Bears Discover Fire

Mr. Fox’s room, left to him by Mr. Singh, the original owner of the Pig & Thistle, was on the top floor under a gable. It was small; he and Anthony shared a bed. That night they were awakened by a mysterious, musical scraping sound. “Woof,” said Anthony, in his sleep. Mr. Fox listened with trepidation; he thought at first that someone, a thief certainly, was moving the piano out of the public room downstairs. Then he remembered that the piano had been sold twenty years before. There came a deeper rumble from far away—and then silence. A bell rang across town. A horn honked; a door slammed. Mr. Fox looked at the time on the branch bank across the street (he had positioned his bed to save the cost of a clock): it was 4:36 A.M., Eastern Standard time. There were no more unusual sounds, and the bell stopped ringing. Anthony had already drifted back to sleep, but Mr. Fox lay awake, with his eyes open. The anxiety he had felt for the past several days (indeed, years) was mysteriously gone, and he was enjoying a pleasant feeling of anticipation that was entirely new to him.

“Hold still,” Mr. Fox told Anthony as he brushed him and snapped on his little tweed suit. The weather was getting colder. Was it his imagination, or was the light through the window over the breakfast table different as the Finn served him his boiled egg and toast and marmalade and tea with milk? There was a fog, the first in weeks. The street outside the inn was deserted, and as he crossed the King’s Esplanade and climbed the twelve steps, Mr. Fox saw that the Boardwalk was almost empty too. There were only two or three small groups, standing at the railing, staring at the fog as if at a blank screen.

There were no waves, no wake; the water lapped at the sand with nervous, pointless motions like an old lady’s fingers on a shawl. Mr. Fox took a place at the rail. Soon the fog began to lift; and emerging in the near distance, across a gray expanse of water, like the image on the telly when it has first been turned on, Mr. Fox saw a wide, flat beach. Near the center was a cement bathhouse. Knots of people stood on the sand, some of them by parked cars. One of them shot a gun into the air; another waved a striped flag. Mr. Fox waved Anthony’s paw for him.

America (and this could only be America) didn’t seem very developed. Mr. Fox had expected, if not skyscrapers, at least more buildings. A white lorry pulled up beside the bathhouse. A man in uniform got out, lit a cigarette, looked through binoculars. The lorry said GOYA on the side.

“Welcome to Long Island,” said a familiar voice. It was the African. Mr. Fox nodded but didn’t say anything. He could see the girl on the African’s other side, looking through binoculars. He wondered if she and the GOYA man were watching each other. “If you expected skyscrapers, they’re fifty miles west of here, in Dover,” said the African.

“West?”

“Dover’s west now, since England’s upside down. That’s why the sun rises over Upper Beeding.”

Mr. Fox nodded. Of course. He had never seen the sun rising, though he felt no need to say so.

“Everyone’s gone to Dover. You can see Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, all from Dover.”

Mr. Fox nodded. Reassured by the girl’s silence so far, he asked in a whisper, “So what place is this; where are we now?

“Jones Beach.”

“Not Babylon?”

“You bloody wish,” said the girl.

Mr. Fox was exhausted. Lizzie was being harried like the fox she herself had hunted with such bloodthirsty glee in Scotland. As Major Mackintosh closed in, she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the hopelessness of her situation: as if it bestowed on her a vulnerability she had never before possessed, a treasure more precious to her than the Eustace family diamonds. “Mr. Fox?” asked Mrs. Oldenshield.

“Mr. Fox?” She was shaking his shoulder. “Oh, I’m quite all right,” he said. The book had fallen off his lap and she had caught him sleeping. Mrs. Oldenshield had a letter for him. (A letter for him!) It was from his niece, even though it was only the tenth of the month. There was nothing to do but open it. Mr. Fox began, as usual, at the ending, to make sure there were no surprises: but this time there were. “Until then,” he read. As he scanned back through, he saw mention of “two ferries a day,” and he couldn’t read on. How had she gotten Mrs. Oldenshield’s address? Did she expect him to come to America? He folded the letter and put it into his pocket. He couldn’t read on.

That evening BBC was back on the air. The lights of Manhattan could be seen on live video from atop the cliffs of Dover, shimmering in the distance through the rain (for England had brought rain). One-day passes were being issued by both governments, and queues were already six blocks long. The East (now West) Kent Ferry from Folkestone to Coney Island was booked solid for the next three weeks.