After a moment his head cleared. He wandered past the dens Bristle and Runt shared. There he smelled caches of game buried in the soft earth, but they were marked with powerful warning scents, so he did not dig them up. Farther out, a few gnawed-over carcasses were discarded to be scoured clean by lower-ranking scavengers. Pax began to poke through the carrion. Only the tail end of a marsh rat held any meat at all. Too rancid and gristly even for the crows, it was crawling with maggots.
Pax lowered his head to the remains. He opened his jaw, but the smell sent him reeling back. This was not food.
He staggered back a few steps and buried his muzzle in a patch of new clover, chewing the sprouts to cleanse the foul odor from his sensitive nasal passages. He swallowed and then began to feed tentatively. The act of eating was a comfort to his shrunken belly, although a false one—the clover wouldn’t strengthen him. After a few mouthfuls, the clear thought arose again: he must find his boy.
Just then, he heard something tear through the grass. Before his sluggish senses could respond, he felt a solid weight plow into him.
Runt pounced on top of Pax, crowing at his successful ambush. When Pax didn’t move to shake him off, Runt began to examine him. Pax lay still while the smaller fox sniffed and licked him, too weak to waste energy batting him away.
Unwell?
Pax closed his eyes against the low-glancing sunlight and did not respond.
Runt bounded off and came back a few minutes later with a worm hanging from his jaw. He dropped it at Pax’s paws.
Pax shrank away, but the thoughts he’d had earlier surfaced again. He had to find his boy. He could avoid death if he ate. Pax picked up the worm and bit into it. Unused to the taste of live flesh, Pax retched and twisted away.
Runt dug up another worm and dropped it in front of Pax, and this time Pax got to his feet and took a few steps before sinking back down.
Runt followed and nudged him. Eat.
Pax mustered as much dominance as he could. Leave.
The younger fox gazed at the older one for a moment, then turned and trotted into the grass. Relieved, Pax laid his head on his paws. He did not have the energy for resistance now. But Runt reappeared after a few moments, something round in his mouth. He dropped his gift and it broke open.
Egg. The scent called up a sharp memory. Once, when he was very young, Pax had found a hard white orb while exploring his humans’ kitchen counter. He’d batted at it, thinking it was one of his boy’s playthings. It had rolled onto the floor and cracked open, spilling its delicious secret.
Peter’s father had come in while he was still licking at the last drops and smacked him away. His flank had stung from the blow, but that egg had been worth it. Since then, Pax managed an exploratory visit to the kitchen counter every time he was left alone, looking for more of them. A few times he’d gotten lucky.
The quail egg Runt had brought was smaller, its speckled shell flecked with dried grass, and it smelled gamier than the ones his humans ate. But there was no mistaking it. Egg.
Pax rose. Runt backed away to allow Pax to lap up the yolked prize. He licked the grass clean of every drop, then looked up, eager to express his gratitude.
Runt was gone, but in a few moments he came back, two more eggs held carefully in his mouth. Pax devoured them. Runt left and returned twice more. Pax ate steadily, until finally, seven eggs swelling his shrunken belly taut, he dropped to the sandy apron in front of the dens and closed his eyes.
Runt leaped onto a gnarled root above the dens. He drew himself up to his full height. And while Pax slept, the ragged little runt kept watch.
Peter recognized Vola’s footsteps—the hard wooden stamp followed by the softer shoed footfall—and dropped the logs back into the wood bin. He braced himself in the cabin doorway, watching Vola pump water into the kitchen sink.
“You stayed off that foot?”
“Pretty much.” Actually, he’d gotten up at least a dozen times to do pull-ups on a beam and he’d lifted logs for half an hour. His arms were sore and his foot hurt a lot when it wasn’t raised, but he hadn’t been able to lie around doing nothing knowing Pax was still out there.
Vola began lathering up her hands without turning around. “You write that note?”
Peter pulled the crutches to his sides. Already he felt more secure when they were tucked under his arms. “I did, but—”
“No buts. You write once a week. The bus driver friend I told you about, Robert Johnson—I ask him, he’ll mail them from different spots along his route. First condition, remember?”
Peter tried a sharp turn, wobbled, but righted himself. He swung through another turn—smoother.
“All right?”
“Okay.”
“Good.” Vola hung the dish towel on its peg, crossed to the fireplace, and began shredding newspaper onto the grate. “Let’s move to the second condition, then. That charm bracelet you carry. I’m guessing it was your mother’s. Why do you carry it with you? Why that particular thing?”
Peter felt his body go instantly rigid the way it always did whenever anyone asked about his mother, as if it had to freeze to decide whether it was okay to talk about her or not. Usually with strangers it wasn’t, so he was surprised when his hands relaxed their grip on the crutches a little and his throat eased open.
“She always wore it. She’d hold her wrist up so I could play with it when I was a baby. I don’t remember that, but I’ve seen a picture. I do remember her telling me about it, though. About the charm, I mean. It’s a phoenix. That’s a special bird. It’s red and gold and purple, colored like sunrise, and it—”
“Rises from the ashes. I know what a phoenix is.”
“Right. But out of its own ashes. That’s the part my mom cared about.”
“Its own ashes?”
“When it gets worn out, it builds itself a nest high in a tree, away from everything.” Peter stopped. It suddenly occurred to him that Vola’s cabin felt like a nest. He circled on the crutches to look around. Yes. A secret, protected nest, surrounded by trees. Away from everything.
He turned back to Vola, who was cross stacking kindling. He hoped she hadn’t read his mind. “So the phoenix fills the nest with its favorite stuff—myrrh and cinnamon is what’s in the story, I think. Then the nest ignites, burning the bird’s old body. And the new bird rises up out of the old bird’s ashes. My mother loved that. She said it meant that no matter how bad things got, we could always make ourselves new again.”
Vola didn’t respond. She touched a match to the shredded paper and watched as it caught fire. Her face looked grim in the light of the new flames. She added two logs and then a third. “Go try those crutches outside while there’s still some light,” she said without looking up.
Peter opened the front door and navigated the step, relieved to get away. He didn’t have a clue what he’d said wrong. Living in the woods all alone probably made a person weird. But she was right that he needed to practice outside. He’d lost a whole day now, a whole day. Maybe he did need some time to train and heal, but he was leaving as soon as he could.
He left the cleared yard and headed to where the uneven ground was snarled with roots and brush. It took a torturously long time to circle the cabin. His second turn around was a little faster, and by the fifth circuit he felt almost comfortable, but he was bathed in sweat when he swung back inside.
The cabin was quiet except for the gentle crackling of the fire. Vola sat in an armchair, sewing something yellow. The quiet and the way the setting sun seemed to wash the cabin in peace, as if everything were right with the world, suddenly felt mocking to Peter.
Everything was wrong with the world—another day had passed when Pax had been out there alone. Another night was coming when he would be cold. Probably hungry and scared, too. And what if he hadn’t found water?
He took a lurching swing across the room. Halfway across, one crutch caught on a rug, and he had to stab the other into the wall to keep from crashing into a lant
ern.
“Shorter steps. You’ll get the hang of them after a while.”
“After a while? My fox will be dead in a while.” He dropped the crutches and sank to the chair at the kitchen table. “What’s the point, anyway? How is this supposed to work out?”
Vola dropped her sewing. “What do I look like—a Magic 8 Ball?” She went out to the porch and came back with a bag of ice; then she lifted Peter’s foot to a chair and arranged the ice over it. “I don’t have your answers.”
The sight of his useless foot reminded him of everything he couldn’t do now. He looked away. “Why not? Aren’t you supposed to be wise and all? Living out here by yourself, with your . . . with all these”—he threw his thumb toward the jumble of notes tacked on the board behind him—“all these philosophy bingo cards? You’re supposed to be wise, at least, aren’t you? Or witchy or something.”
Peter almost didn’t recognize himself, back-talking the woman like this. He felt as if he were short-circuiting—as if his impulses were leaping directly out of him without passing through his brain. But once again he wasn’t where he should be, and now his foot was too wrecked to get him there, and Pax was still out there alone.
Vola pulled a bucket out from a cupboard and set it in the sink. “Philosophy bingo cards.” She looked only mildly insulted. “I’m trying to figure out my own life. I don’t have your answers.”
“So who does? And don’t say my father, because he’s a little absent these days.” And because he caused all this. Peter hardened his jaw against saying the words and forced himself to breathe slowly. He wasn’t angry. He was just frustrated. Anyone would be. Sudden tears threatened—what was wrong with him lately?—and he knuckled his eyes.
Vola started over toward him, then seemed to change her mind. She backed away to lean against the kitchen counter. “You are angry,” she said simply, as if she were noting he had dark hair, or the sun was going down.
“I’m not angry.” But he forced his fists open and counted ten slow breaths, fighting it the way he always did. Because what if he was like his father, with that threatening kind of anger, the kind that was always simmering, the kind that could boil over at any time and hurt everyone in the way? The apologies afterward never healed the damage.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears still crowning. “I’m not angry. It’s just that I didn’t choose it. I didn’t choose for there to be a war. I didn’t choose for my father to join up. I didn’t choose to leave my home. I didn’t choose to go to my grandfather’s. And I sure didn’t choose to abandon an animal I took care of for five years.”
“You’re a kid. You don’t get a lot of choices. I’d be angry, too. Dyableman angry.”
“I told you, I’m not angry!” Peter gulped in a sob that somehow escaped as a twisted laugh. He was short-circuiting again. “And you’re in love with that word, you know.”
“What are you talking about, boy?”
“Dyableman. What is it—a swear? You’re in love with the word dyableman.” His wiring felt totally fried. “If we were in second grade, I’d tell you you’re so in love with that word, you should marry it!”
She squawked, a loud crow’s caw. “But you’re right!” she said. “I should get down on one dyableman ruined knee and ask that word to marry me!”
“You should!” Peter agreed, kind of hysterical now. “You should put a dyableman ring on its dyableman finger!” He wiped his face off and watched Vola as she came over and took the seat across from him.
“My grandfather swore in his first language. It drove my grandmother crazy, because she didn’t speak it. But she sang in Italian when she cooked, so . . .” Vola lifted a finger to stroke the feathers bunched at her throat. “I carry many traits,” she said quietly.
And then she went silent for a while, holding his gaze the whole time. In their silence, Peter felt they were saying something important. Something about the long, dark tunnel he felt narrowing around him.
“I was counting on finding Pax in a week, maybe ten days.” He looked down at his foot. “Now . . .”
“Pax? That’s his name? It means ‘peace,’ you know.”
Peter knew that—lots of people had told him. “But that’s not why I named him. First day I brought him home, I left him for a minute, just a minute, so I could get him some food. When I got back, I couldn’t find him—he’d crawled into my backpack and fallen asleep. It had the word ‘Paxton’ sewn on the label. I was seven then, and I figured, ‘Paxton,’ that’s a good name. It had an X in it, like ‘fox,’ you know? But now . . .”
“But now what?”
“Now he’s all alone because of a war. I let him go because of a war. War, not peace. What’s that called? Irony? Whatever, now it’s a terrible name. He’ll probably die because of a war.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. He could survive. It’s spring. Plenty of food, I’d think.”
Peter shook his head. “Foxes teach their kits to hunt when they’re about eight weeks old. I found him way before that—he was maybe two weeks old, the vet figured. He could run across a dozen mice sitting up on little plates, and he probably couldn’t catch them. All he’s ever had is kibble and the scraps I’d let him swipe.”
“Well, what kind of scraps? Anything he’d find out there?”
Peter shrugged. “He’s crazy for peanut butter. He likes hot dogs. Loves eggs. No, unless he stumbles into someone’s picnic, he’ll starve. He’ll find water, I figure, and he can probably go a week without food, but after that . . .”
Peter dropped his head to his hands. “I let it happen. I didn’t choose any of it, but I didn’t fight it, either. I don’t know why I didn’t fight it.”
Except, of course, he did know. When his father had first dropped the order about Pax, Peter had steeled himself and said, “No. I won’t do it.” But his father’s eyes had flared with that flash-fire anger, and his fist had jerked up, stopping only at the last split second to knuckle Peter’s cheek in a gesture that carried enough threat to set Pax on growling alert.
Peter’s own fists had come up, and the rage he’d felt at his father had scared him more than the threat itself.
He heard his grandfather’s words now—our apples don’t fall far from the tree—and he felt sick and afraid all over again. He dropped his gaze to the worn pine table to hide the shameful headline he felt burning across his face.
Vola reached over and cupped the top of his head with both hands. Peter froze. Except for an occasional “attaboy” shoulder shake from his father or a casual arm punch from one of his friends, no one had touched him since his mother. Vola paused, as though she knew he needed time. Then she pressed down firmly.
It was a strange thing to do, but Peter didn’t pull away, didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even draw a breath. Because at that moment her strong grip was the only thing keeping him from flying apart.
“Well, that’s over now,” she said. “Isn’t it.”
She rose. “I may not have your answers, boy, but I do know one true thing about you. You need food—a lot of food. You’re twelve, you’ve slept out in the cold, and you’ve got a bone to heal. I’m going to set that bone now. Then I’m going to start cooking and you’re going to start eating, and neither one of us is going to stop until you say so. Got it?”
Peter’s belly was suddenly a hollow, snarling crater. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve got it.”
Vola rummaged under the sink and drew out a sack of plaster. Peter watched her sift some into the bucket and then pump in some water. Then she brought over the thing she’d been sewing. “Foot up.”
Vola propped a pillow under his knee and worked a quilted sleeve over his leg, like an open-toed sock.
He recognized the yellow-checked material. He glanced into the bedroom to be sure. “You cut up your quilt?”
“I can always make another one. You need the cushioning.” She took another section of quilt and stripped the batting off, then ripped the yellow calico into strips and dunked them into the plaste
r. “Hold your foot at a ninety-degree angle.” Around and around his foot and ankle, halfway up his shin, she wrapped the strips. When she’d built a thick boot, she frosted it with more plaster. “Don’t move. Not even your toes.”
Vola left for the porch and came back with her arms full. She set two iron skillets on burners, flipped a hunk of butter into each, and turned on the flames. She cracked a couple of eggs into a yellow bowl and started whisking in milk, then cornmeal.
A cool breeze, fragrant with turned earth and frying butter, lifted against Peter. He looked at the sturdy cast drying, his foot safe inside now, wrapped in what used to be Vola’s quilt. “I’m sorry. About how I’ve been.” He tipped his head to her bulletin board.
“My philosophy bingo cards,” she said with a nod. “No-bat Peter, those are just things I figure to be true about the world. The universals. The important ones are the things I figure out to be true about me. I keep them somewhere else, private.”
“How come?”
“How come they’re the important ones, or how come they’re private?”
Peter shrugged. Either. Both. He leaned back, waiting.
Vola eyed him as she sawed a slice off a ham joint and forked it into one of the frying pans. She dipped out three ladles of batter, poured them sputtering into the other pan, then set the bowl down. “I’m going to tell you a story.
“When I got out of the service, I didn’t remember a single true thing about myself. That’s what training does. No more individuals, just pieces they can mold to their machine.
“I was lost my first day as a civilian. Lost. I went into a grocery store, I stared at all the choices, and I kept wondering who I was supposed to be buying groceries for. What filled this person’s hungry belly? Gumbo or pie? Beans or bread? In the produce aisle, I broke down because I didn’t remember a single thing about myself.”
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