Zero at the Bone (2 page)

She slipped her feet into a pair of old moccasins, opened the door for Ra, and went out after him into a clear October morning. The sun was already heating up; it would be a warm fall day, perfect for taking the new black Lab to the pond to work on some water retrieves.

She surveyed the pasture behind her house; the switchgrass was dotted with Viguiera goldeneyes and sunflowers. Even now she took pleasure in her isolation, her privacy, in not being able to see another house from where she stood. She loved going outside in the morning in her nightgown, working alone in tattered shorts, answering to nobody. It made all the sacrifices worthwhile.

The twenty acres surrounding the house, from the rural road to the west as far as the creek on the east, were hers, all hers, what she’d always wanted. A piece of Texas. A home she had worked hard to create for herself. And a business that had made her comfortably self-sufficient. Until last year.

When the dogs saw her approach, they began to mill furiously around their narrow enclosures. She called out to them. “Okay, you beasts. Calm down. Breakfast’s coming.”

She entered the shed at the end of the kennel and began to set out seventeen plastic feeding bowls. From a huge garbage can full of Science Diet Extra, she dipped varying amounts into sixteen of the bowls. First she put down a bowl for Ra, who had been dancing around her feet as she made the preparations. Then she delivered the food two at a time, opening the cage doors with her elbows, sliding the bowls in as she greeted each dog by name.

Higgins was last, since he was on a special diet that took some time to concoct. For him she mixed two cups of Canine CD Maintenance Life, “for the older dog,” a quarter cup of oat bran, a thyroid pill, two Ascription tablets crushed up for his arthritis, and some garlic compound for his coat—just as Hester and Judith had instructed. She turned her head away as she opened his door so she would not have to see the shaved gray skin with the long jagged cut in his rotund flank and the fifteen stitches the vet had used to close it. She rubbed his silky black ears without looking at him once. When Joe arrived, she’d ask him to apply the antibiotic salve to the wound.

As the dogs ate, she dragged the hose from cage to cage, filling the water containers, fortifying herself with the familiar routine. By then the cats, all four of them, were winding around her ankles mewing. She dipped into a smaller garbage can of dry cat food and spilled a tiny portion into each of their four bowls. “This is all you get, guys. No complaints. The rest you have to earn yourself. Go out and catch those damned snakes the way you’re supposed to. And you, too,” she called out to the pair of peafowl on the roof.

This comforting morning ritual over, she and Ra walked back to the house. When she heard Joe’s old Chevy pickup in the driveway, her stomach gave one huge churn. How was she going to pay him? She was already a week behind and he lived close to the margin. It wasn’t fair to keep him waiting. She had a responsibility to him.

The dreads were back in full force.

“Can’t put it off any longer, can I, Ra?” she said.

Well, she’d sit down and look at the numbers one more time. Maybe an idea would come to her, a solution. Sure. And maybe the bank would decide to forgive her loan. And maybe her rich uncle would die and leave her some money. And maybe Higgins’s cut would heal up before noon. And maybe her life would return to normal, as it had been before all this trouble.

Back in the kitchen, Katherine poured herself a cup of coffee and slouched into the chair at her desk where she did her paperwork. For several minutes she sat unmoving, staring at the shoe-box full of unpaid bills, last week’s registered letter from the bank topping off the pile. Her coffee steamed untouched in front of her.

Finally she took a sip to fortify herself, opened the lower right-hand drawer of the desk, and drew out that other letter—the one that had come on Friday, plunging her into a weekend of inner turmoil such as she hadn’t ever experienced as an adult. After reading it several times in disbelief, she had stuffed it in the drawer and slammed it shut so hard the knob fell off. For forty-eight hours, it had alternately drawn and repelled her. She had resisted its gravitational pull, making a wide berth around the drawer every time she passed it. Until now.

Just feeling the paper between her fingers kindled an angry flush of heat in her chest. Goddamn him. Why now? How can he think I would ever respond to this? The man must truly be insane.

Coffee forgotten, she spread the letter out on the desk and looked at the four careful folds in the yellow legal paper. Without reading the words yet, she absorbed the handwriting. Done in black ballpoint, it was big, bold, aggressively slanted and looping—the handwriting of a man who could drive his wife and daughter away and then ignore them for thirty-one years. Her anger burned higher; the flames leapt from her chest up through her neck into her cheeks, scorching the skin from the inside. God, the contempt she felt for that man was beyond words.

Taking two deep breaths to get her through it, Katherine read the letter once more.

37 Wirtz Ave.

Austin, TX

512-243-9080 (Home)

512-338-6712 (Work)

October 11

Dear Katie,

You’ll probably be surprised hearing from me suddenly like this, after so long. But I heard you were having some financial difficulty and I have a proposal to help you out.

Katie, sorry I missed your birthday. Every year when October 2 rolls around I think about you and what a cute little girl you were. It’s hard for me to write this, real hard. I hope you don’t hold against me the things that happened when your mother and me were having our difficult times. Now you are an adult yourself you understand these things. Anyway you probably don’t remember much since you were so young at the time, only a baby really.

About your problems, Katie. I don’t want to discuss this in a letter. It is confidential, but I want you to know the full amount you need is available in cash immediately so there will be no foreclosure on your property. What you would need to do in return is something only you can do. It would not be difficult for you, I’m sure. You might even enjoy it. So if you could come to Austin
SOON
, in the next few days, we could discuss it. It is really in your best interests to come, so I hope you’ll let bygones be bygones. These are hard financial times in Texas and it is good if families can help each other out.

I hear you are the best dog trainer in central Texas. That makes me real proud and doesn’t surprise me at all since our family has always had a way with animals. Remember Pasha? What a good watchdog he was? Be sure to remember him just in case something should happen to me.

I’m still at the zoo, have been all this time. Never really regretted it. For the past eight years I’ve been senior keeper in charge of the large cats. I’d love to show them to you.

I was sorry to hear your mother died.

You are my only living relative in the world since my parents died two years ago (both in a six-month period) and my sister, your Aunt Julia, died last December. Of course, I don’t count your mother’s family as mine since we have been divorced so long.

Your Dad,

Lester Renfro

P.S. Please keep this receipt and key in a safe place for me and bring them with you when you come to Austin. I’ll fill you in on everything then.

P.S. #2 No need to let anyone else know about this.

Katherine felt the flames engulf her face and lick at her brain now, her head swelling with the heat. Like a dragon forced either to breathe fire or explode from the heat buildup, she jerked up from the chair and began to pace circles around the kitchen, puffing little bursts of hot air from her cheeks.

It was almost like an infantile rage. Yes, she felt like a baby beginning to choke from fury. But why? This was so extreme—not something a realistic, independent woman should feel. She had gotten over this thing with her father long ago.

I might be surprised to hear from him after all this time, he says. Uh-huh. It is a bit of a surprise to hear from a father who hasn’t even recognized my existence for the last thirty-one years. “Let bygones be bygones,” he says. Uh-huh. Sure. It’s as easy as that. Families can help each other out in hard times. Oh, yes. Good idea, Lester Renfro. He hopes I don’t hold what happened against him? Well, he’s right about one thing: I
was
too young to remember. But, oh, how I wish I could remember!

Katherine stopped pacing and pressed her hands to her hot cheeks. She had no memories, none at all, from her first five years. It was as if the time in Austin when the family was together had never happened.

She knew only what her mother had told her, again and again and again, as if in the telling she could exorcise her anger: “Don’t expect anything from your father. Ever. He’s a crazy man, a certifiable maniac. We dropped his name so we never have to hear it again or have anything to do with him. Ever.”

Leanne had certainly kept that vow to her death.

But in spite of the stories told and retold, for years Katherine had not accepted the idea of her father as maniac and tyrant. It hadn’t felt right to her and she had yearned for him.

Throughout her childhood, she had waited and hoped and fantasized about what it would be like when he came to claim her. She remained faithful to the idea of the father who would come to rescue her and help her. She had a recurring fantasy of his taking her to work with him at the zoo. She’d help him feed the animals and clean up and make his rounds. He’d see how good she was with animals and he’d say she could be his number-one assistant. It had been a sustaining vision during difficult years.

Ridiculous.

What a fool she’d been. But by the time she was fourteen she had finally accepted reality. Her mother was right. She realized he wasn’t ever coming and she didn’t even care anymore. It was the most important lesson, one she would never forget: She had only herself to depend on. And that was all right with her. She loved being on her own. And she’d done pretty damned well.

Until this bad economy. And she sure wasn’t the only one caught by it.

“A man like that shouldn’t be allowed to walk the earth,” Katherine said aloud, waking Ra, who was snoozing at her feet. “The son of a bitch just assumes I’ll come running. Never. I’d die first.”

She began to pace again, in quick, furious steps around the small kitchen. When she got back to the desk, she forgot about the open drawer and walked right into it, whacking her left shin against the sharp edge. The impact dislodged the white knob again and sent it rolling under the stove. The hell with Lester Renfro. Let him stuff his financial help.

She leaned over and looked at her throbbing shin. A red knot was puffing up right on the bone. She sat down, fighting back tears, and returned to a question that had nagged her all weekend: How does he know I’m in trouble? How does he know I’m a dog trainer? How does he know my address?

It was more than passing strange. She was not in touch with anyone in Austin and her mother hadn’t been either for several years before her death last year. So how did he know?

From the still-open drawer she drew out the envelope the letter had come in. From it she removed the key and the small square of paper he had sent along with the letter. She held the key in the palm of her hand and examined it for the first time. It was a small round-headed brass key. On one side it was blank; on the other, the word
ABUS
was engraved in small capitol letters, and under that, “Germany.”

The pain from the bruised shin seemed to absorb her anger for a moment. She closed her eyes and squeezed the key tight. The metal felt warm; it had taken on the temperature of her skin. My father touched this key. He put it in the envelope and sent it to me. It’s important to him. It unlocks something he wants me to have. Something he thinks could help me.

She looked at the tiny receipt. At the bottom it said, “Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage, 1189 Lamar Blvd., Austin, Texas.” It also said, “$23 received on October 11, 1989, for unit 2259 for one month.”

This was so bloody melodramatic. If he had money he wanted to give her, why didn’t he just send her a check, not make her come begging to him. You wouldn’t keep money in a storage unit, anyway, would you? And what was it he had in mind for her to do? Something that only she could do. Ridiculous. Anyway, how could a zoo keeper accumulate enough money to help her out of this mess? Did he know she needed more than $90,000?

She opened her hand and stared at the key again. Well, it was possible. Maybe those relatives of his who died left it to him. Or maybe he’d been thrifty and saved it over the years. It was just possible that he had enough.

She shook her head violently. Christ, what a fool she was! The same credulous child who kept expecting him to come. Why was she even dignifying this with her attention when she had important issues to deal with? She tossed the key onto the desk. It hit and bounced off to the brick floor.

With the sudden noise, Ra leapt to his feet from a deep sleep, as if it were a gunshot. He was ready to go to work.

Absently, she rested her hand on the familiar bony ridge down the middle of the sleek head as she leaned over to pick up the key. She slipped it into the envelope and stuck it back in the drawer. Her stomach contracted as she caught sight of the box of unpaid bills. “Oh, Ra, who could even imagine a situation where we might lose everything we’ve worked for? It’s just not possible.”

The dog looked up at her and began to prance in place.

“Okay.” She picked up the notice from the Bank of Boerne. “Don’t worry. Today’s the day. I’m going to do whatever it takes—beg, borrow, or steal. Since I’ve already borrowed, I guess it’s time to beg.”

She picked up her cup and took a sip of coffee. It was stone cold. She set it down again and looked at her watch. “Two hours until my appointment at the bank, Ra. Just enough time to put that new Lab through his blind retrieves.”

She looked down at him and tried to smile, but her lips trembled with the effort. “Someday we’re going to look back and laugh at all this, aren’t we, baby?”