As the auctioneer sang, insulted, joked, and carried on, Harry and Blair stood at the edge of the auction ground. A light rain dampened the attendance, and as temperatures were dropping, the rain could quite possibly turn to snow. People stamped their feet and rubbed their hands together. Even though she wore silk long johns, a T-shirt, a heavy sweater, and her down jacket, the cold nipped at Harry’s nose, hands, and feet. She could always keep her body warm but the extremities proved difficult.
Blair shifted from foot to foot. “Now you’re sure I need a seventy-horsepower tractor?”
“You can get along with forty-five or so, but if you have seventy you can do everything you’ll ever want to do. You want to turn up that back field of yours and fertilize it, right? You’ll want to bush-hog. You’ve got a lot to do at Foxden. I know that John Deere is old but it’s been well maintained and if you have a tiny bit of mechanical ability you can keep it humming.”
“Do I need a blade?”
“To scrape the driveway? You could get through the winter without one. It doesn’t usually snow much in Virginia. Let’s concentrate on the essentials.”
Life in the country was proving more complicated and expensive than Blair had imagined. Fortunately, he had resources, and fortunately, he had Harry. Otherwise he would have walked into a dealer and paid top dollar for a piece of new equipment, plus oodles of attachments he didn’t need immediately and might never even use.
The green and yellow John Deere tractor beckoned to more folks than Blair. Bidding was lively but he finally prevailed at twenty-two thousand five hundred, which was a whopping good buy. Harry did the bidding.
Harry, thrilled with his purchase, crawled up into the tractor, started her up, and chugged over in first gear to her gooseneck, a step-up. She’d brought along a wooden ramp, which weighed a ton. She kept the tractor running, put it in neutral, and locked the brake.
“Blair, this might take another man.”
He lifted one end. “How’d you get this thing on in the first place?”
“I keep it on the old hay wagon and when I need it I take it to the earthen ramp and then shove it off into the trailer, backed up to the ramp. I expand my vocabulary of abuse too.” She noticed Mr. Tapscott, who had purchased a dump truck. “Hey, Stuart, give me a hand.”
Mr. Tapscott ambled over, a tall man with gorgeous gray hair. “’Bout time you replenished your tractor, and you got the best deal today.”
“Blair bought it. I just did the bidding.” Harry introduced them.
Mr. Tapscott eyed Blair. As he liked Harry his eye was critical. He didn’t want any man hanging around who didn’t have some backbone.
“Harry showed me the roadwork you did out at Reverend Jones’. That was quite a job.”
“Enjoyed it.” Mr. Tapscott smiled. “Well, you feeling strong?”
To assist in this maneuver, Travis, Stuart’s son, joined in. The men easily positioned the heavy ramp, and Harry, in the driver’s seat, rolled the tractor into the gooseneck. Then the men slid the ramp into the trailer, leaning it against the tractor.
“Thank you, Mr. Tapscott.” Blair held out his hand.
“Glad to help the friend of a friend.” He smiled and wished them good day.
Once in her truck, Harry drove slowly because she wanted the ramp to bang up against the tractor only so much.
“I’m going to take this to my place, because we can drive the tractor straight off. Then you can help me slide off the wooden ramp. Wish they made an aluminum ramp that I could use, but no luck.”
“At the hunt meets I’ve seen trailers with ramps.”
“Sure, but those kinds of trailers cost so much—especially the aluminum ones, which are the best. My stock trailer is serviceable but nothing fancy like a ramp comes with it.”
She backed up to the earthen ramp. Took two tries. They could hear Tucker barking in the house. They rolled off the tractor, after which they pushed and pulled on the wooden ramp.
“Well, how are we going to get it off the bank?” Blair was puzzled, as the heavy wooden ramp was precariously perched on the earthen rampart.
“Watch.” Harry pulled the gooseneck away, hopped out of the truck, and unhitched it. Then she climbed back in the truck and backed it over to the old hay wagon. A chain hung from the wagon’s long shaft, a leftover from the days when it was drawn by horses. She dropped the chain over the ball hitch on her bumper. Harry wisely had both hitches on her trailer: the steel plate and ball bolted into the bed of her truck for the gooseneck and another hitch welded onto the frame under the bed of the truck, with its adjustable ball mount. Then she drove the hay wagon alongside the embankment.
“Okay, now we push the ramp onto the wagon.”
Blair, sweating now despite the temperature, pushed the heavy wooden ramp onto the beckoning platform. “Presto.”
Harry cut the motor, rolled up her windows, and got out of the truck. “Blair, I spoke too soon. I think it’s going to snow. We can put the tractor in my barn or you can drive it over to yours and I’ll follow you in your truck.”
As if on cue the first snowflake lazed out of the darkening sky.
“Let’s leave it here. I don’t know how to work one of these contraptions yet. You still gonna teach me?”
“Yeah, it’s easy.”
The heavens seemed to have opened a zipper then; snow poured out of the sky. The two of them walked into the house after Harry parked the tractor in the barn. The animals joyously greeted their mother. She put on coffee and dug out lunch meat to make sandwiches.
“Harry, your truck isn’t four-wheel drive, is it?”
“No.”
“Hold those sandwiches for about twenty minutes. I’ll run down to the market and get food, because this looks like a real snowstorm. Your pantry is low and I know mine is.”
Before she could protest he was gone. An hour later he returned with eight bags of groceries. He’d bought a frying chicken, a pork roast, potatoes, potato chips, Cokes, lettuce, an assortment of cheese, vegetables, apples, and some for the horses too. Pancake mix, milk, real butter, brownie mix, a six-pack of Mexican beer, expensive coffee beans, a coffee grinder, and two whole bags of cat and dog food. He truly astounded Harry by putting the food away and making a fire in the kitchen fireplace, using a starter log and some of the split wood she had stacked on the porch. Her protests were ignored.
“Now we can eat.”
“Blair, I don’t know how to make a pork roast.”
“You make a good sandwich. If this keeps up like the weather report says, there’ll be two feet of snow on the ground by tomorrow noon. I’ll come over and show you how to cook a pork roast. Can you make waffles?”
“I watched Mother do it. I bet I can.”
“You make breakfast and I’ll make dinner. In between we’ll paint your tack room.”
“You bought paint too?”
“It’s in the back of the truck.”
“Blair, it’ll freeze.” Harry jumped up and ran outside, followed by Blair. They laughed as they hauled the paint into the kitchen, their hair dotted with snowflakes, their feet wet. They finished eating, took off their shoes, and sat back down with their feet toward the fire.
Mrs. Murphy sprawled before the fire, as did Tucker.
“How come you haven’t asked me about taking BoomBoom to the Knickerbocker Ball?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“I apologize for not asking you, but BoomBoom has been helpful and for two seconds there I found her intriguing, so I thought I’d take her to the Waldorf as sort of a thank you.”
“Like buying the groceries?”
He pondered this. “Yes and no. I don’t like to take advantage of people and you’ve both been helpful. She met someone there that I went to college with, Orlando Heguay. A big hit.” He wiggled his toes.
“Rich?”
“Um, and handsome too.”
Harry smiled. As the twilight deepened, a soft purple cast over the snow like a
melancholy net. Blair told her about his continuing struggles with his father, who had wanted him either to be a doctor like himself or go into business. He talked about his two sisters, his mother, and finally he got to the story about his murdered girlfriend. Blair confessed that although it had happened about a year and a half ago he was just now beginning to feel human again.
Harry sympathized and when he asked her about her life she told him that she had studied art history at Smith, never quite found her career direction, and fell into the job at the post office which, truthfully, she enjoyed. Her marriage had been like a second job and when it ended she was amazed at the free time she had. She was casting about for something to do in addition to the post office. She was thinking of being an agent for equine art but she didn’t know enough about the market. And she was in no hurry. She, too, was beginning to feel as if she was waking up.
She wondered whether to ask him to stay. His house was so barren, but it didn’t seem right to ask him just yet. Harry was never one to rush things.
When he got up to go home, she hugged him good-bye, thanked him for the groceries, and said she’d see him in the morning.
She watched his lights as he drove down the curving driveway. Then she put on her jacket and took out scraps for the possum.
* * *
45
Tucked into bed with the latest Susan Isaacs novel, Harry was surprised when the phone rang.
Fair’s voice crackled over the line. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, kind of.”
“The lines are icing up. You might lose your power and your phone. Are you alone?”
“What kind of question is that? Are you?”
“Yes. I’m worried about you, Harry. Who knows what will happen if you’re cut off from the world?”
“I’m in no danger.”
“You don’t know that. Just because nothing has happened recently doesn’t mean that you might not be in danger.”
“Maybe you’re in danger.” Harry sighed. “Fair, is this your way of apologizing?”
“Uh . . . well, yes.”
“Is the bloom off the rose with BoomBoom?”
A long silence filled with static was finally broken. “I don’t know.”
“Fair, I was your wife and before that I was one of your best friends. Maybe we’ll get back to being best friends over time. So take that into consideration when I ask this next question. Have you spent a lot of money on her?”
This time the silence was agonizing. “I suppose I have, by my standards. Harry, it’s never enough. I buy her something beautiful—you know, an English bridle, and those things aren’t cheap. But anyway, for example, an English bridle, and she’s all over me, she’s so happy. Two hours later she’s in a funk and I’m not sensitive to her needs. Does she ever run out of needs? Is she this way with women or is this something reserved for men?”
“She’s that way with women. Remember her sob story to Mrs. MacGregor and how Mrs. MacGregor helped her out and lent her horses—this was way back before she married Kelly. Mrs. MacGregor wearied of it before long. She’d have to clean the tack and the horse for BoomBoom, who showed up late for their rides. She’s just, oh, I don’t know. She’s just not reliable. The best thing that ever happened to her was marrying Kelly Craycroft. He could afford her.”
“Well, that’s just it, Harry. We know Kelly left a respectable estate and she’s crying poor.”
“Pity gets more money out of people than other emotions, I guess. Are you strapped? Did you spend . . . a lot?”
“Well . . . more than I could afford.”
“Can you pay your rent on the house and the office?”
“That’s about all I can pay for.”
Harry thought awhile. “You know, if you owe on equipment you can ask for smaller payments until you’re back on your feet. And if your hunt club dues are a problem, Jock couldn’t be more understanding. He’ll work with you.”
“Harry”—Fair’s words nearly choked him—“I was a fool. I wish I’d given the money to you.”
Tears rolled down Harry’s cheeks. “Honey, it’s water over the dam. Just get back on your feet and take a break from women, a sabbatical.”
“Do you hate me?”
“I did. I’m over that, I hope. I wish things had turned out differently. My ego took a sound beating, which I didn’t appreciate, but who would? It’s amazing how the most reasonable people become unreasonable and, well, not very bright, when love or sex appears. Does it even appear? I don’t know what it is anymore.”
“Me, neither.” He swallowed. “But I know you loved me. You never lied to me. You worked alongside me and you didn’t ask for things. How we lost the fire, I don’t know. One day it was gone.”
Now it was Harry’s turn to be quiet. “Who knows, Fair, who knows? Can people get that feeling back? Maybe some can but I don’t think we could have. It doesn’t mean we’re bad people. It slipped away somehow. Over time we’ll come back to that place where we can appreciate—I guess that’s the word—the good things about each other and the years we had. Most of Crozet doesn’t believe that’s possible between a man and a woman but I hope we prove them wrong.”
“Me too.”
After he hung up Harry dialed Susan and told all. By now she was working on a good cry. Susan consoled her and felt happy that perhaps she and Fair could be friends. Once Harry purged herself she returned to her primary focus these days, a focus she shared only with Susan: the murders.
“No leads on that money in Ben’s portfolio?”
“Not that I know of, and I pumped Cynthia Cooper at the supermarket too,” Susan replied. “And Ned has worked with Cabell, who’s taking this hard.”
“And nothing is missing from the bank?”
“No. And they’ve checked and double-checked. Everyone asks that same question. It’s driving Cabell crazy.”
“Did you get into any more jewel boxes?”
“Very funny. My idea wasn’t so good after all.”
“I felt positively guilty asking Miranda to go through her stuff. She’s in her Christmas mood. Even the mail doesn’t stop her. Did you see her tree? I think it’s bigger than the one at the White House.”
“It’s the Christmas-tree pin that kills me, all those little twinkling lights on her bosom. She must have a mile of wire under her blouse and skirt,” Susan laughed.
“You going to Mim’s party?”
“I didn’t know we were allowed to miss it.”
“I’m going to wear the earring. It’s our only chance.”
“Harry, don’t do that.”
“I’m doing it.”
“Then I’m telling Rick Shaw.”
“Tell him afterwards. Otherwise he’ll come and take the earring. Which reminds me, do you have an earring without a mate . . . ?”
“Thanks a lot, pal!”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. I have so few earrings I was hoping you’d have one I could have, preferably a big one.”
“Why?”
“So I can trade with the possum.”
“Harry, for heaven’t sake, it’s an animal. Take it some food.”
“I do that. This little guy likes shiny things. I have to trade.”
Susan sighed dramatically. “I’ll find something. You’re looney-tunes.”
“What’s that say about you? You’re my best friend.”
On this note they hung up.
Mrs. Murphy asked Tucker, “Did you know that cats wore golden earrings in ancient Egypt?”
“I don’t care. Go to sleep.” Tucker rolled over.
“What a crab,” the cat thought to herself before she crawled under the covers. She liked to sleep with her head on the pillow next to Harry’s.
* * *
46
All through the night heavy snow fell over Central Virginia. A slight rise in the temperature at dawn changed the snow to freezing rain, and soon the beautiful white blanket was encased in thick ice. By seven the temperature plu
nged again, creating more snow. Driving was treacherous because the ice was hidden. State police blared warnings over the TV and radio for people to stay home.
Blair spun around in front of the barn when he tried to get his dually down the driveway. He grabbed his skis and poles and slid cross-country to the creek between his property and Harry’s. The edges of the creek were caked with ice; icicles hung down from bushes, and tree branches sparkled even in the gray light and the continued snow. Blair removed his skis, threw them to the other side of the creek, and then used his poles to help him get across. Any stepping stone he could find was slick as a cue ball. What normally took a minute or two took fifteen. By the time he arrived at Harry’s back door he was panting and red in the face. The waffles returned his vigor.
When Harry and Blair reached the tack room it was warm enough to paint, because Harry had set up a space heater in the middle of the room. They painted all day. Blair cooked his pork roast as promised. Over dessert they sat talking. He borrowed a strong flashlight, strapped on his skis, and left for home early, at 8:30 P.M. He called Harry at close to 9:00 P.M. to let her know he’d finally made it. They agreed it had been a great day and then they hung up.
* * *
47
The snow continued to fall off and on through Sunday. Monday morning Susan Tucker slowly chugged out to Harry’s to pick her up for work. The ancient Jeep, sporting chains, was packed with Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker. As they drove back to town Harry was astonished at the number of vehicles left by the side of the road or that had slipped off and now reposed at the bottom of an embankment. She knew the owners of most of the cars too.
“What a boon to the body shop,” Harry remarked.
“And what a boon to Art Bushey. Most of those people will be so furious they’ll tow the car out as soon as possible and take it over to him for a trade. Four-wheel drive is more expensive to run but you gotta have it in these parts.”
“I know.” Harry sounded mournful.
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