“Right away, madam.” He handed her a large cup.
She carried the steaming coffee to Shaker, still in the kennels.
He looked up and smiled as she came through the door. “Mrs. Howard.”
“Here. What a great day. Now come on over and get your piping hot omelette. The Boss said for me to tell you to come on, you can wash down the kennels on a full stomach better than on an empty one.”
“Did she?” He smiled broadly. “What a good woman.” He gratefully took a swallow. “Very good.”
“Jamaican.”
“High test.”
“Ninety-three octane.” Marty waited for him to toss a collar in the bucket hanging from the wall, a bucket used just for this purpose, as collars were removed from hounds when they returned from their labors.
As they walked back together to the festivities, Marty asked, “Did you always want to be a huntsman?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How did you learn?”
“My parents allowed me to move up to Warrenton to live with my aunt. I was twelve and I begged because the huntsman at Warrenton, Fred Duncan, said he’d set me to work in the kennels. That’s how I started. Fred was a fine huntsman. He’d whipped-in to Eddie Bywaters, the last huntsman of the great Bywaters clan. I learned so much from Fred, and I could go over and watch Melvin Poe hunt the Orange County hounds. Fred would take me up to watch the Piedmont hounds.”
Marty loved hearing these stories and knew there was so much to learn not just about foxhunting itself but about the incredible people who had carried it forward throughout the generations. “When did you get your first job?”
“Here.” He put his hand under Marty’s elbow as she was about to step into a small depression. “Jefferson Hunt needed a first whipper-in, and even though I was young, Fred vouched for me. Raymond put me on every screwball horse he could beg, borrow, or steal before he’d hire me. He finally said, ‘Kid can stick on a horse.’ That was that. And I never want to leave. I love it here.”
“Do you ever worry about the money? I mean, huntsmen make so little, and what if something were to happen?”
“I don’t worry. Maybe I should, but I knew as a little kid that my life wasn’t about money. This is what I’ve always wanted to do, and you know, Mrs. Howard, there isn’t enough money in the world to get me to give it up.”
“But what if you’re hurt?” Marty belonged to the worrying class.
“The Boss will take care of me just like I’d take care of her. We’ve been though a lot together.”
Marty thought about this, an attitude so different from the way she was raised and from the milieu in which she lived. “You’re a lucky man.”
Betty called out to Shaker, “How about those young entry?”
He gave her the thumbs-up sign.
Crawford, hoping to ingratiate himself with a person he considered a servant, and technically, Shaker was a servant, said, “Thank you.”
“The hounds did all the work.” Shaker smiled.
Sister, in line, observed the exchange as well as the high spirits of the group.
Bobby, in front of her, was chatting with Tedi. He noticed his wife. “Hey, hey there. I see you flirting with my wife.”
Ken Fawkes, who was holding a plate for Betty, replied, “Bobby, I’ll give you credit. You knew a good thing when you saw it.”
Everyone laughed.
As Shaker moved through the line, people complimented him. He was their star. They watched him ahead, taking the jumps first, without a lead. They saw him traverse territory they could loop around thanks to the wisdom of Sister, and they watched him work patiently with the hounds.
“Well done.” Bobby beamed as he passed Shaker.
“Can you eat all that?” Shaker looked at Bobby’s full plate.
“I can. That’s the problem.”
Once everyone had a full plate, the caterer’s assistant walked about refilling coffee cups, fetching hot tea or a cold Co-Cola.
People sat on their portable mounting blocks, hay bales, upturned buckets.
Sister, sitting next to Shaker, said to Ronnie Haslip, “Do you remember the day two years ago when Shaker had the flu so I took the horn?”
“Indeed, I do,” Ronnie replied.
“I asked him for advice and he said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what Fred Duncan told me: Hunt your hounds and don’t look behind you.’ So I did.”
The horses hung their heads over the fence, observing the delighted people. The caterer gave them apples from the fruit basket.
“I like this guy,” Keepsake commented.
Golly had positioned herself in the middle of the seated humans. She lay on her side, her tail lazily swishing up and down. Then she casually rolled on her back, her glittering eyes scanning the group. “I’m here.”
Sybil laughed. “Sister, Golly is speaking to us.”
Everyone focused on the cat, which encouraged her behavior. Raleigh and Rooster, seated by Sister, ignored the calico.
“Golly, come over here. I’ll give you bacon,” Tedi offered.
That fast, the cat sprang to her feet, zoomed over, and snatched the bacon from Tedi’s fingers.
“Shameless,” Marty commented.
The conversation bounced between everyone at once and then small fragments of people.
Tedi was mentioning to Sister her memories of a safari her parents had taken her on when she was a teenager. “. . . no one thought much about conservation back then. You know, I look back and I regret those tigers and giraffes my parents bagged. But I can’t bring himself to throw out the hides. It seems sacrilegious somehow. And you know, too, Janie, I have much more fun foxhunting than I ever did or could on a safari. ‘O, the blood more stirs, / To rouse a lion than to start a hare!’ Remember? Hotspur. He was wrong.”
“Sir Henry Percy never hunted fox, he was too busy hunting the Scots.” Crawford joined the conversation.
“Never hunted behind Ashland Bassets, either,” Edward commented, mentioning a pack of bassets whose quarry was rabbit. Following them on foot could be very exciting.
“Hey, where’s Ralph today?” Betty asked.
“Moline,” Ken answered. “Conference.”
Moline was the headquarters of John Deere.
“Poor Ralph. Had to miss the first day of cubbing because of business. Work interferes with the really important things in life,” Bobby said, and laughed.
As the gathering broke up, Crawford was telling Ron why they chose a breakfast instead of a party. He kept his voice low. “. . . memories. Marty discreetly inquired around and found out that after Nola and Guy disappeared no one ever gave a First Day of Cubbing evening party again. We thought better of it, but then Marty suggested we do this. I think we’ll make a tradition of it.”
“I hope you do. Of course, that means next year you’ll have one hundred people out on the first day.”
Crawford shrugged. “Good. I’ll just buy more eggs.” He picked up his mounting block, placing it inside the tack room of his trailer. “As nothing else had turned up, comes as no surprise, I think we’ve heard the last of Nola and Guy. It’s for the best.”
Ron replied, voice even lower, “God, I hope so.”
CHAPTER 16
A thin wisp of ground fog snaked over the pasture where Lafayette, Rickyroo, Keepsake, and Aztec munched and a family of raccoons crossed toward the garbage cans in the barn. Occasionally if Sister forgot to close the tack room door the raccoons would open the desk drawer and pull out bags of bite-sized Hershey’s bars. They loved sweets, as did the possums who followed them at a discreet distance.
Lafayette lorded it over the Rickyroo and Aztec, both young horses at six and five respectively. He relayed the day’s hunting, from the first moment the bit was in his mouth to his wash down with warm water in the wash stall, in colorful detail.
Keepsake, eight years old and a thoroughbred/quarter horse cross, thought Lafayette was laying it on a little thick. He nibbled twenty feet awa
y from the three thoroughbreds. He liked them well enough but he felt he was more intelligent, or at least less gullible.
He noticed the downstairs lights in the house going off, the upstairs bedroom light switching on. The blue light of the television shone from Shaker’s window. He noticed Showboat, Gunpowder, and Hojo, three former steeplechasers, dozing in the adjoining pasture. Each of them had been donated to the hunt for the huntsmen’s use. Sometimes that meant the horses were orangutans; no one else could handle them, so this was the last stop unless the owner shipped them off to the killers. Few foxhunters wanted to put a horse in the knacker’s trailer no matter how badly the animal behaved. But the Jefferson Hunt membership had a wide sweep of contacts. Gunpowder had even spent time competing on the flat track. Having run over timber in steeplechase meets, these three disdained the jumps in the hunt field and thought any equine who even glanced sideways at such a puny obstacle, the largest being three feet six inches, was a wimp.
Keepsake could and would jump anything, so he shrugged off their air of superiority.
The night was thankfully cool and pleasant, the breeze still easterly. Sister turned off the air-conditioning and opened the bedroom windows.
The horses and hounds could faintly hear Mozart’s A Little Night Music floating from her bedroom. Then her phone rang.
She groaned, wondering what the problem was. A night call usually meant a problem. A master’s work is endless, whether physical or political, putting out the brush fires flaring up within the hunt club, any hunt club. Some fool left a gate open, another printed up the trail riding schedule and one date was wrong. Someone else hated that cubbing started so early in the morning and they were sure this was a conspiracy to keep them home.
Any group of humans swirls about in a fog of gossip, misunderstanding, and good intentions. Political maneuvering makes for strange bedfellows—and in many an instance the bedfellows really are in bed together. Foxhunting seems to foster even more of that than other activities. The people, by nature, are hot-blooded just like their horses.
By the end of any given day, Sister’s reserves of emotional restraint ebbed.
Not all humans depleted her. The ones she loved energized her: Betty Franklin, Shaker Crown, Tedi and Edward Bancroft, and she thought she could learn to love Dr. Walter Lungrun. Maybe it was because he rented Peter Wheeler’s old place and she’d loved Peter, had even been his lover for years. In some ways, Walter reminded her of her husband, a curious resemblance, although socially Walter was more reserved than Raymond. Raymond had come to life in a group, his natural element.
Because of that, Raymond had made a fantastic field master. He’d understood the hounds, but he’d loved the people.
Sister felt her husband had been a better field master than she. She would occasionally forget about the people, so intense was her focus on the hounds. But she put her field in the right place time after time, which they greatly appreciated.
Ray Junior had taken after his father. She’d assumed he’d follow her as field master and then master someday.
She often thought of her husband and son at nighttime. The house, quiet, yielded up memories. Even Golly, a naturally mouthy cat, rested her voice at night.
Melancholy and Sister were never on good terms. She wasn’t one to dwell on her losses, on the sorrows that come to us all if we live long enough. They were part of life. If anything, she had learned to thank God for them. Her losses taught her about grace and true love. Her victories taught her to be generous and ultimately thankful.
Tonight as she listened to that most delicious of Mozart compositions, it occurred to her that the structure of music and literature were one and the same thing.
Then the damn phone rang just as this insight was unfolding.
“This better be good!” she growled into the receiver.
A muffled but queerly familiar voice said, “Master, look off the Norwood Bridge—the deep end.”
“I beg your pardon.” She sat bolt upright.
Both Raleigh and Rooster lifted their heads. Golly, on the pillow next to Sister, pricked forward her ears to better hear the voice on the other end of the line.
“A fifty-five-gallon drum.”
“Who is this?”
“Hotspur.” With a click, the call ended.
Her hand shaking, she called the sheriff. He’d once given her his cell phone and his home numbers, which she’d prudently placed by the kennel, stable, kitchen, and bedroom phones.
She reached Ben and related her bizarre phone call. Then she hung up, slipped on her moccasins, her white terry cloth robe with her initials, JOA, stitched on the left breast pocket, and hurried down the back stairs into the kitchen. She charged out the back door, running toward Shaker’s.
All the horses trotted along with her in their paddocks.
Trident, gazing at the stars, still thrilled from his first hunt, saw her dash to the huntsman’s cottage. “What’s Sister doing?”
Asa, also outside for a walkabout, said, “Go to sleep, son. You’ve had a big day.” But he knew something was coming down.
Sister knocked on Shaker’s door knocker, a brass crown. “Shaker, Shaker, forgive me for disturbing you.”
He opened the door, bare-chested, toothbrush in hand. “What’s happened?”
“Oh, Shaker, I heard a voice from the dead.”
CHAPTER 17
The Norwood Bridge curved out below a bluff above the Upper James River. Even this far from where its mouth poured into the Chesapeake Bay, the James proved a formidable river. Strong currents, sudden fluctuations in volume, and rough patches of rapids followed by successive small falls meant anyone navigating these waters best be wary.
At times the waters could become surprisingly clear; other times rains pulled down earth from the Blue Ridge Mountains, sending cascades of runoff flowing into the James, making it muddy for days, even weeks.
The village of Norwood, named for Norwood Plantation, still a working farm, clung to the bluff above the river, the source of transportation and commerce well into the 1840s when the bateaus were replaced by the railroads. A small redbrick former church, its steeple pleasingly proportionate to its base, served as the town’s post office. While small homes perched along the river roads, larger dwellings sat grandly on the bluff itself, where they had been surveying the river and its passing traffic for three centuries.
Sheriff Ben Sidell watched divers, three of them, submerge then rise again. The Norwood Bridge connected Nelson County with Buckingham County. This was not the deepest part of the Upper James, but was, however, one of the most undisturbed parts of the river.
Few motorized vessels plied these waters. Tubers, rollicking along, would cascade by until they were stopped by the first set of rapids, if indeed they lasted that long. Canoers enjoyed this stretch as the river straightened out from its northern bend. They paddled past fishermen, quietly waiting in their rowboats.
Once a year the bateau festival filled the small town. Flatboats heading downriver and people in period costume drew droves of tourists to watch.
Although it was Sunday, August fourth, Ben acted immediately upon hearing about Sister Jane’s mysterious phone call.
After a long talk with Shaker, she’d also called Walter, who agreed to spend the day with Ben Sidell. Sister wanted a hunt club person there and she felt Walter, both by training and temperament, was a good choice.
“If a body was tossed off this bridge, even if sufficiently weighted, it surely would have been carried downstream,” Ben said, “be nothing left.”
“Two hurricanes tore through here since 1981,” Walter replied, “plus plenty of gully washers. But if you follow the direction of the current, a body would have eventually snagged on the shore, maybe there”—he pointed to an eddy on the Buckingham side—“or hung up farther down on the next big arc. Surely someone would have seen it.”
“Well, there might only be old shoes to see. Nature’s aquatic garbagemen work very efficiently.” B
en sighed.
“The murder weapon might have been tossed off the bridge.”
Ben pursed his lips. “Yes, but that would work its way downriver as well. Obviously, it’s hard to say what killed Nola—a rock or a hammer or even the butt end of a revolver. The side of her skull was shattered. Almost like the murderer had snapped into a killing frenzy.”
“The reptilian brain.” Walter crossed his arms over his chest. “See it with animals. A few will go crazy with killing. That old part of our brain usually means violence.”
The temperature was rising, the heavy river smell rising with it.
“I see a lot of strange things in my business,” the sheriff said. “As the social controls have eroded, it seems self-control has eroded with it. We’re becoming more violent, not less.”
“Rwanda.”
“Yugoslavia. Attacks on our country.” The sheriff, a pleasant-looking man about the same age as Walter, in the prime of life, squinted as the reflection of the sun off the water temporarily blinded him. “People can usually find a reason to harm someone else. Mix religion into it like the Islamic terrorists and you’ve glamorized humankind’s worst instincts.”
Walter half smiled. “Whoever killed Nola didn’t need an ideology or national cause.”
“And given that she was buried with that huge sapphire on her finger, it sure wasn’t robbery. No, her death was about rage or lust.”
“Let’s go back to the murder weapon for a minute. Assuming that Sister’s caller is telling the truth, if whatever was tossed over this bridge was heavy enough, like a sledgehammer, isn’t it possible it sank headfirst into the silt, stuck there, and has been covered and uncovered and probably covered again over the last two decades?” Walter put on his sunglasses, blue elliptical lenses.
“I suppose.” Ben leaned against the bridge rail, back to the sun. “Walter, you’re a member of the hunt. Why do you think Sister Jane got this call?”
“Trust.”
“Huh?”
“He trusts her.”
“Hmm.” Ben turned this over in his mind. “If it was Guy Ramy he would call her instead of his own mother?”
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