For Sari Rasmussen, this was the first time she heard the priest read, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.”
Sister had heard Psalm 130 more times than she could count, but the profoundness of The Order for the Burial of the Dead never failed to move her. Some people hated funerals and wouldn’t go. Sister called that selfishness. If ever there was a time when a person needed the sight of friends, words of sympathy, this was that time.
What always struck her about the service was the abiding sense of love. Love for the deceased, love for the survivors, love for God. At such a moment, there were those whose faith was shaken. Hers never was, not even when Ray Junior died. She’d heard her own heart crack, but she hadn’t lost her faith. Had not women lost sons since the beginning of time? One bore one’s losses with fortitude. Anything less was an insult to the dead.
Frances and her children may or may not have believed this way, but they held themselves with dignity.
As Sister sat there, she found it sad that Ralph himself could not hear the words intoned by the Episcopal priest, “Depart in peace, thou ransomed soul. May God the Father Almighty, Who created thee; and Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, Who redeemed thee; and the Holy Ghost, Who sanctified thee, preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, even for ever-more. Amen.”
She recalled Raymond, at the end, sitting up on a hospital bed that they’d put in the living room so he could receive visitors and see the hounds and horses go by. The large windows afforded him a good view. She remembered every word they’d said to each other.
“I’m dying like an old man,” he rasped.
“Well, dear, you are an old man,” Sister teased him, hoping to keep his spirits up.
“You, of course, are still a nubile lovely.” He coughed as he winked at her. “I don’t mind being old, Janie, I mind dying like a candyass.”
“You haven’t lived like one.”
He coughed again; the muscles in his chest and back ached from the continual spasms. “No. Didn’t live like a saint, either. But I thought I’d die on my feet.”
“Heart attack?”
“War. Or misjudging a fence. That sort of thing.”
“I’m glad you stuck around as long as you have.” She reached for his hand, cool and elegant. “We’ve had a good, long run. We took our fences in style. Maybe we crashed a few, but we were always game, Raymond. You most of all.”
He leaned back on the plumped-up pillow. “Foxhunting is the closest we’ll come to a cavalry charge.”
“Without the bullets and cannonballs.”
“Wouldn’t have minded that as much as this. It’s not fitting for a man to die like this, you know.” He sat up again. “What I’ve always longed for is a release from safety. We’re ruined by uniformity and tameness.” His eyes blazed.
“I know,” she simply said.
He tried to take a breath but couldn’t. “You’ve done a good job breeding the hounds. I forget to tell you the good things you do.”
“I inherited a good pack.”
“We’ve both seen good packs go to ruin in the hands of an idiot, of which there are many. Christ, put MFH behind a man’s name and he thinks he’s God.”
“The fox has a way of humbling us all. Raymond, for what it’s worth, I have been an imperfect wife, but I love you. I have always loved you.”
He smiled. “It all does come down to love, doesn’t it? And even if you’ve only loved for one day, then you’ve lived. Well, I love you. And as we both know, my feet are made of clay. But my love for you has always been true. Like the hunt, it takes me beyond safety, beyond tameness. ” He smiled more broadly. “Apart from this ignominious end, I am a most lucky fellow.”
“Sounds like a Broadway play.” She squeezed his hand.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Oh, for a straight-necked fox and a curvaceous woman.” He kissed her hand again. “Has to be hunting in heaven. I’ll look up Tom Firr, Thomas Assheton Smith, the other Thomas Smith, Ikey Bell, oh, the list could go on.” He cited famous masters and huntsmen from the past. “And I shall look for Ray, mounted on a small thoroughbred, and we’ll ride together.” He stopped talking because he couldn’t fight back the tears.
Nor could Sister. And as she snapped out of her reverie she discovered her cheeks were wet but her heart was oddly full. As Raymond had said, it’s all about love. And love remembered washed over her with a power beyond reason.
Poor Ralph had no such comfort at his death. As Father Banks continued the service, a still, white-hot anger began to fill Sister.
Did he beg for his life? Knowing Ralph, she thought he probably did not, even if he were terrified.
Did Nola? Or Guy? Sister prayed and prayed mightily for them all.
Three people snatched from life, not one of them feeling a tender hand on their brow, a kind voice offering all the love there was to offer.
Nola, Guy, and Ralph had not walked on water. Each could be foolish and, as Nola and Guy were so young when they died, they had never had the chance to learn wisdom. They never outgrew the behavior that must have infuriated their killer. It’s possible both Nola and Guy would have remained wild, but unlikely. The duties and pains of this life fundamentally change all but the most dedicated to immaturity. And those duties are actually wonderful. It’s duty that makes you who you are. Duty and honor.
Sister never thought of this as bending to the yoke; for her, it was rising to the occasion. Nola and Guy never had the time to recognize their duties, much less fulfill them. At least Ralph did. He made something of himself, proved a good husband and father.
The stupidity of these deaths, the casual evil of them, overwhelmed her.
She sat there, boiling, knowing the killer had to be in the church.
“Whoever he or she is, they’re a consummate actor,” she thought to herself.
As the service ended, the pallbearers, Ken, Ronnie, Xavier, Bobby, Roger, and Kevin McKenna, Ralph’s college roommate, took their places around the polished mahogany casket. In one practiced motion they lifted Ralph on their shoulders and, in step, arms swinging in unison, carried him down the center aisle, then out into the glowing late-September light.
The congregation followed the family at a respectful distance and filed into the cemetery, home to three centuries of the departed.
The service ended with Shaker, standing at the head of the casket as it was lowered into the ground, blowing “Going Home.” This mournful cry, the traditional signal of the end of the hunt, brought everyone to tears.
Afterward, Sybil walked alongside Sister. “Are you going to cancel Tuesday’s hunt?” she asked.
“No. Ralph would be appalled if I did such a thing.”
Shaker, on Sister’s other side, added, “If the fox runs across his grave it will be a good omen.”
“We sure need one,” Sybil said, her eyes doleful.
CHAPTER 34
Tuesday and Thursday’s hunts, sparsely attended, did little to lift Sister’s spirits. Although hounds worked well together, two young ones rioted on deer. Betty pushed the two back, but the miniriot upset Sister even though she knew the youngsters might stray on a deer during cubbing. Diana was settling in as anchor hound with Asa’s help, and that made up for the miniriot.
Saturday’s hunt, on September twenty-eighth, started at seven-thirty in the morning from Mill Ruins, Peter Wheeler’s old place. Walter lived there under a long lease arrangement of the sort usually seen in England. In essence, he owned the property even though Peter had willed it to the hunt club.
During the year he’d lived there, Walter had already made significant improvements. He’d fertilized all the pastures and replaced the collapsed fences with white three-board fencing. White paint, now lead-free, lasted two years if you were lucky. Walter said he didn’t care, he’d paint the damn boards every two years. He loved white fences. Most folks switched to black, since that paint lasted five to seven years depending on the bran
d. Board fencing itself lasted fifteen years, give or take.
The horrendous expense of stone fencing was actually practical if you considered its life span. A stone fence might need a tap or two of repair over sixty or seventy years, but if properly built by a master stonesmason, stone fences ought to last for centuries.
One of Walter’s secret dreams was, some fine day, to have the drive to the house lined with two-and-a-half-foot stone fences.
Today, Walter was living another of his dreams. This was the first hunt from Mill Ruins since Peter had lived there. It turned into a crackerjack.
Shaker cast down by the old mill, which was redolent of scent. So many generations of foxes had lived near or under the mill, great blocks of natural stone, wheel still intact, that the address among foxes had a certain cachet, say like Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., or East Sixty-eighth Street in New York.
Considered too tony for grays, the place was inhabited by reds.
Naturally, the hounds found scent at the mill, but they didn’t get far with it since that particular fox had no desire for aerobic exercise.
The day, crystal clear, temperature in the middle fifties and climbing, wasn’t the best day for scent. No frost had been on the ground, and the rains of last week were soaking in, although a deep puddle glistened here or there. The high-pressure system that produced those electric blue skies also sucked away moisture, hence scent.
Had Shaker been a lesser huntsman he might have returned to the mill to find another line. Shaker and Sister thought once you drew a cover, move on, don’t dawdle. Occasionally they could blow over a fox clever enough to lie low as hounds moved through perhaps a trifle too quickly. But more often than not, moving along, especially if your pack had good noses, flushed more foxes than inching through every twig, holly bush, and scrap of moss.
He sat on Gunpowder and thought for a moment as hounds moved along the millrace and back to the strong running stream that fed it.
Gunpowder, wise in the ways of the sport, snorted, “Draw an S. Move up higher and snake down. If you catch him high, he’ll probably come back low. If you catch him low, unless he belongs on the other side of this fixture, I bet you he stays low.”
An English huntsman from the Shires will often draw a triangle just like Tom Firr, the great huntsman who perfected this maneuver back in the nineteenth century. And such a cast or draw worked beautifully if your country was neatly divided into squares and rectangles.
America, having been cultivated according to European methods only since the early seventeenth century, wasn’t that neat, that geometric. Plus, the sheer boastful size of the country forced American foxhunters to devise their own methods for seducing foxes out to play.
Whole European nations could fit into one midsized state like Missouri. American foxes took full advantage of their land’s scale as well as the rich woodlands blanketing the East Coast.
Virginia, enriched by the alluvial deposits of the Potomac, the Rappahannock, and the James, as well as their many feeders and tributaries, offered wondrous means of escape. A fox could dash over Davis loam, a kind of rich, sandy soil, scramble up on hard rock, a real scent killer, plunge into a forest carpeted with pine needles and pinecones, more scent killer, and then clop down a baked red clay farm road.
Huntsmen and hounds needed to be quick, to be problem solvers, and to respect those venerable English texts while finding their own way. The American way, like Americans themselves, was a little wilder.
Shaker was going to need that wildness.
Sister patiently waited forty yards behind him. Keepsake, very proud to be used instead of Lafayette, Sister’s usual choice for Saturday, pranced. He desperately wanted to show how perfectly he jumped.
Sister liked a horse that knew how to use his or her body. Good conformation, good early training usually gave a horse confidence. A horse in this way is no different from a professional golfer. The golfer perfects the various strokes; the horse perfects the various gaits and also learns to jump with a human on his back. Any horse can jump without a human up there, but the two-legged riders shift their weight, fall up on one’s ears, flop back behind the saddle, slip to the side, jerk the reins, and, worst of all, they yelp and blame the horse.
The horse needs more patience than the human.
Horses liked Sister. She rode lightly. She might make mistakes, but she always apologized. Mostly she stayed out of the horse’s way, for which it was grateful.
And proud as Keepsake was of his form over fences, Sister mostly liked that he didn’t hang a jump. He gathered himself back on his haunches and sailed over, forelegs tucked up under his chin, neat as a pin.
As they hadn’t yet jumped even a cigarette pack, Keepsake fretted.
The field behind her kept quiet. The Hilltoppers also remained silent. Bobby Franklin, that most genial man, ran a tight group. His Hilltoppers didn’t jump fences, but they kept right up behind first flight, led by Sister. It would never do to let these two fields become strung out. No coffeehousing. No skylarking. No using the horse in front of you as a bumper. Bobby moved out, kept it fun, and the Hilltoppers often ran harder than the field because they needed to find ways around the jumps.
Immediately behind Sister rode Ken, Xavier, Tedi, Ron, Edward, and Walter. Thirty-two others filled out the first flight, with Jennifer and Sari riding tail. Being juniors, they pulled hard tasks, and riding tail was one of them. It was also a fabulous way to learn what to do and what not to do in the hunt field. Whoever rode tail usually picked up the pieces—loose horses, dismounted humans. In most hunts those in the rear were grooms, juniors, and riders on green horses. Often the riders on green horses were the first ones picked up.
Sister, unlike many masters, liked juniors up front, but they had to earn their stripes first. You earned them in the back.
Bobby used his juniors to go forward and open the gates. He figured he’d lose between three and five minutes on every gate, and this time had to be made up, otherwise he’d lose sight of Sister and the hounds. Not good.
There they all sat quiet as mice.
The noise came from St. Just, cawing overhead. “I know where there’s a fox with an infected paw. You could kill him.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Dasher warned the young entry. “He’ll lead you to a fox, but he’ll lead you to Hell, too.”
The hounds heard a long, rising blast followed by two short toots.
Trident, still trying to memorize the calls, whispered to his sister, Trudy, “What’s that one?”
“Uh, he’s not calling us back, he’s kind of telling us to go right.” Trudy watched as Asa walked toward the right and crossed the stream.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever remember all the notes,” Trident worried.
“You will,” Delia reassured him. “Watch Asa and Diana. Don’t worry about the strike hounds just yet. You keep your eye on the steady hounds.”
“Why is he moving us out of the streambed? Isn’t scent better down here?” Trinity asked, the white Y on his head distinctive.
“Because the wind has shifted. He’s pushing us into the wind,” Delia answered.
“Why don’t we just go right down here by the water?” Tinsel asked, a good question.
“The trees, the underbrush are cutting the wind. But up there”—Delia cocked her head toward higher ground— “it’s a little stiffer. And if we pick it up there, we’ll follow it wherever it goes, and if we can’t get anything heading into the wind we can always come back here where it will be cooler longer. Trust Shaker.”
“Do the other humans know this stuff?” Trident asked.
Delia laughed. “No, dear, they’re just trying to stay on their horses.”
“Do the whippers-in know?” Trudy crossed the stream, the clear water chilly.
“Some understand. Others just ride hard,” Delia said.
Asa, now with them, spoke, his voice deep. “It’s an article of faith that every whipper-in believes he or she can hunt hounds—un
til they have the horn to their lips.”
“Why?” Trinity gracefully leapt an old log.
“Kind of like the difference between a strike hound and an anchor hound. The anchor hound has to know where everyone is and what the fox and humans might do. Remember, they’re always behind us. The strike hound pushes out to get the line. That’s all that hound has to do, have a great nose and great drive. Doesn’t have to have a brain in its head, which I am here to tell you Dragon does not. So don’t imitate that ass.”
The young ones giggled.
Delia added, “But Cora is smart. She’s got brains and athletic ability. What a nose that girl has.”
Just then Cora found. “Got one!”
Dragon skidded up to her. “Yo yo yo. It’s good.”
“God, I just hate him,” Asa grumbled as the youngsters flew up ahead, all excited.
Delia laughed as she ran with Asa.
Diana, nose down, figured the scent was about an hour old but holding. They’d better make the most of it. She didn’t know who it was. Often she did.
They clambered up the banks, leaving the stream behind, and came into a huge hayfield, sixty acres of cut hay rolled up in huge round bales. This was galloping country.
Sister popped over the tiger trap jump that Walter had built in the fence line. The logs, upright, created a coop, but it looked formidable. In this case it was because Walter was overzealous when he built it. The trap was three feet six inches but looked like four feet. A few people decided to join the Hilltoppers then and there. The rest squeezed hard, grabbed mane, and over they soared.
St. Just swooped overhead one more time, screaming about the fox with the sore paw, but no one was listening. Furious, he pooped on a brand-new velvet cap, then flew away.
Keepsake stretched out, head low, covering ground effortlessly. How he loved open fields, as did Sister. They moved so fast, she had tears in her eyes.
One of Ronnie Haslip’s contact lenses blew out. He cursed but kept right up. He’d jump with that eye closed.
Betty, wisely using the territory, cleared a jump, three large logs lashed together with heavy rope, at the end of the big field. She listened intently. Shaker had blown “Gone Away” when the hounds all broke out of the covert on the line.
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