Scheduling fixtures drove many a master to drink. Even with the fixtures scheduled, last-minute changes wreaked havoc. A hard rain might prompt a farmer to request no one ride over his fields and with good reason. A crop of winter wheat could get cut up or the slipping and sliding of trailers could turn a pasture into brown waves, which, when frozen, were hell to negotiate.
The ladies of a hunting club usually did the mailings. Gentlemen built fences. Both genders cleared trails. However, as those lines blurred, the new order was whoever could do the job, did it.
The ladies, gathered in Sister’s living room, laughed, gossiped, teased one another.
Golly sorted the mail. Raleigh slept by the fireplace.
A knock on the front door brought Sister to her feet.
Crawford asked to come in. The ladies said hello.
“Perfect timing.” He smiled. “I’ll take the fixture cards and run them through my postage meter.”
“Why thank you, Crawford,” Sister said.
“Martha wasn’t here, was she?”
“No,” Betty Franklin, sitting cross-legged on the floor, remarked. “She got tied up at work. Called about an hour ago.”
“Oh.” He wanted to say something but whatever it was it stuck in his throat.
“A libation?” Sister reached for his jacket.
“No. I’ll do this right now and drop them at the main post office. Oh, I forgot to tell you, thirty coop flats with top boards will be dropped over at Rumble Bars tomorrow. Had the lumber yard knock them together.”
There were many ways to build coops but if the sides were built, then carried to the site, they could be leaned against one another, braced, a top board put on, and then painted. It saved time building the flats off-site.
“Crawford, that’s wonderful.” Sister was pleased. He allowed himself a smile. “When we know how the fox runs we can put up more. This is a good beginning. What a wonderful surprise. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”
“No. No. I really need to go.” He picked up the cards all in their envelopes in cartons according to zip codes. Out he went.
“H-m-m,” was all Betty Franklin said.
Before that subject could warm up, Sister deftly said,“Did I tell you girls the caterer called this morning and said I’d better switch from spoon bread to corn bread? I mean how can you have a hunt breakfast without spoon bread, ham biscuits, gravy—well, I’ll make us hungry. Anyway, he said there are now so many Yankees in Virginia that every time he makes spoon bread there’s a dreadful mess.”
“What does he mean, a dreadful mess?” Georgia Vann asked.
“Yankees pick it up with their fingers. They think it’s undercooked corn bread.” Sister emitted tinkling laughter.
“No!” Betty howled.
“I can’t believe that. How can you not know how to eat spoon bread? I mean, it’s called spoon bread.” Lottie Fisher shook her head, then laughed.
“That’s what he said.” Sister laughed more.
“The hell with the Yankees.” Lottie waved the rebel flag figuratively.
“You know, we give foxhunting clinics in the beginning of cubbing. Maybe we should run a hunt breakfast clinic or a southern cooking demonstration,” Betty merrily suggested.
“As long as you organize it,” Sister said.
“Spoken like a true master.” Betty giggled some more.
“Isn’t it glorious to be superior to Federals?” Georgia teased.
“Like Crawford.” Lottie had to get back to that. “I wonder what he’s about? I mean, I heard he’s trying to win back Martha. If I were her, I’d slap him right in the face.”
“She did that already,” Betty dryly said.
“Shotgun,” Georgia laconically said as she reached for a piece of pound cake with fresh vanilla icing dribbled over it.
“He’s not worth going to jail over.” Betty thought the pound cake looked pretty good, too. This was her third piece.
“Maybe he’s learned something,” Sister said. “More coffee? Drinks?”
“You sit. You threw this together after hound walk. You must be tired by now.” Georgia got up, walked over to the gleaming silver coffeepot, and poured into the cups handed her.
“If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to shoot Bobby Franklin, I’d be rich.” Betty laughed at herself. “Who knows what Crawford and Martha have to work out together. It’s hard for a middle-aged woman to make it alone. Let’s not forget that, girls.”
A quiet murmur rippled across the gathering.
“Sister, you know I can’t keep my mouth shut. Are you really going to make Crawford a joint-master? You must know the club’s abuzz with speculation.” Georgia blushed.
“I don’t know. Crawford and Fontaine have a lot to offer.”
“And a lot to sidestep.” Lottie hated Crawford. She thought he was a rich oaf who tried to buy his way into everything. He didn’t belong here.
As they batted pros and cons back and forth, as well as Martha Howard’s future, Sister listened. She thought to herself, if only Raymond Junior had lived. He’d be old enough now to assume the responsibilities of a joint-master. She’d always dreamed of that. She snapped out of her reverie. “Don’t question the will of God,” she said to herself, then said to the ladies, “I really do appreciate your concern for the hunt.”
“Not just the hunt, Sister Jane, we appreciate you. Can’t you go along for one more year as sole master? Surely something will turn up or resolve itself,” Lottie inquired earnestly, her soft brown hair framing her square face.
“I’ve said that for the last five years.”
“You’re stronger than we are. Wait five more.” Betty echoed what the others were thinking.
“I don’t know. There’s a black young vixen on the farm. You know everything happens in the black fox years.”
The ladies knew the black fox legend.“That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you,” each said in her own way.
“Well—I hope not.” She was tempted to tell them about the lone figure on Hangman’s Ridge but decided that would be between her and Doug Kinser. “But let’s change the subject to something more cheerful or challenging. Can you imagine Crawford Howard without his clothes on?”
CHAPTER 27
The old office in the center of town exuded a sepulchral air. The sturdy white Doric columns, the large iron doors boasted of public wealth, solidness, and civic duty. Built in 1926 on a flood tide of government spending and public speculation, the post office, like the country that spawned it, witnessed the subsequent depression, another world war and three smaller ones, more economic booms and busts.
When the post office was being built, slabs of granite lying along Main Street, men came to the post office wearing coats and hats. If it was summer, they wore jaunty straw boaters. In the winter, fedoras and borsalinos predominated. Ladies festooned in hat, gloves, purse, and shoes dyed to match sashayed onto the black marble floors. The very colors the ladies wore announced their feelings about the day and about themselves. Farmers, some still driving teams, would tie up at the gray iron balustrade designed for that purpose. Wearing overalls and straw hats in the warm weather, they’d stride into the halls cheerfully greeting everyone, stopping to talk about that riveting subject: the weather.
As Crawford Howard pushed open the heavy doors with his back he harbored none of these memories. A post office was simply a post office to him, not a community statement. But it remained a federal building and therefore a citizen trust. An American can enter a post office at any time of night or day to deposit mail in the shining brass slots, to open their own large or small mailbox with their key.
People didn’t dress to go downtown anymore. They barely pulled themselves together, properly groomed, to attend church. The South and especially Virginia practiced a dress code much stricter than that of the rest of America but even here in the bosom of courtliness standards were falling. Many wore jeans and Tshirts. Businessmen still paid attention to their furnishings, as did those ladies who were hoping to catch a businessman’s eye. But even their standards of dress were lower than just thirty years before.