Рита Браун - Crazy Like A Fox

Sister kissed Tootie on the cheek. “As she learns to really know you, she’ll be proud that you’re not a carbon copy. You are exactly yourself.”

Tootie nodded, wanting to believe that, then said, “People must look at me and think of my father naked, not a pretty sight, with those two women. Gross. It is so gross.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You and Gray mean more to me than Mom and Dad.”

“Tootie, for all their faults, they gave you life. One can only hope he will grow up, see the error of his ways, and make amends. And let’s give your mother credit; she is turning over a new leaf.”

Silent, Tootie got up, put on the tea kettle, sat back down, then got up, more treats for Golly, Raleigh, and Rooster.

“You spoil them,” Sister said.

“Learned it from you. It’s you who says, ‘What’s the point of loving someone or something if you don’t spoil them a little?’ ”

“Well, I guess I do. This day has been overwhelming. I thank the good Lord no one was really hurt. You never know about these people with illegal crops, although I know what drives them to it.”

“Money?”

“Yes, but so many people in Virginia and Kentucky, they’ve been wiped out by the war on tobacco, the war on coal. They only know but so much. They aren’t going to be computer coders. As for tobacco, it takes years and years to learn how to successfully grow that crop, the varieties—and then curing it, that’s a real art. Is smoking bad for you? You bet, but does anyone hold a gun to your head and say, ‘You will smoke this cigarette’?”

“No, but someone just about held a gun to my head.” Tootie was bouncing back. “And smoking is vile.”

“It is, but this is where our generations possibly diverge. I believe in people. I believe they should make their own decisions, even if those decisions are not always the best. I have no right to tell someone else how to live. If you started smoking, I would be horrified, but it isn’t hurting me.”

“I could blow smoke in your face.” Tootie laughed, spirits restoring.

“You would, too.” Sister laughed with her. “While I’m thinking about it, let me show you Weevil’s horn. Maybe you will have an idea about it, something that Marion and I missed. She was able to send me the complete pictures of it, since the museum catalogues everything. In case you noticed the carvings.”

Tootie clicked through all the images. “Look, here’s my cottage, what was left of it. Comet’s ancestor is underneath.”

“I saw that. By the time Ray and I inherited Roughneck Farm, it was teetering, but good chestnut logs, I might add, and we’ve used them. Used to be chestnut everywhere. Same with elm.”

Tootie clicked through again. She peered. “My cottage fox, he’s looking at the kennels.”

“Smart.”

“The chase scrimshaw sort of goes from Roughneck Farm to Chapel Cross, the four Corinthian columns. The stables and the fox at the tack room door.”

“Does.”

Tootie returned to Weevil himself. “I must find him. I will find him.”

“Just a minute, now. Whether Weevil is a ghost or has found the fountain of youth, he’s back, but no one knows why. He’s secretive and, remember, this started with a theft.”

“A cowhorn!”

He broke into the case at the Huntsman Hall of Fame. That’s a theft.” Sister said so with feeling.

“Sister, if you had a pencil in that case used by Dickie Bywaters,”—Tootie named the great huntsman from the first half of the twentieth century—“you would think it valuable.”

Sister laughed. “You’re right, but still.” She breathed in. “Sometimes, Tootie, I think you are older than I am.”

“Past lives,” Tootie replied.

Under the circumstances, that was a mouthful.

CHAPTER 23

Sugar maples flashed red on the top leaves, oaks blushed with a bit of yellow or orange on top. High color, about ten days away, perhaps a few more, electrified everyone; humans, horses, hounds, foxes, and all the birds who didn’t fly south became extra busy. Dens, nests, and roofs were repaired. Chimneys, if they hadn’t been cleaned, were cleaned now. Windows were caulked, firewood stacked. Neither man nor beast could afford to be lazy during fall, all the more so since you never really knew when winter would arrive.

This Monday, hounds had a day to relax, recharge after Saturday’s memorable hunt. Skiff trailered over Crawford’s hounds, which blended in with Jefferson Hounds as they walked out.

The air sparkled so Sister, Shaker, Betty, Tootie, Sam, and Yvonne walked across the footpath of the wildflower field, crawled over the hog’s-back jump into the now cut cornfield at After All. Black-eyed Susans, deep purple flowers as well as tiny white ones enlivened the long walk to the covered bridge. There hounds stopped, dashed into strong-running Broad Creek, drank, played a bit, then packed in as both huntsmen called them.

Roger, shiny and mostly black, walked shoulder to shoulder with young Angle.

Lifting his head, Roger noted, “Deer.”

“After All is full of them,” Angle replied. “A lot of fox, too. We hardly ever have a blank day here.”

“Good. Blank days mean hard work for nothing. Well, getting out of the kennels is good, but I want to run foxes,” Roger declared.

As hounds chattered so did the people.

“Ben Sidell had the marijuana burned. Yesterday,” Shaker informed them, a big smile on his face. “Wish I’d known. I’d have gone over for the spectacle.”

“Wonder if we’ll ever know who the planter was, or is,” Betty mused. “He couldn’t have been that bright. You don’t pass a rifle over someone’s head when dozens of people sit on the other side of your crop. He heard the horn. He saw the pack of hounds. Pretty stupid. As for burning crops, I think burnings aren’t made public. People would descend upon them to inhale.” She laughed.

“Hundreds of stoned people.” Yvonne kept her eyes on Pickens, who would turn his head to look at her. “You know, this dog is flirting with me.” She pointed to Pickens.

“Mom, he’s still young and he wants to be friends. The P litter is so sweet.”

“And I’m not,” Dragon sassed.

“What you are is an arrogant cur,” Cora pronounced with finality, making the other hounds laugh, that little intake of air they do.

“I guess protecting his crop blinded the man’s judgment,” Shaker said.

“If you point a rifle at someone or shoot their hound, you think that person isn’t going to retaliate?” Skiff found the episode unsettling.

“Years ago, Binky DuCharme’s son Arthur kept a still farther back from Old Paradise. There’s always been a still back there. Water’s so good. Of course, hounds got on a blazing run and smashed through it. All I could hear was tinkling glass.” Shaker laughed. “And the miracle was, not one hound with cut pads. We didn’t tell the sheriff’s department because Arthur is the son of one of our two non-speaking landowners. What a mess. Poor Arthur.” Shaker shrugged. “Binky had higher hopes for his son.”

“And his cousin, Margaret, is whip smart. So much for breeding,” Betty remarked.

“Brenden DuCharme, father of Alfred and Binky, wasn’t intellectual but he worked hard, was smart about business things,” Sister remembered; Brenden and his wife were alive, just barely, when she moved here.

“Margaret died your first year here. Now there was the paragon of fashion,” Betty recalled.

“She was kind to children. She patted my pony, said some good words when Mom brought me here,” Sister said. “Had to be 1953. I was old enough so I wasn’t a pain when we traveled. Remember those two-lane highways? You’d crawl through every town.”