The fox who visited the bottom of the garden every morning at 7:45 was a holy man. Or a seer. Not a spirit guide. Martin refused to believe in spirit guides. At his age, where did he have to go?
Not yet old enough for the graveyard and yet too old to sustain the hustle the corporate world required. He passed his time with odd consulting jobs. And the garden.
When he and Silvia moved into the house thirty-five years ago, the garden was nothing but a stretch of uninspired crabgrass stretching out to the alley. Beyond the alley was a little copse of trees, a patch of wildness not yet swallowed by suburbia.
In their children’s youth, they had a swing set, a basketball hoop, and a short-lived above-ground pool. When their youngest left for college, Silvia exploded into action. Fifteen years later, the frenzy of planting and manicuring had matured. It became a tiny paradise only a little less wild than the patch across the alleyway.
Never one to enjoy the traditional masculine tasks of lawn mowing and hedge trimming, he left it all to her. Because he loved her, he suppressed his wince of sticker shock when the bills rolled in for yet another fountain or doodad.
In time, a pond appeared where the above-ground pool once was, filled with Koi. The price of designer fish made his wallet recoil in horror.
At first, he maintained it all in homage to her. While she was sick, it brought her such peace to sit on the deck and view her little kingdom. The cancer had aged them both. Then two months after Sylvia was declared cancer-free, she left him.
“I can’t do all this anymore!” Her angry gesture swept out to the garden.
Martin didn’t understand. “We don’t have to keep it up if you don’t want to. It’s just for you. I don’t care.”
“That’s the problem. You’ve never bothered to care about it. Or care about anything, really. Well, now it’s yours to neglect as you like. I wish you the joy of it!”
That last felt like a slap. What joy could there be without Sylvia? The next day, she packed her bags and hopped a flight to Costa Rica. Soon, she was leading nature tours for tourists while living in some colorful little bungalow. Her new garden was rumored to be even more spectacular than her first.
Martin was still working then, so all he did was mow the tiny bit of remaining grass when needed and feed the fish. The fairyscape grew wilder, so much so that the neighbors were starting to complain.
The new neighbors on the east side were a young couple with two kids barely out of diapers and a coupe full of chickens. Mr. East Side offered help cutting back the overgrown shrubbery while Mrs. East Side offered eggs. He declined both.
And then, Martin was encouraged to take early retirement. Downsizing. Fresh talent. Bottom lines.
His full days were replaced with a sudden and terrifying emptiness. In desperation, he called Sylvia, though they hadn’t chatted in years. She listened with patient grace to his mournful complaints about corporate perfidy and empty hours.
“I’m sorry that I can’t help you, Martin. It seems to me that what you need is purpose. I hope you find yours.”
They chatted for a while longer about their children and grandchildren. She made the same Christmas invitation she made every year. A week in Costa Rica with the whole family. He always said no. Work. He couldn’t take off a week. This time he said maybe, and thought her voice brightened before they hung up.
Purpose. What a woo-woo concept for woo-woo people. He had lived a life of dignity. Done things that deserved respect. How dare flighty Silvia in her irresponsible Costa Rica bungalow lecture him about purpose? Martin stared into the ruins of her former masterpiece. Maybe if he tamed her garden, he could puzzle her out.
It was rough going at first. He hacked at random and recoiled at hidden poison ivy and piles of decaying leaves that he’d left to rot too long. When he raked up the detritus, the pile was five feet across and waist deep.
“You starting a compost pile?” Mr. East Side asked from over the fence. He was feeding the chickens, a chore that usually fell to Mrs. East Side.
“A what?”
Mr. East Side put away the chicken feed and leaned across the fence in the spot where the hedge had died. “Tell you what. I’ll bring over my chipper and we’ll chop all that down and put it on my compost pile. You can get compost from ours any time you like!”
Martin opened his mouth to make a semi-polite refusal, but Mr. East Side was already hurrying away to his garage, whistling a jaunty tune as he went. Before long, his backyard was invaded by not only Mr. Eastside and his equipment but also Mrs. Eastside and Eastside Jr., a strapping eight-year-old.
Little Miss East Side was down for her nap. East Side Jr. had a plastic shovel and boundless enthusiasm for shoveling leaves into the chipper. All the while Mrs. East Side hovered to make sure Jr. didn’t fall in.
Leaf shredding and shoveling done, Mrs. East Side, whose name he learned was Amelia, gestured around the garden the way Silvia had on the day she left.
“This space is fantastic! Whoever designed it knew what they were doing.”
She peered under the mimosa tree. A cast iron cafe set was rusting away on the cobblestones Silvia had placed with finicky care. Perfect for morning coffee, Silvia said. Martin had never joined her. He liked to get an early start at work, not dawdle in the mornings.
“My wife.” Martin’s voice came out thick and strange.
Amelia’s watery blue eyes squished up in concern. “I’m so sorry. Did she pass on?”
“Yeah. She passed on. To Costa Rica. We’re divorced.” The words burned the back of his throat.
The concerned expression didn’t leave her face. She patted his forearm and bustled off to round up East Side Jr. (Freddy), saying something to Mr. East Side (Fred) in passing.
Fred came back to collect the chipper. “Hey, Mr. Jones.”
“You can call me Martin.”
“Thanks. Well, Martin, if you don’t mind, I’d like to give you a piece of advice.”
Martin took a step backward at Fred’s escalation of this neighborly intrusion.
“About the yard. Your ex clearly had a vision. If you want to dial it back to her plan, take it slow. Let the garden talk to you, man.”
Martin harrumphed. “You sound like my wife. Visions, talking to the plants, all that silly whatnot.”
“We could clear it out, take it back to lawn again.” Fred’s quick eyes surveyed again, plotting.
A creeping horror seized Martin as he remembered the bleached brown grass and the sad real estate shrubs that used to crouch alongside it.
“No! No, thank you. Thanks for the help with the leaves.”
“Any time, Martin. Any time.” Fred, he had to call him Fred now and not Mr. East Side, wheeled his chipper out the alley gate, whistling.
Martin gave in to the urge and called Silvia for advice. Her voice was as merry as the backyard magpies when she answered her phone. Music and conversation mingled with the sound of her voice.
“Martin! You remembered! I’m so glad. Five years cancer-free, can you believe it?”
He didn’t have the heart to whine at her about plants on such a momentous occasion. Instead, he pretended as though he did remember the date and offered congratulations. The issue of whether the foxgloves were purposeful or accidental could wait. Or he would ask the East Sides. Amelia and Fred, he reminded himself and then surprised himself again by telling Silvia all about them.
“You never were much for knowing the neighbors. I’m glad you have some friends there now,” Silvia said before she hung up to go back to her celebration.
Friends?
Martin started having morning coffee at the freshly cleaned and painted cafe set. He timed it to match Amelia’s morning chicken duties. He couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see him, but the sounds of her bustling around with the four-year-old Clara, Miss East Side, was enough. After about a week of that, she started calling a morning greeting.
“Morning, Mr. Martin.” Her young voice was always right and cheery, her greeting chased by Clara’s babbled copy of her words.
“Morning, Amelia. Morning Clara.”
The exchange was short but felt friendly. And then one morning before chicken time, Martin spotted the fox. The first few mornings, he thought it was the sun on the leaves, or the flash of a cardinal searching for berries in the hedge.
Solemn, wary yellow eyes regarded him. The fox darted to the edge of the Koi pond. Martin stood, coffee in hand, imagining Princess Mononoke’s beautiful pearly body crushed and bleeding in the fox’s jaws.
It wasn’t because Emma, Martin and Silvia’s eldest, had named the fish after some cartoon. Martin had laid out over two hundred dollars in hard-earned cash for that fish. It would be irresponsible for him to allow her to be snatched. And what about the other smaller Koi? He didn’t remember any of their names, but they deserved better as well.
The fox took a lap at the water and darted off. After that, every morning he returned for his drink. The fox made no attempt to get at the Koi, either in the morning or in the cover of darkness. Martin started to enjoy his company. Another friend.
First the East Sides, now this creature from the woods. The fox would often sit for a while, studying Martin with his otherworldly stare. It was the gaze of a creature who knew things. Martin basked in that stare.
And then, disaster struck. Coffee in hand, Martin was headed to his table when Amelia called out.
“Mr. Martin! Hello?” Her voice held strain and panic.
He set coffee aside and pushed through the much narrower gap in the hedge. Since he had been working on the landscaping, the shrubbery was filling out.
“Morning, Amelia. What’s up?”
“A fox! A fox ate all my eggs.”
Martin’s heart dropped to his feet. “Your chickens all right?”
“Yes, yes. Polly and Cluck Cluck and Two Piece and Red and Spicy Wrap are all fine. Fred’s going to bring home some stronger fencing. But a fox! Foxes are clever and hard to keep out of henhouses.”
Fred appeared on his doorstep after work hours to beg for help with stretching the new fence. Fred was as distraught over the possibility of losing their chickens as Martin was at the thought of losing his fox.
For a mad moment, as he held pieces of fencing to be wired in place, he wondered if he could talk to the fox. Reason with him. Fred’s practical solution brought him back from the edge of woo.
“Amelia won’t hear of us killing the thing. So I’m thinking of getting a trap from the wildlife office.”
“A trap?” Visions of mangled a fox filled Martin’s imagination. Some of it must have shown on his face, as Fred made a quick addendum.
“Tender trap. They catch and release him.”
“Or her.” Maybe his holy man fox was a holy woman. Like Sylvia.
“Sure,” Fred agreed. “I don’t know a good place to put the trap. If I put it in my yard we’re as likely to trap my Clara as the fox. That little vixen gets into everything!”
“I know a good spot.” Martin turned his head and pretended to wipe away some dust from his face.
The fox became a wild, feral thing in the tender trap, seasoning Martin’s guilt. When the wildlife rehabbers threw a blanket over the cage and drove it away, Martin’s heart felt the same as it had when Sylvia left.
The yard was different after that. Amelia insisted on holding short conversations with him after their customary greetings. She forced eggs on him. He made omelets and tried not to grumble.
Fred came over sometimes to help him weed and trim, testing his grumble control even more. Fred Junior, little Freddy, came over every Thursday for Math tutoring. No grumbling there. The boy was as smart as a fox.
And then it was fall, almost too cool for mornings at the cafe table. He set his coffee down and opened the letter from Sylvia. The letter he had been saving for a week, afraid of the news it might contain. Had her cancer returned?
A ticket and itinerary for a Costa Rica Christmas trip fell out. Steam from his cooling coffee billowed over it. The accompanying note was short.
“We won’t take no for an answer. Please come!”
Martin dashed the tears from his eyes before they made the ticket ink run. Amelia called out her usual morning greeting on her way to Fort Chickchick, as Martin liked to call her new and improved chicken run.
Somewhere deep in the hedge, there was a rustle and a flash of red. Gold eyes blinked at him once and scurried off. Circle of wildlife rehab. His holy man (or woman) had returned. Was it a sign? Silvia would know. He’d ask her about it.
In person.
At Christmas.
