Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

  "Hide in plain sight," the voices said. "Join us. Be a Walker. Hide among our enemies and be our spy. And then, when it is time, he will lead us away. We will walk away together, and they will never find us."

  "Now go to the Gibson Arms. It's a condo complex, uptown. You're to say you're from an employment agency...."

  Kim finished the papaya. She took the hospital speakerphone from her purse and listened for a message from the Walkers, but no words came. No words had come since that first night.

  But they would come. Soon.

  She hoped.

  Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she had done something wrong. She'd thought about this before, at the other places. She thought about it now.

  Or maybe it wasn't a question of right or wrong. Maybe it was a question of intelligence. Maybe she had to be smart.

  There was a jack below the volume control on the television, but it was too large to accommodate the speakerphone plug. There were several jacks in the stereo, all too small.

  Too large. Too small.

  There was a jack in the telephone answering machine.

  Just right.

  Kim plugged in the speakerphone. She listened.

  Nothing.

  The morning was gone. Kim was hungry again. She sliced cheese. Different kinds. Smooth and buttery; chunky and tart. The chunky kind stuck to the knife and she licked it off, thinking that that was a stupid thing to do because she might cut her tongue.

  She found crackers in the cupboard. Remembering a magazine article that she'd read, she stared at the crackers in hopes of finding secret messages stamped amid the flakes of sea salt.

  Nothing there.

  She ate the crackers.

  The morning was gone. The afternoon was here.

  There would be more news.

  Kim turned on the television, saw a different anchorman.

  He wasn't talking about her.

  He was talking about others.

  People were furious. The morning newspapers hadn't been delivered. The newsboys had apparently taken the day off. The anchorman thought it was all very funny. He made a joke about pimply-faced labor organizers. The sports guy chimed in with a jibe about wildcat strikes. The weatherman said that it was a nice day to play hooky and go fishing.

  The anchorman read the morning funnies aloud, and all the reporters had a good laugh.

  Kim thought. Maybe it's happening now.

  Newsboys get up early. They all have radios. Those little portable things with earphones. They all listen. Maybe they heard the Walkers.

  "Run! We shouldn't even be talking to you. But they're going to kill you! Run!"

  They were going to kill. It was going to happen soon.

  The government. The men in uniforms.

  The General.

  Kim searched the apartment. This time she didn't look for pictures. She looked for clues.

  She found none. She rifled the General's desk and checked his garbage. She flipped through the books she'd stacked beneath the coffee table, but there were no papers hidden inside. No government reports. And no secret tapes hidden in the pockets of the uniforms that hung like executed men in the General's closet, either.

  Kim continued her search. In the other places it had been so easy.

  She had learned a lot in those other places.

  House-sitting. It was a good way to hide, and a good cover.

  In the first house, she cut her hair. And then the owner of that house, who was a lawyer, recommended her to a friend who worked at city hall. And then that woman recommended her to a man in the mayor's office. And then that man recommended her to the General.

  At each stop, she reported what she found through the speakerphone, but she didn't know if the Walkers heard her.

  In the house of the lawyer, she found thirty Polaroid pictures of naked women. Twenty-four had black X's drawn over their faces; six had red smiles felt-penned over their lips.

  In the house of the woman from city hall, Kim discovered detailed maps of the city. Entire neighborhoods were outlined in red. She found other maps, too, maps that featured mansions where row houses now stood. Maps where tenements were labeled "Slave Quarters."

  In the house of the man from the mayor's office, taped behind the refrigerator, Kim found a thick list of registered voters. Most names were crossed out.

  Including her name.

  But there was a single word after her name, and a question mark after the word.

  WALKER?

  She was here for a reason. She couldn't give up.

  Kim checked the speakerphone. Nothing.

  Clothes were strewn about the General's bedroom. Drawers hung open. File cabinets had been emptied. Ransacked.

  Nothing.

  Kim was sweating. She felt defeated. Out of her depth. She didn't know where else to look. In college, she'd read spy novels by the dozen —Deighton, Ludlum, Le Carre, Forsyth—and she knew that generals could hide things in ways she couldn't begin to imagine.

  Microfilm. Computer disks encoded with secret programs. Good old-fashioned invisible writing.

  There had to be something here. The General had to be involved, or the Walkers would have directed her elsewhere.

  Kim trembled.

  The Walkers had sent her, hadn't they?

  They had sent her to the lawyer, to the woman from city hall, to the man from the mayor's office. Without a word, they'd sent her.

  Kim's chest knotted.

  The lawyer sent her to the woman from city hall. And the woman from city hall sent her to the man from the mayor's office. And the man from the mayor's office sent her here.

  To the General.

  No!

  Kim's heart thundered, banged, threatened to explode.

  Not her heart.

  Someone was pounding on the door.

  Kim squinted through the peephole.

  Two men. In military uniform.

  Neither man had blue eyes, or gray eyes, or blue eyes flecked with gray. Neither man had a pointy nose.

  They had brown eyes. They had squashed noses, like large mushrooms.

  One of the men tried a key. He swore when it didn't work, and then he took a small wallet from his breast pocket. From the wallet he extracted a thin metal strip the width of a nail file.

  Kim opened the door.

  Two sets of startled brown eyes stared at her.

  The shorter man asked her about the General, and Kim said that he'd gone on vacation. The taller man peeked over her shoulder and saw the mess in the living room.

  "More books," he said. "More mumbo-jumbo. Just like his office."

  Kim said that she'd found the apartment a mess when she arrived. She said the General gave her the key a week before, when he'd arranged for her to house-sit, but no way was she going to provide him with free maid service. No way.

  The tall man whispered something to the short man. "The General is a rabbit." Kim wanted to laugh —at the silly comment, at the man's grave expression when he'd uttered it—but she pretended that she hadn't overheard.

  The tall man shouldered past her and hurried down the narrow hallway and into the living room. He turned on the television. Five o'clock news.

  The short man asked Kim what her name was.

  She gave the name of her fifth grade teacher, the same name she'd given to the lawyer and all the others.

  The short man keyed the name into a little machine that looked like a calculator but wasn't.

  The tall man returned. He was holding several books. The same ones that Kim had checked for hidden documents. He thrust the books at the short man, and the short man shook his head.

  The tall man said, "The General isn't just any rabbit, he's a cwazy wabbit."

  The men laughed.

  The short man looked at his little machine, then at Kim. He smiled and said that sometimes his machine was very slow.

  The tall man had returned to the living room, and now he called for the short man to come and look at the television. The
short man shrugged and put his machine away.

  The anchorman looked nervous. He reported that the day's mail had gone undelivered, and no one joked about a wildcat strike. The sports guy reported that none of the players on the local big league baseball team had reported for the evening game at the downtown stadium, and no one mentioned playing hooky.

  The anchorman's brow creased and he pressed his earpiece with two fingers. A moment later he rose and walked away from the anchor desk.

  The tall man pulled a pistol and aimed it at Kim.

  The short man said that they couldn't afford to make a mistake.

  Kim stared at the gun. She didn't have her service revolver, and the knife was in the kitchen sink, sticky with chunky cheese.

  The tall man put away his weapon and glared at Kim. He said he was sorry that his partner's machine was so slow.

  The short man winked at Kim as he followed the tall man out of the apartment.

  The sports guy was trying to do the news.

  "Bus drivers throughout the city have apparently walked off the job. Union leaders are unavailable for comment...."

  Kim's gaze drifted to the coffee table. The tall man had gone off without the General's books. She picked up a worn red volume. The Empty Battlefield: the Story of Hill 60.

  "City jail is empty. Evening staff discovered vacant cells when they reported for work. No prisoners. No guards...."

  Another book, this one red with gold lettering on the spine. Vanished: the Men of the Eilean Mor Lighthouse. A black paperback. The Mystery of the Mary Celeste.

  "In the city park, zoo cages stand locked but empty...."

  The Bermuda Triangle. Kim fingered the title of an oversized volume. The Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.

  Quiet.

  She turned to the television.

  The sports guy was gone. The weatherman was gone, too.

  The phone rang.

  Kim didn't pick up the receiver. She picked up the hospital speakerphone, and a steady voice responded to her whispered greeting. "Tell him that it's working. We're on the move."

  Kim swallowed. "Who? Who should I tell?"

  "Him...the General. Tell him that tomorrow morning the greedy bastards are going to wake up to a ghost town."

  Kim remembered. Him.

  The Walkers had told her.

  He says that you're important to us.

  He studied your record with the police department.

  He will lead us away.

  The General.

  Someone took the speakerphone out of Kim's hand.

  A sharp nose. Blue eyes flecked with gray.

  A tight smile.

  "We've got to hurry," said the General. "We've got a long way to go."

  When Opportunity Knocks…

  ...like my old man used to say: answer the goddamned door.

  That's the long and short of it, and the story behind this story is a case in point.

  It's 1992. October in California. A buddy who's getting a start in the construction business is remodeling my house. It's short about three rooms, one of them being the kitchen, which means I've gained about ten pounds in the last few months eating fast-food breakfasts. There's a temporary water heater that holds about three gallons hooked up in a closet, so the current definition of "taking a shower" is that the pipes will get warm but you won't. Most of the time there's one toilet that works (one day the plumber gets something wrong and said working toilet saps the limited supply of hot water, which makes for a nice steamy experience). There are holes in the bedroom wall that allow three very upset cats easy access and egress...the latter pretty much occurs every morning at six a.m., when my friend and his crew show up for work.

  They're all good guys. I grew up with most of them. We drink coffee and talk about what they'll be doing that day, at which point the cats retreat to the storm drain out by the driveway, where they'll hide out until the clock hits quitting time in the afternoon.

  My wife goes to work. I head over to Jack-in-the-Box and grab a Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich (I don't have a kitchen, remember?). Then I drive to my mom's house, where the Mac with the scorched side waits for me on the desk where I used to do my homework as a kid. Blissfully ignorant of the advice I have laid out for you in a previous chapter, I have quit my day job and am writing full time. Most of the summer has been spent locked up in my childhood bedroom working on Slippin' into Darkness (which, as it turns out, is a great place to be when you're writing a novel that draws upon your high school experience).

  So, there I am, typing away on an October morning, coffee and that greasy Jack-in-the-Box breakfast gurgling around in my stomach. The phone rings. It's Rich Chizmar, and Rich has a problem. Awhile back he received an invitation for an anthology of Christmas mystery stories that Marty Greenberg and Ed Gorman are putting together, but he's been so busy with Cemetery Dance and his new book line that he hasn't had a chance to finish a piece. He wants to know if I'd be interested in collaborating so he won't have to pull out of the project.

  Oh, yeah. I'm interested. By this time I'm selling stories to pro markets, but I've yet to get a chance at a Greenberg anthology. Marty does a lot of anthos, but they're pretty much invitation only affairs. I'm eager to get into one of his books, and maybe earn a chance to contribute to others. I'm also eager to work with Ed Gorman, a writer (and sometimes editor) I've admired for quite awhile, but have yet to work with or meet.

  The way I see it, I don't have much to lose. Sure it's October, and it's still hot in California, and I'm not even in the mood for Halloween yet...let alone Christmas. My house is a wreck, my diet is lousy, and writing my first novel has me feeling like I'm going a little nuts. But I figure I can put all that aside for a week or so, finish up Rich's Christmas mystery story, and get back to my book before it goes cold on me. So I ask Mr. Chizmar the pertinent question: "How long would I have to get it done?"

  "I'd need it back by Thursday."

  That little sentence stops me short. 'Today's Monday, Rich," I say. "You mean this Thursday?"

  "Yeah. I can FedEx the story to you today. You'll get it tomorrow by noon. If you FedEx it to me on Wednesday afternoon. I'll have it back by Thursday."[58]

  "How much have you written?"

  "Well...the opening section is finished, and the rest of the story is pretty much outlined."

  Rich keeps talking, going into more detail about the story. It sounds like a solid idea, and definitely something I could run with—a tale of child abuse out of the noir school, but with a hopeful edge in the home-stretch. The juxtaposition of tragedy and hope is something I've admired in much of Rich's work, and I'm interested to see if I can make that work in a story. The only thing I'm really worried about is the emotionally wrenching subject matter, but there's no real way around that. In fact, it's the only thing about the piece that might make the short timeframe a plus. I wouldn't want to linger in this territory.

  But that's the only upside I can see to doing the piece so fast. If there's going to be a problem, it's the calendar. In truth it's not even that, because we're not talking about days. The problem is the clock...because what we're really talking about is a 24-hour window of opportunity to finish the piece.

  But 24-hours or not, I know it's a window of opportunity...and one I'd like to get through without having to bust the glass.

  With that thought firmly in mind, there isn't much else to say.

  Except: "Send it over. I'll do it."

  I do some work on Slippin' that afternoon, then head home. I get to bed early and get a good night's sleep...well, as good as you can get in a bedroom with a hole in the wall and three cats periodically crawling over your head to enter or exit.

  I'm up the next morning by 5:30. I climb into the shower. The pipes get warm, I don't. I shiver and dry off, shave and get dressed, and grab a Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich on my way out of town. I'm over at Mom's by 7:00. I drink some coffee, read the paper, and wait for noon to roll around...thinking, of course, about the hunk of story
winging its way from Maryland to California, and what Rich has told me about it, and what direction I'm likely to go with it.

  Of course, it's not easy to formulate a game plan without Rich's manuscript in my hands. But what can I do? I feel like a sprinter poised in the blocks, waiting for a starting gun that doesn't go bang. Noon rolls around. No FedEx man appears. I wait another thirty minutes. Still no show. Then I call Rich, tell him the manuscript hasn't made it. He calls FedEx, checks his tracking number...and right about then there's a knock on the door.

  BANG! I'm finally out of the starting blocks. I head upstairs and read Rich's manuscript. The first section of "The Season of Giving" works really nicely, amounting to a couple thousand words, but there's a lot of ground to cover after that. I look at Rich's notes on the direction he planned to take the story, and start working it over in my head.

  The thing is, the opening is a long one. Rich had planned to do the piece in three extended sections, all occurring in a tight time frame. The main character is a man tipped to a troubling situation through a chance encounter with a child. He investigates that situation as an observer, comes to terms with his own past in the course of his investigation, and decides to step out of the "observer" role in a dramatic closing piece.

  Good stuff. But if I stick with that structure, I have a feeling we'll end up with a novella, which isn't an option. The other problem I see is that observation is definitely a trickier way to go with the story, as everything will need to come through the main character's filter. I need dialogue, action, and reaction if I'm going to write the piece quickly. I know I can get that if I create more interaction between the characters before we reach the climax, face-to-face stuff that will help build a sense of immediacy and urgency. That approach will gear up the tension and allow me to define each character more easily (and charge those definitions with greater emotion) than if I relied completely on the narrator's observations to do the job.