by Mary Walker
She imagined someone going through her checkbook—the declining income over the past two years, the huge medical bills for Leanne, the balance close to zero right now. It would reveal a great deal about her life. She felt a smile creeping across her lips. Maybe she could come to know her father through his checkbook.
She flipped it open and paged through the check register to his most recent entries, written in the same bold, loopy handwriting as the letter to her. On October 2, he had made a deposit and paid some household bills, his last entries.
She looked back at September, his last full month of life and checked his deposits. It appeared that he was paid twice a month—$1119.50 on the first and the fifteenth. She ran her finger down the payment column of the register. He also paid his bills on the first and fifteenth. His regular monthly expenses—mortgage payment of $646.55 plus gas, electricity, and phone—added up to about $730. His only extravagance seemed to be a check written to Total Camera Mart for forty dollars.
So how come a man with such frugal habits has to take out a second mortgage on his home and dies in debt? Did he have some secret vices?
She pulled a pencil from the desk drawer and ran the eraser slowly down the payment column, working backward from October 2—through September, August, July, and then back through the rest of the year.
When she had finished, she leaned forward and began circling certain entries with the pencil.
Damn. With the exception of this month and last month, going back to when the register was started fifteen months ago, he had written a check for $1300 to Travis Hammond on the tenth of every month. Thirteen hundred dollars every month! No wonder he was in debt. That left him less than two hundred dollars a month to live on, after his fixed expenses.
What was the payment for? Why hadn’t the lawyer mentioned it? It couldn’t be for legal services, could it? She did some quick calculating. Over the last fifteen months, her father had paid out $16,900. That sure as hell wasn’t the fee for drawing up the simple will Hammond had shown her.
She rooted around the cubbyhole to see if there were more old check registers, but she didn’t find any. She opened the drawer and rummaged through the papers there. No check registers. She wondered where he kept his old banking.
Katherine leaned back in the chair and pressed her thumbs into the base of her neck. Why was her father paying a lawyer the lion’s share of his salary for the last year? For what?
Well, she would certainly find out.
She picked up the phone, called information for Travis Hammond’s number, and dialed it. It was the office number. A woman’s tape-recorded voice said the offices of Hammond and Crowley were closed and would reopen at nine tomorrow morning. She could leave a message at the tone. Katherine left her name and her father’s phone number, saying it was urgent Travis Hammond get back to her immediately. Then she stood and looked down at the checkbook lying on the desk.
There’s something rotten here. Wait. Maybe the money was being invested for him. That’s possible. And if he’d been making regular investments, that would explain his having enough cash to help me out now. But Mr. Hammond would have told me. Unless … she pictured the lawyer’s troubled face. No. Impossible.
She sat down at the desk again and pulled out the canceled checks neatly arranged in one cubbyhole. She thumbed back to August and pulled out check number 5897. Dated August 10, it was made out to Travis Hammond in the amount of $1300. It was stamped “Paid.” She turned it over. In the impeccable handwriting of one who grew up in an era when penmanship was taught, was written, “Pay to the order of account #340-980-43, Belton National Bank. Travis Hammond.” Under that was stamped “Belton National Bank, August 15, 1988.”
But why no check last month? Or this one? The tenth of October had passed almost a week ago. Just to make sure he hadn’t written one and not recorded it, she went through all the canceled checks for September. Nothing to Travis Hammond.
I’ve got to talk to him right now. This is driving me crazy. I’ll try him at home. She called information, but the number was unlisted. Damn. She’d have to wait until morning to find out about this.
She looked at her watch—eight fifty-five. Oh, my God, Joe! She still hadn’t called him. He had been expecting her back by dinnertime. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She picked up the phone and dialed. Joe answered on the first ring.
“Joe. This is Katherine. Sorry I haven’t called, but things are crazy here.”
“I heard from the police your father died. Sorry to hear it. I hope it’s okay that I told them all the stuff they asked for.”
“Yes. Of course, it’s okay. Are things all right there?”
“Yup. Jack Reiman came and the Starks came a day early for Candace, so she didn’t get her going-home bath, but they’ll learn to call ahead.”
“Yeah. Joe, I’m going to stay the night here. I have to do some things in the morning. Can you take care of things there? Why don’t you get Rosie and Carlitos to stay with you?”
“Okay. But—”
“Your check. I know. I’ll come home tomorrow and pay you. I promise. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” He sounded like a peasant with centuries of oppression on his back.
“Would you call the Kielmeyers and tell them what happened, that my father’s dead? I promised I’d call them. Tell them I’ll call in the next few days, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She hung up and grabbed the phone book from inside the bottom drawer. She looked up Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage and punched out the number. A gum-chewing voice answered on the fifth ring and told her they were open every night until ten.
Katherine looked at her watch. It was nine, exactly. She had an hour. She located the place on her Austin map, loaded Ra into the back of the car, and exceeded the speed limit getting there.
Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage was on the ugliest strip of road she had seen in Austin. Sandwiched in between a Pizza Hut and a discount furniture warehouse, the entrance was marked by a huge billboard announcing, YOU LOCK IT. YOU KEEP THE KEY. OVER 1800 SPACES. The gate in the high chain-link fence held a sign warning, GUARD DOG ON DUTY.
It was an enormous complex, covering many acres. Finding unit 2259 might take a while. As she drove past the office, a ramshackle trailer resting on cinder blocks, she decided it would be better not to stop and ask. Why? she asked herself. I’m just a daughter going to look at her dead father’s effects. I’m not doing anything wrong.
On both sides of the driveway stretched endless expanses of identical long, low, flat-roofed, barracks-like buildings, constructed of concrete slabs covered by a pebble-like texture. Some had corrugated metal doors large enough to drive a truck through, but most had standard-sized gray-painted metal doors with hasps and padlocks. Just as she had envisioned.
The place was totally deserted and very dark. There was no moon; the only light was supplied by a 40-watt bulb hanging on a utility pole every hundred yards. She was glad Ra was with her.
After driving the length of the complex without finding the right number, she arrived at the back fence, fourteen feet high, with barbed wire on the top. The strip of dirt next to the fence was a dumping ground for old cannibalized cars and decrepit boats with hulls rotted out—a cemetery for dead machines.
She followed the fence until she reached a road running through the other side of the complex. So far she had passed buildings numbered 1 through 19 and seen no signs of life. It was a city of the dead, a ghost town.
She spotted building number 22 and turned into the shadowed alley running between 22 and 23. About halfway along, she located it—2259 was stenciled on the door. She stopped the car, turned off the engine, and searched through the keys on her chain until she found the small one. She held it between her thumb and index finger for a few seconds, warming the metal. For luck.
Before getting out of the car, she looked both ways down the long rows of locked gray doors. She had not seen or heard another living soul. “We don’t like it
here, Ra, do we?”
She climbed out and opened the back for the dog. “Heel. You stay right here with me.” They approached the door. The lock was new and shiny brass. On it was engraved, “Arbus. Germany.”
“Oh, Ra. This is it. Oh, boy.” He wagged his tail wildly at the excitement in her voice.
Before inserting the key in the padlock, she looked up and down the long rows once more. The key slipped into the lock. A slight turn clicked it open. At the click she felt something shift inside herself. It was as if at that instant she had begun some secret collaboration with her father. It made her feel close to him.
She took the lock off, slipped the hasp, and hung the open lock back on the hook.
With her right hand she pulled the heavy door open, keeping her left hand on Ra’s neck. When she felt his hair prick up and the sudden rumble shake his body, she leapt back from the opening, slamming her hip against the car. Ra held his ground, growling and leaning forward toward the darkness inside.
Katherine’s whole body throbbed with her galloping heartbeat.
No. I couldn’t have seen what I think I saw.
In the faint light from the bulb at the end of the row, she thought she had glimpsed a glittering animal eye and thick black-and-tan fur.
It had looked like a huge dog.
No way.
Ra was standing at ease now, waiting for her. When her pulse had slowed to a trot, she took two small steps forward and peered in again. “What is that, Ra?”
This time she knew it wasn’t real. Real, but not alive. “God, that scared me. You, too, huh? What a pair we are, scared by a stuffed dog.”
She stood at the entrance and studied it. The dog was a handsome German shepherd mounted on a wood platform, standing alert, ears perked up. The glass eyes were amazingly realistic. But why would someone do this? Sick. Was this Pasha?
He’d said something in the letter. Remember Pasha. What a good watchdog he was. Yes, a watchdog. I do remember. Pasha was a great watchdog. He made me feel safe. Something in the house terrified me and he made me feel safe. But safe from what? I can’t remember.
Katherine looked back at the stuffed dog. It reminded her of the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs—earthly treasures guarded by godlike dogs.
Katherine inched forward. “Let’s see what treasures you’re guarding, Pasha, if you are Pasha.” She crossed the threshold into a room the size of a closet. On the floor sat three large cartons and a cheap metal file cabinet with two drawers. Katherine felt her whole body droop at the sight. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but this was not it.
She said aloud to herself, “What do you think people keep in these storage units, Katherine? Were you really expecting stacks of money?”
She approached the file cabinet and opened both drawers. They were filled with manila folders, but the light was far too dim for her to read the labels. She looked up at the ceiling. Damn. No light.
“Well, Ra, we’ve got our headlights, don’t we?” She stepped back to the car, checking up and down the long row of closed and locked doors once more. No one. She started the car engine and turned on the headlights. They were not directed toward the closet, so she backed up and turned the car at an angle so the beams were aiming as close to the inside of the unit as she could get them.
Ra sighed and lay down in the open doorway while Katherine went to work on the files. Starting with the top drawer, she pulled out each file and examined the contents, holding it up into the light beam. The entire drawer was composed of magazine and newspaper articles about zoos, animals, and photography. He was a prodigious clipper—like her.
The second drawer contained old invoices and banking dating back to 1960. The man kept everything and organized it—like her. She rummaged through and located his check registers dating from July of 1988 back all the way to 1960. She held each one in the headlight’s beam as she flipped through, pausing each time she came to the tenth of the month. There they were, payments of $1300 going back nine years, to June of 1979.
In May of ’79, the check was for only $1000. She checked the deposit column and noticed that his paycheck deposits were smaller. As she went back through the years, the size of the checks diminished as the years receded, in direct proportion to his income. In 1960, when he was earning $7500 a year, he had been paying only $300.
But for the past twenty-nine years her father had been turning over almost half of his income to Travis Hammond. Why? And when did it start? The records stopped in 1960. What about before that? When she was a baby and the family was living together, had he been paying then, too? She stuffed the registers in her bag, wiped her sweaty face with her shirttail, and turned to the cartons.
She emptied them methodically. One was filled with envelopes stuffed with negatives and prints—all of animals. The other two were filled with old magazines—Modern Photography, Zoo Management, Audubon, Smithsonian, National Geographic—and paperback books on all subjects. After she had gone through them item by item, she repacked them hastily.
When she finished, she turned around to face Ra, still lying in the doorway. “It has to be here, Ra. Whatever it is. For starters, he sent me the key and receipt for safekeeping. Also, there’s plenty of room back at his house for this stuff. He didn’t need this storage space, but he’s hidden something here for me, and he’s left his old watchdog to guard it.”
She stood up and wrested the top drawer out of the cabinet. Sweat began to drip down her temples. She lifted out the other one and tipped the whole cabinet into the light beam so she could examine the inside of the cabinet. Nothing. She lifted each drawer and felt the underside. Nothing. She tipped the cabinet back, resting it against the wall so she could look underneath. Nothing but a few pillbugs and spiders. She checked the rear of the cabinet before shoving it back against the wall.
“Well, shit, Ra. Where is it?” The dog didn’t respond. He was asleep in the doorway. She stepped over him to get out of the stuffy closet for a breath of air. She looked at her watch. Ten o’clock. Closing time. One more look.
She stepped back over the sleeping dog, into the dark closet, and glanced around at the plasterboard walls and ceiling and the cement floor. Finally, her gaze settled on the stuffed dog in the dark corner, where the headlight beam didn’t reach. She hadn’t wanted to touch it, it looked so dusty. She hadn’t wanted to look at it either. She wasn’t sure why.
Now she examined its outline in the dark. How do they stuff dead animals? she wondered. Like the Egyptians, they probably take out all the insides first. So the body would be empty and they’d have to stuff it. That’s why it’s called stuffed! Stuffed with what?
She approached and rested a hand on the dog’s croup. The dusty, dry fur and hardened hide didn’t feel anything like the warm, muscular rump of a living dog. She knelt down and ran her hands up the back, neck, and head, down the chest, between the front legs, and along the belly. She stopped suddenly and moved her fingers back a few inches. There was something that felt like a welt under the fur. She explored it with two fingers. There was a slit in the belly running from between the front legs back to the groin.
Maybe this was the way stuffed dogs were made. No. The stuffing would fall out. Very gingerly, she inserted the tip of her index finger through the opening. She withdrew it immediately, thinking of the spiders underneath the file cabinet, then remembered she wasn’t afraid of spiders and stuck it back in, farther this time. She felt only a void.
Slowly she moved back along the opening, wiggling the finger around until she touched something. It felt like the edge of a thick piece of cardboard. She tried to feel more of it, but her finger had knocked it away.
To locate it, she needed to fit her whole hand in. She inserted four fingers to the knuckles and pulled gently outward on one side of the slit. It widened easily so she could slip her hand in. She found it immediately—the edge of a thick envelope or a file folder. She could feel the edge, but she couldn’t get a grip on it.
Sweat tric
kled freely down her hairline now. She withdrew her hand and wiped her face with her sleeve. Then she sat down to get a better angle up into the dog, resting her cheek against the musty dead fur. Using her left hand to enlarge and hold the opening, she inserted her entire right hand in past the wrist. The rawhide-like edges scraped the skin of her hand and wrist, but she pushed on until she located the object and was able to grab it. It felt like a big envelope.
But her hand was much bigger now, with it closed over the envelope, too big to pull through the opening. She used her left hand to pull and pry at the edges, gradually enlarging the slit, but still she could not get her hand out. The knuckles were raw and scratched from trying.
She refused to let go of the envelope. Her back was soaked with sweat and she was breathing hard with exertion.
The headlight beam suddenly wavered and a monster shadow flashed onto the closet wall.
She swung her head around and tried to leap to her feet at the same time, but her hand, caught inside the dog, jerked her back painfully.
“We’re closing them gates now,” said a gruff voice. “Di’n’t you know we close at ten? Hey, how can you see anything in here?” He shone his light on her.
Katherine twisted her body around to look at him—a burly black man with a flashlight. “I was just fixing to release the patrol dog, girl. You lucky I checked first. He ain’t like this one here.” He waved the flashlight toward Ra, who awoke suddenly with the light on his face.
“Hey, you need help there?” He shone his light on the stuffed dog. “Je-sus, what that thing? Some stuffed dog? You need help there, lady?”
Katherine was twisted around facing him, arm pulled behind her. “No. No. I’m fine. Just finishing up with my … files here.” She tried to smile. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll be out in just a minute, okay?”
He reached down to touch Ra’s head. “Okay, you finish up. I got to close them gates. So finish up.”
“Yes, I am.” Katherine had finally abandoned the envelope and worked her hand loose. It felt like raw hamburger meat.