Scarlet Fever

CHAPTER 26

March 24, 2019 Sunday

“Ten.” Betty brought down the back rear door of the old Bronco.

“Small boxes, for which I am grateful.” Sister climbed into the passenger seat. “How many cards in a box?”

“Fifty. And a piece of tissue paper between each card. Then the inside of the boxes have tissue paper. The tissue between the cards covers the card when you send it. Takes time.”

Betty drove into Charlottesville to Water Street. They parked, lights flashing, and before they could reach the door of Taylor Insurance, Drew opened it, walked out to the car. “Don’t worry about a ticket. Sunday. Hardly any traffic. Hello, Sister.”

“Hi, Drew. Your invitations are quite proper. Lovely.” She grabbed a box, as did Betty and Drew.

Walking into the plush office they passed two women, both middle-aged, going out to fetch boxes.

Within five minutes the boxes sat on a long table.

“You ladies are working on Sunday. He’d better be good to you,” Betty joked.

“This is our annual handwritten invitation to clients.” Loretta Giordis sat down, picking up a true fountain pen.

Drew sat down and pulled one out of his pocket. “Dad’s.”

“That pen has to be fifty years old, Drew. It’s a Sheaffer White Dot. I love stuff like that.”

“Betty, you and Bobby recognize anything having to do with papers and pens because of your business.”

“The good stuff lasts, doesn’t it?” Betty noticed Sister staring at the pen in Drew’s hand.

He held it up for her. “Gold tip.”

“Ah, like a Montblanc.” She marveled at the old pen.

“Somewhat. More gold in the Montblancs.” Drew remembered his manners. “Can I get you ladies a drink?”

“Oh, no thank you,” Betty declined. “I wanted to bring the invitations down here in person to thank you again for your business.”

He smiled. “Two years from now the invitations will be printed in gold. How about that? Our seventieth anniversary.”

“Drew, I applaud any business that grows throughout generations.” Betty did, too. “I don’t want to pick up the phone and talk to someone in India or even Dallas. I want to walk into an office and see a neighbor or at least someone who has lived here.”

“Drew, congratulations on your sixty-eighth anniversary. Before we get out of your hair, would you mind if Betty and I drove down the lane to your farm? We haven’t hunted there for years. I need a bit of a reminder.”

“Go ahead. I’m looking forward to it, and the Ticknors will come to the tailgate. It will be like old times.”

“Good times.” Sister smiled.

As the two drove out of town, turning west, Sister inquired, “How expensive is it to print a true invitation? You give us the invitation to Opening Hunt for free. I actually have no idea, which says something about my social life.”

“Three factors. One: the quality and size of the invitation paper. Two: the color of the ink. There is a slight price difference, for some inks are easier to use and clean from the presses once used than others.”

Sister interrupted. “I had no idea.”

Betty smiled. “No reason you should. Kind of the same for people who don’t know much about horses. They don’t realize a horse’s feet must be trimmed even if not shod, those hooves need tending. Okay, third factor: the number of invitations. And there can be a third and a half if it’s a rush job.”

“So a small number of invitations is cheaper? That would make sense.”

“Not necessarily. You actually save money if you leap from, say, seventy-five cards to one hundred. Now, for a wedding invitation or what Drew is doing, celebrating the birthday of Taylor Insurance, that’s not relevant. But let’s say you want Bobby and me to create special hunt club stationery. And you wanted to sell the stationery to club members. It would be cheaper to print up, say, five thousand sheets and envelopes. That sounds like a lot of paper, given there are only one hundred of our true hunting members. Obviously when you factor in the social members, adjacent hunt members, there are more people, but stick to one hundred. It’s easy to figure. So one hundred members buy five hundred sheets apiece. That’s the standard of what you would buy at Staples for a ream of paper.”

“Vaguely, I know you’re right. I dimly remember seeing the amount on the plastic wrap of the paper I buy for the printing machine.”

“And you go through it fast. Anyone running a business or a club like we have goes through paper. So five hundred sheets isn’t really that much.”

“Wedding invitations and Taylor Insurance, that’s a set number.”

“Right. No point in buying extra, but for the hunt club a large order would create more profit for the club. Are you thinking about it?”

“I am now.” Sister smiled. “I’m not the fundraising person, and Walter, well, he doesn’t have as much time as either of us would like, but he tries. His hours can be brutal sometimes.”

“God bless anyone who goes into medicine.” Betty turned on the road parallel to Crawford’s, the one where Beasley Hall was located, with the ridge between Beasley and the Ticknor Farm and lastly Pitchfork. Betty drove slowly so they could study the terrain.

“Stop a minute, Betty.”

She did and both women cast their eyes upward, for the ridge loomed behind the Ticknor outbuildings.

“They’ve kept the place up. We should be able to at least move along the bottom of the ridge if we have to. Oh wait, don’t start yet. What about over there for parking?”

“Given yesterday’s rain, it’s somewhat drained. You’ll call them, of course.”

“I will and I figure Phipps Ticknor will put out an orange cone or a bucket so we’ll get it right. We’re the first people there. Usually.” Sister hit the window button, sticking her head out.

“Can I go now?”

“Oh yes, sorry.”

They trolled along, the ridge on their right, open fields on their left, with reasonably secure fences in need of painting.

“If we hit a fox and he heads across their fields, no telling where we’ll wind up.”

“Given the roll of the land…well, we can pull out a topo map when we get to my house, but I don’t think we’ll be all that far from Mousehold Heath,” Sister guessed.

“You might be right. Love those topo maps. You can see so much territory in one glance.” Betty, too, put down her window, throwing her scarf back around her neck, for it was fifty degrees at best and the wind cut that down.

Reaching the corner of the black fencing, a three-board slip fence took over. They were now on Pitchfork property.

“If the fox goes right, we’re going to be at Beasley Hall. The climb, mmm, maybe about as steep as Hangman’s Ridge,” Betty conjectured.

“Right. I’ll call Crawford tonight and prep him for Thursday. And I’ll invite him, of course.”

“What’s that?” Betty stopped in time to see a large coyote cross the road up ahead.

“Damn,” Sister cursed.

“If we get that line we will be at Mousehold Heath.”

“No joke.” Sister peered at the disappearing marauder.

Betty drove toward the house, tidy barn to the left three hundred yards away.

“Morris,” Betty noted, seeing a figure run from the barn to the house.

“Too far away but it must be Morris, he doesn’t want to see us.”

They reached the barn, got out, did not go inside but did walk around to the back to see if any of the old trails were visible back there.

“Doesn’t look too bad.” Betty reached the end of the barn. “I think our coyote was here.”

Sister came up next to her. Betty pointed down at a small pool of blood on the barn floor.

“Did you notice anything in his jaws?”

Betty shook her head. “He wasn’t that far away but I can’t say as I looked.”

“Well,” Sister paused, “whatever he killed wasn’t small.”

“Could have gobbled it on the spot.” Betty knew of a coyote’s voraciousness.

“You’d think there’d be fur or feathers. This is only a pool of blood.”

As they rode back they discussed casting possibilities. Then they decided to show Weevil and Tootie the topo maps and go over same. Those two had never hunted back there and neither had many of the members. Sister focused on the task at hand, but the blood bothered her.