Zero at the Bone

by Mary Walker

  Luis Traeger was already in the pen approaching Teddy. He passed by, smacked him on the rear, raising a dust cloud. The rhino’s skin looked so much like armor Katherine expected it to clank, but the noise was just like what you’d get if you thumped your hand into a sandbag. Then Luis walked to the gate in the dividing fence. He unlocked the huge padlock, pulled the chain that secured the wooden gate, and swung it open. He propped it open with a rock and walked backward toward the group at the railing, keeping his eye on Teddy whose squat, powerful legs propelled him slowly and inexorably toward the opening.

  They all watched with riveted attention as Teddy lumbered through the opening and pointed his worn-down nub of a horn toward Ursula.

  Hans stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his face impassive. “I hope these dinosaurs do what they’re supposed to,” he said in his thick German accent. “Getting the female here has been a major pain in the ass.”

  “Oh? How?” Katherine asked.

  “The paperwork involved in getting her over here you wouldn’t believe. She’s on breeding loan from the Frankfurt zoo and it took several dozen permits and releases to get her here, as well as two years and a small fortune. He gestured toward Teddy. “All for this moment. I hope he isn’t queer.”

  Luis clambered down into the moat, up the other side, and vaulted the railing as if he were a young man. As he joined the group, his eyes were shining under bushy gray brows and his nervous fingers jangled the key ring hanging from his belt. His brother stood in the doorway of the pachyderm building with a pitchfork in hand. They all watched with an anticipation Katherine found infectious.

  “Where does the money for transport and everything come from?” she asked Hans.

  “The Zoological Society,” he said without looking at her.

  “Not the Driscoll Foundation?” she asked.

  “No. They pay only for actual acquisitions.”

  “Hans, do local game ranches ever buy animals at the same time the zoo buys them, like in the same shipment?”

  He kept his eyes fixed on Teddy. “How would I know what they do, those places?”

  “They don’t ever buy animals from the zoo?” she asked.

  He glanced at her coldly. “Certainly not. It is against AAZPA regulations.”

  Teddy was sniffing the air. Ursula tossed her head, shaking the hairy tassels at the end of her silly donkey ears and trotted toward him. She stopped and leaned her massive head against his and rubbed it gently back and forth, waiting for him to make the next move. Teddy endured it for a moment, then trotted away to the other side of the enclosure where some hay was still left. He lowered his head, picked some up and began to chew contentedly.

  “That prehistoric dolt,” Hans Dieterlen muttered, adding a few guttural words in German. “Doesn’t he know a come-on when he sees it?”

  “Patience, Hans. He’s just a beginner,” Luis said. “He’s never seen this done by his species, so he’s got to work it out.”

  Ursula was not about to give up so easily. She followed Teddy at a brisk trot and this time she was bolder. She lowered her head to his stomach and dragged her horn along the length of his body. When she reached his groin, she began to lick his belly and then moved on to his penis, which had been hanging down like a useless fifth leg. Teddy let out a squeal. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the penis, which immediately started to grow and lengthen until it was about three feet long and pointed forward toward his nose horn.

  Iris Renaldo took a few steps to get close to Katherine and whispered in her ear, “Wow. I’m glad I decided to come watch. Isn’t that something?”

  “It sure is,” Katherine said with conviction. The erection continued to grow. Katherine suddenly saw where Asians had got the idea that rhino horn was an aphrodisiac.

  Ursula, seeming suddenly nervous by what she had unleashed, ran to the edge of the dry moat between her and the spectators and scrambled down into it.

  “Oh, no,” Luis said. “He won’t be able to get at her in there and I don’t know if she’ll be able to get out on her own. “Come on, let’s head her out.” He jumped the railing and scrambled down into the moat, with Hans and Vic behind him. They walked up to the female rhino and tried to turn her around with thumps to her flanks, but she refused to budge. She was planted where she stood. When they heard the clop of soft hooves, they looked up to see three tons of rhino bearing down on them. Teddy was approaching. As he slid down the side of the moat, the three men scrambled up the other side, getting out of the way just in time.

  Ursula leaned suggestively against the incline and Teddy took the offer. He climbed up on her backside and thrust himself against her, but the observers, craning their necks, could see he was aiming far too low. He got down and looked around bewildered.

  “My God,” said Sam McElroy, “it makes me want to go down there and put the dong in for him.”

  “He’ll get it,” Luis said. “He just needs some practice.”

  And sure enough, Teddy mounted her again, ramming himself against her. There was a slapping noise, then two simultaneous sighs from the rhinos as he found the right spot. It took only a few seconds of thrusting in and out before he let out a bellow and his pom-pommed tail shot up like a flag. But Teddy didn’t move; he stayed in position, resting his head on Ursula’s rump.

  “It’s not over by a long shot,” Luis Traeger said. “Rhinos can ejaculate every fifty seconds for several hours.” As if on cue, Teddy began thrusting again, and again he bellowed and this time so did Ursula. It went on and on for the next half hour and promised to continue indefinitely. By now the zoo was open and visitors were gathering to watch. Some mothers with small children in tow took one look and dragged the kids away.

  “Too bad,” Vic said to Katherine. “It’s good sex education. Come on. Tear yourself away. We have promises to keep.”

  As Katherine turned to leave, Iris whispered into her ear, “Whew! I don’t know about you, but I could use a cold shower.”

  * * *

  “What’s next?” Katherine asked, the wind whipping her hair as they bounced along the rutty road to the Australian Pavilion in the new section of the zoo.

  “A bird—her keeper thinks she’s egg-bound,” he said, pressing on the accelerator. “A cassowary.” They screeched to a stop at the side of the pavilion where several gigantic ostrich-like birds stood stamping the dust with their big feet. Gawky and startled, they regarded the Jeep’s arrival with heads held high on long crepey necks. Batting their long lashes, they looked like aristocratic matrons interrupted at a tea party.

  “There she is.” Vic pointed at a lone bird in the corner of the pen who was stomping her feet and shaking her richly feathered tail as if in the throes of some compelling force. A young woman keeper came running toward them, holding on to her hat. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, breathless. “Matilda’s been straining since I arrived this morning.”

  “How many has she laid already?” Vic asked.

  “Nine. And now she gets stuck on what’s probably the last egg.”

  “Okay, Lisa, she’s been at it way too long. Let’s see if we can give her some help.” He pulled his pack from the back of the Jeep and headed toward the gate.

  “Oh, boy,” Lisa groaned, pulling on some thick leather gloves and pushing down on the bill of her baseball cap. “Oh, boy.”

  “Here’s the plan,” Vic said to the two women. “It won’t be too hard to catch her, but you two will need to hold her still while I see if I can help her ease it out.”

  Lisa groaned again and looked over at Katherine. “You got any jewelry on?” she asked.

  Katherine shook her head, puzzled.

  “Good. This is my least favorite thing to do.”

  Vic unzipped his bag and slung it over one shoulder. “Be careful. These birds can kick like mules.”

  “Especially this one,” Lisa said, unlocking the pen. “She’s the Incredible Hulk of the bird world. We need to get close to her right away so she can’t g
et a good one in.”

  The cassowaries, except for Matilda, who stayed right where she was, straining and shuddering, ran with a few strides of their powerful legs to the opposite end of their pen. Vic headed toward Matilda’s corner, clearly planning to approach from behind; Lisa approached from the front; and Katherine from the flank. Vic moved in first, grabbing her around her muscular thighs, while Lisa threw her arms around the base of the long naked neck, and Katherine grabbed what was left—the bulbous feathered body. She had to bend over and stretch her arms as far as they would go, resting her cheek against the small flightless wing. She was surprised that under the soft plumage, the body was rock hard and trembling.

  The bird struggled, stomping and dragging her big feet, raising clouds of dust that Katherine couldn’t avoid breathing in. There was also some noisome brown sticky stuff on the feathers that was getting smeared on her cheek and in her hair. She envied Lisa the baseball cap that protected her hair.

  “Fine,” said Vic squatting down under the bird’s rear end and peering up. “Ah, I see it, just a nickel’s worth, but there it is. Now … can’t you keep her a little steadier so I can get my hand in there without getting it ripped off? Katherine, tighten up.”

  Katherine hugged harder and gave a little yip of surprise when Matilda snaked her long neck down and grabbed Katherine’s shirt collar with her black beak and began to tug at it. “She’s trying to rip my shirt,” Katherine complained.

  “Good,” Vic said, looking up into her face, only about a foot away from his. “It’ll keep that end busy for a while.” He poured some liquid on his hands and rubbed them vigorously, then poured a clear oil onto them and inserted the left hand into the bird’s cloaca. Katherine was beginning to feel her wind cut off by the continual powerful yanks on her shirt. More dust was being kicked up, which made her eyes itch and water and her tongue feel gritty. Just as she felt close to strangling, she heard a rip as the collar began to separate from the shirt.

  Vic smiled up at her. “Ah, I can get a few fingers around the side. Keep holding—a little tighter if you can.”

  The beak gave a final tug and pulled off a large part of Katherine’s collar.

  Lisa called down to her, “Sorry. I can’t hold any higher on the neck or I could damage her windpipe. It’s very fragile in these birds.”

  Matilda dropped her head again and nipped at what remained of Katherine’s collar. This time she caught a strand of Katherine’s hair in with it.

  “Ow,” Katherine yelled. “She’s got my hair now.” She looked down at Vic for help.

  “Hold on,” he said. “It’s really lodged tight in there, but I just felt it give a little. No wonder she was having so much trouble. Coosh now, coosh,” he said, pulling his hand out and patting the bird on the tail. He poured some more oil on the hand. “Crisco,” he said to Katherine, “better than obstetric jelly.” He stuck his hand back in as Katherine felt her hair being yanked upward, so hard it jerked her head back and brought tears to her eyes.

  “Ow!” She shouted so loud the bird let go of the hair and collar.

  “Don’t shout,” Vic said. “It makes her jumpy.”

  Then his black eyes opened wide and his whole face took on a rapturous expression. “It’s coming,” he whispered to Katherine. “I feel it coming.” Katherine couldn’t take her eyes off his face; it was radiant with pleasure, his usual high color heightened, eyes blacker, lips redder, skin flushed. His eyes looked directly into hers, as if he were waiting for a response.

  Slowly he worked his hand from inside the bird, whispering a calming, “Coosh, coosh,” and when it emerged with a slurping noise, he held the egg up in his palm for her to look at: a glistening bottle-green orb, pear-shaped and large as a cantaloupe. It looked to Katherine like a piece of the moon, luminous and magical, burnished smooth by centuries of worshipers’ touches.

  Katherine gasped. “Do they always look like that?”

  Vic nodded and said, “Here comes the hard part—letting her go without getting kicked.” He backed up slowly with the egg until he was out of range of the long legs. “Now,” he said. “Run!”

  Lisa and Katherine released their holds and ducked out of the way as Matilda flailed out with one powerful limb. They dashed to the gate where Vic was waiting with the egg. He handed it to Katherine, saying, “We’ll take it to the nursery for incubation with the others.”

  She received it reverently in both hands.

  16

  KATHERINE loved the way the candle backlit her glass of Beaujolais, making it glow a luminous ruby. Listening intently, she turned the glass by its stem and took occasional sips.

  Vic was talking about his lonely childhood with his mother in small-town Texas. “The animals seemed to fill that gap,” he said. “My mother tolerated them all, but it couldn’t have been easy for her.”

  “I don’t think I could have survived my childhood without the dogs,” Katherine said, surprising herself with the revelation. She’d never admitted it before. “Does your mother still live in Emory?”

  “No, she died a few years ago,” Vic said.

  They lapsed into a comfortable silence. After a strenuous day in the open air, three hours of animated conversation over a sumptuous dinner, and two bottles of wine, Katherine felt mellow and happier than she had in many weeks. She took a long sip of wine and said, “This is a good restaurant. I really enjoyed my dinner.”

  “Makes up for the lunch we never got around to today.” He looked at her clean plate. “Should we try some of the chocolate intemperance? It’s their specialty.”

  “Why don’t you order some and I’ll help,” Katherine said, thinking she really shouldn’t drink any more wine. The warm prickling in the back of her neck alerted her to overindulgence.

  “Why is it women like to eat dessert, but never order it?” he asked, rearranging his long legs under the table and pressing his knee against her thigh in the process. Katherine had a sudden image of Ursula rubbing her horn along Teddy’s belly and blushed.

  “Wasn’t that incredible today with the rhinos?” he asked. “I’ve always thought of Teddy as part of the earth—a mountain—dirt-colored, ancient, enduring. So it was like the earth rising up to renew itself. When his tail shot up the first time, I felt like applauding. I didn’t know that would happen.”

  Katherine laughed. “I liked that, too. It would be wonderful if it produces a baby rhino.”

  “We’d be one of only a few zoos to have done it.” He looked at her over the top of his wineglass for a while, his black eyes reflecting the curve of the glass. Katherine thought that Sophie was right: he did clean up well—in a blue suit, white shirt, and red paisley tie. With his dark skin and curved nose, it gave him the look of something wild temporarily civilized: a Berber warrior come in from the desert for a weekend in the city. She shook her head to dispel the image. Silly. It was the wine. This was just an overworked veterinarian out for dinner.

  “Will you be around to see the calf born if Ursula is pregnant?” he asked.

  She paused, thinking about it. “How long is gestation for rhinos?”

  “Seventeen to eighteen months.”

  “I don’t know, Vic. I wish I did. Everything is so up in the air right now. Eventually my father’s house will be sold by the bank, so I’ll need to find someplace to live. I like the zoo, really like it, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the snakes.” She felt an urge to try to explain it to him. “It’s almost as if I was born with an aversion so deep and automatic, I can’t control it—this instinct to hike up my skirt and run when I see one. So all day my body is producing surges of adrenaline to prepare me to flee, but I have to stay. It makes me feel like one of the silly females Iris Renaldo makes fun of. I hate it, but it won’t go away.”

  Vic nodded and recited in a low voice:

  “Several of Nature’s People

  I know and they know me

  I feel for them a transport

  Of Cordiality.

  But ne
ver met this Fellow

  Attended or alone

  Without a tighter Breathing

  And Zero at the Bone.”

  “Zero at the bone,” Katherine said. “That’s it exactly. A chill so deep it feels as if it’s in the bone marrow. What is that?”

  “Emily Dickinson,” he said. “Even now, when I see a snake unexpectedly, I feel it—the tighter breathing and the cold bones. When I’m expecting them, it’s not a problem.”

  Katherine sighed. “It goes even beyond what I’ve said. It’s as if I have some ancient tribal memory of a bad experience. I can’t get rid of the feeling. Maybe it has to do with—” She stopped, uncertain whether she wanted to tell him. She decided she did. “I just remembered recently that my father kept some snakes at home, in the living room, when I was very young. My mother and I were terrified of them.”

  He nodded slowly. “Would…” He hesitated a minute, then began again. “Would you be interested in another job, like working for a good trainer here in town?”

  Katherine glanced quickly at his lowered eyes, then away. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, Sam asked me the other day if I knew a trainer who might need help. He wanted me to suggest it to you, as a better alternative. Actually, he ordered me to suggest it to you.”

  “I think he’s eager to get rid of me,” Katherine said, watching his face for a reaction.

  He surprised her. “So do I,” he said. “I’ve been wondering why.”

  “Me, too.” They looked at one another over their wineglasses. She calculated that he’d drunk even more than she had, but he showed no effects.

  She decided to give voice to her suspicion. “Was it Sam’s idea for you to take me around today, try to sell me on the trainer job?”

  He looked injured, his black eyes wide. “No. That was all my idea. Of course, I checked it out with him.”

  Katherine nodded, trying to decide if she was convinced.

  “Well, are you interested?” he asked.

  “Why? Did you find me a job?”

  “Yes. Josh Burton at Circle C Kennel would hire you tomorrow. He says you’re the best trainer of retrievers he’s ever seen. Says your present dog is so good he’s not really a dog at all.”