“How’d you get so smart?” Crawford had a hint of humor in his voice.
“By nearly drinking myself to death. I had to be that stupid to get smart.”
Crawford’s eyes narrowed. He picked up the riding crop. “Why’d you do it, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for drinking, but no excuses. I thought I’d fill up the hollows in my life with bourbon. I wasn’t a prince among men.”
“Who is?”
“Peter Wheeler came pretty close. And there’s my brother.”
“I underestimated you, Sam. There’s more to you than I thought.”
“Maybe that makes two of us.”
Crawford grunted. He slapped the smaller, slighter man on the back, and left for the big house. He had a lot to think about as he strode through the brisk air.
The phone rang in the tack room.
“Sam.”
“Rory, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing.” His voice thickened. “It’s hard, man. How’d you do it?”
“One day at a time.”
“But how do you live with all the shit you’ve done?”
“That’s a bitch. Rory, you ask the people you’ve hurt to forgive you. If they don’t, there’s not much you can do about it. The hard part is forgiving yourself. And no matter what you do, there are people who will never trust you. You just go on.”
“Yeah.” A long pause followed. “I called to thank you for dragging my sorry ass down here.”
“I was glad to do it. Hey, Rory, you hear about Berry Storage burning?”
“Don’t hear nothing from home in here.”
“One of the smaller buildings caught fire. Arson. Found a body inside.”
“Jesus.”
“I thought one of our guys might have figured out how to get in.”
“Well, that’s another reason I called. About Mitch and Tony. I don’t know where they got what they drank, but funny you should mention Berry Storage. Sometimes Clay or Donnie Sweigert would come down and get us to help make deliveries. You did some of that?”
“Yeah, a little. We’d tote chairs to a house. About broke my back.”
Well, we’d go to Lynchburg or Roanoke, even Newport News. Cities all over. I remember once we delivered an expensive desk down to Bristol.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, here’s what I remembered. All of those odd jobs where they needed an extra pair of hands were deliveries to coaches. You know, like sports.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Christ, all you cared about was horses. Yeah, we’d deliver a chair to a football coach at this high school or a sofa to a college basketball coach or maybe the trainer.”
“Odd.”
“I might have been drunk as a skunk, but, hey, the Orioles are the world, and Tech football, bro, awesome. I pay attention to those things.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I don’t. Just crossed my mind.”
“What about other deliveries?”
“None. Just coaches and trainers. And here’s one other thing, on those runs, the ones where us scumbags were used, always the same driver: Donnie Sweigert.”
“Donnie works for Berry Storage. Nothing unusual in that.”
“Maybe not, but you’d think sometimes we’d pull another driver. Always Donnie.”
“Huh.” Sam couldn’t make heads nor tails of this.
“I gotta go. They keep us pretty structured.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Rory’s voice, heavy with emotion, simply said, “I guess I gotta grow up.”
“Grow or die.”
CHAPTER 28
A thin cloud cover, like a white fishnet, covered the sky on Thursday morning. The mercury stalled out at thirty-eight degrees.
Hounds checked down by a man-made lake at Orchard Hill, the day’s fixture.
As Sister waited on a rise above the lake, a froth rising off the still waters, she reflected on the past. In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh founded the Lost Colony of Roanoke. What would Raleigh make of Virginia now?
She also wondered what those first Native Americans thought when they saw ships with billowing white sails. They must have felt curiosity and terror.
What would this lush rolling land be like four hundred years hence, could she return? Would the huntsman’s horse still echo, rising up as the mist now rose at Rickyroo’s hooves?
At least if Raleigh returned, he would recognize the hunt. Back then, though, they hunted in far more colorful clothing, knee-high boots turned down, revealing a soft champagne color inside. Over time, these evolved into the tan-topped formal hunt boots worn by men and some lady staff members, if the master allows the ladies to wear scarlet—still a topic of dispute among foxhunters. The flowing lace at the neck became the stock tie by the early eighteenth century. But apart from the clothing, those seventeenth-century men would know hound work, good hounds, good horses and, from all accounts, good women, as well as a surfeit of existing bad ones.
Tedi, Edward, Xavier, Ron, Gray, Jennifer, and Sari made up First Flight, the two girls allowed to ride on Thursdays. Sister had petitioned their science teacher at the high school, citing environmental studies. The teacher, an old friend, Greg Windom, agreed. After each hunt, the two students had to write up what they had observed.
This morning they observed a huge blue heron lift off from the lake when he heard the hounds, cawing raucously as he ascended.
A slow-moving creek lurched into the lake on high ground; an overflow pipe at the other end of the built-up lake flowed into that same creek some four feet below. In warmer weather, the creek was filled with five-inch stink-pot turtles: little devils, aggressive and long-necked. They’d snap at you, steal your bait if you were fishing for rockfish or even crawdaddies. Catch one and the odor made your eyes water.
Sister had taught geology at Mary Baldwin College before marrying, although her major had been what was then called the natural sciences. But Mary Baldwin had needed a geology teacher, so she voraciously read anything she could and was smart enough to go out with the guys from the U.S. Geological Survey in the area. They taught her more than anything she found in the books.
She passed on what she could to Jennifer and Sari when they asked questions, but she didn’t push them. As years rolled on, Sister had ample opportunity to be thankful for her study of rock strata, soil, erosion, and such. It helped her foxhunt. People would remark that Sister had uncanny game sense. Yes and no. She had never stopped studying soils, plants, and other animals. While she realized she would never know what the fox knew, she was determined to get as close as she could.
She’d hunted most of her seven decades, starting at six on an unruly pony. She still didn’t know how a fox could turn scent on and off, even though she had seen it with her own eyes. She’d seen hounds go right over a fox. Days later that same fox might put down a scorching trail for hounds.
In her wildest dreams, she prayed to Artemis to allow her to be a fox for one day and then return to her human form. Since this prayer went unanswered, she continued to read, learn from other notable foxhunters, and study her quarry. She knew her hounds, but she knew she would never truly know her foxes.
They knew her. The fox possessed a deep understanding of the human species as well as other species. The quickness of the animal’s mind, its powers of judgment, and its ability continually to adapt were phenomenal. The two times a fox would lose its good judgment were when it heard the distress call of a cub, any cub, and during mating season, when the boys were lashed on by their hormones. This is not uncharacteristic of higher mammals.
One such fellow, maddened by desire, now found himself eight miles from home, smack in the middle of Orchard Hill. The hounds picked him up, then lost him at the lake.
He’d dashed around the lake, leapt straight down from the overflow pipe into the creek, and swam straight downstream until he rolled up against a newly built beaver dam. He thought about ducking under the water, coming up into the lodge, but beavers are notoriously inhospitable, even to a fox in distress. He climbed up on the dam, gathered his haunches and, soaring over to the first lodge, alighted on top. He heard the commotion inside. He hopped from lodge to lodge, finally jumping from the last one onto the land. He had outwitted everyone. Catching his breath, he enjoyed a leisurely trot home.