Rita Brown - Whiskers in the Dark

“Yes, Miss Catherine, it has.”

“I wanted to talk to you about our oats.”

“Good. Everything’s good.”

“Well, it is, but I’d like you to go with John”—she mentioned her husband—“to Yancy Grant’s. Father has promised to buy all his oats. We don’t really need them, but Yancy has fallen on hard times.”

“Not all his fault,” the large man quietly replied.

“Maureen.” She thought a moment. “Obviously she never read the Bible. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ ”

Barker O nodded. “Her husband bears no grudge.”

Jeffrey Holloway and Yancy Grant had engaged in an ill-advised duel after Yancy said some foolish things while drunk at a large party at Cloverfields. Everyone assumed Yancy would put a hole in Jeffrey, who was a cabinetmaker originally, not a countryman like Yancy. Turned out Jeffrey shot up Yancy’s knee and Yancy grazed Jeffrey’s arm. Then, once healed, the men made up. Maureen, however, sued Yancy, drove him nearly to the poorhouse with legal bills, then magnanimously dropped her suit. She even allowed Yancy on her place to visit her husband, to check her horses.

“Today?”

“No. You two can go over tomorrow. Take two wagons. He’ll have everything in barrels. I expect you’ll know how much is to be done once you get there. I hope we have enough room to store it all.”

“I’ll make room.” Barker O looked out to see how far the two had gotten, just in time to see Ralston push Jeddie. “That boy needs a good whipping.”

Catherine followed his gaze. “He’s the type, Barker O, will only make him worse. To add to his list of misdeeds, he tried to kiss Serena and even pulled down the front of her dress.”

“Great day.” Barker O shook his head. “Her husband will kill him.”

“Bettina prevailed upon Serena to forgive him and John and Charles had some kind of a talk with him about women. It should have been Ralston’s own father.”

“I haven’t seen Hodge sober for three years.”

“Nor have I, but he gets his work done.” She smiled at the big fellow. “Never ends, does it?”

He laughed. “No, Miss Catherine. My momma used to say, ‘People are no better than they have to be.’ ”

“She said a lot else as well.”

They both laughed, for Barker O’s mother, elderly when Catherine was a child, said exactly what she thought when she thought it. They gave Momma a wide berth. Catherine wondered if one of the reasons Barker O turned out to be a quiet, thoughtful man was he never got a word in edgewise.

“I’d better go on to the north field to check up on those boys.” Barker O shook his head.

“If they made it in one piece.”

8

April 14, 2018

Saturday

“Blastoff Beagles.” Harry laughed at Arlene Billeaud, Master of Beagles. “How did you come up with that name?”

“Oh, I was dating a man who worked for NASA. Nearly married him, but that rocket never landed.” She laughed. “By that time, I’d named my pack Blastoff Beagles.”

Harry laughed, too. “No one will forget the name.”

Harry and Arlene, dragged down by heavy mud on their boots, had been checking creek crossings as the others worked on more repairs at Aldie. Tucker and Pirate, also muddy, walked along. The cats, back on barn duty, were sure to be insufferable once Harry and Susan, who was with the kennel work party, returned.

“You no longer smoke? I remember when I first met you, you did.”

Arlene, mid-fifties and in great shape, shook her head no. “The terrible truth is I miss it. Calmed me and I loved the taste. But I’d had enough friends die of lung cancer by the time I turned fifty. Granted, all were older, from that generation that smoked and drank sociably. Still.”

“Know what you mean. I never smoked myself, but Mom and Dad did, as well as their friends. No one thought a thing about it. Tobacco certainly helped build our state.”

“Imagine Aldie in the old days. People hunting with puffs of smoke trailing them.” Arlene laughed.

Harry, right foot sinking deep into mud on the far side of a creek, the bank less stable than she had thought, picked her foot up with a sucking sound. “Dammit.”

“The fundraiser draws ever closer. I sure hope this dries out. The one good thing is the moisture—even if there’s more hard rain, it should help scent.”

“Moisture is one thing. Snow another.” Harry sighed.

“Ain’t it the truth.” Arlene also got a bit stuck, so Harry, now on firm ground, grabbed her hand and pulled her out.

“Thanks.” Arlene looked down at her mud-covered work boot. “When I was in the Army I remember a saying, really stuck with me. ‘If you’re in trouble, it doesn’t matter what color the hand is that reaches in to pull you out.’ Makes it all so simple, doesn’t it?”

“Does. Which brings me back to tobacco. I remember the big warehouses down by the James. I was in grade school, but we’d go down. Walking along those piles of cured tobacco was a white man with a black man at his shoulder. Those men knew tobacco. The white man was the big boss, the black man, maybe he didn’t have a title but he was number two and had a lot of respect. All gone. All that knowledge gone and those men have no one to pass it along to. I guess what I’m coming back to is wherever you are, whatever time in which you live, you work it out the best you can.”

“I certainly did.” Arlene walked alongside Harry as they headed to check the last creek crossing. “I can’t say women were welcomed in the Army, but they had to take us. We stepped up to the plate. That shut up a lot of naysayers.”

“My father used to say, ‘Do your job and shut up. Your work will speak for you.’ ”

“Smart man.” Arlene walked without a hitch, her artificial leg so much better than those of the past. She paused. “Today Abraham Lincoln was shot at the theater and Alexander II escaped an attempted assassination in 1879.”

“They finally got him, didn’t they?”

Arlene nodded. “Why is it they always kill the person who is trying to help move things forward? What happened? Russia swung so hard after that, shutting down growing liberties and creating a secret police that would kill you as soon as look at you. Assassination never works. Look at Julius Caesar.”

“One genius followed by another.” Harry tested the bank where the water was reduced to a tiny little trickle. “How often did that happen in history?”

“Rarely, but sometimes genius is close. Or great change. I guess I’m thinking of Henry VIII, who caused more suffering than any king before or since, but his daughter made good on all of it and here we are in Virginia, named for the Virgin Queen.”

“Did you learn that much on the job?” Harry smiled.

“Oh, I’m not that studious, but I was surrounded by bright people, knew history. I had a friend in the Agency, Paula Devlin, I swear she knew everything.” The attractive woman smiled. “What do you think?”

Harry pressed down harder with her right toe. “Fortunately, this piddling stream we can jump over. If it were wider and everyone clambering over, the damn bank would just give way and then people would have to wade across. I hate getting my feet wet, don’t you?”

“Worse in the cold and now I only have one.” Arlene shrugged. “Well. Let’s make a loop. Get down on the southernmost path and walk back. I don’t think anything has come down since we’ve been here. The snow was three inches, not much wind. It’s the wind that does the damage when there’s been a lot of rain or snow.”