Red Fox Road

by Frances Greenslade

  My mouth burned with thirst and my head throbbed. There was a wilderness rule about how long you could survive without shelter, water and food. I thought it was three: three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. But that didn’t seem like it could be right. Three hours didn’t seem long enough for the shelter part. But maybe it would be true if the weather was bad and you weren’t dressed for it. Like on a surfboard being carried out to sea. I heard a story like that. That guy actually survived for two days, even though it was off the coast of Scotland or somewhere cold like that.

  I was glad I wasn’t on a surfboard in the middle of the ocean. Things could be worse. Sun winked through the fir branches and sparkled on the dew-specked grass and bushes along the roadside.

  I jumped off the truck and hurried to the cab to dig out my water bottle. I had suddenly realized that I could lick the dew off the grass and shrubs. I brought the water bottle along to catch any drips I might cause by shaking the leaves.

  You’d be right if you thought that it’s not that easy to lick the dew off blades of grass. I found a couple of good drops on some plantain leaves. Because I was hungry, I ate the leaves after licking them. They weren’t too bad—they tasted a bit like spinach, not my favorite, but I wasn’t in a position to be a picky eater. I continued along the road, looking for dew and rosehips. I was craving a cup of fir needle tea. I thought that would make Mom laugh. Maybe she’d be back by lunchtime and I’d make some for her with the water she brought, if that’s what she was looking for.

  You also might think that licking a bit of dew wouldn’t do much to quench your thirst, but I did feel better after a while. I sat on a rock in the sun and chewed on some dried rosehips I’d found and I tried to make a plan.

  The main thing was water. We’d been out here five days. Whatever the wilderness rule number was, I knew that water was the thing you could only go without for days, not weeks. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that Mom must have gone looking for water. She should have taken me. It didn’t make sense that she hadn’t. Unless she had decided to walk out, which was possible. She may have thought she’d be faster on her own. Should I try to follow her? I stood on the road and looked north. I almost took a step. But the note said not to go anywhere.

  It wasn’t like we were in the desert. There had to be water nearby. But the dew had given me another idea. I could set up a still, using a sheet of plastic and a stone. Ms. Fineday had shown us this in one of our outdoor classes. She said even if you could find an old bread bag, or better yet, if you carried a piece of plastic in your backpack, you’d be able to get water in a pinch.

  The bread we’d had came from a bakery and was in paper, not plastic. But Dad had put his backpack in a garbage bag to keep it dry in the back of the truck and I found it tucked behind the seats. I set to work cutting it open with my jackknife. Then I dug out the crowbar that Dad put back under the front seat and I used that to dig a hole. I dug in the softer dirt just off the road, but where it wouldn’t be shaded by the trees.

  It took me a couple of hours to dig it deep and wide enough. Every few minutes, I stopped to listen, hopeful. Then I went back to it. In the middle, I made the hole a little deeper. I needed something wide to collect the water in. The cooler lid would do the trick, but it was attached to the cooler with plastic hinges. I thought of breaking it off; I knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind, considering the situation. But when I looked closer, I saw that it was held on with just one screw on each side. So I got the screwdriver out of the toolbox and unscrewed it.

  I set the lid in the lowest part of the hole I’d dug. Then I stretched the plastic garbage bag over the hole and anchored it with stones along the edges. A small stone set right in the middle where the cooler lid was would direct the condensation from inside the plastic to drip down into the lid. It made me thirsty just thinking about it.

  The sun had climbed to just about overhead. It must be lunchtime. Years of habit made me even hungrier at meal times, even here in the woods. If I had more to eat, preparing it and eating it would take up some time, fill the day. Eating, I realized, was a pretty time-consuming activity. Without it, I had a lot of extra hours to fill. I took out the last granola bar and unwrapped it. I was about to take a big bite, but something stopped me. I took out my knife instead and cut off a third of it. Then I wrapped the rest carefully and put it back in the truck.

  While I’d been working, I’d heard the woodpecker tapping at a tree. Now he’d stopped and I listened to the wind shushing through the upper branches. No other sounds but that lonely wind sweeping the forest. As I ate the bar slowly, the creeping fingers of fear tightened a little around my heart. Saving that granola bar, saving most of it, that wasn’t what someone sure of rescue would do. I didn’t want to think about that.

  I stood up and shook myself. I had to keep busy.

  Down the road where Dad and the elk had gone was the way I needed to go to find water; I could feel it in my gut. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I got my compass and water bottle and made circles out from the truck, looking, but not finding any source of water.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mom had a funny story she told about how Phoebe got her name. After we were born, Mom was in the hospital for a couple of days. When a nurse brought her the forms to fill out with our names, Mom said she hadn’t slept in nearly two days and she was a bit delirious. When Mom told this story, she used to wink when she said she was delirious and then she’d say, “with happiness, of course!” She had the idea to give us both names that started with F, since our last name is Fox. And her favorite sound in the spring, which is when we were born, is the chickadee whistling fee-bee, a high note, then a low note. So she decided the first name she picked would be Phoebe. But because she was a bit delirious, when she went to fill out the form, she couldn’t remember how it was spelled. She thought it started with an F. She asked a nurse, who said she wasn’t familiar with that name, but she’d ask around, and eventually she came back with the answer, written on a paper napkin by a patient down the hall. By then it was too late to change it to an F name, because she’d already decided that Phoebe was Phoebe.

  “And that’s how Phoebe got her name,” Mom used to end the story.

  Once, I must have been very young, I asked her, “How did I get my name?” I remember that Phoebe and I were both in the hammock under the maple tree in the backyard. I remember the sunlight winking through the maple leaves. Mom sat in a lawn chair facing us with her bare feet on the hammock, rocking us slowly.

  “The nurse had come back for the form and I didn’t have another F name yet. She said, ‘Frances is a nice name,’ and so Frances it was. Just think, you could have ended up a Philomena.”

  That was all there was to it? I wanted to ask. I knew it was babyish of me, but I’d always liked Phoebe’s story better than mine. Who was the nurse? Was Frances somebody she cared about? Wasn’t there any more to it than that?

  * * *

  I thought of this story as I teepeed sticks around a clump of dry lichen, then set a few larger ones around the teepee. It was not yet dark, but the woods had that bluish gloom they got after the sun went down. The wind had dropped and a deep calm lay over everything. I felt the chill of night coming on.

  I had already collected a big pile of wood to last through the night. I decided I wouldn’t sleep in the cold, cramped truck. I’d stay up all night and tend the fire so that Dad or Mom might see it. She’d taken her water bottle and her blue raincoat, maybe some matches, and nothing else. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t woken me up. I know I said I wouldn’t leave in case Dad came back. But I didn’t mean for her to go without me. It didn’t make sense. But then, she had not been making sense. And that worried me even more.

  I knew, I’d known from the moment I saw her note, that trying to follow her would be a bad idea. If she had not done what I thought she’d done—that
is, headed north, up the road—then we’d end up with three people who didn’t know where the other two were. At least if I stayed with the truck, as Mom told me to do, she could come back to me if she either found some help or water, or if she didn’t and decided to give up and return.

  The fire caught, igniting the wood I fed it. I cracked the longer pieces in half with my foot and piled them on. Soon it was a good, crackling fire, the damp wood hissing gently. The night closed around me. Beyond the circle of the fire, the forest was a dark mass. Animals would be passing through the trees. They might stop, curious, and watch me for a while beside the fire. I had nothing to fear from them, I told myself. I was in their territory, not the other way around. I was just another animal to them, an odd one, probably, making this strange light flicker through the trees. I might hear the snap of branches, and that might be a deer passing by, or even a squirrel or a bird. Any sound in the dead quiet of night could seem very loud.

  After a while, I felt my eyelids struggling to stay open. My head nodded forward and I caught it with an upward jerk.

  The truth was, I was avoiding the truck not just because it was cold and cramped. The truth was, I was afraid to go to sleep, especially in the truck without Mom there. I was afraid if I got back in the truck, as we had the other nights, together, I would not be able to stop myself from crying. And I didn’t want to cry any more.

  I tried not to think about her alone in the woods. Would she build a fire or would she try to keep walking? How far could she have traveled today? Mom was a good walker, too. She used to run a few times a week, although she hadn’t done it for a couple of years. At her best, she could run six miles in about an hour. Maybe she would have run some of it. That would keep her warm, too. The road wasn’t great and I wasn’t sure what she had on her feet. Had she brought a flashlight?

  I decided to check her pack. As soon as I stepped away from the fire, I felt the chill of the night. From the trees came the voice of the owl—Who cooks? Who cooks? Who cooks for you-all?

  “Hello, owl,” I called back. And the call came again.

  “It’s just me. I’m going to the truck.”

  Everything felt weird and slowed-down in the quiet dark.

  When I opened the truck door, I noticed myself doing it, as if I were someone else watching me. I noticed, too, that the dome light was a little dimmer. I took my own flashlight from the dashboard and flicked it on. At the sight of Mom’s pack, my heart dipped, like the dimming dome light. I fought the tears rising. Normally, she kept her flashlight in the outer pocket, but it wasn’t there. I dug her clothes out of the inner compartment, as the scent of her, warm and powdery, rose up from them. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I took deep breaths and fought them back. I pulled everything out, her long underwear, her old wool sweater that she’d had since she was a teenager, her rain pants, socks and underwear. There was no flashlight.

  I pulled on the wool sweater. Then I grabbed my sleeping bag and pulled it out of the truck. The slamming door echoed in the night and I wondered if there was anyone down that long dark road who would hear it.

  The sleeping bag helped keep the chill off my back as I sat by the heat of the fire. I felt reassured that Mom’s flashlight was gone. It made me think that she’d been thinking clearly. She’d planned ahead. Maybe she would reach the highway by tomorrow. Maybe a logger or a hunter or a conservation officer would drive up the road and find her. Maybe Dad had broken his ankle and decided to wait it out in the tent. Thank goodness Mom had insisted he take the tent.

  A new sound came from the bush, quite far away. A bird, a coyote or a wolf; I wasn’t sure what it was. Something between a squawk and a bark. I listened for it to come again.

  One side of me was cold. I tried to push up closer against Phoebe but her knees were digging into my back. The sun heated my face and neck. Phoebe laughed. She ran across the grass, daring me to chase her, but my legs were too heavy. I was stuck in place, watching her as she lifted and glided over the field.

  A sudden pop woke me up. I’d slipped down off the log I’d been sitting on and was lying on the cold ground with my face to the fire. I looked for the ember that had popped from the fire and there it was on the edge of my sleeping bag. A jerk of my leg knocked it off and onto the ground, but it had burned a small hole in the fabric.

  I would have to go back in the truck. If I wanted to sleep out here, I needed to build a proper shelter and I was too tired to do it tonight. I hoped I was too tired to think about Mom, too. I unwrapped myself from the sleeping bag, piled some more wood on the fire and went around to the passenger side of the truck. Once inside, I found the lever to lower the seat and leaned back. It was colder than by the fire, but I would warm up eventually. I pressed my nose to Mom’s old wool sweater and breathed in.

  In the fall, when the leaves turned yellow and Grandma and I took the canoe out on Gem Lake, you could almost think you were caught between two worlds—the real one above the water and the reflected one reaching down into it. I kept my mind focused on that, how beautiful it was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A pattering of small footsteps on the roof woke me. Something was up there, tapping on the metal. It was still dark. The fire glowed softly, dying down, the orange light smeared on the windshield. A few splashes rippled on the orange and I realized the footsteps I’d heard were actually raindrops. It was raining! I had not set up anything to catch the rain. I sprang into action. The cooler could catch some rainwater. But if I wanted more, I needed a better plan.

  I pushed out of my sleeping bag, grabbed my flashlight and jumped out of the truck. My breath made a fog in the cold air. I had left the tarp half-bungeed onto the truck bed, along with the few things that were still out there—the lidless cooler, and some rope in a five-gallon bucket with a lid.

  I jumped up onto the truck bed and pulled out the cooler and the bucket. Prying the lid off the bucket, I fished out the rope and tossed it onto the driver’s seat. Then I stretched the tarp out as the rain came harder now, stinging my face and bare hands. It was thick, slushy, almost snow. I set the cooler and the bucket on the ground and tried to find something to attach the bungee cords to. I needed the tarp to be at an angle so water would pour off it and into my containers.

  I brought the bungees up to the roof of the truck but there was nothing to hook them into. I turned the truck key and cracked the windows each an inch. Then I stuck the bungee cords in the windows and closed them to hold the cords and one end of the tarp in place. I brought the other end of the tarp down and attached it to the tailgate. The tarp was loose, but with a couple of rocks, I could direct the flow of water into the containers. I gathered two other fist-sized rocks, wiped them off with my shirt and dropped one in the bucket and one in the cooler, so that if a wind came up, they wouldn’t blow over.

  That done, I hurried to the fire and threw more wood on before the rain doused it completely. I gathered up an armload of sticks and moved them under the truck to stay dry. A couple more trips and it was all stowed under there except for a small bundle that I put in the cab. That would be my fire-starter. Then I grabbed my water bottle and held it under the stream of water running down the tarp. I shivered so hard my teeth chattered, but in a few minutes, my bottle was full.

  Back in the truck, I thought of Dad alone in his tent somewhere, listening to rain come down, no sleeping bag, nothing to help him stay warm. I hoped Mom had found help by now. I couldn’t think about that. I turned my mind to the comforting trickle of water running into the containers and I dreamt of canoe paddles cutting the water and rising, cutting the water and rising again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Steam rose up from the cup of hot fir needle tea I’d boiled on the one-burner stove. I breathed in the Christmasy scent and took a long sip, felt it travel down and warm my insides. I’d taken down the rain catcher and then spread Mom’s sleeping bag in the back of the truck, so I could sit with my back against the
metal toolbox and the sun reflecting off the truck windows. It was a beautiful day, the sky that hard-to-name blue and sun streaming over the wet trees, making everything shine. The road steamed too, as the sun heated it.

  My cooler and bucket were full to the brim with rainwater, and for a few minutes, as the sun beat down on me and I drank my tea, I felt happy, really happy. I had eaten the second piece of granola bar, the last of the sunflower seeds and two mints. Strangely, I didn’t feel hungry. I knew I had to find more things to eat, but for now, I felt fine. I had a moment of guilt for feeling good when Mom and Dad were who-knows-where, but I forced that idea out of my head, took in the sparkling forest, breathed in deeply the fresh scent of the morning.

  Ever since I was little, I had wanted to have adventures in the woods. On my walks to school, I looked up at the soft, sage-covered hills around Penticton and imagined myself climbing them, up past the tree line where the only trails were made by animals foraging for food. I read books about plants and stars and clouds and how to tie knots and use a compass and capture small game. Now, here I was, and all the lessons I’d learned had to be put into practice.

  I gazed out at the sparkling forest again. I pictured a helicopter rising over the treetops, circling and kicking up debris as it hovered to land right in front of the truck. Mom, then Dad would jump out, ducking low to avoid the whirring blades, running for me with their arms open.

  The road stretched away from me, a long, narrow ribbon being swallowed by sky. My heart began to thump wildly. Where was everybody? What was taking so long? The balloon-y feeling of panic shot up from my chest and into my head, making the road, the truck, the sky swim before my eyes. I was alone out here, surrounded by miles and miles of forest. I felt like I was the only one in the whole world.