CHAPTER 6
The winds shifted from the south, bringing in even more moisture, but at least the rains scaled back to steady precipitation instead of a deluge.
Landowners called asking Sister Jane not to chop up their fields, so she canceled Saturday’s cubbing. The landowners had more to fear from the trailers churning up the fields than from the horses.
She hated to cancel any hunt but decided not to grumble. She walked down to the kennels to play with the puppies.
Shaker joined her. Puppies were like people. The more you put into them, the more you got from them, the big difference being that puppies were more fun.
Sister and Shaker had worked together for twenty-two years as master and huntsman. They’d become so accustomed to each other, so relaxed when together, they could and did say anything to each other.
Neither was given to gusts of emotion. Both were dedicated to hounds and country life.
Each knew the other’s virtues, faults, and secrets, and as is the way with old friends, each knew something about the other hidden from them. Sister knew that Shaker, for all his physical toughness, feared women deep down. He simply thought women were difficult, Sister, his best friend, excluded. Shaker needed love but he didn’t know how to find it.
And Shaker knew that Sister’s surface amiability masked a steely determination born of rank competitiveness. She didn’t know that about herself, could never see that she had to best her older brother, a career officer, killed in Vietnam.
Each had endured the ups and downs of the other’s marriage, secret affairs.
When Raymond Junior died, Shaker proved as considerate and strong as Raymond Senior. The bond forged in that sorrow would never be broken.
These two would be best friends until death do us part—united by time, temperament, and foxhunting.
“Good litter.” Shaker rubbed a little fellow, turned over to display a fat belly.
“Bywaters blood.” She mentioned a Virginian hound bloodline developed by Burrell Frank Bywaters (1848–1922). The Bywaters family, after the War between the States, used those hounds who had survived that violent upheaval to breed a strain of American foxhound with nose, brains, drive, and cry. Hugh Bywaters (1872–1952) continued the tradition, as did other family members.
“That and a touch of Exmoor Landseer.” He smiled, naming a fine hound born in 1986 from England’s Exmoor hunt. Shaker studied bloodlines. It was his job but also his passion.
“Good litter. Good year.”
“Hope so.”
“Douglas seems a bit down. Do you know what’s wrong?”
“Woman trouble.”
“What woman?”
Shaker reached for another puppy. “Same one.”
“Oh no.” Sister sighed. “I thought that was all over.”
“If she could let go of the shot glass—” Shaker shrugged.
“In the blood. Bobby’s brother. Drove himself right into a tree the day he graduated from high school. Drunk as a skunk.”
“Bobby can put it away when he wants to. . . . He can hold his liquor, though.”
“True. Old Man Franklin loved his bottle, too. A lot of things pass in the blood.” She held a bright tricolor puppy in her lap. “Good and bad.”
“Girl’s beautiful.”
“Her sister, too. Course Betty was a great beauty when she was young. She’s put on a pound or two. Says it fills out the wrinkles.” Sister smiled, for she loved Betty.
“I guess.” A light red stubble shone on his chin.
“If any of us approached romance rationally, it would never happen and that would be the end of the human race.”
“Wouldn’t be such a bad thing.” He smiled sardonically. “I married one woman and woke up with another.” He referred to his dreary marriage, which had ended many years ago, although the scars remained visible.
“For all our faults humans are marginally amusing and sporadically talented. I don’t think any of these beautiful puppies will paint Night Watch.”
They sat in silence in the puppy wing of the kennel. The grown hounds were asleep in the adult wing, so it was quiet except for the patter of rain.
Sister spoke again: “I met with Fontaine Buruss.”
“Thought you might.”
“Time.”
“Naw.” He shook his head.
“I said that at sixty but it truly is time at seventy. We need a smooth transfer of power here over the next couple of years.”
“Won’t be smooth with Fontaine.”
“There are precious few candidates. At least the man knows hunting enough to know what he doesn’t know.”
“He’s an empty-headed peacock.”
“Don’t hold back.” She laughed.
“He is. Cock of the walk. Doesn’t know a damn thing about hounds.” Since Shaker’s whole life was hounds, that was his basis for assessing other foxhunters.
“But you do. One of my conditions, should I choose him, is he either stays out of the kennel or he shuts up and learns.”
“But he can’t learn. He’s too interested in how he looks.”
She knew there was a lot of truth in Shaker’s assessment. Men judged other men differently than women judged men. They were harsher. “Crawford Howard.”
“If that goddamned Yankee winds up as joint-master, I’m leaving. He knows less than Fontaine and he can’t ride a hair of that horse of his.”
“Fortunately, the horse is a saint. But if he were joint-master with me, he wouldn’t bother you.”
“The sight of him would turn my stomach. He thinks he’s a bleeding genius because he built strip malls in Indiana and Iowa. He made money and that’s all he’s done.”
“He plays the stock market and makes more. We need money.”
“That’s a fact.”
“What if I made them both joint-masters? There’s a strong current of support for Fontaine in the club. I can’t ignore that, nor can I ignore our financial dilemma. We need a businessman. We need someone who can think ahead. Crawford has that ability, Shaker. I can’t see my way out of this. I might have to make them both joint-masters.”
Shaker reached down, putting another puppy in Sister’s lap. “They’ll kill each other.”