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Matins
Newberg's eyes cracked open to the sound of bells. He had no alarm clock; many years ago his need for one had vanished. He had begun waking just a few seconds before it went off, and then found that he didn't need to use it to wake at all, though he'd kept the thing for a while out of habit. The cool grey light of dawn filtered through the film-spotted windowpanes. These days, mornings were quiet affairs. He remembered when he used to wake to the sound of mockingbirds outside, and jays, chattering noisily at the morning. Now there was only the sound of the bells, doleful, resonant, sonorous tones that pealed a discordant, but oddly melodic, jumble of sound.
They had started a few years ago, about two years after he lost Lettie. Tinnitus, the doctor told him. A ringing in the ears common with age. Drink more water, rest more. That should help. Newberg had chuckled when the doctor said that. What did doctors know, anyway? This was no ringing in his ears. It was music. A ringing in his mind, perhaps. As his head cleared, the sounds began to fade away, and with them went the faintly wistful, longing feeling that always accompanied them, drifting back into the same foggy forgetfulness that took his dreams.
He paused at the edge of the bed, body imploring him not to get up, to take it easy for once, let that old spine go a day without bearing the weight of his enormous head. "One day," he told it. "One day I let you lie there and then that will be it. The next day I'll lie there and the next, and then I won't ever get up again."
That wasn't exactly true, he knew. If he lay in bed too long, he'd start to drift back into sleep, and then the bells would return, louder than before, more insistent, somehow.
He stood. His knees were already sore and protesting. His back settled into its old, semi-comfortable hunch as he reached for his glasses on the low bookshelf next to his bed and put them on. The world shifted into semi-focus; he hadn't been to an optometrist in ages, and he had never subscribed to those new, fancy services that promised to regenerate your eyes while you waited. The people that came back from those places, their eyes looked like glass to him. You could never be sure what world they saw. Besides, the weight of the glasses on his nose, like that on his spine, was comfortable, even in its irritation.
He undressed in the bathroom and showered. Much as he would have preferred a bath, there wasn't time to soak. Today might be his last day of work. Then perhaps the next morning he could lie in, or take a bath, or even not wake up at the dawn. Maybe the bells would finally stop. He stood at the sink and shaved, his left thumb and forefinger tugging under his neck, pulling the loose skin of his face tight so the straight razor could catch the coarse, grey hairs. He could have used an anti-follicular cream instead of shaving, of course. He was no Luddite. But his fingers knew how to shave, and that was worth something.
He pulled on black slacks, buckling them at the waist, and matched them with a white shirt covered by a dusty black jacket.
"Hey!" called a voice from down the hall. "You still alive, Old Man? Get that bony ass of yours moving! There's work to be done!"
Newberg ran a comb, once white, but now a dingy yellow, through the remaining hair on either side of his head. Some dark left there still, he noted with a twist of satisfaction. Seventy-four years old, and not completely white yet.
"Coming, Fox," he said.
Liturgy
Fox was waiting for him as he walked down the hall, past his kitchen, past the dusty living room, and entered his laboratory. Fox had been waiting for him for a long time. Years.
"No breakfast today?" Fox asked.
"I never have breakfast anymore," Newberg said. His old eyes glittered behind his glasses. He moved into the dimly lit room, along a wall, piled high with boxes of rusty tools, decades-old magazines, and clipped newspapers articles, and to the center, where his work table stood. He dragged his old work stool back from the table, its once red leather now cracked, revealing the white stuffing inside. Seating himself comfortably in the chair, he reached up and pulled the cord for the fluorescent light that hung over it, and it flickered into cool brilliance, its sterile hues glittering on the array of scrapers, knives, needles, prods and electrical tools neatly arranged across the table's surface. The table itself was immaculately clean, but the concrete floor beneath it was covered with old brown and yellow and white stains, pitted in places as if corroded, and marked with dried streams leading down a slight angle toward a brown iron grate in the center of the room.
"You should eat," Fox advised from the back of the room. "Don't want your old bony ass falling over before you finish your greatest work, do you?"
Newberg didn't reply at once. He checked each instrument carefully, making sure they were all clean and in the proper place. He took a pair of thick, leathery gloves from the top of the table and put them on, then got up from his stool and headed to the back of the room, past shelves bearing various-sized jars of various-colored fluids, some dark and syrupy brown and crusted around the edges, some powdery-milky, some murky yellow. Below these shelves were bookshelves, the centers sagging with the weight of their books, books like Mounting Vs. Recreation, Taxidermy in the 21st Century, Finishing Birds & Feather Preservation , and Tools, Technology, and Taxidermal Traditions. Taking up the back wall behind all the shelves were a set of four, humming, polymer-based freezers.
He opened the third freezer, the only one that still contained anything. The air that wafted out was so cold, his breath left frost patterns on the glass door. "You should have a little more respect," he told the vulpine muzzle pointing, upside down, at him. Grunting with the weight, he took the metal tray with Fox from the freezer and carried it over to the work table. The freezer hissed as it closed, its cooling system humming in mechanical panic as it tried to accommodate for the sudden influx of warm air.
Fox lay on the table and didn't move. "Respect? Respect is for humans. Foxes find it ridiculous."
"Is that so?" Newberg flicked a switch on the side of the tray. A little orange light inside it turned on, and the ice crystals on its shiny, metal surfaces began to melt away, the water dripping down the side into a trough at the edge of the table and into a drain at one end. A gurgling sound came from the iron grate on the floor. He took off the gloves. "Then I suppose you don't mind if I don't do so good a job on you, hmm? Maybe I'll just be a little sloppy. I'm tired today."
Fox barked a laugh through his stiff muzzle. "You might! But it's not me you're doing this for. This is all for you and yours, right? You just have to make sure I last. A little memento to remember me by, skin and bones."
Newberg pulled on another pair of gloves, latex ones this time, thin and pale blue. "Seems to me you were the one hounding me to get out of bed this morning, eh?"
"Aw, you know I care about you, Old Man. And me, all this, your work. It's important to you, ain't it? That's why I get you up out of bed. Anything to keep you goin'. We foxes may not have much respect, but we do care. And skies above, turn off that heating tray. You're going to scorch me."
Obediently, Newberg flicked off the switch again. "Are you ready?"
"Ready?" Fox sounded incredulous. "Old Man, I've been ready for more than four years. I was ready when you started with Beaver, and Mole, and Sunfish, and Mockingbird. And I thought you would never finish with Mockingbird."
Newberg's face creased. "I liked Mockingbird."
"Of course you liked Mockingbird," Fox said, exasperated. "Mockingbird wouldn't shut up. You like people who don't shut up."
"Must be why I've kept you so long, hmm?"
"No, that's my charming personality at work. And how do you answer back? You stick everyone you like in a freezer for four years."
Newberg picked up a scalpel. "Not everyone." He bent over, tentatively taking Fox's left hind leg in one hand, and finding that it was no longer cold, gripped it more firmly. The scalpel dipped down toward Fox's belly.
"No, not everyone," Fox said. "Not the female."
Newberg froze. "You keep your mouth shut."
"My mouth is always shut," Fox protested.
"Lettie was different. You know that. Lettie wasn't like you."
"Just another animal."
"She was a human!" Newberg found himself getting angry, and the scalpel punched in just behind Fox's navel, deeper than he had planned.
"Humans are animals," said Fox, seemingly unconcerned by the silvery bright crescent sliding down toward his tail. "They're just not very good at it."
Newberg's eyes watered. Just from the eyestrain, peering too closely, he told himself. "Lettie was... you don't preserve people like you do animals. It's... there's laws against it. And it's creepy."
"Creepy!" barked Fox. "And what do you call this, Old Man? You live in a house out in the middle of the woods by yourself and spend all your time practicing taxidermy on dead animals that you talk to . Come on. How much creepier would it be? You can see us every day, if you want to. Wouldn't it be nice to have a stuffed wife sitting at your breakfast table? You could talk with her just like you do with me. You could sit with her and watch television, even carry her to bed and curl up with her at night, saggy Old Man arm around her cold f—"
"Stop it!" shouted Newberg. "That's horrible! Absolutely horrible!"
"Is it?" Fox's left eye stared resolutely up at the fluorescent light, the twin pair of glowing tubes reflected in it like a gleam. "I wouldn't know. I'm just a fox."
Newberg's left hand trembled as he reversed direction, tracing the scalpel up toward the fox's throat. He stopped, trying to compose himself, trying to ignore the tingling pains going up his arm. He forced himself to breathe more slowly. "You wouldn't understand."
"No," said Fox, "I suppose I wouldn't. You humans are strange about these things. You want to make things last forever, or make them go away so you can pretend they never were. I remember when I saw you and the female, when you were eating on the ground. Remember?"
"I remember." Newberg pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. How long ago had it been? Not so long ago, perhaps. This fox could remember. Foxes lived how long? Eight, ten years? So it couldn't have been more than fourteen. He and Lettie had sat on a tablecloth, out in the woods near the stream. It was summer; the air was heavy and hot and filled with the scent of pine and earth. They were together to forget for a while, their sons off in the wars. They had sandwiches, and iced tea, and she was grumpy because her legs hurt, and they'd had to walk over a mile to get there. She was wearing a flower-print hat, and he'd helped her sit down, and then they'd seen the fox.
"Look," he told her. "Now isn't that worth coming out here for?" The fox was drinking from the stream.
"It's lovely," she had said. "Just think how nice it would be, all dried out, with its head all tilted to one side, stuck on a metal bar in the living room!"
That had hurt. Lettie had never approved of his work.
"I like living things, you know that," he'd scolded her.
"You tolerate living things," she said back, and then he told her that lately she barely qualified as a living thing, what with her moping around, and that was why he only tolerated her. It was a terrible thing to say, and he regretted it instantly, but was too bitter and angry to apologize, or take it back, and probably the only reason that she didn't head back right away was that her legs were still sore. Instead she threw a rock at the fox, and it darted back into the forest.
She ended up saying she was sorry first; she always apologized first, and she leaned against his side, and he put his arm around her, and squeezed a bit, and that way he didn't have to apologize at all.
She was right, in a way. Perhaps he didn't pay as much attention to the living as he could. But she was wrong, too. He did care about them. He'd always told her that was why he did what he did: to cheat death, if only in some small part; to give back some of the life that it took away. His way, even if the dead couldn't live again, at least it made it easier, for a while, to imagine that they were alive. To see what the world had been like with them in it.
Lettie had hated taxidermy because she said it encouraged hunters to kill things, but he said, no, they would kill whether he mounted the animals for them or not. Better, he said, they should come to a craftsman like him, who loved the natural beauty of wildlife, who could give their kills a sense of dignity, life, respect. Better than if they took their animals to some hack who shoved them into false, hackneyed snarling poses and crammed them full of sawdust. Better than if they turned that animal into a hat or stole and wore its carcass around.
Newberg was an artist. That's what Lettie never understood. His fingers excelled at recreating animals in death just as they had appeared in life. Admittedly, he didn't see many of these animals in the wild, but he had photographs and videos to work with, and his creations were so startlingly realistic they often fooled people. He had won several awards. He had even been commissioned to create a southwestern diorama for the Smithsonian, once long ago, but hadn't wanted to spend that much time in the city.
"You there, Old Man?" said Fox.
Newberg rubbed his eyes. "I remember," he repeated, replacing his glasses.
"Reflect tomorrow. Work today," Fox snapped.
He nodded, and began gently peeling the loose skin away from the underlying tissue, then picked up a longer blade, and cut deeper, severing muscle walls and visceral tissue, opening up the abdominal cavity to the sternum. "I have something special for you," he said.
"Oh, goody. What could that possibly be?" Fox stared upward disinterestedly. "A mouse? Wait, can't eat. A vixen? Wait, can't mate. Are you going to put me outside and let me fall apart and be eaten by worms and beetles and turn into dirt?"
Newberg grunted. "I have a canister of VL-89 preservative. I've been saving it for you. You know what that means?"
"You're a crazy old coot?"
He put down the knife and picked up the bone cutters, in two quick movements crunching Fox's sternum in two. "It means I don't remove your skin, your bones, your muscle tissue. This stuff is top of the line. Ten grand an ounce. I just flood it through your vascular system and it preserves everything but the organs. Even your eyes and nose will stay, though I do have to varnish those. Less work for me, and you stay looking pretty well into the next century. No glass eyes for you, my friend."
Fox scoffed. "Sounds like something special for you, not for me. What do I care about pretty? I'm dead."
Newberg bit his lip. "You're no longer with us."
"No, you're the one talking to dead animals. You're no longer with us. I'm just plain dead."
Newberg pulled open Fox's abdomen, the white sheets of visceral tissue tearing apart like stubborn cobwebs. He slipped his gloved left hand inside and pulled a length of intestine partway, having to use his right, with the scalpel, to separate the tissue so he could pull it free.
"Ooh yeah," Fox groaned. "I've waited four years to feel you inside me, Old Man."
"That's disgusting," snapped Newberg. "And stop calling me Old Man. I have a name."
"You call me Fox."
"I tried to think of a name for you, long ago." Out came a kidney, and the scalpel freed it. The intestines and kidney were dropped into a metal bucket by the table.
"Something fruity like Sly or Chester or Reynard, I guess." Fox seemed unconcerned by the growing cavity between ribs and legs. "But none of those fit, do they?"
Newberg pushed the heart aside, and with both hands carefully removed each lung. "No. They were all too... I don't know. None of them were right."
Fox hissed. "They were all too specific. To you, I'm Fox. Not a fox, but all fox." His voice grew as cold as his skin. "And to me, you are all old men. That is why I call you Old Man."
"This may sting," Newberg said, feeling suddenly angry, and unsure why. His fingers curled around the now sagging heart, and the scalpel cut through Fox's vena cava as easily as if it were a cooked noodle. He got up and went to a small refrigerator at the end of the freezer.
"Nothing stings anymore," said Fox. "How about for you?"
Holding a small, sealed jar in one hand, and a pump in the other, Newberg returned to the table. He inserted one end of the pump into the opening in Fox's heart, then attached the other end of the pump to the top of the canister, and turned it upside down. A thick, viscous fluid began to fill the pump, and Newberg squeezed the bulb on top once, forcing the fluid into Fox's heart and arteries. "You can't feel this?" he asked, squeezing again. "I'm beating your heart for you again." He sighed. "As for me? No, not much hurts anymore, I suppose. You either learn to live with pain, or you don't."
"Not even the female?" Fox asked. "Are you sure? Who is beating your heart, Old Man?"
Newberg stopped squeezing the bulb, half expecting Fox's rigid body to contort. "You should really be more grateful. This is great stuff."
"Why don't you try it then?" Fox asked.
Newberg ignored him. "In about twenty minutes, all your rigor mortis will be gone. I can pose you however you like. And in a few hours, you'll set that way. I was thinking something active, lifelike. What about you?"
Fox was silent for a moment. "How about eyes wide open, tongue sticking out, with all my limbs bent backward?" he suggested.
"Don't be morbid. You know, when people have their pets preserved, they'll often choose a relaxed pose, curled up, or sleeping. Maybe that would work best for you."
"Is that what I am, Old Man? Your pet?"
"Now," Newberg said, "You're just being difficult. I think I know what to do."
Again, Fox was quiet. Newberg pulled the pump out of his veins and set it aside, along with the empty canister. Thousands of dollars gone into this animal. Beetles would never taste it. Insects would not crawl on it because of the scent. Bacteria could not survive inside it. It was, for all purposes, non-biodegradable. A permanent fox. It would last until the wind and rain wore away its fur and skin, ate it down into tiny particles of matter, like a rock. Why? Newberg wondered. Why this animal? He opened a drawer, took out sponge-like organ fill-forms, and carefully inserted them into Fox's chest and belly.
"You hated Bear," Fox accused, as if reading his mind. "You did a terrible job on him. And he was so polite and eager and willing to help. He practically bent over backwards for you. In fact, I think he did, on one occasion. But Mockingbird you loved. You spent so much time on her, and she was a real harpy. Berated you every step of the way."
Newberg's hands were trembling again, as he picked up needle and suture. He could use a dermasealer – probably should – but needle and thread would do here. There was love in it, somehow. Carefully, he began to stitch Fox's belly back together. "I suppose I like the give and take, the challenge, the bickering. Mockingbird fought me, like you."
"I'm such a terrible burden," Fox teased. "You didn't like it when the female fought you, though."
Newberg's voice was harsh. "What would you know of it? You weren't there." His fingers made swift, deft movements with the needle, drawing the white-furred skin together as if it had never been separated.
"But you didn't, did you?"
"You don't know what you're talking about." Newberg closed up Fox's throat, and briefly imagined sewing up his voice box as well so he couldn't talk. He frowned. No, that made no sense. That was insane.
"Are you sure, Old Man?" Fox's eyes glittered coldly in the fluorescent light. Only just now, Newberg realized, his teeth were bared slightly. Were they like that all the time?
"Sure of what?" he asked. He cut away the ends of the suture with his scalpel.
"Sure it's not your dead mate you've been trying to sew up all this time." Fox's head suddenly turned to the side, staring directly at him with those cold, slitted eyes. His mouth hung open, teeth bared, tongue lolling mockingly. Newberg's hands jumped, the scalpel falling and skittering across the concrete floor. He stumbled backward, a sudden pain shooting up his left arm, his chest feeling suddenly as if he were being sat on, heart crushed beneath a terrible weight. He gasped for breath, voice grinding in his throat like a car failing to start, his eyes fixed on the terrible gaze of the dead animal on his table.
Fox slumped a little more to one side. "Don't die on me yet, Old Man. You've got work left to do, don't you?"
The pressure on his chest grew greater. Talking was one thing, but he had never seen anything move before. How could it be looking at him?
It was the preservative, Newberg realized suddenly. It had softened the muscles – the rigor mortis was leaving Fox's body. He was just going limp. That was all. No supernatural nonsense, no confirmation that his wits had gone utterly. He was fine. Alone, in his way, but fine. Slowly, his breath returned, the pain in his chest eased. He got shakily to his feet. "No more talk about Lettie, you understand? It's cruel."
"Nature is cruel," Fox observed, but his voice softened. "But no more talk about your female."
Leaning on his table for support, Newberg prodded the animal with his knobbly fingers. It was completely limp already. "You really have no preference as to how I arrange you?"
"Not at all would be my preference," said Fox. "I told you before, though. This isn't for me at all. This is for you."
For all old men, thought Newberg.
The Hours
"Do people really," Fox asked, looking bright-eyed and alert, "have their pets preserved?"
Newberg peered at him over the top of his glasses, then adjusted the rods holding Fox's head upright. "They do. In the last few years, it's nearly all taxidermists have had to do, once the hunting stopped. There. Now each ear." He bent the wires keeping Fox's ears perked so that they swiveled forward a bit. This was the most challenging part of the process: keeping the animal in position while the preservative set. Completely limp and uncooperative at this point, it was difficult for Newberg not to view Fox's continually sagging and twisting limbs or drooping tail as some kind of passive-aggressive tantrum.
Fox grinned at him, his tongue lolling. Newberg made a noise of exasperation and pushed the tongue back between the sharp, yellowed teeth, closing the muzzle again and holding it shut with a loose rubber band. "And don't look at me like that. I know it doesn't actually make sense. But maybe for some people it's easier to pretend nothing ever happened, that outside, their little worlds are still going on just like always. Sometimes we need a few props. Maybe it just helps us remember?"
"Outside?" Fox's voice was suddenly sharp. "Outside what?"
Newberg fumbled. "Outside themselves," he decided. "Anyway, you're just about done now. All posed."
Fox sat in a half-crouch, looking like he'd just risen up for something, his ears perked forward, eyes glittering keenly as he looked straight ahead, muscles bunched as if ready to dart. His tail rose out behind him – Newberg had used conditioner and hairspray to make it look bushy and natural. "How do I look?" he asked.
"Good as new. You look like you've just smelled or heard something interesting." He reached for a bottle of varnish up on one of the shelves, a little dark brown bottle much like a fingernail polish bottle. He opened it, and took a long, slender paintbrush from a holder near an upper corner of the work table.
"I remember smells," Fox commented, not bothering to wrinkle his nose as the flat brush spread a clear liquid across its black, bumped surface. "Very informative. I remember what you smelled like, out there next to the stream."
"What's that?" Newberg asked. He dipped the brush back into the varnish and then painted it across one of Fox's bright amber eyes. He marveled at the effectiveness of the preservative; it seemed even to have restored the vivacity to the irises, the whites, which had gone bluish grey before, with clotted veins, seeming clearer again.
"Death," said Fox. "Death, and poison."
Newberg put the lid back on the bottle and dropped the paintbrush into a jar of water, sitting back heavily on his stool. "Ironic," he said.
"What's that?"
"Just that my business of restoring a little life should make me smell of death, eh?"
"That's not ironic," Fox sniffed. "It's to be expected." His voice went a little harder. "But don't kid yourself, Old Man. You don't restore life."
Newberg rubbed his rough hand over his scalp, the few hairs that remained on top tugged between his fingers. "We've been through this. I know you don't see it that way, but you're just an animal. You don't understand our world."
"I don't understand?" Fox's voice was scornful. "Old Man, you don't understand your world. What you do, making corpses stand up, keeping them from going back to dirt, it's not bringing back life. It's prolonging death."
Newberg's voice shook. "I said you don't understand."
"It's the way of things. Nothing lasts forever. But humans don't get that. They want to hold onto everything for always when they should just let them die and decay, fall apart and be forgotten."
Newberg stood up suddenly, the stool falling to the floor behind him, his face red, the tingling going back into his arm. "You are a pompous and arrogant creature." Spittle flecked from his mouth, spattering across the bridge of Fox's muzzle, one tiny droplet landing in an unblinking eye. "You think you know so much, but all you know is your own little forest. All you are is one little fox."
"I am every Fox," Fox reminded him calmly.
"Nevertheless!" Newberg's hands gripped the edge of his work table, his fingers turning white. "You know only single deaths, the personal cycle of birth and decay, but that circle can be interrupted, do you understand? When one fox dies, nobody cares. What about when worlds die?"
"Like foxes, worlds die."
"And like foxes, dying worlds – or even worlds that are just sick – will scrabble and fight and bite and do everything they can to survive."
Fox paused. "And old men? Is that what they do, too?"
"And old men." Newberg found himself breathing heavily again. He crouched down, hearing the creak in his knees, and uprighted the stool, sagging onto it, his whole body suddenly very, very tired, and he found himself wishing that he had slept in this morning, even if only for just a little. "You never know, do you, when you're just sick, and when you're dying?"
"Yes," said Fox. "You do. Trust me."
Newberg leaned on the table. "We just wait now. It's okay, isn't it, if I sit and wait with you?"
"I don't mind."
He stared at his work, or rather, what there was of it, most of the difficult part taken care of by the preservative. Fox looked so lifelike, so ready to jump up and run, perhaps off the table and out the front door. Newberg took off his glasses and cleaned then with his tie. "How did you die, anyway?" he asked.
Fox's voice was sharp. "If I answer that, you have to answer a question for me."
"All right."
"You won't like it."
"I'll be fine." Fox was silent. Newberg cleared his throat, then asked again, "So, how did you die?"
"Slowly. Painfully." Fox chuckled.
Newberg shifted on his stool uncomfortably. "I mean, what caused it?"
Fox took a moment to answer, considering. "I don't know. I started getting sick in the mornings. Then one day I got too sick to hunt. I ate grasses, bark, but it wasn't enough, and I died."
"I 'd guess it was the stream," Newberg said. "There were toxins in it. They warned people not to drink or wash their hands in it. Some chemical plant up the way or something."
"The water died, so the fox dies." Fox growled a little. "Do you mourn the stream? Do you make it stand still and pretend it is clean and beautiful once more?"
"No," said Newberg. He sat next to Fox, who said nothing else. An old analog clock on the wall ticked sluggishly as the day crept by, past noon, then one. Newberg vaguely realized he hadn't eaten lunch as well as breakfast, but didn't feel that hungry. His mind drifted in and out of his past, remembering the day at the stream, his boyhood, remembering Lettie, and her grumpy, argumentative moods, her sweet conciliation, her flowered hat. The stool should have grown uncomfortable, but it seemed a part of him, a new pair of legs tirelessly holding him up. He found his fingers unconsciously brushing along Fox's fur. Fox did not comment, but he made himself stop anyway; it was disrespectful somehow, and creepy. And now that Fox had put the thought in his head, he felt like one of the old women who preserved their cats, set them on their windowsills to stare endlessly out into the sun with glass eyes, waiting for something to come up the drive – not death, because death had already been and gone, but perhaps forgetfulness, oblivion. That would not come for them for a long time, not until the sun glaring in through the window had baked cracks in their noses, had melted the glue that held in their glass eyes, caused the drying skin under the fur to flake off bit by bit.
No, that was all wrong, he realized. He didn't feel like the old women. He felt, himself, more like one of the preserved cats, watching days go by with eyes that could not see, little more than a skin stretched over a stiff, unmoving frame, waiting for a delayed decay.
He looked down at his handiwork from time to time, and occasionally touched an ear, tugged lightly at a limb, to see how the preservative was setting. "But it doesn't matter to you," he said. "Because you aren't there anymore. You hear and see nothing."
"What doesn't matter?" Fox asked.
"What I'm doing," Newberg said. "This whole process. I'm not making things worse for you, am I? You're not really here."
"No," said Fox. "I'm not. I told you before, this is for you, not me. I can accept that I'm gone and dead."
Newberg said nothing.
"What caused your female to die?" Fox asked.
"That's none of your business," Newberg snapped, but he didn't really feel the anger. Perhaps he was too tired to.
"I told you you wouldn't like my question," Fox said. "But I answered yours."
"You said you wouldn't talk about her."
"I never said I wouldn't ask."
"You said---" Newberg stared at the floor. "It was cancer." Fox wouldn't know what that was, of course. "A sickness. Like you had. But not from the stream." Or was it? Subtle little cumulative effects, in the atmosphere, collecting in the food, in the berries she picked? "At least, probably not." The question wasn't bothering him as much as he'd feared; it was relaxing in a way, freeing to talk about it.
"The last few months she wasn't the same at all. She was mean, argumentative, bitter. I'm not sure if she hated me then, but I told myself she did, that she couldn't stand being with me. So I worked a lot."
Fox sounded surprised. "You left her?"
"I worked! I stayed in here, in my lab. You don't understand. I couldn't be with her. She wasn't the same." He found his voice breaking, the pushed-aside sense of loss welling up, seeping through all the cracks in his memory. It was easy to remember her from before, as cranky as she could be sometimes, as challenging and difficult: that was the Lettie he loved. It didn't hurt to remember that, though that Lettie was gone.
He looked at Fox. "Every moment I was around her, she was... there was so much meanness in her. Her face, all twisted with loathing for me, spite, bitterness. I couldn't bear it."
"I've heard," said Fox, "that dying foxes will scrabble, and fight, and bite, and do whatever they can to survive."
Newman could feel the pleading expression in his face, his eyes unable to focus. "It wasn't her! It was just a cancer that had taken her over, eaten her up."
Fox said nothing.
"I just wanted things to be the way they were before." He looked at the animal, who stared resolutely out into the distance at something far away, something Newberg couldn't see or hear, that fixed its attention.
"I can't move," Fox observed.
Newberg poked him. The creature was stiff, his whole body sliding a bit across the table at the prodding. Rigor mortis had reclaimed it.
Vespers
Hunger was gnawing at him now, but distantly, like a pup left outside, scratching to be let back in. He was suddenly aware he had been sleeping. For how long? He glanced at the window. The light was already fading. It was not yet summer, so the nights were still early and cool, but it was darker now than he'd hoped. He looked back at Fox, crouched in eternal curiosity.
"Don't look at me, Old Man. I've got all the time in the world. You I'm not so sure about."
Newberg got to his feet. His bones were so stiff, so unready to move, he found himself almost wondering if he hadn't inhaled some of the preservative himself, been left half-frozen in a perpetual slump, his joints, muscles chilled and set like gelatin.
His hands slipped around Fox's back and belly, ruffling the orange fur. Fox was as unyielding as a mannequin, even the strands of fur seeming oddly stiff and spiky. "You ready, old friend?"
"Ready?" Fox said. His voice sounded sad. "I'm already gone. But are you ready? After me, it's over. Do you understand?"
"It shouldn't have gone so quickly." Newberg's voice trembled. "I should have spent more time on you. Days, weeks. I shouldn't have cheated. This damned... damned technology, all it wants to do is take everything away from you faster."
Fox barked. "What are we talking about, again?"
"I'm sorry." Newberg picked up Fox. The animal was far lighter than he expected. "You weigh almost nothing."
"We foxes are creatures of air! I'd dance for you, but, you know." Did his legs twitch just a little? No, Newberg decided.
"Then let's go." He tucked Fox under one arm and opened the door.
Outside he breathed deep in the cool night air. It still smelled the same as always; that was one thing that hadn't changed. He stepped out into the forest. Stars already glinted in the evening sky, or perhaps they were satellites. Pine needles crushed under his feet, and he realized suddenly that he had forgotten to put on socks and shoes, that he was still wearing his bedroom slippers. He hadn't noticed. He walked deeper into the forest. Once fireflies would have winked at him in the twilight, but he hadn't seen any in the last three years.
His feet knew the trail as always: in and around the white pines, the oaks, the hickories, past rocks layered with heavy mosses and lichens, through a hollow that still smelled earthy and rich. Fox was silent for the journey, and under his arm, no burden at all, as light as if he didn't exist, just a phantom clinging wispily to his jacket. Still, occasionally, Newberg heard the rare cricket, though once these woods had nearly split apart with their exuberant chirping. They had chorused with frogs then, too, but now there were no frogs to be heard. He wondered if he should hurry, as the light was fading fast, but behind him the moon was heavy and round, and it would help him find his way back home easily enough.
The trees as he traveled began to look less healthy; he saw fewer leaves on them, and broken limbs littered his path, tripping him up several times. He began to see the now-familiar white splotches on their trunks, looking like leprous sores eating their way through the bark. He didn't know what they were, or what caused it, beyond a certainty that it had to do with the poisoned stream. Frequently, now, he saw the white streaks of bone in the tattered carcasses of fallen birds littering the floor. There were no scavengers here to take them, and any passing animal who thought to grab an easy meal would not travel far beyond these woods again. The earthy smell of the forest was gradually supplanted by the reek of decay, and another scent underneath it, plastic and needlelike in his nostrils. He could hear the sound of the stream now, rattling and hissing as it wound its way through the forest.
Rounding a large rock, he saw a huge shape looming up before him, over six feet tall, massive paws spread wide, with claws three inches long sprouting from them. It was leaning against a tree. "Hello, Bear," Newberg said.
"Newberg!" said Bear. "I'm so glad to see you! Ever so glad! Give Bear a hug!"
"Another time," said Newberg. "Back still itching you?"
"Not bad," said Bear. "It just won't stop. I've been scratching it against this tree for days or minutes or at least a very long time."
"Why don't you just pretend to scratch?" suggested Newberg. "That way, it will only pretend to itch."
Bear looked pleased, as if something that were bothering him was finally being taken care of. "That's a great idea, Newberg! I'll try it right away."
"My eye!" screeched a high-pitched voice. "My eye my eye my eye my eye my eye!"
Newberg looked down next to the rock. "Weasel, what have you done? Your eye's fallen off."
"Geddit geddit geddit! Bloojay did it, I just know! Put it back on! We'll bite her horrid little head off! Eat all her wretched little bebbies! Peeppeeppeeppeep that's how they go!"
Newberg set Fox down in the leaves.
"What's he looking at?" asked Bear. "Is someone coming? We should hide."
"Don't worry," Newberg assured him. "Weasel, where is your eye?"
"Off off off geddit! My eye! My eye my eye my eye!" His teeth were bared furiously.
In the dim light, Newberg fumbled around in the leaves. "Here it is, right by your foot." He reached into a jacket pocket and produced a small bottle of glue, dabbing a bit on the tip. "How did you do that to yourself?"
"Bloojay! My eye!"
"There, it's fixed."
"Upside down!" screeched Weasel. "Whoa, the world! It falls! My eye! Upside down!"
Newberg ignored him, and picked up Fox again. "We're almost there."
"Suits me," said Fox. "You haven't much time left."
"My eye! You bastrid!"
Newberg tucked Fox under his arm and headed toward the stream. It glittered in star and moonlight, seeming clean and fresh, but all the trees were dead, their limbs and even tops fallen off, all along the riverbank a series of decaying spikes thrusting defiantly up at the skies. In places they had dammed the river; it welled up around them and continued on. One huge fallen trunk lay across the spot where he and Lettie had picnicked that day, and across the stream was where they had first seen Fox. Newberg eyed the water distrustfully. "I don't think I should cross. Here should be close enough."
"Hah!"
He looked up. "Still awake, Mockingbird? How are you?"
"How are you? " she retorted.
He looked around. "I don't know."
"You don't know anything!" she sang. "Nothing of what is, only of what was. Mister Know-Nothing, couldn't save a tree. D-E-N-Y-I-N-G!"
"Mockingbird!" Fox's voice was harsh. "That's enough."
"Enough for him?" she scoffed. "Never! Never learn anything, he will. Never forget anything, he won't!"
Newberg lifted his head. "What was that?" he asked.
"Never learn—" Mockingbird began, but stopped. He wasn't looking at her, not listening. His eyes were staring off into the distance.
"You have such inferior human ears, all non-moving," complained Fox. "I can't tell what you're listening at."
"Quiet," said Newberg. There was a slow, sonorous resonance in his ears. At first he wasn't sure he heard it, but then it grew louder and louder, a tolling, rhythmic ringing. It was the bells. Never before had he heard them during the day, while fully awake, but only in the cobwebby distance of half-sleep when he lay in bed, refusing to continue his work. These were the bells that rang every morning, drawing him out of his dreaming, tugging him back to the waking world, forcing him to open his eyes, to get up, to continue. Only this time, he was wide awake, clearheaded, paying attention to them, and he knew what they were. They were funeral bells.
"Time," said Fox from his arms, "to say goodbye, Old Man."
The bells rang in his ears, behind his eyes, in his mind, vibrated his chest, shook him down to his gut, until he wanted to be sick. There had been a funeral. The bells had sounded just like this then. He had woken to a funeral every morning. And every morning, he had gone back to sleep, gone back to his work of making life last just a little longer. But now Fox was finished. The dream was over, and he couldn't ignore the bells any longer. Now he had to wake up. There had been a funeral for her, yes. That was what you did for dead people. That was what you did for the living people left behind.
He had seen Lettie lying in her coffin, her face so pale and perfectly preserved, not looking like she was only sleeping, not looking like she might spring to life, but coldly and unmistakably dead, her flesh empty of Lettie and everything that was her. He had stared at her, tried to imagine how this could be his wife, how this waxy thing in this box would look if it sat up and smiled and spoke to him, and the thought was so horrible that he closed the lid, refused to allow it to be opened, and told the few people visiting that they would have to remember her how she was. That thing hadn't been Lettie. He wouldn't let it be her. He would always remember her, instead, just as she was.
The bells rang and rang and he could not drown them out. He put his hands over his ears, but the sound came from his hands, or from his ears, or from inside his head going out. They tolled for the passing of Lettie, and their sons, and the stream, and the trees, and Fox and Weasel and Mockingbird and Bear, and for the ways of the past. They tolled for needle and thread and straight razors and fashions and friendships and peace and the stars in the sky that had already died centuries ago, but whose light was only just now falling down on his face as he shook.
Pain shot up Newberg's arm and into his chest, a vice crushing the air from him, making him fall to the ground, and his first instinct was to push it away, because it was terrifying. But not all that is frightening or unpleasant is bad, he thought. Not everything familiar is sweet, or useful. His heart clenched once, again, and his body dragged in the dirt and sticks and old leaves as it twitched. He felt sweat on his skin. He gasped for breath. And then he let the pain in. It flowed away from his chest and arm and heart and into his mind and eyes, into all of him. It filled him. He let it wrack his bones, he let despair and loss and regret pour into him. Oh god, he thought. She's dead . He caught his breath in a few full, gasping gulps. He stared up into the broken trees at the black sky until he realized he could hear his heartbeat, steady and regular as if nothing had ever happened. Tears were hot in his eyes, but cold on his cheeks, streaking down to his ears.
The sound of the bells faded. They didn't go quieter; they simply began to sound less and less genuine, until they seemed like echoes, and then like the sound of a voice immediately after waking from a dream, not quite imagined, but not quite real, and then they were just a recently summoned memory. Had they ever been there, he wondered? Or all this time, had he been listening to echoes?
He looked up in the tree above him. There was a strange clump of old feathers there. "Goodbye, Mockingbird," he said. Mockingbird did not reply. She would not. She had been dead for years. There was not, really, any mockingbird there at all, but he did not think it was too late to say goodbye.
He got to his feet. Fox had fallen on its side where he had dropped it. He knelt, and gently set the preserved animal he carried in the leaves by the tree, let it stare out not back toward the house, nor back to its own side of the river, but upstream. He put a hand on the head that once belonged to a fox, felt the coarse, unfamiliar strands of fur against his skin and knew that they were no longer vulpine fur; they were something else. A remnant. A reminder. "Goodbye, Fox," he said. "Goodbye, all foxes."
"Goodbye, old man," he heard his wife's voice dance, laughing in his head, bouncing back to him across time.
He smiled. "Goodbye, Lettie."
He stood again, the soreness of his joints flaring up, and he allowed himself to hate it. He shuffled down the path, which was now almost completely dark. Time plucked at his ankles as he walked, and he broke its tendrils, breathed deep. His shoulders straightened, forcing the hunch upright, accepting its weight on him, though, he knew, futilely. He managed to stand tall all the way back to his house, which sat in a clearing at the end of a gravel drive, looking oddly small and forgotten, muted and distant versions of the places they had once been.
In through the door to his lab, and to the back of the room, the freezers hummed, glowing blue and expectant. On the left wall near them was a small white box. He opened it, turned a key, and pressed a red button. The freezers shrieked in alarm, their dying wails echoing in the room as their thrumming heartbeat wound down. He pressed a second button and the alarms went off. Then he turned the key again, closed the box, and went over to his work table. He cleaned it off with a nearby rag, hung up the rag on the side of the table, and pulled the cord for the fluorescent light. It went out, flickered back on once in protest, and the room was dark.
I'm hungry, Newberg thought. Ah well. I can eat tomorrow. Tomorrow I can do whatever I like.
The rituals of preparing for bed seemed unfamiliar to him, new, as if he had not done them in years. The heat of the shower on his skin was immediate, and soothing, the damp air full in his nostrils, the smell of the soap oddly fragrant. He took his old, threadbare pajamas out from under his pillow, and thought that tomorrow, he might buy a new pair. He did not feel ready to sleep. Surely the pain in his bones would keep him awake. Perhaps he would never feel ready to sleep again. But his eyes closed heavily, and the next morning, he slept in.
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