Foxy
Andrew Cutter

Chapter One

	Foxy was a simple mammal that lived a simple life in his simple home in the middle of a simple field.  He enjoyed the simple pleasures of life and relished performing life’s simple tasks.  In fact, everything about his life was simple.  This was because Foxy was simple himself.  Foxy was one of that rare breed of retarded foxes.
	How this came about is in fact quite a sad tale, though Foxy himself recalls nothing of the matter.  This is because he is retarded.  In the year 1999, Fox was only one year old.  He was an above average intelligent Fox and his parents were very proud.  He was desired by all of the young female foxes and the envy of his male fox playmates.  Foxy had everything going for him until one sad day in late autumn.
	Foxy was walking with his parents to a river some distance from his home.  From that river the Fox family hoped to acquire some tasty fish, which were now easier to catch because of the drowsing effects of the cold water.  However, to get to this river the Fox family had to cross a wide stretch of black pavement along which humans traversed in hurtling motorized fibreglass cases.
	Foxy’s parents, wise to a certain extent, always crossed the road with Foxy between them so that they might receive the brunt of any blow that might come the family’s way.  However, they were not so wise as to think it safer to wait for a lull in the traffic before crossing.  Their best idea was to run across as fast as they could in hopes that they would not get hit.  On this particularly cold, icy autumn day their fool-hearted attempt to fatten themselves with fish for winter ended in tragedy.

* * *

	The man driving the red sports utility vehicle approximately one kilometre west of where the Fox family planned to cross the highway was a fat man.  This was because he ate a lot.  More importantly, he ate a lot while driving.  On this particular day he had felt the need for a third breakfast, but had not wanted to go through the trouble of frying another pound of bacon in his one room apartment.  Instead he had driven into the neighbouring town that had two McDonald’s locations.  He liked the one near the Esso gas station the best because the employees there never skimped on the bacon part of his Double Big Mac with extra cheese and bacon order.
	However, on this particular day he had been forced to go to the McDonald’s next to Jimmy’s Muffler and Gun Repair Shop because of a bomb threat in the other McDonald’s bathroom.  This had made the fat man pissed.  And when this fat man got pissed, he got hungry, so instead of his staple order of a Double Big Mac with extra cheese and bacon, he got two orders of a Double Big Mac with extra cheese and bacon, a McFlurry, three orders of large fries and a new sandwich the McDonald’s people were calling a McGrill – whatever the hell that is.
	Needless to say that all of this food needed to be eaten and it needed to be eaten very fast in order for the fat man to be pleased again.  However, the Dharma and Greg marathon on the TBS Super Station was continuing to show in front of his severely dented love seat without him and he didn’t dare miss another minute.
	All of this went toward explaining the fat man’s 40 km/hr excess of the speed limit, his one greasy hand on the steering wheel, and his wide lap full of heavily salted McDonald’s goods.  He was mowing down on the fries when one slipped from his hand to the wet rubber mat at his feet.  Leaning his head under the steering wheel to acquire a better view of the scene below, the fat man maintained his vehicle’s high speed as he searched for his lost fry.
	“Shit!” the fat man exclaimed, spotting the fry, now soaking in drip water from his boots and sporting two short curly hairs at one end.  The fat man reached for the fry and held it near his eye for a moment for examination.  “Ah, what the fuck,” he muttered and, as he leaned back in his seat, he shook the fry and popped it into his mouth.
	Barely glimpsing the road, the fat man was made to lurch by the revolting taste of the fry and he leaned to the passenger seat to spit it out.  It was at this unfortunate moment, when the red SUV was now one kilometre closer to its destination and at the very spot where the Fox family usually crossed, that the Fox family decided to cross the road.
	Tongue out, gag reflex in full force, the fat man was made to look at his windshield and swerve the steering wheel madly when he heard the thud of something against his front bumper.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of something bloody rolling over the top of his windshield just as he returned his focus to the road.
	A little late, the fat man threw his foot down on the brake.  Brushing the now scattered and intermingling McDonald’s fare off his lap, the fat man nervously rolled down his window and leaned his head out to look back at the scene behind him.  As he peered through the gathering dark he thought he saw something silhouetted some distance back.  Frightened, not knowing what… or who he had hit, the fat man shakingly moved the SUV’s gearshift into reverse and backed the vehicle up to see what he had hit.
	As the shape came into focus he realized that it was too small to be a person.  His pounding heart began to beat more slowly and the perspiration on his forehead slackened its flow.  “Just a fuckin’ cat,” he grunted.  He brought his head back in the window and surveyed the remnants of the meal around him.  Little of it appeared salvageable.
	“Fuck,” the fat man managed to say.  “Fuck.”
	And with that he threw his gear shift into drive and stepped down on the gas pedal, making the tires squeal.  Not another precious Dharma and Greg minute could be spared.

* * *

	Foxy and his parents had made it to the bottom of the embankment that bordered the black pavement path along which humans travelled.  Foxy’s father took up his position on Foxy’s left and Foxy’s mother was on the right.  The rumbling sound of a vehicle whisking by above them made the ground shake beneath their feet.
	“Foxy, keep close to us now,” his mother told him, “and if anything happens,” his mother paused with a weak smile, “know that we love you.”
	And with that, the Fox family began the dash up the embankment.
	Near the top, Foxy saw one of the great carriages fly by from right to left.  Through the tinted window at the vehicle’s front Foxy could just make out the silhouette of a human with long hair, his mouth moving and his hand near his ear.  Foxy and his parents looked east from whence the vehicle had came to see if any others followed and seeing none, they continued forward.
Their front paws made their first contact with the hot black asphalt.  Foxy winced as the heat seared the nubile felt pads of his toes.  He paused a moment, lifting his paw for relief as his parents ventured a few steps further, their eyes fixed on their goal.  For their goal, the river from which the tasty fish would come was visible now that they had climbed the embankment and could see past the road.
A field of golden grass stretched out beyond the embankment of the far side of the road.  Beyond, a string of barren trees divided the golden field from the deep blue of the meandering river at its side.  The white sun sent it rays from the low southern sky and they reflected the water, making it wink as with twinkling blue eyes.  Beyond the blue river there was more grassland and farmers’ fields, and more trees - forests of them, and even further this beauteous vista blended all at once into the blue-white haze of the horizon.
And for a second he appreciated it.  The trees, the water, the grass and the sky.  In all of its wonder and complexity, Foxy appreciated the world and saw that it was good.  It was very good.  And Foxy determined that he would be good to the world because it was good to him.
And that’s when it happened.
Foxy saw the red vehicle only a second out of the corner of his eye before its nearest tire struck him.  Foxy’s father went over and above the vehicle’s bumper and his mother, shorter than her husband, was spared by a few centimetres as the vehicle’s underbelly passed above her.
In shock, she did not see the body of her dead husband fall again behind the vehicle.  She lay in the middle of the road for a few seconds, her paws over her head, before she slowly rose to look around for Foxy and her husband.
She saw a body several paces away.
She stared at it from a distance; she could tell that there was no hope that her husband was still alive.  She walked back to the embankment from whence they had started in search of Foxy.  Startled by the noise of a car engine she turned around to see the red vehicle backing up slowly to where she had stood only a moment ago.
That’s when she saw it – a tiny movement from within the tall grass of the opposing bank.  Foxy!  She dashed toward the other bank and the tall grass, from which she could now see two small red ears protruding.
At the sound of the squealing tires she stopped dead in her tracks.
She turned her head only to see the black tire of the massive vehicle above her.  And then she was dead.

Chapter Two

Foxy awoke lying down.  This was very strange as he recalled going to sleep standing up.
No, wait, that can’t be right, Foxy thought.  One does not sleep standing up.  This puzzled Foxy.  In fact, looking around, everything puzzled Foxy.  For one thing he could not see his mother.  And this was very rare.  Foxy was almost always within sight of his beloved mother.
Where am I? Foxy wondered.  Looking around he realised he was not in his own bed which, at home, consisted of sweet smelling grasses from a meadow nearby the Fox family home.  Instead, he was in a bed of straw.  It was very uncomfortable.  One of the straws was unmistakeably a stick and to Foxy’s great misfortune it had stuck itself in one of his ass cheeks.  This bed of straw was in a box, a cardboard box, with which Foxy was unfamiliar.  It’s some sort of… well, I don’t know, thought Foxy, who hadn’t seen a box before.  Additionally, the box full of straw was situated in a vast enclosed area, with which Foxy was also unfamiliar.  So unfamiliar, in fact, that it will have to be described without his input, which basically consisted of a couple of grunts and, sadly, some foul smelling gas.
This enclosed area was one room, the kitchen specifically, in a rather small wooden cabin.  The wooden cabin belonged to an old woman of nearly eighty.  She lived there with her two grandchildren, Arial and Lincoln, whom she loved very much.  Arial was for all intensive purposes still a girl.  She was short, blonde, and had an odd affinity for seagulls, a characteristic that her grandmother tried to keep hush-hush from the neighbours.
Arial’s brother, Lincoln, was older, nearly seventeen now and very quickly becoming the man of the house.  His grandmother relied on him for a great many things and appreciated his help beyond words.  As necessary as he was around the house, Lincoln was very humble and did his work gladly.   Because of the work, Lincoln was a very handsome boy.  He stood just less than six feet tall and his body was lean and muscular.  He most often wore a green tunic with a white undershirt, a long, floppy green cap, tan pants, and leather boots that climbed his leg almost as high as his knees.
The first of these characters that Foxy saw was the grandmother.  As Foxy looked around the room he was in, which had a floor of shorn pine, log walls, a round wooden table with three chairs pushed under it, and an old iron wood-burning stove, his eyes fell upon the short elderly woman.
First chopping up some vegetable, stirring it into a pot, and then repeating with a different vegetable, the woman captivated Foxy with the simple rhythm of her work.  Along with her rhythmic chopping, the old woman was humming.  The tune she hummed was one familiar to Foxy, one to which his mother had put words and had often sung.  For some reason he could no longer remember those words, though he recalled images of a mighty king and his daughter, and a young peasant boy who had loved the king’s daughter.  His mind featured fleeting glimpses of wonderful adventures that the boy had taken to help the young princess, but then the images faltered and his mind failed him, and the song became for him nothing more than a simple ditty.
Then the old woman turned and placed the pot of vegetables on the table and upon doing so discovered that Foxy, whose head was now slightly raised and whose eyes were wide open, was awake.
“Lincoln!”  She cried, “Arial!  Come quick!  It’s a little miracle.”  The woman shuffled around the table to Foxy’s bed.  “It’s a miracle, children – he’s alive!”  She leaned down and stretched out her right hand to touch Foxy’s ear.  Foxy, unaccustomed to the sight of humans flinched and attempted to get up out of his bed.  Until now Foxy had remained motionless; however, upon trying to leap from his place of rest Foxy realised just how much pain he was in.
Foxy cried with the pain that shot up his legs, through his body and to his head.
The two children came running into the room.  Arial was jumping with glee.  She hugged her grandmother, who had now stepped back from Foxy.
Lincoln was quiet.  Collected and cool, he let a small smile grow across his face.  “It’ll take him a while to get all better, I should think.”  He reached for the counter and produced a small saucer of cream.  He placed the cream under Foxy’s nose.  After a few sniffs, Foxy lapped it up gladly.
“Awww…” cooed Arial, “He’s so cute!”  Foxy looked up at the young girl and tilted his head.  “Hah hah!  Awww…”

* * *

Foxy remained at the family’s home all of the time he recovered.  There he enjoyed glorious food, a warm bed (he now slept at the end of Arial’s soft mattress), and the company of the grandmother and children.  However, he spent the time perpetually perplexed about the disappearance of his parents, whose side he had never before left.  The days, weeks, and months passed without any mention of them.  Winter came and Foxy began to think he had never known his parents and that perhaps they had just been a dream.  The old woman and her children were his family now.  The kindly grandmother, the strong and courageous Link, and the adorable Arial: they always showed their love for him and were always there for him, or so he thought until one night near the start of Spring.
Thirsty and wanting a drink of water, Foxy awoke at his usual spot on the end of Arial’s mattress.  The young girl had turned in the night to put her head next to his, so he had to rise carefully so as not to wake her.  He dropped down from her bed as light as a feather and made for the stairs to the main floor.
At the precipice, Foxy paused.  It was very late, far too late for anyone to still be up, but he could see the glow of lamplight from the kitchen.  Then there came a clanking as of bottles falling on the floor.  Curious, Foxy slipped down each step, careful not to make any sound.  Then he peaked around the corner of the doorway that led to the kitchen.
At the table sat the old grandmother.  She did not appear at all like herself.  She leaned drastically in her chair with her neck bent at an awkward angle.  Her legs were spread wide in an uncomplimentary fashion, with one knee bent and the other straight.  Her blouse, usually a pristine white, was stained with dark liquor.  The bottles Foxy had heard falling now lay on the floor, one sporting a large crack.  They were all empty.
“Fucking fox.”  The grandmother’s sudden exclamation made Foxy jump back behind the wall.  But she had not seen him; she was talking to herself.  “Fuck-a, fuckin’ fox,” she began again, more subdued.  A line of drool ran down her lower jaw.  “Been, been looking after the little fucker, night… night and day.  And for what?!”  Her voice became higher and louder, “Just, just to have some hawv… haw… hot shot from the city come an’, come an’ fuck us up.”
Foxy was frightened.  He had never heard any of the family speak like this, let alone the kindly grandmother.  She had always been the epitome of politeness and good graces.  He leaned into the kitchen a little further to look around.  Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary, only the grandmother at the kitchen table.
“He can have the little fucker, for what… what’ll… what all I’ll care.  Shit on him!”  The old woman’s head lolled to the right and the bottle she held in her hand tipped, spilling more brown onto her blouse.  “Fuck!”  She jerked her head up quickly and then tossed the bottle against the wall, smashing it.  Foxy winced.  The noise was terribly loud in the still of the night.
Then, a creaking sound came from the top of the stairs.  Turning, Foxy saw Link descending the steps.
“What’s wrong, Foxy?  Where’s grandma?”  Link looked concerned, his hand shaking a bit as he let go of the stair railing.  Foxy motioned with his head toward the opening to the kitchen.
Link stepped forward through the archway.  He ducked as another bottle flew over his head.  It smashed on the floor in front of Foxy.  A small piece slid along the floor and cut into the pad of his front right foot, causing him to let out a little yelp.
“Lincoln, m’boy!  Where, where the fuc… freck have you been?”  Realising she was speaking with her grandson, she tried heroically to cover up her foul language.  “I see you brough’ that pussy-foot fox which ya, henh?”
“Grandma, what’s wrong?  Why are you like this?  What’s happen-“
“I’ll tell ye what’s goin’ on.  You, go an’ catch that little fucker, er, critter, that fox.  I need him.”
Link stood silently for a moment.  He opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally asking, “Why?”
“Don’ question your grandmother!”  Trying with great difficulty to stand, the old woman managed to steady both legs for only a second before she fell hard on the floor.  “Get that little shithead for me, now!”
“Bu-”
 “S’men from the city, some men need him.  You’ve gotta catch’im and give him to’em.”  Her speech was becoming more slurred and she could no longer keep her eyes open.  Link walked toward the kitchen table and sat next to his grandmother.
“Grandma, whatever the problem is, everything will be alright.  But we can’t send Foxy away, he’s part of the family!”
The grandmother rolled her head to face Link.  “The family?”  She belched a sarcastic laugh.  “Wha’ family?  We ain’t been a family since your parents pissed off.”
“Pa- pardon?”  Link stammered.
“Lincoln… Link.  Your parents weren’t killed by passing bald oafs.  No, nah…  They left with ’em!  They went an’ joined that evil feller, there.  Shi’, you know ‘im.  Pretty tall, kills people.”  The grandmother had found a comfortable position, with her head on her right shoulder and her side leaning against the table.  “They’re shit disturbers, Link, ol’ fashioned killing shit disturbs.  And one of their kind’s come an’ threatened to take you and Arial away if they don’ get the fox.”
“But… oh grandma!”  Link threw his arms around his rotund, liquor soaked grandmother.  She managed to raise one arm to pat him on the shoulder.  “But why would they want Foxy?  Why?!”
“I don’ know.  New hat?”  And then she pushed Link away as she leaned off her chair, fell to her knees, and began to wretch.
As his grandmother lay on the floor, her hands and knees soaking in a spreading vat of vomit, Link turned and spoke to Foxy, “Don’t worry, Foxy, we’ll figure something out.  We won’t send you away.”
“Like hell-” the old woman began to cough and sputter, “-we won’t!”
“Grandma, we won’t!  We’ll have to leave here, take Foxy with us.”
“I’ve lived ‘ere all m’life.  I ain’t leavin’ here just to save a hat.”
“He isn’t a hat, he’s a fox, and he’s our friend!”  Link grabbed Foxy and held him against his chest as he ran up the stairs.  “It’s going to be okay.  We’ll wake Arial, and we’ll all go.  If grandma won’t, well, I can look after us,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to Foxy.  He gently pushed open the door to his sister’s room.  “Arial?  Air?  Wake up, sis.”  He sat down on the side of his sister’s bed as she rose, resting on her elbow and rubbing her eyes.
“Link?  What’s going on?”
“We have to go, pack a bag.  We don’t have much time.  I’ll explain later, but we won’t be coming back.  It isn’t safe for us here.”  He rested his hand on her shoulder before motioning to get up.
“What?  Is grandma coming?  Why?”
“Please, there’s no time.  I don’t know if grandma’s coming.  Foxy, you stay with Arial while I pack my bag.”  With that, Link left the room.
Arial leaned down to the floor and picked Foxy up and placed him next to her in the bed.  “What’s this all about, Foxy?  Why do we have to go?”  She looked at Foxy as if expecting an answer.  But receiving none, she bowed her head, “Of course you wouldn’t know, especially since your accident.  Oh!  I’ve loved living here ever since mummy and daddy died.  I hope grandma comes with us; she’s so good to us.”  Foxy gave a snuff.  “O yes!  And I’m sure you’d miss her too, Foxy.  She really loves you: her little miracle!"
Arial got up and started rummaging in her closet and then through her chest of drawers.  Foxy stayed on her bed, pondering his situation.  He had thought he had found the perfect place.  He was used to everything being the same, and now it was all being thrown into question.  Foxy, who appreciated the simple things in life, didn’t like the prospect of leaving the comfort of his new home.  He felt hollow knowing that his new family wasn’t all it had seemed.  Foxy understood so little about his world, his life, his story.  Foxy was scared.