Рита Браун - Full Cry

One of the great things about her husband was that they could talk about anything, anything, even their affairs, if it came down to that. Usually it didn’t, but on those occasions when it did, they evidenced a rare understanding of each other. They agreed if their son fathered a child before he was ready to be married, they would take care of it and make young Ray fully aware that he must provide financial assistance to the mother if she wouldn’t give him the child. Big Ray summed it up, “You play, you pay.”

When Little Ray’s flapping T-shirt tail got caught in the tractor PTO, the power transfer axle, choking the life out of him in seconds, he had never slept with a woman. That haunted Sister. She wished he had known the richness, the power, even the fear of that connection. He died a virgin. His death caused slashing grief among his classmates and friends, among the members of the hunt club. The hounds, his horses, his beloved cats, all mourned him as deeply as his parents. Their mute suffering tore out Sister’s heart. For three months after his son’s death Big Ray couldn’t go past Tijuana, young Ray’s favorite hunter, without bursting into tears.

On Little Ray’s forty-fourth birthday, gunmetal gray clouds swung down from the mountains. Athena brazenly sat in front of the stable in the big pin oak, Bitsy on the branch beneath her. The two owls made crackling cackling sounds at each other. Sister noticed them when she looked out the kennel window.

Sister remembered odd bits of information. When Ray was born, she flipped through history date books, delighted to find that Julius Caesar had beaten King Juba II in 46 B.C., J. E. B. Stuart had been born on that day in 1833. As Stuart remains the beau ideal of the cavalryman to this day, February 6 seemed a good omen.

Sister had reached the point in her life when she was able to thank God that she had fourteen years with her remarkable son. She’d learned, in her own quiet way, to trust the good Lord. It had been her son’s time.

Shaker dripped in water tracks from his rubber boots as he stepped into the kennel office. “Dragon can go Saturday.”

“Good.”

They’d exhausted the Westminster Dog Show as a topic. The show had ended Tuesday, but being hound people, they had to discuss it in minute detail for days running. And there was a ripe disagreement about who won, who was reserve, et cetera. Needless to say, a hound did not win Best in Show.

“Boss, I know this is Ray Jr.’s birthday. Anything I can do for you?”

“Shaker, you’re good to think of me. No. Just the fact that you remembered makes it a better day. I was lucky to have him.”

“He was lucky to have you.”

Later, when she arrived back at the house, she found a huge bouquet from Gray. The card simply read, “Love is eternal.”

That brought tears to her eyes.

The biggest surprise of the day was when she took a break from chores for four o’clock tea. A new Lexus SUV pulled into the driveway, disgorging Ronnie, Xavier, and Clay.

They stamped in the mudroom door just as they had as boys. Ronnie carried champagne, Clay a hamper basket of treats, and Xavier gingerly held an arrangement of white long-stem roses interspersed with lavender.

They burst through the door, calling, “Hi, Mom.”

Each one kissed her, gave her his present, then plopped at the kitchen table.

She poured the champagne, put out sandwiches, whatever she had. They sat down as they did when they would follow behind Ray Jr., like so many railroad cars hitched to his engine.

After she cried a bit and wiped her eyes, they sat, remembering, laughing, eating.

Ronnie wistfully glanced around the country kitchen. “Where does the time go? Wasn’t it Francois Villain who wrote, ‘Where o where are the snows of yesteryear?’ It was the 1400s when he wrote that.”

“The snows of yesteryear are right here,” Clay, not being poetic, replied.

“Are you going to give us a lecture about evaporation and condensation and how there might be a molecule that once belonged to George Washington in that glass of champagne?” Ronnie rolled his eyes.

“Molecule belonged to François Villain.” X winked. “From France.”

“Clever, these insurance agents are clever. Hey, I remember when you were dying, and I mean dying, in Algebra I. Rayray bailed you out.”

X turned beet red. “No need to bore Sister with that story, Clay.”

“Ah-ha!” Clay put his sandwich on his plate, thumb-print on the bread. “X sat in front, Rayray behind. Passed him the answers to the tests.”

Sister feigned shock. “X!”

“Makes you wonder about having him as your insurance agent, doesn’t it?” Ronnie giggled.

“If it has a dollar sign in front of it, X is Einstein,” Clay said, a hint of sharpness in his voice.

“If it has a dollar sign in front of it, Dee does the work. Give me credit, I married a woman smarter than myself.”

“Not hard to do.” Ronnie laughed.

“I could be really ugly right now.” X dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

“I’ll be ugly for you, Ronnie, since we know you aren’t going to marry for love, why don’t you woo some rich old widow? Think of the good you could then do for the hunt club?” Clay nodded in Sister’s direction.

“Yeah, Ronnie, you could always lash it to a pencil.” X laughed, then realized he was sitting with Sister. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, I’ve said worse; you just never heard it. And you all used to say the grossest things when you were kids.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Makes that show Jackass, look tame.”

“You’ve watched that?” X was amazed.

“I’m trying to keep current with popular culture.”

“Hardly culture.” Ronnie sighed.

“A phase, grossness. Girls do it, too,” Clay said. “But since girls don’t make movies, for the most part, or shall I say movies are made for teenage boys, we don’t see it. Bet you were gross, too, Sister.”

Sister replied, “You forget how much older I am than you all. It was strict when I grew up. I could have matriculated to West Point and felt right at home, course they didn’t take girls then, but I thought about things gross and otherwise. Didn’t show it.”

“Ever wonder where Ray would have gone to school?” X asked.

“Sure.” She drank some champagne. “Princeton or Stanford. But you know, he was leaning toward the fine arts, driving his father crazy. I don’t know, maybe he would have gone somewhere else. What do you all think?”

“Bowdoin,” Clay said. “He would have loved Maine.”

“Colorado State,” Ronnie pitched in. “I think he would have gone west, but wound up in veterinary medicine or something like that. And he was a good athlete. He would have played football. Bet you.”

X shook his head. “Princeton. He would have followed his father to Princeton. And he would have played football there, baseball, too. Maybe lacrosse. Do they have lacrosse at Princeton?”

“Even if they do, if you want to play lacrosse, you go to Virginia, Maryland, or Johns Hopkins.” Clay spoke with certainty.

“Johns Hopkins is a good school,” Sister said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have minded that, and it’s closer than Princeton or Stanford.” She paused. “What a joy to have you all here.”

“We never forget you.” Ronnie smiled.

They always remembered Ray Jr.’s birthday in one fashion or another. They remembered his death day, too, each calling Sister to tell her he was thinking of her. Tedi and Betty always called or dropped by as well.

The boys, for Sister thought of them as “the boys,” grew louder, more raucous. They argued about the NBA, dismissed the Super Bowl, which had just been played. They looked forward to baseball season. They talked horses, fixtures, other people in the hunt field.