“Most beautiful barn in Virginia.” Harry admired the place.
“Mouse alert!” Mrs. Murphy screeched to a stop, fishtailed into the feed room, and pounced at a hole in the corner to which the offending rodent had repaired.
Tucker stuck her nose in the feed room. “Where?”
“Here,” called Mrs. Murphy from the corner.
Tucker crouched down, putting her head between her paws. She whispered, “Should I stay motionless like you?”
“Nah, the little bugger knows we’re here. He’ll wait until we’re gone. You know a mouse can eat a quart of grain a week? You’d think that Warren would have barn cats.”
“Probably does. They smelled you coming and took off.” Tucker laughed as the tiger grumbled. “Let’s find Mom.”
“Not yet.” Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in the mouse hole and fished around. She withdrew a wad of fuzzy fabric, the result of eating a hole in a shirt hanging in the stable, no doubt. “Ah, I feel something else.”
A piece of paper stuck to Mrs. Murphy’s left forefinger claw as she slid it out of the hole. “Damn, if I could just grab him.”
Tucker peered down at the high-quality vellum scrap. “Goes through the garbage too.”
“So do you.”
“Not often.” The dog sat down. “Hey, there’s a little bit of writing here.”
Mrs. Murphy withdrew her paw from her third attempt at the mouse hole. “So there is. ‘Dearest darling.’ Ugh. Love letters make me ill.” The cat studied it again. “Too chewed up. Looks like a man’s writing, doesn’t it?”
Tucker looked closely at the shred. “Well, it’s not very pretty. Guess there are lovers at the barn. Come on.”
“Okay.”
They joined Harry as she inspected a young mare Warren and his father had purchased at the January sale at Keeneland. Since this was an auction for Thoroughbreds of any age, unlike the sales specifically for yearlings or two-year-olds, one could sometimes find a bargain. The yearling auctions were the ones where the gavel fell and people’s pockets suddenly became lighter than air.
“I’m trying to breed in staying power. She’s got the bloodlines.” He thought for a moment, then continued. “Do you ever wonder, Harry, what it’s like to be a person who has no blood? A person who shuffled through Ellis Island—one’s ancestors, I mean. Would you ever feel that you belong, or would there be some vague romantic attachment, perhaps, to the old country? I mean, it must be dislocating to be a new American.”
“Ever attend the citizenship ceremony at Monticello? They do it every Fourth of July.”
“No, can’t say that I have, but I’d better do it if I’m going to run for the state Senate.”
“I have. Standing out there on the lawn are Vietnamese, Poles, Ecuadorians, Nigerians, Scots, you name it. They raise their hands, and this is after they’ve demonstrated a knowledge of the Constitution, mind you, and they swear allegiance to this nation. I figure after that they’re as American as we are.”
“You are a generous soul, Harry.” Warren slapped her on the back. “Here, I’ve got something for you.” He handed her a carton of the rubber paving bricks. It was heavy.
“Thank you, Warren, these will come in handy.” She was thrilled with the gift.
“Oh, here. What kind of a gentleman am I? Let me carry this to the truck.”
“We could carry it together,” Harry offered. “And, by the bye, I think you should run for the state Senate.”
Warren spied a wheelbarrow and placed the carton in it. “You do? Well, thank you.” He picked up the arms of the wheelbarrow. “Might as well use the wheel. Just think if the guy who invented it got royalties!”
“How do you know a woman didn’t invent the wheel?”
“You got me there.” Warren enjoyed Harry. Unlike his wife, Ansley, Harry was relaxed. He couldn’t imagine her wearing nail polish or fretting over clothes. He rather wished he weren’t a married man when he was around Harry.
“Warren, why don’t you let me come on out here and bush-hog a field or two? These bricks are so expensive, I feel guilty accepting them.”
“Hey, I’m not on food stamps. Besides, these are an overflow and I’ve got nowhere else to use them. You love your horses, so I bet you could use them in your wash rack . . . put them in the center and then put rubber mats like you have in the trailer around that. Not a bad compromise.”
“Great idea.”
Ansley pulled into the driveway, her bronzed Jaguar as sleek and as sexy as herself. Stuart and Breton were with her. She saw Harry and Warren pushing the wheelbarrow and drove over to them instead of heading for the house.
“Harry,” she called from inside the car, “how good to see you.”
“Your husband is playing Santa Claus.” Harry pointed to the carton.
“Hi, Harry,” the boys called out. Harry returned their greeting with a wave.
Ansley parked and elegantly disembarked from the Jag. Stuart and Breton ran up to the house. “You know Warren. He has to have a new project. But I must admit the barn looks fabulous and the stuff couldn’t be safer. Now, you come on up to the house and have a drink. Big Daddy’s up there, and he loves a pretty lady.”
“Thanks, I’d love to, but I’d better push on home.”
“Oh, I ran into Mim,” Ansley mentioned to her husband. “She now wants you on the Greater Crozet Committee.”
Warren winced. “Poppa just gave her a bushel of money for her Mulberry Row project—she’s working over our family one by one.”
“She knows that, and she said to my face how ‘responsible’ the Randolphs are. Now she wants your stores of wisdom. Exact words. She’ll ask you for money another time.”
“Stores of wisdom.” The left side of Harry’s mouth twitched in a suppressed giggle as she looked at Warren. At forty-one, he remained a handsome man.
Warren grunted as he lifted the heavy carton onto the tailgate. “Is it possible for a woman to have a Napoleon complex?”
18
The human mouth is a wonderful creation, except that it can rarely remain shut. The jaw, hinged on each side of the face, opens and closes in a rhythm that allows the tongue to waggle in a staggering variety of languages. Gossip fuels all of them. Who did what to whom. Who said what to whom. Who didn’t say a word. Who has how much money and who spends it or doesn’t. Who sleeps with whom. Those topics form the foundation of human discourse. Occasionally the human can discuss work, profit and loss, and what’s for supper. Sometimes a question or two regarding the arts will pass although sports as a subject is a better bet. Rare moments bring forth a meditation on spirituality, philosophy, and the meaning of life. But the backbeat, the pulse, the percussion of exchange, was, is, and ever shall be gossip.
Today gossip reached a crescendo.
Mrs. Hogendobber picked up her paper the minute the paperboy left it in the cylindrical plastic container. That was at six A.M. She knew that Harry’s fading red mailbox, nailed to an old fence post, sat half a mile from her house. She usually scooped out the paper on her way to work, so she wouldn’t have read it yet.