Cocky the Fox (5)
By:
June 10, 2010
HILOBROW is proud to present the fifth installment of James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky the Fox, a serial tale in twenty fits, with illustrations by Kristin Parker.
The story so far: Cocky the fox, a handsome specimen of Vulpes vulpes living on the edge of an English town, is in trouble. His mentor Holiday Bob, top fox in the Borough, is dead. His family life has collapsed, and he’s moved in with his friend Champion, a distressed albino rabbit. His enemies are everywhere. And he’s been drinking a lot of aftershave.
In Fit the Fourth, Cocky sold the cat French Edward some aftershave — this, despite his having been ordered by Billy Five Wives to stop dealing; he reminisced about wooing his vixen, Nora, but also recalled the night when she threw him out of their den and he moved in with Champion; he woke up to find the hutch surrounded by marauding rats — whose ever-changing constellation of gangs, their forms and norms, amuse him; and he sallied forth to do battle.
THAT FEELING again.
Often in these high pre-battle moments I sense a cold monitoring from above, a sort of celestial surveillance. So go ahead, eye in the sky: look down. There’s the garden at night, see it? Way below, between the other houses and gardens. Tree-blobs, street light, tonal blotches. Now brush the threads of night-mist aside and zoom in. The air thickens. There’s the hutch, and there, waiting, the many-eyed mass of the Horde, and there — see Cocky primed and heroic upon the plinth of his upturned wheelbarrow, coat in quills, now then you rodents, who wants
Slight squirt of vertigo as the first rat comes at me, making a snittering solo run through the damp grass: rat-movement is a wrongness, a corner-of-the-eye flicker seen head-on. It’s why we want to kill them all the time! Into my face he springs and I snatch him in mid-flight, pop his skull between my molars, toss the death-heavy body aside. Easy peasy. The next one too — crunch, spit, like eating tapas. As each rat launches himself I can hear him give a grunt, a workmanlike untroubled little hup! You have to hand it to these Horde mobs — they’re very Horde-minded, not too bothered who lives or dies so long as the job gets done.
And here comes Ambrose himself, fussing and bustling, with light from the windows glancing off the crease of his centre-parting. I’ll want a word a word with him later, so I just give him a half-bite — what the late Holiday Bob would have termed a ‘perforator’ — and sling him into the fence. Nice thump as his body hits the wood.
Now there’s an extra-big one in front of me, up on his back legs, moving waistily, stamping, hissing and paddling his hands as if the burden of his Cocky-loathing is just too too much. Well, it’s all personal, isn’t it? And if it isn’t it fucking well should be. This is a major, major rat and I go straight for his throat, shooting horizontally off the wheelbarrow. That’s the thing about rat-fighting — no hesitation! With a dog, even in the heat of it, you can circle about, talk some trash, work on his emotions a bit: they’re all puppies deep down. But a rat sticks his own death in your face in way you can’t ignore. Long ago, at the first hatching of light in the first rat’s brain, the whole line made its grim little pact with extinction. ‘Kill’em hard,’ is what we say in the Borough.
So here I am at rat-level, whirling and snapping. Notice how happy I look in a fight like this, how complete — the unscrewed grin, the hectic fur, my napkinned breast drenched in claret and my tongue tossing ropes of drool… I’m following my bliss! But these rats are everywhere, seething, treading in each other’s eyes to get at me. Another mob has just arrived on the scene, I can hear the captains arguing back behind the lawn furniture. Ah, this is warm work.
Whoops. I stopped whipping my tail end about for a second there and one of them banzai’d in and stapled himself to my left hip. Other rats have clambered onto him, hooking their teeth into his flanks — they call this the Daisy Chain — and with all the extra weight I’m listing somewhat… They’re under me now too — I’m hopping around on rats, rats, rats, with the tinfoil tang of rat’s blood in my mouth. Behind the action orders are being given, sibilant directives, and I note the sour clatter of cans as a squad swarms up my mound of empties toward the hutch. Will we go down together in our garden, then, me and the rabbit, in the light-weakened murk of a town night? Fuck that. Break out, Cocky! Eat them, beat them down… But then my head fills with noise, with feedback, a blinding bone-baring sort of a whistle.
Champion is screaming.
The rats around me stand up, jaws dropped, rat-hands hanging loose, ravished. I make for the hutch, lugging the two or three that are still attached to me — if I get to the Champ before the Horde does, I don’t know, I might kill him myself — anything to stop this NOISE…
But now I’m lighter all of a sudden, less encumbered — did I shake them off? The rat-surge is faltering, something’s blowing through it… Counterpoint to Champion’s demented treble, a low hoarse pulse, then another pulse — Otto the Rot is barking! Bloody great night-shaking woofs and dog-vowels, with his huge upholstered paws crashing against the fence, his claws in their sheaths of leather. And then he’s through, the mottled slats giving way and the rats shrilling in panic as he plunges among them. A joy to watch. Foolish Cocky, imagining that this beast was out of shape! Here’s where nutrition pays off and good sleeping patterns. It’s a right old rampage, cyclonic, with rat-chunks in orbit around his pectorals.
In about ten seconds the garden is clear — just flattened astonished grass, quivering night-molecules and Champion wheezing by the hutch door, which now lolls from one hinge.
Reprieved!
Otto is standing there, genteelly winded, like he’s been fencing or doing the tango. His deep moist eye is upon the Champ, I see, so I jump up onto the hutch roof and distribute a few cautionary lightnings. Respectfully, of course.
‘Nice one, Otto. Thought I’d had my chips there for a minute.’ Prowl, zap, keep back you bastard.
‘Nothing to do with you, cowboy,’ he says levelly, the deluxe tongue prodding the air. His head is enormous. ‘Every dog hates a rat.’
‘Yes, well, an exciting evening all round. Shame it’s over, in a way.’
Otto considers this, considers me, considers the aesthetics of the event. Then he slurps in that tongue and straightens up.
‘One day, Cocky,’ he says.
‘One day!’ I answer gaily.
And he pads back to his kennel, all slouch and symmetry. Class.
I jump down again. Bits of me hurt, but righteously. I stalk along the base of the fence, nosing bodies aside. ‘Ambrose?’
‘Yuuuh…’ He’s not moving much, maybe I wounded him more than I meant to. Who cares? I stand over him, forelegs planted on either side, and let it all drip down into his face. Blood, spit — I want him to feel my heat. I don’t like to gloat, but… Actually I love to gloat.
‘Heh heh,’ I say. ‘Knock at my door, see what you get.’
‘You’re out of touch, Cock,’ he manages. ‘BRG got taken over.’ He coughs up a little spew of blood.
‘By who?’
‘The Tears. We —’ he coughs again, gestures at a nearby corpse ‘— are Mother’s Burning Tears.’
‘What? Well anyway, listen, the point is, you can all get stuffed. No more rat-tribute from me, understand? And no more rats in my garden.’
He’s drifting off, eyelids fluttering. I give him a nudge. ‘I said no more rats in my garden!’
‘Which…? Oh. Yeah.’ Revived, he makes a gallant attempt at a sneer. ‘You’re finished here, fox. You know that.’
‘Hm!’ I work something out of my teeth, a bone-fragment, and spit it to one side. ‘Rats used to taste nicer,’ I say.
‘You got no future!’
‘We’ll see. Say hi to your big fat horrible mum.’
He sighs and drags himself off, smearing the grass with his damaged haunches. Mother’s Burning Tears, eh? Bloody hell. They sound like a bunch of maniacs! All part of the Horde’s new vibe — the cult-like thing, the humourless romanticism of it. I’ll have to tell Paul, he’s very interested in these subcultural formations; as he says, there’s no end to the invention of a truly servile mind.
The night is settling down: TV-burble from the rowed houses, French Edward’s owner still calling. The yeast of combat is leaving the air. No future, said the rat, and he may be right. Just the present, that seems to get less and less habitable… Well — enough of these ruminations. Grabbing the still-numb Champion by his scruff I haul him under the upturned wheelbarrow with me for some kip.
There’s foxes I know who have trouble getting their rest. The late Holiday Bob himself suffered on occasion from a festering wakefulness, and would stalk the Yard, spinning plots and talking to whoever was around. Not me. I take the two ends of myself — my dripping barking face and my electrified tail — curl them inward, close the circuit and sleep. Polluted as I am, sleep is nice for me. Black, forgiving. When I go to sleep I rejoin the total animal.
THE MORNING after the rat-fight we wake up under the wheelbarrow, Champion and I, all smushed together beneath its metal dome like canned fox and rabbit. It’s getting stuffy in here so I obtrude my long curious head and take a sniff of the garden. Dead rats, early morning, nice nice. In such a way, I reflect, does the universe announce its newness: we have the clarifying dawn-world, with its first rumours of rush hour, and we have the high witty scent of death at its freshest, silvering the air above these rat-heaps. I’ve got no hangover, I’ve had a good tear-up, I’m feeling rather lyrical.
Until I see the raven.
He’s black as a bomb and smells of nothing at all, which gives me an immediate scare — it’s like discovering a dead spot in my nose! He has his immense back to me, the wings folded in scholarly fashion, and is bent mutteringly over a rat-corpse. Grey fleshless shins below the shredded short trousers of his leg-feathers, three-toed dinosaur boots. ‘And?’ I hear him say. ‘And? Yes? And?’ Then with two robot jabs and a whole-bodied tug he’s split the rat’s body and spread its innards on the grass. He’s done the same, I observe, to three others already. I withdraw gingerly for a think.
Now which of the brothers is this? We’re all fully coached in Twin-lore, here in the Borough: Randall the gentleman villain, his elegance and lacquered blackness and so on, and then Corvin, the psycho junior partner with the steaming scalp. If it’s Randall I might be safe, for now: they say it amuses him to have manners. But if it’s Corvin…? I cock an ear. Wet crackling noises as he beaks around among the ribs and entrails, going ‘And? And?’ like a mental case.
Bollocks. It has to be Corvin.
What’s he up to though? Not eating, just buggering about with dead things. He’d love to pop me open, wouldn’t he, have a yank at my vitals… I tremble a bit, here beneath the wheelbarrow. Seriously, I quake.
‘You smell scared’ says Champion.
‘Shhhh!’
‘Fear of the blackbird.’
‘You are joking, mate. Fear?’ But I do seem to have fear up the arse-crack, where it has lodged like a probe. The Champ gives a loud sceptical sniff.
Sod it.
I mean to say: You only live once, if that.
This is our garden.
I ease from my hiding-place, fill my chest and hail the raven.
‘Oi! Midnight!’ I shout. ‘Graverobber!’
The wide cloak of his back gives a twitch.
‘Oi! Death-breath! Over here!’
His head lifts, he trudges about to face me and, gracious, I almost cack myself on the spot. The voltage of the bird bangs into me, his lunacy goes fizzing down my spine. Argh! Hackles up! He ticks his head to the side and turns on me the berserk jewel of his raven’s eyeball.There’s a length of bitten gizzard swinging wildly from his beak-end. The carcass he’s been working on, I now see, is rather larger than your average rodent. Rather larger, yes, and with a pair of white forepaws, like the white gloves of an archivist —
That’s no rat, for fuck’s sake.
That’s French Edward!
I have a remark prepared for Corvin, something about how he can go and eat his breakfast off the North Circular, but it dies on my tongue. Instead I flatten against the ground, ears back, and start making low whirring hate-sounds. Rrrrrr….. RRRRRRR! You don’t know how much you hate madness until you meet a real deep-core nutjob. Bob told me about this, about getting ravened: the S&M face regarding me, the black breast panting slightly as if overloaded with malevolence. My hackles rise even further, my growling gets trebley. And the worst of it is, I can see myself as he sees me — a diffident shitty fox, cringing by an upturned wheelbarrow.
‘Good scene, this,’ he croaks. ‘I like it. Lots of GUTS.’
What a monster! He jerks his beak, his black-market endoscope, at what’s left of French Edward.
‘Minor character. Killed by rats. All your fault.’ Then the laugh: ‘Heurgh heurgh heurgh!’ Like something chiselled up from the floor of a burned McDonalds.
He takes a step towards me, and another. I ready myself for impact. I wince.
And then – amazingly – he leaves! I hear him snort, and opening one eye see him give two great contemptuous swats of his wings and lift off, heavily at first but with gathering prowess, until he’s shooting ninja-style up a column of air and the Borough and all its business, the tumble of the town and the fields and woods beyond it, are shrinking away beneath him, shrinking to comedy and then to absurdity and then to… An eyeblink of distance, and he’s gone. Zoomed out.
Strewth. I give myself a furious nose-to-tail shake, with propellor-sounds. ‘Wow!’ I say. ‘Look at old French.’
‘That’s not French,’ says Champion, tin-voiced beneath the wheelbarrow.
‘Not anymore, is it? Huh. Makes you think.’
A solemn moment. I salute you, French Edward, your body raven’s meat, your spirit installed untouchably in the zodiac of cat-ness. It was the Old Spice that did for you: a sober Frenchman would never have been caught by low Horde rats. You had to have your Old Spice. Which is the odor of the morning, now I think of it: death wearing aftershave. You were a cat, a tippler, a mathematician —
But absorbed in these orisons I neglect the fast-moving shadow behind my right ear, which is in fact Corvin, returning, descending on a long sizzling fuse of a nosedive that he detonates beak-first — boom! — on top of my skull. Poor Cocky. Spanked, spatchcocked, legs in all directions. Goosh!… Goosh!… goes the blood in my brain, or the flogging pulse of the raven’s wings as he brakes over me and pulls back skyward. His laughter clatters, dwindles — Heurgh! Heurgh! — and I see a vision. I see foxes arrayed in finality, grey and high-shouldered, with long scowling boneless hillbilly faces. One of them raises a withered wrist. He beckons. ‘Not yet, skinny bollocks,’ I mumble. ‘Not now… Not today.’
After a little while, I get to my feet.
‘The other one is nicer,’ says Champion.
‘The other what?’ I mop my head with a faint paw. I appear to be bleeding, big-time.
‘The other blackbird. His voice is nicer.’
‘His voice? What the fuck are you talking about?’
No reply.
‘Come on, whose — ’
But the Champ, hooded by the wheelbarrow’s metal lip, is staring frozenly. He’s unnaturally still! And there it goes, damn it, that xylophone-run of pure fright along my spinal knobs.
‘Very entertaining, your fox,’ he says, in a voice I’ve never heard before. ‘Wonderful sort of picaresque resilience. He’s driving the plot beautifully.’
‘Uh. You…’
‘All for our amusement, of course.’
I open my mouth, shut my mouth, open my mouth. Because now I know that this voice, this shabby/posh 40-a-day drawl coming out of Champion’s rigid body, is the voice of the raven Randall du Noir. He’s been walking up and down in this garden, chatting with my friend.
The rabbit relaxes: his nose starts working again.
‘Get your shit together,’ I tell him. Although he has no shit, of any sort, at all. ‘We leave tonight.’
Where will Cocky and Champion go now?
Will Cocky and Weasel Paul resolve their differences?
What are the ravens up to?
Find out in the next episode, on Thursday, June 24.
SAME FOX-TIME!
SAME FOX-CHANNEL!
Each installment of THE BALLAD OF COCKY THE FOX was complemented by an issue of THE SNIFFER, a COCKY THE FOX newsletter written and edited by Patrick Cates. Originally sent only to subscribers, they are now all freely available here.
READ MORE ORIGINAL FICTION on HiLobrow.com.