Chapter 5: Trucks at the Gate

"You can't sign that alone," Ramsey said.

"I didn't." Darlene cut a neat piece of lamb. "Dylan signed with me. Two seats of three."

Dylan raised his water glass to his uncle.

"Welcome home, Uncle Ram."

I picked my phone up off the tablecloth.

"Tell your crew to bring boots," I said.

I walked out past the white roses on the arch, and this time I didn't run.

Ramsey drove us north in silence for an hour.

Then he said, "What are you going to do?"

"What does a location deal let them do?"

"Film on the land. Park, set up, shoot. It says nothing about the animals."

"Good."

"Jo. What are you going to do?"

I looked out the window at the dark trees.

"Introduce them to Duchess."

At seven forty on Monday morning I walked Duchess down the drive on a lead rope she could have snapped by sneezing.

She came because there was a bucket of apples in my other hand.

At the bottom of the drive I set the bucket in the middle of the gravel.

Duchess planted all four feet around it and started eating.

Nine thousand pounds of elephant, side-on across the only road in.

Clyde leaned on the gatepost with his coffee.

"That's my girl," he said.

At five to eight, two white trucks and a van turned in off Route 28.

They stopped twenty feet from Duchess.

Nobody got out.

Then the van door slid open and a man climbed down with a clipboard.

He wore a pressed shirt and a navy tie.

Duchess lifted her head out of the bucket.

Her ears came out, slow and wide.

The torn left one fluttered.

She made a sound I can only describe as a tuba clearing its throat.

The man with the clipboard went white.

"Morning," I said. "Can I help you?"

"We have a signed location agreement," he said, not taking his eyes off her. "With the landowner."

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