Chapter 19
Chapter
I kept waiting to hear from Chief Broder or the DEC or someone about the fawn, but I didn’t. For three days, the only time my phone rang was for animal control calls, and even those had begun to settle.
When I got a call early on a weekend morning, I was sure it would be Broder, thinking he’d lulled me into complacency and ready to take me by surprise. But the number that showed was Christine’s, and that did surprise me.
“Hello?” I answered, trying not to sound overly suspicious.
“Tess, I’m so sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but we’ve got an animal situation here.”
“Okay,” I said, thankful to skip any awkward small talk. “What’s the situation?”
“There’s some kind of animal here that looks really bad—I thought it was a possum but Max says it’s a fox. Hard to tell, honestly. Scared the bejesus out of me when I went to take the trash out, and it’s still in the yard. It keeps trying to drink from my watering can and I feel awful.”
“Don’t feel awful; it’s not your fault,” I said. I guessed it was a fox with mange, which wouldn’t have been common at this time of year, but since the weather had stayed warm, wasn’t impossible. “I’ll be down in just a couple minutes.”
When I arrived at Christine and Max’s Queen Anne Victorian—unmissable, as it was painted pistachio green and vaudeville maroon—they were both out in the driveway in their matching robes and slippers. They looked anxious, and Max came right to the curb to greet me.
“It’s still in the yard,” he said without preamble.
I realized abruptly that, except for my single glimpse of him at the church meeting, I hadn’t seen him since that last night at Paul’s house.
Hello to you too, I almost said, but I could already taste the cruel edge on the words, so I bit them back.
“How’s it acting?” I asked, unloading my carrier and grabbing a few tins of sardines out of the back.
“Thirsty. I read that can mean rabies.”
Why the fuck does everyone see rabies everywhere? I wondered. “It can,” I said. “It can be a sign of a lot of things. Let’s take a look.”
I waved Christine and Max back inside and went down the driveway to their yard.
It was a far cry from the golf course postage stamp most elderly suburban couples maintained, tithonia and rudbeckia ran rampant along the borders, the former so tall that the tree peonies I helped Christine plant were almost lost. I never managed to weave a spell into their roots, and I regretted it now even though I wasn’t sure it would help.
There were a couple dolly tubs that had been upcycled into water features, although it looked like Christine had let them run dry.
The fox was scrubbing itself back and forth on the corner of the shed, apparently undeterred by the voices out front or the opening and closing of doors. It seemed frantic, and there were chunks of hair being left on the siding. It definitely had mange.
Far from just a patchy coat, mange was one of the biggest killers of red foxes in the northeast. What began as hair loss became manic, single-minded scratching while the infection attacked the immune system, and in the winter, the hair loss could contribute to hypothermia.
This fox already looked like it was in bad shape, and I just hoped I wasn’t too late.
I approached slowly, keeping my gaze averted and my movements smooth.
The fox still darted away, but it only moved a few feet before it stopped to scratch again, mouth quirked up in a grimace and fur flying from its claws.
It was a good sign that its survival instincts kicked in, even half-heartedly.
I nestled the carrier into a cluster of tall grasses Christine had let go—“It’s my micro prairie,” she’d told me, although the grasses were, unfortunately, not native—and spilled a little sardine juice on the ground before sliding the tin inside.
The fox perked up at the scent of the fish, which made me hope this capture would go quickly.
When my magic was intact, it wouldn’t have been a question; I would’ve woven a little suggestion of sleep around the fox to give it relief and simply bided my time, but now I needed tricks.
I retreated back behind the corner of the house to watch, the remote for the carrier’s door in my hand. Christine and Max came hurrying up to me and I waved them away, holding a finger to my lips.
“Where is it?” Max whispered.
“Still in the yard,” I hissed back impatiently. “It’ll probably take a while, so why don’t you two go inside and I’ll let you know when I have it?”
Christine, clearly more attuned to my building irritation, tugged Max’s sleeve. They went back into the house, and I returned to my corner to observe.
The fox took its—his, I eventually saw—sweet time approaching the carrier.
He continued to circle Christine’s watering can, trying to stick his nose into it between fits of scratching, and I wondered if I should’ve lured him with a bowl of water instead of food.
Eventually, he started to pay more attention to the carrier, approaching and then darting away again.
My patience, which had always been so steadfast, wore thin.
I could feel my undone tasks piling up on my shoulders; the weeding that had to be done as the summer vegetables died back, the windows that needed to be resealed before winter, the roadkill that needed to be processed.
The thing I’d always considered the driving purpose of my life suddenly felt like a burden.
Finally, the fox’s hunger won out over his thirst, and he darted into the carrier. I knew he would try to snatch the tin and bolt, so I wouldn’t get another chance. I pressed the button on the remote and the door flew closed.
It was as clean a capture as I could hope for, but there was a brief second where the fox’s tail was caught by the door. I didn’t think it even pinched, the bottlebrush tail simply sliding through the wire, but it was enough. The fox immediately began to thrash and yowl.
I ran to the carrier and planted both hands on top to keep it steady, wincing as his body thudded against the plastic sides. The sardine smell intensified, and I knew he’d splashed them all over the carrier. He would probably smell like fish for a week.
It took a few minutes for him to give up, and all the while my heart broke for him.
He didn’t understand his situation was about to improve drastically; he thought he was fighting for his life and losing.
Even when he stopped flailing, I could feel him panting through the carrier, his distress palpable.
Christine and Max were already hurrying down the front steps to meet me as I took the carrier to the truck; they must’ve been watching through the kitchen window. “Will it be all right?” Max asked.
There was a time when I would’ve been reassuring, giving them the most hopeful outlook, and now I wondered if perhaps I’d coddled them. Perhaps I’d made them think I was invincible, and that’s why they’d so easily chosen to work against me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “He’s in pretty bad shape. I’m going to do everything I can, though.”
“Okay,” Christine said. “Can you keep us updated on how he’s doing?”
“Sure. Just do me a favor and don’t mention this to Evelyn. She’ll go running straight to Chief Broder, and he’s already up my ass about animals he’s randomly decided are dangerous, so unless you want this guy put down for arbitrary ‘public health’ reasons, it should probably stay between us.”
“Tess, she wouldn’t!” Christine said reproachfully.
“She would.”
“Tess.” Christine laid a firm hand on my arm this time, and I resisted the urge to yank it away.
“You need to talk to her. Whatever happened between the two of you, she’s really hurt by it.
She thinks so much of you. She’s the same Evelyn she always was; she wants to help, but sometimes she goes about it the wrong way. ”
I rounded on her, bewildered. “Between the two of us? It doesn’t feel like the two of us—it feels like something happened between me and all of you.
The only reason I even knew about that town hall meeting was because I stopped down to see Georgie, and lo and behold, there’s a projection of a megachurch built over my house.
You didn’t even seem surprised. And not a single one of you has called to say you don’t want to see my sanctuary turned into a parking lot. ”
Christine heaved a bone-weary sigh, and for the first time in a decade, she looked exhausted.
For a moment, I glimpsed what it must be like to be her—her heart and soul thrown into a town that gave her nothing back, the volunteers for the harvest festival dwindling every year, the other retired teachers leaving until there weren’t enough to staff the after-school programs, the superintendent not bothering to submit the grant applications she slaved over.
How must she feel to see Zeke march into town and suddenly galvanize the same people who ignored her pleas for years?
Relieved, I thought. She’s relieved.
“I don’t expect you to be enthusiastic about a church, Tess,” she said.
“Frankly, I don’t think another church is in the top five things this town needs most, and I certainly don’t think it has to be where your sanctuary is.
I know Zeke will offer you a fair price, but if you don’t want to sell, that’s your right.
You’ve put years of work into that place. ”
I flinched, hid it with a restless movement of my arm. Of course it seemed simple to her—she thought I had the option not to sell. She thought the best of me, and of Zeke, and believed we could be civil about it.
“But no matter where this church goes, I’m going to support it.
I’ve been trying for years, years, to get these people invested in their town, and maybe if they can care about a church, they can care about their school, or their library, or their downtown.
If you don’t want to sell, and you don’t want to support it, I understand.
That sanctuary is your life, but this town is mine. ”