Рита Браун - Fox Tracks

The Doberman rose with a little groan. “You’re right.”

Eyes half-closed, Golliwog waited on the back of the sofa until she heard the dog door flap shut. Then she shot off the sofa.

Sister turned her head as the cat sped toward the kitchen, but she didn’t think too much of it.

Golliwog pressed through the animal door from the kitchen into the mudroom, then positioned herself right by the next animal door, cut into the mudroom entrance. The heavy plastic flap had a magnetic strip so when animals went in and out the door would fasten shut, thereby keeping out the heat, cold, rain, and snow.

She waited. Given the bad weather, neither dog wished to be out in it, so it wasn’t too long before Raleigh stuck his head through the door to enter. Golliwog gave the sleek black dog a nasty rap on his tender nose.

“That hurt!” Raleigh cried out.

“Die, dog!” Golliwog puffed to twice her size, ego to match.

“I’ll get in. I’ll break her neck,” Rooster growled. Golly, having heard the threat, moved to the side. When Rooster stuck his head through, he didn’t see her at first, and out came the claws. Golly drew blood this time.

“Ow, ow, ow!” the harrier howled.

Hearing the commotion, Sister hurried out to the mudroom. Golly didn’t budge.

Sister opened the mudroom door, a gust of wind blew snow on the floor and the two dogs, heads down, hurried inside. Drops of blood fell on the slate floor. Neither dog looked the cat in the eye as she was prancing sideways, hoping to incite even more terror.

“Hateful. Hateful. Hateful.” Sister knew exactly what the cat had done.

“I am the Queen of All I Survey! Dogs do my bidding. Humans feed me right on time.” With that loud declaration, she shot through the door into the kitchen, crossed the floor at a good clip, and ran up the narrow back stairway to the main bedroom. Then she dashed out into the long upstairs hallway to run victory laps.

Gray heard the paw-pounding even down in the den. Sister came in and listened as the dogs joined them.

“She’s mental. She needs counseling.” Rooster had watched enough TV talk shows to parrot such claptrap. “Anger management, that is what’s called for.”

The laughter rolled out of Sister in waves as she told Gray what the conniving cat had done.

“Cats and women.” Gray laughed. “They’ll do as they damned please and we’d better get used to it.”

This made Sister laugh all the more. She reached for a Kleenex to dab her eyes. Up above, Golly was still running victory laps.

“She has to slow down sooner or later.” Sister sat down. “You know I forgot to tell you the Custis Hall girls came out Tuesday. Tariq rode with them. Rode well, too. Their coach has the flu. He had to keep up with those girls, then get them all back to school. Being a coach is quite a job. Being a stand-in coach can’t be easy either, but what fun working with young people.

“He’s better off here than in Egypt. Sooner or later things will stabilize there. It seems like the world is turning upside down, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” She switched back to the hunt. “Actually we had quite a few people for a Tuesday.”

“Bet a lot of them figured we’d be snowed in for Thursday’s hunt.”

“That’s what the Weather Channel said, but this part of central Virginia doesn’t seem to pay much attention to forecasts. It’s the mountains. They create their own weather system.”

“Don’t know how those forecasters do it, but I wish I could be wrong half the time and still keep a job.” He chuckled. “I learn a lot from the channel, though. I really like it when they explain things like plateaus, vortexes, and stuff like that.”

“Bull. You like the weathergirls.”

He smiled devilishly. “Yes, I do. Sister, when a man stops looking, it’s all over. And I hasten to add no one is as fascinating as you.”

She nodded at the compliment before returning to the topic of Tuesday’s hunt. “Oh, Donny Sweigart was out and on one of Sybil’s older horses. He said the hauling business has really slowed down. Tough times. Given that it started to snow the last half hour of the hunt, no one had the time to catch up or chat. We all know how quickly the roads can go bad, especially out there at Old Paradise.”

“McMillan.” Gray smiled. “The Egyptian teacher. Just thinking about his last name. Ever notice the more sophisticated a society gets, the more people mix and marry?”

“The Scots and Irish blanket the world,” she playfully reported. “So some Scot somewhere fell in love with an Egyptian. You know, Nicaragua has many people with Scottish surnames. There were so many troubles in Great Britain over the centuries that in certain historical periods, a person’s best shot might just be to get the hell out.”

“Well, it made our country great.”

“Yes, it did.” She was ever mindful of her nation’s odd genetic makeup, one often covered up, too, as certain groups were once considered undesirable.

Sooner or later, as Gray said, it all comes out in the wash.

He lit up one of his Dunhill Menthols, which cleared his sinuses, and put his feet up on the leather hassock.

“How come you never started?”

“I don’t know. It never appealed to me. I wish you wouldn’t, but it’s not my business to live anyone else’s life for them. I feel the same way about smoking as I do about alcohol and drugs. If you can handle it, fine. If you can’t, seek help. None of those substances does a body much good, but I really don’t think demonizing them helps. And I think sin taxes are just vile. In my little foray on the computer, I was looking at the demographics of who smokes. For cigarettes, it’s overwhelmingly those who are less well educated. So we punish them with taxes. How many poor people do you know who make the laws?”

“Such taxes are punitive,” Gray said, crossing his legs. “I tell myself I’m going to stop smoking and then I don’t. It really is a bad habit.”

“There are worse.”

“Oh?” He gave her an expectant look.

“Yes, like not taking care of your goddess.”

“Come over here. I’ll do my best.”

As she walked over to him, she stopped for a moment, cocked an ear. “She’s stopped.”

Finally, Golly had ceased. She was most likely in the bathroom then, unspooling the toilet paper.

CHAPTER 8

Silver silence. The snow had fallen to a foot and a half. Sister waded through it to get to the equipment shed. She needed to plow a path to the kennels, to the barn, to Shaker’s house, and back to her own. As nothing was shoveled, the going was tiring.

The snow, light and soft, barely crunched as she pushed through. Raleigh and Rooster followed, letting her be the bushhog.

Golly remained in the kitchen. Sprawled on the sink windowsill, she watched the three creatures flounder along. Not for her. She hated when ice formed between her toes and she never, ever enjoyed getting her dainty paws wet.

Halfway between the house and the barns was the equipment shed, hidden by graceful Leyland Cypress. Once inside, Sister reached up and grabbed the tractor’s hand bar to swing herself up. About as old as she was, the 80-horsepower tractor was plenty versatile. Every now and then, she’d dream of a big 120HP John Deere with a batwing bushhog attachment, but who could afford tractors like that? Then again, she consoled herself with the fact that her old green monster was all steel, with no computer parts. It had no cabin either, a fact she regretted the minute she pulled it out of the shed.

The sky, gray and low, kept the glare off, but nothing could keep the wind off, which blew at a steady pace. A twenty-mile-per-hour wind in 18°F cut like a knife. She’d wrapped herself up, even putting on the earmuffs she disliked. The great old machine rumbled along, and she dropped the snowplow, slowly pushing the snow to the side of the paths. Funny, you can walk down a path for fifty years and yet, when it’s covered with snow, you’re not quite sure where the edge is.