joshua lovins – inp(w)

At the age of sixty-three Neb resolved to make a habit of walking a couple of hours each day. She had come to understand that people who walk every day are better off in lots of ways, and she understandably wanted that for herself. So she began to walk more. She walked alone and with friends. She walked to the beach and on the beach. She walked in the woods. She walked up mountains and around the town. In time, however, as happens, she developed a preference for certain walks, and, eventually, those were the only walks she did. One such walk was the walk to the beach, along the beach, and back. A favorite. She walked this walk at least three times each week.

One day, in late spring, Neb set out on one of her beloved beach walks. On her way to the beach she saw all the usual things: green trees, passing cars, birds, and so forth. The beach, too, seemed ordinary enough when she arrived. There was a two-person kayak just above the high tide mark, but that did not surprise her, for sometimes people kayaked here, deposited their kayaks on the beach, and went into town for an ice cream or a coffee. There was a dark shape on the sand in the distance, but that was normal, for people often forgot bags on the beach. She walked down the beach in her usual direction, which was also in the direction of the dark shape. As she walked, she peered curiously at it, wondering what it might be. She drew at last close enough to it that she could discern that it was a wide-brimmed hat, upside down, on the sand. She walked over to the hat, trying to understand what she was seeing. The closer she came to the hat and the better her view of its contents, the more she struggled to trust her senses! Inside the hat, curled up, was what appeared to be a baby black fox. Incredible! She stopped and stared at it, open-mouthed. She walked away from it and then stopped and walked back. She couldn't just leave it here. A baby fox! A black fox! Sleeping in a hat! Was it alive? It was barely reacting to her presence. But, yes, it was breathing. She bent down slowly and jiggled the hat. The fox opened an eye then closed it again. She stood there and looked around the beach, but there was no one around. She decided that she could not live with herself if she left this baby fox here, so she picked up the hat. The fox slept on.

She walked back home, more quickly than usual, carrying the fox in the hat, and looking around her to see if anyone was watching. No one was watching, and even if there had been someone watching, that person would soon have forgotten her, because she didn't matter to anyone outside of her immediate circle of friends, family, and acquaintances, none of whom was out and about in this area at this particular time. When she got home, she put the hat on the kitchen counter, poured a bowl of milk, opened a can of sardines, and put one sardine on a plate next to the milk. The fox yawned, lay its head on the inner crown of the hat, and looked at the assembled meal. It must not have been a sufficiently appetizing spread, for soon the fox put its head back inside of its curled body and fell asleep again. Sleepy fox.

She tried a number of foods over the course of the day, but the fox wouldn't budge. She tried picking him up when the evening came, but the fox just hung limply in her arms, blinking at her and then falling asleep.

She looked up what might be going on with a baby fox that was just sleeping all the time, but she couldn't find good answers online, for they said different things and how could she know which answer was correct? That was the same problem structure as the one that had prompted her to search in the first place: she had to decide on what was in fact wrong with this fox and she did not know how to make that decision. What difference did it make if she had to decide between three options rather than an infinite number of options? Her selection from the three would be just as arbitrary and she would be just as responsible for any error and what did she know about foxes? She should not be responsible for this fox. It did not make sense. She began to regret her decision to pick up the hat with the fox. The hat was its own issue. Whose hat was it? It had a fox in it, but could it then be said to belong to the fox? Hardly! The fox and the hat were probably genealogically uncorrelated bodies that had just happened to collide on the beach. That they stuck together when they collided did not imply that she should treat them as a package, or that the decisions she made about the fox should necessarily have anything to do with the decisions she made about the hat. And yet, she had carried the fox inside of the hat; she had already treated them as a bundle, and so she had already made all kinds of errors. A perfect example of why her involvement in this matter was such a problem. Of course, it had been a necessary problem, because she could not have left the fox behind (though she regretted that she had not left him behind). She had been forced to make herself a problem. She was necessarily a problem!

Her thinking became in this manner increasingly shrill and meaningless as she stared at the fox curled up in the hat on her counter. Her mouth was open again and drool was dripping from her chin and onto her shoe.

At last her husband, Thomas, came home.

"Thomas!" she shouted, as soon as he had walked in the door. "Thomas, thank goodness you're here." She began to cry.

"What the hell?" said Thomas.

"Thomas, look. Come look."

Thomas waddled over, setting his bag down and trying not to be annoyed that he had been on entry assailed not by some cool, dry, homely nothingness that might sweep away the day's sweaty cares but by this viscous spray of a bursted pipe, this plutonic intrusion of pointless drama erupting through the floorboards as if to remind him that this was not finally his tomb but merely another dying day.

"What is it?" he said.

"A fox," she said.

"A fox?" he said.

"A fox!" she said.

"For fuck's sake," he said, walking over to the hat. "Now I have to deal with this now."

"Thomas," she said. "Please. We have to do something."

"This is not a fox," said Thomas. "This is black. Foxes are red."

"It is a black fox."

"How do you know?"

"I have heard about black foxes and this is a black fox. I can tell. Thomas, please. We have to do something."

"Damn it all! What on earth can we do? It is a fox. We cannot do anything for a fox. What on earth can we do for a fox?"

"He's unwell, I think."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"He's so sleepy."

"Hello!" trumpeted Thomas at the fox. "Hello there foxy! Buddy! Wake up!"

The fox opened one eye, sighed, closed it, and buried its face deeper in its fur.

"It is as if we are not good enough for him!" said Thomas, frowning at the fox, putting his hands in his pockets, and pacing around the kitchen.

"Thomas, what on earth do you mean?"

"Didn't you see him sigh?" said Thomas. "My whole life. People inviting themselves into me, deeming me insufficient for their vain schemes, taking me to task for their failure to carry their own weight, spitting on earth I alone partitioned and with cold earth insulated from that otherwise monotonic declension into froth, cosmos."

"Thomas, it sounds like you are maybe projecting some things onto your recent interaction with the fox."

"Neb, we need to do something about this fox in this hat."

"That is what I am saying, Thomas."

"I think first of all we need to figure out why he is so sleepy and we need to try to get his energy up and running."

"Yes, exactly! That is what I have been saying. I have even done some research."

"Well, what did you find?"

"There are three possibilities."

"Make it one."

"Oh dear, Thomas, I cannot make three into one! I am not trained in that."

"You have to do it, Neb."

"What about you?"

"I am the manager. I am delegating. But I take full responsibility for everything."

"But in reality I am the one making three into one, so I am responsible."

"No, I am the one making three into one because I am telling you that you have to do it even though you don't want to."

"Thomas, that doesn't count. A third party looking in on our discussion right now would see very clearly that you do not yet have access to the three possibilities, so you are clearly not in a position to make any kind of a decision about which of them makes the most sense, so you are far less responsible than I would be for any damage associated with the decision between the possibilities."

"Look, Neb, I am not going to litigate this with you right here in the kitchen. We need to get this done right now. If you are not willing to do it, I will do it. What are the options?"

Neb listed the options.

"Let's go with the first option," said Thomas.

"Thomas!" said Neb, "This is a real fox and you are just picking the first option to pick something! We might as well desert our minds to opiates, bury our hearts in hermit sand, wander and hope and starve, and starve!"

Thomas sat down on the couch. He put his head back and closed his eyes. "I don't think I'm cut out for this, Neb."

"Thomas, you can't give up!"

"It's too hard."

"Oh, gosh." Neb was crying again. Her poor Thomas. He opened his eyes again and looked at her sadly. He loved her very much. He wished he could be more helpful, but he had really tried to employ every technique at his disposal.

Then the fox stood up in the hat, stretched, yawned a big yawn, and sat down in the hat. Thomas stood up. Neb froze, her eyes wide.

The fox looked at each of them. Then it spoke. Its voice was deep, rich, and watery, like a heavy, hollow object being dragged down an asphalt alleyway, separated from the listener by an immense box fan. "I am here to take you across the ocean." The fox looked at Neb. "Do you remember the kayak that was on the beach this morning?"

"I... I do," said Neb.

"That kayak will take us across the ocean."

"Where are we going?" said Neb.

"We are going to a different sort of place."

"What — what sort of a place? Europe?"

"No."

"Morocco?"

"No."

"Senegal?"

"No."

"What other places are there?"

"There is an island."

"Sardinia?"

"No, please stop guessing. You are not going to get it."

This was disappointing for Neb because she had always been good at geography.

"Where is it?"

"There is no point talking about it."

"Why not? Do we need to bring anything? What sort of weather should we expect?"

"No, you don't need to bring anything. I imagine the weather will be about sixty-six degrees fahrenheit and sunny."

"Oh, that's very nice."

"Yes, it is nice."

"Is it on a different plane?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, is this island in another realm, so to speak?"

"What does that mean?"

"Like, are you taking us to another world?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"You said you were taking us to a different sort of place."

"I did, yes."

"Is it, like, very, very different?"

"It's very different."

"I see.... Well, I guess we'll just have to see what it is like and judge for ourselves."

"That's the spirit," said the fox.

"I don't think I'm cut out for this," groaned Thomas, sitting back down on the couch and closing his eyes.

The fox looked at him. "I think you will probably be okay."

Thomas opened his eyes again and looked at the fox. The "probably" surprised him. In the time since the fox had started speaking, Thomas had come to expect that it was omniscient. "Probably?" said Thomas.

"Yes," said the fox.

"Do we leave tonight?" said Neb.

"No," said the fox. "Sleeping here tonight. We leave early in the morning."

The fox jumped out of the hat, down from the counter. In a couple of bounds, it crossed the kitchen and living rooms, leaped onto the couch, and curled up there. It looked at them for a few moments, then it closed its eyes. They stood and looked at the fox for a few minutes, until, all at once, twin slabs of exhaustion flattened them, and they were obliged to brush their teeth and go to bed.

A loud bang soon woke them. The fox had push an empty ceramic mug off of the bureau, perhaps to wake them up. They sat upright and looked at the fox sitting on the bureau. The fox looked back. They got up, brushed their teeth, and dressed. The fox asked them to bring the hat. They asked if they should bring water and the fox said they could if it made them feel more comfortable but they didn't have to. Neb decided it would make her more comfortable, so she went into the recycling, found an empty water bottle, and filled it from the tap. Thomas was waiting by the door, rotating the felt hat in his hands. They opened the door and the fox trotted out ahead of them into the pre-dawn gray. The houses and streets were still. The birds were beginning to make their morning bird sounds. The three of them walked to the beach along the same route Neb had taken the preceding day. Things were different now. They were following a baby fox to a kayak bound for a different sort of place.

They reached the kayak and pushed it into the water. Thomas held onto it as it bobbed in the small waves of the bay. Neb asked the fox where it wanted to sit. The fox said, "Do you see that cargo compartment? If you remove that rubber lid, you should be able to fit the hat in there. Then I can sit in the hat." Neb remarked again the fox's connection to the hat. She removed the lid, fit the hat into the compartment, picked up the fox, and put it in the crown of the hat, where it sat and watched them. Neb climbed into the front seat.

"Wait a minute," said Thomas. "We do not have any oars."

"They are called paddles. Oars are for canoes," said Neb.

"We do not have any paddles," said Thomas.

"It's okay," said the fox.

"Okay," said Thomas. The fox was very convincing. Thomas climbed into the kayak and the three of them began to float out into the bay.


JOSH lives in New York. Email him at reeeelllelreljle@gmail.com.


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