“If you want us to lend you some money, why don’t you just say so?” she said.
The boys were as surprised as I was. They looked at each other with their mouths kind of hanging open, all their scariness suddenly gone. Carly was right, I saw. They just wanted to be able to buy hotdogs for themselves.
She dug in her pocket and pulled out the change she had left.
“What do you have, Francie?”
I stood up slowly, cautiously. When I was standing, the boys didn’t seem so big anymore.
“Fifty cents,” I said.
“Hand it over then,” Carly said. “You owe us a dollar seventy-five.” She handed it to one of them.
They were still gruff as they took the change and walked away, but one boy turned and said “Thanks” and his voice was soft.
There are hungry people living in our small town, hungry people who even go to our school. Mom told me that. It never really sank in before, how it would feel to be hungry and smell those hotdogs and not have enough money to buy one. I had never known what it was to be really hungry. Until now.
I found some branches that seemed brittle enough to burn and carried them back to my cave. Then I built up the fire and sat waiting for morning to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I don’t think I slept. My mind wandered to those boys and the way their faces had softened, to Carly with one sock slipping down her skinny leg, to the smell of hotdogs and tangy yellow mustard. I was cold, colder than I could ever remember being. I slumped close to the fire. Gradually, the darkness seeped out of the sky, the wind dropped and a muffled calm lay over the creek like a light blanket.
Something moved in my peripheral vision. I gazed down the shore. Yes, something was definitely down there at the water’s edge. About the size of a dog, it jogged toward me. Then I recognized the four black socks of the little fox. Her golden-red fur stood out against the pale colors of morning. She came within a few yards of my fire and then sat, her black eyes steady and calmly watching.
“Good morning, little fox,” I called. “We made it through the night.”
My voice didn’t scare her. She just seemed curious. Maybe she wanted to warm herself by the fire. I wondered if she’d retrace her steps the way she’d come, back to where the truck was.
“I’m not following you this morning.”
I pulled out my map. There was the creek I’d drawn in. With my pencil, I sketched my cave and the fire. I would likely never see this place again, but it had served me well; I had survived the night and I had found water. I drew in the fox sitting there observing me, her two black-socked front legs neatly side by side like a cat.
The road I needed to get to was a thick black line on my map, running south to the edge of the bush where I’d plunged in following the fox, and north to help, to Mom, to home. Did the road have a name? Ms. Fineday said that naming a place made it familiar. That’s why when European settlers changed the names of so many places when they arrived here, Indigenous people continued to use their own names. I wanted to name this road, a private name only I would use, to make it familiar, a friend. In British Columbia, we had places with names like Desolation Sound and Deception Pass. The names told stories you could imagine just by hearing the name. But those stories weren’t the kind I wanted.
The fox cocked her head. I imagined her listening to my thoughts, wanting to say something to me. I stared back at her.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll name it after you. Red Fox Road.”
I penciled it onto my map. Red Fox Road. It was perfect. It wasn’t only about the fox. Our last name was Fox, too.
I looked out at the bubbling water of the creek where I’d found Dad’s hat. I wrote Hat Creek on my map and drew in a little toque. Now my map of the land looked different in my hands. It took on the shape of a world I was getting to know. It gave me hope that I’d find my way in it.
More than anything, I wanted to cross the creek and look for Dad. I blew my whistle repeatedly, just in case this morning he’d hear it. But setting out from here to look for him was the worst idea. Chances were, I’d get truly lost. Dad knew where the truck was. He could be there right now. And thinking of that brought an edge of panic that I had to fight down.
To get back to the truck, I’d have to start from the spot where I’d come down to the creek, then take compass readings exactly opposite to the ones I’d followed to get here. In theory, that should take me back to the flag I’d left on the X of branches. From there, my challenge would really begin. How far east of the road had I strayed? What could I use to help me find it?
My best chance would probably be to stay east of it, hiking north. Then, when I thought I’d gone far enough, I’d turn and walk west. As long as I’d gone far north enough, I should cross the road at some point.
I looked at the map again to make sure I wasn’t missing something. When I looked up, the little fox was gone.
Once the sun had risen high enough to filter through the trees and warm the air a little, I packed up my water and set out.
I found the tree overlooking the creek that I’d marked with my knife, took a compass reading, then breathed deeply and began walking. I could not get distracted. I could not make a mistake. But I kept looking backward, hoping I might see some sign of Dad. I pulled his warm Canada Post toque lower on my forehead against the cool breeze.
Wind-torn branches and fallen trees, their trunks split and shattered, had transformed the forest and made walking more difficult than before. I counted off the minutes, straddling deadfall and fighting my way through tangles of branches. There was the stump where I’d found the ants. The thought of eating more made me shudder, so I kept on.
In a few more minutes, I was back where the red flag on the X should have been. I didn’t recognize anything. No X, no flag, nothing familiar. I thought I’d attached the piece of cloth firmly to the branch, but it looked like the wind here had been even stronger than down by the creek. It must have blown the branches and the flag away.
Unless I was in the wrong spot. Unless somehow my compass readings had been wrong.
A knot of worry tightened my stomach. I checked the compass again. I was pointing to ten degrees, which should be the right reading. My eyes swept the landscape, searching for the spot of red. Pale orangey inner bark of torn trees stood out like fresh wounds; a tumble of greens and browns stretched out around me, but no red. A woodpecker tapped in a tree somewhere above me. I looked up and there it was—caught in a branch high overhead, the red scrap I’d cut from my precious backpack. I was so relieved, I laughed out loud.
“Thank you, woodpecker!”
It would have been nice to take the scrap with me. I could use it again to mark my way, or I could keep it and maybe try to sew it back into my pack if I…
I stopped myself. When. When I found my way back home. I took out my water bottle and had a swallow. I’d done well to get back to the flag. Now came the tricky part.
Logic said I couldn’t miss it. If only I knew how long I’d followed the fox yesterday. I guessed it might be half an hour. Not as long as an hour, I was pretty sure. The worst thing would be to turn west too soon. If I did that, I could walk within yards of where the road petered out and not see it. Then I’d be in deeper trouble, wandering west into thick wilderness.
One hour, I decided. I would walk straight north for one hour. Then I’d make the turn west. Eventually, I should end up back on Red Fox Road. I would keep track of my time again and if worse came to worst, I could always find my way back to this point, the red flag in the tree. And try again.
The thought of that made a shudder run through my body. I could not bear another night out in the cold. I’d never had much meat on my bones, as people always liked to remind me for some reason, and that seemed to make me feel the cold more. The sleeping bags had been enough to keep me warm beside my fire, but without them, the cold had
made it impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep. I could feel it this morning, the grit in my eyes, the raw throat. I needed to get to the safety of the truck and the protection of the sleeping bags.
One hour would probably take me too far north. But better too far than not far enough.
I had one last look at my red flag, feeling a strange mix of happiness and sadness, like a warm fist around my heart. This little bit of me, my most treasured possession, would flap here alone in the wind, maybe for years. No one would see it, except for birds and chipmunks, maybe a deer. But it would be here as the night fell, the moon soaked the woods, and the rain, then snows of winter came. I was here, it said, and no one heard.
“Wish me luck,” I said to the woodpecker and began the walk north.
After five minutes, I checked the compass and looked for a landmark. Since it all looked the same, I took out my jackknife and carved an F on a tree. I didn’t count on being able to find it again, but it was something. I kept it up, walking five-minute sections, sometimes carving another F, sometimes finding a fallen tree, a stump, a big rock, and marking these on my map.
The sun broke through the canopy of needles and leaves, spreading golden sprays of light through the branches. If I closed my eyes, I could picture where it came in the living room window, shining through the honeysuckle vine winding up wires that Mom had fastened to the window frames outside. I had held the ladder for her while she screwed in the eyes to guide the wire. Each spring we hauled out the ladder and strung a new wire for more honeysuckle vines to climb. In June, it would blaze with red-orange flowers like tiny trumpets and if I sat still in a chair by the window, I could watch the hummingbirds dart from trumpet to trumpet and then disappear with a blur of wings.
In winter, the morning sun splashed in the side door of the kitchen. Mom liked to drag a chair there on weekends to read the newspaper and sip her tea in the pool of sunlight. She had a special china teacup and, when the sun shone on it, I could see through it.
Now, the sun made a reliable guide to help me keep on track without having to check my compass too often. After half an hour, I stopped and listened. I thought I might hear the engine noises I’d heard the other day. But all I heard were crows squawking and a chipmunk’s chatter. Nothing looked any different than it had a few minutes ago. But I had to keep alert. Even a slight change in the shadows or the amount of light up ahead might give me a clue about where Red Fox Road was.
I stopped again twenty minutes later. Now I was pretty sure I was already walking parallel to the road. The truck probably sat a couple hundred yards or so to my left. I sat on a log in a patch of sunlight and took out my water. My gaze swept the woods, looking for something, anything familiar. And then I saw it. To my right, not far, was the rise of land. My eyes followed its length, then my heart sent up a spark. My fluorescent orange T-shirt blazed in the sun. I’d found it! I’d found my way back!
Excited but careful, afraid to make a mistake now, I clambered over logs and under fallen trees. The storm had cut a destructive path through here, ripping big trees up at their roots and exposing fresh black soil underneath, snapping others in half, leaving high, jagged stumps that would become homes for owls and woodpeckers.
When I reached my orange T-shirt, I ran my hands over it, closed my eyes and felt a wave of dizziness and then loneliness for my bedroom at home, the soft gray and pink quilts Mom had made for me and Phoebe when we were little. I’d kept mine, even though it was meant for a crib. I pulled open my dresser drawers and saw warm socks, fresh underwear, T-shirts I’d outgrown but still liked, corduroy pants and clean jeans. I saw the rocks I’d collected lined up on the windowsill, the glowing stars I’d stuck to the ceiling in the pattern of the Big Dipper, and my bedside lamp, which had been Grandma’s, and had a base like a log cabin and a switch on the bottom to turn on the lights at the cabin windows.
I hesitated, trying to decide whether to take the T-shirt with me or not. I could keep it where it was as a marker, but it might come in handy again. I untangled it from the branch and tied it to my pack. Then I skipped up the trail I knew well by now, passing the familiar rock.
But before I even reached the road, I felt that something was wrong.
I saw my lean-to through the trees and then, beside it, something new—the trunk of a fir tree lying horizontal way up in the air. A tree had blown over right next to the lean-to. The massive roots rose like a giant brown hand, with rocks caught between its fingers. As I came out onto the road, I saw where its trunk had landed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Of all places.
Of all the possible places that a tree could fall in this forest, this one had to fall on our truck.
I stood staring at it, my mind not ready to believe what I was seeing.
It was a huge tree. That thought kept circling in my slowed-down brain. A tree lying down looks even bigger than a tree standing up. This one’s trunk was limbless on the bottom part that had fallen across the east side of the road. Just about where it hit the truck, the limbs began. They were taller than me, fanned out in a dense green web high above the truck. Some pieces had snapped and landed on the hood and road. If trees had blood, that’s the smell that hung in the air—raw, fresh resin, and ripped-open bark.
The roof of the truck was crushed nearly to its wheels. As I moved closer, I could see that the backseat and a corner of the toolbox had been flattened. The windshield had shattered but the dashboard was still recognizable. The note I’d left still sat there, barely visible under the web of branches. Limbs draped the hood. It had sprung open a crack, but hadn’t been crushed. The rest of the tree continued across the road onto the west side and had gotten caught up in another tree’s branches in the woods on the other side.
A single word formed in my head and I spoke it out loud. “Why?”
Then I screamed it at the top of my lungs.
Fear came rolling over me then like a billowing cloud of black smoke. My supplies—the sleeping bags, matches, stove fuel…
“Mom!” I cried out. “Mom! Where are you?”
I called her over and over and over, until my throat was raw.
A sputter of tears caught and died. The glass of the broken windshield glimmered in the sunlight. Trees tossed gently in the breeze.
I was doing it again. I was hoping for rescue—for Mom or Dad or both to come dropping down out of that helicopter, with hugs and kisses and warm blankets and a basket full of food.
Where was Fierce Francie?
I couldn’t hear her voice, but I thought I knew what she would do.
What supplies could I save? What could I reach in the truck? I fought back the branches and tried the driver’s door. It gave only a crack, as I’d guessed. There would be no way to get in the truck that way. If only I had the crowbar. But it was under the front seat.
No, it wasn’t! I’d used it to make my drumming noise and I’d left it in the back. I climbed onto the truck bed and under the strong arms of the fallen fir. I could see it, but I couldn’t reach it. There were too many boughs in the way. I’d have to try to break some of the branches, but they were big and supple and I couldn’t do it by hand.
Eighty-five pounds is not enough to break live branches from their trunk, I discovered. I climbed to the edge of the truck bed and jumped down on the branches. They bent, but didn’t break, except for a few twigs.
More likely to break was my ankle. I considered the toolbox, which lay twisted and bent under the weight of the fallen trunk. There might be something in there I could use to clear the windshield glass. It had popped open slightly on one end, but to try to get anything out of it would be to risk tearing my arm open on the sharp metal edge. But I might be able to get a branch in there. I jumped down and searched for a sturdy branch the right length.
When I found one, I climbed back up and found an opening in the toolbox to wedge the branch in. I wriggled it in farthe
r and pressed down with both hands. The toolbox lid gave a little, but when I released the pressure, it caved back in. I tried again. Both hands and one knee pushed down like a big can opener. The lid rose, rose, rose and then—slam. The branch slipped, I fell backward, tree limbs scraped my back and the branch popped up, gouging my shin.
My body had sunk into the tangle of branches. I couldn’t get up at first. I lay there a minute, catching my breath. Now that I was down there, I found I could almost reach the crowbar. Carefully, I reached my arm a little deeper under the limbs. My fingers touched the claw and closed around it. I pulled it toward me and untangled it from the web of branches. Then I used it to help me push myself from the mess of boughs I’d landed in.
I climbed down from the truck gingerly. I’d have a big gash on my shin. My jacket wasn’t ripped, but it was streaked with sticky resin, and the skin over the bony part of my spine stung from the scrapes.
My brain frothed like a pot of potatoes boiling over. Getting frantic would not help my situation. I had to calm down and think clearly. I had not allowed myself a cup of tea and a mint this morning; I’d been in too much of a hurry to find my way back to the truck. I needed to do that now. I only had four mints left and I’d been reluctant—no, afraid—to eat the last ones. What would happen when I ran out?
I got the stove out of my backpack and set it up. Then I squirted water into the pot from the bag I’d collected at the creek and put it on to boil. As I stared into the water, waiting for it to bubble, a few drops of rain speckled the surface. My work with the toolbox had kept me from noticing the sky had clouded over. The air had grown chilly, too. The icy rain made a hiss as it landed on the warm water. Then the hiss grew to a gentle peppering on the truck hood, the leaves and grass along the side of the road, and in a moment, big white snow crystals filled the air.
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