Full Cry

CHAPTER 38

Sunny, cold, and crisp, Thursday’s hunt at Orchard Hill unfolded as though Nimrod himself had written about it. Tomorrow night’s full moon would illuminate the snowy fields. Predators, hunting in full force, pursued rabbits, field mice, even ground nesters among the avian family. Why the tempo of hunting accelerated before a full moon, Sister didn’t know. She just knew it happened. Also that people’s emotions swung higher and wilder; sexual attractions heated up, too. Artemis possessed powers, as did her twin, Apollo. His were more obvious, hers commanded study.

On that glorious February 5, as hounds streamed across the thirty-acre hayfield, its imposing sugar maple, solemn as a sentinel in the middle of the snowy field, Sister thought how little glory remained in modern life. War, so technological and covered by reporters as an entertainment, had room for heroism, but not glory. Only sport and art retained the concept of, as foxhunters would say, throwing your heart over the fence. Professional sport—micromanaged, increasingly scientific—was like a salmon pulled out of the water: its colors were fading, and with it, glory. There’s a heedless, sunny aspect to glory, a disdain for profit and even the applause of others that appealed to Sister. Not that she minded applause or profit, but that wasn’t why she raced across the clean whiteness this morning. She wanted glory.

The field, large for a Thursday at twenty-one, looked like a nineteenth-century aquatint; the packed snow flew off hooves like large chunks of confetti. Faces, red from cold and exertion, radiated intensity and happiness.

The fox, a quarter of a mile ahead of the pack, swung round the other side of the hayfield, turning back toward his den not far from the simple Federal-style house.

Sister, in her eagerness, had gotten a bit forward of her field. She soared over the black coop, snow still tucked along the planks, then paused a moment to watch others take the obstacle.

Tedi, perfect position, arched over the coop, the sky bright blue above her. Edward followed, derby on his head, hands forward, eyes up—not as elegant as his wife, but bold. Behind Edward came Ronnie, light, smiling, another one with perfect position. Xavier followed Ronnie, lurching a bit on Picasso. Xavier really had to lose weight. It was affecting his riding. After Xavier, Clay took the jump big. That was Clay, clap your leg on the horse and devil take the hindmost. Once Clay cleared, Crawford, keen to be up front, tucked down on Czpaka and thundered over: not pretty but effective. Walter on Clemson, his tried and true, took the fence in a workman-like manner, no muss, no fuss, all business. Sam took his fences like the professional he was, with as little interference with the horse as possible.

She heard the horn, figured she better move along. She asked Keepsake for speed, which he readily supplied despite the snow. Keepsake had a marvelous sense of balance.

Sister looked for brain first, balance second. Anyone could pick apart a horse, a hind end a trifle weak or a shoulder slope too straight. For Sister, conformation was a map not a destination. The way the horse moved meant everything to her. As her mother used to say, “Movement is the best of conformation.”

Another jump, an odd brush jump, level on top, sat in the turkey foot wire fence that enclosed the back acres. Keepsake glided over, smooth as silk. They turned toward higher ground, while a soft grade upward, given the snow, burned calories.

On top of that meadow, the 1809 house and outbuildings in clear view, Sister saw a red fox running toward the toolshed. The outermost building, its white clapboard matched all the others.

She said nothing as hounds were speaking. It’s incorrect to call out “Tallyho” if the hounds are on.

Viewing the fox is as good as a twenty-minute run. The field excitedly looked in the direction of Tedi’s outstretched arm, her lady’s derby in her hand. Tedi did not yell out but did the proper thing when viewing a fox. She removed her derby, pointing it in the direction of the fox. She continued this for four or five strides as there was no slowing down, then she clapped the derby on her head realizing she’d snapped her hat cord in her eagerness to confirm her view.

“Bother!” she muttered under her breath as the hat cord swung from side to side on her neck, its small metal snap cold when it touched bare skin.

Within four minutes the fox popped into his den, hounds marked it, Rassle turning a somersault of delight, which made the whole field laugh. Shaker blew “Gone to Ground,” praised his charges, mounted with a wince, and looked at Sister.

Like a schoolgirl bursting with eagerness, she said, “Let’s hunt the back acres. If we don’t pick up anything in twenty minutes, we can call it a day. I mean, unless you’re hurting.”

He shot her a baleful stare. “Who’s hurting?” He spoke softly to the hounds, “Good hounds, good hounds, pack into me now.”

“More?” Ruthie, sleek and fit, was as eager as Sister.

“Yes,” Cora happily told her.

“Yay!” the young entry cheered.

“All right, now. No babbling,” Asa gruffly instructed them, although he was as thrilled as they were. A good hound always wants to hunt. “Discipline, young ’uns. Discipline’s what makes a great foxhound and a great fox. You’re a Jefferson hound, you know, not some raggle-taggle trash.”

They obediently quieted, but Ribot, Ruthie, and Rassle couldn’t help themselves. As they walked to the next cast, they’d jump up to look over the pack, to see Shaker.

“Jack-in-the-boxes.” Tedi, alongside Sister, smiled.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Sister had tears in her eyes from the run, from happiness.

“Yes.” Tedi rode a few paces, then said, “Pity so few people feel that way.”

Sister, without rancor, replied, “Their own damn fault for the most part.”

“I agree,” Tedi said, thinking back to the joy she and Edward shared when both their daughters were alive, the family following the hounds, the pace like lightning. She’d had her share of happiness and her share of sorrow, and she thanked God for both. She knew Sister did, too.

Tedi wondered if this was a function of age or intelligence. She set aside age: she knew far too many immature, selfish, querulous old people. They’d been bloody bores as young people and had grown worse with the years.

Some people figured out the secret to happiness. Others didn’t. The problem with the ones who didn’t was they got in the way of the ones who did. Like psychic vampires, they’d swoop down on the happy. Eventually, one learns to dispense with their entreaties, manipulations, and excuses.

Tedi thought Nola, had she lived, might have become panicked in middle age as younger beauties challenged her fiefdom. Whether Nola could have gotten through it, she didn’t know. She wondered, too, how young Ray would have matured. He had had an uncommon sweetness to him, far sweeter and softer emotionally than her own eldest daughter. Tedi loved Sister for many reasons, not the least because Sister was lovable. But what bound them like a steel cable was the shared loss of their children.

Hounds found another line on the southwestern side of Old Orchard, down by the remains of a railroad spur bridge, the railroad long defunct. This run, although brief, took them over hills like camel humps. When folks made it back to the trailers, they were tired but exhilarated.

Tedi, Isabelle, and Ronnie had brought a tailgate. Despite the cold, people grabbed sandwiches, hot coffee or tea, and Ronnie’s signature brownies, chewy with tiny bits of bitter chocolate scattered throughout.

Sam, quiet and withdrawn, took a sandwich back to the tack room of Crawford’s large trailer. He sat on an overturned bucket, sandwich in one hand, while dipping the bit of Nike’s bridle in a bucket of warm water with the other hand.

He was surprised when X’s large bulk loomed on the other side of the door window.

X opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him. “You’re one lucky bastard.” Sam kept at his task. X continued, “I know you were drunk, drove off the road, and once again your brother saved your black ass.”

Sam glared up at him. “You know a lot, don’t you?” “Cars passed you until you were hauled out. No one told Crawford. You’re lucky.”

“And are you going to tell Crawford?”

“No.” X folded his arms across his broad chest. “No, I’m not.”

“White of you.”

X leaned down. “Listen, you worthless piece of shit. You’ll fuck up again. You’ll do yourself in. Why should I get my hands dirty?”

“That why you came back here? To tell me this?”

“No, actually. I came back here to tell you that I think you know more about what’s going on than you’re telling. For all I know, you killed those winos and Donnie. I know Donnie was in AA but couldn’t go thirty days without a drink. I know a lot more than you think I know.”

“Let me tell you what I know.” Sam stood up, hung the bridle over its hook, put the sandwich on the saddle seat. “I know that you and Clay Berry are old friends, right ball and left ball. I know that Clay will receive a six-figure check from the insurance company. And I wouldn’t be surprised to discover you two split that check.”

X grabbed Sam by the throat, choking the wind out of the small, wiry man. “I could kill you. Wouldn’t bother me.” He released Sam, whose hands fluttered up to his bruised neck. “You aren’t worth a jail term. Tell you this, you keep your mouth shut, so shut I don’t even want you to say hello to Dee. Don’t even look at her. You hear?”

Sam nodded in affirmation and coughed, his windpipe searing with pain.

As X opened the door, Sam whispered hoarsely, “She’s too good for you.”

X spun around. “For once we agree. She would have never—” He stopped; he couldn’t say it. “—if I’d paid attention to her as I should have. She would never have looked at you.”

“I did you a favor,” Sam replied.

“Oh?”

“I woke you up to what a self-centered bastard you are.”

X took a menacing step toward Sam, who grabbed a crop. “I did wake up. I worship that woman. Worship her. I’ll never make that mistake again. She’s the most important thing in my life. You keep well clear of her.” X turned, stepped outside on the plastic mounting block as Sam closed the door. He’d lost his taste for the sandwich.

That evening Sister and Gray dined out. Gray decided he couldn’t wait until Saturday. They talked about everything under the sun. He had his perfect Manhattan; she had Earl Grey tea.

They wound up back at Roughneck Farm in bed. Afterwards, they sat up, covers pulled around their shoulders. Even with the fire in the fireplace, the cold sneaked inside. Outdoors it was bitterly cold, a full moon bathing the world in silver.

“My nose is running.” Sister wiped her nose with a Kleenex.

“Well, you better catch it,” Golly, snuggled on the foot of the bed now that they were done, smarted off.

“Think it’s the dust?” he said.

“Probably.” She leaned against him, sliding down so her head was on his shoulder.

He wrapped his arm around her. “I feel like a teenager.” “Act like one, too.” They laughed, and she asked, “Okay, give me hell if I’m rude, but isn’t it true that all men will have prostate troubles sooner or later?”

“It is. Why, do you want to know if I have to get up five times in the night to go to the bathroom and not much happens?”

“Actually, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Took care of it. Well, I mean I’ll continue to take care of it. But all is well.”

“I know that.” She giggled. “Want my medical history?”

“Well.” He hugged her. “I suppose at our ages that’s germane.”

“Broken right leg, three places, clean through, 1962.

Fractured ribs, too many times to count, starting in the fourth grade. Broken toes, but that’s no big deal, wrap them in vet wrap. Can’t do anything else. Two discs, L4 and L5, are crumbling—enough to make me stiff if I’ve been sitting in one position too long. Other than childhood diseases and the occasional flu and cold, that’s it.”

“Impressive.”

“You could play dice with my bone chips.”

“Broken wrist, college basketball. Hmm, tore my anterior cruciate, left leg, must be eleven years ago. Fixed it. I’d say we’ve both been lucky. I take that back. We’re active, so we haven’t rusted out.”

“What’s the point of having a body if you don’t use it?” Sister smiled as Golly walked over her to rest on her lap.

“I know you’ve missed me,” the cat purred.

“Nobody misses you, Golly, you’re—” Rooster began.

“Don’t start. It’s been a pleasant evening,” Raleigh said quickly.

“Are you surprised that we’re here?” Gray asked.

Sister propped on her elbow to look at him. “No. I know you. There’s been a thirty-year interval from when you moved away for good, but even then, I’d see you from time to time. It’s not like we’re complete strangers.” She paused. “Even if we were, who is to say we wouldn’t wind up in bed together? The chemistry is either there or it isn’t.”

“It’s there.” He sighed deeply.

“Thank you, Jesus.” She laughed. “Thought I’d never feel that rush again.”

“It’s a terrible loss, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” She changed the subject. “Had a moment to watch people take fences today. I always say people ride like they live, and you know it’s true. There was Tedi, cool, elegant, in control. Edward, bold as brass, keen. Ronnie, another elegant rider, relaxed. X, getting the job done, hampered by his weight but enjoying himself. Clay, I swear sometimes I don’t think he has a brain in his head. He doesn’t think too much out there, just goes for it. I used to pound into Little Ray’s head, ‘First reckon, then risk.’ Never could get that message through to Clay. Walter, improving, not a chicken.”

“Did you see me?”

“Not today, but I’ve watched you. Good position, hands forward, you pick your spot. You reckon.”

“I’m flattered. I love watching people ride in the hunt field.”

“I usually can’t do it unless I’m in someone else’s hunt field.”

“Who were the riders you admired when you were up and coming?”

“Ellie Wood Keith, Baxter now, she married a Baxter; uh, Judy Harvey; Jill Summers; Mary Robertson; Rodney Jenkins, of course, but he was a show ring rider. Sometimes I’d see him out with Keswick. The list could go on and on, but my focus was always how people rode in the hunt field. Impressive as show riders are, they’re hitting fences on level ground. It’s math; they count their strides, stay in that infuriating canter, in the hunter classes, I mean. I’d need a No-Doz to sit through a hunter class. In the field you and your horse encounter everything, often very fast. You grow a set of balls out there, or you don’t make it. Maybe I should say ovaries, given the circumstances.”

He laughed, his body shaking. “Jane, you can be wicked in your way. Too bad most people don’t really know you.”

“I can’t very well go about saying what I think and be an effective master, now can I?”

“No.” He thought a moment. “You’re lovely to watch on a horse. Fearless, but not foolish.”

“Thank you, but let me tell you my secret: I have fabulous horses. I just sit there.”

“Don’t be modest.”

“I mean it. Sure I can ride a bit, but if you’ve got the right horse, everything is peachy. Ray, Little Ray, went through his peachy phase, and it stuck with me. Thirteen— remember when your kids were twelve and thirteen, and you endured the word play, the horrible puns, and the really dumb jokes? They get fixated on words. Peachy. Totally. What were some of his others? Used to drive me crazy until I remembered my mother still said ‘swell’ until the day she died. Funny.” She pulled her arm from under the cover to pet Golly. “Tomorrow would have been Ray’s forty-fourth birthday. I can’t imagine him as a middle-aged man.”

Gray kissed her cheek. “He would have been fortunate if he looked like his mother, which he did.”

“He did, didn’t he? Walter looks like Big Ray.” She stopped. “You knew, I mean, I didn’t let the cat out of the bag?”

“Everyone knew. Even the black folks.”

“Thought the black folks knew everything first.”

“Pretty much do.”

“Wonder if anyone knows what’s going on about these deaths?”

“No. I asked around.”

“Ah-ha, so you’re curious, too.”

“Of course. That could have been Sam, you know?”

“I do.”

They lay awhile, watching the fire.

Gray spoke up as a log crackled. “Jane, have you ever felt the presence of your son or your husband?”

She sat up. Golly grumbled. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You ask the damnedest questions. The only other people in my life who would ask something like that are Tedi or Betty. I’m not mad—don’t get me wrong—just, uh, warmly surprised. I’m not accustomed to people truly wanting to know about me. They want things from me, but they don’t want me, if you know what I mean. Tedi and Betty love me for me.”

“I know exactly what you mean. And I want you for you. Of course, I also want torrential sex.”

“Oh that.” She sighed, a mock suffering sigh. “A sacrifice, but someone’s got to do it.” She waited a moment, took a deep breath. “I have felt both Big Ray and Little Ray. When my son was killed, I felt him strongly for months. I don’t know, could have been some kind of wish fulfillment, a way to fight the pain. But even now, there are moments, Gray, when I feel his kindness. I feel him smiling at me. I feel Mother, too. Less so Big Ray, but every now and then, usually in the hunt field, he’ll be near. I often feel Archie, my anchor hound. I know animals possess spirits. Archie is with me. And I can’t tell you how loving the sensations are, how restorative, and, well, I don’t know, I feel a blessing on me, a benediction.”

“Good.”

“You?”

He nodded. “My grandmother. Warmth, love, understanding, the same feelings you’re expressing. You can’t go about talking about this kind of thing, especially if you’re a man. Men aren’t supposed to sense ghosts, if you will, or spirits of love. But Janie, they are with us. And who is to say there aren’t loving spirits with us whom we didn’t know in this life but who have taken an interest in us, or whom we knew from another life? I rather believe that, past lives, I mean. I’m certain you were a queen.”

“Go on!”

“A king?” He shrugged.

“One’s as bad as the other.” She laughed. “If there are kind spirits, there are also evil spirits.”

“Like up at Hangman’s Ridge?”

“Yes. I don’t know if they’re evil or suffering.”

“Both. Lawrence Pollard, the first man hanged there, wasn’t evil, just greedy. It was 1702, wasn’t it? But some of the others, probably psychopaths, are evil. Or maybe some just broke bad, like Fontaine Buruss broke bad.” He named a hunt club member, now deceased, the former husband of Sorrel Buruss.

Fontaine, handsome, charming, devolved into sexual self-indulgence, seducing women he should have left well alone because of their youth. He paid for it with his life.

“Fontaine, what a son of a bitch, but a fun son of a bitch. I actually miss him.” She smiled. “He crumbled in middle age. I swear, what in hell are people afraid of? We are all going to get old. We are all going to die. So why does a man in his forties want to be attractive to twenty-year-old women. The women aren’t any better. They go about it differently, that’s all. You get old, period. In fact, Gray, I love being older.”

“You’re not old. You’re healthy. You’re beautiful.”

“Oh Gray.”

“You will always be beautiful. And sure, if a gorgeous twenty-year-old woman walked into a room, every man’s eyes would go to her, mine included. Do I want to sleep with her? No, I already have two children. I want a woman who can keep up with me, forgive the arrogance.”

“Me, too.”

“You want a woman who can keep up with you?”

“Haven’t tried that. Another life, perhaps. For this one, I’ll stick to men.”

“I’m so glad.” He kissed her again.

“Gray.”

“Hmm.”

“I think I know who the killer is, might be two, not one. Might even be three or four, but I know the locus of greed. I just don’t know how to root it out.”

“Logic or instinct?”

“Both. I’ve used both. I don’t have proof, but you asked me if I felt my son. What is that? An openness, clear channels? Whatever it is, it leads me to my best hounds, my best horses, and I usually know where my fox is laying up. A kind of sixth sense. I’m not eschewing logic. Logic, too, brings us to Clay, Isabelle, if she’s in on it, X, possibly, and possibly Dalton Hill.”

He sat up straighter. “Clay makes sense because of the warehouse. Isabelle, well, hard to say. Why Xavier and Dalton, unless you think this is an insurance fraud?”

“No. I think this is about illegal drugs such as steroids, HGH, OxyContin, stuff like that. Dalton has the knowledge, he can get that stuff readily.”

“Then Xavier would look better.” Gray half laughed.

“I don’t know, but I am ninety-nine percent sure I’m on the right track. If only I could figure out a way to flush them out, get them in open territory.”

“Jane,” he said sternly, “this isn’t a foxhunt. This is murder.”