Red Fox Road

by Frances Greenslade

  Aunt Sissy dropped her voice, but I still heard her perfectly.

  “She said her shoes were listening to her.”

  “Okay,” said Dad.

  “She said they had been bugged. Her plan was to get a new pair, but everything downtown was closed. It was almost comical. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.”

  “That would upset her.”

  “Well, yes, it did upset her, but we can’t pussyfoot around her delusions.”

  “You call it pussyfooting around.”

  “I do. I’ve spoken with the psychiatrist about it. She agrees with me.”

  “I just don’t want to upset Del. It’s hard enough.”

  “The government bugged her shoes. That’s what she said.”

  “Okay, Sis.”

  “You’re putting your head in the sand,” Aunt Sissy said.

  “Okay.” Then he turned up the news and I heard the reporter talking about high-energy biscuits and medical kits arriving in Burma.

  I felt sick. I wished I had plugged my ears.

  I don’t know who was right in that argument, Dad or Aunt Sissy. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I can’t sort it out. Each of them seemed a little bit right and a little bit wrong. What I do know is that it’s not nice to be the one who upsets Mom. It’s not nice and you don’t want to do it, if you can help it.

  But it’s different for sisters. Sisters can upset each other and nothing can make them not sisters anymore.

  * * *

  Fear has a taste. That’s what I was thinking when I woke up in my fir-bough lean-to on the ninth day. I remembered a taste in the back of my throat as I realized the lights shining back at me were not flashlights but eyes. It was a metal taste, or something sharp and silvery like that. I’d had a moment of excitement, relief. I could almost feel Mom’s arms around me. And then the sharp taste seared my throat. I could hardly get a word out. What had I said?

  No. Off you go, bear. And she had gone. Even now I felt the leftovers of fear, like when I’ve cried myself to sleep and wake up feeling stiff and stupid.

  The sun was high enough to shine in on my face as I sat up, but a cold breeze gusted up the road. Scrambled eggs were the next thing in my mind and when I thought of that, I felt a slip—weariness, helplessness—gaining on me. I almost lay back down. Why not snug the sleeping bag tight, let the sun shine on my face, and just wait? I would be rescued, or not. What difference did it make if I kept on trying to survive?

  I went as far as to brush my hand over my sleeping bag to smooth out the lumps. My body leaned to it and then I remembered Ms. Fineday saying to me after the hiking trip, “I’m proud of you, Francie. You’re a brave girl.”

  I straightened myself. I wanted to prove she was right.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I think I had noticed something out of the corner of my eye even before my mind caught up to it. A patch of moisture soaked into the dirt behind the truck. It had not rained; the rest of the road was dry.

  I pulled on my rain jacket against the wind and got up. I saw the cooler first. It lay on its side in the ditch. I went to it and picked it up. It was empty, of course. Two puncture holes pierced its side. How could I not have heard anything? The bucket lay a few feet away, also empty. The little bear had pulled the cooler and bucket down from the truck tailgate where I’d left them and now my water was gone. Had she at least gotten a drink first? I hoped she had. One of us should have had that water.

  I was in trouble now. My own water bottle was almost empty. Why hadn’t I filled the plastic cube we’d brought to use in camp in the Grand Canyon? I hadn’t thought of it. I thought I had more than enough. I didn’t expect to need it past Day Seven and now…I ran to my lean-to and pulled out my water bottle. There was maybe a quarter of a cup left.

  Stupid, stupid.

  The still I’d made—I’d forgotten all about it. But when I hurried to it, my heart sank. The plastic had drooped into the center and pulled away from one side. I squatted and carefully peeled the plastic up. An eighth of a cup, maybe, of yellowy water lay in the cooler lid.

  Now that I couldn’t have it, fir needle tea seemed like the best breakfast I could imagine. Forget scrambled eggs. I longed for that warm, piney cup of tea. My hands around the cup, breathing in the scent.

  I had eight Scotch mints left. I ate two, and had to fight myself not to eat the rest. Then I chewed down some dandelion leaves. The inside bark of some trees was edible, I thought. But what trees? My survival book was specific about certain types of trees—hemlock, for example, which shouldn’t be confused with other trees. The worst thing I could do out here was eat the wrong thing, give myself stomach cramps or worse. I needed to find water.

  First, I went to the truck and emptied my backpack. The plastic cube Dad had bought at Canadian Tire was still folded up in its package. I pulled it open. The package said it could hold twenty liters. Ms. Fineday had said that a liter of water weighs one kilo. So full, the cube would weigh twenty kilos, or about forty-five pounds, more than half my weight. Well, I didn’t need it to be full. I knew I could manage twenty pounds or so.

  I stuffed the cube in my pack, along with my hoodie and the mints. I got a fresh box of matches and put that and my jackknife in my rain jacket. My compass, paper and a pencil went in the other pocket. I put my sleeping bags in the truck in case it rained. What else? My water bottle, of course. That’s all I could think of. I wanted to travel as light as possible, but I knew I still had to be prepared. I hesitated, thinking, then threw in the portable stove, a fuel canister and the pot. I could make myself a nice cup of hot tea as a reward once I found water.

  The last thing I did was to take the note Mom had told me to write out of the window. I took a fresh sheet of paper from my drawing pad and wrote:

  I’m stranded on this road. I’ve been here nine days. I’ve gone to look for water. Please wait for me.

  Then I added P.S. I’m thirteen years old.

  As I set the note on the dashboard, my hand trembled, then my lip. For a moment I saw myself from outside, a small, pathetic girl, hungry, thirsty, eighty-five pounds soaking wet, probably more like eighty now. Sun streamed down on my lean-to and I longed to curl up there, protected from the cold wind.

  A flicker of movement caught my eye. There, on the road in front of the truck, a few feet away, was a little red fox. It sat calmly in the sun, bright black eyes snapping. The bottom part of its front legs was black. White fur fanned out like a mask from its black-tipped nose and ran down its throat and belly. The color of the rest of its soft-looking fur was almost like the color of my hair, a red too red to be strawberry blonde. But it shimmered beautifully in the morning sun and quivered in the wind. It took my breath away. I decided she was a she; a smile loosened the tension I didn’t know I’d been holding in my mouth. I stood very still. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen me; the truck door hid my body. Then she turned her little head and her black eyes met mine. She seemed to say, “What are you waiting for?”

  She stood and tiptoed softly off down the road. South. The same direction the elk had gone. What was this road leading all the animals to? Deer came to the edge of Gem Lake at dawn and dusk to drink. The elk I’d seen at dawn on the road must have either come from a water source, or been heading to one. Maybe the fox was looking for water, too.

  I hefted my pack, and followed.

  I kept my eyes on her as she slipped into the woods where the road ran out. She cleared logs and deked through the brush easily. I hurried to keep up.

  She skipped on, twenty or more yards ahead of me, but she didn’t seem to be in a hurry. She stopped and sat in the sun pouring into a clearing, turned her face to it, just like I would. She seemed to be listening. I moved quietly ahead and then stopped, too, watching the swish of her bushy tail, her sharp ears turning to catch the sounds of the forest. She knew I was there, I thought, but she didn’t seem t
o mind.

  Except for a crow squawking and the wind moaning through the treetops, the forest was quiet. I held my breath. A tree creaked like a door swinging on rusty hinges. The fox turned her face toward me and then she was up and traveling again, tiptoe, tiptoe, a little bounce in her step. I followed.

  I thought I could almost make out a path she was moving along, over downed trees but skirting the thickest underbrush. I caught just enough glimpses of movement to stay on her trail.

  “Ready or not here I come.” My voice called out to Phoebe. I thought I saw the flicker of her hair in the sunlight.

  “You can’t catch me.”

  The emerald green of the lake shone beyond the trees. I ran for the lawn, my heart pounding. A moment to think she was fast, I never knew Phoebe could run that fast, then a shadow of worry. Mom would be mad. I was not supposed to chase Phoebe; she was not supposed to run all out like that.

  I reached the lawn. A hummingbird darted from the feeder near the porch, its wings buzzing, and was gone. I’d lost her. A clamor of voices—mine, Mom’s, Grandma’s. I stopped in my tracks.

  The tree creaked in the wind, squeak, squeak, swinging on its sticky hinge. I’d lost her. The fox had melted into the woods. A ghost of a trail seemed to wind through the underbrush, but I wasn’t sure. I felt like I’d been traveling in a straight line, moving south, but of course that probably wasn’t true. And then I realized that I’d completely forgotten to use my compass. I’d followed a fox to who-knows-where. How long had I even been walking? I hadn’t checked the time. I hadn’t looked behind me. I’d done everything wrong. Like a stupid kid.

  Stay found. That’s the rule for not getting lost. Keep track of where you are. I had not done that.

  Don’t panic. Don’t plunge on wildly. That’s the worst mistake I could make now.

  I squatted in the dirt and took out my compass. I knew the road ran north to south. I thought I’d been traveling south and that I’d kept my back to the north. But when the compass needle stopped moving, I saw I’d done what almost every other traveler does who isn’t paying attention. I’d veered far off course.

  What my instinct told me was north, toward the truck, was actually west. Without noticing, I had strayed to the east, rather than keeping south. I looked at my watch. But that was impossible. Five after two. How could that be? Had I checked my watch when I first got up? No. I had guessed the time was about ten, but I hadn’t checked. Could I have really slept past noon? Or could I have zoned out following the fox for much longer than I thought?

  I shrugged off my backpack and leaned it against a tree. Then I walked about five feet out and took another compass reading, just in case something had thrown off the first reading. But it was the same. I was somewhere east and south of the truck, no closer to knowing where water lay.

  I would not let myself think “lost,” not yet. I sat down again. I had to decide what to do. I could try to find my way back to the truck from here. I’d still be without water, no way to have something warm in my stomach, which had been so comforting each morning. Or I could continue looking for water and then find my way back from there.

  There was that ridge to the east more or less parallel to the road that could extend this far. Or it might not. Trying to find it would mean straying even farther away from the road than I already was. That would be risky. Who was I kidding? Any­thing I could do now would be risky. Not finding water was risky, too. Under normal conditions, a person could survive a few days without water. But these weren’t normal conditions. I felt pretty good, maybe a little light-headed sometimes, a little shaky too. I wasn’t sure what would be causing that, other than being deprived of food. My pants seemed a little looser than normal, but that could be my imagination.

  A gust of wind swept through the forest, tossing the branches and bending smaller trees. Then the eerie creak, creak. Shivering grass and brush rustled like a bubbling stream.

  I made up my mind. I would mark the spot where I was now and walk out in one-minute sections, using the compass. I was determined to find water before I returned to the truck.

  First, I took out my paper and pencil and drew a rough map of where I thought the road and the truck were. Then I marked in the directions the compass showed and where I thought I was now. I drew in the position of the ridge and where I’d found the deer bones. I added my lean-to and my firepit and under them, I wrote “home.” Funny how cozy it seemed now, the fragrant lean-to next to my firepit, the truck with my supplies in it.

  I carefully folded the map and put it back in my raincoat pocket. The next thing I needed to do was mark this spot. I hadn’t retrieved my fluorescent T-shirt from the ridge trail marker and I hadn’t brought anything extra with me. I could use my yellow rain jacket, but the wind had picked up and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to get chilled. Also, if I made a miscalculation, which was always possible, then I’d be out in the cold woods overnight without my jacket.

  Anything bright that wouldn’t blend into the forest colors would be helpful. I dug through my backpack. The pack itself was a dull blue. But inside it, there was a special compartment for a sleeping bag and the cloth used for it was red. The backpack was what Mom called my “most treasured possession.” I didn’t want to wreck it. But that was silly. I needed to do whatever it took to survive.

  I unfolded my jackknife and poked a hole in the red pocket fabric. Then I carefully cut out a square about ten inches by ten inches. It would do. It would stand out against the greens and browns of the woods.

  Next, I gathered two long branches. One, I set firmly against a living tree, resting on its lower branches and with the bottom out at a forty-five-degree angle. Then I leaned the other branch against that at the opposite angle so that the bottom of it was snugged against the trunk of the same tree. It made a large X next to the tree. A third, smaller branch I wedged into the soft forest floor and braced the X with it so it wouldn’t fall over. I tested it by giving it a shake. It seemed secure enough to hold up against the wind gusts that were rising now more often and rushing through the woods.

  I made a hole in the red fabric and stuck it on the end of the X that extended out from the tree. That was my flag to guide me back to this spot, since my walks out and back using my compass readings wouldn’t be precise. If you’re left-handed, you veer left. If you’re right-handed you’ll veer right. Apparently even when people know that, they still assume it applies only to other people, with poor senses of direction, not to themselves. They can still be convinced they’re walking in a straight line. I’ve even read that people who think they have a good sense of direction are more likely to get lost, not less. They’re less likely to pay proper attention.

  Well, I would be super-careful. I would keep track of my progress and write it on my map. I was still not ready to call myself lost. I was just temporarily off-track. The road couldn’t be far from this X. Once I found water, I’d find the road.

  I took out my compass and found south. I needed some kind of landmark to walk toward. The forest looked like an unbroken line of lichen-draped firs and straight gray-black trunks. But the longer I stood looking, the more things started to distinguish themselves. One of the trees was fuller, with starry-looking clusters of needles and a pointy top. It was not a fir, maybe a larch, or what Grandma used to call a tamarack. I’d aim for that one. It was a little off south at 190 degrees, but as long as I kept track, it would work.

  “Trust the tools,” Dad sometimes said when he was working on his car. If you use a tool the way it was meant to be used, it will work.

  My return direction would be ten degrees. I wrote it down on my map, looked at my watch, and began walking. You can walk farther in one minute than you might think. After thirty seconds I’d already stumbled into some fairly thick brush. I had to fight my way through. I was glad to be walking again, because the wind was cold and, standing still, I’d cooled down.

  Afte
r one minute, I looked around and listened. The creaking tree had a different sound now in the stronger wind—a long, drawn out single creeeak, before it relented and creaked back the other way. The rushing wind sounded more like rushing water, a sound I remembered from Gem Lake when the wind came up and traveled through the treetops, but didn’t move much on the ground. We always thought it sounded like a waterfall.

  Other than that, the landscape seemed the same. I checked the compass at 190 degrees and walked toward the tree with the pointy top. I followed this pattern for five one-minute periods of walking, marking each on my map. Though I was wearing pants, my legs were getting poked from fighting my way through undergrowth. My arms were better protected with my raincoat, but sharp branches caught on my sleeves too.

  When I looked behind, I couldn’t see my flag, but that was okay. I’d find it when I retraced my steps. This time, when I looked around, I did notice something new: a patch of dark-green plants with tiny, white star-shaped flowers. The flowers weren’t familiar to me, but the pairs of deep-green leaves were. They looked like Solomon’s seal.

  I walked another minute, ducking under a huge tree that had fallen and landed at about my neck height and caught on a broken stump a few yards away. It looked fresh-fallen. The stump was off my southern path, but its reddish bark looked like it could hold something to eat. In my rising fear when I first realized I’d gone off course, I’d forgotten hunger for a while, but now it had returned more powerful than before. My stomach cried out for something warm and filling.

  I couldn’t lose my path here, I reasoned. I’d just follow the fallen tree to the stump, then return to the same spot. Simple. But I was still nervous. Just to be extra sure, I slipped my arms out of my pack and left it in my path under the fallen tree. When I got to the stump, I checked around its base. Sure enough, large black ants were busily moving around it and up the side. Were all ants edible? I’d never heard of a poisonous ant.