CHAPTER 18
Only a handful of riders followed hounds on Tuesday, January 20, at the old fixture called Mud Fence, so named because in the eighteenth century, the enclosures were red clay and mud.
The snow continued, light and powderyâwhich was unusual since snow in this part of the country is generally heavy and sticky. This dreadful viscous snow then stuck to horses' hooves, turned slick as an eel under tire wheels. This snow felt like a bracing morning in the Rockies. The cold, however, could cut right to the bone.
The moon, one day shy of full, often presaged how much game would be moving around. According to the moon cycle, this should have been a decent enough morning.
However, the foxes at Mud Fence proved lazy as sin.
Shaker cast hounds into the westerly stiff breeze. Hounds worked diligently. Doughboy, Darby, and Dreamboat settled with the pack, and Sister kept her eye on the youngsters. Shamed by their great escape, they yearned to redeem themselves.
Behind her, Walter, Xavier, Clay, Ronnie, Marty Howard, and Dalton Hill composed the field. Most days, when the weather turned bitter, Tedi and Edward valiantly rode forth, age be damned, but this morning Edward had felt as if he were coming down with the flu, so Tedi stayed home to tend to him. The last thing anyone needed was the flu bug making the rounds.
Bobby led the Hilltoppers on weekends and Thursdays. Tuesday, often a big fence day, kept many people at home, regardless of the weather. No Hilltoppers showed up today.
Since Betty was now whipping-in full-time, Bobby ran Franklin Printing on Tuesdays. Thursdays they didn't open until one, but they stayed open until nine. In return for Bobby's support of her whipping-in, Betty covered Mondays and Wednesdays so he could go to meetings, run errands, or even play nine holes of golf. Because they now had seven other employees, managing people was almost as important as the printing work itself.
As the snow fell, Betty, again on the left side, wasn't thinking of the shop. She saw a shape ahead. Outlaw snorted. Hounds, to her right, remained silent. As she drew nearer, she observed a large doe still alive although shot, most likely at the end of deer season, which was the day after New Year's. The animal's leg dangled uselessly; gangrene had set in. Betty, a hunter herself, knew game could get away from even an experienced hunter. If it left no blood trail and did not crash through woods, a clever deer could elude a good hunter, though the good hunter would keep pushing. No responsible person wanted an animal to suffer.
One of the problems in central Virginia during deer season was that so many men came in from Washington, D.C., or other cities. Dressed in cammies, toting expensive rifles, black smudged under their eyes, they usually didn't know as much as they thought they knew. They might be able to shoot, but their tracking skills left much to be desired.
Betty quietly pulled out her .38 and crept closer to the doe, whose poor head was hanging. When the deer turned to look at her, Betty fired. She hit the doe right between the eyes. The suffering animal's legs folded up like a lawn chair, and she went down with an exhalation of air.
Outlaw jumped sideways, not from the report of the gun, but from the fall of the doe.
Betty patted her best friend's neck and whispered, “Outlaw, if I'm ever that bad off, do me in. It's the coup de grâce.”
Sister heard the shot, peered to see if any of her hounds had broken. They had not.
Shaker pulled the pack to the right, away from where he had heard the shot. They drifted down a low rolling bank, then dipped into a steep, narrow ravine. There might be a chance at scent here. The hounds eagerly worked the area but again nothing. As young entry had not yet developed the patience of the male hound and, therefore, could be more easily tempted by the heavy scent of the other game or a bad day, Shaker paid special attention to the D boys.
Though the signs had been promising, this was a blank day. Sister waited for a check, then rode to Shaker.
“Let's not frustrate hounds or ourselves, Shaker. We've been out two hours, and there's not a hope in hell the temperature is going to rise enough to help us.” She squinted in the snow. “Funny, we often get our best hunts in the snow.”
“That's what makes foxhunting, foxhunting. You never know.” He raised the horn to his lips, the rim icy cold, and blew three long notes.
When he removed the horn, a bit of skin came with it.
“Smarts, doesn't it?” Sister smiled.
“If I smear on Chapstick, I can't blow this blessed thing.” He stared at the offending instrument as the hounds came back to him. “All right, come along.”
Sybil hove into sight at the right edge of the narrow ravine. She turned her horse, Colophon, to follow back, as did Betty, now a ghostly figure wrapped in white, standing on the left.
Back at the trailers, Betty told them what had happened. All country, they understood, though no one liked it.
Sister knew swift death was a good death. The longer she lived, the more adamantly opposed she was to keeping people alive, breathing cadavers. When her time came, she prayed the gods would be gracious. Then again, she hoped her time receded at least until she clocked one hundred. Life was too glorious.
Xavier's voice, rising, drew her attention to the trailers where he, Ronnie, Clay, and Dalton passed around a thermos of hot coffee.
“You have to say that. You're a doctor.” X swallowed the warming coffee.
“I say it because I believe it,” Dalton coolly replied.
“Well, I don't.” X bordered on belligerent. “Once a drunk, always a drunk. Sooner or later, they all slide back. They're worthless.”
Clay spoke up. “Not entirely worthless.”
“Why?” X turned to Clay.
“They can serve as a horrible example.” Clay's answer eased the tension.
“I heard you and Sister buried Anthony Tolliver.” Ronnie finished his coffee, using a mug with the Jefferson Hunt logo on it.
“Oh, that.” Clay shrugged.
“You wasted your money on Anthony Tolliver?” X was incredulous.
“He didn't waste it,” Dalton quickly replied.
“The hell he didn't. The county would have put that old souse in the ground. Actually, he was probably pickled. They could have dumped Anthony back at the train station, and no one would have noticed a thing.” X laughed.
“He occasionally did the odd job for the company.” Clay's face reddened; X was irritating him. “And Sister would have paid for the entire thing. Not right. I owed him something, I guess. Or her.”
“Why would Sister Jane care about an old alcoholic?” Dalton asked.
“School.” X exhaled, then realized Dalton needed more information. “They'd gone to grade school together and through high school. I reckon she's one of the few people left in the county who knew him before he became a drunk.”
“Loyal,” Dalton simply said.
“That she is,” Clay added. “Dalton, we all grew up with Sister and her son. In fact, X, Ronnie, and I were Rayray's best friends. We know Sister right well.”
“She wasted her money, too.” X twisted the cap back on the thermos, now empty.
“You're kind of a hard-ass today.” Ronnie looked straight into X's eyes.
“I have no use for drunks.”
Clay slapped his old friend on the back. “Lighten up. Everyone has a use.”
Once hounds were chowing down in the feed room, Sister excused herself. Shaker and Betty handled the chores today. Sister rushed to the house to clean up so she could meet Walter Lungrun at the club.
Steam from the shower soaked into her bones, where the cold had settled. Once her fingers moved better, she scrubbed her short gray hair, put on a conditioner for shine, and then rinsed it all out. She toweled down with an audience: Golly, perched in the sink, her fluffy tail hanging over the edge. Raleigh and Rooster sat side by side on the deep pile bathroom rug. She stood on the bath mat, vigorously rubbing her hair, which stood up in little spikes.
Looking in the mirror, she laughed. “All I need is giant hoop earrings.”
“She's a star.”
Golly flicked her tail, half closed her eyes.
The old house had horsehair stuffed in the walls for insulation. The bedroom had a fireplace, much needed as it was on the northwest corner of the house, cold in winter, cool in summer. She and Big Ray broke down and installed new plumbing back in 1989, paying special attention to all the bathrooms, especially this one, while they also insulated with modern insulation. That had set them back fortyfive thousand dollars.
As she wrapped the towel around her waist, she gave thanks that they had done it back then. Were she to pay for the materials and labor now, the cost would be about seventy-five thousand.
They had also installed a second set of two eighty-gallon hot water tanks for this side of the house, with a special pump to create a lot of water pressure. She didn't mind paying the electric bill on the four big tanks. The house had two separate systems, which she liked. She always had hot water the minute she turned on the tap.
She combed her hair and applied face cream. The indoor heat had dried her skin out. She whipped on a little mascara, no eyeliner. She slapped on skin-tightening cream around her eyes and on her upper lip. It worked. Then she smudged faint violet powder on her eyelids, finishing off with a peachy blusher on her cheeks. She liked being clean and well turned out. She wasn't vain, not even when she was young and people told her she was beautiful. She had never thought she was beautiful. She had angular features and big light brown eyes, but she was not beautiful. She was, however, sensationally athletic. Nor did she underestimate the lovely breasts that capped the whole affair. These days those mounds of pleasure sagged, but not as much as most women her age, thanks in no small part to a life of intense physical activity. Her pecs held them up as best they could.
She critically appraised herself, then leaned down and spoke to Golly, who looked up, whiskers swept forward. “Not bad for an old broad.”
“Not bad at all,”
Golly agreed.
Raleigh added,
“I love you. You are the most beautiful
woman in the world.”
Rooster, pink tongue curling out, seconded that.
“True.”
“You two are so slavish.”
Golly snuggled farther down in the sink as Sister stood up straight again. Her cosmetics, lined up on the counter, included three different colors of blusher and an array of lipsticks, tossed in a big glass brandy snifter. This was self-defense; when cross, Golly would knock the cosmetics off the counter. A second line of attack for the cat was to pull toilet paper all over the bathroom and shred it.
The second sink, Big Ray's, no longer held his implements. Golly might have hunkered down there, but then she wouldn't have been close enough to be a bother.
As Sister's hair dried, she ran her fingers through it. “All right, that's it.”
She sprinted into the closet, yanked out a long plaid skirt, whipped on a pair of high Gucci bootsâthirty years old and still fabulous. She slipped a thin belt with small gold stirrups for a clasp through the skirt loops. Then she pulled a cashmere turtleneck over her head and tucked it into the skirt.
She came out, inspecting herself in the long mirror. Checking the time, Sister hurried down the back stairs, grabbed her shearling three-quarter-length coat, heavy but so warm. Outside, she hopped into the truck.
Even with the snow, she was at the club five minutes before Walter.
Under a tall window with a graceful curve at the top, the two caught up. While she had already written him a note thanking him for the fine hunt breakfast, she again told him how wonderful it was.
Finally, after turtle pie dessert, her tea and his coffee steaming, she reached for the handsome young man's right hand. “Walter, you're a natural foxhunter.”
Beaming, he squeezed her hand. “That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.”
She laughed. “I don't know about that, but you love the sport, and you pay attention. That means so much to me. Oh, I know most people are out there to run and jump. Makes them happy. I have no quarrel with that, so long as they respect the hounds. After all, we each take away from our pastimes what we most need. But the natural foxhunter, the true foxhunter, loves the hounds and loves the quarry. And he knows that if he lived one hundred years, well, he'd still be outfoxed.”
Walter smiled, his large even teeth an attractive feature. “I expect even Tom Firr didn't know it all.” He referred to an English huntsman from the nineteenth century, reported to be the greatest huntsman of his time.
“You've already contributed so much to our club. There are times, Walter, when I turn around and catch sight of you, and I think it's Ray. If you had the military mustache, you'd be his twin.”
A quiet note crept into his voice. “You know, I often think about Big Ray, how I wished I had known he was my natural father. How strange that neither of us knew until last season, but everyone around us knew.”
“That's Virginia.” She smiled, glad that something of Big Ray remained and simultaneously sorry that her genes would be washed away. Still, you take what life gives you.
“Dad didn't know; I'm sure of that.” Walter referred to the man he knew as his father: a hardworking man bested in business many times over, the last time by Crawford Howard. It had destroyed him.
“I'm sure, too. We can both be glad of that, for your father did not live a happy life.” She paused slightly, changing the subject. “My mother used to say, âEventually all things are known, and none of it matters.' She was a foxhunter. They all were. Lucky me.” She smiled.
“Everyone needs a passion. If it were rational, it wouldn't be a passion, would it?” He smiled back. “We're both lucky.”