The Midnight Fox

by Betsy Byars

‘I guess I’m a little tired.’

  ‘Well, I should think so! Helping with the pump out in the boiling sun all morning and then tracking that fox all afternoon. It’s a wonder you don’t have heatstroke. You eat something though, hear? You have to keep up your strength.’

  ‘I’m just not hungry.’

  ‘It’s the heat. But, listen, you drink your tea. You will have heatstroke sure enough if you let your body get dried out.’

  I finished my tea and went up to my room. I did not even look out the window, because I knew I could see the rabbit hutch by the garage and I never wanted to see that baby fox cowering against the wall.

  Hazeline came out of her room and looked in at me on the bed. ‘You feeling better?’

  I nodded. She was all dressed up now in a blue dress she made for 4-H. Her face looked good, as if letting it get swollen had been beneficial. I knew she was going downstairs to sit on the porch and wait for Mikey. I knew he would come, too. One time Petie and I had had the worst argument in the world. We were just sitting on the steps one afternoon and Petie had been thinking in silence for a while and then he said, ‘I wonder what I’ll look like when I’m grown.’

  And I said, ‘Porky Pig.’ I don’t know why I said that, because I wasn’t mad at him or anything. And he said, ‘Well, that’s better than looking like Daffy Duck.’ And I said, ‘Meaning I look like Daffy Duck?’ And he said, ‘Yes, around the mouth.’ And then we both got angry and started screaming things and I thought our friendship was over, only two days later it was just like it had never happened.

  ‘Mikey will come over,’ I said.

  ‘Who cares? I don’t care if I never see him again,’ she said, twisting her fingers in her pearls. He had given her those when she had graduated from high school two months ago.

  ‘I know, but I bet he comes anyway.’

  ‘Well, I can’t stop him of course. It’s a free country.’

  ‘Hazeline?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know that fox I was telling you about? The black one?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, your dad has her baby out in the rabbit hutch and he’s going to shoot her.’

  ‘I know it. I heard. But, listen, don’t let it upset you, hear?’

  ‘Hazeline, I don’t want anything to happen to that fox.’

  ‘Tommy, listen, all wild animals die in some violent way. It’s their life. Wild animals just don’t die of old age. They get killed by an enemy or by the weather or they have an accident or they get rabies or some other disease or they get shot. That’s the way nature is.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said quickly, because I did not want to hear any more.

  ‘You just forget the fox. Tomorrow maybe we can go to the picture show in Clinton or something.’

  ‘All right.’

  She went down the steps then and out on to the porch, and I could hear the swing begin to creak.

  I got up and went down the steps and walked to the tree in front of the rabbit hutch. I could not explain why I did this. I didn’t want to see the baby fox again, and yet here I was.

  He did not see me. He was busy biting the wires of his cage with great fury and determination. I could hear the clicking of his sharp tiny teeth against the wire, but he was making no progress. Then he stopped. He still had not seen me, but he had heard or smelled something and he raised his head and let out a short cry. He waited, then after a moment he began biting the wires again.

  I remained by the tree watching him, listening for the quavering cry that he uttered from time to time.

  ‘Don’t get your fingers in the cage,’ Uncle Fred warned behind me. ‘He may not be able to cut wire yet, but he sure could hurt a finger.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘In a bit, when it starts getting dark, you can sit up here with me and watch for the fox.’

  A car came slowly up the drive, and I said to Uncle Fred, ‘It’s Mikey.’

  Behind him in the doorway Aunt Millie said, ‘Did you say it’s Mikey, Tom?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Praise be.’

  I walked around the front of the house and stood there for a minute. Mikey had not gotten out of the car but was sitting with one arm out the window, looking at Hazeline on the porch.

  ‘What you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much of anything,’ she said. ‘Just fighting the heat.’

  ‘You don’t look hot – you look real good and cool.’

  ‘Sometimes looks are deceiving.’

  He ran his fingers over the steering wheel. There was a pause, then he said, ‘Do you want to ride up to the lake?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When you going to make up your mind?’

  ‘I just don’t know whether I feel like looking at boats racing all over creation tonight.’

  ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll give you’ – he looked at his watch – ‘one minute to make up your mind.’

  He started watching the seconds tick off, and I held up my watch too and counted, and only eleven seconds had gone by when Hazeline got up and said, ‘I’ll go,’ and started laughing. ‘Tell Mom I’m going off with Mikey,’ she said over her shoulder and got in the car.

  I went into the kitchen where Aunt Millie was standing in front of the electric fan and said, ‘Hazeline has gone off with Mikey.’

  I heard the cry of the baby fox again, and I thought I would be hearing that sound for ever. One time Petie Burkis fell down and broke his leg on the school playground and he said, ‘Oh!’ in this real terrible, painful way, and I never could forget it. Later I tried to make him say it again that same way, and one whole afternoon Petie did nothing but say the word Oh over and over – a thousand times maybe, and in all those thousand tries, he never sounded that same way again. I still remember it though, exactly, like I will always remember the way that baby fox sounded when he cried.

  It seemed to get dark quickly that night. Uncle Fred was already out on the back porch. He had brought out a chair and was sitting with his gun beside him, pointing to the floor. I never saw anyone sit any quieter. You wouldn’t have noticed him at all he was so still.

  I stood behind him inside the screen door. Through the screen I could see the tiny fox lift his black nose and cry again. Now, for the first time, there was an answer – the bark of his mother.

  I looked towards the garden, because that’s where the sound had come from, but Uncle Fred did not even turn his head. In a frenzy now that he had heard his mother, the baby fox moved about the cage, pulling at the wire and crying again and again.

  Just then there was the sound of thunder from the west, a long rolling sound, and Aunt Millie came to the door beside me and said, ‘Bless me, is that thunder?’

  She looked out at the sky. ‘Was that thunder, Fred?’

  ‘Could be,’ he said without moving.

  ‘Look!’ Aunt Millie said, ‘I swear I see black clouds. You see, Tom?’

  ‘Yes’m.’

  ‘And feel that breeze. Honestly, when you think you have reached absolutely the end of your endurance, then the breeze comes. I could not have drawn one more breath of hot air, and now we are going to have a storm.’

  We stood in the doorway, feeling the breeze, forgetting for a moment the baby fox.

  Then I saw Uncle Fred’s gun rise ever so slightly in the direction of the fence behind the garage. I could not see any sign of the fox, but I knew that she must be there. Uncle Fred would not be wrong.

  The breeze quickened, and abruptly the dishpan which Aunt Millie had left on the porch railing clattered to the floor. For the first time Uncle Fred turned his head and looked in annoyance at the pan and then at Aunt Millie.

  ‘Did it scare your fox off?’ she asked.

  He nodded, then shifted in the chair and said, ‘She’ll be back.’

  In just this short time the sky to the west had gotten black as ink. Low on the horizon forks o
f lightning streaked the sky.

  ‘Now, Fred, don’t you sit out here while it’s thundering and lightning. I mean it. No fox is worth getting struck by lightning for.’

  He nodded and she turned to me and said, ‘You come on and help me shut the windows. Some of those upstairs are stuck wide open. Just hit them with the heel of your hand on the side till you can get them down.’

  I started up the stairs and she said again, ‘Fred, come on in when it starts storming. That fox’ll be back tomorrow night too.’

  I went upstairs and started hitting the sides of the windows. I had just gotten one window to jerk down about two inches when I heard the gunshot. I had never heard any worse sound in my life. It was a very final sound, like the most enormous period in the world. Bam. Period. The end.

  I ran out of my room and down the steps so fast I could not even tell you how many times my feet touched the stairs, none maybe. I went out the back door, opening it so fast I hit the back of Uncle Fred’s chair. I looked towards the rabbit hutch, said, ‘Where?’ then looked at the back fence. Then I looked down at Uncle Fred, who was doing something with his gun.

  ‘Missed,’ he said.

  Suddenly I felt weak. My legs were like two pieces of rope, like that trick that Hindu magicians do when they make rope come straight up out of a basket and then say a magic word and make the rope collapse. My legs felt like they were going to collapse at any second. I managed to force these two pieces of rope to carry me up the stairs and into the room.

  I closed two windows, and the third one, in sympathy perhaps, just banged down all by itself. Then I sank to the bed.

  Seventeen

  The Stormy Rescue

  I had no intention of going to sleep when I lay down on the bed; I did not think I would ever be able to sleep again, but that is what I did. I fell right asleep and did not even move until four hours later when I awoke. It was one o’clock in the morning.

  The storm was in full force, or perhaps it was a second storm, but the house was quiet. I got up and went out into the hall. I could not hear anything but the sound of the rain and Hazeline’s transistor radio, which was sputtering with static beside her on the pillow.

  I went down the stairs, one by one. I did not make a sound. I stepped on the part of the steps near the wall because Petie had told me that was how burglars got up stairs unheard. I was just stepping into the hall when without warning the hall light went on. Aunt Millie was standing there in her bathrobe squinting at me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. I just didn’t know what time it was.’

  ‘Well’ – she looked closely at her watch – ‘it’s just past one o’clock.’

  ‘I went to sleep in my clothes.’

  ‘Well, you get on your pyjamas and get back to bed. This is the first good sleeping night we’ve had, and you mustn’t let it go to waste.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, go on back up the steps.’ She watched me go up two steps and then she said, ‘Goodness, we’ve gotten on so well all summer, I’d hate for anything to happen now right before your parents get home.’

  ‘Aunt Millie, did Uncle Fred get the fox?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he still out on the porch?’

  ‘In this rain? No, he is fast asleep in his bed like you ought to be.’

  She waited until I was up the stairs and then she turned out the light. I went into my room and she called, ‘Are you getting in bed?’

  I lay down. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And go to sleep.’

  I lay in bed for a long time, still in my clothes, and then I got up very carefully. I walked over to the window and looked out at the tree Bubba and Fred Jr used to just run up and down all the time like monkeys. I could imagine them climbing up, laughing and brown, racing, going out on all sorts of perilous limbs just to be first at the window. I opened the window, pushed out the screen, reached out into the rain, and felt for the smooth spot Aunt Millie had told me was worn into the bark of the tree.

  I took off my shoes and knelt on the window sill. There was an enormous flash of lightning that turned the whole world white for a moment, and then I climbed out onto the nearest branch and circled the trunk round with my arms.

  I thought that I could never get one step further. I thought that I could never move even one muscle or I would fall. I thought that in the morning when Aunt Millie came up to see why I wasn’t at breakfast she would find me here, pressed into the tree, still frozen with fear.

  The rain was hard and slanting directly into my face. Finally I got up just enough courage to turn my face out of the rain. Then lightning flashed again and I saw the ground about a million miles below. I held the tree so tightly the bark was cutting into my cheek.

  I don’t know how long I stayed that way. If I had tried to look at my watch, just that little movement would have thrown me off balance. After a while, though, I began to sort of slip down the tree. I never let go of the main trunk for a second. I just moved my arms downward in very small movements. Then, slowly, when I was practically kneeling on the first limb, I let my foot reach down for the next one.

  If there were smooth spots on those branches, my feet never found them. They only touched one rough limb after another as, slowly, I kept inching down the tree, feeling my way, never looking down at the ground until, finally, my foot reached out for another limb and felt the cold wet grass. It shocked me for a moment and then I jumped down, landing on my hands and knees.

  I got up and ran to the rabbit hutch. The baby fox was huddled in one corner of the pen where there was some shelter from the rain. The lightning flashed and I saw him watching me.

  ‘I’m going to get you out,’ I said.

  He crouched back further in the hutch. In the next flash of lightning I looked on the ground for a rock and I saw at my feet a small dead frog. I knew that the black fox in all this rain had brought that frog here to her baby. She was right now watching me somewhere.

  There were bricks stacked in a neat pile under the hutch and I took one and began to bang it against the lock. I was prepared to do this all night if necessary, but the lock was an old one and it opened right away.

  The noise had scared the baby fox and he was now making a whimpering sound. I unhooked the broken lock, opened the cage, and stepped back against the tree.

  The baby fox did not move for a moment. I could barely see him, a small dark ball in the back of the cage. He waited, alert and suspicious, and then after a moment he moved in a crouch to the door of the cage.

  He cried sharply. From the bushes there was an answering bark.

  He crouched lower. The lightning flashed again and in that second he jumped and ran in the direction of the bushes. He barked as he ran. There was an immediate answer, and then only the sound of the rain. I waited against the tree, thinking about them, and then I heard the black fox bark one more time as she ran through the orchard with her baby.

  And I thought, some day I will be in a famous museum, walking along on the marble floors, looking at paintings. There will be one called ‘Blue Flowers’ and I will look at that for a while, and the next one will be ‘Woman on the Beach’ and I will look at that for a while, and then I will glance at the name of the next painting and it will be ‘Fox with Baby at Midnight’, and I will look up and my heart will stop beating because there it will be, just the way it was this night, the black fox and her baby running beneath the wet ghostly apple trees towards a patch of light in the distance. And I thought, leaning against that tree in the rain: If there is a picture like that, I hope sometime I will get to see it.

  Suddenly the rain began to slacken and I walked around the house. I had never been so wet in my life and now that it was over I was cold too. And I was tired. I looked up at the tree and there didn’t seem to be any point in climbing back up when in just a few hours everyone would know what I had done anyway. I went up on the porch and rang the doorbell.

  In all my life I have never felt
so dumb and foolish as I did barefooted, soaking wet on that slick porch at two o’clock in the morning, waiting for someone to come and answer the door.

  It was Aunt Millie in her cotton robe who turned on the porch light and peered out through the side windows at me.

  I must have been an awful sight, like the poor little match girl, for she flung open the door at once and drew me in.

  ‘What are you doing out there? What are you doing?’

  ‘Who is it?’ Uncle Fred asked as he came into the hall. He was pulling his pants up over his pyjamas.

  ‘It’s Tom,’ Aunt Millie said.

  ‘I meant who’s at the door.’

  ‘Tom,’ she said again.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yes, he was just standing out there on the porch.’

  They both turned and looked at me, waiting for an explanation, and I cleared my throat and said, ‘Uncle Fred and Aunt Millie, I am awfully sorry but I have let the baby fox out of the rabbit hutch.’ I sounded very stiff and formal, and I thought the voice was a terrible thing to have to depend on, because I really did want them to know that I was sorry, and I didn’t sound it the least bit. I knew how much Uncle Fred had looked forward to the hunt and how important getting rid of the fox was to Aunt Millie, and I hated for them to be disappointed now.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Aunt Millie said, ‘Why, that’s perfectly all right, isn’t it, Fred? Don’t you think another thing about that. You just come on to bed. You’re going to get pneumonia standing there in that puddle.’ She started for the linen closet. ‘I’ll get you some towels.’

  Uncle Fred and I were left in the hall alone and I looked up at him and he looked like an enormous blue-eyed Indian.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  He looked at me and I knew he was seeing through all the very casual questions I had been asking all summer about foxes, and seeing through the long days I had spent in the woods. He was remembering the sorry way I had tried to keep him from finding the fox’s den and the way I had looked when we did find it. I think all those pieces just snapped into place right then in Uncle Fred’s mind and I knew that if there was one person in the world who understood me it was this man who had seemed such a stranger.