Рита Браун - Outfoxed

“Are you whipping in today or are you auditioning for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts?”

“You are a heartless bitch.”

“Suffering’s good for you, Betty. Tests the spirit. Enlarges the heart. Sharpens the mind.”

“I’m about as wonderful as I can stand. Even my husband says I’m wonderful.”

“Your husband has imagination.” Sister laughed. “But just so I know what to say at your eulogy, tell me, exactly what are you dying from today?”

“Arthritis in my lower spine, in my toes, in my fingers, and my stomach lining is irritated, although not my bowel, thank heaven. Cody’s up to no good but I don’t know with whom, and Jennifer got a D in math. A D! Naturally my mind hurts, too.” This was said with uncommon good humor.

“This drizzle will stop by the time we cast hounds.”

A long sigh, then, “Six-thirty. Whiskey Ridge.”

“Is Bobby going to make it?”

“No, he’s got to deliver the brochure today. I worked all night Tuesday so it was his turn last night. Looks good.”

“Jennifer?”

“She’ll be there.”

Jennifer Franklin, their younger daughter, a senior in high school given to surprising mood swings, received science credits for foxhunting. Each week she had to write a three-page paper on what she learned about the environment. She’d written about the great variety of oak trees, the life cycle of the fox, and this week she was concentrating on amphibians preparing for hibernation. Three pages sounded like not much work but it turned out to be time-consuming due to research, although Jennifer discovered that she enjoyed it.

As Sister hung up the phone she checked to see if the lights were on in the stable and the kennel. They were.

“Good men,” she thought to herself, for Douglas Kinser and Shaker Crown were already at work.

As professional first whipper-in, meaning Doug was paid, his responsibility was to condition and prepare the master’s horses and the huntsman’s horses for the hunting season. He also walked out hounds, assisted in their training, and rode forward of the huntsman so he could turn hounds back if need be. It helped if the first whipper-in was intelligent. Douglas was. He could intuit what Shaker was doing even if he was one mile away from the huntsman.

Golliwog reposed on the marble counter, her luxurious tail swaying a bit. Her calico coat, brilliant and gleaming, was a source of no small vanity to the feline. She’d eaten her breakfast and was considering dozing off.

Raleigh, also full, wanted to accompany Sister. He parked by the kitchen door, ears up, alert.

“Catch cold on a day like this,” Golly laconically said.

“Lazy.”

“Sensible.” Golly rolled over, showing Raleigh her back. She disliked being contradicted.

Sister allowed her members great latitude in dress during cubbing, but she herself remained impeccably turned out. She wore mustard-colored breeches, brown field boots with a ribbed rubber sole, useful on a day like this, a shirt and man’s tie, an old but beautifully cut tweed jacket, and a brown cap, tails down. She opened the door and Raleigh dashed out with her.

Golly lifted her head, watching them trot to the barn. “Silly. Neither one has sense enough to come in from the rain and Sister wastes time hunting foxes. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the whole race of foxes. Liars and thieves, every single one of them.” Having expressed her opinion, she closed her eyes in contentment.

Sister ducked under the stable overhang and shook off the water, as did Raleigh. She walked into the center aisle of the barn, the soft light from the incandescent bulbs casting a glow over the horses and Douglas, too.

Raleigh joyfully raced up and down the center aisle, informing the horses of his presence. They weren’t impressed. They liked Raleigh, but this morning he was just too bouncy.

“Ma’am. You might wear your long Barbour today. Don’t want you getting the shivers before opening hunt.”

“Douglas, you’ll make someone a wonderful mother someday.” She laughed at him but went into the tack room and grabbed her coat along with a pair of string gloves. She loved Douglas. Teasing him made them both happy. He’d grown from a skinny kid with green eyes, beat up just about every day at school, into a broad-shouldered, curly-haired, beautiful young man with bronze skin. Douglas’s mother was white and his father black. He took the best from both.

Sister’s son, Raymond, died in a freak harvesting accident in 1974. He was fourteen years old and there wasn’t a day when she didn’t hear his voice, remember his infectious smile, and wish he was with her.

She spoke rarely of her son. One lives with one’s losses. The shock of it and then the subsequent grief had kept her numb for a year and then after that she was flat. She couldn’t think of another word but “flat.” Three years passed before she thought there might be joy in life but three things sustained her during those three years: her husband, Big Raymond; her friends; and her foxhunting. The former two provided love, the latter, structure and a sense of something far greater than human endeavor.

What was odd about Ray Junior’s death was it occurred in a year of the black fox. When Big Ray died in 1991, there was also a black fox. He made mention of it, gasping for breath with emphysema.

“Janie, black fox years are watershed years for us. Mother—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence but the black fox superstition was one of his mother’s cherished beliefs, right up there with transubstantiation. She said that great upheavals or the death of a family member were always heralded by a black fox. Mother Arnold declared that her grandmother, in her prime during the War between the States, swore that in 1860 the whole state of Virginia was full of black foxes. People had never seen so many.

Sister knew there was a black fox kit, half-grown, in the den near Broad Creek, running through her property. Given the apparition she’d seen the day before yesterday and this fact, she couldn’t suppress an involuntary shiver.

“I told you you’d get the shivers. Put a sweater on.”

“I’m not cold. But you know, Doug, I saw the damnedest thing and I can’t get it out of my mind. When Shaker and I walked back to the coop that Fontaine obliterated, I thought I saw the Grim Reaper on Hangman’s Ridge right by that haunted tree. Of course, in retrospect I realize I was probably hallucinating, I was so hungry, but still, the man was as clear as day and I looked away and looked back and he was gone.”

“Me, too.”

“You, too, what?” She sat on a tack trunk for a moment as Douglas exchanged the regular English leather reins for rubber ones.

“When I tracked down Archie, he was staring right up at the ridge and I saw whatever it was, too. I told Shaker. Don’t think he believed me.”

“Didn’t believe me either.”

He held the reins, the bridle hanging from the tack hook. “It’s a bad sign, Sister.”

“I know, but for whom?”

He shrugged. “Not us, I hope.”

She smiled. “You’re young. You’ll live a long, good life.”

“You seem young.” He laughed.

“Flattery, young man, will get you everywhere.” She stood up, slapped her knees as she rose, then called out to her horse, Lafayette, standing patiently in his stall.

“Lafayette, it’s going to be slick as an eel today.”

“I can handle it,” he bragged. “ I can handle anything.”

She smiled as he whinnied, walking into his stall to rub his ears and chat with him.

“Blowhard.” Rickyroo, a hot thoroughbred in the adjoining stall, snorted.

Both Lafayette and Rickyroo were thoroughbreds but Lafayette at nine showed more common sense than Rickyroo at five, although Ricky would probably be a pistol at nine, still.