“You’re a hardworking man. How do you stay so fat?” Crawford laughed at Bobby, who was as round as he was tall.
“Good genes.” Bobby motioned for the waitress to return. “I think I’ll have a cup of coffee, too, but with cream, please.”
“Certainly.” She left and soon returned with the coffees and the Springbank.
Bobby leaned forward. “Crawford, you know I back your candidacy because I think you can preserve and even extend the territory. You can talk to the developers and get bridle paths, you can talk to landowners and explain easements and conservation issues. I admire that in you. But you have a touch of the Yankee and you can’t just go up to people and spout off.”
“Bullshit. Virginians are the most direct people I’ve ever met. You people say the most incredible things to one another, scathing, blistering talk.”
“When we know one another well—very well. Until then there is the dance of politeness, Craw, and we speak in code. You think you don’t need to learn the code.”
“Wastes time. If I go to the gas station, I’m expected to talk for fifteen minutes to the idiot behind the pump. I haven’t got that kind of time. I have businesses to run and a big farm to manage.”
“No one has time anymore but we make time. Those casual conversations—”
“Casual. Boring. The weather. Who shot John.” Crawford used a southern expression, which made Bobby laugh because he didn’t get it quite right.
“That’s how we knit our community together. It’s not about facts, issues, or how smart you are, Crawford. It’s about respect for people. Respect.”
Crawford shifted in his seat. “Well—”
“A little case in point. When you divorced Marty two years ago you cut her off without a penny. She had to fight through the courts to get any kind of settlement.”
“Any man in a divorce does that.”
“Some do and some don’t. But if you want to present yourself as a community leader, m-m-m”—he wiggled his hand—“better to err on the side of generosity. Look, it’s an old divorce lawyer’s routine, ‘starve the wife’ and she’ll get so worn down and scared she’ll accept far less, but, Craw, you are rich. You could have given her a decent package, walked away, and looked like a prince, especially to women, and brother let me give you the hard facts, women run this show.”
“Hunting?”
“Life.”
He smirked. “The hell they do.”
“I can’t believe you’ve lived here for seven years and you haven’t figured that out about the South and especially Virginia.”
“You have a”—he considered his words—“dynamic wife. You can’t extrapolate from your experience. Generalization.”
“Okay. Let’s say I’m wrong. Women are at the back of the bus. By publicly proclaiming Marty wasn’t going to get a penny more than you thought she deserved you made plenty of enemies. Trotting around that twenty-year-old model after you dumped Marty hardly helped matters and how long did that last . . . ten minutes? You could have seen her in New York. You didn’t have to bring her here. But worst of all, you opened the door for Fontaine to look like a hero.”
“Oh that.” Crawford’s voice sounded deflated.
“That.”
When Marty was in distress and couldn’t pay the rent on her small apartment because Crawford had thrown her out of the house and she unwisely and meekly left, Fontaine had hired her to be his assistant in his landscape business. Fontaine was a landscape architect and a very good one when he chose to work.
“That.” Bobby’s tone dropped.
“I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“We all have that feeling at one time or another.”
“I accused him of sleeping with her.” Crawford flared up. “He finds his way up more skirts!”
“But not Marty’s. He was too smart for that, even though she is a fine-looking woman. Fine-looking.”
Crawford’s eyes narrowed; then he dropped his gaze into his shot of Springbank. “Live and learn.”
“It’s not too late.”
“I made restitution. I bought Marty a house.”
“Small but pretty. However, you need to mend fences, build bridges, and above all, listen to Sister Jane. She knows more about people and hunting than all of us put together.”
The amber color of the scotch caught the light, golden shafts sinking through the Springbank.
“One other little thing.” Bobby held his coffee cup up for a refill. “You need to apologize first to Sister Jane for heading Fontaine into that coop. You need to offer to rebuild it.”
“That’s Fontaine’s job.”
“Yes, it is, but do you want this goddamned mastership or not?”
“All right. All right.” He quieted while the waitress refilled Bobby’s cup. “What else?” He watched her hips swing as she walked back to the kitchen.
“You need to apologize to Fontaine. A public apology would be best.”
“I will not.”
“Then I suggest you watch your back because Fontaine will get even.”
CHAPTER 3
At five-thirty in the morning the phone rang in Sister Jane’s kitchen.
She picked up the phone, hearing a groan of suffering on the other end.
“Arrgh. Umm. Aah.” The speaker repeated herself, the pain more intense.
“Betty Franklin,” Sister simply said.
“Oh, my dear, did you hear me groan? I feel just terrible.”
“And it’s fifty-three degrees with a soft rain.” Sister described the weather that October 14.
“Aah.” Betty groaned again for effect.
“Are you whipping in today or are you auditioning for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts?”
“You are a heartless bitch.”
“Suffering’s good for you, Betty. Tests the spirit. Enlarges the heart. Sharpens the mind.”
“I’m about as wonderful as I can stand. Even my husband says I’m wonderful.”
“Your husband has imagination.” Sister laughed. “But just so I know what to say at your eulogy, tell me, exactly what are you dying from today?”
“Arthritis in my lower spine, in my toes, in my fingers, and my stomach lining is irritated, although not my bowel, thank heaven. Cody’s up to no good but I don’t know with whom, and Jennifer got a D in math. A D! Naturally my mind hurts, too.” This was said with uncommon good humor.
“This drizzle will stop by the time we cast hounds.”
A long sigh, then, “Six-thirty. Whiskey Ridge.”
“Is Bobby going to make it?”
“No, he’s got to deliver the brochure today. I worked all night Tuesday so it was his turn last night. Looks good.”
“Jennifer?”
“She’ll be there.”
Jennifer Franklin, their younger daughter, a senior in high school given to surprising mood swings, received science credits for foxhunting. Each week she had to write a three-page paper on what she learned about the environment. She’d written about the great variety of oak trees, the life cycle of the fox, and this week she was concentrating on amphibians preparing for hibernation. Three pages sounded like not much work but it turned out to be time-consuming due to research, although Jennifer discovered that she enjoyed it.
As Sister hung up the phone she checked to see if the lights were on in the stable and the kennel. They were.
“Good men,” she thought to herself, for Douglas Kinser and Shaker Crown were already at work.
As professional first whipper-in, meaning Doug was paid, his responsibility was to condition and prepare the master’s horses and the huntsman’s horses for the hunting season. He also walked out hounds, assisted in their training, and rode forward of the huntsman so he could turn hounds back if need be. It helped if the first whipper-in was intelligent. Douglas was. He could intuit what Shaker was doing even if he was one mile away from the huntsman.
Golliwog reposed on the marble counter, her luxurious tail swaying a bi
t. Her calico coat, brilliant and gleaming, was a source of no small vanity to the feline. She’d eaten her breakfast and was considering dozing off.
Raleigh, also full, wanted to accompany Sister. He parked by the kitchen door, ears up, alert.
“Catch cold on a day like this,” Golly laconically said.
“Lazy.”
“Sensible.” Golly rolled over, showing Raleigh her back. She disliked being contradicted.
Sister allowed her members great latitude in dress during cubbing, but she herself remained impeccably turned out. She wore mustard-colored breeches, brown field boots with a ribbed rubber sole, useful on a day like this, a shirt and man’s tie, an old but beautifully cut tweed jacket, and a brown cap, tails down. She opened the door and Raleigh dashed out with her.
Golly lifted her head, watching them trot to the barn. “Silly. Neither one has sense enough to come in from the rain and Sister wastes time hunting foxes. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the whole race of foxes. Liars and thieves, every single one of them.” Having expressed her opinion, she closed her eyes in contentment.
Sister ducked under the stable overhang and shook off the water, as did Raleigh. She walked into the center aisle of the barn, the soft light from the incandescent bulbs casting a glow over the horses and Douglas, too.
Raleigh joyfully raced up and down the center aisle, informing the horses of his presence. They weren’t impressed. They liked Raleigh, but this morning he was just too bouncy.
“Ma’am. You might wear your long Barbour today. Don’t want you getting the shivers before opening hunt.”
“Douglas, you’ll make someone a wonderful mother someday.” She laughed at him but went into the tack room and grabbed her coat along with a pair of string gloves. She loved Douglas. Teasing him made them both happy. He’d grown from a skinny kid with green eyes, beat up just about every day at school, into a broad-shouldered, curly-haired, beautiful young man with bronze skin. Douglas’s mother was white and his father black. He took the best from both.
Sister’s son, Raymond, died in a freak harvesting accident in 1974. He was fourteen years old and there wasn’t a day when she didn’t hear his voice, remember his infectious smile, and wish he was with her.
She spoke rarely of her son. One lives with one’s losses. The shock of it and then the subsequent grief had kept her numb for a year and then after that she was flat. She couldn’t think of another word but “flat.” Three years passed before she thought there might be joy in life but three things sustained her during those three years: her husband, Big Raymond; her friends; and her foxhunting. The former two provided love, the latter, structure and a sense of something far greater than human endeavor.
What was odd about Ray Junior’s death was it occurred in a year of the black fox. When Big Ray died in 1991, there was also a black fox. He made mention of it, gasping for breath with emphysema.
“Janie, black fox years are watershed years for us. Mother—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence but the black fox superstition was one of his mother’s cherished beliefs, right up there with transubstantiation. She said that great upheavals or the death of a family member were always heralded by a black fox. Mother Arnold declared that her grandmother, in her prime during the War between the States, swore that in 1860 the whole state of Virginia was full of black foxes. People had never seen so many.
Sister knew there was a black fox kit, half-grown, in the den near Broad Creek, running through her property. Given the apparition she’d seen the day before yesterday and this fact, she couldn’t suppress an involuntary shiver.
“I told you you’d get the shivers. Put a sweater on.”
“I’m not cold. But you know, Doug, I saw the damnedest thing and I can’t get it out of my mind. When Shaker and I walked back to the coop that Fontaine obliterated, I thought I saw the Grim Reaper on Hangman’s Ridge right by that haunted tree. Of course, in retrospect I realize I was probably hallucinating, I was so hungry, but still, the man was as clear as day and I looked away and looked back and he was gone.”
“Me, too.”
“You, too, what?” She sat on a tack trunk for a moment as Douglas exchanged the regular English leather reins for rubber ones.
“When I tracked down Archie, he was staring right up at the ridge and I saw whatever it was, too. I told Shaker. Don’t think he believed me.”
“Didn’t believe me either.”
He held the reins, the bridle hanging from the tack hook. “It’s a bad sign, Sister.”
“I know, but for whom?”
He shrugged. “Not us, I hope.”
She smiled. “You’re young. You’ll live a long, good life.”
“You seem young.” He laughed.
“Flattery, young man, will get you everywhere.” She stood up, slapped her knees as she rose, then called out to her horse, Lafayette, standing patiently in his stall.
“Lafayette, it’s going to be slick as an eel today.”
“I can handle it,” he bragged. “I can handle anything.”
She smiled as he whinnied, walking into his stall to rub his ears and chat with him.
“Blowhard.” Rickyroo, a hot thoroughbred in the adjoining stall, snorted.
Both Lafayette and Rickyroo were thoroughbreds but Lafayette at nine showed more common sense than Rickyroo at five, although Ricky would probably be a pistol at nine, still.
“Do you want to take the field or whip today?” Doug asked her.
“Take the field. After what happened Tuesday, I think I’d better be right there. Not that Bobby Franklin isn’t a good field master—he is. We’re lucky to have him on Tuesdays. Anyway, he was ahead, as he should have been, right behind the hounds, so this little contretemps happened behind him. No one was riding tail that day either.” It was common practice to have a staff person or trusted person ride at the rear of the field to pick up stragglers, loose horses, loose people.
“I heard that Fontaine is spending money in every store owned by a club member.”
“Fontaine is one of the most consistently underrated men you’ll ever meet. That’s the pity of it. He could have amounted to something.”
“Being master of Jefferson Hunt amounts to something.”
“Yes, it does, but I meant out there in the world. He’s a good-looking man, so talented in his field, but the money he inherited made a bum out of him in a way. Pulled his fangs.”
“Seems to do that to people.”
“I’m beginning to think if you want to destroy your children, let them inherit a lot of money.”
“Not my problem.” Douglas laughed.
“Money brings tremendous responsibility and worry. People think if they have a lot of money they won’t have any troubles. Well, any problem that can be fixed by money isn’t a problem.” She smiled. “Who knows, maybe you’ll wind up rich.”
Doug threw a white saddle pad on Lafayette. “I learn something from you every day. I’m going to remember that.”
“Scrape and save now. Learn everything you can from everybody. I promise you, you’ll use every single bit of it in this life.” She walked outside Lafayette’s stall, took her saddle and saddle pad off the saddle rack, and put them on his back. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m dispensing advice like a sob sister. You know, I think that damned whatever I saw and you saw has gotten under my skin. I’m afraid, Doug. You know I believe in fate, but it’s something else. Something vague.”
“I feel it, too.”
“Oh, well,” she sighed, “it’s going to be a wild morning. They’ll be popping off like toast and blaming me for going out on such a day.”
“Not like the old days.”
“No. The days of a master inviting only certain people to ride during cubbing season—long gone. You’ve got to invite them all, which makes it a holy horror because most of those folks haven’t a clue as to what we’re doing or why. Furthermore, I am considering cutting their tongues out. Actually, they’ve got
ten much better about babbling in the hunt field. I’m being a crank.”
“No, just being a master.” He laughed.
Cubbing, a six-week to two-month period before formal hunting, existed to teach young hounds the whys and wherefores of hunting. It also served the same purpose for green horses and now, against most masters’ better judgment, green people. The most interesting part of cubbing, though, was it also taught the young foxes what was expected of them, how hounds ran, the calls of the horn, and where to look for cover if they couldn’t get back to their home den.
As older hounds brought along the young ones, so older foxes passed on their tricks to their children.
Douglas and Sister faced each other, checking out their gear.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
CHAPTER 4
As the drizzle turned into a steady rain Sister had ample time to repent her enthusiasm. The hack to the other side of Whiskey Ridge, twenty minutes, soaked her back because she hadn’t fastened tight the collar of her raincoat.
Carefully, Sister, Shaker, and Doug crossed Soldier Road, picking up the gravel road leading to the abandoned tobacco barn where they would first cast hounds.
The hounds, anchored by Cora, a mature female, behaved beautifully. Sister worried that the cooler temperature might encourage the young hounds to consider unplanned excursions but they didn’t. Even Dragon, by nature wild and flashy, kept to the middle of the pack.
The few trailers parked by the side of the road testified to the fact that only the diehards would cub on this early morning.
Betty Franklin huddled in her trailer with Outlaw, her dependable, handsome quarter horse.
Jennifer, in the trailer tack room, called out, “Mom, I can’t find my heavy socks.”
“They’re hanging on the end of my nose,” Betty replied.
“Oh, Mom,” Jennifer grumbled.
Betty heard her rummaging around. So did Jennifer’s horse, Magellan.
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