“Simon, have a good evening.” Pewter shook herself, then trotted to the screen door.
Pewter was never one to hang back when food was on the table.
Mrs. Murphy called up, “Peppermints in Mom’s barn coat. She forgot to give them to the horses.”
“Thanks!” Simon could taste those candies already.
Harry, hungry, pulled her tractor into the old shed the minute she heard the bell. Johnny Pop, the old John Deere, belched a few times, black puffs of exhaust rising like smoke signals from the exhaust pipe. Harry disengaged the PTO—the power takeoff—a rotating axle that powered attachments. Tomorrow before climbing back on she would dutifully check fluids on her old tractor. She had a mania for maintaining all equipment properly because she assumed she’d never be able to buy any more.
The two friends caught up on their own doings as well as everyone else’s. The animals gratefully ate the chicken that Susan had made for them.
“Susan, no wonder Ned married you.” Harry smiled as Susan put apple crisp before her for dessert.
“Bet he has days when he wonders,” Susan laughed as she sat down to the apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. “Oh, ran into Fair, and he said he’s off this coming weekend if we want to go to the furniture stores in Farmville.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Can’t make up my mind. If I go I’m afraid I’ll buy that chest of drawers I keep dreaming about. My husband won’t be happy about it.” She sighed, then smiled as she delivered ice cream and apple crisp to her mouth.
“Let’s wait until we get closer to the weekend. I don’t want to be tempted, either.” Harry savored the crunch of another mouthful of apple crisp. She changed the subject. “Is Mim going to Keeneland this year?”
“She’s waiting for Saratoga.”
“I’d love to go!” Harry adored Saratoga Springs, a beautiful city north of Albany, New York, and the center of the thoroughbred world in August.
“She’s selling this year.”
“She had those two yearlings by, uh, one’s by Fred Astaire and the other is by J. C. Smells, the Pennsylvania horse. But the mares are granddaughters of Secretariat. Everyone wants that blood, especially from the mares.”
“Mim is shrewd. Ran into her, too, and she said you had found Mary Patricia Reines’s class ring. I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”
“I’m sorry.” And Harry was. “I’ve been on overload and I didn’t know who it belonged to when I found it. Took it to Coop only because I found it not far from where I found Barry, poor guy. And she took it to Aunt Tally. It’s a long story about why she took it there instead of to Rick, but, anyway, Big Mim knew. And Mary Pat’s initials are inside the ring plus the date, 1945. Oh, Coop and I came back here after Aunt Tally’s and used Mom’s big magnifying glass. The inscription, which is reversed so you can use the ring for stamping, is Victuri te salutamus.”
“We salute you, Victory?” Susan’s Latin was rusty but serviceable. “Or, we who are about to be victorious salute you?”
“Close enough. The ring is worn but I think it’s Victuri. Could have been Victoria, she who conquers.”
“Victoria, -ae, is conquest, victory,” Susan said. “Easy to remember since it’s first declension. I forget fourth and, well, if you don’t use it you lose it.”
“Men say that, too.”
They burst out laughing.
“Well, victory is feminine but victor is masculine. It’s coming back. Victor, victoria.” Susan polished off the apple crisp. “That’s so good.”
“Is there more?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t, but, well, the thing about temptation is, if you can resist something it’s because it’s not tempting enough.” She walked over to the counter. “What about you?”
“I’m full.”
“I’m never full.”
“Susan, you’ve always been like that. You burn it off.”
“I burned it off until I turned thirty-five. Then my metabolism changed. I don’t know why yours didn’t.”
“Farm work.”
“Thank God you spend part of each day inside at the post office or you’d be rail thin.” She cut another large helping, using Harry’s spatula.
Harry needed more kitchen utensils. Susan made note of that for future presents.
“Didn’t we have fun putting in all those trees?”
“Fun? I about broke my back.”
“I loved it.”
“Harry, you love anything with a motor in it, and you and BoomBoom were in hog heaven. It’s so funny to see BoomBoom in the cab of that eighty-horsepower tractor. I mean, she really is one of the most beautiful, feminine women, and she works at it, too. But let her get in a car or a tractor and, like you, she’s as good as any gearhead. She is a gearhead!”
“I’ve gained a new appreciation for BoomBoom. I think that ordeal we survived at the Clam turned me around.” Harry mentioned the big sports arena at University of Virginia, where they had been pursued by two criminals.
They worked together, fought back, and lived. The cats and dog helped, too.
“I’m glad. Before it slips my mind—where is Mary Pat’s ring?”
“Here.” Harry removed it from her pinkie.
“Rick let you have it? I can’t believe it.”
“I found it. Cooper took it to him first thing Monday morning. They dusted it and examined it and, as you would suspect, my prints, Aunt Tally’s. Obviously, no one expected much, but Rick went through the motions. Rick said I could have it. Coop brought it by on her way home last night. Finders keepers.”
“That’s good luck. Finding a ring is good luck, even if in the end she had bad luck. I guess we’ll never know. Back to our Latin. Finding a dismembered hand is good luck. It means power is coming to you. Victory.” Susan pointed to the tiny inscription on the ring underneath the Episcopal shield.
“Vespasian was sitting in his tent after a battle and his dog brought him a hand. He knew he’d be emperor. 69 A.D., I think. It’s amazing how that Latin does stick in there.” She tapped her head. “That’s why I made Danny and Brooks take it. Danny is still taking it up at Cornell, and, Harry, he called me this morning and says he still doesn’t know what he wants to be. I thought he’d be a lawyer like his dad, but Brooks, you know, I think she’s heading that way. Well, it’s too early to tell. They have to find their own way.”
“You’re a good mother, Susan.”
“Tosh.” Susan waved away the compliment and handed back the ring to Harry. “What a lovely woman she was. Generous to a fault. I always thought she was brave because she never married, and in her generation you married even if you were as ugly as a mud fence.”
“Never thought about it. We were in grade school when she disappeared. It amazes me how sensitive you were to other people even when we were kids.”
“Mary Pat was an original. Remember the time she let us ride on her track? We were nine years old and we thought we were in the homestretch for the Preakness!” Susan glowed.
Harry, content after a full meal, lapsed into nostalgia, “I was on Silly Putty, that gray pony, and you were on Tickles. You won.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Wonder why Mary Pat didn’t marry. She was beautiful and rich. Maybe she figured if she married she’d lose control of her money,” Harry said. “Back then if you weren’t careful or if the trusts weren’t tied up, you did. I mean, women were chattel. And Mary Pat was making money from breeding horses. You could do that then. Maybe she didn’t want to risk losing that money. You know,” she sat upright, “I never did think about it. When you’re a kid you mostly think of yourself and your peers. I thought the world began with me.”
Susan laughed. “I think that’s the way every generation feels until it matures. Mary Pat didn’t marry because she was gay.”