The Hounds and the Fury

by Rita Mae Brown

"Think Crawford will buy Sanifirm?"

  "I don't know, but if he does I bet Donny still has a job."

  "Not if he keeps poaching, he won't."

  "Deer?" Jason wasn't a deer hunter.

  "Donny will sneak on your property and pretty much shoot whatever he can, although deer are his preferred target. He'll do it out of season, too."

  "He doesn't shoot foxes, does he?" Jason sounded scandalized.

  "Sister put a stop to that."

  "I'll bet she did." The corner of Jason's lips curled upward in a half smile.

  "She's too much of a fox herself to crack on him. She pays him off."

  "No kidding?"

  "Out of her own pocket. No hunt club funds are touched. She asks him to tell her where the dens are, so he's a consultant."

  "But she knows where they are."

  "Like I said, Jason. She's part fox." What Walter wanted to add, but didn't, was "Never underestimate the old girl. Never."

  CHAPTER 7

  December 31 is St. Sylvester's Day, commemorating a pope who died in 335 ad. He tolerated all religions and is credited with building many churches, including the first St. Peter's in Rome.

  St. Sylvester probably would have stayed inside this Saturday, for the snow lay deep on top of the foot-deep base. Occasional squalls still cast down flurries. Snow plows worked through the night, so the roads were reasonably decent if one drove prudently.

  As it was the New Year's Hunt, the last of the four foxhunting High Holy Days, forty-two people braved the weather to gather at Beveridge Hundred, a Jefferson Hunt fixture since 1887, the founding year of the club. Beveridge Hundred remained in the Cullhain family. The current crop of Cullhains struggled on. Their money had disappeared in 1865 along with some of their men, dying agonizing deaths in America's worst war. The survivors had pulled themselves back up, only to fall destitute again during the Great Depression. In deference to their pinched financial position, club members brought dishes for the traditional hunt breakfast. Walter supplied the drinks, which eased the burden on this most genial collection of relatives.

  Hounds got up one fox for a short burst and then another, but the deep snows kept foxes close to their dens. By noon, everyone had filled the old mansion, whose outside and inside were badly in need of paint. A few spots, plaster off, revealed laths stuffed with horsehair. The piano in the parlor was put to good use. Jason Woods, a clear tenor, paired with Walter's baritone. Soon everyone sang with them.

  Hounds were already back in the kennels by the time the humans reached the desserts.

  Hunt staffs first responsibility was the hounds or staff horses, depending on their position. Rarely did Shaker attend a breakfast, although he might be able to get to a tailgate once the hounds were in the party wagon, the small horse trailer outfitted to carry them. A quick sandwich or muffin before he pulled out, accompanied by hot coffee, kept him going until he could really replenish his body. Huntsmen burn calories the way prairie fire burns grass.

  Betty Franklin and Sybil Bancroft Fawkes, although honorary whippers-in, not paid staff, still performed all staff functions. They too didn't attend the breakfasts until hounds were in the party wagon or in the kennel, horses cooled out, blankets thrown over them.

  Later, back in the barn, Betty Franklin and Sister cleaned tack in the heated tackroom. Shaker, with Sybil's help and that of her two sons of grade-school age, had fed all the hounds and even rubbed soothing bag balm on their pads. No one's pads had been cut up, as there wasn't much ice, but Shaker figured an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. The two boys felt important to help with a big job. Sybil appreciated Shaker's thoughtfulness. Her marriage, a disaster, had left her a single mother. She liked her sons to be around real men, and Shaker was about as real as it got.

  Sari, Lorraine Rasmussen's daughter, and Jennifer, Betty's daughter, were home from Colby College on Christmas vacation. They washed down the staff horses and asked to clean tack, but Sister sent them on their way. She knew both girls wanted to primp for a big New Year's Eve party, although first they had to attend Betty's party.

  As Betty finished washing the bits, hanging Shaker's bridle on a tack hook high over a bucket, she asked, "When does Gray start at Aluminum Manufacturers?"

  "Tuesday. Thought Garvey might be with us today, but maybe the roads aren't as good out his way." Sister paused. "Iffy won't take kindly to what she considers a footprint in her garden."

  "Iffy's been a pill since birth."

  Sister laughed so hard she startled Raleigh and Rooster, who barked. "Oh, shut up. It's just me. Go back to sleep. Betty, savage but true."

  "She isn't that bad looking. A bit of a dumpling, but pretty enough. She's so sour no man would have her."

  "No woman either." Sister laughed.

  "Who do you think is pickier? Men or women?"

  "Men."

  "See, I think it's women." Betty answered her own question.

  "Maybe men and women are picky about different things. Men get very distracted by looks. Women get distracted by promises. And both get what they deserve."

  "Ain't that the truth. You'd better go into marriage with your eyes wide open."

  "Betty, you no more did that than I did. When you're young you can't possibly know the changes the years bring. Love is blind, for which I suppose we should give some thanks, or there'd be no next generation."

  "Ha!" Betty wrung out a soft rag before rubbing it on saddle soap, her first step in cleaning the leather.

  "Ha, what? I know that tone of voice."

  "Sex. Nothing can keep the human animal from sex. No laws, no religion, not even the threat of death. In the old days it was syphilis. Now it's AIDS. We're fools breeding fools, and we always were."

  "I did my share," grinned Sister, alluding to her very rich past.

  'You did all right." Betty wiped down the leather after the saddle soap. "Back to Iffy. I heard she was seeing a lot of Alfred DuCharme. Hard to believe."

  "Lord." Sister raised her eyebrows. "Hadn't heard that. Let's keep on the good side of Alfred. He allows us to hunt Paradise. Took awhile to bring Binky around to it, so we need Alfred to be especially happy with us. Iffy, on a whim, could toss a monkey wrench into the works. Especially if she gets mad at Gray. She'll take it out on the club."

  Binky, Alfred's older brother, had stolen Alfred's girlfriend, Milly Archer, a west end Richmond girl, back in 1975. Alfred had never forgiven Binky.

  Regardless of Binky's entreaties, Alfred refused to attend the marriage. He wouldn't even wave to his brother or his sister-in-law if he passed them on the road.

  When their father, Brenden, had died he'd kept the land intact. He thought this would force them to cooperate, and thus reconcile, without him alive to be a go-between. He figured wrong.

  Instead, Binky and Milly's daughter, the bright and spunky Margaret, soon found herself filling in for her departed grandfather and mediating between her father and her uncle.

  Embittered though he remained toward Binky and Milly, Alfred worshipped his niece, a sports physician at Jefferson Regional Hospital.

  The brothers lived in separate dependencies, small houses, near the ruins of the main house. The one time they had been seen together willingly was at Margaret's graduation.

  'Yep. Funny how people shoot themselves in the foot. Think of the happiness Alfred has missed. He doesn't stick with a woman long. Maybe that's why he's going out with Iffy. He thinks she'll be dead soon, so he won't have to dump her. Or vice versa." Betty giggled, finished cleaning Shaker's bridle. 'You stripped your bridle. I didn't strip Shaker's. I washed it, then used saddle soap."

  Stripping took more time as one used something like castile soap to wash it, then rub it even cleaner. After this, one hangs it up and reapplies a light leather oil with a clean cloth. Then one uses the heat of one's fingers to rub it again, lastly wiping all down once more with a clean dry cloth.

  "I know. I'm being superstitious, so I went the whole nine yards."

 
"Any other superstitions besides cleaning way too thoroughly?"

  "I count the spoons in the house."

  "What?"

  "I count the spoons in the house."

  "Why?" Betty looked at her.

  "I don't know. My mother did it and her mother did it every New Year's Eve. I know it's stupid—but hey, you asked me and I told you. What do you do?"

  "Make resolutions. The usual. I will lose weight."

  'You don't need to lose any more weight, Betty."

  "I'm so used to making that as a New Year's resolution, I can't stop."

  "See, that's why I have to count the spoons. I've always done it."

  Another forty-five minutes passed between the two close friends, who could open their hearts to each other as well as talk about substantive issues sprinkled with the paprika of gossip.

  The phone rang in the tack room.

  "Hello. Hi, Walter."

  "Jason Woods cornered me at breakfast after you left. He said you didn't think he knew how to whip-in."

  "That's not what I said."

  "I know. You'd be more diplomatic. He's taking this as"—a note of humor filled Walter Lungrun's voice—"a slur on his manliness."

  "Jesus Christ, spare me a man who isn't one."

  "He's okay, Sister. He's just one of those people who needs attention, adoration. He's very good at what he does."

  "So are a lot of other people. If you aren't at the top 20 percent, you slide into mediocrity, I reckon. But that's not the point. The point is, what do we do with this twit?" She went on to explain her entire conversation with Jason concerning how Jefferson Hunt develops whippers-in. "And I apologize. I should have told you, but I thought he'd be smart enough to let it go. Or if not, then show up this summer to start walking puppies."

  Betty listened, attention rapt.

  "If he would do that, would you and Shaker work with him?"

  "Of course, if he has aptitude. Look, I know he can ride. He has that beautiful chestnut gelding, Kilowatt. That's not the issue. It's the rest of it. I have yet to see him evidence any interest in even one hound, much less the pack, and he wants to whip-in?"

  Walter, putting his feet on the hassock in his den, replied in a relaxed voice. "But if he does the real work, the hard work in the off-season, will you and Shaker work with him?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you mind if I call him and discuss this? I'll relay our conversation."

  "No. I'm grateful. Gets me off the hook."

  "Not if he shows up in April." Walter grunted when his Welsh terrier launched into his lap.

  "Means early morning four-thirty or five o'clock wake-ups. We try to knock out the walks, the individual puppy walk, too, before ten in the morning. Once we cruise out of spring into summer, you know how fast that heat comes up. Stifling."

  "Sticky hot." He thought for a moment. "The bait Jason dangled in front of me, so you know, is he will contribute ten thousand dollars annually to the Club."

  She interrupted, something she rarely did. "Oh, if that's not a bribe!"

  "Sister, with all due respect, Jason possesses considerable resources."

  "Okay, Walter, you're managing me, but I get it."

  He laughed. "I am. Bluntly put: Better to have Jason in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

  She exhaled through her nostrils. 'You're right, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to start creating whippers-in of people who write big checks. I just won't."

  "Well, let's see how it plays."

  After hanging up, Sister relayed Walter's half of the conversation to her curious friend.

  "Who knows? He might turn out all right." Betty clearly supported Walter in this. "Since you, Shaker, Sybil, and myself might be working with Dr. Woods, let's list his good qualities."

  A brief silence was followed by Sister saying, "Brilliant intellectually. Driven. Rich, although some of that wealth has to be inherited. We've never met his people, you know. He rarely mentions them except that they live in Newport Beach, California. Let's see. Well, he's handsome."

  "Succumbs to flattery, especially from women," Betty added.

  The two women looked at each other and laughed. "What man doesn't?"

  "I'm on empty."

  "By the time you know whether he really can make a whipper-in, you'll have figured out how to handle him," Betty said.

  "Or he'll have figured out how to handle me."

  "That's easy." Betty tossed her sponge in the bucket. "Do what you say."

  CHAPTER 8

  The glow of candlelight and the free flow of champagne improved everyone's complexions.

  Betty and Bobby Franklin's modest, pretty clapboard house sat on forty acres. Bobby had wanted to name this patch of land Mortgage Manor, but Betty prevailed, and the name remained Tricorn Farm, for once a hatter had lived here who made tri-corns in the eighteenth century.

  The hunt membership plus flotsam and jetsam from town and country jammed into the traditionally decorated house. A time traveler from colonial Williamsburg would have felt at home. Jennifer and Sari, after dutifully greeting guests, sped away to a party where the median age was twenty. At the Franklins' the median age had to be forty, which for two girls in their freshman year at Colby College might as well have been one hundred and ten.

  While the Franklins' daughter and Sari might have had no need of candlelight's soft glow, it added to Sister Jane's natural radiance. The soft glow didn't hurt Tedi and Edward Bancroft, either.

  It most certainly didn't hurt Frederika Thomas, whose creamy cleavage pulsated in the light from the fireplaces, the candles flickering in the two-hundred-fifty-year-old chandeliers. Freddie's bosom, much admired, rose and fell at a pace she controlled. The more they heaved, the more she sought to impress upon the gentleman (it was usually a gentleman) with whom she spoke that she was deeply impressed with his conversation. Perhaps, given the height of the heave, she might even be sexually interested. When Freddie discovered the power of her mammary glands, she made certain to wear low-cut dresses or blouses. A snug cashmere turtleneck could be worn to good effect as well. Freddie had mastered this technique by eighteen. At thirty-four she had perfected it.

  Speaking with Sister, a respectable 38C, which suited her six-foot frame, Freddie kept her glories at a moderate pace with the chat. Freddie admired Sister but had never thought of seducing her. Good thing, because Sister would have laughed herself silly.

  "Poor Marty." Freddie's doe eyes widened further. 'You just know she's dying to come. This is the party. Anyone not invited to the Franklins' winds up at the country club, I suppose. Well, at least Marty will be able to wear her major jewels. Crawford's no cheapskate."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sister saw Iffy in her motorized metal wheelchair festooned with party lights and sparklers, which Iffy intended to set off at midnight. "Marty needs a scooter like Iffy's. I'm surprised those rubies and diamonds don't bend her double."

  "I'd kill for those rubies and diamonds."

  "You'd have to."

  Freddie, possessed of a good sense of humor, laughed at Sister's good-natured jibe. "Good as he is that way, Crawford's a brute to keep her from her friends."

  "Once a man takes a position publicly, he rarely backs down or seeks a compromise. It's a particular failing of the gender, I'm afraid, and Crawford is more pigheaded than most."

  "You don't think women can be stubborn?"

  "I do." Sister's silver hair gleamed in the light. "But with great effort, especially from friends, most women can be brought around to seek a compromise. Maybe I'm making too much of it. I'm upset with Crawford, obviously, and I adore Marty. I miss her already. She was the most P.C. person in the hunt, and even though I often thought she was to the left of Pluto she made me think."

  Jason Woods, intent in conversation with Walter, turned his head. Both Freddie and Sister noticed his classic profile simultaneously.

  "Divine."

  "I'd have to agree." Sister smiled. "But surely you've
met him."

  "In passing. There's never been enough time to talk, and I was usually stuck with my tick of an ex-boyfriend."

  "Jason seems to have a refreshingly low opinion of monogamy," Sister remarked.

  "These days so do I." Freddie laughed.

  If a male stranger had beheld these two women together, he would have first fixed his gaze on Freddie. At thirty-four, lithe and voluptuous, she'd send the blood south. Eventually his eyes would shift to Sister. Standing there, completely unselfconscious, the older woman burst with raw animal energy. Maybe his blood wouldn't head south, although it would have when she was younger, but even a man half her age would be drawn to her. The energy would pull him—and it pulled women, too, in a different manner.