Hotspur (5 page)

Shaker ran his hand through his auburn curls. “Her elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.”

“I'd better call on her in a day or two,” Sister said.

“Why?” Doug asked, feeling that Sister had been kind enough.

“Because she's alone.”

“She brought it on herself, poor thing,” Walter quietly said, and without rancor.

“We all pretty much make the bed we lie in. Or is it lay in?” Sister held up her hand. “Isn't grammar a bitch? Anyway, she is a neighbor. This is awful for her, too. And who knows, maybe I'll get us the right to pass through her farm.”

“Spoken like a true master,” Walter said, laughing as he headed back to the coop.

The two coops faced each other from opposite sides of the dirt farm road. During a hunt it was great fun to jump one, canter across the road, and sail over the other. However, some horses would jump out of the hayfield, their hooves would touch the dirt road, and they'd suck back. If the rider didn't squeeze hard with his or her legs, the horse might refuse the next coop, which meant horses behind would stack up with dolorous results.

Some would fuss because they were ready to jump and the nervous humans messed up their rhythm. Others would think to themselves that this must be quite a scary situation if Old Paint up front had chickened out.

Sister, who also being field master led the field, could never resist slowing a bit to look over her shoulder to see who made it and who didn't. The results would provoke a stream of laughter back in the tack room or in the kennel as she, Shaker, and Doug finished up the chores of the day. Not that the master herself hadn't supplied laughter and comment over the years. That's part of the appeal of foxhunting. Sooner or later, you'll make a spectacle of yourself.

As the humans returned to their task, Aunt Netty and Comet crept over to the cooler. Netty used her nose to pop the lid right up. Both foxes peered into the ice-filled container.

“No brownies,”
Aunt Netty mourned.

“Pack of Nabs.”
Comet spied the little pack of orange crackers beloved by Southerners and loathed by everyone else.

“What's wrong with people?”
Aunt Netty moaned.
“This should be full of sandwiches, brownies, chocolate
chip cookies!”

“Lazy. They're getting lazy as sin,”
the young gray concurred with her negative assessment.

“I don't know what this world is coming to. Why,
there used to be a time, young one, when those two-legged idiots would charge off on the hunt, we'd send
someone to keep them busy, while the rest of us would
raid their trailers. Hamper baskets full of ham biscuits,
corn bread, cinnamon buns, fried chicken.”

“Aren't things still like that when they have tailgates?”
Comet inquired.

“Sometimes. But, you see, women work now. In the
old days more stayed home, so the food was better.
That's my analysis of the situation. Actually it's my husband's, who as you know is inclined to theorize.”
She eyed the pack of Nabs.
“I'm not eating those things.”

“I will.”
Comet reached in and flipped out the cellophane-wrapped crackers.

Walter, nailing the last board in place, a top board over the peak of the coop, looked up. He whispered, “Tallyho.”

Sister stopped and turned to look. “Aha. Aunt Netty. That gray with her is out of last year's litter on my farm.”

“They see us.”
Comet picked up the crackers.

“Let them look all they want. Can't very well chase us.
I'm telling you, a praying mantis can run faster than a
human being. My God they are slow. Makes you wonder
how they survived.”
She slapped the cracker pack out of Comet's mouth.
“Open that pack and eat it. Give them
a show.”

“Okay.”
Comet tore open the crackers and gobbled them down.

“Aunt Netty, I know that's you.” Sister shook her finger at the red fox.

“So?”
Aunt Netty laughed.

“I'm going to chase you this fall,” Sister promised.

Shaker and Doug stopped work to watch the two foxes.

“Reds and grays don't much fraternize, means the game's good. Plenty for them to eat, so they might as well be friends,” Shaker noted.

“You can chase me until the Second Coming. You will
never catch me, Sister Jane,”
Netty taunted.

Comet swallowed the last of the Nabs.
“Jeez, these
things are salty. And I can't open a can.”

“Me neither. Put an ice cube in your mouth and let it
melt. That will help. Now you see what I mean—a cheap
old pack of Nabs when it could have been fried chicken.
Just terrible. Standards have fallen.”

Comet did as he was told.

“I'm going closer. Give them a thrill.”

Comet couldn't talk because he had an ice cube in his mouth, but he watched as Aunt Netty sashayed to within twenty yards of Sister and Walter. She stared at them for a moment, then leapt straight up in the air as though catching a bird. When she landed she rolled over and scooted back into the hay. Comet, too, disappeared into the hay and headed back to his den above Broad Creek, which traversed many farms on its way to spilling into the Rockfish River.

“She's a pistol,” Walter said, slapping his leg.

“Fastest damned fox. Not the prettiest. That pathetic brush of hers looks more like a bottlebrush,” Sister said, laughing, too.

“When I first started hunting with you, I didn't really believe you could identify the foxes. But you can. They're all different from one another.”

“And she's sassy. She's not happy unless she has people flying off horses like pinballs spinning out of a pinball machine. She likes to hear them hit the ground.” Sister giggled.

Shaker was picking up the leftover wood bits. “Well, we recognize them as individuals and they recognize us. She came right on up to you to give you a show.” He tossed the wood fragments in a five-gallon kelly green plastic bucket.

“That she did.” Sister picked up the wood bits at her coop. “The gray looked healthy.”

“Lot of people don't like running a gray,” Doug said.

“I love getting on a gray. Love to start my puppies on a gray,” Sister enthusiastically said, her voice rising a little. “They'll give you a good run—but in circles or figure eights. More contained. For the young ones, that's a help.” She thought for a moment. “You know, cubbing is harder than formal hunting in the sense that you've got to give the youngsters, hounds, and foxes positive experiences. The leaves are on trees and shrubs. It's difficult to see. More to handle, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Kind of like the preseason in football.”

“Still can't believe she came up here like that.”

“Alice?” Doug spoke.

“No, Aunt Netty.” Walter took the extra planks, un-planed oak, heavy, and slipped them on the back of the pickup.

“A lot more pleasant than Alice.” Shaker dropped his hammer into his tool belt. “Alice never was strong on social skills and they're really rusty now.”

A loud moo and the appearance of a large Holstein heifer, her calf in tow, captured their attention.

“That damned cow.” Shaker took off his ball cap, wiping his brow with his forearm.

“I'll walk them back.” Sister reached in the bed of the pickup, retrieving a small bucket of grain kept there for just such events.

“I'll walk with you,” Walter eagerly volunteered.

“Best offer I've had in years.” She smiled.

“When you two are done flirting, tell me, boss, how do you propose to get home?”

“You're going to pick us up at Cindy's barn in a half hour.”

Shaker nodded in agreement as he and Doug climbed into the old Chevy pickup.

“Come on, Clytemnestra. Come on, Orestes,” Sister called, shaking the bucket enticingly.

Clytemnestra followed and kept pushing Sister for the bucket. Once on the woody path, Walter broke off a thin branch and used it as a switch. Orestes stuck with his fat mother. Both were terribly spoiled and mischievous.

Out of the woods, they passed the lovely schoolhouse that Foxglove Farm's owner, Cindy Chandler, had restored.

“Can't keep this cow in. She opens gates, crashes fences. Bovine wanderlust.” Sister slapped Clytemnestra's wet nose as the cow nudged her again.

“Picture of health.”

“Raymond and I used to run cattle. Very cyclical business. Don't know if I'll ever go back to it.”

They walked in silence for a while, punctuated only by Clytemnestra's mooish comments, the loud swish of her tail.

“Do you think Guy killed Nola?” Walter asked. He'd been in his teens at the time and remembered little of it.

“No.”

“It's strange. On the one hand I'm glad Nola was found and on the other I'm not.” Walter took the bucket from Sister, handing her the switch.

“I think we all feel that way. I try not to trouble myself with things out of my control,” Sister said. “I can't do anything about the past, but maybe I'll be able to do something to help.”

“Count me in.” Walter growled at Clytemnestra, who balked at going back through her pasture gate.

“I do count on you, Walter. I do.”

CHAPTER 8

Roger's Corner, a white frame convenience store, commanded the crossroads of Soldier Road, the road heading west from town, and White Cat Road, an old wagon road heading north and south. Far in the distance, a thin turquoise line rimmed the mountains. A first-quarter moon accompanied by a red star hovered above the last bright strip of twilight.

Roger, now in his middle forties, ate too much of his own pizza heated in a revolving infrared glass case. On the shelves, Snickers, Cheez-Its, Little Debbie cakes, and Entenmann's chocolate-covered doughnuts vied with bags of charcoal, ammunition, hunting knives. In the coolers, handmade sandwiches—including Roger's famous olive cream cheese on whole wheat—enticed folks to stop. If they hadn't tanked up in town, they pretty much had to stop at Roger's, because gas was hard to find in these parts. The next pump was over the Blue Ridge Mountains in Waynesboro.

The outside floodlights hummed in the night air accompanied by the flutter of saturniid moths and the buzz of many bugs, a few zapped by the lights themselves. A long sign, ROGER'S CORNER, white with well-proportioned red block letters, ran almost the entire length of the roof. Roger might never achieve his fifteen minutes of Warholian fame in the world at large, but his sign announced his presence emphatically in these parts.

Shaker Crown, his Orioles baseball cap pulled up off his forehead, worn out from the day's work and not much of a cook, leaned over the counter.

Henry Xavier, owner of the largest insurance company in town, had stopped by on his way home as had Ralph Assumptio, owner of the John Deere tractor dealership. Both men had farms on this west side of the county that were part of Jefferson Hunt territory and both men hunted with Sister. Most members didn't say they hunted with the Jefferson Hunt. They'd simply say, “I hunt with Sister Jane.”

By so doing, they found out instantly if the person to whom they were talking knew anything about local society. If they were met with a blank they would graciously add, “the Jefferson Hunt.” It was one of those little pride things like the way members of Green Springs Valley Hounds outside of Baltimore never discussed how big their jumps were. They shrugged and would say about their horse, “Oh, he got over nicely.” Green Springs Valley Hounds, founded in 1892, boasted some stiff fences. It was not a hunt for the fainthearted, but such details were never explained, simply announced.

All groups cherish their ceremonies of togetherness, rituals that prove them set apart and special.

“Where's your chew?” Roger was ringing up Shaker's sandwich.

“Um . . .”

“Here it is. You left it on top of the Twinkies.” Henry Xavier, known only as Xavier, picked up the neat round tin of Copenhagen Black and handed it to Shaker.

“Ah, thanks.” Shaker tapped his head. “Vapor lock.”

Ralph joined them, banging on the counter the gallon of milk his wife had told him to pick up. “Day wasn't fit for man nor beast.”

“We built new coops over there at Foxglove. And it was hateful.”

“Thank God.” Ralph lovingly stared at the round can of chew in Shaker's hand. “Damn, I wish I hadn't promised Frances I'd give that up.”

“Guess who showed up to bitch out Sister?” Shaker asked as he pulled soggy bills out of his pocket, gently peeling a fiver off the wad.

“Crawford,” Xavier offered.

“On a mission,” Roger simply said.

“Mission impossible.” Xavier smiled as the others laughed.

“That jumped-up jackass really believes we'll elect him joint-master.” Ralph put his milk back in the cooler because he sensed this might be a ripening chat.

“Hey, if he dumps enough money into the club, who knows?” Xavier's heavy brows, black with some gray, shot upward. “Money papers over many sins.”

“Sins I can handle. But he lacks the imagination to be a sinner. He's just a Yankee jackass,” Ralph said as he walked back from the cooler.

“Aren't they all?” Shaker winked.

“I was born in Connecticut.” Xavier smiled. He was a genial man becoming portly. In this heat he favored seersucker shirts, which somehow made him look fatter, not thinner.

“Oh, Xavier, you were raised here. Don't turn P.C. on us.” Roger slapped at him over the counter.

“Well, do you guys want to know who rolled down the road or not?”

“Shoot,” Xavier said.

“Alice Ramy.”

“What did she want?” Ralph couldn't stand it any longer; he grabbed a tin of Skoal menthol chew, pulled the string around it, and with delight placed a pinch between his lip and his gum. He closed his teeth in contentment.

“Oh, the usual. Got up in Janie's face and said we couldn't hunt there and she'd loose the hounds of hell on us”—Shaker enjoyed his little reference to hounds— “and that Peter's harrier better stay out of her chicken coop, wait, make that her golden chicken coop.”

“And Sister smiled through it all,” Ralph said.

“And that's why Crawford Howard can't ever be a joint-master. His ego would be in the way. He'd fire back at the old battle-ax or buy up all the land around her and choke her out. Son of a bitch.” Xavier knew a good deal about Crawford's local business dealings since he insured many of them. He hated Crawford, but business was business.

“True.” Roger clasped his hands. “But you guys need a joint-master so Sister can train him to her ways. She can't live forever.”

“She might come close,” Shaker said with a laugh. “She was throwing around oak boards today like a thirty-year-old. Tough as nails, the old girl is.”

“Don't make 'em like that anymore.” Xavier admired Sister. After all, he'd hunted in the field with her when he was a boy. She'd been in her forties then.

“I kind of felt sorry for Alice,” Shaker continued. “Guess Ben Sidell got her knickers in a knot. She felt he accused her of covering up for Guy, and you know, the whole ugly mess is flaring up all over again. Sister was real good about it. Said she'd call on her. I couldn't take it that far, but I do feel kind of bad for Alice.”

“Alice doesn't make it any easier, and I should know,” Ralph said, and shook his head. He was Alice's nephew; his mother was Alice's sister. “Everything has to be her way. If you take a can of beer out of her refrigerator, she opens the door behind you to make sure you didn't disturb the other cans lined up inside. You can't smoke a whole cigarette but what she whisks the ashtray and dumps the ashes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she'll run you crazy. And now she's out of control. At least when Paul was alive he'd make fun of her and snap her out of it.”

“Women dry up,” Xavier simply stated.

“And men get sentimental,” Roger, a sharp observer of folks, said. He reached for a brew. “Anyone? On me?”

“Thanks.” Xavier accepted a cold can of Bud while Roger reached for an import, Sol.

“People dry up if they aren't tended to. I'm kind of worried about myself,” Shaker joked.

“I don't want to hear, ‘There are no women out there.' ” Xavier punched him. “Clean up, get out, and start looking.”

“Did Ben call on you?” Ralph asked Roger.

“Sure.”

“Me too.” Xavier sighed.

“Hasn't gotten to me yet,” Shaker added. “I was hired on as a whipper-in that year. What a year.”

“Give Ben credit. He's going over the file and questioning every name he finds in there. I talked to him.” Roger liked the aftertaste the crisp Sol beer left in his mouth. He liked Mexican beers. “Guy stopped by here that last night. Bought something. I don't remember what. Dad was behind the counter. I was helping to unload the Coca-Cola truck.”

“You had muscles then,” Xavier teased him.

“Still do. They're protected by this layer of fat.”

“You'll never have that problem,” Xavier, also a bit heftier than in his running days, commented to Shaker.

“Most huntsmen stay pretty lean, takes a lean hound for a long race and a lean huntsman, too. Although I know one or two fat huntsmen. Pity the horse.”

“Ever notice how a lot of fat people are really light on their feet?” Xavier thought about a copy of
Men's
Health
magazine he'd seen on the rack at Barnes & Noble. A fellow in swim trunks was on the cover, his abs rippled like the proverbial six-packs. Xavier made a mental note to buy the magazine. He was standing around looking at his buddies, and except for Shaker they looked like overweight middle-aged men.

“I don't want to see it,” Ralph blurted out.

“See what?” Xavier asked.

“The grave. The grave over at After All.”

“Ralph, what made you think of that?” Shaker noticed how white Ralph's face had turned.

“First day of cubbing. We'll probably leave from the kennels, and if the fox heads east we could wind up over there, and I don't want to see that grave. Every time I think about Nola I get sick. I mean it.”

A silence followed.

Roger broke it. “Me too.”

“Ditto,” Xavier sighed.

“I guess when the sheriff is done with the bones, he'll give them back to the Bancrofts,” Shaker said.

“And that's another thing—all this bullshit about forensic science,” Ralph exploded. “Nola's been in that dirt tomb for twenty-one years. They aren't going to find squat. You know why you hear so much about pathology and this miracle and that miracle? Because any law enforcement officer can tell you, murder is damned easy to pull off. So if you create this propaganda about how you can be convicted from one strand of hair, people believe it. I suppose it deters the weak-willed. I don't know much, but I can tell you those lab coat dudes aren't going to find much.”

“They know her head was crushed,” Xavier said. “Ben told me.”

“Oh, come on. If we'd dug her up we'd know that, too,” Ralph practically spit out. “Do you think he cares? The killer? People kill every day and never give it a second thought. They don't have a conscience. It would eat you or me up alive. But whoever killed Nola”—Ralph pointed his forefinger for emphasis—“walked away and thought he was right, or rid of her, or whatever he thought, but he didn't give a damn.”

“I don't believe that,” Shaker argued.

“Me neither. Killing a beautiful woman like that would haunt him for the rest of his days,” Roger agreed with Shaker.

Xavier tapped his lips with his forefinger, a little stream of air escaping, then he said, “Maybe. Maybe not. If it was Guy, we will never know. Apologies to you, Ralph. I know he was your cousin, but let's just look at this from every angle. If it was Guy, it's done and he's gone. Maybe he'll return someday in old age, confess, repent. I don't know. Stranger things have happened, but if it wasn't Guy, I don't think the man who smashed in the side of her head cares that he killed her. He just cares that he doesn't get caught.”