Every Fox is a Rabid Fox

by Harry Gallon

  ‘No Dad.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, remember. Your brother, I mean.’

  ‘That’s not–’

  ‘What did you use?’

  ‘Use?’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘It was a chainring.’

  ‘A chainring?’ he says. ‘A bloody chainring? That’s such a dirty thing. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I was fixing mum’s bike.’

  ‘They gave it back to you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Ah.’

  My father’s eyeing his armchair and wondering how long it’ll take before I hang up. ‘I thought you meant you’d been harming yourself,’ he says, laughing. ‘You know, people used to ask your mother if she self-harmed. In fact, people would see these marks on her arms and they’d ask me if I knew what she was doing. “Baking cakes”, I’d say. “Baking cakes all day”, I’d tell ‘em, “and not ones worth burning yourself for on the oven door!”’

  A pause.

  ‘I think they thought I did it.’

  Another pause.

  ‘They must’ve thought I hurt her. Yes. That’s why no one round here speaks to me anymore. But I never hit her,’ he says.

  ‘I know that, Dad,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He coughs.

  ‘Yeah,’ says my father, stroking his chin. Pulling his fingertip over the embossed lettering of our surname and wondering what the time is. ‘Your mother said you’ve quit your job.’

  ‘I’ll get a new one.’

  ‘When your leg heals?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I cough.

  ‘Well, uh, farmer’s asked me to get rid of this fox for him. Been stealing his pheasant. Burying them with their feet poking out the ground in one of his fields. Anyway, you could help me, if you–’

  ‘Have you spoken to Stephanie?’

  *

  My father hangs up the phone. He hangs up himself with some twine on the porch. I could go, I suppose. We could hang there, together. Ageing. Inedible. Making feathery small talk while we try to mature. While he anticipates the train that will take me away again, and I, failing to meet his eye, silently wait for the bailer twine to snap. Crack my kneecaps on the floor. Blood sprayed on the door to dry brown.

  I go into the kitchen and find my little sister underneath the sink. She’s drinking from a bottle of bleach. I say, ‘That’s a child safety cap,’ and point to the child safety cap on the floor. ‘How’d you get it off?’

  She burps.

  She says, ‘You know me,’ and offers the bottle.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ says my sister, perusing the ashtray by the sofa. ‘That everyone was already mourning? That one more death wouldn’t transport them to a place they weren’t already in and prepared to come back from?’

  ‘You’re not my friend,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’

  ‘I’m not your enemy, either,’ she says. ‘I’m much worse than that. I’m your family.’

  ‘Then why can’t I ignore you?’

  She smiles. ‘You’re still afraid he’s living through you,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He sounded surprisingly cheerful on the phone.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘As though you may actually go visit him.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could be fun.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Like a game.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Count to five.’

  I could burn it down. Stand at the side of the road below the gate. Below the pathway that divides the front garden. Watch it burn. Watch it turn into ash you can pinch with your thumb and forefinger then sprinkle around like salt. My sister, listing on the reef of my sofa, says, ‘No.’

  I say, ‘Oh.’

  She says, ‘It’s not as simple as setting fire to unwanted property. And besides,’ pausing to yawn, ‘you may actually get done for arson if you stand there holding the match.’ She takes a long sip of bleach. ‘You need to find out what really happened to Gentleman Jim. Have you ever, actually, thought about what it feels like to linger like he did? Like our grandmother still is?’ My sister nudges another inch closer to my end of the sofa, touches her nose on my knee, puts her hand on my thigh and squeezes. ‘You’ll just be killing a fox,’ she says, quietly.

  WILLOW

  Willow messages me. We haven’t spoken since she left my house that night. Something going. Something off. Again. Doesn’t matter. Didn’t matter, then, when we broke up before. She’s been calculating. I imagine. Needs to decide whether I’m a good idea. I don’t think so. Doesn’t matter still. She messages in the morning, wants to meet for coffee. Sounds awfully familiar. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ I say, packing bag. Locking up. Takes a lot to drop the last washing up in the bowl. Peanut butter spoon, though, is all. I’ve been subsisting. Now everything’s empty. ‘I’m going to see Stephanie,’ I text her, stepping out of the door with my sister on the floor, in a bag. ‘You can meet me before I go.’

  Willow, with a coffee. Willow, toffee hair and early-morning-just-brushed-teeth breath but things are yellow. Stained iodine. Things have never not been tainted. Willow with the dread of caffeine-pissing. We’re in Liverpool Street Station and Willow says, ‘This coffee’s terrible. Why couldn’t we meet somewhere else?’

  ‘I’ve got to catch a train.’

  ‘We could’ve met sooner.’

  ‘You’re the one who disappeared,’ I say. ‘You’ve not spoken to me for days, so why does it matter?’

  She says, ‘I’m sorry.’

  She says, ‘You’re not well.’

  ‘Do you think you took advantage of me?’ I ask.

  Willow looks at me. Willow’s angry. Willow says, ‘Don’t you dare.’

  I say, ‘Sorry. That was stupid.’ Pause. ‘You’re not missing out, anyway,’ I tell her. ‘How’s your boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s just that you’ve dyed your hair again.’

  For a moment she’s quiet, then says, ‘I need the toilet.’

  ‘They’re pretty clean here, this early.’ Looking towards the bar. Fake wooden casks panel-pinned to the wall. ‘You don’t even have to buy anything.’

  Willow leaves.

  Willow comes back.

  Willow says, ‘Why are you going to see Stephanie?’

  ‘The same reason you came here for this bad coffee,’ I say. ‘To apologise.’

  I smile.

  ‘Is it really that easy for you?’ she says. ‘To clench your jaw and be a dick and act like you’re fine, when everything must be tearing you up inside?’

  ‘You didn’t seem to mind last week. Or the week before that.’

  ‘It wasn’t right,’ she says. ‘I thought I was helping. No, I don’t mean it like that.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Stop saying that.’

  ‘You’ve got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Is that what you want? To be with me again?’

  ‘I want to forget.’

  There’s a pause. Spoons clatter somewhere behind. Commuter overflow. Somewhere, an announcement caught in the throes of goodbye.

  ‘I spoke to your mother the other day,’ says Willow.

  I say, ‘I know.’

  ‘You need to go see her.’

  She touches my knee.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ says Willow, ‘rather than seeing your sister-in-law, to get some therapy? Get your head in the right place? You haven’t seen Stephanie since–’

  ‘I’m going to see my father, too.’

  ‘How long will you be?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘That’s good,’ says Willow. ‘But wouldn’t it make more sense to see your mother and Stephanie at the same time, since they both live near each other?’

  ‘I don’t kn
ow, Willow,’ I say angrily, scooping milk froth out of a tiny enamel jug on the table. ‘This is just how I’ve planned it. And anyway, why does it matter?’

  Willow opens her bag. Takes out a small case. Opens that. Takes out a packet. Puts a pill in her mouth and swallows. ‘Want me to get you a glass of water?’ I ask.

  She says, ‘I’m fine.’

  My bag on the floor starts to shake. It’s almost time. Struggling to look her in the eye. Now who’s guilty? ‘You’ve got to stop saying that,’ I say. Willow smiles. I feel relaxed. It doesn’t–

  Willow shouts. ‘Don’t you think you’d be coping better if you’d just fucking SCREAM? If you’d let yourself CRY?’

  The bag on the floor is unzipping itself.

  ‘You’re infuriating,’ she says. ‘And I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘There’s no use in worrying,’ I tell her.

  Something dark, twisted. Something bitter slides out. A shadow. I don’t follow it. I can see the clock in the foyer. I can see my sister standing under it.

  ‘What would you have done if you had been pregnant?’ I say.

  ‘I would have got an abortion.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  I zip the bag back up.

  ‘And if your brother died,’ I ask, ‘then what?’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t go around fucking apologising for it,’ says Willow.

  I stand. Shift the brown polyester chair to the side.

  ‘Actually,’ I say, shouldering my bag, ‘you’d wait. Then, eventually, you’d follow him.’

  I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT POISONING YOU

  ‘Perfect,’ says my sister, washing her hands in the basin while we’re looking at ourselves in Stephanie’s bathroom mirror. ‘That was perfect,’ while she sat on Stephanie’s toilet with her knickers round her ankles. ‘I almost can’t believe it,’ when I locked the door behind us and stood at the window and waited. ‘She really bought it,’ as we sped towards Chelmsford, in need of a piss.

  ‘How did you come up with that?’ she said only a few hours ago. ‘That bit about following your brother? Frankly, I’m surprised at you.’

  ‘I feel cruel.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘She’ll forget all about you.’

  *

  Stephanie met us at the station. I’d told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted. She said, ‘We’re still family, aren’t we? And anyway, I’m going to be the mum-taxi at some point. May as well start practising.’

  Her son, not yet two, was sitting on the back seat.

  Her son was thinking about poisoning me.

  That’s what he looked like.

  I said, ‘Sorry to drag you out here, too.’

  He smiled, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Do you find it fun?’ says my sister, dead, half-in-and-out of the toilet as she tries to pull her knickers up. ‘Playing people off against one another?’

  I’ve been standing in front of the mirror for almost 20 minutes.

  ‘Are you alright in there?’ says Stephanie, tapping gently on the old bathroom door.

  The floor is cold. Orange tiles. The smile of her firstborn is a thousand miles from his future, when he’ll be old enough to come to terms with the death of his father. If he even remembers him. Outside, the rhododendrons need a trim.

  ‘I was thinking of getting a man in, actually,’ Stephanie tells me, gathering her unborn second baby and standing in front of the open French window. ‘Is that the Virgin Mary on the mantel piece?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, it’s just something I’ve gotten used to,’ she says, then looks at me. ‘Are you feeling alright?’

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ I say. ‘Too much coffee on the train.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘I could do it, maybe,’ I say, looking at the overgrown bush. Cut it back, then burn the roots.’

  *

  I’ve spent this afternoon destroying the rhododendron bush. Stephanie suggested I stop halfway. Getting late. Have some food. Stephanie said that she could finish it herself, and I knew she could but she had my nephew to look after. He wasn’t doing much, except staring at the corner where my dead little sister sat staring straight back. I said no. Not hungry. Thank you. ‘I wonder where the cat’s gone?’ says Stephanie, but I don’t answer. Saw the cat before, pulling in. Got out of the car. Extended its claws in the driveway. Fur stood up as my dead sister walked into the house. ‘She must’ve gone off into the woods.’

  ‘Would you like me to check the workshop?’ I ask, with a long birch branch underarm and a pair of gardening gloves. ‘She may be hiding in there.’

  ‘Well, I usually keep it locked, now,’ says Stephanie. ‘I don’t think she’d have been able to get in.’ She looks at me. And looks at me. Sudden, sad, happy frown. ‘But you know what cats are like, eh?’ she says. ‘Wait here while I get the key,’ batting rhododendron tendrils and severed branch limbs out of the way.

  My brother’s workshop is inside a curved, corrugated iron building, by a dried-up old yew tree at the end of the garden. My brother put it up himself, coated it with primer then a layer of matt black paint which, by now, is peeling. Revealing layers of red. Stephanie gave me a key to the workshop then said she’d go inside to make up the spare bed. She left quickly.

  The air inside the workshop smells of oil and metal and wood smoke. The carcasses of old motorbikes hide the marks left when my brother used to get frustrated and throw spanners at the walls. A thick, greasy bike chain hangs from a hook by the window, which is filthy and decorated with cobwebs, while the tiny wood-burning stove, with which he made tea in the corner, looks colder than the little girl’s leg poking out of it.

  I rush to grab it.

  ‘What the HELL are you doing in here?’

  My sister screams.

  ‘WHAT THE HELL do you think you are doing?’

  I try pulling her out, grab, pull. But she’s half-stuck in the under-insulated chimney flue. Pull again, white knuckle pain on the door catch and when she bursts out brings a coughing-fit soot cloud. My sister, raggedy, says, ‘I was just trying to tidy a bit.’ Then she trips over an empty oil canister. Coughs some more. Says, ‘Thought I’d start with this old thing here,’ patting the chimney. ‘They’re dangerous, you know. Houses burn down because families don’t clean out their soot.’

  ‘No one’s lighting it up here,’ I tell her.

  ‘Everything alright?’ It’s Stephanie. Standing in the doorway, her unborn baby spinning around. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says to me when I face her. ‘Here, take this.’ She hands me a small, dark-blue handkerchief. ‘I tend to keep it with me, these days. Seems a waste to keep buying tissues. But I’ve got a couple more, anyway, so you keep that one, eh?’

  I touch my face.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘it’s clean.’

  I hadn’t realised that there were tears all over me.

  ‘Are you going to tell her the truth?’ my sister asks me, dropping more soot on the floor and blowing soot in my face and breathing impatient cough-soot, while Stephanie stands still in the door and just looks. And just looks. And just looks.

  For a long time we stand and say nothing.

  Just nothing.

  It is easier this way.

  Then, eventually, I spoil the world and say, ‘Well, the cat’s not here, anyway.’ Wipe my face with the handkerchief she gave me. Try gently to nudge her out of the way so I can leave, but Stephanie stops me.

  Stephanie looks at me.

  Stephanie says, ‘It’s okay.’

  Trying to look, look into me, my eyes.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  It comes: ‘Is it?’

  Momentously long pause.

  ‘Is it, really?’

  ‘Come here,’ she tells me. Commands. I always liked that about her. So I do. Go there, towards her in the door frame. Arms out. Doorway. Cobwebs and bike chain. And then my arms around her and hers around me and my head in her shoulder and my heart in her throat and my e
yes like levees broke like nope nope nope don’t say it.

  ‘Just do it,’ shouts my sister.

  ‘I–’

  ‘FASTER.’

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ says Stephanie.

  ‘But it’s true.’

  I don’t know if I can believe her. It’s only been a few months. I’m still struggling to walk. Stephanie puts her son to bed while I make us a couple of drinks. ‘A weak one won’t hurt the baby,’ she says. Rubs her belly. Takes a kitchen chair and the G&T I’ve made her out onto the lawn by the smoking remains of the rhododendron bush. ‘Still no sign of the cat,’ she says.

  ‘She’ll probably come back when we leave,’ I say.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘She’ll be back when she’s hungry. Don’t worry. She’s a young cat. She still has all her lives left.’

  ‘It’s the fox that worries me,’ says Stephanie. ‘He’s been stealing my chickens at night. He’s been coming in through a hole in the fence, stealing my chickens and then burying them upside down, by the yew tree at the end of the garden, so only their feet poke out.’

  ‘You going to kill him?’ I say.

  ‘Maybe he’s a she,’ says Stephanie. ‘Maybe she’s got babies to feed every day, too.’

  There’s a pause. Stephanie stirs the ash of the rhododendron bush with her foot. ‘I’m not going to kill her,’ she says. ‘I’m going to keep repairing the fence.’

  ‘Who do you think your baby’s going to look like, this time?’

  ‘Like Luke, I hope,’ says Stephanie. She takes a sip of gin. ‘I’m going to name him after his dad, anyway.’

  ‘So they tell you it’s a boy again?’

  ‘Of course it’s a boy.’ She nudges my shoulder and I smile. ‘You mustn’t let me forget to give you some eggs before you leave,’ she says.

  I shake my head and say, ‘You keep them.’

  AN INVITATION TO THE DEATH OF A FOX

  There’s a missed call on my phone from my mother. There’s a half-eaten burger in front of the TV. And one eye of my father is roving me. I took a cab from the station to my old family home. It took me six numbers and seventeen minutes to find one. The reception isn’t kind, this side of London. It’s all dial tones and landlines. Endlessly ringing answering machine wind chimes. One lady said, simply, ‘We don’t do that anymore,’ then hung up. I almost phoned Willow, who would’ve had 4G, but stopped myself and went to see what business cards they had inside the train station. The ticket office was closed. The ticket office was always closed. I don’t remember it ever having been open. Rainy, red-brick holes for windows. Waiting room abandoned. Boarded up. Tickets torn up and dropped on the floor around clear plastic bin bags, but not in them. My father knew I was coming, but the whole thing felt like a show.