In the dark it took Durgess a half hour to find the designated oak tree—he was driving the flatbed slowly so as not to lose Asa Lando, who was following with the forklift. Durgess parked the truck so that its headlights illuminated the clearing around the craggy trunk of the old tree. Before unloading the rhino, Durgess looped one end of a heavy cattle rope around its neck. The other end he secured to the trailer hitch of the flatbed.
“Why bother?” Asa Lando said.
“I got fifty thousand excellent reasons.”
But the rhino never made a move to break free; in fact, it made no movement at all. When Asa lowered the animal to the ground, it settled immediately to its knees, its drowsy demeanor unchanged. If it was happy to be outdoors again, neither Durgess nor Asa Lando could tell. They might as well have been rearranging statuary.
Uneasily, Durgess studied Robert Clapley’s high-priced quarry in the twin beams of the truck lights. “Asa, he don’t look so good.”
“Old age. That’s what he’s dyin’ from.”
“Long as he makes it till morning.” Durgess cocked his head and put a tobacco-stained finger to his lips. “You hear a dog bark?”
“No, but I heard a wheeze.” Asa Lando jerked a thumb toward the rhino. “Chest cold. Doc Terrell says he probably picked it up on the aeroplane.”
Durgess hastily stubbed out his cigarette. “Christ. A rhinoceros with fucking asthma.”
“Comes and goes, Durge. Same with the arthritis.”
“To hell with that. I heard a dog out there, I swear I did.”
He cupped a hand to his ear and listened: Nothing. Asa Lando shrugged. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s Jeffy got a chest wheeze. That’s all.”
Durgess edged toward the somnolent load and unslipped the rope. It seemed unnecessarily harsh to keep the aged creature tied down, as some prey had to be (due to the incompetent riflery of Wilderness Veldt clients, most of whom had no reasonable chance of hitting anything that wasn’t tethered to a stake).
Asa Lando took out a camera and snapped a picture of the rhinoceros, for posting on the Wilderness Veldt’s Web site. Then he heaved a bale of wheat in front of the animal, which acknowledged the gesture with a gravelly sniff.
“Well, Durge, that’s it. All we can do now is go back to the lodge until dawn.”
“And say our prayers,” Durgess said. “What if he up and dies, Asa? You think he’ll fall over on one side, or will he stay… you know… ”
“Upright? That’s a good question.”
“Because if he don’t fall, I mean, if he just sorta keeps on his knees… ”
Asa Lando brightened. “They won’t even know!”
“There’s a strong possibility,” Durgess agreed. “The damn thing could be stone-dead and… ”
“From fifty yards away, how could they tell?”
“That’s what I’m savin’, Asa. These clowns’ll never figger it out. Long as Jeffy here don’t keel over before they actually squeeze off a shot.”
Durgess took a step closer, into the spear of white light and swirling insects. He peered skeptically at the motionless rhino. “You still with us, old-timer?”
“He is,” Asa Lando said. “Unless that’s a puddle of your piss on the grass.”
The hunting party had come in the night before and, against Durgess’s advice, celebrated into the late hours with rich desserts, cognac and Cuban cigars. It was rare that the governor was able to cut loose and relax without fear of ending up in a snarky newspaper column—ordinarily he was careful not to be seen socializing so intimately with insider lobbyists such as Palmer Stoat or shady campaign donors such as Robert Clapley. And upon first arriving at the Wilderness Veldt, Dick Artemus had been subdued and remote, his wariness heightened by a recent unsettling event inside the governor’s mansion.
Gradually, however, the chief executive began to feel at ease within the gated privacy of the Wilderness Veldt Plantation, drinking fine whiskey and trading bawdy stories in cracked leather chairs by a cozy stone fireplace. This was what it must have been like in the good old days, the governor thought wistfully, when the state’s most important business was conducted far from the stuffy, sterile confines of the capitol—hammered into law by sporting men, over smoky poker games at saloons and fish camps and hunting lodges; convivial settings that encouraged frank language and unabashed horse trading, free from the scrutiny of overzealous journalists and an uninformed public.