“Never!” Betty vehemently spoke.
The rest rumbled their agreement.
“Well, what I meant to say is, what if you have to leave us, what if it’s not your idea?” Crawford recognized his blunder and wished these damned Virginians weren’t so subtle. And how they prized it, too. Made him sick. Everything took twice as long because of their damned subtlety.
“You mean if I died?” Her gray eyebrows raised quizzically.
“Well—yes,” Crawford sheepishly replied.
“The kennels will still belong to the Jefferson Hunt Club, as will the rest of Roughneck Farm.” She had dropped a bombshell.
No one knew what to say.
Betty started to cry.
Bobby also wiped away tears. “Now, we don’t have to go into this. It’s not our business.”
“You know, I wasn’t withholding it to be obstructionist.” Sister folded her hands on the table. “It’s just no one likes to think of their own demise. When Peter died, it shook me.” Murmurs echoed this sentence, as it had upset all of them. “He’d had good, long innings. I never thought Peter would die. He was made of iron, but the last year when he didn’t ride anymore, I guess deep down, I knew. When a foxhunter stops riding, well?” She shrugged, and the others knew what she meant.
“You aren’t going anytime soon. Only the good die young.” Bobby recovered himself.
Everyone laughed.
“I should live forever, in that case. But I had to think about how I had arranged my effects. And I’d pretty much left everything as Raymond and I had once decided. But that time is past. I have no true physical heirs, but I have plenty of hound children and horse children— and your children.” She smiled warmly. “The Jefferson Hunt will always have a home. I wish I could leave you more money. Who knows what the future will bring. But you have the physical plant.”
“Hear! Hear!” Ken applauded.
The others followed his lead.
“So we don’t need to go into debt.” Ralph Assumptio’s long face lit up.
“I rather wanted this to be a surprise, but Crawford, your concern, which is quite legitimate, forced my hand.”
“I certainly had no idea. I didn’t mean to.” He truly meant it.
“And I agree with you, Crawford, that a showgrounds would help us,” Sister said. “We might even be able to rent it out to other groups and make a bit of money. Imagine that, a hunt club more in the black than in the red.”
Everyone laughed again.
“You have an idea about the showgrounds?” Crawford ran his forefinger and middle finger over his lips, an unconscious gesture of thoughtfulness.
“I think it’s a good idea, but I really don’t want it at Roughneck Farm while I’m alive. I couldn’t stand the commotion.”
“What if I bought a piece of property near your place?” Crawford suggested.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Ken said. His voice carried authority, an authority he didn’t have in his youth. “Naturally, I’ll need to discuss this with Tedi, Edward, and Sybil, but there is a triangle of land, those acres on our western border. The old logging road goes into it. Perhaps we could donate that to the club and start on the showgrounds next spring, if all goes well.”
“Still taking on debt,” Ralph grumbled, lowering his head like a bull. He’d been sullen lately. “Bulldozers, grading—why, just the preparation for a ring can easily cost thirty thousand dollars. It’s the drainage that gets you. Now, I don’t want to discourage your gift, Ken, assuming your wife, mother-in-law, and father-in-law agree, but a building program would still mean debt—a grandstand, fencing, fencing around the show ring, that cash register starts ringing up. And you need a sprinkler system, otherwise you’ve got a dust bowl in the summer. You need a tractor and harrow to drag the ring. You need night lights. You need P.A. equipment, otherwise no one will know what’s going on, and I can tell you right now a bullhorn isn’t going to cut it. That’s for starters, folks. And how big do you want the ring? Big. Doesn’t do you a bit of good to build a small one.”
“Now, Ralph, we can figure these things out.” At that moment Crawford wanted more than anything to strangle Ralph.
“He’s right, though,” Betty chimed in. “It’s a long-term project, but if the land is donated, with effort and a lot of bake sales, hunter trials, and hunter paces, we could raise the money over the years and then build it.” Betty feared debt, too. She and Bobby struggled to pay their mortgage sometimes.
The last thing Betty, Bobby, or Sister wanted to do was wear out the members by always trying to squeeze money or work out of them.
Ronnie Haslip, uncharacteristically silent for most of the meeting, said, “If you build a ring, you should build it three hundred feet by one hundred and fifty feet and board it solid so you can also play arena polo there. Could bring in a little more revenue. And you might want to think about stables, the kind that used to be at the Warrenton Fairgrounds. Then you’ve expanded your versatility.” He held up his hand as Ralph opened his mouth. “And your budget, I know.”
Bobby twiddled with his pencil, then spoke, a rather high voice from such a large body. “How can we do this without exhausting our members? This is a huge project. If we add more obligations like more shows, hunter trials, bake sales, you name it, we are going to plain wear out our people. Today, just about everybody works a real job and they don’t have time.”
“Well, what if I headed up an exploratory committee?” Crawford suggested. “Maybe we could float a bond so people aren’t going crazy with these nickel-and-dime projects.”
“My nickel-and-dime project brought in fourteen thousand dollars last year,” Ralph reminded them. He was justifiably proud of his horse shows, one of which was A rated.
“No disrespect, Ralph, but those shows are a lot of work,” Ronnie said. “If Claiborne and Tom Bishop didn’t give us the use of the Barracks,” Ronnie named their large indoor arena, “gratis, we’d be lucky to make a thousand dollars. And it takes just about everyone in the club to work that big show you do, the A one.”
Shows were rated by the American Horse Shows Association. Tempting though it was to think of it as a report card, it usually reflected the level of competition, the courses, etc. A show rated B wasn’t necessarily a bad show, it was just somewhat simpler and didn’t attract many professional riders who wanted to gain points, rather like professional tennis players trying to keep their rankings on the computer.
Sister kept out of most board discussions unless they related to hounds, hunt staff, hunt territory. She kept out of this one but was listening intently.
“Crawford, do you have dollar figures in mind?” Ken short-circuited Ralph’s indignation. “These horse shows are a godsend to us even if they are a lot of work. How much more could we bring in if we had this facility?”
“You could charge the polo club, homeless since the old fairgrounds were torn down, at least five thousand a summer. Other groups would be charged on a day rate. I can get figures from Expoland, Commonwealth Park, and the Virginia Horse Center.”
“Those are big operations.” Bobby tried not to let his personal animosity for Crawford cloud his judgment.
Crawford was struggling with the same problem in reverse. “I also thought I could see what the Albemarle County Fair brings in. And I will get a variety of construction figures based on different types of footing, ring sizes, stuff like that. I expect the exploratory process will take four to five months.”
“The fair suffered the last two years, rained out,” Betty flatly stated. “It’s a huge problem.”
“Which is why we also need an indoor arena if we’re going to do this right,” Ronnie said, gathering steam. “And I don’t want to do this if we aren’t going to do it right. Have any of you ever seen the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Kentucky or the Shelbyville Fairgrounds? They’re beautiful. Right out of the 1890s. If we’re going to do this, then we must do it properly and it should be a thing of beauty.”