“I know we’ve visited a lot, Duane,” Bobby said. “But now we’re old and life’s different.”
“Well, we’re not real old yet,” Duane pointed out; he wanted to counter the notion that he was exactly old.
“There is one big problem with old,” Bobby said.
“What would that be?”
“It ain’t reversible,” Bobby Lee said. “I don’t think we’re the first two friends in the world who might end up getting younger.”
“You’ve got a point,” Duane said. “And that concludes our visit for tonight. I believe I’ll keep on walking.”
66
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, while he was sitting under his tree, reading a few pages of Desert Solitaire, K.K. Slater drove up in Boyd Cotton’s pickup.
She parked outside the gate and walked over to where Duane sat.
“Driving Boyd’s old pickup takes me back to my girlhood,” K.K. said. “Hell, it was practically made in my girlhood. Are you still reading Ed Abbey?”
“I’m not exactly reading—I’m more just sitting here with a book.”
“I was never a reader,” K.K. admitted. “I thought I’d come by and see that you were staying out of trouble.”
“I guess I’m about as out of trouble as I can get,” he said. “I was sort of hoping Double Aught would pay me a visit, but so far he hasn’t.”
“That’s probably because Sam annoyed him yesterday,” she said. “When he’s annoyed he hides out. Even though he weighs nearly five thousand pounds he can make himself hard to spot.
“Sam has the odd notion that animals should do what he wants them to do,” she said.
“Where is Sam?”
“No idea,” she said. “Sam goes where he pleases, and that’s an understatement.
“Boyd Cotton wants to take helicopter lessons,” she said.
“Helicopter lessons?” Duane said, astonished.
“Sure. In the first place helicopters are handy for locating animals—and in the second place I think Boyd is scared a rhino might get one of his horses.”
“I expect they might,” Duane said, still surprised. Boyd Cotton flying a helicopter? That was certainly a change.
67
THE HARTMAN TWINS quit us,” Bobby Lee told Duane, on their next visit—it was about sundown.
“Why?”
“They’re scared of that little man with the poison arrows,” Bobby said. “They didn’t like being out here, anyway—too far from Thalia.”
“Too far from Thalia?” Duane asked. “Thalia’s right there, in plain sight.”
“It’s outside the city limits, though,” Bobby pointed out. “There’s some people who don’t feel safe outside the city limits of Thalia.”
“I guess so,” Duane said. “Most normal people think it’s dull as hell, but it sure hits the spot with Dub and Bub.”
68
THE NEXT MORNING Duane got up early and drove to the Asia Wonder Deli, where to his astonishment he found Sam of the San, talking with Mike and Tommy in sign. His small hands were a blur of motion.
Duane got a couple of spring rolls and settled down to eat them.
“Tommy lived in Botswana,” Mike told Duane. “He knows many San.”
Then Mike frowned.
“Well, there are not many San now, but Tommy did know some.”
“I’m too slow for sign talk,” Mike admitted. “When they get through, Tommy will translate.”
From time to time a few roughnecks would wander in to get some Asian breakfast; they were startled to see Sam of the San, and, like the Hartman twins, took note of the bow and arrows. Sam had also acquired some kind of digging stick, which he left in his lap as his hands told their stories.
Over his shoulder he carried several roots.
“To eat,” Mike said, when Duane asked about the roots. “The San are very good at sniffing out edible roots.”
“But he’s never been here before—how does he know what’s edible and what isn’t?”
“They are fine smellers,” Mike said, and left it at that.
“Big chance to take,” one young roughneck said.
“You are not San,” Mike reminded him. “Their whole life is a big chance.”
Duane saw that Sam was eating spring rolls.
“Does Sam pay you?” he asked.
“Of course,” Mike said. “This morning he brought us a nice wild piglet.
“I think there is bad news from the Rhino Ranch, though,” Mike said. “That big rhino that likes you, he’s gone.”
“Uh-oh,” Duane said.
“I don’t know for sure,” Mike said. The San talk too fast—I don’t get it all.”
“I guess we better hurry back to the ranch and see what they think,” he said.
“We cook that little piglet—be ready Sunday,” Mike said. “Very tasty.”
“I’ll be here,” Duane said.
69
NEWS THAT DOUBLE AUGHT was gone again tilted Duane in a direction he didn’t really want to go. Instead of going back to the Rhino Ranch, he turned right instead of left and in less than fifteen minutes found himself at Casey Kincaid’s door. She lived in a rather sedate apartment complex, in one of the best neighborhoods in Wichita Falls. Just as he raised his hand to knock, she opened the door.
“Took you long enough, you old fart,” she said. She was dressed in a T-shirt and a thong.
“It’s because I have so many scruples to overcome,” he told her. It was true, but Casey could take it as a joke, if she wanted to.
So far she had not invited him in.
“You’re older than I remember you being,” she said. “I don’t know about this. Some old guys croak when they’re fucking. You croaking would be about the last thing I need.”
But then she made a gesture with her head, which he took to mean he was invited in.
“I only do phone sex for money, Mr. Moore,” she said. “Real sex I only do if there’s something interesting about the guy.
“All I see that’s interesting about you is your guilt,” she told him.
It was not the response Duane had been expecting, but it was an interesting response, anyway. Even as she spoke he was experiencing some guilt. What was he doing in the apartment of this young woman, who, for a goodly number of reasons, was an inappropriate sexual partner for him to become involved with?
Casey watched him with a blank expression on her face.
Then, as if she were conducting an experiment of her own conception, she slowly took off her T-shirt.
“Oh, well, Mr. Moore,” she said. “You’re here and nobody else in the way of a male is. Let’s get naked and see if we can think of anything interesting to do.”
Guilty or not, it was what Duane wanted her to say. He began to take off his clothes.
70
“GUYS ARE SORT of amazing to me, when I start to think about how stupid they are,” Casey said. They had done various things, and were resting.
“Probably it’s smarter not to think about men at all,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Who wants to waste their youth and beauty on totally brainless guys,” she said. “Like the two fat-dick brothers who worked for the rhino place. They showed up one night and offered me money, as if I were a cheap whore. I told them I was an actress, not a whore—if they go home and call me we could do phone sex—at least we could if they could put it on their credit card.”
“And what did they do?”
“Went home and called me and I did my cocksucking sound a few times and they shot right off.
“I never let any of you yokels touch my asshole,” Casey said. “It’s too sensitive to trust to amateurs. I only butt-fuck with my peers.”
“Do you have many?”
“Sure, but not around here. Do you ever wonder why I haven’t really let you penetrate me yet?”
“I noticed it hadn’t happened,” Duane said.
“And it won’t happen, unless you get a vasectomy
first.”
Duane was stunned. A vasectomy first?
“I guess I’ve never given much thought to vasectomies,” he said.
“I’ve had several guys do it,” she said. “I’m the snip doctor’s best shill, Mr. Moore.”
Duane pondered that news for a bit. He felt some inner resistance to having a vasectomy.
“It’s just a little snip,” she said. “Surely the chance to fuck me is worth a little snip.”
Duane didn’t bite.
“If you just did it we could enjoy a lot of things we haven’t enjoyed yet,” she said. “I’m talking about all those things nobody bothered to teach you.”
When he got home he sat under his tree with his book, but didn’t read it. He was pretty sure there was nothing in it about vasectomies.
71
DUANE SHOWED UP at the office one morning when Dal’s computer was down—it gave him his first real chance to introduce himself to her, which he did.
Dal greeted him with a shy smile.
“I’m glad you’re working for us,” Duane said.
“I am glad also,” Dal said.
“They still haven’t found Double Aught,” Dickie said, taking his cell phone from his ear for a moment.
“I don’t know why he keeps running off,” Duane said.
“Let him go, sir—they are bad animals,” Dal said.
Duane was startled. Bad animals. Why?
“The one that’s lost had kind of made friends with me,” he told her, but Dal shook her head.
“You may think so, sir, but it is not true,” she insisted.
Duane felt off balance—Dal was vehement, which he had not expected. He had been prepared to like Dal, and he did like her, but he wondered why she was so emphatic about rhinos. He knew they had them in Asia too, though not many.
“Any special reason for thinking so?” he asked.
Dal saw a flicker from her computer and looked at it briefly before turning back to Duane.
“I think you will have to go very far to find this beast who is not your friend,” she said, and turned back to her screen.
72
“I THINK THEY’VE FOUND a way to drill in the Barnett Shale,” Dickie told his father one morning. “It’s going to change everything.”
Duane shrugged.
“I’ve heard about the Barnett Shale all my life,” he said. “I’ve been told many, many times about techniques that were going to change everything. Of course there are booms and busts. But so far nothing that’s come along has really changed everything.”
“You have to drill horizontally, which they couldn’t in your time but can easily do now.”
“Dal’s been sifting through some old findings and she thinks the Barnett Shale might show up in two or three of them. It might be as close as Montague County, where we’ve never drilled.”
“We did drill there a couple of times in the Fifties,” Duane told him. “We just hit the Caddo sand, as usual.”
Then he noticed that Dickie wasn’t really listening. He was looking out the window—Casey Kincaid was walking across the parking lot. Wherever she went she seemed to draw all eyes.
Dal, though, was not watching Casey at all. She was staring intently at her computer, and Duane had no intention of interrupting her.
Still, sometime when she wasn’t so busy he wanted to ask her again, about the matter of Double Aught.
73
THE NORTH TOWER at the Rhino Ranch had become a place of low moods.
Duane heard that K.K. was flying up. As he was walking by he saw Boyd Cotton about to mount his quarter horse and go ride the line.
“Sam may know something,” Boyd said, as he mounted. “But if he does he’s keeping it to himself,” Boyd added. “It’s worrying me that Double Aught don’t leave a track. I’ve been following four-legged animals all my life and every single one of them has left a track.
“I like my jobs to make sense, and this one don’t,” Boyd said.
After which he left.
“Boyd thinks Double Aught might be a ghost,” Bobby Lee said, the minute Boyd rode off.
“I wonder what Sam thinks?”
“Whatever it is we won’t know it until Tommy comes over for a chat,” Bobby Lee said.
Then the familiar white Cessna circled and landed.
“Working here was exciting at first, but now it ain’t,” Bobby said. “How’s life with Casey?”
“She wants me to get a vasectomy,” Duane said.
“If you do it you’ll never be the same,” Bobby said.
“But I’ll never be the same, anyway,” Duane said. “Old people get less and less the same, all the time.”
“Don’t I know it, it’s them dying brain cells,” Bobby Lee said.
74
“THERE’S BEEN a sighting,” Honor Carmichael announced.
Duane, who had been napping, was confused.
“Of Double Aught?” he asked. “Where is he?”
“Not of the stupid rhinoceros—I mean of your most recent wife and her new best friend.”
Duane waited. He had no idea who Annie’s new best friend might be. All he knew was when she left him she had been headed for Tajikistan.
“Think sports hero,” Honor suggested.
Duane thought of Michael Jordan. Then he thought of Troy Aikman. Neither of them lived in Tajikistan, so far as he knew.
“Imran Khan,” Honor said.
The name meant absolutely nothing to Duane.
“Is he a soccer player?”
“Cricket, you dummy—cricket! He’s retired now, but in his time he was great.”
Duane could not connect with Honor’s information. As time passed he found it harder and harder to believe that he had ever been married to Annie Cameron at all. He had never seen a cricket match and had never heard of Imran Khan.
“Maybe they’re just friends,” he said.
“Could be,” Honor said. “Though friendship is not the first thing you think of when you think of Imran.”
“What would you think of me getting a vasectomy?” he asked.
“Because the lady of the moment doesn’t want to have children, but is too lazy to worry about birth control?”
“That about sums it up,” Duane admitted.
“Interesting,” Honor said. “So the vasectomy was her idea?”
“I think it was mutual,” Duane said.
75
BOYD COTTON came back annoyed. Once again he had made a circle of the big pasture and saw neither Double Aught nor his track.
K.K. Slater was more than annoyed—she was crying.
“Sam just quit,” she said. “He wants to go back to the Kalahari, or as close to the Kalahari as they’ll allow him to live, nowadays.
“My main rhino keeps disappearing and my only San tracker wants to go home. I once thought this enterprise would work, but now I’m not so sure.”
Myles came running over about that time with a cell phone pressed to his ear.
“They found him,” he said. “He’s in a town called Ralls.”
“That’s just this side of Lubbock,” Duane said. “It’s cotton country.”
“He seems to have knocked over a school bus, but nobody was hurt,” Myles said. “The bus was empty at the time.”
“Come with me, Duane,” K.K. said. “We’ll fly out. There’s room for you, Boyd, if you want to come.”
“I don’t,” Boyd said.
“What about a flight plan?” Myles said.
“I don’t think I’ll bother with a flight plan. We’ll just land when gravity pulls us down.”
In less than an hour they were droning above the breaks of the Cap-rock.
It was nearly sundown—Duane himself had become a little anxious about where they might land.
Fortunately K.K. spotted a little crop duster’s strip and eased the Cessna down.
The crop duster had just crawled out of his plane.
“Hear the news, there’s a darn rhinoceros i
n Ralls.”
“There better be,” K.K. said.
76
WHEN THE FRIENDLY crop duster delivered them to Ralls, nearly a dozen patrol cars, various TV outlets and half a dozen cowboys were waiting for them. All the cowboys had their ropes at the ready, thinking it was their one chance to rope a rhino.
“So where is he then?” K.K. asked.
“Oh, he’s right over…” one cowboy said, then nearly fell off his horse.
“He was right there,” the local sheriff said. “Probably just slipped around behind the schoolhouse.”
“I’ll bet you a million dollars he’s not behind the schoolhouse,” K.K. said.
And he wasn’t. Nothing was behind the schoolhouse except some basketball hoops with no nets.
Neither the cowboys nor the sheriff nor the local news outlets could accept it at first. They had seen Double Aught—he was there as big as life—until he wasn’t.
“If you cowboys went to the trouble of taking your ropes down, why didn’t some of you rope him?” K.K. asked.
The cowboys looked embarrassed and began, in ones and twos, to make wild, pointless dashes into the bleak neighbors of Ralls.
But all of them came back with nothing to show for their ardor.
“Oh boy, oh boy,” the sheriff kept repeating.
The local embarrassment was so heavy that Duane couldn’t bear it. He took a walk past the business district, hoping the great presence of the big animal would appear. But this time it didn’t. No great presence rose out of the playgrounds of Ralls.
“Most embarrassing dern thing ever happened in Ralls,” the sheriff said.
“Never mind, Sheriff—just never mind,” K.K. said.
77
“ARE YOU UP to a night in this town?” K.K. asked Duane, when the sheriff finally desisted.
“What are my options?” he asked.
“Well, you could hitchhike home, if you just feel like deserting me,” she said.