Outfoxed (14 page)

CHAPTER 25

Aunt Netty ducked into Target's den, as hers was a half mile farther on. She'd carried her booty long enough.

“A feast!”
Charlene sank her fangs into a limp wing.

“You should have seen Alice Ramy, the sow,”
Aunt Netty crowed in triumph.
“If I were bigger I'd break her neck, too.”

Reynard, Charlie, Grace, and Patsy ate in respectful silence as the adults discussed corn, oats, and mice.

“The gleanings are especially good down by Whiskey Ridge,”
Target said.

“It's good everywhere. A perfect year. Oats, rye, corn, barley, fat mice, fatter rabbits.”
Aunt Netty lived to eat.
“Even my useless husband mentioned it the other day.”

“I haven't seen Uncle Yancy since July,”
Charlene noted.

“I hardly see him myself, which I consider a benefit,”
his wife remarked.
“He's spent most of the summer down at Wheeler Mill studying the wheels and the raceway. He likes to talk to the foxes down there, reds, you know. Yancy feels that he can prove all mammals descend from a great prehistoric fox. He says birds come from flying reptiles, so we have nothing in common with them, but all mammals come from the original fox.”

“Even humans?”
Reynard wondered.

“Yes. They're more closely related to us than we'd like, but better to be close to a human than an armadillo, I suppose.”

Grace, the image of her mother, put her paw on a piece of flesh because Charlie was inching toward her.
“Does that mean we'll build machines?”

“I don't follow, dear.”
Aunt Netty, full, stretched out on her side.

“If we're related to humans will we build machines like they do?”
Grace slapped her brother, who put his nose too close to her portion of chicken.

“Gracious, no. Machines dull your senses. We'd never be so foolish.”
Netty laughed.
“That's what's wrong with them. They get further and further away from nature. Yancy says there was a time when they had better eyes and ears than they do now. He said once humans could even smell game. If they keep on the way they're going, they'll even lose their sense of direction. Yancy says millions of them live in cubicles stacked on top of one another. Seems impossible but he says he's seen it on television.”

“Where does he watch television?”
The patriarch of this family joined the conversation.

“Doug Kinser. Yancy sits on the window ledge and watches the eleven o'clock news.”

“Why bother? It's only about them.”
Charlene shrugged.

“Yancy says you never know when they're going to do something stupid like build a dam. Affect all of us. Even St. Just.”

“I'll snap his neck yet.”
Target's eyes lit up.
“He's worthless.”

“Worthless but smart. He won't be satisfied until he sees you dead.”
Aunt Netty lifted her head.
“Children, take the chicken outside. Help your mother clean up this den.”

Patsy, the quiet one, whispered,
“Dad, how can a blackbird kill a fox?”

“Can't.”
Target swished his tail around.

“He can lead the hounds to you, Target. Pride goeth before a fall,”
Netty warned.

“I'll get him before he gets me.”

As the young foxes gathered up the debris of their meal, Aunt Netty scolded:
“What are you all doing here, anyway? You should be in your own dens.”
Her speech was clipped.
“Charlene, you spoil these children. Why, the grays are already in their new homes, even that little black thing. She has a pretty face. She'll need it with that black coat.”

“Who cares what the grays do?”
Reynard, parroting his father, said.

“I do. They aren't stupid, you know.”
Netty, who'd seen a lot in her day, couldn't help but sound superior.
“They've taken the good new dens near the cornfields. Makes it that much harder for you. You should have found a place last week.”

“I'll chase one out and take his den,”
Reynard bragged.

“I wouldn't be so sure of that.”
Aunt Netty had no time for youthful folly.
“Opening hunt is not but ten days away. You'd better get yourself situated.”

“We can dust those guys.”
Charlie, the good-natured son, laughed.

“And so you can but what if you duck in a den and find Comet there? He's a young gray but he's tough, very tough, just like his father. You'll have a fight on your paws and hounds at your heels. Prepare now.”
Having imparted enough wisdom for one day, Netty closed her eyes, curling her tail around her nose.

Charlie picked up a drumstick; Reynard, some feathers. Grace batted the neck around and Patsy picked up the backbone. They walked outside, scattering the bones. The sun filtered through the trees.

“Why do they start formal hunting in early November?”
Grace asked.

“Because we're looking for dens. They'll get better runs. That's what Mom says,”
Charlie answered.

“It's because there's frost on the ground. Usually. The first frost comes around the middle of October but some years not until later. By November the frost is here until April. Scent holds,”
Patsy said.

“Maybe it's both things.”
Grace walked toward the creek. She liked to watch the fish. She'd seen bear catch them and she thought if a dumb bear could do it, she could do it.

Reynard dashed by her. Charlie ran after him. Patsy bumped into Grace just to hear her squeal. A perfect October day was meant for play. They could worry about hunting later.

CHAPTER 26

The last label peeled off the sheet of paper was smacked onto the envelopes. Formal invitations to opening hunt had already been mailed the first of October. This mailing was the fixture cards.

Fixture cards listed the time and place of each hunt. Often at the top of a fixture card was printed the phrase “Hounds will meet.”

Scheduling fixtures drove many a master to drink. Even with the fixtures scheduled, last-minute changes wreaked havoc. A hard rain might prompt a farmer to request no one ride over his fields and with good reason. A crop of winter wheat could get cut up or the slipping and sliding of trailers could turn a pasture into brown waves, which, when frozen, were hell to negotiate.

The ladies of a hunting club usually did the mailings. Gentlemen built fences. Both genders cleared trails. However, as those lines blurred, the new order was whoever could do the job, did it.

The ladies, gathered in Sister's living room, laughed, gossiped, teased one another.

Golly sorted the mail. Raleigh slept by the fireplace.

A knock on the front door brought Sister to her feet.

Crawford asked to come in. The ladies said hello.

“Perfect timing.” He smiled. “I'll take the fixture cards and run them through my postage meter.”

“Why thank you, Crawford,” Sister said.

“Martha wasn't here, was she?”

“No,” Betty Franklin, sitting cross-legged on the floor, remarked. “She got tied up at work. Called about an hour ago.”

“Oh.” He wanted to say something but whatever it was it stuck in his throat.

“A libation?” Sister reached for his jacket.

“No. I'll do this right now and drop them at the main post office. Oh, I forgot to tell you, thirty coop flats with top boards will be dropped over at Rumble Bars tomorrow. Had the lumber yard knock them together.”

There were many ways to build coops but if the sides were built, then carried to the site, they could be leaned against one another, braced, a top board put on, and then painted. It saved time building the flats off-site.

“Crawford, that's wonderful.” Sister was pleased. He allowed himself a smile. “When we know how the fox runs we can put up more. This is a good beginning. What a wonderful surprise. Are you sure you wouldn't like a drink?”

“No. No. I really need to go.” He picked up the cards all in their envelopes in cartons according to zip codes. Out he went.

“H-m-m,” was all Betty Franklin said.

Before that subject could warm up, Sister deftly said, “Did I tell you girls the caterer called this morning and said I'd better switch from spoon bread to corn bread? I mean how can you have a hunt breakfast without spoon bread, ham biscuits, gravy—well, I'll make us hungry. Anyway, he said there are now so many Yankees in Virginia that every time he makes spoon bread there's a dreadful mess.”

“What does he mean, a dreadful mess?” Georgia Vann asked.

“Yankees pick it up with their fingers. They think it's undercooked corn bread.” Sister emitted tinkling laughter.

“No!” Betty howled.

“I can't believe that. How can you not know how to eat spoon bread? I mean, it's called spoon bread.” Lottie Fisher shook her head, then laughed.

“That's what he said.” Sister laughed more.

“The hell with the Yankees.” Lottie waved the rebel flag figuratively.

“You know, we give foxhunting clinics in the beginning of cubbing. Maybe we should run a hunt breakfast clinic or a southern cooking demonstration,” Betty merrily suggested.

“As long as you organize it,” Sister said.

“Spoken like a true master.” Betty giggled some more.

“Isn't it glorious to be superior to Federals?” Georgia teased.

“Like Crawford.” Lottie had to get back to that. “I wonder what he's about? I mean, I heard he's trying to win back Martha. If I were her, I'd slap him right in the face.”

“She did that already,” Betty dryly said.

“Shotgun,” Georgia laconically said as she reached for a piece of pound cake with fresh vanilla icing dribbled over it.

“He's not worth going to jail over.” Betty thought the pound cake looked pretty good, too. This was her third piece.

“Maybe he's learned something,” Sister said. “More coffee? Drinks?”

“You sit. You threw this together after hound walk. You must be tired by now.” Georgia got up, walked over to the gleaming silver coffeepot, and poured into the cups handed her.

“If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to shoot Bobby Franklin, I'd be rich.” Betty laughed at herself. “Who knows what Crawford and Martha have to work out together. It's hard for a middle-aged woman to make it alone. Let's not forget that, girls.”

A quiet murmur rippled across the gathering.

“Sister, you know I can't keep my mouth shut. Are you really going to make Crawford a joint-master? You must know the club's abuzz with speculation.” Georgia blushed.

“I don't know. Crawford and Fontaine have a lot to offer.”

“And a lot to sidestep.” Lottie hated Crawford. She thought he was a rich oaf who tried to buy his way into everything. He didn't belong here.

As they batted pros and cons back and forth, as well as Martha Howard's future, Sister listened. She thought to herself, if only Raymond Junior had lived. He'd be old enough now to assume the responsibilities of a joint-master. She'd always dreamed of that. She snapped out of her reverie. “Don't question the will of God,” she said to herself, then said to the ladies, “I really do appreciate your concern for the hunt.”

“Not just the hunt, Sister Jane, we appreciate you. Can't you go along for one more year as sole master? Surely something will turn up or resolve itself,” Lottie inquired earnestly, her soft brown hair framing her square face.

“I've said that for the last five years.”

“You're stronger than we are. Wait five more.” Betty echoed what the others were thinking.

“I don't know. There's a black young vixen on the farm. You know everything happens in the black fox years.”

The ladies knew the black fox legend. “That doesn't mean it's going to happen to you,” each said in her own way.

“Well—I hope not.” She was tempted to tell them about the lone figure on Hangman's Ridge but decided that would be between her and Doug Kinser. “But let's change the subject to something more cheerful or challenging. Can you imagine Crawford Howard without his clothes on?”

 

CHAPTER 27

The old office in the center of town exuded a sepulchral air. The sturdy white Doric columns, the large iron doors boasted of public wealth, solidness, and civic duty. Built in 1926 on a flood tide of government spending and public speculation, the post office, like the country that spawned it, witnessed the subsequent depression, another world war and three smaller ones, more economic booms and busts.

When the post office was being built, slabs of granite lying along Main Street, men came to the post office wearing coats and hats. If it was summer, they wore jaunty straw boaters. In the winter, fedoras and borsalinos predominated. Ladies festooned in hat, gloves, purse, and shoes dyed to match sashayed onto the black marble floors. The very colors the ladies wore announced their feelings about the day and about themselves. Farmers, some still driving teams, would tie up at the gray iron balustrade designed for that purpose. Wearing overalls and straw hats in the warm weather, they'd stride into the halls cheerfully greeting everyone, stopping to talk about that riveting subject: the weather.

As Crawford Howard pushed open the heavy doors with his back he harbored none of these memories. A post office was simply a post office to him, not a community statement. But it remained a federal building and therefore a citizen trust. An American can enter a post office at any time of night or day to deposit mail in the shining brass slots, to open their own large or small mailbox with their key.

People didn't dress to go downtown anymore. They barely pulled themselves together, properly groomed, to attend church. The South and especially Virginia practiced a dress code much stricter than that of the rest of America but even here in the bosom of courtliness standards were falling. Many wore jeans and T-shirts. Businessmen still paid attention to their furnishings, as did those ladies who were hoping to catch a businessman's eye. But even their standards of dress were lower than just thirty years before.

Crawford reached the slots and slid the mail in. One brass slot was marked with the town's zip code, another was marked
VIRGINIA,
and a third was marked
OUT OF TOWN
but it may well have read
OFF THE WALL
.
Virginians, without making noise about it, quietly, calmly, considerately believed any activity of importance took place within the state's borders. From the Potomac to the Dan River, from the Atlantic to the early steep folds of the Alleghenies shared with its rebellious sister, West Virginia, this was the center of the universe.

Even Crawford, as he methodically tossed the mail in the slots, listening for the satisfying soft thunk on the other side as it hit a mail basket, even he who knew the world had adopted this point of view. What was Nairobi, London, New York compared to Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, or the dowager herself, great fusty Richmond? Crawford, a direct and active man, hardly realized the seductiveness of the area. When he repaired here with Martha, flush with the first fortune he'd made, he came for the beauty of the place and because it was an hour by air to New York City, only fifteen minutes more by air to Atlanta. Washington, D.C., was a half hour by air or an hour and a half by car if no state troopers prowled the corridors to that corrupted seat of power. He certainly did not move to central Virginia for the people. He made fun of them, decrying them as parochial, falsely genteel, and silently racist.

When Virginia elected Douglas Wilder, the first black governor in the history of the United States, he questioned his stand on Virginia's racism. The more he thought about it, the more he decided Virginians were no more racist than New Yorkers.

As the years rolled along he would travel out of state and find himself irritated by the lack of grace in random encounters. He began to fume about the manner in which people drove in Boston and once in Los Angeles he upbraided a man at a business meeting for not wearing a suit and tie. He told the young man that he was being disrespectful to the other men at the meeting. One should always consider the effects of one's dress and demeanor on others.

This is not to say that Crawford Howard, born and bred in the hurly-burly of Indianapolis, that gritty competitor to massive Chicago, had become a Virginian. This is only to say that the state of Virginia, her siren song sweet and strong since 1607, had filtered into Crawford's ears.

He began to tip his hat to ladies even if only a baseball cap. He smiled at older women and told them they were alluring. Before telling a male competitor how wrong the competitor was, Crawford might even say something like “Have you considered this . . . ?”

The natives first ignored him. In their eyes he was a rich barbarian. Over time, his good qualities—vision, responsibility, and determination—won praise from some. He cared far too much about money and talked about it and business far too much but he had come a long way.

Fontaine Buruss, of course, would never give him credit for smoothing over his rough edges. There were those who agreed with Fontaine but they were often the same people who, if living in England, would not speak to you if you couldn't trace your lineage back to William the Conqueror. William and his men had a lot to answer for.

As Crawford picked up the now empty carton, he walked under the cream-colored swinging bowls of light, lamps hanging by heavy chain; he passed the long tables whose red marble tops contrasted richly with the black marble floor. He paused for a moment to consider whether the drunk sleeping on a marble bench in the corner was still alive. He was and Crawford pushed open the door, walking down the cascade of broad steps to his Mercedes.

He cruised by Martha's apartment. He told himself he was curious. Then he motored by Fontaine's office. The light was on. A bead of sweat appeared at his left temple even though the temperature was now fifty-four degrees. He parked in the lot across from Fontaine's office. The sweat rolled down to his chin. He wiped it off, walked into the lobby, and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Martha's voice called out.

“Your beau.” He liked the sound of that.

He heard a muffled exchange. “Come in,” Martha said.

Fontaine and Martha, bending over a drafting table, stood up to greet him.

“Hello,” Fontaine coolly said.

“Hello,” Crawford replied to equal degree.

“Did I get the date wrong? Were we supposed to have dinner tonight?” Martha hastily reached for her daybook.

“No, no, I was dropping off fixture cards at the post office and I don't know . . . drove by and saw the light on.” He smiled.

“We're trying to come up with something English but not too rigid for the Haslips' new garden. See.” She pointed to designs.

A moment of silence followed. “We might as well start fresh in the morning,” Fontaine said warmly to Martha.

“Fine.”

“A nightcap?” Crawford asked hopefully.

“Sure,” she replied, a quiet look of happiness on her face.

This infuriated Fontaine, who rolled a second set of plans, popping them into a heavy cardboard tube. Half sounding playful and half in warning he said, “Watch out for him, Martha.”

Crawford, face suddenly bright red, replied through clenched teeth, “This is no affair of yours.”

“You were a damn fool to let her go in the first place. If I weren't married, I would have asked her out myself.”

“Since when has that stopped you!”

Fontaine gave his reply, a straight right to the jaw. Crawford, not being a boxing man, crumpled.

Martha knelt down as he shook his head, then scrambled up. He did not offer to return the blow. Crawford recognized his physical limitations. He was four inches shorter than Fontaine and about ten years older. No amount of elective surgery could turn back the clock.

“Come on, Crawford.” She tried to move him toward the door.

He held his jaw with his hand. Hurt like hell but he managed to hiss, “I'll dance on your grave!”