A Black Fox Running

by Brian Carter

  Farmer Lugg sipped his Guinness and smiled.

  ‘You should have used a silver bullet, Bert,’ he said.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Scoble said. ‘But he got your ewe and a brace of lambs.’

  His pale eyes remained expressionless while the smoke-yellowed tip of a forefinger rolled the wart on his cheek. Lugg nodded and the humour left his face as the corners of his mouth dropped.

  ‘It didn look like no fox job,’ he said. ‘’Twas messy. Foxes kill neat, and they usually chew the heads off lambs.’

  ‘I told ’ee, maister,’ Scoble said quietly. ‘That fox is different. My Jacko disturbed him and the two had a scrap. You’ve seen the dog chomp foxes before but he met his match in Blackie. Look at his leg – look, to the bloody bone that is.’

  ‘We’d best sit in the corner out the way,’ said the farmer.

  Bert Yabsley called his dogs to heel and transferred his tankard to the table under the window. His face was redder than Scoble’s but there was a cheerfulness too that went well with his Falstaffian appearance. When he was not labouring for Farmer Lugg he dug out badgers and stopped earths. Throughout that part of the moor he was acclaimed as a great liar – ‘thicky girt romancer’ the locals called him. Yabsley told lies as easily and with as much relish as mediocre men tell dirty jokes. A good, heavily embroidered untruth flushed from his mouth brightened the dull lives of his drinking companions.

  But the big, bluff public bar jester did not have to ‘romance’ about his terriers. They were called Billy, Tacker and Jan, and they were the bravest Jack Russells on Dartmoor. Tacker was the star performer. Once he had taken a chin-grip on a big dog or a fox, he was hell to dislodge. Jacko hated him, for the terrier had made the lurcher yelp many a time.

  ‘I got ’im from a gypo at Ashburton Pony Fair,’ Yabsley said, crumpling one of Tacker’s ears gently in a huge fist.

  ‘’Im and your Jacko idn exactly bosom pals, Len.’

  Scoble frowned and swallowed half a pint of scrumpy.

  ‘Blackie’s back round Holwell Clitter,’ he said slowly, like a man surfacing from some dark thought.

  ‘Then us will have to get ’im out,’ said Yabsley.

  ‘No terrier has ever got a fox out of that clitter,’ the farmer said. The Jack Russells sniffed at the soles of his boots and Jan cocked a leg against Scoble’s wellington.

  ‘Tacker could winkle a mouse out of a woodpile,’ Yabsley said. He made a soft, smacking sound with his lips and Jan came running to receive the caresses.

  ‘I’ve seen ’im work clitters the wind couldn’t get through. He’s had a fox belting round like a fart in a collander. Dang me if that poor beast didn die of giddiness!’

  ‘Holwell Clitter’s as tangled as a cow’s guts,’ the farmer said. He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice.

  ‘Emsworthy Gate before daybreak on Saturday and for Christ’s sake keep your trap shut, Bert. I idn going to be too popular with the hunting folk if they gets to hear about this shoot.’

  ‘They don’t have sheep to worry about,’ said Scoble. ‘Foxes idn no better than rats. If I had my way I’d shoot the bloody lot.’

  ‘You can’t trap ’em, then?’ said Lugg.

  ‘If I tilled gins at Holwell the toffs would have my guts for garters.’

  ‘If they had a living to make they woudn be so keen to do it by the book,’ Yabsley said.

  Farmer Lugg blew his nose.

  ‘You’re wrong, boy,’ he said. ‘Gentry always does it by the book. It’s bred into ’em.’

  ‘And I idn sorry,’ Yabsley laughed, picking up Tacker and crushing a kiss on the dog’s head.

  Scoble lidded his eyes like a tired bantam and stared at him through the lashes.

  ‘There’s nort better than a lady’s arse filling a nice tight pair of jodphurs,’ Yabsley went on.

  His hand traced the shape of an invisible buttock in the air before him.

  ‘I idn surprised you’re the father of eight kids,’ Farmer Lugg said wrily.

  ‘Soon it’ll be nine,’ Yabsley roared. ‘Joan’s expectin’ again.’

  Wulfgar took pleasure in the loneliness of bog and tor. It was satisfactory to think of Teg waiting for him under the oaks, by the river, although at times the sadness in her voice as she questioned him about the night’s hunting made him feel guilty. But with the lengthening of the shadows he went eagerly to the rabbit runs. The realisation that he was a traveller shuttling between two lives added to the inner conflict.

  Once or twice he kennelled elsewhere. Brush laid across nose encouraged reverie. He would spend half the night lying close to the stars, not quite wide awake, letting the dreams run their course. What if Teg had become a convenience and was no longer a necessity? Full of self-hatred he dismissed the thought.

  ‘I love Teg.’ He spoke calmly. Blurred with trees the horizon squirmed in a tear, broke free and stood breathless again. He fumbled blindly along the thread of clan instinct. Beyond the screech and wail of owls was the half-heard whisper of dead foxes. The tor drifted somewhere between ideas but the distance was swelling into a shout of shapes.

  ‘I am here,’ Wulfgar said. The wind lifts my fur. I am printed on the mists of gone-forever seasons, like Tod. Only in the absence of other foxes do pure thoughts fly from the heart. Stream, heather, sky – to soothe all pain. I drink the sky.’

  And floating there close to sleep he saw the vision.

  The mountain tops were snowy, and white rivers poured swiftly into lakes fringed with oak and pine. Rabbits were eating seaweed among red deer, hares and wild goats on the shore. The rabbits were as numerous as autumn leaves under beech trees, and their warm, delicious smell clung to the breeze.

  He told Stargrief of the experience the next day. The ancient dog fox had taken to kennelling permanently on a mossy ledge near the top of Longford Tor.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That sounds like a vision.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know – but you’ll find out when Tod wants you to.’

  ‘Have you had many visions, Stargrief?’

  ‘A few; nothing grand. Small visions, I suppose. I even had a vision with you in it once – long before you were born.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. It was always the same – the dark fox running before a whole pack of foxes over countryside no moorland dog or vixen has ever visited. I saw the high tors covered with snow.’

  ‘And did you feel the happiness?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The hills were hardening in sunlight and all down the valley the grass glinted. The morning air was keen but the purity of light meant real spring. By the powder mill the fields were as bright and green as a fox’s eye.

  ‘Teg must be very close to having the cubs,’ Stargrief continued. ‘What you did by the ponds was good for your family, but men are sure to come to the homelands. Many foxes will die.’

  ‘The clever ones will survive.’

  ‘Of course. It has always been so. You seem to be finding it easier to accept Tod’s will.’

  ‘Listen,’ Wulfgar said hotly. ‘I had a vision of a good place but I didn’t see myself as some latter-day Tod sorting out the clan’s problems with a flick of my brush.’

  They made scats together and pretended the conversation had not occurred.

  Larks were singing when Wulfgar came to Sherberton, and mist in shapes like strange animals passed low over the moors. From the brambles that hedged the larch plantation fresh buds had erupted, and in the coombs by Hexworthy children were plucking lambs’ tails off the hazels.

  Tiny leaves had hidden Swart’s nest in Crow Thorn and pink apple buds softened the walled gardens of Holne.

  He ate St George’s mushrooms on the turf where the sheep had been. Then the gleaming path fell through dark masses of furze and whortleberry and the mist was swirling away.

  ‘Teg,’ he said, like a creature addressing a ghost.

  A
jay spread its blunt wings and jumped into the sky. Pollen drifted down through the hazel branches.

  ‘Fox-ox-ox-ox-ox-ox,’ the jay screeched.

  ‘Idiot bird,’ said Wulfgar. He shook himself and clenched his teeth on a flea that had been living dangerously in his chest fur. The jay’s manic cry doused him like cold water. He returned to the moment and used his nose to fathom the mysteries of the morning air.

  Rabbits were squatting close to the ground or sitting on their hindlegs watching him. Among the hawthorn roots were many runs and burrows, and the turf all around was beaded with droppings.

  Wulfgar walked in a circle and rose on his hindlegs and began the rabbit-stalking ritual …

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ he said, nudging the carcass towards her with his nose.

  ‘No I’m not,’ she snapped irritably.

  The damp, earthy smell of underground mingled with her own strong scent and the less attractive odours of decaying flesh. Teg shifted restlessly about the den, scratching first in one corner then the other. When he came near her she lifted her back and showed her teeth in a savage snarl.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  Anger flashed in her eyes and while she continued to turn and twist like an animal with worms, Wulfgar dragged the rabbit carcass to his corner and began to skin it. A little light filtered through the roof boulders.

  ‘Come on – move,’ Teg growled.

  Wulfgar’s hackles rose.

  ‘Move,’ Teg said. She was puffed out with unmistakable rage.

  ‘And don’t look so surprised. Maybe you’ll end up like Stargrief delivering prophetic incantations to daft dogs, but this is real fox stuff.’

  She drove her muzzle into his haunches and he could feel her whole body quivering. Clamping his jaws on the rabbit he shuffled to the far side of the den and ate quietly, keeping his thoughts to himself. With a couple of pounds of red meat in his belly it was easy to sleep.

  Across his dream the blackthorn squeaked. Swart sat on the top branch opening and closing his wings. He was very black against the dark sky and there was something else in the spiky black tangle of twigs and boughs – something blacker than the crow. Then a terrible mouth was gaping like a gin trap and the thorns kept on squeaking and wailing in the wind that had no other voice. Thin and insistent the squeaking followed him into consciousness. He opened his eyes and shivered. The squeaking sounded too real to be the shard of a dream. He moistened his nose with his tongue. The squeaking smelt of newly minted life.

  ‘We have four cubs,’ Teg murmured. ‘I’m sorry I was so bad-tempered. I just couldn’t think of anything except giving birth to these.’

  The blind cubs whimpered faintly and Teg licked away the birth-membrane from their fur and nostrils. The licking not only sent the blood flowing briskly through the tiny creatures but made them aware of their mother and her love. Wulfgar watched silently from the warmth of his own feelings.

  After the grooming Teg tucked the cubs under her body and laid her chin on her forepaw.

  ‘Is there any rabbit left?’ she whispered.

  ‘No, but lie still and I’ll see what I can get.’

  ‘You won’t have to go far,’ she said. ‘I’ve buried some lamb under the stone by the entrance.’

  She greedied on the scraps he brought her. Every now and then a cub squeaked and was silenced with gentle licking.

  ‘The cubs are our love, Wulfgar,’ she said drowsily.

  ‘My spirit and your spirit,’ he said.

  ‘Stargrief shall name them. I’m too full of them to do it sensibly.’

  Teg breathed a score of ridiculous endearments onto the tangle of little bodies that lay beneath her. She called the cubs her catkins, her morning dew, her primrose buds, and names silly enough to make Wulfgar grin.

  On the ridge above Wistman’s Wood he sniffed out the old dog fox. The sunlight of late afternoon lit the abutments of Longford Tor and a contented flock of ewes and lambs grazed the slopes of Beardown Tors. High over the North Moor a kestrel was taking winged insects in flight.

  Wulfgar said, ‘Three little dogs and a vixen. She had the lot white I slept.’

  ‘A healthy litter?’

  ‘I suppose so – yes, or Teg would have said.’

  The dog foxes decoded the calm air and walked south to the scattered boulders of Littaford Tors.

  ‘She’d like you to name them,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘Only if I can hunt with you tonight,’ Stargrief smiled.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the larch wood by Little Two Rivers.’

  They crossed the road swiftly and trotted over marshy land to the foot of Laughter Tor. The pearly haze of day’s end had given way to twilight and a single star hung low in the sky.

  ‘The dog cubs shall be known as Oakwhelp, Nightfrond and Brookcelt,’ said Stargrief. ‘I name the newborn vixen Dusksilver. May Tod keep them safe.’

  The western sky remained bright for a long time. Grass and whortleberry leaf glinted on the steeps that took them down to the larch plantation of Brimpts beside the East Dart. Four crows flapped noiselessly over the treetops and vanished as the foxes paused to examine the wind.

  ‘An omen?’ Wulfgar said in a strange bloodless voice.

  ‘Why should it be?’ said Stargrief. ‘It’s only your anxiety for Teg and the cubs that makes you see doom everywhere you look. Four crows, four blackthorn trees, four frogs crushed on the road – you could go on for ever reading runes in this and that.’

  But his words lacked sincerity.

  Creeping through the wild blackberries on the borders of the plantation Wulfgar felt fear performing its cold, colic tricks in his stomach. ‘Stargrief is right,’ he thought. ‘I’m acting like an old vixen.’ He recalled his father who after being caught in a snare could think of nothing else but snares for the rest of his life. The sick fox saw wires all around him but he did not see the car that flattened him to the tarmac. ‘No,’ Wulfgar thought. ‘I won’t let a pack of stupid worries drive me to madness.’

  He rounded his nostrils and took the measure of the shadows that reached out for him.

  STARGRIEF

  Vega twinkled in the tawny owl’s eyes and minute noises scratched the darkness. Insects ticked against leaves and stems; earthworms came slowly out of their burrows with a whisper of tiny bristles. Little escaped the ears of Wulfgar and Stargrief.

  They dug out a nest of young rabbits and ate their fill. River song crept up through the trees, and the tawny owl looked out upon the universe from his perch in the larch. Gemini and Orion added their soft fire to the glow of the western sky.

  Wulfgar gave a bark of joy.

  ‘There’s something of the wolf in you,’ said Stargrief. ‘You are well named.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong,’ said Wulfgar. ‘I’m all fox. I snatch at the meat the wind brings me. I nose out mysteries.’

  In the half-dark he saw the glitter of Stargrief’s teeth as the old fox grinned.

  ‘What if there’s no such thing as fate?’ Wulfgar went on. ‘What if there’s only a life to lead?’

  ‘It would make a mockery of your visions,’ said Stargrief.

  Wulfgar sighed.

  ‘What song does the wind sing when I’m not here?’ he said.

  ‘Tod alone knows such things.’

  ‘Isn’t it wrong to keep on using Tod as a refuge and an excuse? Shouldn’t we shape our own destinies without appealing to a lost age – to a fox with our dreams in his veins instead of blood? We say Tod wants this and Tod wants that, but how do we know? And is it important? We are here, now, under these trees.’

  ‘Tod is as real as the trees. The heart has eyes.’

  ‘But don’t you understand,’ Wulfgar said. ‘If there is a Star Place for us there must be a Star Place for rabbits and everything else including Man.’

  A breeze stirred the tree tops.

  ‘You look back to the First Dusk, Wulfgar,’ Stargrief said. ‘But I look further, into the Great Night
from which Tod came. There are truths beyond truths.’

  ‘Does my ignorance and conceit upset you?’

  ‘No. Curiosity isn’t vanity. In my thirst for knowledge I was very much like you.’

  ‘I’m a cub in your presence.’

  ‘I’ve been through a lot of seasons,’ Stargrief smiled. ‘The wisdom of Tod is hard earnt.’

  ‘But the unanswered questions – ’

  ‘We can’t know everything. If we lived for as many summers as we have enjoyed sunsets we would still have a river to drink dry. But cheer up. Birth and death always make us look beyond self for things to illumine the experience.’

  They parted company at Stargrief’s suggestion. Wulfgar did not ask the old dog fox where he was going but he guessed and it made him uneasy. Then he thought of Teg and the thought was liquid sunshine in his belly.

  He returned along the West Dart at moonrise. The stars had lost the gem-like brilliance of winter and did not shine in great clusters. On the slope above Dunnabridge Farm he came out of the scrub oak and saw the ponies standing perfectly still where the river mist had risen. They were very big in the soft tranquillity, adding their breath to the crumbling greyness; and if it had not been for the slow rise and fall of their flanks they could have been mistaken for statues. Wulfgar passed among them carefully for he sensed their reverence. Even the wind had died to a hush. All the animals were staring up at the horizon, to the dark curve of the earth and the swelling brightness above it. A huge moon rolled into view and silver ponies stood motionless like pilgrims at a shrine waiting for a miracle.

  Wulfgar ran over the dewy moors full of the beauty of the night.

  In the rick-yard at Prince Hall he discovered roosting fowls and snatched a plump Rhode Island Red before it could squawk. The gut-constricting scent of the bird had him wild with excitement but it was a gift for Teg and he would rather have died of starvation than eat it.

  Lapwings sprang from the darkness and their sad cries pursued him to the Moretonhampstead-Tavistock road.

  Meanwhile Stargrief was trotting in the opposite direction. He was recalling his own cubhood as he approached Runnage Bridge on the Walla Brook and the collie bitch took him by surprise. Like most farm dogs Queenie had been brought up to hate foxes. Two springs before she had worked the flocks of Swincombe Farm but had always shown a preference for a wilder life. Her habit of wandering off for days, even weeks, had not alarmed her master. Then one morning she had met and mated with a stray mongrel and never returned to the farm. The mongrel had been shot for sheep-worrying but Queenie survived and lived as her ancestors had done before Man claimed them for servants.