Albino Fox

Work was over and I needed gas. I realized this on my way through the corridors walking out. Another long day at work. Dining Room Supervisor at a retirement complex for seniors. There was no way I was going to chance not getting a fill-up on my way home. It’s a lengthy drive, mostly on the highways. The thought of running out of gas was inconceivable. Ridiculous even. I didn’t want to make the effort to get the fill-up, however. It was a long, long day and I was tired. And it was out of my routine. And I love routine. Not O.C.D. routine, but routine. I’m a manager after all. Routine creates efficiency and effectiveness. Right?

I hadn’t realized or noticed how late it was. It was dark outside. That really surprised me. I had only been at this job for three months, since May. Every time I headed home it was still daylight. This day, or night I should say, it was dark. It had rained hard all day and I imagined there were some heavy-duty rain clouds still blanketing the sky. Not a star or moon to be found as I curiously peered skyward. The odd, surprising coolness of the night and the cool, friendly, albeit ghostly breeze created a sense of mystery and uncertainty in my consciousness. Forming a foreshadowing broodiness in my slightly paranoid mind.

Something spooky was abound. But I took it in stride as I strode to my ride.

The ground was wet. Lit up electrically, both figuratively and literally. The former by my suspicious, analytic mind, the latter by the facility’s confident outside lighting design. Was I walking through the pages of a Stephen King short story or one of Penny Louise’s Three Pines Mystery? Either way I felt alive. I felt fresh and more importantly, I felt refreshed. I was truly a new man. In so many ways. The separation from my wife was the catalyst of that change. I embraced everything going on around me, gratefully, lovingly. The raindrops, puddles, the breezes, all new friends of mine. So happy they were accompanying me on my journey. It was a beautiful evening. The surrounding woods were alive with raindrops dripping from the branches of trees gently swaying in the summer night’s breeze. You could hear them dancing on the fallen leaves, wet sidewalk, and the gradually expanding puddles. Puddles big enough that I had to reroute my walk to the car a couple of times. Managing the detours to the best of my ability, playfully. Like a running back cutting, pivoting, and redirecting his way through a gridiron of angry, hungry tacklers. Ew, don’t get my new shoes drenched. Cut right. Swerve left. Do a flagrant, graceful spin move, nobody’s looking. Except maybe a squirrel. Which could possibly be a problem if the squirrel thought I was the biggest nut it ever saw and decided to capture and save me for the winter.

Sweet natural summer scents swirled up and around from the pine needle carpet, waltzing through the air on the cool breezes, seducing my senses with their loveliness and purity. Like fairies and pixies, invisible to the human eye, the scents watched me walk the lonesome path in my easy, take-your-time stride. Using the big, elegant, businessman-like umbrella, which I had lifted from the Lost and Found from my previous employment, as a walking stick, I pictured myself as an Armond Gamache type. Stoic. Truthful. Respected. Trustworthy. Loving (and loved) family man. {Thanks, Penny.} The breezes and scents followed me, surrounded me, and led me as I tapped the umbrella’s tip on the sidewalk to the rhythm of the dancing raindrops falling from the trees. Led me to my gasoline thirsty Nissan Sentra. Parked alone. Under a streetlight. Picturesque, looking like a magazine ad. Shining in the wet summer night. Lit up like a white horse waiting to take the King home after a successful battle. Ironically stationed however, for only the swirling scents of the summer night’s breeze to witness. And the King himself to witness, of course. Carrying my plastic bag “lunchbox” by my side like the sword wielded by a King, I returned glorious from battle. Exhausted but triumphant. I laid my eyes on the most precious sight. My ride home back to my castle. My white horse, the Silver Sentra.

Alone sat the Sentra. Unassuming. Just waiting for a drink of energy and the long, sweet drive home. Waiting for his King. They were happy to see each other. The King and his horse. The car seemed like my only friend. I realized I had become a loner. This happened gradually through the years, as I worked to escape my past. Since high school all of my friends were of the sketchy variety. Drinking buds. Party people. Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. And strippers. I was a glutton for punishment. I dated a couple and fell head over heals in love with one, Tuesday was her name. In hindsight, I now realize how rebellious and self-destructive I actually was. Just me and the Sentra now. Trying to keep it together after fifteen years of sobriety. Trying to hold on to what remained of my family. Not my wife who left, but my kids. Just the King, with his white horse, contemplating the striving and thriving of my new existence. Everyday on the long rides to and fro work the gears in the mind churned and churned. Am I doing everything necessary to make it on my own without my wife? Are all of my bills paid? Is the new insurance up to speed? Can I get the kids to the dentist soon? Am I in position for a home buyout and refi? Can I buy her out and keep the house? That would be the best case scenario for me to have a structured life with my kids. To have the most quality time as possible with them. Have I done it right? Am I on the right track? Have I done my best navigating this unexpected divorce? After weathering the hardship of massive depression and anxiety, have I done it right? Kept my cool? Stayed true to myself, my children?

The Sentra took me in gladly. I felt at-ease and comfortable in the routine. True to myself.

The drive home from work was always enjoyable. Peaceful. Filled with music, usually Bob Dylan, namely Time Out of Mind or Slow Train Coming. The drive was always contemplative. My mind forever occupied with my adjustments after my wife left me. The new job. The kids. The divorce proceedings and the seemingly unattainable finalization. Frustrating to say the least. Occasionally my mind wandered to my Tinder account. Occasionally. Okay, more than occasionally. Also frustrating, but that’s on me. [ LOL, right? ] I needed to get laid. And my writing. I thought about writing stuff. Stuff like I’m writing now. Like churning cream into butter for a dairy farmer, turning thoughts into words on printed pages screens is my obsession. I drive the long commute home pondering my life’s adjustments, my psychological struggles, my anxiety, and will myself to record what’s happening to me. The adjustments. The adaptations. Adapting to survive. Literally. Adapting to survive, and thrive. Man, what is happening to me?

The rain really changed the temperature. After a long heat wave, it felt nice. Cool, moist air breezing into the open windows, wrapping it’s embrace around my head as I navigated the country roads on my white horse, the silver Sentra. Ruffling my neatly combed, corporation approved, hair into a windswept coif. The only sound in between Bob’s break-up songs of Time Out of Mind was the Sentra’s wheels on the wet road. Like the clip-clop of a horse’s gallop, the sound of travel. The sound of moving on. Moving forward. The comforting sound of knowing you’re going in the right direction, at the right speed. The unmistakable sound of survival.

The country roads gave way to Route 30. If the Sentra was a horse I wouldn’t have had to make an unfortunate detour to get gas. I’m such a creature of habit that making such a detour, changing my routine, usually dismayed me. Picturing myself walking the shoulder of Interstate 476 or 276 with a gas can in my hand was all the encouragement I needed, to make that righthand turn at Route 30 instead of the normal left turn. After all, I didn’t even have a gas can in my trunk (note to self: I still don’t). Blinker on, Bob “twenty miles out of town in cold irons bound”, wheels pushing the wetness out of their way, the white horse veered right onto Route 30.

Although it was out of the norm, the detour, I was looking forward to it in a way. Against my nature of course. But there it was. A psychological contradiction. The foreshadowing broodiness of paranoia perked up a tinge. A tangle of mixed emotion on a righthand turn. What is happening to me?

Route 30, in that direction, cuts right through the center of Villanova University’s campus. I had taken it once or twice, since taking the new job, to get gas. The only gas station open after eight o’clock at night during the Covid pandemic. It was kinda neat driving through this beautiful campus without a soul in sight. Surreal and futuristic, in a way. Old school; Outer Limits or Twilight Zone, new school; Black Mirror. Spooky. Something unknown and foreign came in and took everyone away. I felt like the only survivor, driving, searching for anyone, anything. Maybe that’s why I was looking forward to the detour. Life imitating art, or Sci-Fi television if you could call that art. A blank canvas for my imagination. The ‘new norm’ of uncertainty guiding my thoughts.

Passing through the barren campus was like looking at a blank slate, a template, so to speak. Much like my new life, this campus had a new life. Out of nowhere, suddenly empty and alone. Struggling with uncertainty. The uncertain future. The confusing, uncertain present. Passing through this science fiction landscape was a surreal comfort. The King and his white horse carefully traveling the rolling pastural hillsides of suburban southern Pennsylvania only to find the empty, surrendered castles of the Villanova Empire. There must be another survivor of this unknown apocalypse, the King thought, whimsically. A fair maiden. A damsel in distress searching for a fashionable Silver 2006 Nissan Sentra shitbox rolling slowly through the night with a faint trace of the troubadour of troubadours, Ye Olde Bob Dylan, echoing in the pandemic’s hypnotic summer breeze.

This time was different though. As I approached the campus, I saw three students walking on the sidewalk. It was the twelfth of August. The sight of them caught me by surprise. There was uncertainty, worldwide, whether schools would be opened and in session for the new school year. Schools everywhere had shut down at the tail end of the winter. I expected this campus to stay shut, what with all the gloom and doom on the news. But there they were. Students. Pep in their step. Wonderment and ambition in their minds. There weren’t many that I saw, however. Just the three students and then I saw a barista in a recently re-opened coffee shop. She wore a face shield as she wiped down a table, looking like a surgeon leaning in, getting ready to remove a spleen or something.

Getting into the routine of the ‘new normal’ the campus was, I guess. As was I. But we were still caught up in the Twilight Zone. Hardly any other vehicles traveling this once busy Route 30, especially at the start of the college school year. The road was still wet, the tires were still rolling. Pushing the water from underneath them out of the way. Still creating the sound of survival. Bob was still keeping me company.

I approached the heart of the campus. Grand buildings lit up with complimenting lighting. Thick, identically masoned walls accentuating the sweeping walk-ways, buildings, and manicured lawns. Separating the fine peoples of the Villanova Empire from the rest of the world.

The walls were thick and sturdy. Thick enough for students to sit on especially at the campus’s entrance where the walls graciously end with wide, flat, tabletop-like, endcaps.

And there they were. Two more students. Female. Sitting casually on one of the endcaps. About five feet off the ground. It was a nice sight to behold. Traveling through the Twilight Zone, as it were. They were pleasant enough to gaze upon. Yes, young enough to be my daughters, but I wasn’t leering in a sexual manner. I was taking in the scene, as if at a museum and looking at a Monet. A surreal landscape. With two beauties. Enjoying the moment. The two students, sitting high upon the wall as if the only two people in the universe, enjoying each other’s company. Enjoying the moment. The present. And me, as well. Traveling solo. In more ways than one. Taking a detour. In more ways than one.

As I got closer the landscape and the two beauties shifted, evolved, became more focused. Sweet kids. I wondered what they were talking about. I thought about my daughter. Just a couple years shy of going to college herself. As the two students and I became parallel in our universe, their faces were in complete focus. So young, sweet, and innocent. My heart was filled with warmth thinking about my daughter in that scene. A freshman in college, late August, classes yet to begin, talking to a new friend. My heart also broke a little bit more. My daughter, a freshman in college. Tears fill my eyes as I write this. Time flies. It is precious.

My glance towards to the students lingered in nostalgic melancholy. One of the students looked in my direction as I passed by them. Her face lit up in horror. It was unsettling. Did I get caught gazing at them? I disconnected my gaze and turned to face the empty street and continue my detoured journey.

A blurry flash of white. A ghost. A small piece of paper headed straight for the vacuum cleaner. I was suddenly outside of my body, as if watching from the backseat. There was no way this white blur was not getting hit by the silver Sentra. Trodden upon by the galloping white horse of the King.

I have always prided myself on being a safe, cautious driver. So much so that my ex would get pissy that I wasn’t driving fast enough. You drive like an old man, she’d say. So much so that, I kid you not, other drivers would get so mad at me that I became used to the angry honks, obscene hand gestures, and bile cursing from scowling faces. Pride got the best of me, I guess, or this old man is slipping. Because, admittedly, I didn’t have my eyes on the road. I let my guard down. I was too relaxed. Too comfortable in my world of fantasy and science fiction. The streets were empty. The music, familiar and comforting. The scenery and landscape, compelling and distracting. In hindsight, I knew that last glance to the students was too long. But there was nothing going on around me on the road, what harm could an extended glance do?

Outside of myself, as if in the backseat, the windshield became a movie screen at a drive-in movie. I could see what was happening but I couldn’t do anything about it. This blur of white swooping in from the left, as the dummy driver was returning his gaze from the right, was caught in the crosshairs of collision. Was it a plastic bag doing the Jitterbug in the pandemic’s sinful, summer breeze? Was it a figment of my imagination? It had a cartoonishly blurry dynamic like the animated Casper the Friendly Ghost, after all. But the look on the student’s face said no, this is happening. This is real. My focus sharpened as the movie went into slow motion.

The dummy driver and me, outside of my body, as if in the backseat, began to blend back into a single being. Not gracefully, however. It was a crushing kaleidoscope of incomprehension. Like the feeling of too much Robitussin. Seeing trails of movement invisible to the human eye. Robotrippin’, but sober as a Supreme Court judge. We blended together, that dummy driver and me, roughly. Choppily. Clumsily. Statically, as the motion picture ventured into freeze frame. Vulgarly, as I saw the face on the blur.

How did it get right in front of me so quickly? My heart broke as I stared at the albino fox frozen in freeze frame, head turned at a ninety degree angle to its right staring at the grill of the Sentra, in the unforgiving illumination of the headlights. Its body, legs, and tail in full sprint trying to get to the other side unscathed.

The face of this albino fox was tragically ironic or ironically tragic, adding to my crushing kaleidoscope of incomprehension.

As my two beings completed their merge back into one and I stared at the frozen frame of misfortune, the albino fox, as if chasing a rabbit through the woods, was smiling. Looking directly at the front of the car, as if saying, I GOT THIS. He didn’t. Have this. A safe passage. A close call. An unbelievable get-away.

I hit the brakes, but not hard. I didn’t lock ‘em up, so to speak, and come to a skidding halt. It was more of a reactionary tap. Foot off the gas, instinctively, and a jab at the brake pedal.

Boom. Or Bang. The thudding noise definitely began with the “B” sound. That’s the sound playing over and over in my head when I think about it. Bouff!, or Bousch!, or Boompt!, as it immediately disappeared from my line of sight. A piece of paper getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Ghastly. Boom!

I hit the fucker. Hard. I was still in motion, driving. I didn’t feel a bump so I didn’t think my tires caught it, turning it into instant roadkill. But I knew it was not going to be a good outcome, regardless. The King on the white horse thought about taking off and not looking back. Alas, the white horse gradually came to a halt, as if acting on behalf of the King with thoughts of fleeing.

I put on the hazards and opened my door. I didn’t want to look in the rearview mirror. I was horrified. I love animals. I didn’t want to see what had happened. What I had done.

I stepped out of the car and turned to face the accident scene.

Route 30 had a sleek, wet shininess to it under the streetlights. I expected to see the fox laying dead in the street, motionless. Dread filled my being as I began to separate from myself again. I saw myself from behind, high up. The ‘me’ I saw, the dummy driver, was standing by the car, driver’s door wide open. In the short distance, was the animal standing in the middle of the wet street, lit up with a well-placed streetlight. The animal was back lit so I could only see its dark silhouette. It was twisted. Standing. Motionless. It was haunting. My separated self witnessed this scene from a disjointed distance. It looked like a movie poster from the horror genre of the late seventies/early eighties. The animal and the man, motionless. Filled with dread of varying degrees. They faced each other, the man and the animal, in this movie poster-like visage.

The animal began moving. Hobbling. In a twisted, uneven circle. It only had the use of three of its legs. Its front right leg was raised in a gimpy, protective fashion. It tried to finish its journey to the other side of Route 30. Only to hobble in its dazed, crippled circle. Not able to finish, tired, hurt, stunned, shocked, it curled up in the street as if it were laying down for a nap in its wilderness den.

My latest out of body experience proved short as well. I began to regain my perspective and emotions as I neared the fallen animal. A dizzying walk, where my balance and concentration were playing tricks on me. A seemingly psychedelic mind-trip of changing, shifting dimensions all around me. This used to happen to me as an adolescent. Whenever I was scolded at home for my many malfeasances, the walls would start to move. Up, then down. The floor dropping. My balance would stagger. My mother oblivious to the Alice in Wonderland phenomenon going on as she berated me, pointing the wooden spoon at my face. The wet street receded beneath my feet as if it were a soft rubbery surface. The buildings and streetlights rose and fell like the digital lights on a stereo system. It was dreamlike but I knew it was real and happening. I was coming back into myself from that freaky out of body view, and the supreme dread that filled my head said that this was real.

I reached the sweet animal at the same time as the two students who caused this accident. Laugh out loud, just kidding. Wanted to make sure you were paying attention. The fox, as it were, was not a fox at all. It was a sweet dog. One of the sweetest looking dogs I have ever seen. It was as small as a fox, with big, fluffy, seemingly super-soft white hair. A sweet dog because it was still smiling. In between its tongue-out panting from the running, it looked at the three of us with pleasure. You could tell it was a ‘people-person’ dog, one that loved meeting people.

As one of the students reached out a hand to comfort the pooch, I asked her to be careful. I was afraid the dog might nip her in self-defense. The student slowly, carefully extended her hand and patted the sweet thing. It smiled more. You would never have guessed that this dog was just brutally whacked by a car. The dog seemed so content in the moment. Just a little tired from the running, enjoying the new-found attention. There was no blood on the scene. There were no cuts, bruises, or ripped up fur on the dog. It remained quietly content in its curled-up safety zone, enjoying the meaningful strokes of comfort supplied by the student. I stood by and watched, guiltily.

Minutes later a commotion came bustling across Route 30. A young man, running, calling out words which were not registering in my brain, and a young woman, also running, behind him. They reached our impromptu support meeting in despair.

The young man was quite upset. He must’ve said the dog’s name a dozen times but I can’t remember the name. He really loved the dog. Said it had gotten loose and he and his friend were chasing it. The freeze frame of the albino fox flashed in my mind. Full sprint, head turned, smiling. He/She was playing Catch Me If You Can with its owner. Loving life. Loving freedom. Loving its owner for the fun times. The young man didn’t have to ask if it was I who hit the dog. It was obvious. Standing closest to the abruptly parked car with door wide open and hazard lights on. Wearing a shirt and tie, work slacks and shoes, nametag, and a guilty, sullen face. The young man and I made eye contact. The eye contact wasn’t long but it was held long enough for a conversation conveyance that needn’t be said aloud.

The young man carefully picked the dog up and cradled him/her lovingly. Again, the dog was so quiet, sweet, and content, you would never have known that I slipped up and lost my concentration and hit it. The dog adoringly looked at the young man as if settling in for long night’s sleep cuddled up with its favorite human.

The impromptu conference dissipated when it seemed the albino fox was not in grave danger. In need of medical attention, yes. But it was going to survive this close call. We all could tell by its smile. We went our separate ways. The young man, his friend, and the albino fox/dog back across Route 30. The two students headed back to their perch to retrieve their belongings. And I. I turned to face the Sentra. The white horse waiting for its King. We still had to get a fill-up. We still had a contemplative journey ahead of us. We were still twenty miles out of town. Cold irons bound. This was not routine. I prefer routine.

In this crazy, crazy year I’m having with the divorce, the pandemic changing world, losing my job, finding a new job, surviving the depression within myself, discovering myself, I have learned something that we all know to well. Accidents happen. They’re not planned. They just happen. And we have to deal with the circumstances and outcomes of those accidents on the fly.

My thoughts, on the contemplative drive home, after gassing up, were centered on my children. Accidents happen. I have always been a doting worrier when it comes to the kids. I worry. I really love them.