Zero at the Bone Read online

  Her breath got ragged. “Oh, I sold the dogs months ago to help pay the mortgage. They went into the May and June payments.”

  “Did they? That must’ve been real hard for you. How about that big one rides around in the car with you, the one that wins all the field trials?”

  “Ra?” Her voice sounded thin, even to her own ears. “But no one would consider him part of the kennel assets. He’s … my pet. Just happens to have won a show or two.”

  “Charley Holbein says that dog is worth twenty thousand in stud fees alone. Says it’s the best field-trial dog he’s ever seen. Now come, Kate. I know how it is to get attached to critters, but this is business.” He pronounced it “bidness.”

  Katherine had never before known what it meant to feel faint. She gripped the edge of his desk to keep panic at bay.

  He looked her straight in the eye. “Anything I could do for you on this, Miss Kate, I would do, but the committee has made a decision. They think the value of the property will continue to sink, so giving you more time would likely just delay your agony, and increase the loss we’ll surely take on this.”

  George Bob stood up. He was dismissing her. It was all over.

  There must be more she could say to stop this. Katherine opened her lips to protest. But she didn’t utter a sound because she knew it would come out as a whine. And she had taught herself never, never to whine.

  Finally she found a neutral voice. Still sitting, she said, “So that’s it? I have until the seventh of next month?”

  “’Fraid so.” He looked at the calendar open on his desk. “Twenty-two days from today.” He looked up at her. “We go back a long way and you’ve been a good customer, Kate. I sure dislike having it turn out like this.”

  “Me, too,” Katherine said in a small voice that was humiliatingly close to tears. She stood up and let him usher her to the door. Before passing through, she stopped for a final try.

  “George Bob? About the dog—Ra—he really is a pet. The only reason he’s won some field trials is that he and I get on so well … you know, we have good rapport. He wouldn’t work well for anyone else. It wouldn’t make sense to foreclose on a dog, would it?” She tried to laugh at the idea, but the sound that emerged was more like a whimper.

  The banker kept his business face in place, but he draped a heavy arm across her shoulders. “I know this is real hard, but that animal is a valuable asset. I’ll present it to the committee, Kate, but I can’t make no promises.” George Bob liked to slip in a double negative every so often to show that he was a good ol’ boy at heart, even though he was a banker.

  * * *

  When Katherine got back to the car she was shaking, her torso damp with cold sweat. She climbed in quickly, wanting to lie on the floor and pass out so she wouldn’t have to feel what she was feeling. It was fear, panic. Things were out of control, swarming in on her, and she was powerless to stop the momentum.

  She rested her forehead against the hot steering wheel and pictured her house—the two old yellow wing chairs flanking the stone fireplace in the living room, her books neatly organized in the shelves; the cool white bedroom with the tall pecan trees shading the windows; the wood-and-brick kitchen. In her mind’s eye she saw the pasture behind the kennel in the morning light. Ra was loping through the wildflowers, his plumy tail carried high on the breeze.

  Not only was she about to lose her home and her business, but she was probably going to lose Ra, too.

  When a car pulled into the space next to hers, she sat up straight and searched her purse for the key. She began talking to herself: “Am I just going to lie down and feel sorry for myself? Let these bankers ruin my life? Hell, no. This is not like me. I’ve had hard times before and I’ve always gotten through them. I don’t have to accept this.”

  She started the engine and revved it a few times to fortify her courage. She would fight back.

  * * *

  Katherine was so stunned she forget to put the phone down until it began to buzz at her. Then she let her head fall forward and pressed her fingers hard into the base of her neck. Her lawyer had just finished reading the loan documents. There was no recourse, he told her, but to come up with the full $91,000 in the next twenty-two days. In response to her question about Ra, he’d said there was no question that the dog was part of the kennel assets. Too bad, he’d commiserated, but there it was.

  Then he’d asked the same question George Bob had asked: “Don’t you have some family who could help out?”

  She’d glanced down at the drawer containing the letter.

  “No,” she’d said into the phone. “No family.”

  As she massaged the tight cords in her neck, she thought about it.

  No family.

  Her mother had always impressed on her that they had no family except one another. Whenever Katherine had brought up the subject, Leanne had sat her down and reminded her that they were alone in the world. Katherine’s father was a maniac they would never see again. And her grandmother, Leanne’s mother, had disowned them forever when they moved to Boerne, had warned them never to come crawling back to her for anything. Leanne’s father had died when Leanne was sixteen and her only brother, Cooper, was nothing but a toady, always currying his mother’s favor.

  “My mother’s a greedy, selfish, unforgiving woman,” Leanne would say. “A spoiled, indulged woman who inherited a fortune and vowed never to give a penny of it to us. Anyway, we would prefer to starve to death rather than go groveling to her for anything.”

  Then Leanne would flash her dazzling smile and say gaily, “Anyway, the two of us are a family, aren’t we? We’re happy as we are, sufficient unto ourselves.”

  Sure, Katherine thought, sufficient until the next man came along. Thank God all that was over and she didn’t have to feel that abandonment anymore, now that she was grown up. But now, today, with these problems weighing her down, she felt strangely like that child cooking her own dinner, not knowing when her mother would come back.

  Katherine stood up from her desk and looked out the kitchen window to admire the billowy clouds in her big sky. Family? Who needed it!

  She heard the purr of a car pulling up to the kennel, then the slamming of doors, and the high twangy voices calling. “Yoo-hoo, Kate, Joe. Higgins, where are you?”

  Oh, no! The sisters Kielmeyer, come for their dog.

  She looked out the window. There they were, dressed in their usual floral traveling outfits and sensible shoes. They had known her when she was a girl, before she had decided to call herself Katherine instead of Kate. They were old friends and usually she was delighted to see them, but today she didn’t know if she could face them. Would it be better to let them see Higgins first? Or to rush out and try to explain everything before they saw the damage? But it was too late now. They were already bearing down on the kennel.

  Katherine called her dog. “Come on, Ra. You had something to do with this. Let’s face the music together.”

  3

  JUDITH held the squirming Higgins on the shelf of her ample peach-flowered bosom. To a stranger it would look as if she were squeezing the life out of the little dog because his bright pink tongue dangled from his squashed-in black face. But Katherine had never seen him with his tongue in.

  As Katherine walked across the lawn, Ra ran forward to greet the women. Politely, he sat at their feet to receive his accustomed praise. Hester, the smaller sister at two hundred pounds, and the more talkative, leaned over and rubbed his ears vigorously.

  Ordinarily Katherine would be delighted to see them back, but not today. “Welcome home,” she said. “As you see, we had a problem while you were gone. But Dr. Burris says he will be fine.” She watched their faces apprehensively while she spoke. For ten years Higgins had boarded with her when the sisters were out of town. Since they traveled for four months every year, and since they paid double the usual rate for Katherine and Joe to give special attention to Higgins, he was a major and dependable source of income.

 
Both of them were staring at her, waiting. Katherine had never seen them look so severe, their sagging faces set into stony silence.

  “It happened Tuesday—a freak accident,” Katherine said. “He was out running with Ra. You know, exercise to keep his weight down, as we talked about. First Ra would chase Higgins, then Higgins would chase Ra.” Katherine was pleased to note that both sisters looked a little softer at the vision of their darling playing with a friend.

  “There was a garbage bag waiting for Joe to put out at the curb. Ra jumped over it when Higgins was chasing him and Higgins tried to jump it, too. But you know his legs are shorter and he didn’t make it and landed right on top of the bag. There was a broken bottle in the bag that cut him through the plastic.”

  Katherine’s eyes started to fill with tears when she described it. The scene had been awful—bloody and dominated by pitiful yips of pain. Best they didn’t hear about that. “It was a very long cut. Well, you can see that, but fortunately not too deep. I know you both have a great deal of confidence in Dr. Burris, and he knows Higgins well, so we took him into San Antonio, to Dr. Burris’s house, since it was after office hours. He disinfected it and put in fifteen stitches.”

  Now Hester had taken Higgins from her sister and restrained him in her arms so she could study the long jagged cut with the black stitches. Her forehead was squeezed down over her eyebrows.

  Katherine stopped to catch her breath. She still had no idea what they would do—drive away and use another kennel in the future? Spread the bad word among their numerous friends? Report her to the Humane Society for neglect?

  There was silence as the sisters absorbed the news and explored the injury with gentle fingertips. Finally Hester spoke. “How did the little fellow behave during this emergency?” she asked, pressing her crinkly, powdered cheek gently against the dog’s injured side.

  “Oh,” Katherine said, “he was splendid. After the initial shock, he was very brave, lay quietly in Joe’s lap so he could hold a towel to the cut to stanch the bleeding. No complaining at all.”

  Both sisters smiled at their dog.

  “I feel so bad about it,” Katherine said, discovering as she spoke the words how really bad she did feel. “Higgins and Ra have always played together when Higgins is here and … well, this was a bad accident. He’s due at Dr. Burris’s the day after tomorrow to have his stitches removed. The cut seems to be healing well. Oh, and there’s an antibiotic salve to put on twice a day.” They both nodded at her. “It will leave a scar, he says.”

  Hester handed the dog back to her sister. She approached Katherine, stretched her arms out wide, and wrapped them around her. “It must have been dreadful for you, Kate. You’re so fond of him. And then to have to worry about how we would feel when we saw him. He can be so clumsy sometimes, just a knucklehead really.”

  Judith said, “You must let us reimburse you for the vet bill. Dr. Burris doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Oh, no,” Katherine said. “That’s my expense.”

  “Well, we need to collect his things and get this boy home,” Judith said. “Did you have a chance to work on his manners, Kate?”

  “Yes, before the accident we did. Put him down a minute and I’ll show you.”

  Judith deposited Higgins on the ground gingerly. He stood there on his short bowed legs, his tongue protruding, his cork-screw tail curled tight against his fat rump. Katherine moved to stand directly in front of him. In her gruff dog-training voice, she commanded, “Higgins, sit.” Higgins immediately dropped his rear end the three inches to the ground.

  Both Hester and Judith let out a squeal of surprise.

  “Good boy,” Katherine said. “Higgins.” She waited until she established eye contact with the dog. “Down.” Higgins thought for a second longer than she liked, and pushed out his short front legs so he was lying down.

  “Oooh, good boy,” Hester said. “Kate, it’s wonderful. I don’t know how you do it. I wish we’d asked you to train him sooner. It just never occurred to us that he could be trained. He’s always been so … opinionated about things.”

  When Joe had loaded all Higgins’s toys and his bed into the trunk of the Cadillac and Judith had written a check and tucked it into Katherine’s shirt pocket, Hester hefted herself in under the wheel. Judith climbed in next to her with Higgins in her lap. “Oh, it’s so nice to be home,” Hester said through the open window. She looked at the fields of wildflowers and sighed. “I don’t believe there’s a place in all Europe as beautiful as your place, Kate.”

  Katherine was surprised by a surge of tears welling up like a force of nature, as if from an underground spring.

  “Oh, my dear, what have I said?” Hester wailed.

  Katherine couldn’t speak. She held up her hand—a request for time to gather her composure.

  “Come sit in the car with us for a minute so we can talk,” Judith said, reaching behind her to open the back door of the Cadillac. Katherine got in obediently.

  “I’m going to give us some air.” Hester started the engine, rolled up the electric windows, and turned the air-conditioning on full-blast. The sisters both swiveled their heads toward the back seat, waiting.

  Katherine sat for a long minute with her head down. She was not accustomed to telling her problems to anyone. It was always better, she’d found, to keep them private. But for the first time in her life, a swell of emotion was threatening to overwhelm her. She finally found her voice and began to talk. Once started, she couldn’t stop.

  She began with her morning visit to the bank and the impending foreclosure.

  “That George Bob Rainey should be ashamed of himself,” Hester said. “He could give you some more time. He’s probably got himself a buyer interested.”

  Katherine went on to tell them what the lawyer had said about Ra being part of the collateral. She even told them about the letter from her father and how she felt about it. They were a perfect audience. They listened attentively, nodding and making little cooing noises at the worst parts, asking questions only occasionally for clarification.

  By the time she’d finished, Higgins was asleep in Judith’s lap, making wet snuffling noises with each inhalation.

  “So,” Hester said, “in three weeks, the bank will take your house, your land, and your business, including Ra, if you don’t come up with ninety-one thousand dollars.”

  Katherine nodded.

  “And your father has offered you the cash you need to pay off the loan, but you hate him for his past neglect so you refuse to go collect the money. Do I have it right?”

  Katherine said, “But he never even—”

  Hester interrupted. “No, I know he didn’t. Kate, our father was the son of a bitch to end all sons of bitches, wasn’t he, Judith?”

  Judith nodded so vigorously her tight perm loosened.

  “And you know what? I enjoy the money we inherited from him all the more for it. When we go to Rome and stay at the Ritz, I like to think of that cheap, surly bastard sweating it out in the oilfields for the money we’re spending. He beat us just to keep in practice and he used to complain that his life would be better if girls were all drowned at birth. Should we turn down his money because he mistreated us? Hell, no. All the more reason to take it and enjoy it. Kate, you get in your car and drive to Austin now. Let the bastard pay to ease his guilt. Tell him he can begin making it all up to you by saving your dog from foreclosure.”

  Katherine had stopped crying. It felt as if there had been a major shift in the earth’s surface and suddenly she were viewing it all from a different place. Why hadn’t she seen it from this perspective herself? It made perfect sense. Why should she suffer for his deficiencies as a father?

  Both of the sisters were studying her expression. When they began to chuckle, Katherine realized she had a smile on her lips. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  “That’s very good,” Hester said, clapping her hands.

  “Will you call us, Kate, and let us know what happened?” Jud
ith asked.

  Kate opened the door and climbed out of the car. “Absolutely. Be sure to have Higgins practice his sits and downs. Next time he’s here we’ll work on down-stays. He could use that.”

  When she shut the door, Higgins woke with a start.

  Judith propped him up on his haunches and waved his paw in Katherine’s direction as they pulled slowly out of the driveway. Katherine waved back at him.

  * * *

  A growing elation swelled her chest. She tried to contain it. After all, this was not going to be some big emotional reunion. It was a business transaction. She was going for the money.

  She called out to Joe, who was hosing down the kennels, “Joe, can you hold down the fort for me this afternoon? I’ve got to drive to Austin.”

  Joe dropped the hose and pushed his abundant black hair back from his forehead. “Okay, but I don’t take out that big Doberman while you gone. I don’t even put a hand in there to feed him. Not me.”

  She could barely contain her desire to get on the road. “Tanya can stay in today. I’ll be back tonight.” She started to walk backward as she gave instructions. “You remember that Jack Reiman is picking up Gunner at six. His bill’s on the desk. Don’t forget to give him a flea dip and make him all pretty.”

  Joe nodded in his usual long-suffering way. “Yeah, I remember. He be ready. When do I get paid?”

  Katherine pulled out the check Judith had tucked into her pocket. To the three-hundred-dollar boarding and training fee, Judith had added another two hundred, a sum that more than covered Dr. Burris’s bill. Katherine breathed a sigh of relief. “Tomorrow,” she called back to Joe. “After I deposit this check. Okay?”

  She looked down at Ra frisking at her heels. “Okay, Ra. We’re going to Austin to surprise my father. Out of the mists of the past I am going to appear full-blown, Athena-like, in front of his eyes. We’re going to let the bastard pay his dues. Oh, yes, Ra. The sisters Kielmeyer are right. It is about time.”

  It was one o’clock when Katherine saw Austin’s pink granite capitol dome on the horizon to the north. The drive had taken just one hour. In ten minutes she could be at the Austin Zoological Gardens in Zilker Park. She could see her father, talk with him, touch him. After thirty-one years. The idea made her feel shaky. She needed just a little more time to get mentally prepared.