by Betsy Byars
This Thursday morning when I went to the mailbox there was a letter to me from Petie Burkis and I was never so glad to see anything in my life. I ripped it open and completely destroyed the envelope I was in such a hurry. And I thought that when I was a hundred years old, sitting in a chair with a rug over my knees, and my mail was brought in on a silver tray, if there was a letter from Petie Burkis on that tray, I would snatch it up and rip it open just like this. I could hardly get it unfolded – Petie folds his letters up small – I was so excited.
Dear Tom,
There is nothing much happening here. I went to the playground Saturday after you left, and you know that steep bank by the swings? Well, I fell all the way down that.
Here’s the story:
BOY FALLS DOWN BANK WHILE GIRL ONLOOKERS CHEER
Today Petie Burkis fell down the bank at Harley Playground. It is reported that some ill-mannered girls at the park for a picnic cheered and laughed at the sight of the young, demolished boy. The brave youngster left the park unaided.
Not much else happened. Do you get Chiller Theatre? There was a real good movie on Saturday night about mushroom men.
Write me a letter,
Petie Burkis
I went in and gave the rest of the mail to Aunt Millie who said, ‘Well, let’s see what the government’s sending us today,’ and then I got my box of stationery and went outside.
There was a very nice place over the hill by the creek. There were trees so big I couldn’t get my arms around them, and soft grass and rocks to sit on. They were planning to let the cows into this field later on, and then it wouldn’t be as nice, but now it was the best place on the farm.
Incidentally, anyone interested in butterflies would have gone crazy. There must have been a million in that one field. I had thought about there being a contest – a butterfly contest and hundreds of people would come from all over the country to catch butterflies. I had thought about it so much that I could almost see this real fat lady from Maine running all over the field with about a hundred butterfly nets and a fruit jar under her arm.
Anyway, I sat down and wrote Petie a letter.
Dear Petie,
I do not know whether we get Chiller Theatre or not. Since there is no TV set here, it is very difficult to know what we could get if we had one.
My farm chores are feeding the pigs, feeding the chickens, weeding the flowers, getting the mail, things like that. I have a lot of time to myself and I am planning a movie about a planet that collides with Earth, and this planet and Earth become fused together, and the people of Earth are terrified of the planet, because it is very weird-looking and they have heard these terrible moanlike cries coming from the depths of it. That’s all so far.
Write me a letter,
Tom
I had just finished writing this letter and was waiting for a minute to see if I would think of anything to add when I looked up and saw the black fox. I did not believe it for a minute. It was like my eyes were playing a trick or something, because I was just sort of staring across this field, thinking about my letter, and then in the distance, where the grass was very green, I saw a fox leaping over the crest of the field. The grass moved and the fox sprang towards the movement, and then, seeing that it was just the wind that had caused the grass to move, she ran straight for the grove of trees where I was sitting.
It was so great that I wanted it to start over again, like you can turn movie film back and see yourself repeat some fine thing you have done, and I wanted to see the fox leaping over the grass again. In all my life I have never been so excited.
I did not move at all, but I could hear the paper in my hand shaking, and my heart seemed to have moved up in my body and got stuck in my throat.
The fox came straight towards the grove of trees. She wasn’t afraid, and I knew she had not seen me against the tree. I stayed absolutely still even though I felt like jumping up and screaming, ‘Aunt Millie! Uncle Fred! Come see this. It’s a fox, a fox!’
Her steps as she crossed the field were lighter and quicker than a cat’s. As she came closer I could see that her black fur was tipped with white. It was as if it were midnight and the moon were shining on her fur, frosting it. The wind parted her fur as it changed directions. Suddenly she stopped. She was ten feet away now, and with the changing of the wind she got my scent. She looked right at me.
I did not move for a moment and neither did she. Her head was cocked to one side, her tail curled up, her front left foot raised. In all my life I never saw anything like that fox standing there with her pale green golden eyes on me and this great black fur being blown by the wind.
Suddenly her nose quivered. It was such a slight movement I almost didn’t see it, and then her mouth opened and I could see the pink tip of her tongue. She turned. She still was not afraid, but with a bound that was lighter than the wind – it was as if she was being blown away over the field – she was gone.
Still I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe that I had really seen the fox.
I had seen foxes before in zoos, but I was always in such a great hurry to get on to the good stuff that I was saying stupid things like, ‘I want to see the go-rillllllas,’ and not once had I ever really looked at a fox. Still, I could never remember seeing a black fox, not even in a zoo.
Also, there was a great deal of difference between seeing an animal in the zoo in front of painted fake rocks and trees and seeing one natural and free in the woods. It was like seeing a kite on the floor and then, later, seeing one up in the sky where it was supposed to be, pulling at the wind.
I started to pick up my pencil and write as quickly as I could, ‘P.S. Today I saw a black fox.’ But I didn’t. This was the most exciting thing that had happened to me, and ‘P.S. Today I saw a black fox’ made it nothing. ‘So what else is happening?’ Petie Burkis would probably write back. I folded my letter, put it in an envelope, and sat there.
I thought about this old newspaper that my dad had had in his desk drawer for years. It was orange and the headline was just one word, very big, the letters about twelve inches high. WAR! And I mean it was awesome to see that word like that, because you knew it was a word that was going to change your whole life, the whole world even. And every time I would see that newspaper, even though I wasn’t even born when it was printed, I couldn’t say anything for a minute or two.
Well, this was the way I felt right then about the black fox. I thought about a newspaper with just one word for a headline, very big, very black letters, twelve inches high. FOX! And even that did not show how awesome it had really been to me.
Six
Hazeline
I did not mention to anyone that I had seen the black fox. For one thing I did not want to share it, and then, too, I had never heard that there was such an animal. I had the uneasy feeling that someone would say, ‘A black fox? Boy, you’ve been dreaming. There’s no such thing as a black fox!’
That night, though, after supper I went out on to the porch where Hazeline was sitting waiting for her boyfriend, who was coming to take her for a ride. She was reading a bride magazine and she said to me, ‘How do you like that dress?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘It would look awful on me though,’ she said. ‘I am too fat for everything.’
‘I think you’re just right. I think people who like to eat are very lucky.’ I never saw anyone who liked to eat as much as Hazeline, not even Petie Burkis. Every night at the supper table she would say, ‘This is the best cabbage (or sweet corn or beans or beets or whatever we were having) I have ever eaten in my whole life.’
‘Well, I wish I was like you,’ she said, ‘and could just pick at my food. You would think that there never was such a thing as a fat bride, because in all this magazine there are only the tiniest skinniest girls you ever saw.’ She showed them to me.
‘Hazeline?’
She was now angrily flipping through the pages of skinny brides, showing them to me one by one.
‘Do you have many wild animals around here?’
‘Wild animals?’ She paused to turn her mind from the brides. ‘Law, no, this is practically like the city now. You don’t have to worry about wild animals.’
‘No deer or – foxes, anything like that?’
‘Oh, sure, deer, foxes, squirrels, muskrat, the woods are full of them. Dad and the boys used to go hunting all the time. I remember they shot a possum one time and it was the ugliest thing you ever saw and it had these tiny baby possums in its pouch. They were so tiny that Daddy had one in a spoon to show me, in a teaspoon!’ She shuddered and closed her magazine. ‘I squealed – I just squealed! I thought that possum in that teaspoon was the awfullest thing I ever saw. And Fred Jr and Bubba used to tease me about that for years. We would be sitting at the table and all of a sudden Fred Jr would make the awfullest face and say, ‘Mamma! Hazeline’s eating with the possum spoon!’ That was the only way anybody could ever stop my eating. The possum spoon!’ She let her magazine drop to the floor beside her chair.
‘Hazeline, do you see many … foxes in the woods?’
‘Why? You want to go hunting?’
‘No, no, I just wanted to see an animal or something. I don’t want to go hunting ever.’
‘Well, if you do want to go, you just tell Daddy, because he is never happier than when he’s walking through the woods with his gun. He loves it. He could go hunting every day of his life.’
‘Do people do any trapping or anything around here?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘There used to be good money in trapping, I guess, but now they got fur farms and things. Nobody I know does any trapping, unless it’s ’cause an animal gets to be a bother, like in the garden or with the chickens.’
‘Then what do they do?’
‘Well, you know that house right on the opposite side of the road where you turn in to our place?’
I said quickly, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, it hadn’t been but about two weeks ago that something was stealing that man’s chickens. Every night a chicken would be gone, and he knew it was a fox.’
‘How did he know that?’
‘These chickens were taken just before they roosted or real early in the morning, maybe. If a hen’s taken from a high perch or something, then it’s generally a coon or an owl. If there’s some of the chicken left uneaten, then it’s generally a weasel or a skunk. But if the chicken’s just gone – just carried off whole with maybe a feather or two left behind – then it’s a fox.’
‘Oh.’
‘Usually a fox won’t bother your chickens except when it’s got a family of little foxes or something. Then it’ll come right on in and take what it wants and not make a noise doing it.’
‘What did the man do?’
‘Mr Hunter tried going out with his gun but he couldn’t get near that fox. Foxes are tricky – that’s not something that’s just in stories. They really are tricky. So Mr Hunter got real tired of the whole thing and he went down to the creek and he put a piece of raw chicken out in the middle of the stream on a little island that the fox couldn’t reach.’ She broke off. ‘Well, at last here comes that boyfriend of mine.’
‘Yes, but go on about the fox.’
‘Wait a minute.’ She waited till her boyfriend got out of the car and then she called, ‘Well, you were so late getting here that I just went and got me a new boyfriend.’
She laughed and hooked her arm through mine.
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I reckon I’d just be wasting my time around here.’ And he turned around and pretended to head back to the car.
‘Mikey Galter, you come right back here.’
He came back and sat on the porch railing, grinned, tugged at the hem of her skirt, and said, ‘You look mighty good.’
I said, ‘Go on about the fox, Hazeline.’
She laughed and said, ‘Where was I? Almost losing my boyfriend put that fox right out of my head.’
‘Mr Hunter put the raw chicken on the island so the fox couldn’t reach it,’ I prompted.
‘Yeah, well, then he put some moss in the stream like a little stepping stone, see? Only underneath the moss was an open trap, and that very night the fox came by and he saw the raw chicken and he put his foot right on that moss and sprung the trap. Bingo!’
‘Oh.’
‘End of fox,’ she said. ‘That was about two weeks ago, and then he found the den and went and got a stick of dynamite and blew it up and that was the end of the baby foxes.’
‘Oh.’ It was one of those stories that you’re sorry afterwards that you made somebody tell you.
Mikey said, ‘My grandaddy was the one who could get foxes. He used to be able to squeak them up.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hazeline asked.
‘There was a place like a hollow, where there were wood mice, and my grandaddy would get down in there and hide and start squeaking. That man sounded more like a mouse than any mouse. He could get a fox in rifle range every time. They just couldn’t resist his squeaking.’
Hazeline said, real delighted, ‘I didn’t know your grandaddy could do that.’
Mikey nodded. ‘He was in the kitchen one time and he started squeaking, and my mom came in and said, real worried, “There’s a mouse somewhere in this kitchen. I hear it!”’
‘Your mamma?’ Hazeline asked.
‘She’s scared of mice, I’m telling you.’
‘Not your mamma?’
‘Yes, my mamma.’
They got up an argument about whether his mother was really scared of mice or not, and I said, ‘I thought foxes were very smart.’
‘They’re smart, all right,’ Mikey said. ‘I got the smartest dog in the world and he has yet to catch him a fox. They been fooling him for ten years.’
‘Henry? Is that who you’re calling the smartest dog in the world?’ Hazeline said, and then they started arguing about whether Henry was smart or dumb.
‘Are we going to sit here and fight all night, or are we going for a ride?’ Mikey said finally.
‘Let me get my sweater,’ Hazeline said. She did and then they went down the steps, Hazeline saying, ‘Next time I see your grandaddy in church I’m going to ask him if he’ll squeak like a mouse for me.’
I sat there a minute and then Aunt Millie called, ‘Tom, come in here a minute.’
I went in the hall and she was standing back by the bookcase. She said, ‘Your mother told me how much you like to read and we have just bushels of books right here. You take whatever you want.’
She opened the little glass doors so I could see the books and they were all the kind I didn’t like. The way I liked to get a book was this:
I would go over to Petie’s and he would be sitting on the porch reading. He would be so interested in the book that he wouldn’t even look up to see who I was.
‘What are you reading, Petie?’
He would lift the book so I could see the title and it would be something like Mystery of the Deep.
‘Can I read it when you’re through?’
He would nod.
‘How much more you got?’
Still without missing a word, he would flip the remaining pages.
‘Well, hurry up, will you?’
He would nod again, but Petie Burkis had never hurried through a book in his life. So I would wait. And I would wait. And wait. And finally, when I was ready to go out and get the book out of the library myself, then he would come over and give it to me. I couldn’t get it open fast enough and I would start reading on my way into the house and the book would start like, ‘The crack in the earth appeared during the night and when the people of Pittsburgh awoke, it was there, and deep down in the crack the people could see something moving.’
That was the way I liked to get a book. I did not like to open a bookcase, especially with someone watching, and know that I had to take one, had to.
‘This one looks
good,’ I said. It was the kind of book I particularly hated. It was called The Lamb Who Thought He Was a Cat. I used to wish people wouldn’t write books like that. It would make me feel sad to read about someone who was trying to be something he could never, ever be in his whole life. Just thinking about that lamb worrying because he couldn’t climb trees or because he didn’t have claws made me feel awful.
‘That’s a wonderful book,’ Aunt Millie said. ‘We laughed over that thing. I can still remember Bubba sitting in that chair right over there laughing at that book.’ She looked pleased at my selection.
‘I think I’ll take it outside,’ I said.
‘Now, listen, when it starts getting dark, you come in. I don’t want you to ruin your eyes.’
Ruining my eyes was something she did not have to worry about, but adults always seemed to be worrying about the wrong things. One time Petie Burkis’s sitter came out and Petie was stuck up in this tree, about to fall, and she said, ‘Petie, come down out of that wind – you’re going to get the earache!’ Petie made up a headline about it – BOY BREAKS TWENTY-SEVEN BONES – AVOIDS EARACHE!
‘Now, when it gets dark, come on in.’
‘Sure.’
I went out and sat by the creek on the very rock I had sat on that morning. I did not open the book. I turned it front down on the grass beside me, because I did not even want to see the lamb and the cat on the cover. And I sat there looking across the field, waiting, hoping for some miracle that would bring the black fox leaping over the green, green grass again.
Seven
Discovery at the Field
The next four days I spent practically the whole time down by the creek waiting to see the black fox. I am not a good patient waiter. I like to have things go ahead and happen. I thought one time that if there was some way to turn your life ahead like a clock, then I would probably lose half my life turning it ahead to avoid waiting for things.