Рита Браун - Hotspur

“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.