino was one bull the less.

  23

  THE FUROR OVER the death of the young rhino, one of the few animals upon which the hope for the species depended, was not merely local, or statewide, or national: it was global. Not since two German hunters gunned down the most famous and most photographed elephant in Africa had there been such worldwide outrage.

  Though the actual shooter—Lonnie—had been a Coloradan, blame for the death nevertheless stuck to Texas. A new shipment of sixteen black rhinos were due in this very week; fears for their safety filled the correspondence pages of newspapers around the world.

  Boyd Cotton and Bobby Lee were briefly national heroes for having boldly detained the merciless kil
lers—now just two miserable roughnecks with no job prospects and big legal bills.

  Duane, a skeptic about rhino removal from the first, drove back to Arizona mainly to avoid the press that descended on Thalia. No one had been in the house in Patagonia, as far as he could tell. The only thing there that he really wanted was a little 28-gauge shotgun he had bought several years back and sometimes hunted with.

  His pet quail were gone, though he saw a few of their cousins scuttling around the property. The loss of the quail made him sad. On a whim he drove to Ruidoso, New Mexico, where there was a pretty good racetrack. He watched the horses run until dead rhino stories began to disappear from the newspapers, at which point he drove on back to Thalia.

  His cell phone, which he didn’t really like, had been left in Texas, but he had taken care to leave his message machine on. He was hoping there were no calls from Annie—hearing her voice would have been difficult, just then.

  There were no calls from Annie, but three from Honor Carmichael, the last one a little bit testy. Honor did not like it when she wasn’t called back.

  24

  LET ME GUESS—Little Orphan Annie left you,” Honor said, when he finally caught up with her. She and her companion had been on a Scandinavian cruise.

  “How’d you know?” he asked.

  “Someone I know saw her and her new guy going through customs at Kennedy,” Honor said. “It’s a small world, as I’ve pointed out to you before.”

  Duane didn’t ask about the new guy, and Honor didn’t mention him again.

  “The good news is that Willy got a Rhodes Scholarship,” he added.

  “That is good news,” Honor said. “It’s also handy for changing the subject.”

  “I don’t really know what to say about the subject,” Duane admitted. “Annie called from Munich and said she had a new beau, and wanted a divorce. She said we should just let the lawyers handle it.”