Zero at the Bone (26 page)

“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 never 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.”

Katherine felt a sudden gush of pleasure spread through her body. It seemed years since anyone had praised her. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “It makes me want to purr.”

“So … what shall I tell him?”

“Tell him thanks, but I plan to stay at the zoo. I’m going to learn to be a credit to Alonzo Stokes if it kills me.” She took a big swig of wine and looked away from his puzzled expression.

*   *   *

As they finished off his chocolate intemperance and another glass of wine apiece, Katherine took a deep breath and asked the question she had been framing all evening: “Vic, is it possible that a ranch in Kerrville has a bongo and some aoudads?”

He looked up with eyes so wide his forehead wrinkled. “Aoudads, sure. Lots of the game ranches have big herds of them, but a bongo, no. They’re on the endangered list, hard even for zoos to get hold of. We were damn lucky to get our young male.”

“The one that’s over in quarantine?”

“Yeah. He’s the only one in Texas. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio—none of them have any.”

“How did we get ours?”

“Through an animal dealer who has contacts in the Congo, all over Africa, really. And the Driscoll Foundation was generous enough to put up the twenty thousand dollars for it. Why, Katherine?”

“I saw a photograph of a bongo being unloaded at a ranch in Kerrville on October second.”

“October second … that’s when we got ours,” Vic said. “Are you sure it was a bongo?”

“Pretty sure.”

“May I see the photograph?”

Katherine took a deep swig to finish off her wine and pushed her glass away. She’d reached her limit. That reminded her she needed to find the ladies’ room. She stood up without answering his question. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her face to clear her head. She needed to make a decision. Now. If she was going to investigate the documents her father had left her, she had to ask direct questions, take some chances. She was sorely tempted to show them to Vic and get his opinion on how to proceed. But what if he was involved in whatever it was that was going on?

She patted her face dry with a paper towel. She needed help, that was certain. But could she trust him? She pictured the white teeth against his dark skin. God, he looked like a dishonest camel trader. Why pick him to confide in? But who else was there? Sam McElroy? No way. Alonzo, certainly not. Hans Dieterlen? No. Her uncle? Impossible.

She felt a burning need to talk to someone about it. But Vic? Why take the chance? She thought about his knee pressing her leg, the way his hair curled under his ears. Maybe it was just wine and hormones at work here, but she had to take a chance on someone. And even if Vic was involved, at least she would have taken some action that might jar something loose.

She stopped at the pay phone in the hall to call Sophie at her parents’ house. They’d agreed to come back home at the same time so neither would be in the house alone. Sophie answered the phone and agreed to meet Katherine at ten-fifteen outside the house, so they could go in together.

As she approached the table, Vic finished signing the bill and rose from his chair. “Hard question, huh?” he asked.

“What?”

“About seeing the photograph.”

“Oh, that. Very hard,” she said.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

*   *   *

When he pulled his old Volvo station wagon into the gravel driveway, he left the engine running and turned to face her.

Before he could say whatever it was he had on his mind, Katherine said, quickly, before she could back out, “Can you come in for a minute, Vic? I want to show you something.”

He nodded enthusiastically.

Just as they reached the front door, Sophie pulled her BMW into the driveway next to Vic’s car and jumped out. “Perfect timing,” she said. “Hi, Vic.” She had to shout to be heard over Belle’s barking.

Vic looked puzzled. “Sophie,” he said.

“Sophie’s staying with me,” Katherine explained as she unlocked the door, soothing the dog with her voice. “Easy, Belle. Good girl.”

As they entered Vic caught sight of Ra undulating toward them. “This must be the dual champion, Amun-Ra,” he said.

“Radiant Sunrise’s Amun-Ra,” Katherine said, scratching the dog on the chest.

Vic stopped as they walked through the dining room–studio to glance at the walls of photographs. He immediately spotted the color ones of Katherine and went to study them. “Very nice work your father did,” he said. “Very nice.”

The three of them sat down in the kitchen and talked for a few minutes until Sophie said, “Time for me to turn in.” She looked at Katherine. “Late night last night. I don’t know how you do it.” She walked out, headed toward the library with Belle at her heels. They heard her door closing.

“I’m going to get the photograph. I’ll be right back,” Katherine said, rising from her chair. She stopped in the doorway and looked back at him, on the verge of asking him to take a pledge of secrecy, but she decided it would sound melodramatic, and it would be useless anyway. He was either trustworthy or he wasn’t. And she was wagering that he was.

She left without saying anything.

She pulled the envelope from under her mattress and carried it back to the kitchen, her foggy head full of warring emotions. No doubt the wine and lack of sleep over the last twenty-four hours were contributing to this act of indiscretion. But she was going to risk it.

She lay in front of him the page on which she’d copied the four photos that had been marked with the date 10/2/89 and “RTY Ranch, Kerrville.” “These are just copies, but you can make them out well enough.” She pointed at one of the photos. “This is a bongo, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Even in black and white, there’s no mistaking the vertical white stripes on the body and the leg markings and the hunched line of the back. It’s a bongo, and not ours.” He counted the stripes with his index finger. “This one has twelve stripes; ours has fourteen.”

Katherine turned the page over. “This is what was written on the back of each of these pictures,” she said.

“October second, 1989,” he read, “RTY Ranch, Kerrville. I’ve been there. About five years ago. It was the first of the big game ranches. Their profit comes from charging hunters immense fees to shoot exotic game to nail up on their walls. I’ve heard you can even shoot big game there if you have enough cash. This outfit’s run by a guy—Robert Yost—whose family owned the ranch for generations. Old Texas money. But they had fallen on lean times until he had the idea of stocking exotic game.”