Derek Kelly is a writer from Dundalk, Ireland. Several short stories have been published. Large White Chrysanthemums was published in CC&D Magazine (v336, the 8/23 issue). Hastilude appeared in Year VIII, Number 58 February 2023 of The Adelaide Literary Magazine. While He Isn’t Worth It appeared in the April 2024 issue of All Your Stories Magazine. The Galway Review previously published his short story Taig. In 2023, Derek was awarded the Carlow College Literary Award.
THE FOX HOLE
By Derek Kelly
At night, Jack heard their cries. They sounded like children. The cries had alarmed him at first. Cries from which memories came flooding back. Of long nights in the fox hole dug deep into the desert sands south of Basra. The thumps in the far-off distance causing sand to trickle down into the fox hole. The faces of the squaddies anxiously ready for the off. The sky illuminated then more distant deadened thuds. Shake ‘n’ Bake, an American officer had said. Jack pitied the men under the barrage. Then the signal was given, and they climbed out of the fox hole. As dawn broke, the slow walk across the sand plain with armoured support. The scene greeting them one of biblical destruction. In the days before the invasion, Jack had listened to his COs speech of this place being the home of the Garden of Eden, the scene of Noah’s Flood. He had thought his Colonel’s talk religious nonsense. Looking around at the carnage that greeted them that early morning Jack saw charred remains slumped in crumpled vehicles. Other Iraqi soldiers who had tried to escape on foot looked like the people at Pompeii caught in a pyroclastic flow. The soldiers had become frozen in their attempts to flee. Their contorted bodies a mute cry of despair. It was as if humanity were condemning the living. Jesus wept, he thought, here there would be no resurrection.
He saw them too. The foxes. Several times that week he had seen them from the bathroom frolicking on the local football pitch. A school stood nearby. The small upper sash window being of clear glass gave expansive views across the playing field and the brown and moss-covered rooftops farther on blended with the mountains in the far distance. During the day, he could hear a gabble of children playing while on their school lunchbreak. He would sometimes watch the children thinking about his own daughter. He often went for walks in the evenings. It gave him time to reflect upon his own situation. An exile now from his own wife and family. Even his own people. It was while walking one evening out by the school road that he had first encountered the fox. It was unmistakable with its bushy tail. On seeing him, it had stood motionless on the green. Staring. Unsure. The night air was sharp and cold. Stars shone clear in the black sky. The fox watched his every move. Like that kid in Helmand had when Jack had caught up to him. Jack didn’t approach the fox. Later, when he had returned home, he found by searching his mobile phone that it was a male fox. It was, the article said, likely out looking for a mate. Continuing his walk, Jack had thrown glances over his shoulder to see if the fox had gone. But it hadn’t. Not once had the fox taken its gaze off him. Like that kid in Helmand hadn’t.
Jack had moved into the area after his wife had asked for a separation. The house was a bit run down. It was all he could afford to rent. But it was enough. Two bedrooms, kitchen come dining, a living area. It was compact. His very own fox hole. The estate, the auctioneer said, came with a reputation. There are some quiet parts, she had said, this road is fine. The road on the opposite side of the pitch though, can be rougher. There had been a shooting on a nearby road recently, she said. Some guy had brought a loaded gun to a party and had started to play around with it. Ended up shooting his girlfriend in the face. You might have heard about it. She laughed at the incident after she had told him. Jack hadn’t heard about the story. He wondered if the auctioneer was trying to dissuade him from renting the house. He thanked her for her candidness. Still, he said, if no one else is interested I’d be happy to take it. A week later the auctioneer contacted him to ask if he was indeed interested in renting the house. The following day he got the keys and moved in. He sent an email to his wife giving her his new address. He made sure he wrote in the email the address was for their daughter, Ursula. He didn’t want Sandra accusing him of harassing her.
Around the time of his birthday Jack received a Liverpool FC Breakfast Set. The box in which it had come had the address written in an unmistakable child’s handwriting. The card inside read, ‘happy birthday dad, love Ursula.’ And there were kisses too, lots of kisses and a drawing of a stick child holding a heart-shaped balloon with ‘dad’ written inside the heart. He broke down after reading the card. That was the last card he ever received from Ursula. It was Jack who applied for divorce. Before doing so, he had texted Sandra asking her to keep in contact for Ursula’s sake. Divorce was, he texted, the best way to proceed given she had no intention of reconciling. Sandra never responded to the text message. He texted and emailed her a few more times enquiring after Ursula. But there were no responses. Hard won experience had taught him to back off. To go to court would, he knew, cost too much. He had already spent all his savings in court actions and had gotten nowhere. Representing yourself, he knew, only antagonises judges. It was around that time he had begun to hear the cries from the field at the back of the house. At first, he had thought the sound was of someone being attacked. Rough estate and all that. It brought back memories he had wanted to forget. Standing in the pitch black of the bathroom attuning his ear to the sound he realised it was some animal. He read later they were mating calls made by foxes. Strange, he thought, all those years living in the countryside with Sandra, and he had not heard a single fox, or even seen one. Now, back living in the city, he was hearing and seeing them at night.
But he was also hearing and seeing other things. They always came. The dead. Day and night. The same faces and at the most inopportune moments. While walking down the high street with Sandra and Ursula one Saturday afternoon a car had backfired, and Jack threw himself against the side of a parked car covering his head. Sandra was shocked. Onlookers stared at him. Picking himself up he told Ursula it was just a game. They went for coffee and ate cake, and he explained to Sandra what he had seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. He hadn’t talked before about his experiences. Now she couldn’t shut him up. She didn’t want Ursula to hear such stories.
Having taken photos of the foxes with his mobile phone he searched on the internet and saw that the den constituted a family of red foxes: there was a tod, a vixen, and three pups. He would see the fox out on the roads at night. No doubt the tod was foraging for food. Once, from the bathroom window, he saw it dash out from the undergrowth and, as a flock of geese tried to get airborne, the fox jumped, teeth bared and grabbed one of the geese by its wing. Fox and goose rolled on the ground while geese, like littered paper whipped up in a breeze, fluttered madly about and squawked. The goose had managed to get free of the fox’s grip and tried valiantly to get airborne, but one of its wings had been broken. Realising this, and that there was no point in struggling, it seemed to just accept its fate. It just sat there, looking around helplessly, as the fox approached it slowly and, between its salivating jaws, brought it back to the den.
That was how he explained to Sandra his killing of the teenager in Helmand. He hadn’t known the teenager was sixteen, he told her, stirring the latte spoon and searching for words while still seeing the young boy’s face.
“There’d been an IED. It took out one of our guys. He just seemed to vanish in a dust cloud of shrapnel and sand. Everyone hit the dirt, and we returned fire. People were shouting. Calling out for the medic, giving orders. In a matter of seconds, the firefight was over. I saw one of the Taliban running away and gave chase. In his haste, confusion I guess, he had run down a dead end. He threw his weapon away and turned to face me. He just stood there with this stupid grin on his face. He raised his arms. I walked up to him and, with my knife… I…” He stopped talking and stared at his latte. Sandra needed no other words to understand what he had done. The scene in her mind sent shivers down her spine. “He was just a teen,” he finally said, turning around to Ursula and letting her lick the froth off the latte spoon.
From the bathroom window he would see the family of foxes frolicking near the dense undergrowth in which they lived. The pups would run about tumbling. Sometimes the pups would fight. It all seemed so playful like a couple of children mucking about. The pups remained close to the vixen and the tod though. They did not stray far. When the pitch was not being played on, he would observe other wildlife. Especially geese and ducks. Jack would see them fly over the roof of the houses and circling, swoop down onto the field. There they would drink the water which had formed in great puddles after the rains. Sitting in the bedroom he had set up for Ursula, he would watch from the window the pups practice their hunting technique with the birds. Some birds, magpies mainly, seemed to play chicken with the pups. When local youths saw the pups, they tried to entice them out from the undergrowth with bags of crisps. The girls in the group calling the pups cute.
Most evenings after work Jack walked through the estate to the nearby shopping centre. It gave him something to do. Another focus. Walking along the wall and railings that ringed the football pitch, he would see some of the same youths he had seen enticing the foxes climb over the railings. A couple of six packs of beer being passed to someone sitting on the wall and then handing them down the other side. Their accents were harsh and rough. He imagined if he said anything to them, they would most likely gang up on him and attempt to intimidate him. He knew his training would kick in and he would probably end up killing one of them. Best to walk on and say nothing.
The police were called to the family home after he had attacked Sandra. He told his solicitor he had no recollection of the event. Sandra said he had attempted to strangle her. She had to push him off and, when she did, she ran out of the house carrying Ursula. The police found him cowering in the undergrowth of a nearby house in a state of delirium. In court, his face had bruises and minor cuts. His training had kicked in then too. The judge commended the police on their actions.
Lying on Ursula’s bed he found it difficult to sleep. He kept turning. Trying to find a position that would satisfy mind and body and induce sleep. But sleep eluded him. His mind was on overdrive. Sandra had sent him a copy of Ursula’s death certificate. She had died from meningitis aged eleven. A note in Sandra’s handwriting said his daughter had been cremated. There was no sorry. No condolences offered to him. He hadn’t seen Ursula in over five years. Getting up, he went to the bathroom and vomited again. Wiping his mouth, he heard shouting from the field. Switching off the bathroom light he peered out the window and saw the undergrowth was on fire. The blaze ran the length of the railed wall. A group of youths started screaming, others were laughing. They were in riotous mood. He watched them a short time, then went back to Ursula’s bed and lay down.
When the shot had rang out, he and the other squaddies had immediately taken up positions and tried to find the shooter through their telescopic sights. Jack watched his officer give field signals as another shot splintered into a nearby wall. They would flush the shooter out. As they prepared to engage an American officer moved up alongside them on his hunkers and said he was not sending his men into the area. He would call up fire support instead. But it’s just one sniper, Jack’s officer had said. I’m not putting my men in danger, the American responded. The coordinates were called out, and Jack and the others took cover behind some Abrahams.
Several minutes later, above their heads they could hear a rumbling sound. Then there was a flash of light followed by a thunderous clap. When the smoke cleared, they were given the signal to advance. The buildings from which the sniper had fired were a mass of rubble. Debris was strewn everywhere. Body parts lay about. A fridge, a sofa, table, and some chairs burnt black. A Marine kicked a crumpled-up child’s bicycle out of his way.
“How do you know you got the sniper,” Jack heard one of the squaddies ask a Marine.
“Semper fi, Mac. Semper fi,” the Marine said.
He never heard or saw the den after the night the undergrowth had been set alight. Walking over to the shopping centre a few days later he passed by the field. The smell of the burnt undergrowth still lingered in the air. Through the railings he could see the vegetation black and scorched. The fire had obviously burned itself out. No fire brigade appeared to have been called. He did not hear one and he certainly had not called one.
Jack continued to walk the estate at night. Listlessly at first. A shipwreck adrift. Then more measured. An Odysseus in search of a home, a family. Approaching his house one evening, he saw a fox on the green. Encountering Jack, the fox stood still and stared at him. Jack ignored it at first and walked up the driveway to his front door. With his key in the door, he turned and saw the fox limping away. Then the fox stopped, sensing it was being watched, and it turned its head towards him. In one effortless move, Jack shouted:
“SQUAD. SQUAD-SHUN.”
His boots echoed along the empty street as they smashed heavily into the tarmac driveway. His voice carried across the green. Jack stood rigidly to attention as if on parade. Both he and the fox stared at each other. Before it turned away again, Jack saluted it for having managed to survive the carnage that engulfed its den a few days before. Jack knew he was also saluting himself.
The Galway Review 