Zero at the Bone

by Mary Walker

  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 t
hrough 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?”

  2

  BY the time Katherine pulled her Wagoneer into the parking lot behind the one-story red brick building that housed the Bank of Boerne, the white blouse she’d just put on felt damp. She turned off the engine and checked her watch. Five minutes early. One fat drop of sweat rolled slowly from her temple along her hairline.

  She’d faced adversity before. Often. But this was different. She loathed the idea of asking for help. It made her cringe just to think about it. And that she should have to ask George Bob Rainey made it even worse.

  She pulled from her bag the letter and notice of sale that had arrived by registered mail six days before. She turned the engine back on so she could have some air-conditioning while she reread them.

  It was bad news.

  The worst.

  She was three months behind on her mortgage payments. “In monetary default,” it said. Default—an ugly, accusatory word. The bank was forced to accelerate the loan so her entire balance of $90,899 was due immediately. If she did not make her payment by Tuesday, November 7, her property would be auctioned off on the east steps of the Kendall County Courthouse at 11 A.M.

  Only twenty-two days from today!

  The bank’s attorney was posting the property and kennel assets for foreclosure on the bulletin board at the courthouse, and if she could not meet her commitments, it would go on public sale.

  That phrase—“If you cannot meet your commitments”—stung her hard. She had always taken pride in meeting her commitments head-on. Hadn’t she always met more commitments than other people? When she was growing up, her mother had often seemed helpless and lost—more the child than Katherine. Hadn’t she taken care of things alone at home during her mother’s absences? And hadn’t she managed to do well in school, too? Hadn’t she put herself through college? Hadn’t she built a profitable business from the small beginning of raising and training a few golden retrievers?

  And when her mother got cancer two years ago, hadn’t she, Katherine, taken over and paid the enormous hospital bills that her mother’s tiny trust income couldn’t pay? And all this on her own. The only help she had ever asked for had been this bank loan to buy her house and land. She had met her payments on time every month for eleven years. Until the medical bills and the downturn in the economy had sabotaged her.

  Yes, she could go on and on about commitments.

  As a matter of fact, that’s just how she saw herself: an independent woman who had always met her commitments. God, it sounded like an epitaph. She visualized it written on her tombstone: “Katherine Anne Driscoll. She met her commitments.” Somehow she didn’t like the sound of it as the summary of thirty-six years. Joyless.

  She looked down at her watch again. Three past eleven. She hurried into the bank feeling hot, awkward, and pretentious in high heels and a straight skirt. Trying to look like I don’t need money, she thought. Trying to look proper.

  As she entered, she saw George Bob Rainey across the lobby and felt the usual rush of embarrassment his presence always brought out in her.

  He walked toward her beaming, his face even fuller and more boneless than when she had seen him two months before. “Kate. Good to see you. Good to see you.” He seized her hand and pumped it up and down several times. Priming the pump to get money out of it, Katherine thought. I wish it were as easy as that.

  “Come on into my inner sanctum,” he said, steering her with an open palm on her back, something Katherine loathed. Especially now when her back was probably a little sweaty from the tension. When I was paying my mortgage on time, she thought, I could have shrugged his hand off. But not now.

  The door of his office was mahogany with gold letters on it: “George Bob Rainey, Vice President.”

  He opened it and steered her in. He gestured to a small straight-backed chair that was dwarfed by the huge desk. A supplicant’s chair. Perfect. She perched on it, adjusting her straight skirt to cover her knees.

  “Well, Kate, you’re looking good, girl. Still seeing Johnny Rhenquist?”

  “Uh, no. Not lately.” She was determined not to give him any grist for gossip over her broken engagement. “How’s Major?”

  George Bob Rainey eased himself into the big burgundy leather executive chair with a low grunt. “Oh, mean as ever. A real pistol. We still have to muzzle him when guests come to the house. Hell, he took a chunk out of Charley Holbein’s leg last month. Damn dog. I pretty near beat him to a pulp after that. I should’ve done what you suggested years ago and had you train him. I’m afraid it might could be too late now.”

  Katherine thought it had been too late even five years ago, when he had brought the huge German shepherd, then a puppy of eight months, to one of her group obedience classes. The dog was high-strung and aggressive toward the other dogs, and George Bob had refused to correct the behavior. She’d had to ask him to leave the class. She’d also had to reject the repeated leering advances he’d made over the years. Each time she turned him down, he’d clucked and said it was too bad she wasn’t a good sport like her mother.

  The problem was this was a small community. He knew Leanne’s reputation and he never let Katherine forget it. Whenever she was around him, she felt an undercurrent of shame and a need to prove herself businesslike and sexless—the exact opposite of her mother.

  George Bob was looking down at the open folder in front of him on the desk. In an instant, his face was transformed, from genial host to no-nonsense banker. This new man looked up at Katherine with his eyes slightly narrowed, his thin lips sucked back into his mouth. He was ready to get down to it.

  She put the letter on the leather desktop and slid it across the wide expanse toward him. “I got this last week. It was a real shock.”

  He glanced down at it. “Yes, ma’am, I know. Looks like we got a real problem here.”

  Katherine took a deep breath and began as she had been rehearsing it in her head. “When I was in two months ago to talk about this, I told you my business was down, just like everyone’s around here, but that it was improving—slowly—and that I had plans for increasing my profits, if I could have some more time.”

  She saw that his jaw was opening. He was about to interrupt, so she rushed on with the rest of her speech. “You said I could have a few months to work it out. I haven’t had enough time, and I can’t pay it all at once, but I am in the process of … working it out. I have some better ideas in mind. I can get an outside job; I can lay Joe off to save on overhead. If you could bear with me on this for just a few more months, George Bob, I will pay everything I owe. I’ve always been a good customer, paying right on time for eleven years.”

  Katherine found herself breathing hard after this speech, not because it was more words than she usually spoke at one time, although it was, but because of her profound resistance to saying them. It was too close to begging. And she could hear herself what bluff it was. The truth was she was just stalling for time; she saw no way she could pay off the debt in this lifetime.

  He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him. “Kate, it’s no longer a matter of just curing the default. Since the loan has been accelerated, you owe the full ninety-one thousand dollars.” He didn’t even have to look down at the folder for the number, Katherine noticed. He was loaded for bear. “Now I don’t want to be discouraging here. I know what a can-do sort of gal you are, but let’s us look at some serious possibilities here. Have you tried to sell the place?”

  She looked down at the backs of her hands. They were gripping her knees so tightly the bones and veins stood out in relief. “Not really. But I had a realtor look at it and she said I’d be lucky to get a hundred thousand for the whole thing, including the extra ten acres. That’s less than I paid for it. She also says it would take a long time to sell it in this down market.”

 
He shook his head slowly, sadly. “This is the hardest time for real estate I ever did see. Who ever would’ve thought this would happen?”

  George Bob had lowered his voice to funereal tones. Katherine’s heart slowly contracted. This was certainly his worst-news voice. “Now, Kate, we want to work with you on this, but we have a responsibility to our shareholders and our depositors to see that these loans get paid. If they don’t get paid, we are responsible to make the most we can out of the collateral. Unfortunately, it’s just like the notice says.” He picked it up and pushed it back across the desk to Katherine. “The loan committee has decided that we will have to foreclose on this property if you can’t figure out a way to pay what you owe by November seven.”

  “That’s only three weeks away. How can I figure it out in three weeks?” Her voice was in danger again of rising to a whine. She clenched her jaw to stop it.

  “Kate, let’s get serious. You’ve got some family in Austin could help. I know from your mama that you’ve got a rich grandmother. Hell, you’re one of the Driscolls. Why don’t you call them and ask for a loan to get you over this bad hump? That’s what I would do if I was you.”

  She shook her head angrily.

  He continued. “If it was up to me, I’d give you as much time as you needed, but it’s not up to me.” He gestured to the office next to his, the president’s. “We don’t like to take over properties. That’s not the business we’re in. But the powers that be say we got to collect on these real estate loans or do the best we can with the collateral.”

  For the first time he looked down at the open folder. “Says here in the loan agreement your collateral is the twenty acres, house, kennel building, and the assets of the kennel.”

  “Other than the runs and some dog-training equipment, there aren’t any kennel assets,” she said, fearful of the next shoe to drop.

  “Oh? It says here those champion dogs, big retrievers you breed and train—they’re part of the assets, the collateral assigned to the bank.”