CHAPTER 32

A Titleist golf ball, white, rolled to a stop next to a small grooming brush, bristles full of flaming red fur.

“You thought that golf ball was an egg when you brought it home, didn’t you?” Inky mischievously batted the golf ball.

Charlie, a natural collector of all sorts of objects, replied, “It’s fun to play with, but I don’t think the humans that play with them have much fun. They curse and throw their sticks. Why do they do it if they hate it so much?”

“Human psychology.” Inky observed the flat-faced species with great interest. For one thing, their curious locomotion intrigued her. She thought of human walking as a form of falling. They’d catch themselves just in time. It must be awful to totter around on two legs.

“They do like to suffer,” Charlie noted. “I believe they are the only species who willingly deny themselves food, sex, pleasure.”

“And they’re so happy when they finally give in and enjoy themselves.” Inky laughed.

Charlie’s den used to belong to Aunt Netty, but she’d wanted to be closer to the orchard, so she had moved last year. Netty was like a perfectionist lady forever in search of the ideal apartment.

Charlie had enlarged the den. Given his penchant for toys, he needed more space.

“Look at this.” He swept his face against the dandy brush. “Feels really good.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Cindy Chandler. She left it on the top of her tack trunk. When she forgets potato chips or crackers, that’s the greatest. Not only does the stuff taste good, the bags crinkle!”

“Some sounds are so enticing. Sister’s big wind chimes— I like to sit in the garden and listen to them ringing at night.”

Inky and Charlie, the same age, belonged to two different species of fox. Inky, a gray, was slightly smaller. She could climb trees with dexterity, and in many ways she was more modest than the red fox, who had to live in a grand place, making a conspicuous mound so everyone would know how important he was.

The reds found this lack of show on the part of the grays proof that they were beneath the salt. Nice, yes, but not truly first class. And their conversational abilities missed the mark most times, as well. The reds enjoyed chattering, barking, even yodeling when the mood struck. Grays were more taciturn.

Both types of fox, raised in loving homes, went out into the world at about seven or eight months. The annual diaspora usually started in mid-September in central Virginia.

And both types of fox believed themselves the most intelligent of the land creatures. They allowed that cats could be rather smart, dogs less so. Humans, made foolish by their own delusions of superiority, delighted the foxes because they could outwit them with such ease. Nothing like a small battalion of humans on horseback and forty to sixty hounds, all bent on chasing a fox, to reaffirm the fox’s sense of his own cleverness.

“Charlie, how did you disappear in the apple orchard?” Inky had heard from Diana how the red fox evaporated as if by magic, leaving not an atom of scent.

He puffed out his silky chest. “Inky, there I was in the middle of the apple orchard, fog like blinders, I tell you, the heavy scent of ripe apples aiding me immeasurably. I’d intended to duck into that abandoned den at the edge of the orchard. You know the one?” She nodded that she did, so he continued. “But along came Clytemnestra and Orestes. And I thought to myself that those hounds, young entry, mind you, have denned a fox each time they’ve been cubbing. Getting too sure of themselves. If I simply vanish, they’ll be bumping into one another running in circles, whimpering, ‘Where’d he go?’ I jumped on a big rock and up on Orestes’s back. Up and away.” He flashed his devilish grin.

“You shook their confidence,” she admiringly complimented him, “for which every fox is grateful.”

“The T’s and R’s are going to be very good, I think. Trinity, Tinsel, Trudy, and Trident, Rassle, and Ruthie. Good. And now that the D’s are in their second season, well, we may have to pick up the pace. Aunt Netty was right.”

“Usually is,” Inky agreed.

Outside, the arrival of soft twilight announced the approaching night.

“Would you like a golf ball?”

“That would be fun.” Inky liked to play.

“I know where she keeps them at Foxglove. It’s a piece of cake to reach into the golf bag and filch one. And her house dog sleeps right through it.”

“Charlie,” Inky said and blinked, “did you notice anything unusual in that fog when you were riding Orestes?”

“I smelled Ralph. He sent off a strong, strong odor of fear. And I heard two other riders moving in different directions. They weren’t together. I know one was Sybil, because I could smell. I couldn’t get a whiff of the other rider. Too far away.” He rolled upright. “Don’t you find it odd that humans kill one another? To kill for food, well, we must all survive, but to kill members of your own species? Very nasty.”

“You know, sometimes a vixen will go into a killing frenzy to teach her cubs how to kill,” Inky soberly said. “I think humans can go into killing frenzies, too, but for a different reason. I worry that this person might do that.”

“Possibly.” Charlie swept forward his whiskers. “You know that Cly and Orestes didn’t see the killer or they would have blabbed to everyone. Cly can’t keep a secret. Cows are dumb as posts.” He laughed.

As the two left the den, Inky wondered if murder was a pleasure for humans the way catching a mouse was a pleasure for her. If so, how could a killer ever stop killing?