Рита Браун - Scarlet Fever

Like humans, hounds learn by doing and observing.

Steam rose off horses’ hindquarters. People were actually sweating in their heavy coats and winter undershirts. Sister, her eye never leaving her huntsman, reached the other side of the meadow, plunged onto a narrow path, more snow down her neck, and soared over a large tree trunk. High winds had scoured central Virginia last week. Neither she nor her staff knew what lay across paths or how much destruction had been done. Jefferson Hunt covered two large counties. They’d find out when they found out. Work parties, hopefully, would follow. Windy though it was at this moment, at least there were no thirty-mile-an-hour gusts. The wind, too, would blow scent, which is exactly why Target crossed an open meadow. However, a bit to the left of the fox tracks, hounds stuck with it, opening loudly again once in the woods.

Another five minutes of hard running and Sister pulled up at the ruins of a modest house, the chimney standing like an upturned finger, alone, the fireplace visible. The chimney had not fallen down but the rest of the place lay strewn about. Hounds dug at the side of the stone fireplace.

Weevil dismounted, blew “Gone to Ground,” praised his hounds.

The fox, deep in his snug den, heard the commotion outside. He knew all the hiding places in a five-mile range.

“I know you’re in there,” Parker baited him.

Tinsel added her two cents. “You’re afraid to come out. We’re ferocious, you know,” said a hound who was anything but, although she was puffed up from the run.

He said nothing, waiting for them to leave. Target was wise and in his prime.

Weevil called them together and mounted up as Tootie, a young woman, the other whipper-in, arrived at the site. She had also had a devil of a time finding a crossing from her left side of the pack. She took the left, Betty had the right.

“Come along,” Weevil sang to them.

Hounds packed in behind him, the whippers-in on each side. They walked back to the trailers perhaps two miles away at Foxglove Farm. Foxglove was a cherished fixture, being in their territory since the beginning of the hunt in 1887.

Coming up to Sister, Harry Dunbar, mid-fifties, trim and tidy with a salt-and-pepper beard and moustache, complimented the pack. “What terrific work on a dicey day. You must be proud.”

“I am.” She smiled. “It pleases me when people in the field actually pay attention to the pack and know what’s happening.” She paused. “You’ve ripped your coat again. Harry, a few more of those and you’ll turn into an icicle. The cold has to be stabbing you.”

“I’m parading my manly toughness,” he joked. “You will, however, be pleased to know I ordered a heavy scarlet Melton from Horse Country. I’ll retire this and thankfully be warmer.”

“You’ve worn this coat ever since I’ve known you and that’s, what, since 1990?”

“No, 1989,” he said. “I’d opened my shop and you paid me a call, inviting me to hunt. Well, I took you up on it. On the subject of coats, my weazlebelly is as old as this Melton, used when bought, but I save that for the High Holy Days or joint meets. Scarlet is expensive.”

He spoke of his tails, which for men are often called weazlebelly, shadbelly for the ladies. Worn with a top hat the tails reek of elegance as well as dash. Flying over fences in top hat and tails never fails to impress itself upon the memory of those who see it.

“You’re right about the expense, but the truly serviceable hunt attire, the stuff that lasts generations, which some does, costs both men and women. Those wonderful English fabrics.” She turned to face him fully as they rode. “Could you get heavy English fabric? That dense twill?”

“Marion has worked her magic despite the uproar in England.”

Marion Maggiolo, proprietress of Horse Country, made annual pilgrimages to England and Scotland in search of their fabrics, unmatched by any other nation no matter how hard they tried. Given that warmth was now hanging on until later November she also pioneered lighter hunt coats with fabrics from Italy, to keep a rider comfortable on fall days where the mercury might even nudge seventy degrees Fahrenheit. For the old hunters, these high temperatures were confusing. Might have been for the new ones, too.

“When will the coat be ready?”

“Next week, I hope. I waited too late, trying to squeeze one more year out of these tatters. I expect I won’t be using the new one until next winter.”

“You might be fooled.”

He smiled. “You’ve got that right. I wake up and wonder what season I’m in. Sometimes I even wonder if I’m in America.”

She nodded. “I think many of us feel that way. I’m older than you, of course, but I’m coming to the dismal conclusion that it’s all smoke and mirrors. No one really knows what’s going on.”

“Sister, you are not old. You will never be old.” He thought a moment. “About no one really knowing what’s going on. Honest to Pete, I now think simple competence is revolutionary.”

They both laughed, old buddies who had hunted together for decades. Hunting together is not as strong a bond as being in a combat unit under fire but it’s strong, partly because hunting can be so unpredictable. One soon sees who has courage, who has brains, and who has both. Truthfully, the horses have more of both than the humans.

Harry reached over, touching Sister’s elbow with his crop’s stag handle and wrapped in thin strips of leather. “Drop by the store, will you? I’ve found a Louis XV desk much like the one you and Ray inherited from his uncle. The one that was stolen all those years ago.”

“Oh, what a siren song. You are trying to seduce me. Trying to sing that money right out of my pocket.”

“What man isn’t?” he teased back. “But do drop by. It would be restorative to see you when we both aren’t freezing.”

She smiled at him, agreeing, then looked ahead, riding forward to Cindy Chandler, an old dear friend.

“What the hell?” Sister blurted out.

Reaching the trailers, Cindy Chandler stood in her stirrups. Booper, her horse, gingerly stepped forward. Sister also stood in her stirrups.

An expensive maroon Range Rover had driven through Cindy’s fence by the cow barn. Clytemnestra, huge, and her equally huge son, Orestes, charged about, which set Booper off. No one wanted to tangle with the evil-tempered heifer and her dismally stupid son.

Cindy slid off, handing her reins to Sister. While no one expects a master to perform a groom’s duty these two had been friends for over forty years. Each was always happy to help the other, status be damned. Sister knew Cindy was the only person who could sweet-talk Clytemnestra, who actually followed Cindy, her son in tow, into her special cow barn, quite tidy and warmish considering the day.

Morris Taylor, sixty-two, in a T-shirt and jeans, sobbed next to the Range Rover, its nose in a drainage ditch, steam hissing from under the hood.

“I didn’t mean to do it.”

Sister, now dismounted, motioned for Tootie to come over, handed the gorgeous young woman the reins to both horses, and walked over slowly to Morris, as Weevil, who didn’t know the man, approached from the opposite direction.

“Morris, it’s Janie.”

“Sister, Sister. I didn’t mean to do it.” He shivered.

As Weevil removed his coat to put over Morris’s shoulders, Morris shrank away. “Who are you? Don’t touch me.”

“It’s all right, Morris. He is a friend.”

“Who is he? Why does he want to touch me?”

“He wants to put a coat on you,” she told the shivering man, who now held on to her for dear life, a life preserver, which in a way she was.

Betty motioned for Weevil to give her the coat, touched her temple. He understood.