Out Of Hounds

CHAPTER 6

February 11, 2020 Tuesday

Shelby County, Kentucky, blessed with good soil, sat east of Louisville by twenty-five miles. Abutting Shelby County was Oldham County. Long Run–Woodford Hunt territory and wonderful territory it was, as long as it could last, for Louisville fast encroached on surrounding counties.

Jane Winegardner, MFH, of old Woodford now merged with Long Run, sat on a hill. As Sister Jane was one of her oldest friends and she was younger than Sister, she was known as O.J., the Other Jane.

At this moment the Other Jane felt her sixty-odd years, for the wind, nine miles per hour, blew from the west to the east. The Ohio River divided Indiana from Kentucky. Even thirty miles away, the touch of water filled that wind. The Ohio was a mile wide between Louisville and Indiana. With the mercury sitting at 38°F one’s pores tightened, the skin glowed. Who needed a face-lift?

The hard-riding master chose to flank the hounds today. Much as she loved running and jumping, sometimes as a tune-up, a master ought to sit and watch, moving from good view to good view. In this way she or he could judge how well the pack was working together, how good the communication was between huntsman, staff, and hounds. Since hounds could not carry a cellphone or walkie-talkie, there had to be that invisible thread that marks a person with the horn from a person truly hunting hounds. Fortunately, the huntsman, Spencer Allen, truly hunted hounds.

Many packs, especially those crisscrossed by highways where formerly the roads were dirt, used walkie-talkies. Sister Jane, thanks to the vastness of her territory for an East Coast hunt, refused this prop for her whippers-in and huntsman. If you hunted with Jefferson Hunt you hunted as was done in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and most of the twentieth century. You used your five senses.

The great maw of Louisville added to the dangers of hunting. All those paved highways, all the new people, lots and lots of new people, innocent of country ways, demanded constant communication between staff. One couldn’t trust a new person to slow if he or she observed hounds hunting. Then, too, there needed to be a road whip equipped with a radar screen that showed the tracking collars of the hounds. This allowed the driver to speed, and he did speed, to the spot where it looked like hounds would cross one of these hateful highways. Also, the road whip could hear the communication between huntsman and his staff. In this manner hounds were saved from accidents. Of course, the quarry could care less and many a clever fox and sharp-witted coyote learned to use the roads.

O.J. had seen a mother coyote teach her young how to cross the highway, to look both ways, to shrink back if needed, to surge across when safe.

One does not hunt dumb animals. The dumb animals are the ones on two feet.

So she sat, fingers tingling despite good gloves, to behold the pack, surging across a wide lower pasture, the coyote well in front, seemingly unstressed. Her keen eye noted which hounds were forward, who was in the middle, who was tailing.

Like any good master or good huntsman, O.J. knew your pack is made in the middle. A brilliant hound is a thrill but it’s the good soldiers that keep it right. Then, too, it’s easy for a huntsman to draft from the rear, but hell to draft from the front. Yet if your forward hounds are so fast they pull away, you now have two packs, so it must be done. She hated that, of course. Sister Jane could never do it. She’d keep the speedsters in the kennel, pay for their food herself, but eventually breed to a hound a step slower. Sister never wanted to blunt drive. Her deep love for hounds was both a strength and a weakness. She simply could not draft a speedster or a senior citizen. She and O.J. would talk for hours about hounds, hunting, management of territory, shifts in quarry. They could empty a room, so they only spoke of such things when together with staff from other hunts. Foxhunting is a blinding passion like skiing, surfing, you name it. Logic gets in the way of the emotional release, and release it is. You have not a second to consider the cares of the day. If you do you will soon be entertaining others with an involuntary dismount.

O.J. liked what she saw. Yes, a few hounds were now tailing, they were older and would probably be retired this year, but they had not fallen so far behind as to be a big worry. The big worry was that the damned coyote was heading straight for a busy road.

Watching, heart beating a bit faster, she saw the road whip. She could almost hear him banging on the side of the truck to alert the forward hounds not to cross. Sometimes they obeyed and sometimes not. A burning hot scent can’t be denied.

At the last minute the large gray fellow cut hard right, dropped into a narrow creekbed, high sides, to run in the water then leap out and head back away from the road. Sure enough the pack, stymied at the creekbed, did slide down but the damage to scent was done.

After about a two-hour stop-and-start run, O.J. hoped her huntsman, Spencer Allen, would lift. He could cast back, for one often picks up another line, but best to ride back toward the east, away from those roads. Not that there weren’t other roads on the return but none quite so heavily traveled.

As she turned her mare, Blossom, the wind picked up a bit, hitting her right between the shoulder blades. Kentucky lacks the heavy forests in this part of the state that cover Virginia.

There were no ravines to dip into. You were exposed to the elements. Maybe this was the trade-off for that impossibly rich limestone soil. O.J. thought Mother Nature had a sense of humor.

Much of what a master has to do depends on how the duties are divided up if there is more than one master. O.J. shared managing hunt staff with the other masters. As for the hounds, she loved them, so sitting on a hill, walking to another hill to watch, did not seem troublesome to her. Prudently, she kept her thoughts to herself. Any staff, whether hunting or not, wishes to put their best foot forward when observed. People can and do lie. Not everyone, for which any master is grateful, but as the old adage tells you, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. No one wants to carry a difficult person. Cohesion frays. O.J. made sure it wasn’t going to get to that point. Her whippers-in were honorary. Long Run formerly had a professional…good, too…but she had retired to have a baby. Still, O.J. liked how the whippers-in moved forward, negotiated terrain, supported the huntsman.

Once back at the trailers, her longtime friend and former Second Flight field master, Louise Kelly, untacked Blossom.

“Can you feel your fingers?” Louise asked.

“Not very much.” O.J. smiled. “My feet stayed warm. I finally did what Sister Jane has been telling me to do. I wore three thin pair of silk socks. My toes are a little cold. If we’d been out there much longer I’d feel it more. What’s funny is poor Sister. Nothing really works for her feet. She says the longest she can keep them warm is an hour.”

“How was it today?”

O.J. looked around then spoke. “Good. I was glad the huntsman hunted back when he did. Long, hard run. Thank God for Barry. He was at the crossroad just as the coyote was due to cross but, smart fellow, the coyote dropped into the creekbed, ran in the creek. By the time he got out he had fouled his scent for a good hundred yards. The wind took care of the rest. Staff did good. We do need another professional whip but our budget is stretched to the max. Our whippers-in are good but they can’t always show up. It’s a problem. Sister and I were talking about it. Most hunts are in the same boat.”

“Do you need to check in with anyone?”

“No. Everyone is ready to go home.” O.J. smiled.

“Okay.” Louise loaded up Blossom, closed the door, and the two old friends headed back to the barn.

—

“Sounds like we both had good days but I usually get good runs at Cindy Chandler’s Foxglove Farm.” Sister spoke to O.J., it now being about seven o’clock.

“Any word on the stolen painting?”

“No. I talked to the curator at the Sporting Museum, called my friends at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting. All knew the painting but no one had any ideas where it might be now. Sometimes these thefts run in cycles, kind of like the old days when silver would be stolen from houses in the same area by teams. There is an odd twist. When I drove home Saturday a sign on the telephone pole before you turn into my driveway blared ‘Stop Hounds Barking.’ A crank. Well, yesterday another sign went up. ‘Stop Foxhunting: A Cruel Sport.’ This appeared on the stone pillars, the gates into Crawford Howard’s Beasley Hall. He’s livid and believes he’s been singled out for abuse by the same people who stole his painting. I don’t see how the two can be connected. I told him I had a similar sign here, too. He brushed it off.” Sister thought a moment. “I begin to think we live in a time when no one can enjoy themselves without others passing judgment, dressed up in terms of great moral offense.”

“True,” O.J. replied. “Then again, think how even in Ancient Rome, moral judgment was used to attack others. Maybe it’s human nature. If you haven’t the brains or the resources to succeed, you rip apart others who have.”

“So why do people run for president? It’s a blood sport.”

“I have no idea.” O.J. shook her head. “I wouldn’t even run for the lowest elected position in Lexington.”

Sister laughed. “Are there any low elected positions?”

“Well, there’s head of the police department. And he takes nonstop abuse. One shooting. The police should have had a crystal ball, seen into it, and stopped the violence. It really is crazy, but back to the painting, it seems to me the only way it could leave the country is in a private plane with security paid off and customs in the other country paid off, or it could be smuggled in. If the thief or thieves aren’t the best at what they do, something or someone will make a mistake.”

“We can hope. Yet it could still be in our country. No one has a clue.” Sister listened to the old wall clock tick in the kitchen. “As you know I have had my struggles with Crawford, whose ego is inextinguishable, like JFK’s flame, but I don’t wish this on him. In his defense, he is generous in good causes. His biggest mistake is bullying and bragging. He could have looked at that gorgeous Munnings daily. He didn’t need to brag about it. Too many people knew. It’s even crossed my mind that this is a revengeful act.”

“Sister, you and I come from secure backgrounds. We knew who we were and who our people were. We never had a reason to publicly promote ourselves. We see it as vulgar.”

“It is,” Sister said with unusual vehemence.

“Millions would disagree as they hustle to rise. Look at this another way. You and I don’t mind a man putting his hand on our shoulder even if we don’t know him well. We don’t mind a man opening a door for us. We expect it as a courtesy. Many women, some even our age, would experience this as a form of diminishment. They would feel belittled.”

A long pause followed this. “Okay. I get your point. But the underlying emotion is fear. Fear you won’t make the grade. Fear someone is subtracting from your worth. Fear, fear, fear, and it’s sold daily like cars and underarm deodorant.”

O.J. laughed. “You know, you’d never be allowed to teach.”

“Funny you say that. I really liked teaching geology at the college level. It’s wonderful to watch someone grasp concepts, to become excited.” A long intake of breath followed. “Do you ever feel like this isn’t your country anymore?”

“All the time,” came the sad answer. “I love that young people are passionate about the environment. They are sensitive about other people’s backgrounds and feelings. But I know they don’t understand country life and they don’t really care. They will buy Brussel sprouts for way too much money at one of these so-called organic food stores but they don’t know how to grow them.”

Such a long pause followed this that O.J. said, “Are you there?”

“Am. You got me thinking. That Munnings painting. Could this have provoked some anger? You know, like she is promoting woman oppression?”

“What?”

“Sidesaddle. Men expected women, until really the 1920s and 1930s when we rebelled, to ride sidesaddle. Could it be a reminder of oppression, of the patriarchy? Hence the theft.”

“Well, Sister, you’d think the radical who stole it would be making her case. Or his case? I can’t believe a man would do that.”

“What about a woman who started life as a man? If anyone has clarity of vision about the crap women still live with, it seems to me it would be a transgender woman.”

“I don’t doubt that but I would think she has better things to do than steal a Munnings. This is about money. Has to be.”

“O.J., you’re probably right. You usually are. Do you think we will live to see the end of foxhunting?”

“We might live to see the end of the First Amendment.”

Sister gasped. “Dear God, don’t say that.”

After they concluded their talk, which ended on a happier note about the difference between fox scent and coyote scent, coyote being stronger, Sister sat in the library absentmindedly stroking Golly.

Rooster grumbled. “Why is she always petting that damned cat?”

“Golly is on the sofa. We’re on the floor.” Raleigh rolled over.

“Yeah.” Rooster put his head on his paws while Golly looked down from her perch, such a satisfying position.

Gray stayed with his brother at the old Lorillard home place two days a week, so Sister was alone. She never minded being alone, but then with two dogs and a cat, she never was.

Tempted though she was to call him, she refrained. The two brothers were slowly restoring the clapboard house, lovely proportions, simple lines, dark navy shutters, almost black. They needed their time together but O.J.’s comment about the First Amendment bothered her. She believed in the U.S. Constitution just as she believed in the Ten Commandments.

“Thou Shalt Not Steal,” she whispered out loud.