“Nobody misses you, Golly, you’re—”Rooster began.
“Don’t start. It’s been a pleasant evening,”Raleigh said quickly.
“Are you surprised that we’re here?” Gray asked.
Sister propped on her elbow to look at him.“No. I know you. There’s been a thirty-year interval from when you moved away for good, but even then, I’d see you from time to time. It’s not like we’re complete strangers.” She paused. “Even if we were, who is to say we wouldn’t wind up in bed together? The chemistry is either there or it isn’t.”
“It’s there.” He sighed deeply.
“Thank you, Jesus.” She laughed. “Thought I’d never feel that rush again.”
“It’s a terrible loss, isn’t it?”
“Yep.” She changed the subject. “Had a moment to watch people take fences today. I always say people ride like they live, and you know it’s true. There was Tedi, cool, elegant, in control. Edward, bold as brass, keen. Ronnie, another elegant rider, relaxed. X, getting the job done, hampered by his weight but enjoying himself. Clay, I swear sometimes I don’t think he has a brain in his head. He doesn’t think too much out there, just goes for it. I used to pound into Little Ray’s head, ‘First reckon, then risk.’ Never could get that message through to Clay. Walter, improving, not a chicken.”
“Did you see me?”
“Not today, but I’ve watched you. Good position, hands forward, you pick your spot. You reckon.”
“I’m flattered. I love watching people ride in the hunt field.”
“I usually can’t do it unless I’m in someone else’s hunt field.”
“Who were the riders you admired when you were up and coming?”
“Ellie Wood Keith, Baxter now, she married a Baxter; uh, Judy Harvey; Jill Summers; Mary Robertson; Rodney Jenkins, of course, but he was a show ring rider. Sometimes I’d see him out with Keswick. The list could go on and on, but my focus was always how people rode in the hunt field. Impressive as show riders are, they’re hitting fences on level ground. It’s math; they count their strides, stay in that infuriating canter, in the hunter classes, I mean. I’d need a No-Doz to sit through a hunter class. In the field you and your horse encounter everything, often very fast. Yougrow a set of balls out there, or you don’t make it. Maybe I should say ovaries, given the circumstances.”
He laughed, his body shaking.“Jane, you can be wicked in your way. Too bad most people don’t really know you.”
“I can’t very well go about saying what I think and be an effective master, now can I?”
“No.” He thought a moment. “You’re lovely to watch on a horse. Fearless, but not foolish.”
“Thank you, but let me tell you my secret: I have fabulous horses. I just sit there.”
“Don’t be modest.”
“I mean it. Sure I can ride a bit, but if you’ve got the right horse, everything is peachy. Ray, Little Ray, went through his peachy phase, and it stuck with me. Thirteen— remember when your kids were twelve and thirteen, and you endured the word play, the horrible puns, and the really dumb jokes? They get fixated on words. Peachy. Totally. What were some of his others? Used to drive me crazy until I remembered my mother still said ‘swell’ until the day she died. Funny.” She pulled her arm from under the cover to pet Golly. “Tomorrow would have been Ray’s forty-fourth birthday. I can’t imagine him as a middle-aged man.”
Gray kissed her cheek.“He would have been fortunate if he looked like his mother, which he did.”
“He did, didn’t he? Walter looks like Big Ray.” She stopped. “You knew, I mean, I didn’t let the cat out of the bag?”
“Everyone knew. Even the black folks.”
“Thought the black folks knew everything first.”
“Pretty much do.”
“Wonder if anyone knows what’s going on about these deaths?”
“No. I asked around.”
“Ah-ha, so you’re curious, too.”
“Of course. That could have been Sam, you know?”
“I do.”
They lay awhile, watching the fire.
Gray spoke up as a log crackled.“Jane, have you ever felt the presence of your son or your husband?”
She sat up. Golly grumbled.“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ask the damnedest questions. The only other people in my life who would ask something like that are Tedi or Betty. I’m not mad—don’t get me wrong—just, uh, warmly surprised. I’m not accustomed to people truly wanting to know about me. They want things from me, but they don’t wantme,if you know what I mean. Tedi and Betty love me for me.”
“I know exactly what you mean. And I want you for you. Of course, I also want torrential sex.”
“Oh that.” She sighed, a mock suffering sigh. “A sacrifice, but someone’s got to do it.” She waited a moment, took a deep breath. “I have felt both Big Ray and Little Ray. When my son was killed, I felt him strongly for months. I don’t know, could have been some kind of wish fulfillment, a way to fight the pain. But even now, there are moments, Gray, when I feel his kindness. I feel him smiling at me. I feel Mother, too. Less so Big Ray, but every now and then, usually in the hunt field, he’ll be near. I often feel Archie, my anchor hound. I know animals possess spirits. Archie is with me. And I can’t tell you how loving the sensations are, how restorative, and, well, I don’t know, I feel a blessing on me, a benediction.”
“Good.”
“You?”
He nodded.“My grandmother. Warmth, love, understanding, the same feelings you’re expressing. You can’t go about talking about this kind of thing, especially if you’re a man. Men aren’t supposed to sense ghosts, if you will, or spirits of love. But Janie, they are with us. And who is to say there aren’t loving spirits with us whom we didn’t know in this life but who have taken an interest in us, or whom we knew from another life? I rather believe that, past lives, I mean. I’m certain you were a queen.”
“Go on!”
“A king?” He shrugged.
“One’s as bad as the other.” She laughed. “If there are kind spirits, there are also evil spirits.”
“Like up at Hangman’s Ridge?”
“Yes. I don’t know if they’re evil or suffering.”
“Both. Lawrence Pollard, the first man hanged there, wasn’t evil, just greedy. It was 1702, wasn’t it? But some of the others, probably psychopaths, are evil. Or maybe some just broke bad, like Fontaine Buruss broke bad.” He named a hunt club member, now deceased, the former husband of Sorrel Buruss.
Fontaine, handsome, charming, devolved into sexual self-indulgence, seducing women he should have left well alone because of their youth. He paid for it with his life.
“Fontaine, what a son of a bitch, but a fun son of a bitch. I actually miss him.” She smiled. “He crumbled in middle age. I swear, what in hell are people afraid of? We are all going to get old. We are all going to die. So why does a man in his forties want to be attractive to twenty-year-old women. The women aren’t any better. They go about it differently, that’s all. You get old, period. In fact, Gray, I love being older.”
“You’re not old. You’re healthy. You’re beautiful.”
“Oh Gray.”
“You will always be beautiful. And sure, if a gorgeous twenty-year-old woman walked into a room, every man’s eyes would go to her, mine included. Do I want to sleep with her? No, I already have two children. I want a woman who can keep up with me, forgive the arrogance.”
“Me, too.”
“You want a woman who can keep up with you?”
“Haven’t tried that. Another life, perhaps. For this one, I’ll stick to men.”
“I’m so glad.” He kissed her again.
“Gray.”
“Hmm.”
“I think I know who the killer is, might be two, not one. Might even be three or four, but I know the locus of greed. I just don’t know how to root it out.”
“Logic or instinct?”
“Both. I’ve used both. I don’t have proof, but you asked me if I felt my son. What is that? An openness, clear channels? Whatever it is, it leads me to my best hounds, my best horses, and I usually know where my fox is laying up. A kind of sixth sense. I’m not eschewing logic. Logic, too, brings us to Clay, Isabelle, if she’s in on it, X, possibly, and possibly Dalton Hill.”