Zero at the Bone

by Mary Walker

  “Look at the way Iris holds hers.”

  Katherine looked. With her right hand, Iris gripped the stick about halfway down the four-foot handle. Katherine choked up on the stick and found it easier to maneuver as she neared the snake, but the hook on the end was shaking wildly nevertheless. Wayne stepped over behind her and reached around to put his hand on top of hers and guide the stick toward the snake. “Okay,” he said in a calm low voice, “now we’re going to slide it under him, around the middle, yeah, like that. It’s not sharp enough to hurt him, don’t worry, now we’ve got him, whoops!” The snake made a sudden quick lurch forward in an attempt to strike at Iris’s hook. Katherine tried to jerk the stick back, but Wayne kept a tight hold on her hand so she couldn’t. “Easy. We’ll get him. Once you’ve got the feel, it’s pretty smooth.”

  “Actually,” Alonzo said, “that one’s a little nippy, has been since birth. You’ve got to be quick and decisive with him.”

  Katherine’s knees felt rubbery, but Wayne moved a step closer to give support, bracing his chest against her back and keeping his hand tight over hers in control of the stick. “We’ll get him this time,” Wayne said easily. He guided the stick under the snake and lifted it in a quick motion. Iris pressed her hook down on top of the snake to hold it in place as they lifted it out the door. Alonzo hurried over and removed the lid so they could toss the little snake in with the other three. Its tail was rattling ominously.

  Alonzo secured the top on the can. “Good,” he said. Then he looked up at Wayne. “But don’t baby her, Wayne. Just because she comes from a high and mighty family doesn’t mean she can’t carry her load here.”

  Wayne spun around to face Alonzo, his skin suddenly mottled with angry red patches. “I’m not babying her and I don’t know anything about her family. She hasn’t even been here two weeks and you have her doing dangerous things already. When I was new here you didn’t have me doing things like that for more than a month.”

  Katherine felt her face fill with hot blood. She didn’t know what the precipitating emotion was—embarrassment at being fought over or the fear making itself fully felt.

  “Well, I expect big things from her,” Alonzo drawled. “She comes from zoo stock. Her gramma could handle a snake with the best of ’em.” He stopped and got a faraway look in his colorless eyes. “So could her daddy,” he said. “She needs to learn.”

  Sharb and Iris were watching the exchange silently.

  “Thanks, Wayne,” Katherine said with her eyes lowered. “I think I have the feel of it now.”

  “Okay,” Alonzo said. “Iris, show Katherine how to clean the bushmaster room in back. It will be her responsibility from now on. The female’s starting to shed, so we want it ready right away. If she’s finished we might put them in on Friday, see if we can get some action. Wayne, let’s get that rattler exhibit spotless and change out those silk plants. They look pretty chewed up.”

  Turning toward Lieutenant Sharb, he said, “Anything we can help with before you go, Lieutenant?”

  Sharb, still looking pale and uneasy, was leaning over and scratching his ankle furiously. “No,” he said. “I’m gone.”

  As he opened the door, he looked back over his shoulder at Katherine. “Take care, Miss Driscoll.”

  * * *

  “Be sure to rinse the Lysol off real good,” Iris Renaldo advised Katherine. “We don’t want any smells interfering with the pheromones the female gives off. Mr. Stokes says we don’t want no competing odors.”

  They had been scrubbing the olive-drab walls in silence for ten minutes. Katherine straightened up from her squatting position and winced as her head came within an inch of hitting the low ceiling. Damn. One more thing she would never get used to.

  The small breeding room was hot and stuffy. The only window was a fixed five-by-ten-inch observation slit high on one wall. Iris had propped the door open with a bucket to give them some air, but there was no circulation that Katherine could discern.

  Katherine wanted to rest for a minute, to shake out her arm and let the blood flow back into her hand, but she didn’t want to appear lazy to Iris, who never seemed to stop working. She was a machine, Katherine thought, glancing over at the stocky, squat figure with her pants worn low on her wide hips. Her powerful brown arm made big circles with the sponge, her ropy tendons bulging out.

  “Mr. Stokes wants things just so for his bushmasters,” Iris said suddenly.

  “Yeah. I’ve noticed,” Katherine said. “Too bad he doesn’t feel that way about the people who work here.”

  “Oh, he don’t show it,” Iris said, “but he cares about the people here. I can tell he likes you. And you can learn more about herps from him than anyone in the business. This is one of the top five reptile collections in the whole world, right here. Didja know that?”

  Katherine didn’t answer. She really didn’t give a damn.

  Iris went on. Since she had not spoken ten words to Katherine in the past two weeks, it was a surprise to hear her talk. “This is a great facility even if it is almost thirty years old, and we get almost any species we ask the Zoological Society for. But it takes more than money to build a great collection. It takes someone like Mr. Stokes, who’s so dedicated.”

  Katherine couldn’t deny that he was dedicated. “Is that how new species are acquired? You just ask the Zoological Society?”

  “Usually, yeah. How it works is we ask and the society decides if it’s reasonable and then the Driscoll Foundation coughs up the money. Sometimes we acquire through trades or gifts from other zoos. And breeding loans, too. Like those cobra eggs we’re incubating are on loan from Detroit.”

  “How come when money’s so tight at the zoo, this department can get anything it wants?” Katherine asked, something she had been wondering as she heard about the need for austerity, but witnessed row after row of cages and aquariums filled with new specimens shipped in from all over the world.

  “I dunno. I suppose Mr. Stokes has been here so long he knows how to ask. Also, the herps are the biggest draw. People come to see them.”

  “Really?” Katherine asked, raising her eyebrows. “More than the other animals?”

  “Oh, yes. A fact,” Iris said. “The development office does these studies and the snakes and the big cats are the main draws.”

  “I didn’t know people liked snakes that much,” Katherine said.

  “Oh, they don’t like them. But they come to see them. You know, the girls giggle and talk about how slimy and dangerous they are and how awful it’d be if they got loose, and the guys tap on the glass and make like they’re big macho men.”

  Katherine hated to be included in the same category with those girls, but she couldn’t deny that she was. “I wish I could like them better,” Katherine admitted. “I’ve worked with dogs all my life, but I can’t seem to work up any warmth for snakes, or even much interest. How did you get so—comfortable with them?”

  “Oh, I been keeping snakes since I was nine years old.” Iris stopped sponging for the first time and turned toward Katherine. Her black eyes, which Katherine had thought dull and hostile, began to glitter as she spoke. “That’s when I caught my first indigo. Chico. A sweetheart, so tame, real easy to live with. My mom was against it at first, but when she saw how easy he was, she decided it was better than some smelly flea-bitten dog who’d crap up the yard or a cat who’d be all the time clawin’ at the furniture. At one point in high school, I had eleven snakes and two lizards, won the city Science Fair award with my project on shedding. It was so great ’cause Chico was right in the middle of a shed when the judges went by.”

  She dipped her sponge in the rinse bucket and swirled it over the area she’d just washed. “Maybe it would help if you got one as a pet. A milk snake or an indigo’s easy to start with. They eat good. You don’t wanna get stuck with no fussy eater. But you’re into dogs, huh?”

  “Yes. I’ve been training and breeding retrievers for twenty years. But it seems so natural and instinctive
to love dogs. You see a puppy and you want to cuddle it and soon he gets to understand what you say and you can work together on training. I can’t see how that happens with snakes; I mean, I wish I understood what the appeal is.”

  “Lemme see if I can explain it,” Iris said, stopping her work again. Her greasy short black hair glistened in the fluorescent lighting of the small room. She stood up and hooked a thumb under the wide brown belt with the brass snake-head buckle, and tilted her head while she thought.

  “When I first saw Chico, I just wanted to watch him all the time. He was so clean and smooth. You know indigo snakes? They got these dark-blue scales, shiny, and this easy way of moving, like it’s just no sweat, you know? Even the way he ate I liked. People think it’s all disgusting the way snakes eat, but it seems to me somehow pure.”

  She laughed here to shake off the almost mystical expression on her dark face and went back to her vigorous scrubbing. “No chewing or fuss, just take the whole thing in and use every part of it. When you feed a snake you get to feeling how efficient it is. With Chico, it was a lot like you and a puppy really. He loved to curl up with me. Snakes can’t control their body temperature, you know, so they love to be next to warm things.”

  “Do you still have him?” Katherine asked, surprised at how voluble and animated Iris was once she got talking.

  “No. He died. I don’t have snakes of my own now. I keep some of the snakes from here that need special attention. In my living room.”

  Katherine stopped sponging. Snakes at home. In the living room. Oh, my God. She remembered now. The glass boxes in the living room. My father brought them home from the zoo. My mother and I were scared to go near them. We hated them. “They can kill you,” my mother said. And she was right.

  Katherine shuddered.

  “You all right?” Iris asked.

  “Oh. Yes. I just remembered that when I was little, my father kept snakes in our living room.”

  They scrubbed in silence for a while.

  Finally, Iris said in an uncertain voice, as if she were venturing into a dangerous area, “Funny thing, you having a father who’s a keeper like me, then having this rich grandmother who gave the money for this building and for most of the animals in it. I mean, it’s so … oh, you know, different worlds.” She looked up at Katherine to gauge her reaction.

  Katherine nodded.

  “This is none of my business,” Iris continued, “so you just tell me go stick it if this bugs you, but if your grandma’s so rich, how come you have to work a job like this? It’s not society-lady work like that cousin of yours in the front office, but real, shit-shoveling work.”

  Katherine smiled at Iris, beginning, to her astonishment, to like her. “I don’t even know my grandmother,” Katherine admitted. “I’m working here for the money, just like everyone else. My dog-training and kennel business in Boerne is way down and I’ve got a lot of debt, so I need to earn money.”

  Iris nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I know how that goes. It’s buying on credit that gets ya. You buy a TV or a VCR and think paying it off’ll be a snap, then first thing you know you can’t make a payment and they take it back and you lose all the payments you already put into it. And the damn thing don’t work right, anyway.”

  Katherine thought about the stack of unpaid bills on her desk at home. “No shit!” she said.

  Iris laughed and turned to look at Katherine, who was surprised to see two big dimples appear in Iris’s cheeks.

  They worked for a while in companionable silence, two women who knew firsthand the pitfalls of borrowing money.

  Finally Iris said, “But since you feel the way you do about herps, I wonder why you weren’t assigned to one of the other vacant jobs.”

  Katherine stopped scrubbing. “What other jobs?”

  “Oh, Yolanda over in birds says they need someone there. And I hear they need someone for the hoof stock.”

  “Do they? How long have they had openings, I wonder?”

  “Coupla weeks, at least.”

  “Hmmm,” said Katherine, picturing Sam McElroy looking over the folder on his desk and telling her the only opening was in reptiles. She remembered the surprise on his face when she jumped at the job. She wondered why he didn’t want her around.

  “Of course, they’re gonna need someone in cats, too, now, to replace your dad,” Iris said. “Not that he’s replaceable really,” she added quickly. “But they’ll need to hire or promote someone to the head job over there. Danny’s really conscientious. And he’s got the desire. He begged your father to take him on, but he just don’t have the experience yet to be permanent head.” She shook her head sadly. “He was so good with them big cats, your dad, and he loved them. He was as good in his way as Mr. Stokes is in his.”

  Katherine digested that for a while. They had been working in opposite directions around the small room and now they met and finished off the last section of wall, Katherine doing the top part, Iris scrubbing down low.

  “Now the floor and we’re finished,” Iris said. “Let’s start in the back corners.” She dropped to her knees and began scrubbing the rough cement floor with one of the two brushes she’d brought in. Katherine marveled at what an efficient work machine Iris was. By the time Katherine had the other brush in hand and was on her knees, Iris had already completed a large part of the corner and was rinsing it with the sponge.

  “I never knew my father,” Katherine said. “Tell me about him.”

  “I didn’t know him that good, but I admired him. He was real kind to me when I was a kid working part-time for Mr. Stokes while I was still in high school. I guess that’s why I still call him Mr. Stokes and always called your dad Mr. Renfro, ’cause I started doing it so young and never could switch when I got older.”

  “What did you admire about my father?” Katherine asked.

  “Oh, I guess it was mostly how strong in his opinions he was. When he thought something was right for the animals he wouldn’t let nothing sway him. And he had a real temper. Like I remember Vic was going to put down this old lion, Simbaru. He suggested it as humane, you know, ’cause Simbaru was blind in one eye, had this painful growth on his rear and had lost all his teeth and everything and was stinking up the lion wing. But your dad was against doing it—he thought the lion had some good years left. He really went all out to try to save that lion. I guess what I really admired was his sticking up for his animals like that.”

  “What happened with the lion?” Katherine asked.

  “Oh, in the end, they didn’t put him down, but they did get rid of him, so I guess Vic won out. After that your dad was so mad he tried to stop Vic from getting the head-vet job, but he did anyway. I always like when someone, oh … you know, stands up to everyone and don’t back down.

  “That and him being so nice to me when I was young. You remember those things. It makes me want to help you when I see how hard it’s been for you.”

  It brought a catch to Katherine’s throat—the idea of kindness coming full circle, but if she were to respond, it would bring on tears again, so she returned to the subject. “His strong-mindedness seems to have got him some enemies, though.”

  Iris, on her hands and knees, glanced over, then shook her head vigorously. “Oh, sure, but these aren’t the kind of things people get killed over, if you’re thinking that. Not Anglos, anyway,” she added under her breath.

  They bumped feet when she reached the open door. Iris first, they crawled backward, scrubbing their way out. They stood up to survey their work.

  “Looks pretty good,” Katherine said, gazing down at her shriveling hands and vowing to buy some good rubber gloves before the next time. “How often does this need to be done?”

  “This thorough, each time a new pair goes in,” Iris said.

  “Will it meet Alonzo Stokes’s standards, do you think?”

  Iris studied it. Then she sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. “Too much Lysol smell. We’ll leave the door open to air it, and if there’s still
some smell tomorrow, we’ll put a fan in.” She smiled at Katherine, showing her dimples again. “Then it might pass inspection.”

  Iris looked at her big Timex. “Quitting time. Tuesdays Wayne and Harold and Irv and me go out for a beer after work. Wanna come?”

  “Oh, I’d love to,” said Katherine, pleased to be asked, “but I promised myself that today was the day I would go to visit my grandmother, whether she wants to see me or not. If I put it off, it might be another thirty years before I get up the nerve again.”

  Iris laughed, picking up her bucket and starting for the service area. “I know what you mean. Well, maybe next week. You’ll like getting to know the guys better. We really got a great group here.”

  “Yeah, seems to be. Why isn’t there a head keeper here?” Katherine asked, throwing her sponge and brush into the other bucket and picking it up. “The other departments all seem to have one.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Iris answered, walking ahead, “but not here. Mr. Stokes is curator and head keeper. He needs to keep a hand in everything. I guess he can’t trust anyone else to do it right.”

  When Iris got to the sink, she hoisted her bucket and dumped out the dirty water. “I’ve been here longer—nine years, and sometimes I’ve, you know, hoped he’d settle on me, but…” She shrugged her shoulders in resignation. “Anyway, good luck with your grandma,” she said. “Maybe she’ll like you and leave you her millions and you’ll end up the boss of us all.”

  Katherine laughed and dumped her bucket into the sink. “And maybe Alonzo Stokes will decide we did such a good job scrubbing that he’ll retire and make you head keeper.”

  Iris flushed under her dark skin and then smiled, showing the dimples again.

  14

  KATHERINE took one more look in the mirror hanging on the back of her locker door. There really wasn’t anything more she could do—she’d brushed her straight chestnut hair so it looked shiny and neat. She’d washed her face and added a touch of color to her cheeks and lips. But she kept staring at her face. What would her grandmother think of this face when she saw it for the first time in thirty-one years? Would she see there some trace of the five-year-old child she had known? Would she see in the gray eyes and straight nose some small reminder of Leanne, her only daughter? Or would she see a thirty-six-year-old woman who looked in no way familiar, an utter alien?