“Do you think Guy killed Nola?” Walter asked. He’d been in his teens at the time and remembered little of it.
“No.”
“It’s strange. On the one hand I’m glad Nola was found and on the other I’m not.” Walter took the bucket from Sister, handing her the switch.
“I think we all feel that way. I try not to trouble myself with things out of my control,” Sister said. “I can’t do anything about the past, but maybe I’ll be able to do something to help.”
“Count me in.” Walter growled at Clytemnestra, who balked at going back through her pasture gate.
“I do count on you, Walter. I do.”
CHAPTER 8
Roger’s Corner, a white frame convenience store, commanded the crossroads of Soldier Road, the road heading west from town, and White Cat Road, an old wagon road heading north and south. Far in the distance, a thin turquoise line rimmed the mountains. A first-quarter moon accompanied by a red star hovered above the last bright strip of twilight.
Roger, now in his middle forties, ate too much of his own pizza heated in a revolving infrared glass case. On the shelves, Snickers, Cheez-Its, Little Debbie cakes, and Entenmann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts vied with bags of charcoal, ammunition, hunting knives. In the coolers, handmade sandwiches—including Roger’s famous olive cream cheese on whole wheat—enticed folks to stop. If they hadn’t tanked up in town, they pretty much had to stop at Roger’s, because gas was hard to find in these parts. The next pump was over the Blue Ridge Mountains in Waynesboro.
The outside floodlights hummed in the night air accompanied by the flutter of saturniid moths and the buzz of many bugs, a few zapped by the lights themselves. A long sign, ROGER’S CORNER, white with well-proportioned red block letters, ran almost the entire length of the roof. Roger might never achieve his fifteen minutes of Warholian fame in the world at large, but his sign announced his presence emphatically in these parts.
Shaker Crown, his Orioles baseball cap pulled up off his forehead, worn out from the day’s work and not much of a cook, leaned over the counter.
Henry Xavier, owner of the largest insurance company in town, had stopped by on his way home as had Ralph Assumptio, owner of the John Deere tractor dealership. Both men had farms on this west side of the county that were part of Jefferson Hunt territory and both men hunted with Sister. Most members didn’t say they hunted with the Jefferson Hunt. They’d simply say, “I hunt with Sister Jane.”
By so doing, they found out instantly if the person to whom they were talking knew anything about local society. If they were met with a blank they would graciously add, “the Jefferson Hunt.” It was one of those little pride things like the way members of Green Springs Valley Hounds outside of Baltimore never discussed how big their jumps were. They shrugged and would say about their horse, “Oh, he got over nicely.” Green Springs Valley Hounds, founded in 1892, boasted some stiff fences. It was not a hunt for the fainthearted, but such details were never explained, simply announced.
All groups cherish their ceremonies of togetherness, rituals that prove them set apart and special.
“Where’s your chew?” Roger was ringing up Shaker’s sandwich.
“Um . . .”
“Here it is. You left it on top of the Twinkies.” Henry Xavier, known only as Xavier, picked up the neat round tin of Copenhagen Black and handed it to Shaker.
“Ah, thanks.” Shaker tapped his head. “Vapor lock.”
Ralph joined them, banging on the counter the gallon of milk his wife had told him to pick up. “Day wasn’t fit for man nor beast.”
“We built new coops over there at Foxglove. And it was hateful.”
“Thank God.” Ralph lovingly stared at the round can of chew in Shaker’s hand. “Damn, I wish I hadn’t promised Frances I’d give that up.”
“Guess who showed up to bitch out Sister?” Shaker asked as he pulled soggy bills out of his pocket, gently peeling a fiver off the wad.
“Crawford,” Xavier offered.
“On a mission,” Roger simply said.
“Mission impossible.” Xavier smiled as the others laughed.
“That jumped-up jackass really believes we’ll elect him joint-master.” Ralph put his milk back in the cooler because he sensed this might be a ripening chat.
“Hey, if he dumps enough money into the club, who knows?” Xavier’s heavy brows, black with some gray, shot upward. “Money papers over many sins.”
“Sins I can handle. But he lacks the imagination to be a sinner. He’s just a Yankee jackass,” Ralph said as he walked back from the cooler.
“Aren’t they all?” Shaker winked.
“I was born in Connecticut.” Xavier smiled. He was a genial man becoming portly. In this heat he favored seersucker shirts, which somehow made him look fatter, not thinner.
“Oh, Xavier, you were raised here. Don’t turn P.C. on us.” Roger slapped at him over the counter.
“Well, do you guys want to know who rolled down the road or not?”
“Shoot,” Xavier said.
“Alice Ramy.”
“What did she want?” Ralph couldn’t stand it any longer; he grabbed a tin of Skoal menthol chew, pulled the string around it, and with delight placed a pinch between his lip and his gum. He closed his teeth in contentment.
“Oh, the usual. Got up in Janie’s face and said we couldn’t hunt there and she’d loose the hounds of hell on us”—Shaker enjoyed his little reference to hounds— “and that Peter’s harrier better stay out of her chicken coop, wait, make that her golden chicken coop.”
“And Sister smiled through it all,” Ralph said.
“And that’s why Crawford Howard can’t ever be a joint-master. His ego would be in the way. He’d fire back at the old battle-ax or buy up all the land around her and choke her out. Son of a bitch.” Xavier knew a good deal about Crawford’s local business dealings since he insured many of them. He hated Crawford, but business was business.
“True.” Roger clasped his hands. “But you guys need a joint-master so Sister can train him to her ways. She can’t live forever.”
“She might come close,” Shaker said with a laugh. “She was throwing around oak boards today like a thirty-year-old. Tough as nails, the old girl is.”
“Don’t make ’em like that anymore.” Xavier admired Sister. After all, he’d hunted in the field with her when he was a boy. She’d been in her forties then.
“I kind of felt sorry for Alice,” Shaker continued. “Guess Ben Sidell got her knickers in a knot. She felt he accused her of covering up for Guy, and you know, the whole ugly mess is flaring up all over again. Sister was real good about it. Said she’d call on her. I couldn’t take it that far, but I do feel kind of bad for Alice.”
“Alice doesn’t make it any easier, and I should know,” Ralph said, and shook his head. He was Alice’s nephew; his mother was Alice’s sister. “Everything has to be her way. If you take a can of beer out of her refrigerator, she opens the door behind you to make sure you didn’t disturb the other cans lined up inside. You can’t smoke a whole cigarette but what she whisks the ashtray and dumps the ashes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she’ll run you crazy. And now she’s out of control. At least when Paul was alive he’d make fun of her and snap her out of it.”
“Women dry up,” Xavier simply stated.
“And men get sentimental,” Roger, a sharp observer of folks, said. He reached for a brew. “Anyone? On me?”
“Thanks.” Xavier accepted a cold can of Bud while Roger reached for an import, Sol.
“People dry up if they aren’t tended to. I’m kind of worried about myself,” Shaker joked.
“I don’t want to hear, ‘There are no women out there.’ ” Xavier punched him. “Clean up, get out, and start looking.”