Raleigh, also full, wanted to accompany Sister. He parked by the kitchen door, ears up, alert.
“Catch cold on a day like this,” Golly laconically said.
“Lazy.”
“Sensible.” Golly rolled over, showing Raleigh her back. She disliked being contradicted.
Sister allowed her members great latitude in dress during cubbing, but she herself remained impeccably turned out. She wore mustard-colored breeches, brown field boots with a ribbed rubber sole, useful on a day like this, a shirt and man’s tie, an old but beautifully cut tweed jacket, and a brown cap, tails down. She opened the door and Raleigh dashed out with her.
Golly lifted her head, watching them trot to the barn.“Silly. Neither one has sense enough to come in from the rain and Sister wastes time hunting foxes. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the whole race of foxes. Liars and thieves, every single one of them.” Having expressed her opinion, she closed her eyes in contentment.
Sister ducked under the stable overhang and shook off the water, as did Raleigh. She walked into the center aisle of the barn, the soft light from the incandescent bulbs casting a glow over the horses and Douglas, too.
Raleigh joyfully raced up and down the center aisle, informing the horses of his presence. They weren’t impressed. They liked Raleigh, but this morning he was just too bouncy.
“Ma’am. You might wear your long Barbour today. Don’t want you getting the shivers before opening hunt.”
“Douglas, you’ll make someone a wonderful mother someday.” She laughed at him but went into the tack room and grabbed her coat along with a pair of string gloves. She loved Douglas. Teasing him made them both happy. He’d grown from a skinny kid with green eyes, beat up just about every day at school, into a broad-shouldered, curly-haired, beautiful young man with bronze skin. Douglas’s mother was white and his father black. He took the best from both.
Sister’s son, Raymond, died in a freak harvesting accident in 1974. He was fourteen years old and there wasn’t a day when she didn’t hear his voice, remember his infectious smile, and wish he was with her.
She spoke rarely of her son. One lives with one’s losses. The shock of it and then the subsequent grief had kept her numb for a year and then after that she was flat. She couldn’t think of another word but “flat.” Three years passed before she thought there might be joy in life but three things sustained her during those three years: her husband, Big Raymond; her friends; and her foxhunting. The former two provided love, the latter, structure and a sense of something far greater than human endeavor.
What was odd about Ray Junior’s death was it occurred in a year of the black fox. When Big Ray died in 1991, there was also a black fox. He made mention of it, gasping for breath with emphysema.
“Janie, black fox years are watershed years for us. Mother—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence but the black fox superstition was one of his mother’s cherished beliefs, right up there with transubstantiation. She said that great upheavals or the death of a family member were always heralded by a black fox. Mother Arnold declared that her grandmother, in her prime during the War between the States, swore that in 1860 the whole state of Virginia was full of black foxes. People had never seen so many.
Sister knew there was a black fox kit, half-grown, in the den near Broad Creek, running through her property. Given the apparition she’d seen the day before yesterday and this fact, she couldn’t suppress an involuntary shiver.
“I told you you’d get the shivers. Put a sweater on.”
“I’m not cold. But you know, Doug, I saw the damnedest thing and I can’t get it out of my mind. When Shaker and I walked back to the coop that Fontaine obliterated, I thought I saw the Grim Reaper on Hangman’s Ridge right by that haunted tree. Of course, in retrospect I realize I was probably hallucinating, I was so hungry, but still, the man was as clear as day and I looked away and looked back and he was gone.”
“Me, too.”
“You, too, what?” She sat on a tack trunk for a moment as Douglas exchanged the regular English leather reins for rubber ones.
“When I tracked down Archie, he was staring right up at the ridge and I saw whatever it was, too. I told Shaker. Don’t think he believed me.”
“Didn’t believe me either.”
He held the reins, the bridle hanging from the tack hook.“It’s a bad sign, Sister.”
“I know, but for whom?”
He shrugged.“Not us, I hope.”
She smiled.“You’re young. You’ll live a long, good life.”
“You seem young.” He laughed.
“Flattery, young man, will get you everywhere.” She stood up, slapped her knees as she rose, then called out to her horse, Lafayette, standing patiently in his stall.
“Lafayette, it’s going to be slick as an eel today.”
“I can handle it,” he bragged.“I can handle anything.”
She smiled as he whinnied, walking into his stall to rub his ears and chat with him.
“Blowhard.”Rickyroo, a hot thoroughbred in the adjoining stall, snorted.
Both Lafayette and Rickyroo were thoroughbreds but Lafayette at nine showed more common sense than Rickyroo at five, although Ricky would probably be a pistol at nine, still.
“Do you want to take the field or whip today?” Doug asked her.
“Take the field. After what happened Tuesday, I think I’d better be right there. Not that Bobby Franklin isn’t a good field master—he is. We’re lucky to have him on Tuesdays. Anyway, he was ahead, as he should have been, right behind the hounds, so this little contretemps happened behind him. No one was riding tail that day either.” It was common practice to have a staff person or trusted person ride at the rear of the field to pick up stragglers, loose horses, loose people.
“I heard that Fontaine is spending money in every store owned by a club member.”
“Fontaine is one of the most consistently underrated men you’ll ever meet. That’s the pity of it. He could have amounted to something.”
“Being master of Jefferson Hunt amounts to something.”
“Yes, it does, but I meant out there in the world. He’s a good-looking man, so talented in his field, but the money he inherited made a bum out of him in a way. Pulled his fangs.”
“Seems to do that to people.”
“I’m beginning to think if you want to destroy your children, let them inherit a lot of money.”
“Not my problem.” Douglas laughed.
“Money brings tremendous responsibility and worry. People think if they have a lot of money they won’t have any troubles. Well, any problem that can be fixed by money isn’t a problem.” She smiled. “Who knows, maybe you’ll wind up rich.”
Doug threw a white saddle pad on Lafayette.“I learn something from you every day. I’m going to remember that.”
“Scrape and save now. Learn everything you can from everybody. I promise you, you’ll use every single bit of it in this life.” She walked outside Lafayette’s stall, took her saddle and saddle pad off the saddle rack, and put them on his back. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’mdispensing advice like a sob sister. You know, I think that damned whatever I saw and you saw has gotten under my skin. I’m afraid, Doug. You know I believe in fate, but it’s something else. Something vague.”
“I feel it, too.”
“Oh, well,” she sighed, “it’s going to be a wild morning. They’ll be popping off like toast and blaming me for going out on such a day.”
“Not like the old days.”
“No. The days of a master inviting only certain people to ride during cubbing season—long gone. You’ve got to invite them all, which makes it a holy horror because most of those folks haven’t a clue as to what we’re doing or why. Furthermore, I am considering cutting their tongues out. Actually, they’ve gotten much better about babbling in the hunt field. I’m being a crank.”