The Midnight Fox

by Betsy Byars

  (c) more than five

  3. The kind of commercial you hate the most is

  (a) deodorant

  (b) mouthwash

  4. The kind of hat you would most hate to wear is

  (a) a small man’s hat with a feather

  (b) a checkered cap

  (c) a cap with a propeller on top

  5. Which cereal would you buy?

  (a) Good Luckies – a cereal in the shape of horseshoes that is supposed to bring you good luck all day

  (b) Peppies – the cereal that cures that tired, run-down feeling

  (c) Friendlies – a cereal in the shape of clasped hands that makes you have hundreds of friends instantly

  There were about fifty-two and they all sounded like they were from a real test that you would take in a magazine. Petie was good at this kind of thing. He could imitate any sort of writing perfectly.

  ‘My goodness, you certainly did get a nice long letter from your friend,’ Aunt Millie said. ‘Come on and get your supper and then you can read it.’

  ‘All right.’ Naturally I did not want to sit down and eat supper when I had this whole questionnaire to do, but I sat down anyway, kept the paper open in my lap, and read while I was pretending to eat.

  6. If you walked in your sleep, would you

  (a) say, ‘Oh, well, lots of people walk in their sleep every night’

  (b) tie yourself to the bed

  (c) invent a little camera and strap it to your head so the next day you could develop the film and see where you had been

  ‘I said you could read the letter after supper,’ Aunt Millie said patiently. She always liked everyone to give full attention to their eating.

  ‘Oooo, this looks so good,’ Hazeline said, happily flapping open her napkin.

  ‘Yes’m,’ I said.

  That night after I was in bed I lay awake for a long time. I had a very good feeling. I had already thought of a questionnaire I was going to make up for Petie, and also I felt good because I had seen the fox again.

  Seeing something beautiful always made me feel good. One time in a museum I saw an old model of a sailing ship that someone had made long ago. The sails were sewn just as carefully as sails that really had to hold ocean winds, and the boards were fitted as well as boards that really had to keep water out, and I just stood there. I thought I would never get enough of looking at that old sailing ship.

  My mom and dad practically had to pull me away, and even after we had left the museum and gone home, that was the only thing in the whole museum that I could remember.

  My cousin Eleanor had gone with us to the museum and she had seen an old doll-house she liked, and as soon as we got home she started getting spools and boxes and stuff, and trying to make a doll-house just like the one she’d seen. But it was enough for me just to have seen that old ship and to know that it was there where I could see it again some time. Now, I felt the same way about the black fox.

  Ten

  The Search

  The days and weeks passed quickly, long warm days in which I walked through the woods looking for the black fox.

  The next time I saw her was in the late afternoon at the ravine.

  This was my favourite place in the forest. The sides of the ravine were heavy dark boulders with mosses and ferns growing between the rocks, and at the bottom were trunks of old dead trees. The trunks were like statues in some old jungle temple, idols that had fallen and broken and would soon be lost in the creeping foliage. There was only an occasional patch of sunlight.

  At the top of the ravine was a flat ledge that stuck out over the rocks, and I was lying there on my stomach this particular afternoon. The rock was warm because the sun had been on it since noon and I was half asleep when suddenly I saw something move below me. It was the black fox. There was a certain lightness, a quickness that I could not miss.

  She came over the rocks as easily as a cat. Her tail was very high and full, like a sail that was bearing her forward. Her fur was black as coal, and when she was in the shadows all I could see was the white tip of her tail.

  As I watched, she moved with great ease over one of the fallen trees, ran up the other side of the ravine, and disappeared into the underbrush.

  I stayed exactly where I was. My head was resting on my arms, and everything was so still I could hear the ticking of my watch. I wanted to sit up. I am sort of a bony person and after I have been lying on something hard for a long time, I get very uncomfortable.

  This afternoon, however, I did not move; I had the feeling that the fox was going to come back through the ravine and I did not want to miss seeing her.

  While I was waiting I watched an ant run across the ledge with an insect wing. He was running so fast with this wing that he would make a little breeze and the wing would fly out of his grasp. Then he would go back and get the wing and start running again.

  Then I watched some birds on the other side of the ravine circling over the rocks, catching insects as they skimmed the air. It was a beautiful sight, and I thought as I watched them, that is what man had in mind when he first said, ‘I want to fly.’ And I thought about some old genius working up in a remote mountain valley actually making a little flying machine that he could strap on his back like a knapsack, and this old man would come down to a big air base and he would go out on the flight line and announce to everyone, ‘Folks, I have invented a flying machine.’ There would be a silence and then everyone would start laughing as if they would never stop, and finally the Captain would pause long enough to explain to the old man that flying machines had already been invented, that right over there – that big silver thing with the huge wings, that was a flying machine, and over there, those enormous bullet-shaped things, those were flying machines. ‘Well,’ the old man would say, shaking his head sadly, ‘I won’t waste no more of your time. I’ll just head on home,’ and he would press a button on his knapsack, and silently, easy as a bird, he would lift off the ground, and skimming the air, fly towards the hills. For a moment everyone would be too stunned to move, and then the General would cry, ‘Come back, come back,’ and everyone at the air base would run beneath the flying old man, crying, ‘Wait, wait, come back, come back!’ because that was the way every one of those men really wanted to fly, free and easy and silent as a bird. But the old man, who was a little hard of hearing, would not hear their cries and would fly off into the distance and never be seen again.

  Right after I stopped thinking about this, the black fox came back. She came down the rocks the same way she had gone up, her white-tipped tail as light as a plume, and I remembered a black knight I saw once in the movies who was so tall and fine and brave you could see his black plume racing ahead of all the other knights when there was a battle.

  She had something in her mouth that looked like a frog – it probably was, for the creek was low now and you could always find a frog if you wanted one. She trotted on, apparently concerned only with getting the frog home, and yet I had the feeling that she was missing nothing. She passed across the ravine in a zigzag line and then started up the other side.

  I did not move, and yet all at once she looked up at me. She froze for a moment, her bright eyes looking at me with curiosity rather than fear, and she cocked her head to one side, listening.

  I stayed perfectly still – I was getting good at this – and we looked at each other. Then she turned away and bounded up the side of the ravine, turning at the top and disappearing into the underbrush. I felt that somewhere in the shelter of the trees she had paused to see if I was going to follow. Perhaps she wanted me to follow so she could lead me back into the forest, but I stayed where I was. After a while, I got up and went back to the farm.

  The next time I saw the fox, it was a marvellous accident. These don’t happen very often in real life, but they do happen, and that’s what this was. Like the time Petie and I were walking down the alley behind his house and there, on top of this lady’s garbage, we saw a mayonnaise jar full of marbles – not j
ust ordinary marbles but all different kinds, kinds I had never seen before. Petie and I turned them all out on the grass and first Petie chose one and then I chose one until they were all gone. And both of us right now, today, have every single one of those marbles.

  This was an even better accident. For the past two weeks I had been practically tearing the woods apart looking for the den of the black fox. I had poked under rocks and logs and stuck sticks in rotted trees, and it was a wonder that some animal had not come storming out and just bitten my hand off.

  I had found a hornets’ nest like a huge grey shield in a tree. I had found a bird’s nest, low in a bush, with five pale-blue eggs and no mother to hatch them. I had found seven places where chipmunks lived. I had found a brown owl who never moved from one certain limb of one certain tree. I had heard a tree, split by lightning years ago, suddenly topple and crash to the ground, and I ran and got there in time to see a disgruntled possum run down the broken tree and into the woods. But I did not find the place where the black fox lived.

  Now, on this day, I did not go into the woods at all. I had gone up the creek where there was an old chimney, all that was left of somebody’s cabin. I had asked Aunt Millie about it, but all she could remember was that some people named Bowden had worked on the farm a long time ago and had lived here. I poked around the old chimney for a while because I was hoping I would find something that had belonged to the Bowdens, and then I gave that up and walked around the bend.

  I sat on a rock, perfectly still, for a long time and looked down into the creek. There were crayfish in the water – I could see them, sometimes partly hidden beneath a covering of sand, or I could see the tips of their claws at the edge of a rock. There were fish in the water so small I could almost see through them. They stayed right together, these fish, and they moved together too.

  After a while I looked across the creek and I saw a hollow where there was a small clearing. There was an outcropping of rocks behind the clearing and an old log slanted against the rocks. Soft grass sloped down to the creek bank.

  I don’t know how long I sat there – I usually forgot about my watch when I was in the woods – but it was a long time. I was just sitting, not expecting anything or waiting for anything. And the black fox came through the bushes.

  She set a bird she was carrying on the ground and beneath the rocks came a baby fox.

  He did not look like his mother at all. He was tiny and woolly and he had a stubby nose. He stumbled out of the hole and fell on the bird as if he had not eaten in a month. I have never seen a fiercer fight in my life than the one that baby fox gave that dead bird. He shook it, pulled it, dragged it this way and that, all the while growling and looking about to see if anyone or anything was after his prize.

  The black fox sat watching with an expression of great satisfaction. Mothers in a park sometimes watch their young children with this same fond, pleased expression. Her eyes were golden and very bright as she watched the tiny fox fall over the bird, rise, and shake it.

  In his frenzy he dropped the bird, picked up an older dried bird wing in its place, and ran around the clearing. Then, realising his mistake, he returned and began to shake the bird with even greater fierceness. After a bit he made another mistake, dropping the bird by his mother’s tail, and then trying to run off with that.

  In the midst of all this, there was a noise. It was on the other side of the clearing, but the black fox froze. She made a faint sound, and at once the baby fox, still carrying his bird, disappeared into the den.

  The black fox moved back into the underbrush and waited. I could not see her but I knew she was waiting to lead the danger, if there was any, away from her baby. After a while I heard her bark from the woods, and I got up quietly and moved back down the creek. I did not want the black fox to see me and know that I had discovered her den. Hazeline had told me that foxes will pick up their young like cats and take them away if they think someone has discovered their den.

  I wondered if this was how the black fox had come to have only one baby. Perhaps her den had been the one discovered by Mr Hunter. Perhaps she had started to move her cubs and had got only one to safety before Mr Hunter had arrived with his dynamite.

  I decided I would never come back here to bother her. I knew I would be tempted, because already I wanted to see that fox play with his bird some more, but I would not do it. If I was to see the black fox again, it would be in the woods, or in the pasture, or in the ravine, but I was not going to come to the den ever again. I did not know that an awful thing was going to happen which would cause me to break this resolution.

  I went home and I put a tiny little mark on the edge of my suitcase with my penknife. I did this every time I saw the black fox. There were four marks on my suitcase now, and in the weeks to come, there were to be ten more. Fourteen times I saw the black fox and most of those fourteen she saw me too. I think she knew that I wasn’t anything to be afraid of. She didn’t exactly jump with joy when she saw me and she didn’t trust me, but I know she was not afraid.

  After I got home, my mom said, ‘What on earth happened to your brand-new suitcase? There are notches all over it.’

  And I said, ‘Let me see,’ as if I was surprised too, but if I wanted to, I could have sat right down then and told her about every one of those notches, that this one was for when I saw the black fox carrying home a live mouse so her baby could start learning to hunt for himself, and that this one was for when I saw the fox walking down the stream, her black legs shining like silk, and this one was for when the fox passed me so closely that I could have put out my hand and touched her thick soft fur. The fifteenth notch I never put in the suitcase, for that was not a happy memory like the others but a painful one.

  Eleven

  Tragedy Begins

  One time Petie Burkis and I made up a TV show called ‘This is your Bad Moment’. And on this show contestants would come out on the stage, and the audience would get to see the contestant in a bad moment. Like if Petie Burkis was a contestant he would come out on the stage and there would be an enormous table absolutely covered with every kind of pizza in the world. Petie loved pizza and he would just stand there looking at this steaming table and while he was deciding what kind of pizza to go for first, a little door would open and a hundred monkeys would come tumbling out, jump up on the table, and start romping all over the pizzas. Petie would leap forward, trying to save at least one, but he would be too late, and then the announcer’s voice would say, ‘Petie Burkis, this is your bad moment.’ And the camera would come in close so everyone could see the sorrowful look on Petie’s face as he watched the monkeys stomping on the pizzas.

  Well, that night when Hazeline came out on the porch where I was sitting and said, ‘Get on your bathing suit and let’s take a swim,’ I thought about that TV show. I could even hear the announcer’s deep voice saying, ‘Tommy, this is your bad moment.’

  ‘What?’ I said quickly.

  ‘I said, let’s take a swim. Didn’t you bring your bathing suit?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, get on some old shorts then. Aren’t you roasting?’

  ‘I’m not so awfully hot.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  She got up and I followed her into the house and put on my bathing suit. I did not want to go swimming at all, but I went down and sat on the steps.

  ‘Well, let’s go,’ Hazeline called from the corner of the house.

  I looked up and she was standing there with two black inner tubes. In all my life I never saw a more welcome sight.

  We went down to the pond and got in the inner tubes and just floated around. Hazeline kept saying, ‘Don’t splash me now. Don’t splash,’ until finally I got brave and did splash her a little, and then we just floated around some more.

  I could have stayed in that inner tube for hours. I could have gone to sleep in that inner tube. It started getting dark and the stars came out, and I felt like that inner tube with me in it was the centre o
f the whole universe. I thought that if someone on another planet was looking at Earth through a tremendously powerful telescope, the first thing this person would see would be me and that black inner tube floating in the pond.

  ‘There’s Mikey,’ Hazeline screamed suddenly. She always seemed surprised to see him, even though he had come over every single night since I had arrived. ‘I’ve got on the awfullest bathing suit. Come on, let’s get out and go around back before he sees us.’

  We got out as quickly as we could, but of course he saw us and came running over. He grabbed Hazeline by the arms and made her walk out on this little dock and then he pretended he was going to push her into the water.

  ‘Mikey, really, Mikey, don’t push me off, really, because I just washed my hair and this water is muddy. Mikey, I mean it, don’t push me off, hear?’

  He said, ‘I’m not going to push you.’

  ‘You are, too.’

  ‘I am not going to push you.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise. I am not going to push you. What I’m going to do is drop you.’ And he held her out over the water and dropped her in.

  She came up and she was furious. Her hair was like a sagging bird’s nest, and she started thrashing her arms around and trying to splash Mikey. He ran out of the way, but Hazeline got a bucket and filled it with muddy water and she chased Mikey until she had him pinned against the hedge and then she said, ‘All right, Mikey Galter, you just apologise to me or I’m going to throw this water all over you and your good shirt.’

  He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –’ And right then she threw the water all over him anyway and started running. It was very funny to watch and Aunt Millie and Uncle Fred came out and Uncle Fred said, ‘Don’t let her get away with that, Mikey,’ and we were all laughing as if we would never stop.