Hotspur

CHAPTER 5

Large, overhead industrial fans set high in the ceiling swirled, their flat blades pushing the air downward, and window fans also sucked in air from the outside and sent it over the sleeping hounds. This arrangement kept flies out of the kennels as well.

It was late afternoon, the day after Nola had been discovered. The rains had been followed by the oppressive heat typical of the South.

The Jefferson Hunt Club Kennels, built in the 1950s, were simple and graceful. The building’s exterior was brick, much too expensive to use now thanks to higher taxes and higher labor costs. The large square structure housed the office, the feed rooms, and an examination room where a hound could be isolated for worming or the administration of medicines. At the back of this was a 150-foot-square courtyard of poured concrete sloping down to a central drain. The roofline from the main building gracefully extended over one side of this courtyard by about eight feet. Lovely arches much like those underneath the walkways at Monticello supported the overhang.

Open archways bounded the courtyard, again like the ones at Monticello. The dog hounds lived on the right side and the gyps on the left. Each gender had its own runs and kennel houses with raised beds and little porches. The puppies lived at the rear with their own courtyard and special house. A small, separate sick bay nestled under trees far to the right.

The design—simple, functional—was pleasing to the eye. Doorways into the sleeping quarters were covered with tin to discourage chewing. The center sections of the doors to the runs were cut out and covered with a swinging heavy rubber flat, like a large mud flap on a truck, so the hounds could come and go as they wished. Eventually someone would get the bright idea to chew the flap, but a large square of rubber was easier to replace than an entire door.

All sleeping quarters were washed down every morning and evening. Painted cinder-block walls discouraged insect infestation. The floors sloped to central drains.

Many hounds slept in their raised beds, the wash of refreshing air keeping them cool. Others were dreaming in the huge runs, a quarter of an acre each, filled with large deciduous and fir trees. Some hounds felt the only proper response to blistering weather was to dig a crater in the earth, curling up in it. Fans whirling over kennel beds was sissy stuff.

Two such tough characters, Diana and Cora, faced each other from their shallow earthen holes, now muddy, which pleased them.

“Hate summer,” Cora grumbled.

“It’s not so bad,” the beautiful tricolor replied, her head resting on the edge of her crater.

“You’re still young. Heat gets harder to handle as you get older,” Cora said. She had recently turned six.

Six, while not old, gave Cora maturity. She was the strike hound, the hound who pushes forward. She sensed she was slowing just the tiniest bit and knew Dragon, Diana’s littermate, would jostle for her position.

Cora hated Dragon as much as she loved his sister. Quite a few hounds loathed the talented, arrogant Dragon.

Being the strike hound didn’t mean that Cora always found the scent first. But she worked a bit ahead of the rest—not much, perhaps only five yards in front, but she was first and she wanted to keep it that way.

If another hound, say a flanker, a hound on the sides of the pack, found scent before she did, Cora would slow, listening for the anchor hound, the quarterback, to speak. If the anchor said the scent was valid, then Cora would swing around to the new line, racing up front again. She had to be first.

If the anchor hound said nothing, then Cora would wait for a moment to listen for someone else whom she trusted. All she waited for was “It is good.” If she didn’t hear it soon, then she’d push on.

For years the anchor hound of the Jefferson Hunt had been Archie, a great American hound of substance, bone, deep voice, and reliable nose. Archie, a true leader, knew when to knock a smart-ass youngster silly, when to encourage, when to chide the whole pack, and when to urge them on. He died a fighting death against a bear, ensuring his glory among the pack as well as among the humans. They all missed him.

Diana, though young, possessed the brains to be an anchor hound. No one else exhibited that subtle combination of leadership, drive, nose, and identifiable cry. Cora knew Diana would become a wonderful anchor, but her youth would cause some problems this season. Like a young, talented quarterback, Diana would misread some signals and get blitzed. But the girl had it, she definitely had it.

In fact, the whole D litter, named for the first letter of their mother’s name as is the custom among foxhunters, oozed talent. And in Dragon’s case, overweening conceit.

Puppies taunted one another, their high-pitched voices carrying over the yards drenched in late-afternoon sunshine.

“Pipe down, you worthless rats,” Cora yelled at them.

They quieted.

“Too bad Archie can’t see this litter. He was their grandfather. They’re beauties.” Diana watched one chubby puppy waddle to the chain-link fence between the yards, where he studied a mockingbird staring right back at him from the other side.

“Babblers.” Cora laughed. “They are beautiful. But the proof is in the pudding. We’ll see what they can really do two seasons from now. And don’t forget”—she lowered her voice because gossip travels fast in close quarters—“Sweetpea just isn’t brilliant. Steady, God bless her, steady as a rock, but not an A student.”

Sweetpea was the mother of this litter.

“I wish it were the first day of cubbing.” Diana sighed.

“Don’t we all. I don’t mind the walking out. Really. The exercise is good, and each week the walks get longer. You know next week we’ll start with the horses again, which I enjoy, but still—not the same.”

“Heard the boys in the pasture yesterday.” Diana meant the horses. “They’re excited about starting back to work so long as Sister, Shaker, and Doug go out early, really early.” Diana sniffed the air. A familiar light odor announced the presence of Golly grandly picking her way through the freshly mowed grass toward the outdoor run.

Diana rose, shaking the dirt off.

Cora, too, smelled Golly. “Insufferable shit.”

Diana laughed. “Cora, you’re crabby today.”

“It’s the heat. But that doesn’t change the fact that that cat is a holy horror.” Cora curled farther into her cool mud crater. She wasn’t going to talk to the calico.

Golly reached the chain-link fence. “Good afternoon, Diana. Your nose is dirty.”

Diana sat down at the chain-link fence. “Keeps the bugs off.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t get bugs.”

“Liar,” Cora called out.

“Tick hotel,” Golly fired right back.

“Flea bait. You hallucinate. I’ve seen you chase the ghosts of fleas,” Cora replied, giggling.

“I have never hallucinated in my life, Cora. And you can’t get my goat, ha,” she said, “because you’re a lower life-form and I’m not letting you needle me.”

“Oh, if you aren’t hallucinating, then what are you doing when you, for no reason, leap straight into the air, twist around, race to a tree, climb up, drop down, and do it all over again? You’re mental.”

“Spoken like the unimaginative canine you are.” Golly raised her chin, half closing her eyes. “I’m being visited by The Muse on those occasions.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Cora said, and made a gagging sound.

“Worms!” Golly triumphantly decreed.

Diana, thoroughly enjoying the hostilities, said, “Just got wormed Monday.”

“Well, I walked down here in the heat of the day to give you girls some news, but since you’re insulting me I think I’ll go hiss at the puppies, teach them who’s boss around here.”

“You can tell me.” Diana lowered her voice and her head, her dirt-encrusted nose touching the fence.

“You’re a sensible girl,” the cat replied.

In truth, Diana was sensible and also quite sweet. She loved everybody.

Cora, upright now, walked over. “Well?”

“Who said I was talking to you?” Golly opened her eyes wide.

“Oh come on, Golliwog, you know we’re dying to hear it,” Cora coaxed, buttering her up.

The luxurious calico leaned forward, her nose on the chain-link fence now. “It was Nola. The family dentist identified her not an hour ago.”

Cora thought for a moment. “This will stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“If only we had known her . . . we hear and smell things.” Diana frowned. “We might have been able to help find out something useful.”

“The last hound that knew Nola Bancroft would have been Archie’s grandmother. She lived to be eighteen, you know,” Cora said. “It was a long, long time ago.”

“You’d think if any of us had known about the murder, or if any of the horses over at After All Farm knew, they would have told. We’d know. We pass those things down,” Diana said.

“Undomesticated.” Cora meant that undomesticated animals might have witnessed something at the time.

“Who lives that long?” Diana wondered.

“Turtles. That snapping turtle at After All Farm, the huge one in the back pond, he’s got to be forty years old, I swear it,” Cora said.

“Amphibians aren’t terribly smart, you know. Their brain moves at about the same speed they do,” Golly said with a laugh. Then she thought again. “But they do remember everything.”

“How old is Athena?” Diana asked, thinking of the great horned owl. “They live a long time, don’t they?”

“Don’t know,” the cat and hound said in unison.

Diana lay down, her head on her paws, her face now level with Golly’s face, almost. “Why does it matter? To us, I mean?”

“Because it really will stir up a hornet’s nest, Diana. People start buzzing. Old dirt will get turned over, and I promise you, ladies, I promise you, this will all come back to the Jefferson Hunt Club. Sooner or later, everything in this part of the world does,” Cora said.

“Think Sister knows that?” Diana asked. She loved Sister.

“She knows. Sister has lived almost six hound lifetimes. Think of what she knows,” Cora said, shaking her head in wonder.

“Well, exactly how do you think this will affect us? Will people not pay their dues or something like that?” Diana asked.

“No. People drop out when it’s a bad season. No hunt club has control over the weather, but people act as though they do, the fair-weather hunters, I mean.” Cora observed human behavior closely. “Or when there’s a club blowup, which happens about every seven years. Archie always said humans do things in seven-year cycles. They just don’t recognize it.”

“Crawford Howard.” Golly curled her upper lip as she said his name.

“Up to his old tricks?” Cora snapped at a low-flying dragonfly.

“Cat intuition.” Golly smiled. “I have an idea. Whatever happened to Nola in 1981 was well done, if you will. When you’re hunting you all go places humans don’t. Sometimes even Shaker can’t keep up with you when territory’s rough. You might find something or smell something out there that could help solve this mess. After all, the best noses in the world are”—she paused for effect— “bloodhounds, but you all are second.”

“Second to none!” Cora’s voice rose, which caused a few sleepers to open one eye and grumble.

Humans ranked the noses of bloodhounds first, followed by bassets second and foxhounds third, with all other canines following. Foxhounds thought this an outrage. Of course they were best. Besides, who in the world could hunt behind a bloodhound? The poor horse would die of boredom. This was a pure article of foxhound faith.

“This has to do with hunting? Is that what you’re really thinking, Golly?” Diana noticed a few of the boys in the kennel were quarreling over a stick. How they had the energy to even growl in this heat mystified her. One of the troublemakers, of course, was her brother, Dragon.

“Yes, think about it. Cubbing starts September seventh. It’s the end of July. Stuff happens when you’re hunting. Everything speeds up. People reveal themselves out there.”

“We sure hear them scream for Jesus.” Diana giggled as she recalled a few of the oaths elicited by a stiff fence.

“I have never figured that out. The horse jumps the fence, not them,” Cora said, laughing.

“Oh, but that’s just it, Cora. Sometimes the human takes the fence and the horse doesn’t.”

They all laughed at that.

“We’ll keep our nose to the ground,” Cora promised.

“I have the strangest feeling that Guy Ramy will be coming back.” Golly lowered her voice again. “More cat intuition.”

In a way, Golly was right.