Crawford, jealous of Marty for the chance to whip, mounted up. He smiled at her but was secretly miserable that he wasn’t a strong enough rider to whip. And he hadn’t a clue as to how to rate hounds. He thought all a whip had to do was ride hard. In Crawford’s case, ignorance was bliss. How he longed to say at some fancy Virginia party, “Oh, yes, I whip-in at Jefferson Hunt.” It would be even more delicious to drop the information into a cocktail party in Manhattan. They’d think it had something to do with sexual practices. He’d then get to fire off a double entendre or two, after which he could declaim about foxhunting.
As it was, Crawford could have used Velcro in his saddle.
“Sister?” Shaker worked closely with his master. She’d carried the horn in her youth when the then huntsman died unexpectedly and violently in a bar fight Saturday night. She had a great eye for terrain and a good sense of casting hounds. Not a professional huntsman by a long shot, but she was no slouch either.
She inhaled deeply, the heavy air filling her lungs. “Warming fast.”
“Northern edge of the woods?” He swung gracefully up in the saddle.
“Good idea.”
As the hounds packed in and trotted to the next cast Diana whispered, “Is Dragon in trouble?”
Dasher, her litter mate, as was Dragon, whispered back, “If not with the people then with the snake. Boy, is he going to be sick.”
Jefferson Hunt named their hounds using the first letter of the bitch’s name. Dasher, Dragon, and Diana had been born to Delia, an old lady now retired to laze in the sun.
“If that copperhead hadn’t bit him, I would have!” Archie exclaimed.
Shaker stared down at Arch. “What are you talking about?”
“Sorry,” the steady fellow apologized. Wouldn’t do for him to be accused of babbling.
“How do you know it was a copperhead?” Dasher whispered.
“Head already getting fat. A nonpoisonous snake would have left two fang marks and that’s about it.”
“Rattler,” Cora quietly said.
“He’d be dead by now.” Archie tried not to gloat.
At the northern edge Shaker pushed the hounds toward the hay field. They picked up a fading scent moving at a trot. The next hour the hounds worked diligently with a few small bursts as their reward.
Sister lifted hounds and they happily walked back to the trailers.
“Bobby, dear, we could hear you all the way down to The Rocks,” his wife chided him.
“Oh.” His face reddened.
Behind them Crawford rode in silence, Fontaine behind him. Fontaine was studying Czapaka intently, especially his hindquarters. Confirmation, the way a horse is put together, reveals a lot about the horse’s potential use and longevity of service. Cody observed this.
“Nice horse.”
Fontaine turned his head back. Cody drew alongside him so they could speak without shouting. “Yes, he is a nice horse.”
“Quick with his hind feet?” Fontaine called up to Crawford, meaning “Does the horse kick?”
With disdain, Crawford, not even turning his head, called back. “No, but I am.”
“I’ll remember that.” Fontaine smiled broadly and benevolently for all to see.
“What’s Fontaine up to?” Cody thought to herself.
Walking back to the trailers, Target was a deadly foe.
CHAPTER 13
“Going to be a great year. One of the best. They go in cycles.” Lafayette dropped some of his hay, reaching down to snatch it up.
Rickyroo, in the next stall, stuck his nose between the iron stall divider bars. “We were right behind Aunt Netty.”
“Could you see her?”
“No. She vanished. The usual.” Rickyroo picked up his red play ball with a handle. He threw it over his head.
Ricky, full of energy, found things to do, things that were upsetting to the humans. If a bridle hung on the stall door, he’d play with it until he had pulled the reins into his stall; then he’d chew them to pieces.
He tore off other horses’ blankets when they were turned out in the field.
He also tore a flap off Cody Jean Franklin’s frock coat last year because he felt like it.
The humans called him a handful. The horses thought of him as a joker.
Aztec, a graceful five-year-old light bay, a blaze down her face, said, “It’s not fair. You two go and I stay home.”
“You’ll go out in the field, Az. Sister believes in bringing along horses slow,” Lafayette counseled her.
“I’m as big as you are.”
“And so you are, but I’ve seen a lot more than you have. The last thing we need is you spooking all over the place with Sister on your back. She’s a good rider but she’s no spring chicken.”
“I’m not going to spook. I hilltopped last year.” She referred to the practice of hunting but not taking the jumps.
“Be patient,” Rickyroo advised.
“You’re not,” Aztec grumbled.
“I know what I’m doing.” He threw the ball at the bars between them.
Golliwog strolled in during the conversation, Raleigh behind her. “If you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be playing with that stupid ball.”
“Raleigh plays with balls,” came the retort from the dark bay.
“My point exactly.” Golliwog sat down on a hay bale, picked the tip of her tail up with her paw, and began grooming.
Raleigh, an exceedingly good-natured dog, said, “Golly, you’re such a snot.”
“Cats,” was all Lafayette said.
“You’re jealous. You’re all jealous. You have to work for a living whereas I simply exist to be beautiful and catch the occasional offensive mouse.”
“You’re doing a piss-poor job of it.” Aztec laughed.
“Oh, really?” Golly dropped her tail. “Do you have any idea how many places there are for mice to hide? Shall I list them, grass-eater, eyes-on-the-side-of-your-head, big fat flat teeth, no-good . . . !”
“We’re scared.” Lafayette reached for more hay in his hayrack.
“I could scratch your eyes out if I wanted to. You’re lucky that I like you—basically.”
“Golly, cool it.” The sleek Doberman nudged the cat. “We all know that you are the most beautiful, the smartest cat that ever lived. Even smarter than Dick Whittington’s cat.”
Having heard what she wanted to hear, Golly’s mood instantly improved. “Say, I heard Dragon got nailed.”
“Archie told me on the way home that the little shit had it coming,” Lafayette said. “When Archie realized they’d split and told his group to catch up with Cora, Dragon refused. He even called Cora an old bitch. Archie’s furious.”
“She should have drafted him out when he was a puppy. He was beautiful but he was rotten even then. I told her but she missed it. The problem with Sister is it takes her too long to figure these things out. I knew that puppy’s attitude was wrong. Outrageous.” Raleigh stood on his hind legs to peer into Lafayette’s stall.
“But you’re a dog. Dogs know about one another. Same with us.” Lafayette nodded to his stablemates. “We know if a horse will work into the program long before Sister or Douglas knows. It’s the nature of things.”
“I suppose, but I’d like to save her the trouble.” Raleigh loved Sister with all his heart and soul.
“Humans need trouble. Makes them think they’re living.” Golliwog laughed.
“Cynic,” Raleigh returned to the cat.
“Means ‘dog’ in Greek, you know.” Golly adored showing off.
“It does?” Aztec was surprised.
“Yes. Diogenes lived like a dog. Really, he lived in a hovel and wore rags but he was brilliant. He questioned everything, especially authority. He upset the rich, obviously. They called him a dog. They called the people who followed him dogs. Stuck.”
“How do you know all this?” Aztec asked, her deep-brown eyes filled with admiration.
“I read whatever Sister is
reading. I sit on her shoulder or on the pillow behind her shoulders. She reads all the time.”
“I don’t understand the appeal of books.” Ricky tossed his ball again.
“Big surprise.” Lafayette snorted in jest.
“I’ll tell you about books.” Golly stretched fore and aft, then sat down quite regally, prepared to declaim. “It’s the best way to enjoy an uninterrupted conversation with the best human minds from any century, from most any country. Superior as we are to humans, imagine if we wrote books. You might know what Man O’ War learned and thought. I could learn from the cats of ancient Egypt. It truly is our one great failing. We don’t record our experiences.”
“We’re too busy living them.” Raleigh laughed.
“There is that.” Golly smiled and purred. She did love Raleigh quite a bit.
The slam of a truck door diverted their attention. The cat and dog walked to the open barn doors. The sun had just set and soon a light frost like thin icing would blanket the ground.
“Doug and Cody,” Raleigh said.
“That started up again?” Rickyroo paid little attention to human couplings and uncouplings.
“How could Doug pick such a loser, even if she is pretty?” Golly returned to her hay bale by the side of the aisle, set up for the morning feeding.
“On again, off again.” Lafayette’s stall dutch door opened on the other side of the barn from Doug’s cottage.
“I don’t want her to hurt Doug again.” Raleigh’s ears swept back.
“Of course she will. She’ll hurt everybody, including herself, but there’s one thing I’ll say for Cody . . . if she gets somebody in trouble, she gets right in there with him.”
“What’s the worst that can happen? She gets pregnant,” Ricky said.
“There’s lots worse than that. People commit suicide over love and really dumb stuff,” Raleigh replied.
“Well, it doesn’t affect us.” Ricky felt the whole thing was silly.
“The hell it doesn’t.” Golly spoke forcefully. “Everything they do affects us.”
CHAPTER 14
Later that night three short knocks brought Cody to the front door of her small house. She opened the door.
“Hi, Sis.” Jennifer leaned against the doorjamb, the hall light framing her hair like a halo.
“Jen, get in here.” Cody clamped her hand around Jennifer’s wrist, pulling her inside and shutting the door behind her. “You asshole.”
Jennifer, unperturbed, unsteadily walked for the couch and dropped onto it. “Shut up.”
“What’d you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t jam me.” Cody bent over Jennifer to check out her pupils.
“Couldn’t go home.”
Cody picked up the phone. “Hi, Mom. Jen’s with me. She’s going to spend the night.”
“What about her clothes for school?” Betty asked.
“She can wear mine. She needs help writing her history report.”
“Well . . .” Betty’s voice faded. Then she said, “All right.”
Cody hung up the phone. “Don’t do this.”
“You do.”
She bent over Jennifer. It was like looking into her own face. “Because I’m weak. I don’t want to do it. I don’t even want to drink a beer. Something happens and I just do.”
“Yeah, well, me, too.”
“No one’s got a gun to your head. Stay off the stuff. I’ve wasted the last five years and I’ll never get them back and I’m trying to get straight. Hear?”
Jennifer nodded. “Everything is so fast.”
Cody sat next to her sister, patting her knee. “Yeah. And everything is so clear. Cocaine. I’m a genius on coke until I come off.”
“Black.” Jennifer rocked a bit.
“Heading down?”
“Yeah. There’s got to be something to cut that, I mean cut the down. I heard speedballs do it.” She mentioned a potent cocktail of cocaine and heroin.
“That’ll kill you if you get the mix wrong,” Cody replied.
“Got anything?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t give it to me if you had,” Jennifer flared.
“If it would soften the drop, I would. I’ve been on that ride, little sis.”
“What am I gonna do?” Jennifer cried.
“Feel like shit. There’s nothing I can do.”
Desperation contorted Jennifer’s beautiful features. “You gotta help me.”
“I am. I’m letting you stay here.” Cody sighed. This would be a long night. “Where’d you get the stuff?”
“Easy to get.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Jennifer laughed. “Why the hell do you care? You get it where you can get it. I can buy it at school—lots of places.”
“Jen, you’re gonna stop if I have to lock you up and throw away the key. I’m not gonna let you screw around and fuck up like I have.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jennifer just wanted her racing heart to slow down and the black clouds to disperse.
CHAPTER 15
The night promised a light frost. Sister Jane made the rounds before turning in for the night. She checked Dragon, head swollen but beginning to feel better. She said good night to the rest of the hounds, hearing a few good nights in return.
She walked back over the brick path to the stable. The horses slept in perfect contentment.
With Raleigh at her heels, she walked in her back door, removed her barn coat and scarf, draping them over the Shaker pegs. Then she slipped her feet out of the green wellies.
She clicked off the lights in the kitchen, the hall, and the front parlor. Then she climbed the front stairs to her bedroom. Two windows, the glass handblown, looked over an impressive walnut tree. Beautiful though it was, the sound of dropping walnuts on a tin roof could waken the dead during the fall.
Golly, already on one pillow, opened an eye, then shut it when Sister and Raleigh entered the room. An old sheepskin rested at the foot of the bed. Raleigh jumped up, circled three times, finally dropping like a stone.
“You weigh more than I do,” Sister teased him.
“Close,” Raleigh replied.
A chill settled in the room. Built in 1707, the house was a marvelous example of early American architecture. Insulation was horsehair in the walls, some of which also had lathing. Years ago when Ray was still alive they’d blown fluffy insulation down the exterior walls and it helped cut the cold. Materials had advanced since then, and she often thought of just ripping out the walls from the interior and putting up those fat rolls of pink insulation with numbers like R-30.
The expense halted that pipe dream, as did the total disruption to her life. Bad enough to be disrupted at forty but by seventy her tolerance had diminished proportionately.
She hopped out of bed, slipped on a sweatshirt, and hopped back in.
She picked up Arthur Schnitzler’s The Way into the Open, published in 1908. There was a line in the novel she appreciated, “the bereavements of everyday life.” She read a bit, then put it down. Neurotic, edgy Vienna displeased her tonight.
She reached for George Washington’s foxhunting diaries, which had been compiled for her by an old friend who worked at Mount Vernon. The good general had kept diaries, notes, letters from the age of fourteen on.
She read a few lines about hounds losing a line on a windy day. Then she put that down, too. Normally she loved reading Washington’s foxhunting observations. He was a highly intelligent man and a forthright one about hunting. But she needed relief from hunting. Right now it was causing as much headache as joy.
She opened a slim red volume of Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. These notes, written in 1746, when the general was fourteen, were, he hoped, going to be engraved on his brain. The physical act of writing pinned the words in the mind as well as on the page. But for the young, tall youth, the main purpose was mastery over himself.
She
read out loud to Golly and Raleigh: “In the presence of others sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet.” She paused. “Well, that leaves Kyle Dawson out of polite society.”
“Sister, you haven’t seen Kyle Dawson in years,” Raleigh reminded her.
She peeped over the book, speaking to the animals. “Here’s one for you. Number thirteen. Ready? ‘Kill no vermin as fleas, lice, ticks & c in sight of others; if you see any filth or thick spittle, put your foot dexterously upon it; if it be upon the clothes of your companions, put it off privately; and if it be upon our own clothes, return thanks to him who put it off.’ ”
“I don’t have fleas.” Golly rolled over, reaching high into the air with her left paw.
“Liar.” Raleigh lifted his head.
“That got a response.” Sister turned the page. The phone rang. No one close to Sister called after nine-thirty in the evening. It was now ten. “Hello.”
“Hello, is this Mrs. Raymond Arnold?”
“Yes.”
The deep male voice replied, “This is Dr. Walter Lungrun. I was hoping I could cub with you this Thursday.”
“Are you a member of another hunt, Mr. Lungrun?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not. I’ve just returned to the area to do my residency.”
“Ah, well, come on ours anyway. You’ll have to sign a waiver and release form saying you know this sport is dangerous and if you break your neck so be it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It will be good to have a doctor in the field. What’s your specialty?”
“Neurosurgery.”
Sister glanced at the silver-framed photograph of Raymond in his army uniform that rested on her night table. “Lungrun. From Louisa County?”
“Yes. I left to go to Cornell and then to NYU School of Medicine.”
“So you’re smart, Dr. Lungrun.” Her voice lightened.
“Smart enough to call you.” He was light in return.
“Well then, I’ll see you at seven-thirty at the Mill Ruins.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Lungrun.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Arnold.”
She hung up the phone, folded her hands over her chest. “How extraordinary.”
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