“Did you see me?”
“Not today, but I've watched you. Good position, hands forward, you pick your spot. You reckon.”
“I'm flattered. I love watching people ride in the hunt field.”
“I usually can't do it unless I'm in someone else's hunt field.”
“Who were the riders you admired when you were up and coming?”
“Ellie Wood Keith, Baxter now, she married a Baxter; uh, Judy Harvey; Jill Summers; Mary Robertson; Rodney Jenkins, of course, but he was a show ring rider. Sometimes I'd see him out with Keswick. The list could go on and on, but my focus was always how people rode in the hunt field. Impressive as show riders are, they're hitting fences on level ground. It's math; they count their strides, stay in that infuriating canter, in the hunter classes, I mean. I'd need a No-Doz to sit through a hunter class. In the field you and your horse encounter everything, often very fast. You grow a set of balls out there, or you don't make it. Maybe I should say ovaries, given the circumstances.”
He laughed, his body shaking. “Jane, you can be wicked in your way. Too bad most people don't really know you.”
“I can't very well go about saying what I think and be an effective master, now can I?”
“No.” He thought a moment. “You're lovely to watch on a horse. Fearless, but not foolish.”
“Thank you, but let me tell you my secret: I have fabulous horses. I just sit there.”
“Don't be modest.”
“I mean it. Sure I can ride a bit, but if you've got the right horse, everything is peachy. Ray, Little Ray, went through his peachy phase, and it stuck with me. Thirteenâ remember when your kids were twelve and thirteen, and you endured the word play, the horrible puns, and the really dumb jokes? They get fixated on words. Peachy. Totally. What were some of his others? Used to drive me crazy until I remembered my mother still said âswell' until the day she died. Funny.” She pulled her arm from under the cover to pet Golly. “Tomorrow would have been Ray's forty-fourth birthday. I can't imagine him as a middle-aged man.”
Gray kissed her cheek. “He would have been fortunate if he looked like his mother, which he did.”
“He did, didn't he? Walter looks like Big Ray.” She stopped. “You knew, I mean, I didn't let the cat out of the bag?”
“Everyone knew. Even the black folks.”
“Thought the black folks knew everything first.”
“Pretty much do.”
“Wonder if anyone knows what's going on about these deaths?”
“No. I asked around.”
“Ah-ha, so you're curious, too.”
“Of course. That could have been Sam, you know?”
“I do.”
They lay awhile, watching the fire.
Gray spoke up as a log crackled. “Jane, have you ever felt the presence of your son or your husband?”
She sat up. Golly grumbled. “Why?”
“I don't know.”
“You ask the damnedest questions. The only other people in my life who would ask something like that are Tedi or Betty. I'm not madâdon't get me wrongâjust, uh, warmly surprised. I'm not accustomed to people truly wanting to know about me. They want things from me, but they don't want
me,
if you know what I mean. Tedi and Betty love me for me.”
“I know exactly what you mean. And I want you for you. Of course, I also want torrential sex.”
“Oh that.” She sighed, a mock suffering sigh. “A sacrifice, but someone's got to do it.” She waited a moment, took a deep breath. “I have felt both Big Ray and Little Ray. When my son was killed, I felt him strongly for months. I don't know, could have been some kind of wish fulfillment, a way to fight the pain. But even now, there are moments, Gray, when I feel his kindness. I feel him smiling at me. I feel Mother, too. Less so Big Ray, but every now and then, usually in the hunt field, he'll be near. I often feel Archie, my anchor hound. I know animals possess spirits. Archie is with me. And I can't tell you how loving the sensations are, how restorative, and, well, I don't know, I feel a blessing on me, a benediction.”
“Good.”
“You?”
He nodded. “My grandmother. Warmth, love, understanding, the same feelings you're expressing. You can't go about talking about this kind of thing, especially if you're a man. Men aren't supposed to sense ghosts, if you will, or spirits of love. But Janie, they are with us. And who is to say there aren't loving spirits with us whom we didn't know in this life but who have taken an interest in us, or whom we knew from another life? I rather believe that, past lives, I mean. I'm certain you were a queen.”
“Go on!”
“A king?” He shrugged.
“One's as bad as the other.” She laughed. “If there are kind spirits, there are also evil spirits.”
“Like up at Hangman's Ridge?”
“Yes. I don't know if they're evil or suffering.”
“Both. Lawrence Pollard, the first man hanged there, wasn't evil, just greedy. It was 1702, wasn't it? But some of the others, probably psychopaths, are evil. Or maybe some just broke bad, like Fontaine Buruss broke bad.” He named a hunt club member, now deceased, the former husband of Sorrel Buruss.
Fontaine, handsome, charming, devolved into sexual self-indulgence, seducing women he should have left well alone because of their youth. He paid for it with his life.
“Fontaine, what a son of a bitch, but a fun son of a bitch. I actually miss him.” She smiled. “He crumbled in middle age. I swear, what in hell are people afraid of? We are all going to get old. We are all going to die. So why does a man in his forties want to be attractive to twenty-year-old women. The women aren't any better. They go about it differently, that's all. You get old, period. In fact, Gray, I love being older.”
“You're not old. You're healthy. You're beautiful.”
“Oh Gray.”
“You will always be beautiful. And sure, if a gorgeous twenty-year-old woman walked into a room, every man's eyes would go to her, mine included. Do I want to sleep with her? No, I already have two children. I want a woman who can keep up with me, forgive the arrogance.”
“Me, too.”
“You want a woman who can keep up with you?”
“Haven't tried that. Another life, perhaps. For this one, I'll stick to men.”
“I'm so glad.” He kissed her again.
“Gray.”
“Hmm.”
“I think I know who the killer is, might be two, not one. Might even be three or four, but I know the locus of greed. I just don't know how to root it out.”
“Logic or instinct?”
“Both. I've used both. I don't have proof, but you asked me if I felt my son. What is that? An openness, clear channels? Whatever it is, it leads me to my best hounds, my best horses, and I usually know where my fox is laying up. A kind of sixth sense. I'm not eschewing logic. Logic, too, brings us to Clay, Isabelle, if she's in on it, X, possibly, and possibly Dalton Hill.”
He sat up straighter. “Clay makes sense because of the warehouse. Isabelle, well, hard to say. Why Xavier and Dalton, unless you think this is an insurance fraud?”
“No. I think this is about illegal drugs such as steroids, HGH, OxyContin, stuff like that. Dalton has the knowledge, he can get that stuff readily.”
“Then Xavier would look better.” Gray half laughed.
“I don't know, but I am ninety-nine percent sure I'm on the right track. If only I could figure out a way to flush them out, get them in open territory.”
“Jane,” he said sternly, “this isn't a foxhunt. This is murder.”
CHAPTER 39
February, although two steps closer to spring than December, feels far away from that first bright crocus. Usually the coldest month of the year in central Virginia, February dragged some folks down into a bad case of the blues. Fortunately, foxhunters usually escaped this dive in emotional fortunes because hunting reached its apogee. Only the toughest hunted, the others having retired to their fireplaces or even to Florida until spring. The foxes gave delicious sport. By now the pack worked like a well-oiled machine; the young entry were part of the pack, bringing vigor and curiosity to the hunt. The horses, hunting fit, were keen. The humans, if they hadn't eaten themselves insensate over the holidays, were also lean and mean. Truly, February was perfect.
Sister loved whatever day she was in: cold, hot, cloudy, sunny, rainy, dry, she didn't care. She was alive, healthy, and doing what she loved. This particular day, February 6, she fought off the sadness of Ray Jr.'s birth by remembering her labor. Doctors tell you, as do psychologists, that you won't recall physical pain. Clearly, they had never given birth. To this day, she could remember the contractions. For a brief period there, she would gladly have killed Big Ray for getting this upon her. Then Ray Jr. made his appearance after eight hours of nausea, heaving, and pushing. Red, wet, wrinkled, he was a shock until she held him in her arms. Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.
She had had fourteen years with a boy of uncommon good humor and generosity. Little Ray loved animals, loved sleeping with kitties, loved falling down in the kennels as the hounds swarmed over him, licking him. He gurgled to the horses even when he was in his mother's arms. He kissed their soft noses and laughed if they blew air out of their nostrils. He held her hand when they walked, even into his fourteenth year. He kissed his father without embarrassment. He hugged his friends, boys and girls, without thinking twice about it. His path was physical, touching, connecting through flesh. He showed his love by touching your arm, smoothing a hound's head, patting a horse's hindquarters. Like all happy people, Little Ray was a magnet to others, as well as animals.
She loved him even when he committed the childhood sins we all commitâtelling that first lie, stealing a candy bar from Roger's Corner, doing someone else's homework. Ray always polished off his homework in record time. When he erred, she'd discipline him, and Big Ray would back her up. Then, when the first flush of puberty showed on her son's cheeks, father and son drew much closer. The minutiae of masculinity is best taught by a loving father, which Big Ray was.
He showed his son the difference between a regular tie knot and a Prince of Wales. He instructed his son in the duties and courtesies due women. Given that they lived in central Virginia, of course, this process had really begun when the boy was a toddler. Southern men, especially Virginians, adhere to a strict code concerning the ladies. Doesn't mean they can't keep a harem busy, but the proper tokens and forms must be observed.
Both parents worried about sex. Young Ray hadn't quite gotten to that yet; his voice was only beginning to crack when he was killed. But she and her husband wondered what would happen because he was so affectionate and loving. They worried that he'd be misunderstood, and they worried that he wouldn't understand himself. Learning about sex, love, lust, and friendship with the opposite sex takes restraint, compassion, and a wealth of common sense. There's not one of us who doesn't learn a few of those lessons the hard way. They prayed the hard way wouldn't mean a baby born out of wedlock.
One of the great things about her husband was that they could talk about anything, anything, even their affairs, if it came down to that. Usually it didn't, but on those occasions when it did, they evidenced a rare understanding of each other. They agreed if their son fathered a child before he was ready to be married, they would take care of it and make young Ray fully aware that he must provide financial assistance to the mother if she wouldn't give him the child. Big Ray summed it up, “You play, you pay.”
When Little Ray's flapping T-shirt tail got caught in the tractor PTO, the power transfer axle, choking the life out of him in seconds, he had never slept with a woman. That haunted Sister. She wished he had known the richness, the power, even the fear of that connection. He died a virgin. His death caused slashing grief among his classmates and friends, among the members of the hunt club. The hounds, his horses, his beloved cats, all mourned him as deeply as his parents. Their mute suffering tore out Sister's heart. For three months after his son's death Big Ray couldn't go past Tijuana, young Ray's favorite hunter, without bursting into tears.
On Little Ray's forty-fourth birthday, gunmetal gray clouds swung down from the mountains. Athena brazenly sat in front of the stable in the big pin oak, Bitsy on the branch beneath her. The two owls made crackling cackling sounds at each other. Sister noticed them when she looked out the kennel window.
Sister remembered odd bits of information. When Ray was born, she flipped through history date books, delighted to find that Julius Caesar had beaten King Juba II in 46 B.C., J. E. B. Stuart had been born on that day in 1833. As Stuart remains the beau ideal of the cavalryman to this day, February 6 seemed a good omen.
Sister had reached the point in her life when she was able to thank God that she had fourteen years with her remarkable son. She'd learned, in her own quiet way, to trust the good Lord. It had been her son's time.
Shaker dripped in water tracks from his rubber boots as he stepped into the kennel office. “Dragon can go Saturday.”
“Good.”
They'd exhausted the Westminster Dog Show as a topic. The show had ended Tuesday, but being hound people, they had to discuss it in minute detail for days running. And there was a ripe disagreement about who won, who was reserve, et cetera. Needless to say, a hound did not win Best in Show.
“Boss, I know this is Ray Jr.'s birthday. Anything I can do for you?”
“Shaker, you're good to think of me. No. Just the fact that you remembered makes it a better day. I was lucky to have him.”
“He was lucky to have you.”
Later, when she arrived back at the house, she found a huge bouquet from Gray. The card simply read, “Love is eternal.”
That brought tears to her eyes.
The biggest surprise of the day was when she took a break from chores for four o'clock tea. A new Lexus SUV pulled into the driveway, disgorging Ronnie, Xavier, and Clay.
They stamped in the mudroom door just as they had as boys. Ronnie carried champagne, Clay a hamper basket of treats, and Xavier gingerly held an arrangement of white long-stem roses interspersed with lavender.
They burst through the door, calling, “Hi, Mom.”
Each one kissed her, gave her his present, then plopped at the kitchen table.
She poured the champagne, put out sandwiches, whatever she had. They sat down as they did when they would follow behind Ray Jr., like so many railroad cars hitched to his engine.
After she cried a bit and wiped her eyes, they sat, remembering, laughing, eating.
Ronnie wistfully glanced around the country kitchen. “Where does the time go? Wasn't it Francois Villain who wrote, âWhere o where are the snows of yesteryear?' It was the 1400s when he wrote that.”
“The snows of yesteryear are right here,” Clay, not being poetic, replied.
“Are you going to give us a lecture about evaporation and condensation and how there might be a molecule that once belonged to George Washington in that glass of champagne?” Ronnie rolled his eyes.
“Molecule belonged to François Villain.” X winked. “From France.”
“Clever, these insurance agents are clever. Hey, I remember when you were
dying,
and I mean
dying,
in Algebra I. Rayray bailed you out.”
X turned beet red. “No need to bore Sister with that story, Clay.”
“Ah-ha!” Clay put his sandwich on his plate, thumb-print on the bread. “X sat in front, Rayray behind. Passed him the answers to the tests.”
Sister feigned shock. “X!”
“Makes you wonder about having him as your insurance agent, doesn't it?” Ronnie giggled.
“If it has a dollar sign in front of it, X is Einstein,” Clay said, a hint of sharpness in his voice.
“If it has a dollar sign in front of it, Dee does the work. Give me credit, I married a woman smarter than myself.”
“Not hard to do.” Ronnie laughed.
“I could be really ugly right now.” X dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
“I'll be ugly for you, Ronnie, since we know you aren't going to marry for love, why don't you woo some rich old widow? Think of the good you could then do for the hunt club?” Clay nodded in Sister's direction.
“Yeah, Ronnie, you could always lash it to a pencil.” X laughed, then realized he was sitting with Sister. “Sorry.”
“Don't apologize to me, I've said worse; you just never heard it. And you all used to say the grossest things when you were kids.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Makes that show
Jackass,
look tame.”
“You've watched that?” X was amazed.
“I'm trying to keep current with popular culture.”
“Hardly culture.” Ronnie sighed.
“A phase, grossness. Girls do it, too,” Clay said. “But since girls don't make movies, for the most part, or shall I say movies are made for teenage boys, we don't see it. Bet you were gross, too, Sister.”
Sister replied, “You forget how much older I am than you all. It was strict when I grew up. I could have matriculated to West Point and felt right at home, course they didn't take girls then, but I thought about things gross and otherwise. Didn't show it.”
“Ever wonder where Ray would have gone to school?” X asked.
“Sure.” She drank some champagne. “Princeton or Stanford. But you know, he was leaning toward the fine arts, driving his father crazy. I don't know, maybe he would have gone somewhere else. What do you all think?”
“Bowdoin,” Clay said. “He would have loved Maine.”
“Colorado State,” Ronnie pitched in. “I think he would have gone west, but wound up in veterinary medicine or something like that. And he was a good athlete. He would have played football. Bet you.”
X shook his head. “Princeton. He would have followed his father to Princeton. And he would have played football there, baseball, too. Maybe lacrosse. Do they have lacrosse at Princeton?”
“Even if they do, if you want to play lacrosse, you go to Virginia, Maryland, or Johns Hopkins.” Clay spoke with certainty.
“Johns Hopkins is a good school,” Sister said thoughtfully. “I wouldn't have minded that, and it's closer than Princeton or Stanford.” She paused. “What a joy to have you all here.”
“We never forget you.” Ronnie smiled.
They always remembered Ray Jr.'s birthday in one fashion or another. They remembered his death day, too, each calling Sister to tell her he was thinking of her. Tedi and Betty always called or dropped by as well.
The boys, for Sister thought of them as “the boys,” grew louder, more raucous. They argued about the NBA, dismissed the Super Bowl, which had just been played. They looked forward to baseball season. They talked horses, fixtures, other people in the hunt field.
“Think Crawford will cough up enough for you to hire someone else, really?” Clay asked.
“Um . . . if we make this a club effort, I think he'll contribute more than his share,” Sister replied judiciously. “But if anyone pressures him, he'll get angry and I won't blame him. He's hit up all the time.”
“True.” Clay sipped the coffee that Sister had made to accompany the champagne and sandwiches. “You make the best coffee. Wish I could teach Izzy how you do it.”
“Patience and good beans.” She laughed.
“You know that brass coffee maker Crawford has in his tack room? That thing cost over five thousand dollars. Imported from Italy.” Ronnie relayed this with amazement.
“Does his coffee taste any better than Sister's?” X's eyebrows, some gray in them now, rose.
“No,” Ronnie answered firmly. “No one makes coffee as good as Sister.”
“Ronnie, back to the subject of your marriage.” Sister surprised them all by this. “You don't even have to marry some rich old broad to make me happy. I want to see you happy, and I know, if you'll relax and let us love you, you'll find the right man.”
A silence followed.
X chuckled. “As long as it's not me.”
“For Crissakes, X, you're so fat, even if I loved you and wanted you, I couldn't find it, you know?”
They roared, even X.
“Ronnie needs someone. We all need someone.” Clay dabbed his mouth with the napkin. “But I don't think we have any other gay men in the club. Or at least, that we know about.”
“We don't,” Ronnie answered grimly.
“Well, Ron, you can't have someone in your life who isn't a foxhunter.” Sister was firm. “We'll keep our eyes open at other hunts.”
“Guys, I can do this on my own.”
“You've done a piss-poor job of it so far.” X snorted. “I can count on the fingers of one hand the affairs I know you've had. Not counting one-night stands.”
“Do we have to get into this?”
“I'm fascinated.” Sister's eyes sparkled.
“Yeah, we do. If Rayray were alive, he'd be right here with us, pushing you on.” Clay drained his champagne glass.
With four of them on a bottle, there was little left, even though Sister drank lightly. She got up, pulled a bottle out of the fridge, and handed it to X, who opened it. She always kept a bottle of champagne, a bottle of white wine, and a six-pack of beer in the fridge for guests.