Red Fox Road

by Frances Greenslade

  While the frog cooked, I packed up my sleeping bag. The aroma of the cooking meat began to fill the air; like a switch had flipped, hunger pains tore through my body. I doubled over; my head swam. I thought I’d be sick, so I sank to the earth and lay there with the cool mud against my cheek and I tried to calm my breathing.

  Strange that except for the first couple of days, the hunger had not hit me like this. But now, so close to eating something solid, I felt like I’d die if I had to wait another second. But I had to wait. I couldn’t risk poisoning myself with undercooked frog when I’d come this far.

  To take my mind off it, I considered my pack. Was there anything else from the truck I should try to salvage before I set out?

  I ticked off the things I’d be carrying: water, matches, stove, the almost-empty fuel canister I’d had in my backpack, the pot, jackknife. That took care of my needs for eating. Rain jacket, hoodie, Dad’s toque and Mom’s sweater, my sleeping bag. That was for warmth. Even if I could have gotten the other sleeping bags from under the tangle of the fallen tree, I probably wouldn’t have taken them. Another one would likely not fit into my pack, and tying it on top would make it too bulky. The tarp would have been handy, though. But it was hopelessly buried under the fir branches.

  Actually, I thought, stretching my arms over my head to get out the kinks…I went to the back of the truck and stood pondering it. The sun at that moment peeked through the trees and streamed warm golden light on my shoulders. Actually, I thought again, hoisting myself up into the truck bed, it was true there was no way to get the whole tarp out, but I could cut a piece of it. It could be useful for a lot of things—covering my pack if it rained, sleeping on, catching water, attaching to the roof of my lean-to. I pushed aside the larger branches with my body, then cut into the tarp at one edge. When I was done, I had a piece about six feet by three feet. Perfect. Not too heavy or bulky, but big enough to serve some purpose. I folded it neatly and stuffed it into the bottom my pack.

  Compass, paper, pencil, what was left of the Oregon map. Back at the fire, I sipped my tea with the sun warming me. I turned the frog on its spit. Its skin was crisping up and peeling off. I could eat it soon. Then, because I was so ravenous, I ate two mints. One left. I folded the crinkly package closed and tucked it into the pocket of my backpack. As I did, I felt again the certainty that it was the right time to leave.

  The frog, when it was ready, tasted like you might expect a frog cooked over a fire to taste—smoky, slightly swampy, a bit like pond water and pinecones. But it revived me and I felt stronger. I silently thanked my little red fox, and then I was ready to leave.

  I wrote a new note:

  PLEASE HELP. I’ve been stranded on this road for eleven days. I’m walking north along the road back to the highway. P.S. I’m thirteen years old.

  I put it in a corner of the windshield where a bit of glass was left to protect it from the elements. I thought of someone coming upon it: forest workers or hikers, hunters or Dad or Mom. I took it back out and wrote: P.P.S. I’m okay, but hungry.

  It occurred to me that if a helicopter did come out searching, they would not get any clues if they saw the truck from the sky. So I took a few minutes to gather some of the fallen branches and I formed them into two giant arrows on the road, pointing north. The wind might blow them away eventually, but maybe they’d be there long enough to do some good.

  I did one last walk around the truck. The hood still rested open a crack and the crowbar jutted out where I’d left it.

  Something told me to take the crowbar. It’ll be heavy, I thought. What would I need a crowbar for in the woods? I started to walk away. Then I glanced back at the truck once more.

  Take the crowbar, said a voice in my head.

  Okay, okay, I would take the crowbar. I ran back and grabbed it, wrapped my hoodie around it and shoved it in the side of my backpack. The extra weight tugged at my shoulders as I lifted my pack back on and cinched the waist strap. I could always abandon it on the road later.

  * * *

  As I picked my way carefully along the road, slightly off-balance with the bulk of my pack and aware of the throb of my injured shin, the truck tugged at me, like a long elastic band had been tied from my ankle to it, and the resistance against it pulled me backward.

  The red Mazda had been my nest since I could remember, me in the back, my knees up, my view sideways as trees and hydro poles and vehicles flashed by, Mom and Dad in the front, Dad’s big tanned hand on the gearshift in the middle and Mom’s feet against the dashboard, her hand sometimes trailing out the window, the curls of her hair lifting in the breeze, one sometimes catching a draft that wound it in a tighter circle. When we were little, Phoebe sat sideways in the seat opposite me, reaching out her feet to mine as we tried to get our toes to touch.

  The truck smelled of sunshine, old lunches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples left too long under the seat, the perfume scent of an air freshener from Midas Muffler that hung from the mirror for years and said “Trust the Midas touch.” And exhaust. After a drive, the rubbery tang of it hung in our clothes and wafted from Phoebe’s hair as we played on the floor in our room.

  The sun rose higher; my body relaxed in its warmth, my muscles loosened. I watched my steps, made them deliberate and sure. I stopped to take off my rain jacket. In the sunshine, wisps of steam rose from the mud; the forest breathed a rich, warm scent of earth and sap, and my ears tuned to the Oregon jungle noises: distant birds singing and near ones cackling over nests, woodpeckers hammering at trees and ravens shouting orders.

  When I began to walk again, the backward tug was gone. I breathed in fresh air. This mild, sunny day stretched out before me. But for now I just had this step then the next, finding the solid ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Once the sense of being followed gets in your head, it’s pretty much impossible to get it out. It came late in the day when I’d started counting steps to push myself to walk a little farther. The sun had dropped to just above the tree line and everything had softened in the rosy-orange glow of that time of day. But there was still lots of light left and I wanted to make the best of it.

  I had reached the 460s or seventies in my count, aiming for one thousand, when the hairs at the back of my neck began to tingle with that sense that someone was following me.

  I stopped and looked behind me. There was nothing but the long empty road, striped with long blue shadows. No rustlings of leaves, no breeze, but the longer I stood there looking, the stronger the feeling. I felt that whoever it was had stopped when I stopped and was standing, like me, silently watching and listening.

  I bent to shift the weight on my back, then straightened and turned north again, walking a little faster now. I’d lost my count, so I started again at one. I was only at five when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before on the road. In the soft mud, tracks ran alongside the path where I was walking. They belonged to an animal, not a human. They were a little bigger than my fist, and they showed the sharp marks of claws on the toe pads. Each toe had been imprinted clearly in the mud.

  I crouched and touched one, the cool mud indentation fresh and damp beneath my fingers. I was no expert, but logic told me the wind and sun would set the print quickly, the way the mud pudding that Phoebe and I used to mix up crusted over if we didn’t stir it. Last night’s rain would have washed out anything from yesterday. These were new. Something had been walking along here, not very long ago. My gut told me the prints and the feeling of being followed had the same source.

  What had I learned about animal tracks? If you could see the claw marks, that was a clue. That meant the tracks were either feline or canine. One walked with claws extended and the other kept them sheathed. Which was it? Either a cougar or bobcat, for instance, if feline, or a coyote or wolf, if canine.

  The strange thing was that the tracks showed I was following this animal, not the other way aroun
d. So how could it be watching me? I tried to think of tracks I’d seen. These looked a lot like a dog or a coyote. And the more I thought about it, I was pretty sure that visible claw marks meant canine. Cats don’t normally walk around with their claws out. If they’re running, their claws will grip the ground, but not if they’re just walking normally. You hear dogs’ nails on a kitchen floor, for instance, but you don’t hear a cat’s.

  This mattered to me because I didn’t want the tracks to belong to a cougar. Mom always said we had to be more cautious of cougars than of bears, because cougars might stalk small prey, like children. That’s why she had always made Phoebe and me walk between her and Dad when we hiked.

  “Tail-end Charlie,” Dad liked to say from the back. “I’ll be the cougar lunch.”

  “That’s what dads are for,” Mom answered.

  So if the tracks were canine, and I was almost sure now that they were, they belonged either to a fox (but they seemed too big for fox, especially my little red fox), a coyote (they seemed too big even for coyote), a wolf (were there wolves in these woods?), or maybe some other animal I didn’t know about. Or they could be a dog, but what would a dog be doing out here?

  I had planned to stop for the night at around seven o’clock, when there would still be enough daylight left to make camp and get a fire going. Now I wasn’t so sure. If this animal was ahead of me, maybe it was better not to keep following it. On the other hand, if I stopped, I’d have to face the silence and the night coming on. Already a hush had dropped over the woods like a blanket closing over the day. The stillness echoed like the sound after a bell rings.

  I shook each leg and each arm to try to flush out the willies. I was tired, I realized. Hunger gnawed at my insides. My stomach felt like a scraped-out bowl. I wanted to keep walking. What would be the worst that could happen? I’d have to huddle somewhere without a proper shelter. Even in the dark, I could always get a fire going, if only a small one.

  I went on, trying to ignore the quiet, focusing on the soft rhythm of my own boots on the muddy road. I walked steadily, the tracks beside me in a clear line in the mud. Then they were gone. My mind had wandered. I checked my watch. I’d been walking nearly half an hour since I last checked, but it was as if I’d been in a dream and suddenly woken up. I couldn’t remember anything about the ground I’d covered.

  All I could remember was my dream of french fries with gravy and cheese—poutine—that Dad and I got from Jeffer’s, the fry truck. I felt like I hadn’t just pictured it; I was there, waiting in the warm sunshine with Dad and Jeffer’s voices humming like bees and then watching as the grains of salt from the shaker rained down like stars falling, dusting the table. Sprinkling out pepper. Cradling the paper cup of hot crispy fries. I’d felt the comfort of returning to our warm truck, heard the ignition turn and the engine bubble to life. But I had not been able to put one of those fries in my mouth.

  Now, I retraced my steps to find where the tracks had disappeared. I didn’t have to go far. Only a minute or two back, the tracks had gone from the straight line they’d been following to a confusion of prints crossing over each other in circles in the mud. I tried to find where they’d gone next—into the woods or backward or where—but I couldn’t see any tracks leading away from the circles. It was as if the animal had suddenly vanished.

  I started walking again. The light had softened with evening coming on, but the air was warm, almost thick. I was really tired. It was time to stop. Just ten more minutes, I thought, checking my watch. I was too weary to count steps. When I thought I’d done enough, I checked my watch again. It had only been five minutes.

  I began to look for a good place to spend the night. As I slowed my pace, the weariness washed over me again. This place, right here, would have to do. I didn’t think I could go another step. I had to gather wood. I needed to build some sort of protection from the night.

  My pack slid from my shoulders and landed heavily on the earth. A tall tree with drooping branches was the best I could do for shelter. I rummaged for the tarp and pulled it out, spreading it on the ground close to the trunk. I wanted to lie down right there, pull my sleeping bag over me. But I knew I needed to keep out the cold and damp better. The crowbar came in handy to break off some branches from nearby trees; these I interlaced, teepee-style, if a little haphazardly, around the trunk. It wasn’t perfect, but right then it looked like the coziest place in the world.

  I dragged more branches from the forest floor. The windstorm had left a broken mess of them that made my job easier. Pulling up a larger log for a seat, I carefully built my fire, held the single match to the tinder and felt the reward of watching the fingers of flame spread and lengthen.

  The good warmth of the fire spread heat to my twitching, exhausted muscles. I couldn’t wait to lie down, to stretch out and rest my back. But as much as I wanted to relax into the deep quiet of the falling evening, I couldn’t. The feeling of being watched returned stronger than before.

  What a quiet night. I lit my stove and put a pot of water on to boil. The flare of stove gas seemed to roar in the silence. Hot tea, the last mint, and then I’d sleep. I looked around me, into the deep gloomy woods. When I turned back, the stove exhaled a hiccup, then went silent. The flame had died. Thick, unnerving silence. My fuel canister had run out.

  I tried to whistle the little tune that Dad whistled when he worked on his cars: “Whistle While You Work.” But even that took too much effort, and besides, the sound of it in the silence felt lonely and eerie. Even the leaves and branches seemed to be holding their breath, so motionless, waiting and watching. The tea water was only lukewarm; I drank it slowly, ate the mint.

  My eyelids drooped. The firelight glowed behind them. The forest breathed with me, softly in, softly out.

  I snapped awake. There’d been a sound—sharp, near. Unless I dreamed it. The moon was up and the woods in the light of it lay ghostly pale and still. As I stirred the fire, the pop of embers echoed like gunshots.

  There it was again—a single bark. It rang out, hanging in the air so strange and lonely and out of place. I slid the crowbar quietly from the backpack and stood up, straining to hear approaching footsteps. Could it be a wolf? Would a wolf attack a human? And do wolves bark like dogs? It sounded like a dog. That’s what made it seem so out of place, I realized. It was like a dog I’d hear in my neighborhood in the summer, when I slept with my windows open.

  I held the crowbar in front of my chest, with the claw-side down. What would I do with it? Should I try to climb a tree?

  A tinkle of metal on metal came from the road, then the distinct sound of panting. Out of the moon shadows, a shape appeared. It stopped on the other side of my fire, sparkling eyes gazing at me. Then it sat, cocked its head and I saw the collar, and the glinting tags.

  It wasn’t a wolf. It was a dog. Just a regular dog. All my relief came rushing out in a breath. He looked friendly enough, sort of like a German shepherd, but with pointy ears flopped over and a fluffy tail.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, and he galloped over to me, his tail wagging.

  “What are you doing here? Where’s your owner?”

  The fur of his tail and legs was tangled with sticks and burrs and his tongue hung panting from his mouth. I found myself laughing, crazily, with the let-out tension.

  “You scared me. You know that? What’s your name?” I ruffled the long fur at his neck and ran my hand over his soft, velvety head.

  “You want a drink, don’t you? I’ll give you a drink.”

  I squirted some water into the cooking pot for him. He lapped it up in about five seconds. I filled the pot again and he emptied that just as quickly, then sat back, his tail wagging.

  “I don’t have any food. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

  I’m not a dog person. Mom says there are dog people and she’s not one. I’m not one either. We’ve never had a dog in our family, and usually, I’m a
little afraid of them, especially when they come running up to me and jump on my legs.

  But as I sat by the fire pulling burrs from his fur, I’d never been so happy to see a dog. He seemed just as happy to see me. He kept twisting around and licking my hand. After a while, he settled down at my feet and I kept working on the burrs.

  I checked his tags—that must have been the tinkling noise I’d heard just before I saw him. One tag was turquoise with a phone number and another number on it; the other was red and shaped like a heart and said “Rabies vaccinated” with another number underneath. His collar was well-worn leather. Wherever this dog came from, I guessed he was a long way from home. And somebody must be looking for him.

  After a while, he fell asleep. I got out my sleeping bag and spread it in the little teepee I had made. Then I built up the fire.

  I thought about making some kind of leash for him. I didn’t want him to run away. But it seemed unfair to tie him up. He was probably trying to get home, just like I was. Besides, I had a feeling he’d stick around. As I crawled into my sleeping bag I called out, “Hey, Buddy.”

  He came to me, his tail thumping the ground.

  “Can I call you Buddy? I don’t know your real name.”

  He lay down at my feet, put his head on his paws and went back to sleep.

  Stripes of silver moonlight streamed in between the branches crisscrossing over me and Buddy. My tired bones seemed to sink into my sleeping bag and right into the earth. I closed my eyes and heard Buddy breathing, heard the whisper of the forest settling in for the night.

  Rest your weary bones. Rest your weary mind.

  Grandma used to say that to me when she sat on my bed out at Gem Lake nights when it was still light out and the sound of people down on their docks tying up their boats echoed across the water. I hadn’t thought of that for a long time.