“It all happened in the fall,” I began, “a little before supper. It was starting to get dark, and a little fox was on his way home from school. He was rowing his boat along—”
“A fox was rowing a boat?” asked Mort. It was a friendly question, not a challenge. He wasn’t suggesting that he thought it impossible for a fox to row a boat; he just wanted to make sure that this fox was rowing a boat.
“Sure,” I said. “Look.” I looked around and found my drawing on the floor of the bus. When, earlier in the day, we had been required to draw a picture of an animal, I had drawn my favorite animal subject of that time—the fox in the rowboat. “Here, see?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Mort. He had slipped his thumb into his mouth and he was half reclining now. Matthew glanced down at him and rolled his eyes.
“So,” I continued, “the little fox was rowing along in his rowboat and he was excited about getting home to see his mother and father. His father was a very nice fox, who was always bringing presents home for his children.”
“Cookies?” asked Mort, pulling his thumb from his mouth just long enough to ask the question.
“No, not cookies,” I said. “Fox children don’t eat cookies. They eat lambs.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Mort.
“So the fox was thinking about the nice roast lambs they’d be having for dinner, and he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. In came the fog, and before that fox knew it he was lost.”
“Oh, no,” said Mort. He covered his face with his hands. Matthew looked, for a fleeting moment, as if he might giggle.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. It gets better. So the little fox sat there in the fog calling and calling for his mother, but she didn’t come.”
“No, no, no, no,” said Mort under his breath.
“And the little fox began to cry and cry, and he didn’t know what to do. Since his mother didn’t come, he figured that she probably didn’t even notice that he wasn’t at home. He thought about how she and his father and his pesty little sister were probably sitting around the table now, eating lamb and telling jokes. Calling wasn’t going to do any good. Rowing wasn’t going to do any good. Nothing was going to do any good. He just sat there with his head in his hands, crying and crying.”
“Paws,” said Matthew. I shot him an angry glance, and he pushed his face toward me defiantly.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because that’s what foxes have. Paws, not hands.”
“Oh,” I said. “‘Paws.’ I thought you meant—never mind. Okay, paws.” I shrugged. Matthew was right, after all. “He sat there with his head in his paws, crying and crying, and all of a sudden he started to think about the clams.”
“The lambs,” said Matthew.
“No,” I said, with a good deal of satisfaction. “Not the lambs. The clams. You’re not listening closely enough. He started to think about the clams under the water, because the little fox was cold and lost, and fog kept blowing into his face, and the darned boat was starting to leak, so the fox was having a heck of a time. He thought about the clams, and how they were all home already, in their nice little sandy beds with nothing to worry about.”
Mort’s lower lip began to tremble a bit.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said quickly. “It’s just like the other kids—they’re all home now, and we’re not. They get to see their mothers and eat cookies and go to the bathroom, and we don’t. Well, just wait and see how this comes out.”
Mort swallowed hard and nodded.
“‘Jeez,’ said the little fox, ‘I bet the clams are happy. I wish my mother had been a clam.’”
“Me too,” said Mort.
“And because the little fox was so angry and sad about all the good times that he missed because his mother wasn’t a clam, he began to let out a cry that was as loud as the siren on a fire engine. At first it wasn’t too loud, but the more he wailed the more angry and sad he got and the louder and screechier his wail got, and what do you think happened?”
“He died?” asked Matthew.
“No,” I said. I took a breath and tried to keep the feeling of compassion alive within me. “His mother and father and sister heard him. They were looking for him all the time, and when they heard him, they rowed right to him and took him home to have dinner, and they all lived happily ever after.”
Mort looked at me for a little while with his mouth hanging open.
“So do you know what the moral of the story is?” I asked. I was about to say, “The moral is: ‘Never give up hope, even when you’re lost,’” but I didn’t get the chance, because Mort said at once, “Yeah, I get it,” took a deep breath, stuck his head out the window, and let out a yell that made the bus driver slam on the brakes. The sound coming out of Mort was really remarkably like the siren on a fire engine. It rose and fell, and he could keep it up for an astounding length of time. He would pause only long enough to take another breath, and then he would launch right back into it, a little louder and a little longer each time.
“Hey, stop it, stop it,” called the bus driver. “Can’t you make him stop?” he asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m just a kid,” I said.
Suddenly there was a loud and frantic banging on the door of the bus. The driver and I looked toward it and saw my mother and the widow Barber and another woman, Mort’s mother, banging on the door, hopping up and down to try to see into the bus, and calling our names.
I looked at Mort. An insane joy swelled within us. When our mothers got to us, we were standing on a seat, with our arms around each other, jumping up and down, and laughing hysterically. Matthew was just sitting there. When his mother reached him, he got down on the floor and retrieved his drawings. He handed them to her just as they were, crumpled into a ball, without saying a word. He started down the aisle, and when he squeezed past me, he looked at me with that sneer again, and I could tell that he was going to stick his tongue out at me. Before he had a chance, I punched him in the mouth.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.
🎧 109: “It all happened in the fall,” ...