Red Fox Road

by Frances Greenslade

  “What’s wrong with it?” Mom said. Her voice sounded dry, tight.

  Dad didn’t answer. He pulled the hood latch and got out. We watched him through the crack as he reached for the oil dipstick, pulled it out and looked at it. He closed the hood and went around to the side of the truck to look under it.

  I saw him stand, brush off his jeans and look up the road. I don’t think Mom saw that.

  He came back and reached under his seat, pulled out the crowbar he kept there. Then he went to the back and tapped on something.

  He got back in and tried to start it again. The same dull clunk. He turned to Mom.

  “It looks like we might have a hole in the oil pan.”

  “Can you fix it?” That was probably a sign of the faith that Mom had in Dad. But I knew something she didn’t, because I spent Saturdays in the garage with Dad when he worked on our cars that had broken down. I brought him coffee after supper when it was getting dark and chilly out and he had the work light rigged up to shine on whatever engine part he was working on. I liked the smell of oil, and the WD-40 he used to clean bolts. I knew how to test a spark plug gap and trace and cut a new gasket, how to take a tire off if the nut was stuck. And I knew that if we had a hole in the oil pan, that sound we heard when Dad turned the key meant the engine was seized and plugging the hole in the oil pan wouldn’t help. We would not be driving out on this logging road. We would not be driving anywhere.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “We can’t fix it, Del,” Dad said. “We’re in a bit of a situation here.”

  “A situation?” Mom’s voice rose. “You mean we’re stranded here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I’ll have to walk out to the main road. It’s not that far.”

  “You can’t walk out. You have no idea where you’re going.”

  “I’ve got the GPS. I can see the road, Del.”

  “The GPS got us into this ‘situation,’ as you call it, in the first place.”

  I wasn’t scared, exactly. But I didn’t like that Mom was mad at Dad, that now it seemed as if she’d been right and he shouldn’t have taken the back road into the wilderness. It seemed to me that Mom was usually right, in that brutally practical way she had, but I couldn’t help myself from taking Dad’s side most of the time anyway. Something made me want to stick up for him, and made me wish she wouldn’t point out the mistakes he made.

  I know you’re not supposed to love one of your parents better than the other. Then again, you’re not supposed to love one of your children better than the other either.

  Dad was looking under the truck again, as if he might see something different than he’d seen the first time. I went and joined him. The road and the rocks were stained dirty brown.

  “Yup. As I suspected,” Dad said.

  “Is the engine seized?”

  “I’d say so. It must have been that rock we hit a while back when we bottomed out. We must have been losing oil ever since.”

  Dad and I both looked down the road, in the direction we were going. It looked less like a road and more like a washed-out trail, scarred with deep runnels where rain had cut into it. A tumble of jagged rocks had collected in the dips. About fifty feet ahead, trees swallowed the road as it curved out of sight.

  “I think we’re close. This should join up with the highway up there. It shouldn’t take me long to cover it.”

  “You’re going to walk?”

  “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s walking,” he said, smiling at me.

  Mom got out of the truck. “I think we should just wait for help,” she said. “If we had a cell phone…”

  “A cell phone wouldn’t work out here, even if we did have one,” Dad said. “And I think we could wait a long time for someone to come down here.”

  “I thought you said it was a logging road. It’s used all the time.”

  “I may have been wrong about that.”

  “Wait until tomorrow at least. We can make a fire. Maybe someone will spot it.”

  Dad cleared his throat and spat in the dust. He spoke quietly. “No one’s going to take any notice of a fire in the middle of the Oregon bush.”

  They must have both been thinking what I was thinking: that no one would know we were here, and no one would even worry about us for probably a good two weeks. We had not taken the most direct route, either, even before we took the shortcut. Dad said we’d take the faster route back after the hike, when we’d be eager to get home. But for the drive down we’d go into what he called “more interesting country,” through the forests of Oregon. That didn’t sound like him; except when I thought about it more, it seemed to me he was stalling. He’d rather be driving than hiking. Dad really wasn’t an outdoorsy guy. His idea of adventure, Mom said, was taking a Sunday drive.

  “We’ve got everything we need to camp,” I said. “I can set up the tent.”

  “Everything except food,” said Mom.

  “We’ve got food,” I said. “We’ve got some, anyway.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said. He turned to untie the ropes on the tarp covering our gear. “I’ll walk out of here tomorrow. I’ll start at first light.”

  I climbed onto the back of the truck with a strange feeling of excitement bubbling in my chest. I should have been afraid, but I’d often imagined how I’d survive if I got stranded in the bush, and now here we were. It was only for a night, but still. It was a chance to practice. I pulled out the tent. It was a small lightweight one for backpacking and was really better suited for two people than three, but I’d convinced Mom and Dad that it would be big enough for our Grand Canyon trip. The website said you could sleep outside under the stars, and that was my plan.

  “Where should we set up?”

  Mom and Dad both looked into the woods, but they seemed not to have really heard my question. I jumped down and took the tent into a clearing that was just a few feet off the road.

  “I’d rather be on the road,” Mom said. “If someone comes down here, I don’t want to miss them.”

  “It’s too rocky, though.”

  She looked at the tent distractedly and said, “Put it where you want then.”

  Dad went off to hike farther up the road to see what condition it was in. I set the tent up easily myself, and rolled our sleeping bags out inside it—Dad’s on the outside, Mom’s in the middle, mine beside hers. Then I went to gather wood. When I got back with the first armload of branches, Mom was sitting on the tailgate, rolling a cigarette from her secret tobacco pouch.

  “I thought you quit,” I said.

  “I did quit.”

  “But you brought your pouch.”

  “It’s just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Emergencies.” She had her head down and was rolling carefully. She ran her tongue delicately along the edge of the cigarette paper, then met my eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you know what.”

  “This isn’t an emergency.”

  “It’s not?” She struck a match and it flared on the end of the cigarette, the skunk-sweet smell of her special tobacco scenting the air.

  “It’s an adventure,” I said.

  “Okay, Francie. You have your idea of an adventure and I have my idea of an emergency. Can we agree on that?”

  “Can I use your matches? I want to light the fire.”

  “It’s not too early?”

  “I’ll gather lots of wood. It’ll be better with a fire. I’ll make you a seat beside it.”

  She handed them to me, then closed her eyes and took a long slow inhale.

  I went back to the clearing where I’d set up the tent. The sunlight blinking through the budding branches had softened already. The sun sat just above the mountains. When it sank behind them, it would get chilly. The woodp
ecker’s rapid staccato rang like a small jackhammer. Ms. Fineday would say to pay attention to the woodpecker. It wasn’t afraid. The woods were its home and everything it needed was there.

  I looked for the best place to make the fire. It couldn’t be under low-hanging branches, but I wanted some protection from the wind so the embers wouldn’t scatter if a gust came up.

  A rotting log about thirty feet long lay on the forest floor. I found another, shorter one and dragged it over to place at a right angle to the long one. I’d make the fire in the corner, between the protection of the two logs. I had no shovel, so I used a rock and my hands to dig a hole first. The sweet, mushroomy peat smell of the soil rose up. I tore some of the beards of dried lichen from the hemlock branches and set them among some twigs and small branches. Then I went and gathered some more, bigger branches. The woods were growing shadowy and cooler. The sun would disappear soon.

  Making a fire was all about preparation. If you did it right, all you’d need would be to set a single match to it. Grandma taught me that. We built fires when I stayed with her out at her cabin on Gem Lake and Grandma challenged me to build a one-match fire. Even in the rain, I could do it, if I could find dry tinder, peelings of inside bark or grass.

  Grandma died two years ago and the cabin was closed up now. We hadn’t been there since she died. Whenever I asked to go, Mom said all it meant was work for her. Mice had overrun the place and the pump for water no longer worked. And Dad said it meant we’d have to rent a boat and trailer, since Grandpa had sold the one Grandma used and there was no road in. But I knew there was more to it than that.

  We never went. I wondered whether the loons still made their nests in the cove by Grandma’s cabin, or if the eagles had gotten them. I didn’t care if there were mice; I thought the cabin was the most beautiful place I’d ever been. When I learned to drive, I’d go there myself every weekend, canoe over so I didn’t need a trailer, and I’d live there like Grandma did, all by herself, all summer long. I didn’t know if I believed in ghosts, but I liked to think that Grandma was living there still.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mom said we should gather all our food so we’d know what we had. I had two pepperoni sticks and three pieces of Juicy Fruit gum. Mom had half a bag of barbecue chips and almost a full bag of Scotch mints. Dad had about a quarter bag of sunflower seeds. Then there was a block of cheese, half a loaf of bread, three apples and three granola bars. The apples and granola bars were supposed to be our afternoon snack before we got to the motel. We all had our bottles of water, too, but getting more water shouldn’t be a problem, because there was still snow in places and we had the stove and fuel.

  “It’s a shame we don’t have coffee,” Mom said. “I don’t know how I’m going to face the morning without coffee.”

  I poked at the fire with a stick. “We could make tea from fir needles. Actually, there’s lots of things you can make tea from.”

  She smiled. “I don’t think fir needles are going to quite cut it as a coffee substitute.”

  “Dandelion root. I think I’ve heard of that.”

  “I’ll pass. I guess I can live without coffee for one morning of my life.”

  Dad came back and squatted by the fire, warming his hands.

  “It gets chilly when that sun’s gone, doesn’t it?”

  “What did you find up there?”

  “It’s rough, but it’s a road. I followed it a ways. Pretty rocky. But the GPS is clearly showing the highway up ahead. I’m guessing it’s about fifteen miles. I really can’t miss it if I just keep walking south.”

  “Famous last words,” Mom said.

  “I’ll get up at first light. We’ll be out of here by noon, early afternoon at the latest.”

  “Well that’s good because we don’t have much to eat.”

  “We won’t starve,” Dad said.

  “People can go without food longer than you think,” I said. “We can’t go very long without water. But as long as you’re drinking water, you can last a long time. Gandhi went on a hunger strike for twenty-one days.”

  “I think that’s an experiment I’d rather not try,” Mom said.

  “You’ve got no fat on you,” Dad said. “You’d be lucky to make it a week.” He circled my wrist with his fingers. “Look at that.”

  “Gandhi was pretty skinny, Dad.”

  “How do you know all this?” Mom said.

  “I read about it.”

  “Anyway, we’re being kind of ghoulish. No one’s going to be starving to death.”

  “Speaking of that,” Dad said. “What should we eat?”

  “You’re going to need something for your hike tomorrow,” Mom said. “How about we have some bread and cheese now and split one or two of the apples?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dad said.

  * * *

  It was crowded in the tent that night and I was pushed up against the side, so my sleeping bag was getting wet from condensation. The ground was a bit cold, too, and I thought I should have put the tarp down first. And then there were the noises. There are a lot of noises when you sleep in a tent. The wind was up and every once in a while it gusted and a shower of little twigs and debris from the trees landed on the tent. I heard Dad start from his sleep, and then listened as his breathing went back to normal. Some time before dawn, it started to rain. Normally, I love the sound of rain on the tent, but I kept thinking of Dad, and how he’d have to be walking in it.

  The rain woke Mom, too. I could feel her listening as she lay beside me. In fact, I think all three of us were awake, and we stayed like that, listening to the rain, until a pale gray light dawned.

  “I want you to take the tent,” Mom whispered to Dad.

  “I don’t need the tent. I want to be light on my feet.”

  “No, listen. You probably won’t need it, but neither will we. We have the truck. I just don’t want you out in that rain without shelter. Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case it’s farther than you think.”

  “It’s not. The technology doesn’t lie. I’ve told you before. You have to trust the technology.”

  “Just humor me then. No sleeping bag. Just the tent in case you need to stop and you need shelter.”

  “All right, I’ll take the tent. That means I need my pack. I want to leave right away.”

  “Francie?”

  “I’m awake.”

  “Can you pack up the tent for Dad, please?”

  * * *

  He had the tent, and he had matches, his GPS, one of the pepperoni sticks, an apple and a granola bar, water. He had good hiking boots, waterproof. He had a hat—his Canada Post toque—then his hoodie, then his yellow rain jacket.

  “You brought your work toque,” Mom said.

  “Gotta have the magic toque,” Dad said. “It makes me walk faster.”

  This wool toque was a joke between Mom and Dad. There was a drawer full of brand-new ski hats at home that Mom had bought him for Christmas, and Dad had never worn any of them; he liked the old navy-blue and red Canada Post toque he wore to work every day.

  Mom fussed over his pack and tried to keep the tears out of her eyes. Now that he was really going, there were no more jokes. It was only fifteen miles, and he walked close to that in a regular workday. But he was walking into the dense Oregon forest, and in spite of what he said about the GPS, he didn’t know exactly where he was going or what might be in his path to get there. What if there was a mountain? What if there was a river?

  I wanted to say something, but I didn’t want to seem like I doubted him.

  “Okay, Squirt,” he said and kissed the top of my head. “Catch you later. I’ll bring you a hot chocolate, how does that sound?”

  He hefted his pack and pulled the straps tighter.

  “Should we bet on how long it’ll take me?” />
  “Never mind that,” said Mom. “We don’t want you rushing. It’ll take how long it takes.”

  Dad grinned. “See, that’s why I married you.”

  He winked at me and turned to the road. It was now or never. He took a step.

  “Dad!”

  He turned.

  “I just wonder. You could always go the other way.”

  “I know, Squirt. But it’d take me two days at least. Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  So he walked away and disappeared into the curtain of rain. We watched as the trees swallowed him up.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You know what?” Mom said. “Fir needle tea does sound pretty good this morning.”

  “I’ll go gather some.”

  “You know what you’re doing?”

  “Douglas fir is one of the easiest trees to identify.”

  “And you’re sure it’s safe to ingest?”

  “We made it with Ms. Fineday. It’s really tasty.”

  I could see my breath as I stepped into the woods. The ground was springy with moss and fallen needles and rain. It wasn’t hard to find fir trees. The younger ones had branches low enough to the ground that I could reach them. I stripped sprigs of needles from the branches and the fresh, citrusy smell made me happy. As I held them to my nose, I remembered Ms. Fineday saying that you should thank the tree for sharing its needles with you.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was kind of preoccupied.” Then I said a proper thank you and stuffed the sprigs into my pockets. As I did, I noticed the rain had turned to snow—thick, wet flakes, falling fast.

  Mom was on the tailgate, smoking, when I got back.

  “It’s snowing,” she said.

  “This needs to be chopped up to get the flavor to really come out.”

  “Might as well do it right,” she said. “We’ve got time.”