Fox Tracks: A Novel

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Tired?” asked Betty Franklin as the whipper-in joined her. The expensive annual ball was beyond the Franklins’ purse at this time, but Sister, well off, paid Bobby and Betty’s way. As far as she was concerned, they were hunt staff who had served her for over thirty years. They deserved it. Tootie and Val, on the other hand, had been born with silver spoons. Their fathers paid their tickets, declaring this was the last year they would do so. Derek, a scholarship student, worked after school but he came up with the cash. Tootie’s date, Baxter Chiles, also worked for his ticket. The fellows had bunked up together at a much cheaper hotel downtown.

  Sister took note of everyone’s accommodations, and while she never interfered in anyone’s personal life unless they asked her to, she liked both these young men. The girls could do a whole lot worse, but they were young and who knows what will happen? Then again, thought Sister, she fell in love with Big Ray when she was just twenty-one. She was married at twenty-two. Fifty years ago, and yet it seemed like yesterday. Puzzling as this contradiction was to Sister, all her older friends felt the same way about powerful emotional events long distant. Nothing ever truly fades except one’s looks.

  Betty affected a Philadelphia working-class accent, not Main Line, “I like da song. I can dance to it. Good beat.”

  Sister leaned forward, resting her arms on the table, which would have brought a swift reprimand from her mother, “I just miss American Bandstand.”

  Glowing, Betty recalled, “Daddy put up a radio in the garage and we’d dance almost every night when we’d come home from the barn. There we’d be, a bunch of barn rats, gyrating.”

  “All girls?”

  “For the most part. Sometimes the boys would come over after football practice in the fall or track-and-field in the spring. You know what was fabulous? We were having the time of our lives and we knew it. I don’t know if young people are as happy as we were.” She looked at the dance floor mostly filled with the young.

  “Bet they are.” Sister smiled.

  “But what I don’t understand is why they don’t learn ballroom dancing? It’s so, so erotic. A man holds you in his arms, you might even put your head on his shoulder and you move in rhythm. I like this kind of dancing, I’m not totally out of it, but there’s nothing like being held in a man’s arms.”

  “Favorite song?”

  Betty’s lips pursed. “I have so many. You know what I really love.” She began to sing, “Heaven, I’m in Heaven.”

  The two of them finished “dancing cheek to cheek,” then clapped for the joy of it.

  “It’s hard to sing with other music in the background.” Sister fiddled with her earring. “You know what I remember? Cotillion.”

  Betty groaned as though in terrible pain. “The worst. The absolute worst and we’d have those hideous practice dances once a month. How did we live through it?”

  “Fortitude. And we acquired considerable manners in the process. What I remember is sometimes we girls would practice. Not at cotillion, but sort of like you in your father’s garage. Loathed it.”

  “Why? I thought it was fun.”

  “Betty, you’re all of five foot six if you’re an inch. I’m six feet now and was even a tiny bit taller back then.”

  “Well, so what?”

  “I’d always have to lead. I really didn’t want to push another girl around the floor, plus they all had their noses smack in my cleavage.”

  Betty stared at her dear friend’s rack. “Did anyone suffocate?”

  Sister lightly slapped her. “Do you eat with that mouth?”

  “I do, but if I were you, I certainly wouldn’t wear that gown near any hungry babies.”

  Sister let out a whoop, and the two of them nearly fell off their chairs laughing. Is there a greater happiness than laughter with an old friend?

  Once recovered, Sister swept her eyes across the dance floor. “I see what you mean. No one holds anyone. I never thought about it before. Well, I don’t think about much apart from hunting, geology, and history.”

  “That’s not true. I’ve seen you work that credit card at Bergdorf’s.”

  “Mmm. I like the men’s store better than the women’s. The tie display with all those colors in perfect silk.” She looked directly at her friend. “You’re right. It’s not very heterosexual, this kind of dancing,” she mused. “But I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”

  “That they will, but they miss the frisson, the buildup, the gliding around, all that tension in your mind, all that music in your body.”

  “It is an unromantic time,” said Sister. She noted the girls dancing with their dates. “Betty, I don’t envy them. I love those girls, as do you, but I would not want to be young now.”

  “Me neither,” Betty said forcefully. “Hey, before I forget, we’re supposed to hunt at Old Paradise Tuesday. Bobby said he’d heard Art has fired up the old still just beyond the westernmost boundary.”

  Art was the middle-aged son of Binky DuCharme, the father being half-owner of Old Paradise. Art never fulfilled his promise, that’s what his parents said, but they loved him anyway. Others said he was nice enough, but a bum.

  “We’d better pray our fox doesn’t head his way.”

  “The one time hounds ran through there, all that stuff exploded. Sounded like a small war. I never knew distilling could be so, uh, loud.”

  “Sure was that time,” Sister agreed.

  “They’re now selling country waters in small batches. I mean the authorities are allowing it, but the distiller has to go through the process so he gets the stamp put on it. I even think one of the brands from Nelson County is called Pure Moonshine.”

  “More money to be made illegally.” Sister frowned for a moment. “Well, we know our foxes at Old Paradise, so if we hop the big red who heads straight west we’ll have to work to lift the pack, which I hate to do. They are doing their job. They should be rewarded, not thwarted.”

  “It will be an interesting day.”

  “Always is.” Sister thought for a moment, then said above the music: “Know your quarry.” She blinked. “I’m tired. It’s past my bedtime. I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.”

  “You had a scare,” Betty said wisely. “It’s finally getting to you.”

  “I think it is.” She looked directly into Betty’s eyes. “Tootie and I had been gone from the shop maybe five minutes.” She snapped her fingers. “Dead.”

  “You never know. I used to think my mother was so tedious when she’d say, ‘Make every minute count.’ I know what she means now.” Betty inched closer to her friend. “You and Tootie didn’t have to come to the Ball. We’d have missed you, but everyone would understand.”

  “We needed a distraction.” Sister glanced out at the dance floor. The song had changed. “She’s a strong person and she didn’t want to disappoint Baxter.”

  “The boys are staying somewhere down in the Forties, I think. I asked Derek how it was, and he said clean. At least it’s not a flophouse.”

  “Good for them.”

  “Maybe so, but after the Ball the girls are in one room, the boys downtown. I don’t like to think of one of them going downtown and one staying here. I mean I don’t like the idea of either Val or Tootie at a cheap hotel.”

  Sister pondered this. “Well now, Betty, let us trust their resourcefulness. Tootie did mention that she and Val had double beds so perhaps they will work it out.”

  Betty laughed. “It’s better that mothers don’t know these things, especially their mothers.”

  “Val’s mother would be better than Tootie’s but still, you’re right. Better mothers don’t know.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  Sister shook her head. “No. Let’s make our dates do that. I’m about ready for a tonic water with lime.”

  “Neither one of us are drinkers. Oh well, many of our hunt club members make up for us.” She paused. “You know that Crawford will make trouble the minute he can. My bet is he’ll cast his pack at Ol
d Paradise. If not Tuesday, he’ll be sure to try and screw up one of our hunts in the next week.”

  “He’s the kind of man that keeps score.” Sister felt a rush of anger rise again. “I try not to hate anybody, but I do hate him. Then I remember the good things he’s done for Custis Hall, for Felicity.” She mentioned a classmate of Tootie’s and Val’s who became pregnant at the end of her senior year. Crawford gave her and her brand-new eighteen-year-old husband a place to live.

  “He’s a walking contradiction.”

  “Maybe we all are.” Sister shrugged, returning to the day’s event. “What I can’t get out of my mind, Betty, is the slightest whiff of gunpowder when Tootie and I returned to the tobacco shop. I discounted it, you know, city pollution. You don’t think of guns in the city, not like home, but I smelled it.” She paused for a long time. “We were detained, as we should have been, so we got to watch some of the police procedure, and do you know Betty, there were thousands and thousands of dollars in the glass display case? Lighters, jeweled cigarette cases, long cigarette holders, some with jewels, plus the cash register was crammed full of money. Nothing was touched. Nothing that one could see. You kill a man for cigars? Or cigarettes? I simply can’t fathom it. And poor Adolfo had a pack of cigarettes set right on his chest. American Smokes was the name.”

  “Might be some kind of revenge thing,” said Betty. They fell silent, and Sister’s thoughts wandered. “I bought a cigarette case from him. I’ll show you when we get back home. How can I look at it without thinking of him? Betty, he was so warm. You know how Latin men radiate warmth, and Cubans ooze charm along with it. The man was delightful.”

  “Even delightful people have enemies.”

  “Yes.” Sister paused, then raised her voice a bit. “I have never heard of American Smokes,” she said, furrowing her brow in thought.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ornate wrought-iron lamps, installed in 1877, on the long curving main drive at Custis Hall, contrasted with the clean Federal architecture of the earliest buildings on campus built in 1812. The building bordered quads named after the trees planted on them. One could readily see when the money poured into the school, as it was reflected in the architecture.

  Those buildings constructed in the 1980s were mercifully hidden around the Blue Spruce quad, way in the back, a half mile from the original Federal building. One good thing about these particular three long, low-slung buildings was they looked better than the examples from the 1970s.

  At the rear of the blue glass building, Art DuCharme with Donny Sweigart, both men in their thirties, maneuvered a heavy wooden crate off the back of a small moving van onto a forklift. A Custis Hall groundskeeper drove the forklift and the two men followed him into the building.

  A service elevator, thankfully huge, had enough room for the forklift to deposit the large box.

  When the elevator reached the fourth floor, Tariq Al McMillan met Art and Donny. He rolled a low metal dolly over and the two delivery men jiggled it onto the dolly. Art steadied the end of the box while Donny walked beside it.

  Tariq rolled the large, heavy object into a large office with floor to ceiling windows. The entire campus unfolded before him, to the west.

  “Do you need a crowbar?” Donny asked, staring at the crate.

  “Here, let’s put it right here.” Tariq directed them to the windows. “I think my big claw hammer will do.”

  Knowing it wouldn’t, Donny left without a word, returning with a crowbar and a power drill with a Phillips head. Reversing the direction, he could spin out screws.

  After twenty careful minutes, an ultramodern desk emerged. A heavy glass top—so heavy the sides were green—was supported by two graceful steel legs and supports. Like bridge cables, they ran diagonally between each side’s front and rear legs. The desk resembled a suspension bridge.

  “Ah.” Tariq clapped his hands once the desk sat in place, directly in front of the large window.

  “Pretty amazing.” Donny admired the cool piece of furniture.

  Tariq dug into his pocket, giving each man a fifty-dollar tip.

  Donny looked at Ulysses S. Grant. “Tariq, this is too much. You paid enough to get the desk here.”

  “It’s not too much. I’ve been waiting six months for this desk. I’m grateful for your help. And I’m grateful in the hunt field, too. Teenage girls can be a lot to handle.”

  Donny laughed. “I’m practicing. Sybil is pushing forty and she’s a lot to handle.”

  The three men laughed.

  Art checked his watch. “We’ve got one more pickup. Tariq, thanks for the tip.”

  As they left, Tariq settled in his comfortable desk chair, leaned his elbows on the desktop, and admired the steeple on the campus chapel, noticing clouds piling up behind the mountains.

  Donny and Art walked to the small moving van, a square-box Chevy Topkick from the late nineties. Art said, “Margaret went to school here. She got a scholarship.”

  “She’s made the most of it. I bet being a sports doctor she makes good money.”

  “You know, I make more than she does and I don’t pay as many taxes.” He laughed.

  “Yeah, but you have to worry about getting caught.”

  Both men laughed as Art drove west from Custis Hall to Walter Lungrun’s place, Mill Ruins. They did not go in the main entrance, a long gravel driveway that led to the huge mill where a two-story waterwheel still turned.

  Instead, Art turned down a rarely used rutted farm road. “It’s Lungrun’s operating day. He wouldn’t notice the tracks anyway. No one uses this road. Well, hardly.”

  The truck hit a deep rut sending Donny, not wearing his seat-belt, upward. “Jesus.”

  “Yep. Sometimes in the spring or summer, maybe Lungrun drives back here. He’s got that Wrangler.”

  “Well, let’s hope no one comes back here. Anyway, it’s supposed to snow. That should cover our tracks.”

  “Place used to be full of people. Shootrough was what they called it because it was full of high grasses. Everyone would come in the fall, expensive shotguns. Walking through here, the quail would fly up—I bet there were hundreds of them. A lot of farms had shooting places then, but this one was special, more natural and full of game.”

  “Can’t much do it now. The laws against shooting hawks and falcons means the big birds have about wiped out the ground nesters. Not that I’m a big fan of shooting anything but deer. Still. Seems too barren.”

  They drove up to a large metal-sided building, color faded, roof good, windows still intact.

  They stepped from the warm truck into the cold.

  Art, with conviction, said, “No broken windows after all these years. You know nobody comes back here.”

  “Sometimes the hunt does,” said Donny, “but no one goes in the building. Well, let’s get the stuff out of here.”

  Art slipped his key into the big metal lock and opened a side door. The two men then carried twelve-by-twelve-inch cartons over the concrete floor from the building. The truck’s back door was rolled up and they loaded the cartons onto the bed of the box.

  Donny pulled himself inside the truck’s rear compartment as Art continued bringing cartons. Donny walked to the back, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a beeper, like one would use to open a car or truck door. Pressing its button, he heard a click and a beep. A flat door, what looked like the back of the truck, opened, revealing a three-foot-wide space spanning the width of the truck.

  Donny rapidly packed the cartons into this space. Art brought out the last ones, then climbed aboard dragging a small metal step-ladder over to Donny. He handed him cartons as Donny stacked them all the way to the top of the hidden space.

  “They’re tight as a tick,” Donny remarked from the top of the ladder.

  “Yeah, but let’s use the cords.” Art stooped to retrieve long, flat, heavy woven plastic cords, which the two men fastened into recessed large eyelet screws inside the hidden door. They tightened three bands of the plastic,
further securing the boxes.

  Once finished, Donny pressed the beeper and the false back closed. He handed the beeper to Art.

  Back in the truck, Art leaned over Donny and opened the glove compartment where he placed the beeper, which had a long black ribbon attached.

  “Cut the motor on, Art. It’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

  “How would you know?” Art sassed him. “You haven’t been to bed with any witches.”

  “How do you know?”

  Art cut on the motor and the mid-sized truck engine rumbled to life. “You’re right. Sometimes I wonder about you.”

  “Well, Art, every time I open that door inside the box, I think, damn, you did a good job,” said Donny. “You can do just about anything with a car or truck. I never wonder about you.”

  “Hey, that’s my line of work, but building a false bottom or back or compartment is pretty easy. The trick is hiding the seams, fooling or diverting the eye.”

  They bounced back down the awful road.

  Once out on the decent two-lane highway, Donny asked, “When do you want to deliver this?”

  “Let me call and double check, but I figure middle of the night Sunday.”

  “I’m good with that.” Donny unzipped his heavy jacket as the truck heater worked its magic. “People are saying you’re running the still again.”

  “Mmm. Don’t worry about it.”

  “If there’s enough talk, Ben Sidell might have someone stop you on the road.”

  “Donny, don’t worry about it. No cop is going to find the hidden compartment and I know every byway so we can avoid the weigh stations. Haven’t gotten caught yet.”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re making money. Good money.” Art reached for the round can on the seat of the truck for a dab of chew. “What are you going to do with all that money?”

  Donny smiled broadly. “I got plans.”

  Art smiled back. “Me, too.”