Red Fox Road by Frances Greenslade

Author:Frances Greenslade [Greenslade, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PRH Canada Young Readers
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

A faint, faraway rumble brought me back to the stick I’d begun whittling. I looked at my watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I stood to listen to the rumble. It came from the west, the same area where I’d heard the engine rumble the other day. I ran to the truck and hopped up on the tailgate to see if I could spot anything. The sound grew a little louder and then I recognized the whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopter blades. I climbed onto the toolbox and used it to boost myself onto the roof.

“Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms madly.

That was useless and I knew it, since the helicopter was nowhere near me yet, but I was so excited that I couldn’t help it. It would be just like my fantasy: Mom and Dad jumping down, ducking and running toward me. They knew where I was; they couldn’t miss me. A road would not be a hard thing to find in a wilderness of trees.

I hurried to my fire, poked it to life and put on some green boughs, not too many this time. Blue-gray smoke twisted and billowed from it. I climbed back onto the roof of the truck.

The whomp of blades drifted into and out of earshot, like a dream that wouldn’t quite become real. At first I stood and waited for it to get closer. I’d wave my arms when it did. After a while, I sat on the roof with my arms around my knees and watched the sun disappear below the trees. As soon as it did, the chill dropped over me.

At six o’clock, I admitted to myself that the sound had faded altogether. At 6:30 I went and built up the fire again. I couldn’t make myself eat, if you could call it eating. I knew I’d feel better if I at least had a cup of tea, but I couldn’t make myself leave the heat and brightness of the fire and walk into that cold, shadowed dusk.

Where was she? What if she’d gone into the woods to find water, or to pee, and got lost? Where was Dad? Had he ever made it back to the road? If he hadn’t, where was he?

Then I had the kind of thought that comes to me at dusk when the sky is the color of dirty dishwater. When Dad was experimenting with the GPS at home, he went through two sets of batteries in one day. He thought he’d figured out why, but he hadn’t had a chance to test his theory yet. What if he’d run out of batteries out there? What if he was still walking? If there was one thing Dad was good at, he always said, it was walking.

Leaves crinkled in the undergrowth to the left of me. Something was stepping softly. I felt my heart catch, waiting, and then something let go. All the holding back, all the efforts to keep my mind from rushing to the dark places—it all just let go.

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