Pax

by Sara Pennypacker

  Both of them came alive instantly at the strange scent. Bristle was on her feet first.

  She nudged the jar and jumped back at its surprising roll. She sniffed it all around and tested it with her tongue. One taste was all it took. Bristle locked the jar between her paws and began lapping greedily, cleaning out the top half in seconds. She squirmed her snout in deeper.

  Pax had done this same thing. Be careful. You can get trapped.

  Too late. Bristle jumped up. She thrashed her head from side to side, but the jar was wedged on tightly. She hopped onto her hind legs, trying with both forepaws to claw it off, and tumbled over and over.

  Runt watched in amazement. His sister had never lost her composure before.

  Pax approached, offering to help. But Bristle dashed away. She would do this herself. Finally, she rolled onto her back and pried the jar off her face with her hind legs. She shook herself and stalked back, her head and tail high. She dropped down beside Pax and began cleaning herself.

  Bristle had never sat this close to him before, with her flank pressed comfortably against his own. Her scent had never been this friendly. A streak of brown on Bristle’s white cheek caught his attention. Without thinking of the consequences, he stretched out and licked it off.

  And Bristle allowed it.

  Pax cleaned her ears and her throat and her muzzle. And after a moment, Bristle returned the care. Cheek to cheek, the two foxes groomed each other. Bristle stopped to sniff Pax deeply. You don’t smell of humans now.

  Pax didn’t respond. He got to his feet to test the air. Something dangerous had entered the clearing with the dusk. An animal scent he didn’t recognize but feared. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but Pax howled at Runt.

  Get inside the den. Now.

  “Kid!”

  Peter twisted around so sharply, he nearly fell over. He’d been certain the guard station was empty—he’d watched for ten full minutes to make sure before leaving his cover.

  A soldier came out from behind a truck. He lifted his rifle butt to the sign chained over the barricade. “No entry.”

  Peter straightened up as tall as he could on his crutches. It had been two days since he’d spoken to anyone. Two days since the bus driver had said, “I don’t know what you’re really up to, son, but I doubt it’s a good idea. You want, I can get you on a bus back tonight. No shame in that,” and Peter had replied, “No thanks,” because there would have been shame in turning back, and then the bus driver had said, “All right then, good luck,” and let him out.

  Not a soul had spoken to him that night. The town was on the perimeter of the evacuated area, and the few people he passed cast their eyes down, picked up speed, as if they couldn’t afford to make contact with anyone who might need help. Nothing extra here, their looks said. All is already lost.

  The next day, from sunrise to well past sunset, and most of this morning, he had traveled on roads through vacant towns, past abandoned schools and playgrounds and neighborhoods spookily silent without their squeaking tricycles, their car radios, their pickup ball games. The only familiar sound had been water running through garden hoses when he’d filled his thermos.

  He hadn’t seen any other humans, but he’d seen the animals they’d left behind. A skittish pony, tugging up grass in front of a church. Dogs eyeing him balefully from behind Dumpsters. Dozens of skinny cats, sliding away, their flanks hollow as spoons.

  “Hey, kid!” The soldier moved closer. He eyed Peter’s handmade crutches, the rough cast, the dirty clothes. “We evacuated this area almost two weeks ago. Where’ve you been, you don’t know that?”

  “I know that. But I left someone down there. I’m going to get him.”

  “Take it easy. We checked the records—everyone’s out.”

  “He’s not a person.” Peter jutted his chin, defying the soldier to argue that this mattered.

  Instead, the soldier’s face changed, became somehow younger, and Peter saw that he wasn’t that long out of high school. He slid his rifle back into its sling. “I have a dog. Henry.” He didn’t say anything else for a minute, just looked down the road, as if he were hoping this dog of his would suddenly appear. Then he turned back and sighed. “I don’t think anyone’s walking him. My sister said she’d do it, but she works. Want to see his picture?”

  Even before Peter nodded, the soldier had drawn out his wallet. He held out a picture. A beagle. An ordinary beagle. Peter’s throat hurt. The corners of the photo were worn soft and colorless. That picture had been taken out a lot.

  “That’s Henry. I got him for my eighth birthday. His hips are bad now, but he still likes his walk, you know? Still likes to sniff out squirrels and stuff. I told my sister that, but . . . Henry won’t understand where I’ve gone, is the thing. He’ll wait at the door all day for me. What’s yours look like? I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

  “Pax isn’t a . . .” Peter stopped. If it didn’t matter that Pax wasn’t a human, why should it matter that he wasn’t a dog? “He’s red. Black legs.”

  “How big? Coyotes out here. They have pups this time of year. They’ll take down a small dog when they have a litter to protect.”

  “He’s pretty small.” Peter shifted his weight off his blistered palms. “Please. I’ve come a long way to do this.”

  The soldier gazed at his photo another minute before slipping it into his wallet. When he looked back at Peter, he seemed older again. “We’re holding them. But they’re coming. You go in, you’ve got to be back out by tomorrow.” He pointed at Peter’s crutches. “You can do that?”

  “I can. So . . . you’ll let me through?”

  The soldier looked around and leaned in. “This road is patrolled hourly, but we only guard the main trail entrances. No one is stationed in the woods yet. You travel twenty yards in, no one would stop you. But listen: if you get caught, I didn’t just say that. Now get out of here.”

  “Thanks.” Peter turned and started for the woods before the soldier could change his mind.

  “Kid. I hope you find him.”

  It was quiet in the woods, but here the quiet was right, and it was broken by the sound of wild things, which seemed a promise. Here, Peter could imagine seeing Pax’s red brush flicking between the trees. Here, when he called, it was easy to imagine an answering bark. These things raised his spirits so much that he could almost ignore the pain in his palms and in his armpits, bleeding and raw.

  For an hour he pegged over ground that was so springy with decades of fallen pine needles, it seemed to lift him. When he heard the rough growl of a jeep, he ducked behind some brush until it passed. After that, he walked along the road’s edge, sure that when another patrol went by, he’d have enough warning to take cover.

  And then he was there.

  It wasn’t a landmark he recognized, or the way the road straightened out of its curve. It was the sense of betrayal that hung all around. He’d done something terrible here, and the place remembered.

  “Pax!” he called, not caring if anyone heard him. Let the jeeps come, let a whole army come. He wasn’t leaving without his fox. “Pax!” Against his shouts, the silence grew only deeper. Ominous now, not promising.

  He started along the road again, calling and keeping his eyes to the gravel shoulder. He was sure Pax had had the toy soldier in his mouth when the car had peeled away. Whenever Pax had given up on Peter, he would have dropped it. Peter wanted to hold it in his hand again—a solid proof that his fox had been here.

  He walked a quarter mile, a half mile, eyes down. And then he stopped short. He wasn’t going to find that toy soldier. Because Pax wouldn’t have given up. Not ever. Pax would never have thought he’d been abandoned—they were inseparable. Pax had known it all along. Peter was the one who’d had to learn it.

  If Pax wasn’t here, he must have gone home to find Peter, or tried—maybe the river would have blocked him, but maybe not. Dogs made it home against crazy odds all the time. Pax was ten times smarter than any dog, so why
wouldn’t he be able to find his way? Maybe he was there right now.

  Home. Home was about ten miles southeast of the old mill. And the mill was probably four or five miles south of where he was right now.

  So he’d head south, calling for Pax all the way. The gorge beside the mill would be too dangerous to navigate in the dark, so he’d sleep there, then make the descent at dawn. He would cross the river where it widened out at the mill, and then after another ten miles of trails that he knew, he’d be home.

  “Hold on,” he said out loud. “I’m coming.”

  Pax woke with a start. His boy was near.

  He jumped to his feet, waking Bristle, who had been dozing beside him, and began to search the clearing for Peter’s scent.

  Nothing. But he was near.

  Pax bolted through the trees to the ridge above the encampment. He saw no youth among the war-sick. He did not hear Peter’s voice among the murmurs and shouts. He crept down the hill and circled the camp as close as he dared, scenting from all directions. His boy was not there.

  But he was near. And he was coming.

  Pax returned to Bristle’s side and lay down. But he did not sleep.

  Peter traveled south for almost an hour, feeling certain that Pax had traveled the same route. But when he emerged from the woods, he stopped.

  A vast meadow sloped down for at least a mile before flattening into another mile of wide green floor. At the base of that, the land rose hundreds of feet in jagged steps, as if chopped with a giant hoe. And beyond that, rolling to the horizon, was the forested plateau that hid the gorge.

  Since waking, he’d traveled nine hours without thinking of rest once, but now the stunning immensity of the distance ahead drained what was left of his energy.

  He dropped his pack and fell to the ground.

  Nine hours of gripping the crutch handles had stiffened his hands to claws. He forced them open and felt the raw palms split. They’d blistered the day before, broken open, and blistered again. He poured cool water from his thermos over the hot pulp of his palms and set to work picking out shreds of tire rubber. Then he eased his extra pair of socks over his hands and looked out again.

  A movement halfway down the valley caught his eye. Something trotted in bouncing dips between two trees. Fox movement. Peter rose to his knees. “Pax!”

  There it was again. But no, whatever was there was tan, not red. Coyote, maybe.

  The thought was a shot of adrenaline, and suddenly he was moving again, pack slamming against his back, crutches pistoning down the hill all the way to the valley bottom in just half an hour and then sinking into the boggier ground there, muddy and slower but still moving.

  And then a ten-foot sheer rock wall loomed in front of him. The cliffs were a lot taller than they had appeared from across the valley.

  Before he could second-guess himself, Peter hurled his pack and then his crutches up and heard them clatter onto a stony ledge. He wedged his fingers into a crevice and pulled. His cast scraped along the rough rock face, but his arms were strong from Vola’s training, and he levered himself onto a shallow foothold. From there, he reached for a jutting tree, then another crack in the rock, and then he heaved himself over the first ledge.

  It took an hour to climb the stepped rise that way: crutches and pack first and dragging himself after. When he reached the crest, panting and sweat-soaked, he fell to the ground under a tall pine. He drained his thermos in one swallow and ate the last of the ham sandwiches. He opened Vola’s second packet.

  Peanut butter. Peter’s throat closed. He remembered the first time Pax had found an empty jar in the trash. He’d squeezed his snout in so deep, it had gotten stuck, and Peter had laughed until it hurt. He stuffed the sandwich back into the bag, wishing he’d found it the day before and tossed it to the dogs scavenging the Dumpsters, and got up again. It was almost six o’clock, and he had a ways to go still.

  As he traveled, the memories of those hungry-eyed animals accompanied him, darting and retreating like accusing ghosts. He wished he could tell them that he knew how it felt to have the one person who had loved you and taken care of you suddenly vanish. How the world suddenly seemed dangerous after that.

  He had lost a parent. How many kids this week, he wondered, had woken up to find their worlds changed that way, their parents gone off to war, maybe never coming home? That was the worst, of course. But what about the smaller losses? How many kids missed their older brothers or sisters for months at a time? How many friends had had to say good-bye? How many kids went hungry? How many had had to move? How many pets had they had to leave behind to fend for themselves?

  And why didn’t anyone count those things? “People should tell the truth about what war costs,” Vola had said. Weren’t those things the costs of war, too?

  With a start, Peter found that the dark was falling around him. A little panicked—he should have been looking for a good place to settle for the night—he spun around. His left crutch shot out onto a patch of loose stones. He fell onto it hard and heard a crisp snap. For an instant he feared rib! but the sound had been wood. He landed, still gripping the top of the crutch. Six feet away was its bottom shank.

  “Dyableman!” It came out naturally, a satisfying word. He tried out some other swears, and they felt pretty good, too. But the way the darkening woods absorbed his shouts without a response made him uneasy, so he stopped. He didn’t have the luxury of venting, anyway. He had a crutch to repair and not much light left.

  All around him, trees shot out hardwood limbs that he could tape to the broken pieces as a splint. But he had no hatchet to cut them. As he drew the bat out of his pack so he could find the tape, he realized that the solution was in his hand.

  He aligned the crutch pieces, laid the bat over them, then began winding the tape. When he was finished, he tested the crutch with his full weight. It held, strong and solid. He wished he could tell Vola she’d been right: he had needed her bat on his journey.

  He knelt by his pack again. The accident had been warning enough—he pulled out the things he needed to make camp for the night, then scraped a bowl in the dirt and filled it with a pile of twigs and dried grass. He touched a match to it, and a little fire crackled to life.

  Peter held his jackknife over the flames until he figured it was sterilized, then gritted his teeth and slit open the new blisters that had formed on his palms. The pain made him gasp, but he eased on some of Vola’s salve and took deep breaths until it numbed. The herb smell swept him back to her kitchen with a rush, and he wondered if she was there now. How was she managing without that heavy leg to anchor her?

  Before he put his knife away, he held it up. The last of the firelight danced along its blade. He remembered the first time he’d seen Vola’s knife, how shocked he’d been when she had gouged a chip of wood off her leg.

  Peter tugged up his jeans. He pressed the flat of the knife against his calf and tried to imagine slicing off a nugget of flesh because it offended him, because it wasn’t perfect.

  A coyote howled then, and a second answered from a distance. Peter shivered. He turned the blade until the cool edge creased his flesh, then jerked it up. The slice was only half an inch, but its sting was fierce. There were advantages, he could see, to being made of wood.

  The cut beaded up. As the dark blood began to drip, he drew it into the shape of a leaping fox. With his fingernail, he pricked out a pointed nose, then two ears. A wild smear of his thumb for the brush.

  Pax. Tomorrow.

  A red-fox blood vow.

  Three mice swelled Pax’s belly and a muskrat dangled from his mouth, his first large prey. It would feed Bristle and Runt for the whole day. He craved sleep after a long night of hunting, but as usual he’d trotted a long weaving path home to confuse any possible predators. The trail the bleeding Runt had left when they’d moved was still strong enough to mark them as vulnerable.

  The first rays of morning light lit the grasses. A movement caught his eye. Bristle. She was a few ful
l-bounds out in the clearing instead of at the apron of the burrow, where she usually guarded Runt. He watched her bounce up in mock alarm and then tumble kicking into the grass. Then he saw an even more surprising sight: Runt’s small head bobbed up.

  Runt was outside. And he was playing.

  Pax dropped the muskrat. He called to Bristle.

  And Runt turned his head.

  Pax called again, testing.

  And Runt answered. He could hear.

  Pax was washed with a relief so overwhelming that he could not move for a moment. Where he had once cared for only one boy, he now brimmed with love for this bristling vixen and her ragged brother. And they were safe.

  He streaked across the clearing. Bristle and Runt parted to welcome him into the space between them. He dropped onto his back, and Runt toppled onto him. Pax rolled Runt over gently, listening for any whimper of pain, and heard only purrs of delight.

  For an hour the foxes played. Runt rested often, and whenever he did, the other two stopped and flanked him. Like the buttercups beside them, their three fox faces lifted to the morning sun.

  Until Bristle leaped to her feet, her nostrils flared.

  Pax smelled it, too. The same threatening scent that had made him anxious for two days. But this was no longer a faint thread in the air. This odor was strong and growing stronger.

  Coyote! Bristle jumped toward the den, pivoted toward the clearing, then jumped back to Runt. Pax had never seen her so panicked.

  At that instant, all three foxes perked their ears sharply to the same spot in the woods. To the careless branch rustling of a creature that did not need the advantage of stealth. Heading north, up from the gorge. Heading for the clearing.

  The coyote was following Runt’s trail.

  Bristle nosed her brother upright and screamed at Pax, Guard him!