Pax. Jon Klassen
to Pax; brother but not littermate of the vixen. Play!
Bristle bared her teeth and snarled at her brother. Dangerous. Stay away.
Pax ignored Bristle’s warning posture and met the greeting. Friendly. You FLEW! BIRD?
The little fox bounded back to the fallen oak, then sprang on to its trunk. One fork of the dead tree angled up. The small fox walked lightly along its length. He looked down to make sure Pax was watching.
Pax dropped and tucked his paws under his chest, but it was hard to keep from leaping on to the tree to try it himself. He had climbed the walls of his pen, of course, but he’d never been higher than its six feet. His brush twitched.
The vixen stalked a few steps away and then dropped to the ground. She rolled on to her side to gaze directly up at her brother, her love for him obvious now. He was the runt. He’s small, but he’s tough. I don’t want him with me when I hunt. But he follows me. She tossed her head and growled at Pax, as though blaming him for her brother’s play.
The runty little fox stepped out along the branch, tail poised for balance, then coiled himself and leaped out over the heads of the earthbound foxes. He landed in a clump of burdock beside the road and then burst out covered in burrs. He tore around in mad circles, as if soaring had filled him with an excess of joy that had to be spent through his legs, and then flung himself on to the ground to roll out the rest.
His sister pounced on him. Too close to the road! While she pulled the burrs from his coat, she scolded him for the recklessness of his flight. But Pax marvelled at it – a good five full-bounds he’d travelled without touching paws to ground. He would try the feat himself one day.
When Runt managed to get to his feet, he lowered his head and nuzzled his sister. She knocked him back to the ground, only mock-rough this time, and then sat on him, pinning him down. He struggled a little but never really tried to upset her, and he protested only meekly when she began to groom him.
Pax settled himself a respectful distance away. After a while, her brother now properly subdued and her irritation spent, Bristle retrieved the morsel of rat and dropped it in front of him. She lay down and began to lick her paws, then to clean her face with them.
Pax edged closer, so low that his belly brushed the ground. The company of these two young foxes drew him, whether he was welcomed or not.
Bristle stretched out in a patch of slanting sunlight. Her damp cheeks glistened like the pumpkin-coloured wood of the table where Pax’s humans ate their food, brilliant against the white of her sleek throat.
Pax looked over at Runt, who was sniffing the spot where Pax had slept. His coat markings were identical, but not as vibrant. His fur was sparse and tufty in places, and his hip bones protruded at sharp angles. He reared back suddenly and pounced in mock attack.
Pax watched as Runt tossed the toy soldier into the air and then pinned it down, over and over. He had done the same thing as a kit. He trotted over and joined the game, and Runt welcomed him as though they had played together since birth.
Bristle got to her feet. Bring it here.
Her brother ignored her for a moment but then, as if he had been judging the limits of his sister’s patience, he loped over and dropped the toy at her paws.
Bristle issued a throaty rattle at the soldier. Human. Leave it. Home. Now, she ordered her brother.
Runt leaned in to Pax and braced his forelegs.
Bristle sprang back to nip at her brother. He stinks of the humans. Remember.
Pax was startled by the image she communicated to her brother then: a cold, howling wind; a mated pair of foxes, struggling with something that reminded Pax of his pen – steel, but with jaws and clamps instead of bars. The steel jaws and the snowy ground were smeared with blood.
Bristle tipped her head to assess the sky and sniff the breeze, which carried the threat of thunderstorms from the south. Home.
Runt lowered his tail and began to follow his sister. But then he turned back to Pax, inviting him to come as well.
Pax hesitated. He didn’t want to leave the spot his humans would return to. But dark clouds were rolling in, and just then, thunder boomed in the distance. He knew his boy would not venture out during a storm. He didn’t want to think of getting drenched by the side of the road. Alone.
He tucked the toy soldier into his cheek and set out after the two foxes.
Bristle turned when she sensed his presence. One night only, Human-Stinker.
Pax agreed. He would follow his scent back to the road after the storm. His humans would come for him then. And once he found his boy, he would never leave his side.
Peter recognised the sounds before he was fully awake: the footfalls of a herd of just-released kids, their hoots, the thumping of their eager fists into gloves. He scrambled out from under the bench and grabbed his stuff. Too late: twenty boys and their coach were streaming down the hill. Up at the parking lot, a bunch of adults were overseeing the dismissal, and some of them wore uniforms. His best option was to join the dozen or so kids who were already scattered over the bleachers, heads bent together in clusters of two and three, and blend in when they left.
Peter climbed the bleachers to the top row and dropped his pack. A kid watching a baseball practice – nothing could be more normal, yet his heart skidded.
Below, the coach started lobbing fungoes into the field. The players were mostly the usual guys you expect to see on a ball field, all muscle and shout. Peter found the one he wanted to watch: a small kid with a straw-coloured crew cut and a bleached-out red T-shirt, playing short-stop. While the rest of the players scrambled around like puppies, this kid was a statue, hands poised waist high, eyes glued to the coach’s bat. The instant wood smacked cowhide, he sprang. Somehow he managed to reach every ball that came anywhere near his territory, even though he was so short that he looked like someone’s tag-along kid brother.
Peter knew he himself wasn’t the kind of kid you’d expect to find on a ball field, either, and he was even less at home in the dugout with all the shoulder punching and trash talking. But a baseball field was the only place where he felt he was exactly where he was born to be.
The feeling that brought Peter was something he had never even tried to describe to anyone else – partly because it felt too private, but mostly because he didn’t think he had the words to explain it. “Holy” came the closest, and “calm” was in the mix, but neither was exactly right. For a crazy minute, Peter sensed that the short-stop understood about that holy calm, was feeling it too, right now.
The coach had taken the mound and was tossing puffballs. The batters were hitting sharp liners and grounders, and the outfielders were finally paying attention, or at least facing in the right direction. The short-stop was still the one to watch – he looked like he was stitched together with live wires, gaze steady to the play.
Peter recognised that kind of concentration – sometimes his eyes would actually go dry because he forgot to blink, so focussed was he on every move of every player – and knew it paid off. Like the kid in the red T-shirt below him, Peter owned his territory on a ball field. He loved that territory right down to the cut-grass, dry-dust smell of it. But what he loved more was the fence behind it. The fence that told him exactly what was his responsibility and what wasn’t. A ball fell inside that fence, he’d better field it. A ball soared over it, and it wasn’t his to worry about any more. Nice and clear.
Peter often wished that responsibility had such bright tall fences around it off